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The 11,000 foreign athletes, media crews and guests will be met at the airport by workers in biohazard suits

Friend of suspect who returned to scene of robbery told guard he was looking for a ‘finger with a ring on it’Italian police are trying to catch a suspected thief by fingerprinting a digit he accidentally cut off on barbed wire while fleeing the scene of a robbery, although they hope the suspect will turn himself in the hopes of retrieving his lost wedding ring.The injured man sent a friend back to the area, a recycling plant in Milan, to search for his body part and the ring, but the friend was spotted by a security guard rummaging through leaves, local media reported. Continue reading...

As Derry prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, we revisit the archive to show how the day unfolded on 30 January 1972, when British paratroopers opened fire on a civil rights march and killed 13 civilians Continue reading...

Despite aching backs and stiff joints, a growing number of elite athletes – from Zlatan Ibrahimović to Serena Williams – are pushing the clock back. So why can’t you? We ask the experts how to do it

Vote on proposed peace deal to placate warring factions pushed to an electronic ballot next week after Friday night meeting of state executive

Lynn was left with brain damage when she fell out of van travelling at 60mph after Chay Bowskill kidnapped herThe attorney general is reviewing the sentence given to a man whose then girlfriend was left with catastrophic brain injuries when she fell out of a van travelling at 60mph after he kidnapped her.Angel Lynn, 19, has been left unable to walk or talk after she suffered a fractured skull and brain injuries when she fell from the vehicle on to a dual carriageway near Loughborough in September 2020. Continue reading...

Pattinson’s comment on the caped crusader’s dark psyche gives me hope that Matt Reeves’ film will have something to sayThe messed up psychology of Batman, masked defender of Gotham City, is so dense and peculiar that entire books have been written about it. This is perhaps why so many fans took umbrage at the caped crusader’s depiction during the Joel Schumacher years as a batnippled lightweight. There is really nothing fun about getting under the skin of the dark knight, only to discover he has all the psychological complexity of a Ken doll, as George Clooney and Val Kilmer should probably have worked out the minute they picked up their scripts.Nobody can accuse Robert Pattinson of not doing his homework in this regard. Speaking in the new issue of Premiere magazine’s French edition, the new Batman reveals that he wanted to get into the nitty-gritty of the superhero’s psyche from the minute he signed on. Continue reading...

That night was unquestionably the worst I’ve experienced during my 100 years on this earthI was born in Budapest in 1921 and was living there when war broke out. I received my army call-up in May 1943; at the time, Hungary was one of the Axis powers and had been fighting the Soviet Union on the eastern front for the past two years. I received basic military training but, because I was Jewish, I wasn’t given a regular uniform. Instead, I was conscripted into a labour corps and sent with 3,600 others to the mines in Bor, Serbia, which provided copper for the German army.The labour camps were harsh environments, but I spoke good German and was able to secure a job as a stoker on a train that carried rocks from the mine, which meant I managed to stay warm. In September 1944, the approach of the Russian army led to the hurried closure of the mine and, to our delight, we learned we were to head back to Hungary, accompanied by the Hungarian guards from the camp. Continue reading...

After stopping driver in his 80s in a supermarket car park, officers also discover he never had insurance eitherA man stopped by police told officers he had been driving without a licence or insurance for more than 70 years.Officers on a routine patrol in Nottingham said they were stunned when they pulled over the driver in his 80s in a supermarket car park. Continue reading...

We air both sides of a domestic disagreement – and ask you to deliver a verdict

Prince would be latest high-profile defendant – with a strategy condemned by US legal expertsNew Yorkers love a big trial.From Joan Collins, who resisted a claim from her publisher over an “unpublishable” manuscript, to Leona Helmsley’s “only little people pay taxes” prosecution, to a long line of swindlers, cheats, celebrity divorces and mafia take-downs, each scandal-strewn case becomes part of the metropolis’s dirty jungle lore. Continue reading...

