What happened

Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday they have no intention to testify in the House Oversight Committee’s investigation of Jeffrey Epstein. In a letter to committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), the Clintons said they had already given the panel what “little information we have” on Epstein’s “horrific” crimes, and subpoenas for them to appear for closed-door depositions were “legally invalid” and clearly driven by “partisan politics.” Comer said he would move to hold both Clintons in contempt of Congress.

Who said what

Comer’s “relentless efforts” to force the Clintons to testify “reflect his overall approach to his panel’s Epstein inquiry,” The New York Times said. He has sought to “deflect focus” from President Donald Trump’s own “ties to the convicted sex offender” and his administration’s mishandling of the Epstein case, and to “shift the spotlight onto prominent Democrats.” Bill Clinton, like Trump, “had a well-documented friendship” with Epstein “throughout the 1990s and early 2000s,” The Associated Press, but neither president has been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein’s crimes.

The Clintons’ lawyers sent Comer a letter Monday night laying out their case for why the subpoenas are “invalid and legally unenforceable,” citing the same decades of legal precedent Trump used in 2022 to thwart a Democratic subpoena to testify about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Comer said his committee would not try to compel testimony from Trump.

What next?

If Comer’s committee declares the Clintons in contempt next week, “the full House would next vote on whether to refer the matter to the Justice Department for possible prosecution,” The Washington Post said. The “seldom-used congressional power” can result in anything from a “symbolic” rebuke to a year in jail, Politico said, but “there’s reason to believe” the Clintons may face “dramatic consequences,” given the Trump DOJ’s willingness to target his “perceived enemies.”

First elected as prime minister in 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu has won five elections since, making him the longest-serving leader in Israel’s history (exceeding even David Ben-Gurion, its founding PM). He has spent just 18 months out of office since 2009. His right-wing politics, particularly his approach to the Palestinian question, have profoundly shaped Israeli society and public opinion.

He has seldom been personally popular (recent polls suggest only 40% of Israelis trust him), but “King Bibi”, an exceptionally shrewd operator, long ago established himself as “Mr Security”, the man best placed to protect Israel from its enemies, notably Hamas and Iran. To his detractors, he is ruthless, reckless, a danger to democracy who prioritises his own political survival over Israel’s interests – and, of course, the driving force behind the brutal war in Gaza. He is, nevertheless, by far the most influential figure in Israeli politics today, and arguably in the entire Middle East.

Where do his politics come from?

Not least, from his father. He was born in Tel Aviv in 1949 – the middle son of Benzion Netanyahu, a Polish-born medieval historian who was a Revisionist Zionist (militant, territorially maximalist) and was often openly critical of his son. His teenage years were spent between Israel and Philadelphia, where his father taught; but when he was 18, in 1967, he moved back to Israel for military service. During five distinguished years in the army, he fought in Lebanon and served in the Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s equivalent of the SAS, alongside his brothers Yonatan and Iddo, to whom he was close. In 1976, Yonatan (Yoni) was killed during a special forces raid on Uganda’s Entebbe Airport to free the 106 mostly Israeli hostages held by Palestinian and German terrorists. The only Israeli military casualty of the operation, Yoni is revered as a national hero; his death inspired his brother’s political career.

In what way?

It fell to Netanyahu, who was in Boston, studying at MIT, to break the news to his parents; he later founded an anti-terrorism institute in Yoni’s memory, setting him on a path to politics. He was hired by Israel’s ambassador to the US in 1982, became its representative to the UN in 1984, and was elected to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in 1988. Five years later, he became leader of Likud, Israel’s main right-wing party; and in 1996 he beat Shimon Peres to become PM. His first term was troubled. Right-wingers were furious that he agreed to cede 80% of Hebron to Palestinian Authority control, among other concessions in the occupied West Bank; the Left accused him of “killing the peace”, by undermining the 1993 Oslo Accords, of which he was a fierce, long-term critic. He lost the 1999 election.

How did he make a comeback?

Netanyahu served as foreign minister and then finance minister in Ariel Sharon’s government, before resigning in 2005 in protest at Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied Gaza Strip. In 2009, he was elected PM again. Migration to Israel of more than a million citizens of the former Soviet Union (at least 10% of Israel’s whole population) over the previous 20 years had led the country’s politics to take a more conservative, nationalistic turn – reinforced by the collapse of the peace process, the Second Intifada (2000-2005) and rising Palestinian terrorism. By 2007, Hamas had taken power in Gaza.

What policies has he pursued?

A champion of free market economics who has nurtured hi-tech startups, he has also gained notoriety for trying to reshape Israel’s institutions. His attempts at media manipulation, allegedly offering deals in return for favourable coverage, have embroiled him in two criminal cases; while his proposed “judicial reform” law is widely seen as an attempt to weaken the judiciary. On the Palestinian issue, Netanyahu, in theory, changed tack in 2009, endorsing a two-state solution with a “demilitarised” Palestine. But he continued to undermine it in practice. His governments have supported Israeli settlers who build on land in the West Bank designated by the UN as Palestinian. He has been in a coalition with ultra-nationalist settler parties since late 2022. His Gaza strategy was, until recently, to keep Hamas in power, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. He allowed Qatar to fund Hamas, believing that it could be safely contained militarily. Since Hamas’s attacks of 7 October 2023, he has once again opposed a two-state solution, saying that he was “proud to have prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state... after we saw the little Palestinian state in Gaza”.

How did 7 October affect him?

The attacks, in which 1,195 people were killed and 251 taken hostage, were the result of serious intelligence failings, and initially dealt a crushing blow to Netanyahu’s reputation, and to his Hamas policy. His relentless prosecution of the war in Gaza since, in which 64,200 people have died, according to Palestinian authorities, has damaged Israel’s global standing (though the campaign still has significant support at home). It is widely suspected that he has kept the war going to delay a reckoning over his failures, and to reduce the possibility of his being tried on corruption charges, relating to media manipulation and allegedly receiving expensive gifts from businessmen.

Why is he still in power?

What looked like a disaster has also proved an opportunity: it gave Israel the chance not just to destroy Hamas as a military force, but to decimate its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon, and to execute the “12-day war” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Netanyahu has seized the opportunity to redraw the map of the Middle East, humiliating Iran and its “axis of resistance” and bolstering his own position. But the basic tensions remain: his own coalition pushes for “total victory” in Gaza, while much of the world, the Muslim world in particular, demands a fair settlement for the Palestinians.

Dealing with Washington

“Who the f**k does he think he is? Who’s the f**king superpower here?” These were reportedly Bill Clinton’s words after his first meeting with Netanyahu, in 1996. The Israeli PM knows the US and its media well, and – buoyed by pro-Israel lobby groups and support from the Christian Right – he has felt confident to push back against Democratic presidents who have sought to rein in Israel. Barack Obama’s officials described him as “untrustworthy” and “disrespectful toward the president”. In 2015, Netanyahu accepted a Republican invitation to address Congress – and railed against the nuclear deal Obama was brokering with Iran. He had better relations with Joe Biden, especially after 7 October. But by the time Biden left office, he was privately referring to Netanyahu as an “asshole”. Donald Trump, by contrast, has been a near-perfect ally. The US officially recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in Trump’s first term. In 2020, his administration brokered the Abraham Accords, normalising relations between Israel and several Arab states; Trump joined Israel’s attacks on Iran, and has suggested Palestinians be removed from Gaza. He has even called for Netanyahu’s corruption charges to be dropped.

A presidential nominee's choice of a running mate is one of the more high-profile decisions made prior to the general election. Political science research shows that these choices have limited impact, but in the kinds of agonizingly close elections that have characterized American presidential politics for most of this century, running mates can be consequential. 

The likely Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, is vetting her short list, and GOP nominee Donald Trump selected Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) earlier this month. Vance has subsequently come under fire for a series of controversial statements over the previous few years, fueling speculation that Trump might dump him from the ticket before it is too late. While it is much too early to say whether Vance will help or harm the Trump campaign, modern history is full of running mates who either helped the ticket across the finish line — or turned out to be a drag on losing campaigns. 

The best picks compensate for a nominee's weaknesses

George H.W. Bush (1980): In 1980, former California Gov. Ronald Reagan's brand of social and fiscal conservatism was in the process of taking over the GOP. But the party still included millions of moderates who were uncomfortable with the hawkish Reagan and considered him too extreme. So Reagan took the unusual step of tapping his moderate rival for the nomination, former U.S. Rep. and C.I.A. Director George H.W. Bush, as his running mate. Bush, who would later run successfully for the nomination and win the presidency in 1988, was from the Republican old guard of social liberals. He helped make voters comfortable with Reagan, who only a few years earlier was considered a firebrand who might accidentally start a nuclear war with the Soviets. The soft-spoken Bush ultimately helped Reagan deliver one of the worst defeats of an incumbent in American history when they vanquished Democratic President Jimmy Carter in a landslide. 

Mike Pence (2016): Critics derided him as "Mike Dense" and mocked Trump's selection of the pious incumbent governor of Indiana. But the staid and steady Pence helped solidify support from white evangelical voters – perhaps the single most important Republican voting bloc – who were uncomfortable with Trump's personal history as a twice-divorced man with a reputation for womanizing. When the infamous Access Hollywood tape that included Trump talking about sexually assaulting women was leaked to the press in October 2016, Pence's standing on the ticket may have made it possible for Trump to survive the episode. Pence's wife, Karen, told him that she "would no longer appear in public if he carried on as Trump's running mate," after hearing the tape, said journalist Tim Alberta. But Pence stuck with Trump, and together they won the election, in part by winning 80% of white evangelical voters, according to exit polls. 

Al Gore (1992): After 12 years of Republican control of the White House and three straight blowout presidential losses, Democrats were desperate to get their nominee right – especially because the incumbent, George H.W. Bush, looked increasingly vulnerable as the party conventions approached. Already dogged by allegations of extra-marital affairs (and possibly worse), Democrats worried that their nominee, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, would be seen as too liberal despite his status as one of the early members of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). Gore, a Tennessee senator, was also a charter member of that centrist Democratic group, which wanted to move away from the party's reliance on a brand of liberalism that had become unpopular. Clinton gambled that a young ticket of self-styled ideological moderates would persuade the electorate to once again trust Democrats with the country's highest office, and they were proven right when they won the election decisively.

The worst picks compensate for the wrong problem

Sarah Palin (2008): Palin is the ultimate cautionary tale in running mate selection lore. GOP nominee John McCain, a longtime Arizona senator with a carefully cultivated image as a "maverick," wanted to pick his friend and longtime colleague Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) as his running mate. But Republican strategists feared that the party's base would revolt, and McCain impulsively chose the little-known Palin to increase enthusiasm from the conservative wing of the party. Despite an electric debut at the Republican National Convention, Palin later gave a series of disastrous interviews in the following weeks that led to her enduring Saturday Night Live caricature as an intellectual lightweight. In one infamous exchange, Palin was unable to tell CBS's Katie Couric the names of any newspapers that she read. As the campaign dragged on, even Palin's own staff grew frustrated with her and voters began to doubt her credibility as a possible successor to McCain, who would be 72 by Election Day. McCain went on to lose to Democratic nominee Barack Obama by 7.3 points. The "Palin effect," ultimately "cost McCain almost 2% of the final vote share," according to one 2010 study

Tim Kaine (2016): Riding high in public opinion polls and watching Republicans make the seemingly suicidal choice of Donald Trump as their nominee, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton decided to pick Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) as her running mate. The moderate Kaine was not from a swing state, was not particularly charismatic, and did nothing to shore up Clinton's left flank with progressives still seething from the outcome of the bitter primary contest against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Reports suggested that Clinton chose Kaine precisely because of their ideological affinity, a callback to her husband Bill Clinton's choice of Al Gore in 1992. Clinton and Kaine "are cut from the same political cloth," said The New Yorker's John Cassidy about the puzzling selection. Kaine was thought by Clinton's advisors to be "someone with whom they might work closely for four or eight years," Cassidy said. Instead, they only got to work together for a few months before their shock loss to the Trump-Pence ticket. 

Joe Lieberman (2000): For Democrats, it is hard to think about Joe Lieberman outside the context of what followed his losing campaign with then-Vice President Al Gore in 2000. A social moderate, Lieberman, a veteran senator for Connecticut, became so disenchanted with his party during George W. Bush's two terms that he ran successfully as an independent for another term in 2006.  In 2008 Lieberman campaigned for the Republican nominee, John McCain and appeared at the Republican National Convention. But in 2000, Gore chose him as a way of distancing himself from President Clinton's sordid personal history. Lieberman had given a fiery speech on the Senate floor during Clinton's 1998 impeachment trial denouncing his conduct while still voting to acquit. Lieberman was also the first Jewish candidate to serve on a major-party presidential ticket and was very popular in his home state. But Gore's real problem was with the disenchanted progressive wing of his own party, and enough people deserted him for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader to cost Gore the crucial swing state of Florida and thus the election. 

Commentators say Keir Starmer has become more open during interviews and the man behind the transformation is none other than Barack Obama, says a Labour shadow minister.

Even Starmer's "closest supporters" had become "frustrated by his inability to open up in public", said Politico, but "something has changed recently" after the former US president "urged Starmer to talk more openly".

'Barack just came alive'

An interview with Sky News earlier this month has been cited as evidence of the transformation. Starmer opened up on his "distant" relationship with his late father and said he wishes they had been closer.

Afterwards, the interviewer, Sophy Ridge, reflected that she had previously found Starmer "slightly impenetrable" but she had now "found a side that I hadn't experienced before", and felt "like I got to understand him a little better". Ridge's Sky News colleague, Adam Boulton, wrote that a "flurry of interviews and profiles" of the Labour leader is intended to answer the question of who he "really" is.

Could Obama be responsible for this change? Starmer and the former US president were introduced by Labour MP David Lammy, a friend of both politicians. The shadow foreign secretary said that, during a series of calls on Zoom, Obama told Starmer that 21st-century politicians must “communicate who they really are".

Speaking to the Power Play podcast, Lammy revealed that the former president's key message to the Labour leader was to be authentic. Obama's approach is "always seated in authenticity," said Lammy.

When Starmer began discussing his father during conversations with Obama, “Barack just came alive,” Lammy told the Labour leader's biographer, in a separate interview. The Democrat began "interrogating Keir further," Lammy said, as he thought that the story could become the "architecture for a genuine campaign".

Lammy added that Starmer has been talking a "lot more" about how his mother "struggled terribly with illness for many, many years", and how "his father cared for her". He has now discussed his "backstory, much more comfortably than perhaps we saw a few years ago" and "I know that Obama had strong views that Keir should do that".

'Clinton clone'

This is not the first time that a senior UK politician and a US president have reportedly swapped notes. During the 1997 general election campaign, Tony Blair was compared to Bill Clinton. "People called him a Clinton clone, or Clinton Lite," said Bloomberg at the time.

More recently, Boris Johnson has been compared to Donald Trump. The two men are "dangerously similar", said New Statesman and they have "overlapping lives", said The Spectator. Before he became prime minister, Johnson had quietly met Trump aide Stephen Miller, to swap speech writing tips.

This Easter weekend marks the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement with US President Joe Biden paying a five-day visit to both sides of the Ireland-Northern Ireland border to mark the occasion.

Fresh from a row with Russia over the detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Biden will throw himself into another geopolitical crisis when he visits Northern Ireland, a country that has been without a functioning executive for over 400 days.

Biden’s isn’t the only intervention from a US president on the subject, though. Bill Clinton gave an interview to the Irish broadcaster RTE this week, saying it is a “miracle” the Good Friday Agreement survived Brexit. Clinton took part in last-minute talks before the landmark deal was signed in 1998 and called it an act of “bravery from all sides”.

Clinton also took the opportunity to urge the Democratic Unionists, who are yet to return to power-sharing at Stormont amid a stalemate over Brexit, to engage with the institutions in the wake of Rishi Sunak’s Windsor framework with the EU.

“I think we should say, ‘look, there’s something to work with here’,” said Clinton. “[Sinn Fein] doesn’t want to jam you, they want to work with you to resolve these things. How can we live together? How can we work together? How can we all put our heads on the pillow at night and feel at peace about what our children are going to face?”

While Biden is known to share the same views as Clinton on the Stormont stalemate it is understood he will not be visiting the site of the executive itself on his trip, in the hope perhaps of keeping a lower profile than his immediate predecessor in the White House managed this week.

To find out how closely you’ve been paying attention to the latest developments in the news and other global events, put your knowledge to the test with our Quiz of The Week

1. The citizens of Paris have voted to ban which mode of transport in the French capital?

• Bicycles
• E-scooters
• Electric cars
• Buses

2. In her final speech as New Zealand’s prime minister, who did Jacinda Ardern assure that “they too could one day lead”?

• Nerds
• Geeks
• Dorks
• Dweebs

3. How many slogans has the Labour Party unveiled in the three years since Keir Starmer became leader?

• 5
• 8
• 9
• 12

4. Twitter’s famous blue bird logo has been replaced by what image in what is thought to be a late April Fool’s Day prank by billionaire owner Elon Musk?

• A llama
• A tree frog
• A gorilla
• A Shiba Inu dog

5. Why did an angry shopper complain to Sainsbury’s over its rump steak this week?

• It wasn’t organic beef
• It was too expensive
• It had a misogynistic name
• It wasn’t British beef

6. What percentage of the world’s population is affected by infertility, according to research from the World Health Organization (WHO)?

• 5%
• 12.2%
• 17.5%
• 20.1%

7. A French minister sparked a political row after she appeared on the cover of which magazine?

• Vogue
• Elle
• Cosmopolitan
• Playboy

8. Which animal is facing extinction in Wales due to a deadly virus?

• Ospreys
• Red squirrels
• Puffins
• Grey seals

9. Former president Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to how many felony counts of falsifying business records when he appeared in a New York court this week?

• 11
• 23
• 34
• 43

10. Which unusual flavour of Easter egg will be launched by Deliveroo, the food delivery app, in time for Easter weekend?

• Southern fried chicken
• Fish and chips
• Hot cross bun
• Pizza

1. E-scooters

Rental e-scooters are to be outlawed in the French capital after a referendum was held last week. Around 89% of votes cast were in support of a ban, but with no online voting, turnout was only about 8%. Nevertheless, the result means Paris will become the first major European capital to outlaw the scooters.

2. Nerds

As she bowed out of New Zealand’s parliament, Ardern gave a rousing speech calling for politics to be opened up to atypical leaders. She said: “You can be anxious, sensitive, kind and wear your heart on your sleeve. You can be a mother, or not, an ex-Mormon, or not, a nerd, a crier, a hugger – you can be all of these things, and not only can you be here – you can lead.” Ardern announced her shock resignation in January, saying she had “no more left in the tank”.

3. 12

The party’s current slogan, “Build a better Britain”, was introduced in March. Recent YouGov polling found that almost half of Britons think Starmer has failed to set out a clear vision for the party in his three years as leader.