Severe weather warning for damaging winds, heavy rainfall and flash flooding issued for Melbourne and parts of regional Victoria

The runaway success of the Colombia-set animation, with its infectious Lin-Manuel Miranda songs, is in no small part thanks to its Latinx characters, cast and key film-makers“My kids LOVE it!” “It’s MASSIVE in our house!” The WhatsApp group for my daughter’s reception-year class – usually home to messages about lost school jumpers and tips for half-term clubs – explodes into emojis and capital letters at the mention of Disney’s Encanto. One obsessed eight-year-old has learned the words to all the songs – and so have most of their classmates. A’s five-year-old is demanding to know how to say the words in Spanish. Encanto-mania is taking over kids’ lives.For the uninitiated, Encanto (which is Spanish for “charm”) is Disney’s 60th animated feature film, featuring ridiculously catchy songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the composer of Hamilton. It tells the tale of the magical Madrigal family who live in an enchanted house hidden in the mountains of Colombia. Every member of the clan is blessed with an extraordinary gift – except 15-year-old Mirabel (voiced by Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Stephanie Beatriz) who is struggling to find her place in the family. Continue reading...

Reducing speed limits, banning home wood-burning and providing free transport are just some of the approaches takenEarlier in January the London mayor and other organisations issued the first pollution warning of the year. These warnings follow the UK government index.They are designed to protect vulnerable people, but they do this by asking those people who experience most harm to avoid doing things outdoors. They do not ask the polluters to reduce their emissions. Continue reading...

Mayor says Dominic Cummings’ trip put town on the map as English Heritage reports ‘stay at home’ boomThe crumbling medieval fortress at Barnard Castle had a record number of visitors last year after gaining notoriety as the destination of Dominic Cummings on a lockdown mission to test his eyesight.Visitors to the 12th-century castle on the north bank of the River Tees were up by almost 20% in 2021 compared with 2019, according to English Heritage, the charity that manages more than 400 historic buildings and monuments. Continue reading...

Territory government accused of failing to implement preprepared plans and urged to lock down central Australia

Doctor’s condition grave after attack in Fujimino near Tokyo as police confirm man aged 50 to 70 in custodyA Japanese man has been arrested for the attempted murder of a doctor he allegedly took hostage overnight, reports said on Friday.The suspect is also alleged to have shot a nurse, who is severely injured, as he confined the doctor, who is feared dead after the attack, according to public broadcaster NHK. Continue reading...

From the beginning, China’s response to coronavirus has been to quash outbreaks with ultra-strict lockdowns. But has the Omicron variant left its leaders trapped in the wrong strategy?Ever since the first Covid-19 outbreak was detected in Wuhan, China has countered the virus with incredibly harsh social measures designed to restrict interpersonal contact and eliminate opportunities for the disease to spread. Closed borders, mass testing and entire neighbourhoods and cities quarantined in response to a single case – that’s what it has taken to maintain China’s strict “Covid zero” policy. And it’s been successful: officially, China’s lost fewer than 5,000 people to coronavirus since the start of the pandemic – that’s fewer than the number of people in the US killed by the virus in the past week.As our China affairs correspondent, Vincent Ni, tells Michael Safi, for Chinese leaders, Covid zero isn’t just a policy – it’s a major achievement for their authoritarian system of government. But with the mutation of the Omicron variant now causing shutdowns in cities across the country, Covid zero is presenting officials with a new dilemma: what’s the exit strategy? Continue reading...

Madagascar, Mozambique and Malawi lashed by high winds and torrential rains, leaving nearly 80 people deadThe death toll from a storm that struck three southern African countries has risen to 77 as emergency teams battled to repair damaged infrastructure and help tens of thousands of victims.Tropical Storm Ana made landfall in Madagascar on Monday before ploughing into Mozambique and Malawi through the week, bringing torrential rains Continue reading...

Moscow unhappy with rejection of demand for veto over Ukraine’s potential Nato membershipRussia has said it is willing to continue talks with the US over European security, but is not optimistic about their prospects after Washington and Nato allies again rejected a key part of the Kremlin’s proposed new order for post-cold war security.Tensions have soared in recent weeks as Russia massed more than 100,000 soldiers and heavy weapons at its border with Ukraine, raising fears of an invasion. Continue reading...

Malaki Thorpe, 18, accused of racially aggravated actual bodily harm in north LondonA teenager has been charged over a suspected hate crime after two Jewish men were attacked in north London on Wednesday, the night before Holocaust Memorial Day.Malaki Thorpe, 18, of Tottenham, will appear at Highbury Corner magistrates court on Friday charged with two counts of racially aggravated actual bodily harm (ABH) and one count of possession of an offensive weapon. Continue reading...

The fast food chain has said components for the sandwich will be sold separately and customers will have to assemble it themselvesBurger giant McDonalds is causing something of a flap with a bizarre new set of forthcoming ‘menu hacks’ that includes a sandwich called “Land, Air & Sea,” combining fish, beef and a bird with dismal flying abilities – the chicken.Menu hacks have in recent years become a popular way for the public to customize creations from existing items on fast food chain menus. Continue reading...