4. A Shiba Inu dog

On Monday, Twitter users noted that the blue bird logo usually found on Twitter’s homepage and loading screen has now been replaced with an image of Doge, the Shiba Inu dog used as a popular internet meme.

5. It had a misogynistic name

Shopper Rose Robinson complained to Sainsbury’s for giving its product a “sexist” name, according to the Daily Star. Robinson is calling on the supermarket chain to rename its “Big Daddy” rump steak, which she feels is a “misogynistic” label. “I was shocked and just a bit disappointed that in this day and age, it was possible for it to make it through whatever channel it had to have made it through to get onto the shelves,” she added. Sainsbury’s said: “We strive to be a truly inclusive retailer.”

6. 17.5%

In the WHO’s first estimates of infertility prevalence in more than a decade, it was found that about 17.5% of the global adult population will experience infertility. Based on more than 100 studies between 1990 and 2021, the results show limited variation between regions and between high, middle and low-income countries. “For millions around the world, the path to parenthood can be difficult to access, if not impossible,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general.

7. Playboy

Marlène Schiappa, minister for the social economy and associations, gave an interview on gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights to the French-language edition of Playboy magazine. She appeared on the cover wearing a white dress. But the cover was described by the French prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, as “not at all appropriate, especially in the current period”.

8. Red squirrels

A killer pox has killed up to 80% of red squirrels in one winter at the few sites they are still found in Wales. Nearly 11,000 people have signed a petition calling for the Welsh government to fund vaccine research in order to protect Wales’ small population of red squirrels – there are only about 1,000 left in North Wales. Invasive, non-native grey squirrels carry squirrel pox virus, but are not affected by it.

9. 34

The indictment makes Trump the first ex-president in US history to face criminal charges. The case against him centres on an alleged $130,000 (£105,000) payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign.

10. Southern fried chicken

According to the Daily Star, the “somewhat baffling treat” is available in cities across the UK over the weekend via the Deliveroo app. “Love fried chicken? Love chocolate? Then put your hands together,” said Aisha Jefferson from Deliveroo.

Kenneth Starr, who died last week, left behind a complicated legacy. He is best known as the independent counsel whose long investigation of an Arkansas real estate deal involving then-President Bill Clinton ended with a salacious report and Clinton's impeachment for lying about his intimate relationship with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. And Starr ended his career defending then-President Donald Trump in the first of his two Senate impeachment trials and overseeing a sexual assault scandal at Baylor University.

CNN's Fareed Zakaria asked Clinton on Sunday if he had any thoughts on Starr's death, and Clinton said it's nice that Starr was loved by his family.

Lewinsky shared a similar sentiment on Twitter.

Ken Starr, a former U.S. solicitor general and the independent counsel who led the Whitewater probe and other investigations during the Clinton administration, died Tuesday in Houston. He was 76.

Starr's wife, Alice, said he spent the last 17 weeks hospitalized with an undisclosed illness and died of complications from surgery. In an email sent to friends and family, she described her late husband as a "brilliant, kind, and loving man" who "felt compelled to always respond to the call to serve his country, even when it meant enduring harsh criticism for his service."

The Texas native became a federal judge at 37 and argued more than three dozen cases before the Supreme Court while serving as U.S. solicitor general during the George H.W. Bush administration. He then transitioned to the role of independent counsel, investigating then-President Bill Clinton. The probe initially focused on real estate transactions made during Clinton's time as the attorney general and governor of Arkansas before looking at Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky while she was a White House intern.

In a report filed with the House of Representatives at the end of the investigation, Starr said Clinton lied under oath about this affair and obstructed justice. In December 1998, Clinton was impeached by the House, but later acquitted by the Senate.

Starr went on to serve as dean of Pepperdine University's law school in California and president of Baylor University in Texas; he resigned after an investigation determined the school mishandled sexual assault allegations made against members of the football team. Starr was back in the spotlight in 2020, when he served on former President Donald Trump's impeachment team during his first Senate trial.

Congressional leaders, lawmakers, and the political elite gathered in Washington, D.C. Wednesday morning to honor the late Madeleine Albright, who died of cancer last month at age 84.

Among the event's speakers were President Biden (who reminded the crowd how Albright taught "a fellow ambassador how to do the macarena on the floor of the U.N. Security Council"), as well as former President Bill Clinton, who nominated Albright to her post as secretary of state during his second term in 1996. "We love you, Madeleine. We miss you, but I pray to God we never stop hearing you. Just sit on our shoulder and nag us to death 'til we do the right thing," the former president said.

But perhaps the most potent remarks from any official were delivered by Albright's fellow ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lit up the Washington National Cathedral with tales of Albright's storied dancing, wild accomplishments, and legendary proverbs.

"She didn't just help other women. She spent her entire life counseling and cajoling, inspiring and lifting up so many of us who are here today," Clinton said after, at one point, recalling how Albright could leg press 400 pounds. "So, the angels better be wearing their best pins, and putting on their dancing shoes. Because if, as Madeleine believed, there's a special place in hell for women who don't support other women, they haven't seen anyone like her yet," Clinton continued to raucous applause.

Bill Clinton turned down tea with the Queen in 1997 because he wanted to go for a curry, formerly classified documents have revealed. Buckingham Palace contacted Downing Street to say “HM the Queen would be very pleased” to invite the Clintons to tea on their one-day detour from summits in Paris and The Hague. However, the Clintons replied that they while “very grateful for HM the Queen’s invitation”, they would “wish to decline politely”. A briefing note said Bill had expressed an interest “in trying Indian food” instead.

World’s oldest tennis player wants to take on Federer

A 97-year-old Ukrainian man has been named the world’s oldest tennis player. Leonid Stanislavskyi has entered the Guinness World Records after playing tennis for over 50 years and credits the hobby for his longevity. He says he has no plans of stopping and for his 100th birthday wants to play against tennis legend, Roger Federer.

Mum makes face mask out of breast milk

A mum has made her baby son a facemask out of breast milk. Linh Ta shared the process on TikTok, in a post captioned: “When your baby has acne and you make a breast milk mask for him.” The post has since gone viral, attracting 4.2m views. One viewer commented: “Your baby is going to LOVE these photos when they are like 16 years old lol.”

Ghislaine Maxwell kept a “secret stash” of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex tapes and plans to use the recordings as an “insurance policy to save herself”, a former friend has claimed.

Officials who raided Epstein’s Manhattan home following his arrest on sex trafficking charges in July last year found “thousands of graphic photos”, including images of underage girls, says the Daily Mail.

But an unnamed ex-confidant of Maxwell told the newspaper that the British socialite also “has copies of everything Epstein”.

“Ghislaine has always been as cunning as they come,” said the source. “She wasn’t going to be with Epstein all those years and not have some insurance.

“The secret stash of sex tapes I believe Ghislaine has squirrelled away could end up being her get out of jail card if the authorities are willing to trade.”

Maxwell was arrested in New Hampshire last week and charged with six federal crimes, including enticement of minors, sex trafficking and perjury.

If she were to use any hidden sex tapes in a bid to bargain with prosecutors, “they could implicate some twisted movers and shakers”, the former friend reportedly claimed.

Speculation has been rife about the powerful individuals within Epstein’s circle, who included President Donald Trump, former president Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz and former Victoria’s Secret owner Leslie Wexner, according to The Guardian.

Specific allegations have been made by alleged victims linking the Duke of York and Dershowitz to the late convicted paedophile’s criminal activities with underage girls. Both men have denied the claims.

Maxwell’s ex-friend told the Daily Mail that “if Ghislaine goes down, she’s going to take the whole damn lot of them with her”, but declined to mention specific individuals.

The source added: “Not only did Epstein like to capture himself with underage girls on camera, he wanted to make sure he had something to hold over the rich and powerful men who took advantage of his sick largesse.”

That claim chimes with an account of an interview with Epstein that was published last August by The New York Times in the wake of his apparent suicide in a Manhattan prison.

The billionaire financier reportedly told journalist James B. Stewart during a conversation in 2018 that he held “potentially damaging or embarrassing” details about his inner circle, “including details about their supposed sexual proclivities and recreational drug use”.

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Tom McTague in The Atlantic

on unlikely parallels in transatlantic politics

Boris Johnson is not Britain’s Donald Trump. Jeremy Corbyn is.

“Take away Brexit, and Johnson is a run-of-the-mill conservative whose policy agenda, instincts, and world view, as opposed to his personality, verge on the dull; a member and defender of the establishment whose wish is to climb atop it, not rip it down. Corbyn is the opposite: a populist who believes in the inherent corruption of the established order, at home and abroad; a man who sees conspiracy and injustice everywhere. Only one of these descriptions comes close to the US president.”

2. Carla Bleiker in Deutsche Welle

on an arid day on Capitol Hill

The never-ending impeachment hearing

“Six hours — more than twice the length of the last superhero film from the Avengers series — but with far less action. Even political enthusiasts in the US capital almost nodded off. And anyone who was not already well informed about what Trump was discussing over the phone with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland are, and which quid pro quo was or wasn't made, had scant chance to even be able to follow the two opening witnesses’ testimony.”

3. Zoe Strimpel in The Daily Telegraph

on a female icon barking up the wrong tree

Hillary Clinton’s regressive vision of womanly courage is no model for feminism

“What is feminism? The term seems to have become a fuzzy catch-all, so I like to pin it to concrete issues. The menace and violence women face at the hands of men, for instance. Last year saw domestic violence killings in the UK reach a five-year high, with women by far the more numerous victims, with around three-quarters murdered by a male partner, ex-partner or family member. This is a feminist issue. What is not a feminist issue is Hillary Clinton’s decision to stick with hubby Bill after his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky.”

4. Shmuel Rosner in The New York Times

on fighting fire with fire

Does Israel need a crisis to end its crisis?

“Most observers would probably agree that Israel’s current political situation is worthy of the word ‘crisis’. And yet, politicians stubbornly refuse to acknowledge its severity and change course. One hopes we would not deteriorate as far as longing for more dire circumstances so that this country’s leaders see the light. Of course, if we do take that perverse route, possibilities are many: It could be an attack from Iran (a threat considered serious and about which the military keeps warning); it could be the alarming deficit turning into an economic calamity. Or it could be the recent-days collapse of a fragile cease-fire in Gaza.”

5. David Aaronovitch in The Times

on Kremlin hand-wringing

Russia is fuelling our craze for conspiracies

“Upon seeing the actual pictures that day from the Cenotaph one of these conspirators realises that the images do their Tory hero no favours. What to do? Perhaps they can be switched the next day with previous pictures? Careful inquiries are made. The 2016 sequence is located. But how to feed it into the edit? Tricky. If the picture editor and the producer for that day’s show happen to be in on the plot, no problem. But there are dozens of them and what are the chances? Pitching up at the late-night edit our conspirator somehow manages to persuade the producer to take a hike and then doctors the report him/herself. Job done! The sanitised Johnson is beamed to that bit of the nation that is watching. But rats! Someone DOES notice. The plot begins to unravel.”

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Clare Foges in The Times

on misogyny

Labour is the party with a woman problem

“While the old left blithely ignored women, the hard left berates them and the new left belittles them. Of course, right-wing politics has had its own share of sexist pigs, but where the right seems to fare better is in treating women not as mere representatives of a minority but as individuals with their own talents, strengths and weaknesses. This is perhaps why the Conservatives have scored two female leaders to Labour’s nil. So if they are to style themselves as champions of equality, and if they are to gleefully accuse the Conservatives of having a woman problem, Corbyn’s Labour should really get their own house in order first.”

2. John Rentoul in The Independent

on political realignment

Johnson securing a Brexit deal would be a disaster for Swinson

“If a Brexit deal would be good for Johnson, mixed for Corbyn and bad for Farage, it would be disastrous for Jo Swinson. She has bet the mortgage on stopping Brexit, which has lifted the Liberal Democrats in the opinion polls and prompted the defection to her ranks of seven MPs. But if we leave the EU what then does the party stand for? Many thoughtful members were worried about this at the party conference in Bournemouth last month. ‘We would have to become the party of Rejoin,’ they said in private, fretting that this would appeal to a tiny proportion of the voters, and that the party didn’t have distinctive policies on anything else.”

3. Peter Hitchen in the Daily Mail

on Extinction Rebellion

One day it will be impossible to criticise the fanatics of Extinction Rebellion. Until then, I’ll tell the truth about those irrational zealots

“Thanks to the political and media class’s dim acceptance of shouted propaganda, and their rejection of reason, we are already damaging ourselves. Wind generation only functions thanks to huge hidden subsidies, paid for by the poor, and is vulnerable to power cuts unless it is backed up by fossil fuel or nuclear generation. We are like a thirsty man refusing to drink from a tap because of a water shortage, while his local water company leaves hundreds of leaks unrepaired, allowing thousands of gallons to drain away each hour. This is a futile, self-harming gesture. And these demonstrators, ignorant and engorged with self-righteous rage, demand more futility.”

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4. Stephen Bush in the New Statesman

on voter fraud

Are Boris Johnson’s VoterID proposals an attempt to disenfranchise Labour voters?

“There are three inevitabilities in life: death, taxes, and the Conservatives announcing plans to force people to provide ID in order to vote. The nominal cause is concerns about electoral fraud, though the party’s opponents fear that the plans are a thin pretext to make it more difficult for supporters of Labour, the SNP and the Liberal Democrats to vote.”

5. David Leonhardt in The New York Times

on the lessons from history

The Clinton Legacy: Impeachment Hurts the President

“Trump deserves to be impeached on the merits, and, if he is, it will probably further sully him in the eyes of swing voters, much as it did to Clinton. The big question now is how well will Democrats handle the process. They should move quickly to hold more public hearings, rather than the private sessions they held last week, so Americans can better understand how Trump has perverted American foreign policy and national security for his own benefit. Ultimately, impeachment may well hurt some Democrats from Trump-friendly districts, much as it hurt several Republicans 20 years ago. But it is also very likely to damage Trump — as his own sullen reaction suggests that he realizes. That’s a trade-off worth making.”

The UK is too desperate to secure a trade deal with the US, according to Bill Clinton's treasury secretary.

As Dominic Raab, the new foreign secretary, heads to the US to explore the potential for an agreement, Larry Summers said the UK was in a weak position when it came to negotiating with trade partners.

Summers said: “Britain has no leverage, Britain is desperate… it needs an agreement very soon. When you have a desperate partner, that’s when you strike the hardest bargain.”

He said: “We have economic conflict with China and, even on top of that, the deterioration of the pound is going to further complicate the negotiating picture.

“We will see it as giving Britain an artificial comparative advantage and make us think about the need to retaliate against Britain, not to welcome Britain with new trade agreements.”

He concluded: “You make more concessions dealing with a wealthy man than you do dealing with a poor man.”

However, the keen Brexiteer and former Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, has dismissed the claims.

“This is a classic attempt by Larry Summers to use Brexit for domestic point-scoring,” he said.

“Forty-five Republican senators have signed a letter to the prime minister pledging to back a trade deal with Britain once we have left the EU. The president (Donald Trump) himself has expressed his enthusiasm for a UK-US deal.”

Meanwhile, one US senator has said Britain should be at the front of the queue for a trade deal with the US, in a statement that the Daily Express sees him “laugh off the Brexit scaremongering” of Summers.

“Many of my colleagues in the Congress would say that Great Britain should be in the front of the queue given everything our nations have gone through together,” said Tom Cotton.

“Obviously it wouldn’t be a matter of days or weeks for such negotiations, it might be months, but I would suspect it would be months not years.”

Last year saw a string of new releases from literary giants such as Mario Vargas Llosa, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Zadie Smith and Julian Barnes.

That’s not to mention a host of exciting new talent – and a political thriller from Bill Clinton.

Here are some of the best novels and non-fiction released in 2018.

Feel Free by Zadie Smith

A new Zadie Smith book is always accompanied by a fair amount of fanfare, but with Feel Free, the hype is well warranted.

With subjects ranging from Jay-Z and Quentin Tarantino to Facebook and Trump’s America, Smith’s “brilliant”, second collection of essays, “is at once delightful, challenging, and important”, says Esquire, “and might be the closest we’ll ever get to a real-life conversation with the fiercely private writer”.

Buy Feel Free from The Week Bookshop for £16

Educated by Tara Westover

Tara Westover, who grew up in a Mormon commune in Idaho, didn’t see the inside of a classroom until she was seventeen, but it was an experience that dramatically changed the trajectory of her life.

Voted the number one book of the year by Amazon book editors, who called it their “hands-down favourite”, Westover’s “stirring memoir chronicles how she survived her survivalist upbringing, eventually earning a PhD from Cambridge University” and is “a rousing reminder that knowledge is, indeed, power” says Business Insider.

Since its publication, it has gone on to win near-unanimous praise from readers and critics alike. The New Yorker called it “astounding” while Barack Obama described it as “remarkable”.

Buy Educated from The Week Bookshop for £12.99

Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami

The celebrated Japanese author returns to the spotlight with the English translation of his latest novel; the story of a failing portrait painter whose life begins to change after a he discovers a mysterious painting referencing Mozart’s 18th-century opera Don Giovanni.

“As is often the case in Murakami’s fiction, a plot of relative simplicity – an artist’s reinvention – is disrupted by enigmatic, surreal or violent incidents” writes Charles Finch in The Independent.

While “he allows his disparate elements to spin out too widely, to the point where they begin to appear only tenuously connected” says The Guardian, “paradoxically, it’s this incompleteness that this beguiling, confounding – and yes, sometimes infuriating – novel is concerned with: the sense that everybody is unfinished, a work in progress, and that any clear-cut resolution is therefore a lie”.

Nominated for last year’s replacement for the Nobel Prize for Literature, and “written in a style that calls to mind The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, this is Murakami at his best”, says Vogue.

Buy Killing Commendatore from The Week Bookshop for £15.99

Becoming by Michelle Obama

First lady memoirs can often be turgid affairs but Michelle Obama is no normal first lady.

Charting her trailblazing path from Chicago’s South Side to the White House alongside her husband, “Becoming is frequently funny, sometimes indignant or enraged, and when Michelle describes her father’s early death from multiple sclerosis it turns rawly emotional,” says The Guardian.

Kuba Shand-Baptiste in The Independent says: “It’s both humbling and affirming to bear witness to the very human makings of Obama.”

At its most moving, it is “told with the style and warmth of a fireside tale”, says Vanity Fair, even if overall “her story is paced indifferently and regrettably”. The prose shifts between “bloodless, campaign-trail professionalism and the language of empowerment found on daytime talk shows”, says the magazine.

Her decision not to hold back on the current incumbent of the White House has broken with many accepted norms but her candour and insight into the ongoing American malaise has been widely welcomed and well received.

“With the full weight of Trump’s presidency on our shoulders, there’s something devilishly comforting about losing yourself in a book that so effortlessly pulls you out of today’s hellscape and thrusts you back to what, comparably at least, seem like the good old days,” says Shand-Baptiste.