The Labour leader’s approval has dropped to 35% as the country wrestles with the Omicron Covid variant and rising inflationSupport for Jacinda Ardern has dropped to its lowest level since she became New Zealand’s prime minister in 2017, as the country reckons with higher living costs and a Covid-19 outbreak.While Ardern remains New Zealand’s preferred prime minister by a significant margin, her support had dropped four points in the latest 1 News Kantor poll, to 35%. The result is her lowest since just before the 2017 election, when Ardern began her tenure. Her counterparts on the right are still tailing by a significant margin, but new National leader Christopher Luxon had made substantial gains, up 13 points to 17%. Continue reading...

Friday: Aboriginal organisations accuse the NT government of failing to carry out emergency plans over outbreak. Plus: recordings show orcas hunting blue whalesGood morning. There are concerns over the ability of home rapid antigen tests to detect the Covid Omicron variant, as issues over the supply of the tests to concession card holders rumble on.Covid is “out of control” in central Australia, representing a “catastrophic failure” by the Northern Territory government to carry out its own emergency plans, according to the three biggest Aboriginal organisations in the NT. The groups have accused the NT government of failing to adequately carry out emergency plans that had been made with them “well in advance” of the current outbreak. “Many of the issues we are facing were foreseen, and plans made to address them. But there has been a catastrophic failure by government to discharge its responsibility to all Northern Territory residents by implementing these plans in Central Australia,” they wrote in a scathing letter to the NT chief minister, Michael Gunner. Continue reading...

Cabinet Office officials wrangle over final version of Sue Gray’s findings on alleged Covid rule-breaking partiesBoris Johnson has been told it is “time for the truth to be released” as he faced more calls to publish a long-awaited report into “partygate” in full and not “suppress crucial details”.Officials in the Cabinet Office are still wrangling over the final version of Sue Gray’s findings on a string of alleged Covid rule-breaking parties in Downing Street and other parts of government. Continue reading...

Mike Morrogh on proposals for greater autonomy for the Donbas region and the creation of Northern Ireland a century agoSimon Diggins (Letters, 25 January) urges that “those, like Jenkins, who find it difficult to understand why a country like Ukraine might wish to chart its own course, let him look over the Irish Sea at a close historical parallel”. Unfortunately, such a look might support Simon Jenkins’ view that a measure of autonomy for eastern Ukraine is the only way out of the crisis. Ireland achieved practical independence at the cost of the partition of Ireland by the British government in 1920.

What the royal’s lawyers said in his answer and defences to the sexual abuse suit against himPrince Andrew has filed his answer and defences to Virginia Giuffre’s sexual abuse lawsuit against him, brought in the New York district court. Here are some of the key points from the court papers. The prince’s lawyers say:Prince Andrew denies the allegations contained in paragraph one of the complaint. (Paragraph one of the complaint: “This suit arises out of defendant’s sexual abuse of plaintiff when she was under the age of 18 years old.”)Prince Andrew lacks sufficient information to admit or deny the allegations contained in paragraph two of the complaint. (Paragraph two: “During 2000–2002, beginning when plaintiff was 16, plaintiff was the victim of sex trafficking and abuse by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.”)Prince Andrew denies the first clause in paragraph seven of the complaint. He lacks sufficient information to admit or deny the remaining allegations contained in that paragraph. (Paragraph seven: “Prince Andrew was a close friend of Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite who spent years overseeing and managing Epstein’s sex trafficking network, and actively recruited underage girls, including plaintiff.”)Prince Andrew denies the allegations contained in paragraph nine of the complaint. (Paragraph nine: “After publicly feigning ignorance about the scope of Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation and sympathy for Epstein’s victims, Prince Andrew has refused to cooperate with US authorities in their investigation and prosecution of Epstein and his co-conspirators.”)Prince Andrew admits that he met Epstein in or around 1999. He denies the remaining allegations in the first sentence of paragraph 30 of the complaint, and lacks sufficient information to admit or deny the allegations contained in the second sentence of that paragraph. (Paragraph 30: “According to Prince Andrew, he first met Epstein in 1999 through Maxwell, Prince Andrew’s close friend. Prince Andrew and Maxwell have been photographed at numerous social events together.”)Prince Andrew lacks sufficient information to admit or deny the allegations contained in paragraph 33 of the complaint. (Paragraph 33: “In 2006, Prince Andrew invited Epstein to his daughter’s 18th birthday party, despite Epstein being charged with procuring a minor for prostitution only one month prior.”)Prince Andrew lacks sufficient information to admit or deny the allegations contained in paragraph 38 of the complaint. (Paragraph 38: “The below photograph depicts Prince Andrew, plaintiff, and Maxwell at Maxwell’s home prior to Prince Andrew sexually abusing plaintiff.”)[Virginia] Giuffre’s complaint should be dismissed because this court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the action.Giuffre, through her own actions, inactions, and other conduct – including, without limitation, entering into the 2009 release agreement with Epstein containing a broad third-party release of her claims against Prince Andrew and others – waived the claims now asserted in the complaint.Assuming, without admitting, that Giuffre has suffered any injury or damage, Giuffre and/or others, who are not Prince Andrew, contributed in whole or in part to the alleged damage.Assuming, without admitting, that Giuffre has suffered any injury or damage alleged in the complaint, Giuffre’s claims are barred by the doctrine of consent.Giuffre’s alleged causes of action are barred in whole or in part by her own wrongful conduct and the doctrine of unclean hands.Giuffre’s claims are barred in whole or in part by the applicable statute(s) of limitations. Continue reading...