Buy Becoming from The Week Bookshop for £25

Brave by Rose McGowen

The long-awaited memoir chronicling the life of actress and activist Rose McGowan, Brave tracks her childhood growing up in the Children of God cult and details her experiences with the Hollywood machine, including her alleged sexual assault by Harvey Weinstein.

“A must-read as the era of #metoo moves into a new year”, says Harper's Bazaar.

Buy Brave from The Week Bookshop for £17

The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers

A must for all coffee lovers, Eggers’s non-fiction tome tells the tale of Mokhtar Alkhanshali, the American son of Yemeni immigrant parents, who travels to Yemen to learn about the origins of coffee making.

Travelling deep in his ancestral homeland in order to resurrect the ancient art of Yemeni coffee, Alkhanshali finds himself caught up in the civil war, unable to abandon his people and give up his dream.

Buy The Monk of Mokha from The Week Bookshop for £16.99

Milkman by Anna Burns

Anna Burns’ Booker-Prize winning novel about the Northern Irish Troubles was the unanimous choice of the judges and has been widely hailed as a darkly comic masterpiece.

Told from the perspective of a 18 year-old girl with no interest in the conflict, Milkman is “viciously funny. Its jokes come out askew, as does its plot” says the Daily Telegraph.

Burns, who was shortlisted for the Orange prize in 2002 with No Bones, which also depicted the Troubles, “is excellent at evoking the strange ecosystem that emerges during protracted conflict”, agrees The Guardian.

The New Statesman says that “while Milkman is a work of timely universality, it is also a distinctly Irish novel, a darkly mirthful satire with a twist of Beckettian melancholy and an anarchic touch of Swift”.

Buy Milkman from The Week Bookshop for £6.99

Ctrl Alt Delete: How Politics and Media Crashed Our Democracy by Tom Baldwin

In his blistering book about how media and politics have been involved in a decade-long death spiral, journalist Tom Baldwin takes Apple’s first iPhone launch in 2007 as a kind of Year Zero moment.

The resulting explosion of social media, suggests Baldwin, destroyed the advertising revenue base of conventional media, created echo-chamber filter bubbles and laid people open to manipulation by shadowy forces.

Ctrl Alt Delete “is a well-written, often funny, sometimes elegiac and occasionally angry musing on how the worlds of politics and the media have been changed for the worse”, says David Aaronovitch in The Times.

Interviewing everyone from Tony Blair to Michael Gove, top journalists to Russian bloggers, and tech giant execs to online activists, “Baldwin describes a vicious battle for control of the news agenda, at the expense of public trust and the value of truth”, reports the Frontline Club.

While understandably focused on the Twitter age that spawned Brexit and Trump, “a merit of this book is that it takes care to explain that the crisis in the conduct of democracy did not happen overnight”, says The Guardian. “It is the culmination and interaction of trends reaching back at least three decades.”

Buy Ctrl Alt Delete from Amazon for £14.45

The Only Story by Julian Barnes

The Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending returns with a novel about a young man’s love for an older woman darkening into tragedy. Opening with the question, “Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less and suffer the less?" the book struggles to answer the question, exploring the possibilities of both.

Buy The Only Story from The Week Bookshop for £12.99

How to be famous by Caitlin Moran

The 1990s were recently voted the decade Britons would most want to go back to. In the era of Trump and Brexit it is understandable many people yearn for the sunny optimism of the end of the Cold War, Bill Clinton, New Labour and Britpop.

“Nostalgic or not, [Caitlin] Moran’s newest novel, the hilarious sequel to the soon-to-be adapted How to Build a Girl will transport you to grungy and gritty London during this time”, says Esquire.

Seen through the eyes of witty and wilful Wolverhampton-native Johanna Morrigan, Moran’s protagonist transforms herself into a self-styled music journalist whose unapologetic writing (and sex life) ends up catapulting her to fame with explosive consequences.

Buy How to Be famous from Amazon from £9.99

A long way from Home by Peter Carey

The double Booker prize-winning author returns to the remote country towns of his youth in a novel which touches upon his complicated relationship with race as a white Australian for the first time.

Set in the 1950s, the novel follows Irene Bobs and her husband as they enter the Redex Trial, a brutal motor race around the Australian outback, “over roads no car will ever quite survive”.

“I couldn’t have imagined that a car race could be so enthralling,” says the Guardian’s Tessa Hadley.

Buy A Long Way From Home from The Week Bookshop for £7.99

Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala

The second novel from the author of Beasts of No Nation (adapted into an award-winning Netflix film), Speak No Evil covers strikingly different ground to its predecessor.

Harvard-educated Iweala starts his follow-up novel far closer to home with a Harvard-bound hero from a well-off Nigerian family. But after young Niru is inadvertently outed to his profoundly homophobic parents by his white friend Meredith, the novel “veers into the dark unknown” as his life becomes “a journey of confusion, torment and, eventually, violence”, says Vulture.

Buy Speak No Evil from The Week Bookshop for £16.99

The Melody by Jim Crace

Another bleak portrayal by the author of Harvest, The Melody is “a fable about grief, myth, music and persecution, in which a widowed musician inadvertently sparks a campaign of violence against the paupers scratching a living on the fringes of town”, says The Guardian. The story is tale about greed as much as it is grief, offering commentary on those who are feared and othered for the sake of profit.

Buy The Melody from The Week Bookshop for £13.99

How Democracy Ends by David Runciman

There were many authors analysing the current political crises of the West last year, but David Runciman takes the award for the most gloomy. Nevertheless he is among the most critically acclaimed.

Expanded from an article written in the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s shock election victory, the driving force behind the Cambridge academic’s book are questions such as what happens when websites like Facebook use their data to sell us opinions that suit our prejudices?

Calling the book “provocative”, “fluent” and “typically counter-intuitive”, Prospect says Runciman “believes that as democracy has grown middle-aged it needs to be more responsive to people’s actual needs”.

“Otherwise darker, more atavistic, forces may prevail,” says the magazine.

Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer says: “I didn’t entirely subscribe to his rather gloomy thesis, but there is five-star food for thought in How Democracy Ends.”

Buy How Democracy Ends from Amazon from £8.99

The Favourite Sister by Jessica Knoll

Set to be one of the beach holiday books of the summer, the new thriller from the author of Luckiest Girl Alive “has a reality TV show as its setting, and a pair of sisters — who are definitely no Housewives — with a dark secret to get the action going” says Elle.

USA Today says that in The Favourite Sister, “Knoll mines the rich landscape of reality television and creates a binge-worthy beach read complete with the provocative twists and turns of a whodunit”.

TIME has even published an except for those who want to dip their toe in before diving.

Buy The Favourite Sister from Amazon for £14.75

Air Traffic: A Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in America by Gregory Pardlo

Taking as a point of departure his father’s own role in the 1981 US air traffic controllers strike, which saw the newly-elected Ronald Reagan go head-head-to-head with the unions, Gregory Pardlo’s memoir is “a masterwork, blending personal and family history with a historicised critique on blackness and masculinity” says Vogue.

An epoch-defining confrontation comparable to Margaret Thatcher's battle with the miners a few years later, Pardio manages that rarest of things - to tell a personal memoir that is also an important story about modern America.

Buy Air Traffic from The Week Bookshop for £22.00

Warlight by Michael Ondaatje

Twenty-five years on from the release of The English Patient, Booker Prize-winning writer Michael Ondaatje returns to familiar territory with a novel set in the aftermath of the Second World War.

A series of unexplained mysteries involving abductions, disappearances and intrigue begin in Blitz London and unravel over number of years.

Buy Warlight from The Week Bookshop for £13.99

The Neighbourhood by Mario Vargas Llosa

A bona fide literary giant, Peru’s most celebrated author and Nobel Laureate tackles political corruption, the hazards of extreme wealth and erotic intrigues in his latest novel. The story follows Enrique, a high-profile businessman who receives a visit from the editor of a notorious gossip magazine which unleashes a twisting tale of murder, affairs, wealth and corruption.

Buy The Neighbourhood from Amazon for £15.28

Identity by Francis Fukuyama

One of the world’s most respected and accessible big thinkers, Fukuyama’s Identity brings a fresh spin to the much-covered themes of populism, political Islam and the conflict between liberalism and white nationalism.

Buy Identity from Amazon for £16.99

Love is Blind by William Boyd

Part of the rockstar group of authors who burst onto the British literary scene in the early 1980s, William Boyd is one of those rare writers who precipitates a cultural event with every new book.

This historical travelogue-cum-romance which takes place in 19th century Scotland, France and Russia, follows in the vein of earlier successes such as Any Human Heart and Waiting for Sunrise.

Set in the late 1890s, it’s an international saga about love, music, missed opportunities and revenge.

“Yet there is also a sense of mischief and playfulness imbued into its narrative that takes the form of several elaborate homages to other books and stories,” says Alexander Larman in The Guardian.

In so doing, “Boyd has pulled off an audaciously cunning trick, a literary bait and switch that both delights and surprises” says Larman.

Anton Chekhov’s influence on this novel “is clear from the epigraph, which quotes Chekhov’s widow, to one of the novel’s final images”, says The Spectator. “One wonders, though, how mindful Boyd is of the great Russian writer’s urge to ‘flee the stereotype’ at all times”.

In short, says The Scotsman, Love is Blind is “the equivalent of a nice blended whisky rather than the fine malt that Boyd provided in, for instance Any Human Heart. It’s Boyd at less than full throttle, but that is still better and far more engaging than the work of most novelists”.

Love is Blind hardback is available to buy from The Week Bookshop for £18.99

The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer

Wolitzer “has always found a way to write engrossing, smart, and breezy books that also cut to the heart of the conundrum of living as a woman in the world”, says Vulture, and her latest book is no exception, focusing on the generational tensions among feminists at a fictional US college.

Buy The Female Persuasion from The Week Bookshop for £13.99

Room to Dream by David Lynch and Kristine McKenna

Fresh from near-universal praise for his Twin Peaks follow-up, visionary director David Lynch teams ups with Kristine McKenna to deliver a part memoir, part biography incorporating interviews with friends and contemporaries. Giving us an in-depth look into his creative process, Lynch reveals the inner story of the life behind the art.

Buy Room to Dream from The Week Bookshop for £22.00

The President is Missing by Bill Clinton and James Patterson

Political memoirs are ten-a-penny, but it is not so often a former US president turns his hand to fiction. Teaming up with prolific novelist James Patterson, Bill Clinton brings insider knowledge to this political thriller about the disappearance of a US president.

Buy The President is Missing from The Week Bookshop for £18.00

The Fruits of my Labour by Karl Ove Knausgaard

“The final volume in the epic Norwegian autobiographical series includes a long essay on Hitler and a consideration of the personal fallout from his earlier books,” says The Guardian. The borders between private and public worlds merge in this tell-all, as Knausgaard opens up about everything from his ambitions and frailties, his uncertainties and doubts and his relationships with friends and family.

Buy The Fruits of my Labour from Amazon for £19.49

21 lessons for the 21st century by Yuval Noah Harari

New books by Yuval Noah Harari have become something of an event.

Ever since Sapiens, his history of humanity, burst on to the literary scene in 2014 the book and its author have become a literary phenomenon. Selling over one million copies worldwide, it has been cited by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Barack Obama as a must-read.

The future-gazing follow-up, Homo Deus, was also a global bestseller, and now Harari has turned his attention to the present with 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, covering everything from war to fake news to meditation.

The Guardian describes 21 Lessons as “a self-help guide for a bewildering age” whose “sweeping statements are peppered with truly mind-expanding observations”.

Some critics have claimed the book amounts to little more than a collection of already-published articles, but given Harari’s status as ‘guru of the moment’, there is little doubt it will still prove hugely popular amongst his legion of devoted fans.

Buy 21 lessons for the 21st century from Amazon for £9.96

The Secret Barrister by the Secret Barrister

A unique take on courtroom drama, The Secret Barrister holds the distinction of being written by an actual barrister, who chooses to withhold their name.

Cosmopolitan says the real-life stories detailed in the book straddle a fine line between “touching, telling and at times terrifying”, adding that the mystery author answers “questions you might’ve always wanted to ask: about wigs, about defending someone they suspect is guilty, and about holding the responsibility of someone’s future in your hands”.

The Guardian notes that the book, while funny and informative, also serves as a damning indictment of an “utterly broken” justice system.

Buy The Secret Barrister from The Week Bookshop for £16.99

Bring It On Home by Mark Blake

Subtitled Peter Grant, Led Zeppelin and Beyond: The Story of Rock’s Greatest Manager, Mark Blake’s rip-roaring Bring It On Home takes readers through the formation of Led Zeppelin, one of the world’s most iconic rock bands, and the story of their shrewd, mercurial manager Peter Grant.

“To say Bring It On Home is a rambunctious page-turner is an understatement; but despite all the violence and weirdness, you can’t help liking the ‘real’ Peter Grant who emerges here,” Planet Rock says of the book, which was published to coincide with the band’s 50th anniversary.

Buy Bring It On Home from Amazon for £13.65

Late last night, Donald Trump made one of the most surprising moves of his unpredictable presidency: he took down his Twitter account and fell silent.

As it turned out, however, the 11-minute deactivation of his account, was not the US president’s own work, but rather, that of a disgruntled Twitter employee who had deactivated the account on their last day of work.

During the short outage, some anti-Trump Twitter users rejoiced:

Employees committing acts of sabotage on their final day is nothing new. Here are some of the most amusing - and the most petty:

Wandering Ws

Shortly after George W. Bush was elected in 2000, White House employees discovered that staffers working under his predecessor, Bill Clinton, had either removed or broken the “W” keys on all computer keyboards in the West Wing.

At the time, ABC News described it as “a critical problem”, considering Bush’s middle name is Walker - often abbreviated to simply W.

When asked his reaction, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer replied: “It would have been ‘wow’. But the W was removed, so now it’s just, ‘oh’.”

Blues of the World

Newspapers often find themselves on the receiving end of last-day pranks, due to the ease with which writers can hide secret messages in text.

When The News of the World was shut down in 2011 after 168 years of circulation in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal, the publication’s journalists vented their anger at editor Rebekah Brooks in the crossword.

“Disaster”, “tart”, “menace”, “stench” and “racket” were among the answers in the paper’s last edition, writes The Guardian, while the cryptic clues included “Woman stares wildly at calamity”, “criminal enterprise”, “repel odd change that’s regretted” and “mix in prison”.

Slip sliding away

In 2010, Steven Slater quit his job as a JetBlue flight attendant in the most spectacular fashion, by grabbing a couple of beers from the trolley, resigning over the intercom, opening the emergency exit and sliding his way to freedom.

He claimed that he was pushed over the edge after being abused by a passenger who stood up too early following landing. He was later arrested at his home and charged with criminal mischief, reckless endangerment and criminal trespass and sentenced to a year of probation.

Although many saw his dramatic exit, not a single witness could corroborate Slater’s story regarding passenger abuse, writes the Wall Street Journal.

Parting letter

When it comes to hidden messages in newspapers, one of the Daily Express’ former lead columnists Stephen Pollard is described as “the master of the genre” by the Guardian, after famously concealing the phrase “f*** you Desmond” in his final piece.

It was understood to be a rebuke to the paper’s owner Richard Desmond, and appeared in Pollard’s final editorial about organic farming.

The prank reportedly cost Pollard a job he had lined up for himself at The Times, but he was later re-hired at the Express. “It was a long time ago. Richard’s in business, he’s a businessman, he probably felt it was water under the bridge,” Pollard told the Guardian.

Bill Clinton has been drafted in to help end Northern Ireland’s political impasse, after months of talks failed to result in a power-sharing agreement.

Northern Ireland has been without a devolved administration since the government collapsed in January. Following an election which saw gains for Sinn Fein, nationalists have been engaged in a tense stand-off with their unionist counterparts over the formation of a new government at Stormont.

The biggest sticking point between the two has been the rights of Irish language speakers, a red line for many unionists.

Now Reuters has reported that the former US president, who played a central role in brokering peace in Northern Ireland in the 1990s, has been called in to help.

He is scheduled to receive an honorary doctorate at Dublin City University later today after which he will travel to Belfast to meet both sides.

Earlier this year, at the funeral for former deputy first minister Martin McGuinness, Clinton spoke of the need for politicians to finish the work started by the former IRA commander who played a central role in agreeing the Good Friday Peace Agreement.

The Daily Mail says British and Irish governments, who are facilitating the talks, have expressed “cautious optimism” the power-sharing government can be restored this month but the parties have said there are still challenges to be addressed.

However, “in a blow to the British and Irish governments’ hopes that a deal to bring back Stormont is close”, the Belfast Telegraph says “significant areas of difference” still remain between the DUP and Sinn Fein, including the Irish Language Act and legacy issues.

Earlier this month, the Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire said a power-sharing deal by the end of the month was “eminently doable, but still requires that spirit of compromise”.

The end of October is seen a make-or-break deadline as the government in Westminster would be forced to intervene and set a budget for Stormont’s rudderless public services, effectively imposing direct rule.

The breakdown of the government has come at a critical time for Northern Ireland and the peace process.

Despite reassurances from Theresa May, the DUP and the EU that Brexit will not mean the return of a so-called hard border or controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic, there are fears that unless the UK remains within the EU customs union some form of barrier will be required. This would be in direct contravention of the terms set out in the Good Friday Agreement and could push an already fragile peace back over the edge.

Shimon Peres, the former Israeli president who shared a Nobel prize for forging a peace deal between his country and Palestine, has died in Tel Aviv, aged 93.

He was admitted to hospital two weeks ago after having a stroke. "His condition [had] improved before a sudden deterioration on Tuesday," says the BBC.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his "deep personal grief on the passing of the beloved of the nation".

Peres will be remembered as a "statesman who helped build his country into a nuclear-armed regional military power", says the Washington Post.

However, the famously hawkish leader turned to peace in his later years and his "defining achievement" was his role in negotiating the Oslo peace accords, The Guardian says, for which he was jointly awarded the 1994 Nobel peace prize, along with Yitzhak Rabin, then Israeli prime minister, and Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

"The longest serving of all of Israel's public servants, Peres was a person about whom it could rightly be said: The history of the State of Israel is the history of Shimon Peres," says the Jerusalem Post.

Tributes have poured in from around the globe.

"There are few people who we share this world with who change the course of human history, not just through their role in human events, but because they expand our moral imagination and force us to expect more of ourselves," said US President Barack Obama. "My friend Shimon was one of those people."

Often described as a "warrior for peace", Peres served as prime minister of Israel on three separate occasions: as acting PM in 1977, then from 1984 to 1986 in the national unity government and for seven months in 1995 and 1996, after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

He later served a seven-year term as Israel's ninth president, from 2007 to 2014. He stepped down from the role two weeks before his 91st birthday.

Boxing legend Muhammad Ali will be laid to rest today, with a procession through the streets of his home town, Louisville, Kentucky, followed by a public memorial service.

Former US president Bill Clinton and actor Billy Crystal will speak at the memorial, which will take place at the KFC Yum! Center sports arena, named after the fast food chain and its parent company.