Downing Street says it’s ‘hypothetically’ possible report will be published today or tomorrow; PM denies making call to airlift Pen Farthing’s animals

She moved to the Mojave desert, but the pandemic stranded the psychedelicist back in her native Wales. She explains how ‘three people losing their minds in a terraced house’ ended up with an album of the year“It looks like the bottom of the ocean, the light is completely different. And the perspective of time changes out here. The days are so long.” Down the line, Cate Le Bon is describing the beauty of desert living. “Everything is so still,” she says. “Sound travels differently out here. It feels like you’re in a vacuum, and you choose when you want to break the seal.”She still speaks about the Mojave with the wonderment of a newcomer; the events of the past two years mean that she has spent perhaps just two months in the home she bought in Joshua Tree, California. Instead, she pinged around the globe from Wales to Topanga Canyon, anything to keep working; producing records for John Grant and Devendra Banhart and recording her own sixth album, the spectacular Pompeii, the follow-up to her Mercury-nominated 2019 album Reward. Continue reading...

In pulling his music from Spotify in protest at Joe Rogan’s Covid misinformation, the singer continues a life of political action – but unlike others, he doesn’t need to please the streaming giantIf you had been forced to predict which blue-chip American rock legend was going to suddenly pull their music off Spotify in protest at the streaming site hosting a far-right-friendly podcast that spreads medical misinformation, Neil Young would have been a very safe bet.He is famously among the most ornery, uncompromising and capricious of said blue-chip legends. The years that produced his most famous work also played host to Young wilfully sabotaging his own commercial prospects in order to follow his muse (or, as he memorably put it, “heading for the ditch”); suddenly abandoning tours midway by directing his tour bus to pull off the motorway en route to the next show; whimsically declining to release a succession of completed albums; and incurring the wrath of his partners in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY) by removing their contributions from the master tapes of his songs before releasing them. He spent a substantial chunk of the 1980s making wildly uncommercial albums, apparently with the specific intention of annoying his record label, which ended up suing him for being unpredictable – it lost, perhaps because, as his labelmate Elton John put it, its lawsuit “felt a bit like suing Neil Young for being Neil Young”. Continue reading...

Outrage over ad for receptionist role insists applicants are under 30 and provide bathing costume photoThe Italian labour ministry has opened an investigation after a company seeking a female receptionist aged under 30 asked job applicants to include a photograph of themselves in a bathing costume alongside documents proving their credentials.The advert, posted on several specialised job sites by a Naples-based security company, stipulated that the candidate must be female, no older than 30, a fluent English speaker and have their own car and “a sunny character with an attractive appearance”. Continue reading...

Discovery of 18 letters at former post office in Vilnius last summer launched effort to trace recipientsA letter written to a 12-year-old girl in Lithuania has been delivered 51 years after it was sent by a pen pal in Poland.“I thought that someone was pranking me,” said Genovefa Klonovska after being handed the letter, which included a handmade rose and two paper dolls. Continue reading...

Force under investigation over its contact with male and female whose bodies were found by dog walkerA police force is under investigation over its contact with two teenagers whose bodies were found at a beauty spot in Dorset.The male and female, both in their late teens, were discovered by a dog walker in a wooded area beside a reservoir near Bridport. Dorset police said there were no suspicious circumstances but have not said how they died. Their identities have not been revealed but their families have been informed. Continue reading...