Will Smith, who portrayed the boxer in the 2001 film Ali, as well as boxing greats Lennox Lewis, George Foreman, Larry Holmes and Mike Tyson, will be among the pallbearers, reports Louisville newspaper the Courier-Journal. The procession will follow the route of the boxer's 1960 Olympic gold medal parade.

Representatives from several religions, including Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism and Mormonism, will also attend.

Ali, who died last Friday at the age of 74 following a long battle with Parkinson's disease, joined the black separatist Nation of Islam as a young athlete, then embraced mainstream Islam years later.

Thousands of people attended a Muslim prayer service yesterday for the three-time heavyweight champion. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was expected to be at today's memorial but apparently cut his trip short after yesterday's service.

Ali had long planned how he wished to say goodbye to the world, detailing his wishes in a document that grew so thick he and his friends began calling it The Book.

"The message that we'll be sending out is not our message – this was really designed by The Champ himself," said Timothy Gianotti, an Islamic studies scholar who helped to plan the services with Ali.

"The love and the reverence and the inclusivity that we're going to experience over the coming days is really a reflection of his message to the people of planet Earth."

One of Ali's wishes was to have ordinary fans at the service, not just VIPs. Accordingly, thousands of public tickets for both yesterday's and today's services were made available.

He will be buried in Cave Hill Cemetery, the final resting place for many other prominent residents of the city, including Colonel Harlan Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Muhammad Ali: Will Smith and Lennox Lewis to carry coffin

07 June

Hollywood actor Will Smith and British boxer Lennox Lewis will be among the pallbearers at the funeral of Muhammad Ali on Friday.

The service is due to take place in Ali's hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, on Friday. The venue will be the inappropriately-named KFC Yum! Center, a 22,000-capacity basketball arena where thousands of fans are expected to flock to pay their respects. The funeral will also be streamed live on the internet.

Celebrities, athletes and world leaders will be among the mourners, with CNN reporting that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and King Abdullah of Jordan will be among the speakers, joining former US president Bill Clinton and comedian Billy Crystal.

However, there is confusion over the running order, with the Times of Israel claiming Ali's family had "bumped" Erdogan and Abdullah from the bill.

As one the pallbearers, London-born Lewis will be the highest profile Briton at the event. He was the last "completely undisputed world heavyweight champion", says the Daily Mail, and was "close to Ali for many years". He, Ali and Evander Holyfield are the only men to have held the heavyweight title three times.

Smith, meanwhile, played Ali in the 2001 film of the same name. The other pallbearers will be Jerry Ellis, the brother of Ali's former sparring partner Jimmy, the late boxer's cousins John Grady and Jan Wadell, his nephew Ibn Ali, former brother-in-law Komawi Ali and family friend John Ramsey, reports the BBC.

Ali was "one of the transcendent figures of the 20th century... who captivated global attention in the 1960s and 1970s", says Reuters, and the world's focus will be on Louisville as he is laid to rest.

There will be "various ceremonies" in the town, reports US news website the Daily Beast, and they will "focus as much on his civil rights stance... as his boxing achievements".

A jenazah - Muslim funeral prayer service - will be held on Thursday, with 14,000 tickets available.

"On Friday, the funeral will be preceded by a procession through the town of Ali's remains," says the Daily Beast. "Ali had originally planned to lie in an open casket and allow people to file past to pay respects, but that was changed to a procession in recent weeks amidst fears for the disruption such an event might cause."

Muhammad Ali: How the world reacted to death of 'The Greatest'

6 June

From the moment Muhammad Ali's death was announced, tributes have poured in as the world grieves for an iconic boxer who also became a leading symbol of the civil rights movement.

The 74-year-old sportsman, often known simply by his self-imposed nickname "The Greatest", died on Saturday at a hospital in Arizona as a result of septic shock after being admitted for respiratory problems.

He will be remembered "not merely as the most talented world heavyweight boxing champion," says the Daily Telegraph, "but also as one of the most irresistible and compelling personalities of his age."

In a fitting testament to that multi-faceted personality, speakers as varied as former US president Bill Clinton and comedian Billy Crystal will be among those giving eulogies at Ali's funeral in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky on Friday.

Ali, who was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1984, was "courageous in the ring, inspiring to the young, compassionate to those in need, and strong and good-humoured in bearing the burden of his own health challenges", Clinton said in a statement.

His idiosyncratic boxing technique was as memorable as his trademark line of exquisitely crafted trash talk, says Al Jazeera. "A heavyweight with the agility of a lightweight, the feet of a ballet dancer, and the reflexes of a cat, Ali redefined what it meant to be a heavyweight," writes Khaled A Beydoun.

British boxer Amir Khan uploaded a video tribute to his Twitter account in which he called Ali his "hero". His death was a "sad day for boxing", he added.

Ali's brash, mouthy charisma might have charmed large swathes of white America, says Lawrence Ross at The Root, but to say he "transcended race" is a disservice to his strong sense of black identity.

"David Bowie and Merle Haggard weren’t asked to transcend their whiteness for black people to recognise their importance," Ross writes.

Born Cassius Clay, Ali publicly shed his "slave name" in 1964, when he joined the controversial black separatist group Nation of Islam, although he later left to practise mainstream Islam.

An outspoken voice for civil rights, he was not afraid to offend mainstream America, most notably by refusing to fight in Vietnam War. "Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?" he said.

He was stripped of his title and unable to renew his boxing license for three years after that. It was a heavy price to pay at the height of his career but it turned Ali into a civil rights hero.

"There will never be another Muhammad Ali," said boxing champion Floyd Mayweather. "The black community all around the world, black people all around the world, needed him. He was the voice for us."

Jeb Bush has announced he is "actively exploring the possibility of running for president of the United States" in 2016, a dramatic entry into the field of Republican hopefuls from a man whose father and brother were both president.

Bush has been dubbed 'the smart brother' and is said to be more level-headed than his sibling George W. He was governor of Florida in 2000 when his brother defeated Al Gore in an election that hinged on recounted votes in that state.

While the wording of the 61-year-old's Facebook and Twitter announcement might seem non-committal to outsiders, the US media reaction suggests there is a strong chance Bush will be his party's next candidate for the White House.

His entry to the race changes everything, says the Washington Post. It "scrambles the large Republican field, thrusting him to the front of the pack and locking up a huge swath of longtime party fundraisers being wooed by other candidates".

Those candidates whose financial backers are now set to desert them for Bush, according to the Post, include New Jersey governor Chris Christie, Texas governor Rick Perry and Florida senator Marco Rubio.

Bush's candidacy also makes it less likely that 2012 nominee Mitt Romney will stand again, says the Post. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll yesterday, Bush took a narrow lead over the rest of the field, if Romney was not included.

The news raises the interesting possibility of a clash between political dynasties in the 2016 race: Hillary Clinton is widely expected to stand for the Democrat nomination. Her husband, Bill Clinton, unseated Jeb's father 22 years ago.

MSNBC says the two families have become close over the decades. George W considers Bill Clinton to be his "brother from another mother", says the broadcaster, while Bill Clinton looks on the elder George Bush as a father figure.

But there are "plenty of people in both parties unhappy with another Clinton-Bush face-off", says MSNBC. It adds: "Liberals and conservatives alike might view the matchup as lacking real contest."

Bush may have one big advantage for his party as a candidate: it is thought he can attract the Latino vote. This section of the electorate is seen as crucial for the Republican party, which can no longer rely on the old, white, male vote to see it over the finish line.

Despite speaking perfect Spanish and having a Mexican wife, Bush has been oversold as a draw for the Latino vote, says Gustavo Arellano, editor of OC Weekly. Writing for The Guardian, Arellano says Latinos are not as conservative as they used to be.

Latinos are "as tired of political dynasties as they are of gringos", says Arellano. A better idea might be for Jeb to "sit this one out" and encourage his half-Mexican son, George P Bush, to run in 2024, he suggests.

Also for The Guardian, Suzanne Goldenberg says Jeb Bush may be smarter than George W, but he is an "out-and-out flat-earther" on the subject of climate change - a lot more radical than his brother. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has said she will defend the progress Barack Obama has made on the issue.

HERE we go. The guns of the Republicans’ ‘dark arts’ department are sounding in the opening barrage against Hillary Clinton’s still-to-be-launched 2016 presidential campaign.

This week’s National Enquirer, the supermarket tabloid, announces that a cabal of right-wing plutocrats has assembled a war chest of $500 million to “gut Hillary” at any price.

They are said to be paying snoops to dig up dirt so dirty that Hillary will back down before she even throws her hat in the ring.

Here’s a teaser, already available as a campaign button and bumper sticker: 'Ready Hillary for Prison 2016', and '2016 Hillary for President: Prison or POTUS?'

So far, it seems, the snoops are having trouble scooping fresh poop from soil so ardently sifted since 1992 when Bill Clinton first ran for the White House.

This is all the Enquirer can report: “Sources say operatives are digging up details on at least eight Hillary 'secrets'! They will also try to use a variety of evidence to rip the covers off Hill­ary’s torrid love affairs with both men and women, according to in­siders.”

This is cheap journalism: if you have not got the goods yourself, you report that others are looking for them.

But the Enquirer goes on to list the eight 'secrets' being probed. They are not new.

#1 to #3 concern the first Clinton White House scandal, 'Travelgate', which involved alleged shenanigans at the White House travel office and the mysterious death by shooting of Clinton lawyer Vince Foster.

#4 is Hillary’s alleged lesbian peccadillos. Have the snoops found a witness to a “steamy embrace” in the West Wing?