Motorist asks police to de-arrest him and to treat him as a witness to Yasmine Chkaifi’s killing by her exA motorist who says he was trying to prevent a woman from being stabbed to death when he drove his car into her attacker has urged the police to reverse a decision to arrest him on suspicion of murder.Yasmine Chkaifi, 43, was repeatedly and fatally stabbed by her ex-husband Leon McCaskre, 41, on a pavement in London’s Maida Vale on Monday morning. The motorist drove his blue Renault Clio into McCaskre, killing him. Continue reading...

After criminal charges ‘not proven’, Ms AB says verdict shows women should never give up seeking justiceA Scottish court has ruled that a soldier raped a woman he met in a Dundee nightclub, after she sued him in a landmark civil action which she says proves that “justice will always be done, no matter how long and bitter the journey”.In what is only the second ruling of its kind in recent Scottish legal history, a sheriff in Edinburgh found on Thursday that Sean Diamond, 28, a serving soldier in the British army, raped the woman after she fell asleep fully clothed on a friend’s sofa on 14 July 2015. She was awarded damages of £119,250. Continue reading...

Both diners are remainers, but will they agree on immigration, inclusion, Covid and the climate crisis?

From disappeared mountains to continent-crossing palm trees, Noémie Goudal’s work uses deep climate history to depict the world we’re heading into‘This show is very much about paleoclimatology – how scientists are studying the past climate partly to understand what happened but also partly to help them predict what will happen in future and how we can plan for it,” says Noémie Goudal. “It’s by looking at the past, at changes in heat and the elements, that we can apprehend what will happen.”We’re discussing her exhibition Post Atlantica, which opens at London’s Edel Assanti gallery on this week. Including film, photography, a monumental sculptural installation and a series of ceramics, it’s a show united by the French artist’s ongoing fascination with the history of Earth, its climate and its geology. The title refers to Atlantica, an ancient continent that formed about 2bn years ago then divided to form parts of present-day Africa and South America; paleoclimatologists take a deep dive into that past and more, and Goudal has spent years researching their work. Continue reading...

A child safeguarding review will look into case as Greater Manchester police investigation continuesThe death of a five-year-old boy whose family had had previous contact with authorities is to be reviewed by child safeguarding experts.Dylan Scanlon, a “happy, funny and cheeky little boy”, was pronounced dead by emergency services who responded to an incident at his home in Oldham on New Year’s Eve. Continue reading...

Police detain 21-year-old suspect after shooting at missile facility in Dnipro that left five others injuredUkrainian police have detained a national guard soldier who is suspected of shooting security guards at a military factory for unknown reasons, killing five people and injuring five others, the interior minister has said.The shooting took place in the early hours of Thursday in Dnipro at the Pivdenmash missile factory during the issuance of weapons to the guards, the ministry said in a statement. Police said four servicemen and one civilian woman were among the victims. Continue reading...

A group of German, Austrian and Swiss immigrants has implanted an ideologically driven settlement in one of the country’s poorest regionsA 1,600-hectare (4,000-acre) gated community, dubbed El Paraíso Verde, or The Green Paradise, is being carved out of the fertile red earth of Caazapá, one of Paraguay’s poorest regions.The community’s population – consisting mainly of German, Austrian and Swiss immigrants – will eventually swell from 150 to 3,000, according to the owners. Continue reading...

Cases across country are declining but could rise again with onset of winter and students returning to schools, experts warn

John Boyne’s story is used by more than a third of teachers in England in lessons on the Nazi genocide, a study foundThe Boy in the Striped Pyjamas may “perpetuate a number of dangerous inaccuracies and fallacies” when used in teaching young people about the Holocaust, an academic report has said.According to research by the Centre for Holocaust Education at University College London, more than a third of teachers in England use the bestselling book and film adaptation in lessons on the Nazi genocide. Continue reading...

Atagi still considering whether to change vaccination advice; nation records at least 72 Covid deaths with 13 in SA including reconciled data of death notifications from past fortnight; Central Land Council calls for central NT lockdown. This blog is now closed

Pedro Almodóvar’s poetic conviction and creative fluidity flow through this moving baby-swap drama about two single mothers and buried secrets from the Spanish civil warNot parallel actually: that would mean they don’t touch. Here we have convergent mothers; intersecting mothers whose lives come together with a spark that ignites this moving melodrama, which audaciously draws a line between love, sex, the passionate courage of single mothers, the meaning of Lorca’s Doña Rosita the Spinster and the unhealed wound of Spain’s fascist past. Pedro Almodóvar’s new movie has the warmth and the grandiloquent flair of a picture from Hollywood’s golden age (something starring Bette Davis and Joan Fontaine maybe, with music by Max Steiner) and the whiplash twists and addictive sugar rush bumps of daytime soap.As ever with Almodóvar, there are gorgeously designed interiors with fierce, thick blocks of Mondrian colour, huge closeups of the female leads and overhead shots of food preparation. It’s impossible to watch this film without just feeling grateful that its director is still so fluent, so creative, still making us a gift of these films. There is a lot going on here, and perhaps the emotions and thoughts spill over the edges of its narrative form. But it would be obtuse not to let yourself travel downstream on this film’s emotional surge. Continue reading...

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He was the shellshocked genius who channelled his anarchic brilliance into The Goon Show. Ian Hislop and Nick Newman explain why they’ve written a play about Spike Milligan – while comedians remember a legendThe tortured lives of comedians form a biographical genre all of their own; there’s always an audience for the tears of a clown. No wonder Nick Newman and Ian Hislop chose Spike Milligan as the subject of their new play. Milligan, who died 20 years ago next month, is the troubled comedy genius to end them all. Shellshocked in the second world war, repeatedly admitted to hospital for mental ill health, subjected to electroconvulsive therapy, and increasingly embittered as his career failed to deliver on early promise – the Spike Milligan sad-clown drama writes itself.“But we didn’t want to do that,” says Newman. “We wanted to ask: how did he come to create these brilliant things?” Their play – a cheerful act of ancestor-worship by by Private Eye’s editor and its eminent cartoonist – is about the first three years (1951-54) of The Goon Show, as its chief writer Milligan battles the BBC to get his vision on air. “It’s: will he survive the fallout from the war?,” says Newman, “and will he crack radio?” And, “spoiler alert!,” chimes in Hislop. “Milligan wins! We just wanted to have a play where he wins.” Continue reading...

Gary Hersham has been selling houses to the very rich for decades. At first, £1m was a big deal. Now he sells for £50m, £100m, even £200m. What does it take to stay on top in this cut-throat business?Ring ring. Gary Hersham’s phone was going, as usual. The super-prime London estate agent blew through the Mayfair office of his company, Beauchamp Estates, scattering employees behind him. As he climbed into the passenger seat of the company car, a Volkswagen Golf rather than his personal BMW, I asked where we were going. “I don’t know!” he said. He found a postcode, and announced it to the driver. Ring ring. Hersham’s mobile has the high-pitched jangle of an old-fashioned telephone at fire-alarm volume. “I didn’t ask you for that,” he roared down the phone as we sat stationary outside his office. “What makes you assume that’s what I was doing? Could I speak to Emily please?” Emily, his fantastic secretary. Ring ring. Someone else was calling. “We’ve got to wait for Marcus!”Enter, at a trot, Marcus O’Brien, Hersham’s protege: tall, slicked hair, suited and groomed, just 30. (Hersham is 68.) O’Brien had been out for a big dinner the night before, knowable only from his stating the fact: there was no sickly pallor, despite being crammed into the back seat of the Golf, which was now winding its way through Mayfair, past the members’ clubs and hedge funds and townhouses, a neighbourhood in which Hersham has been selling property for 43 years. His agency has sold houses for quantities of money that seem increasingly conceptual as they rise: Belgrave Square (£50m), Caroline Terrace (£60m), Grosvenor Crescent (£100m). Then the ultimate, a career peak in an already elevated range, the most expensive house ever sold in Britain: 2-8a Rutland Gate in Knightsbridge, sold in early 2020 for £215m. Continue reading...

There has been a sharp drop in one-off encounters, researchers say, but more people are enjoying friends with benefits and getting experimental in bedA one-night stand, people used to say, is like a short story: if it is any good, you want it to go on for longer; if it isn’t, you could have done with 15 minutes’ more sleep. To which the retort is: sure – but a lot of people really like short stories.A lot of people, in the pre-pandemic days, used to really like one-night stands, too. The sex therapist Jenny Keane hosts a wide-ranging sex chat through her Instagram account. On it, one woman wrote appreciatively: “The sex is purely focused on pleasure. You’re not thinking about your relationship dynamics, them not doing the dishes. It’s about being served and cared for physically. It can be a very empowering and beautiful thing.” Continue reading...