#5 re-introduces the affair of the blow-job administered to Bill Clinton by intern Monica Lewinsky, suggesting that Hillary masterminded a campaign to smear Lewinsky and her family, had a “revenge” tryst herself, and called the intern a “narcissistic loony toon”.

#6 goes all the way back to one of the more splendid Clinton smears, claiming that when Bill was Governor of Arkansas in the 1980s both he and Hillary were mixed up with a cocaine cartel which landed drugs at a rural airport, and murdered people.

#7 resurrects the story that Hillary tried to talk to the spirit of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. No kidding.

#8 is a “shocking medical secret”, or rather a spin - without evidence so far – on Hillary's fainting spell in December 2012, which left her concussed and raised questions about her fitness at age 66 to run for the presidency. The 'dark arts' plan is to spread rumours that she has an undisclosed brain tumour. Given the Clintons' proven resilience to scandal, this seems a bit like trying to sink a battleship with a pea-shooter.

One of these eight 'secrets' just might have legs, however, particularly for a new generation of voters too young to have paid attention in the 1990s. The sad death of Vince Foster, Arkansas lawyer, old friend of the Clintons and rumoured one-time lover of Hillary’s, has never been fully explained.

He was found dead in a Washington park after apparently shooting himself in the head. Was he murdered? No fingerprints were found on the nearby gun, and no bullet was recovered, suggesting he had been dumped in the park after dying elsewhere. If it was suicide, why? If he was murdered, was it at the behest of the Clintons? If so,why?

The snoops of the dark arts are now said to be tracking, or even to have scored, two crucial letters “missing” from Foster's White House office safe after his death. One, contents unknown, was to the then Attorney General, Janet Reno.

Foster was said to have been depressed to find himself fending off the barrage of allegations hurled at the Clintons, with the inference that he knew them to be true. Does that explain suicide? The favoured spin from the 'Clinton-haters' has always been that Foster knew too much, and had to be got rid of.

The only named source in the Enquirer’s article is Marinka Peschmann, a ghost-writer who had a bestseller with the Hollywood producer Robert Evans’s memoir The Kid Stays in the Picture, later turned into a movie.

Peschmann is now a “freelance investigative journalist” who has written two anti-Hillary books, The Whistleblower: How the Clinton White House Stayed in Power to Reemerge in the Obama White House and on the World Stage (punchy titles aren't her strong point) and Following Orders: The Death of Vince Foster, Clinton White House Lawyer. It is on Peschmann's website that the 'Ready Hillary for Prison' buttons and bumper stickers are for sale.

The Enquirer uses material from Peschmann's books alleging that the Reno letter would be a “smoking gun” that proves that Hillary, without proper authority, ordered the 1993 FBI/ATF raid on the Branch Davidian religious cult at Waco, Texas, which resulted in the deaths of 74 men, women and children.

Peschmann allegedly told The Enquirer:"The orders to raid Waco were from Hillary, but Janet Reno took the fall, and Vince Foster was devastated by what happened. I’m sure those doc­uments were destroyed. [But] if copies were to emerge today, they could de­stroy Hillary.”

Peschmann used her website yesterday both to promote her books and to distance herself from the 'Plot to Destroy Hillary'. However, she wrote: "I hope [the plot] is true because I could use some back-up getting the info on Hillary out that is documented in my books…The fact is no dirty tricks are required when it comes to Hillary - the truth is damaging enough.”

Hmmm… As 2016 looms, Peschmann might like to research the case of David Brock.

Brock was the star investigator of the ‘Clinton-haters’ and as a ‘journalist’ he notched up a formidable string of scoops just when Clinton scandals were among the hottest stories on earth.

He broke the Whitewater story and his cover article for yhe American Spectator, His Cheating Heart, triumphantly introduced Bill Clinton the serial adulterer. The magazine’s circulation rose from 70,000 to over 300,000.

But in July, 1997, Brock wrote an article for the magazine Esquire, headlined Confessions of a Right-Wing Hit Man, in which he recanted much of what he had written previously, criticised his own “reporting methods” and admitted that he had been part of the right-wing plot, the Arkansas Project, to bring down the Clintons.

In a second article for Esquire, he offered a formal apology to the Clintons. He has since written two books detailing the media manipulations and falsehoods of the campaign he spearheaded.

The Enquirer, in its own way, is fun and sometimes even right. Even if its story of a plot against Hillary was dreamed up in a bar, there is certain to be a well-funded campaign to smear her. But why should we believe a word from Peschmann or any other of Brock’s “right wing road warriors” sure to cash in on 2016?

IS THERE honour among hackers? The latest story from America of outrageous invasion into what would once have been considered private space suggests there might be.

‘Guccifer’ is an anonymous but prolific hacker, perhaps even a collective, who has been feeding scandal sites, in particular The Smoking Gun. His coups have included drawings of his dog by former President ‘Dubya’ Bush and doodles by Bill Clinton.

But in its latest post, The Smoking Gun reveals that ‘Guccifer’ knew the secrets of the final episode of the fourth season of the television drama Downton Abbey, and did not tell a soul. In the States, the latest season started only on Sunday (where it broke all records for a PBS drama, drawing 10.2 million viewers, more even than watched in Britain in September) and we still await the outcome with bated breath.

It is one thing to know that Google tracks your every internet search for its corporate customers, and the National Security Agency with its buddies at GCHQ follows your every call and e-mail abroad.

It is one thing to know that there are thieves with computers ceaselessly attempting to buy beer with your credit card and steal your savings from the bank.

But it is quite another to have your Sunday night viewing pleasure spoiled. That would be going too far. ‘Guccifer’ knew when to stop. He can keep a secret.

How ‘Guccifer’ breached the walls of Downton Abbey is a story in its own right. According to the files he has dumped on The Smoking Gun in what appears to be an act of confession or a boast, he hacked into the BTinternet email account of the show’s creator Julian, Lord Fellowes, and found the script. This was six months before it aired in the UK.

‘Guccifer’ had found Fellowes in an address book he managed to steal from an assistant to the celebrated British-born editrix, Tina Brown, formerly of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The Daily Beast. After 30 years of schmoozing with the rich and famous, Brown's little black book was a treasure trove of contacts.

Having hacked into the assistant's Yahoo account and found the address book, he exported nearly 900 names and corresponding e-mail addresses into an Excel spreadsheet and set about reviewing the list for possible new targets - "a standard Guccifer MO", says The Smoking Gun.

“While the hacker routinely copies an address book following a break-in, some contact lists - like those of Brown, Powell [Colin, former Secretary of State], and former White House adviser Sidney Blumenthal - have proven to be target-rich environments for Guccifer to exploit."

Armed with Brown’s contact list, Guccifer hacked into the email accounts - mostly AOL or Earthlink - of, among others, the Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein, Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell, British actor Rupert Everett and BBC Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman. TSG reports that he was also researching Martin Amis "in preparation for an assault on the author’s Yahoo account”.

The hacker used basic Wikipedia information about his targets as well as lists of popular pet names to guess passwords, and protected his own identity with proxy servers, fake IP addresses and anonymising software.

‘Guccifer’ sounds more like a one-man News of the World than one of the cloak-and-dagger Big Brother spooks who have recently dominated the electronic spying news.

He has targeted the Washington establishment and Hollywood celebrities with equal abandon. He has the private phone numbers and e-mails for Robert Redford and Warren Beatty, Nicole Kidman and Leonardo DiCaprio. He has raided, and vandalised, the websites and e-mails of generals, politicians, White House aides and the head of the Romanian Intelligence Service, George-Cristian Maior.

Nobody seems quite sure why.

“Guccifer wrote of turning over his archive ‘just in case I am busted,’ but he has not offered a rationale for the crime spree detailed in those documents,” says The Smoking Gun. “While referring to his distaste for the 'new UK-USA empire', the hacker claims to be operating from 'the cloud of Infinite Justice'. Still, it is hard not to view many of his break-ins as crimes of opportunity. Hacking for hacking’s sake, with a simple goal of disruption, havoc and embarrassment.”

While Guccifer's motive remains a mystery, there was never any doubt over the motive for a raid on government files which electrified America more than 40 years ago and returned to the headlines this week.

In 1971, a group of anti-Vietnam protesters broke into an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania and stole documents that proved, scandalously, that J Edgar Hoover’s FBI was digging up dirt and organising disruption of the 'New Left' and the anti-war movement.

Details of their exploits have been revealed for the first time in a book, The Burglary, by Betty Medsger, a Washington Post journalist who reported the original break-in. A professor of physics was the brains behind the raid, it turns out, and a professor of religious studies was on his team.

But the key recruit was a committed anti-war campaigner driving a taxi for a living. He had learned how to pick locks.

On the night of the raid, they all met in a hotel room. They picked the locks to the FBI office and carried out files that would help change the course of American policy.

They spread the files on tables in a rented farmhouse to read through them, highlighters in hand, before mailing them to journalists. The revelations inspired the Church Committee in the Senate which investigated intelligence agency abuses, and led to new controls.

The FBI, as enraged then as now, fielded a team of 200 to exact revenge. They never found them. The professor of physics, William C Davidon, died last November.

“My response to [Edward] Snowden”, says Keith Forsyth, the lock-picker, all these years later, “was ‘here we go again’.”

Forsyth worked with a skeleton key, not a computer key. Everything else is more of the same, only more of it.

NEW YORK - Will the death of the Iron Lady light the fuse for a presidential run by Hillary Clinton in 2016? The news of Margaret Thatcher's passing took America by storm yesterday, dominating the headlines with very little of the doubt and nuance found in some quarters of the British press.

President Obama led the tributes, calling her "one of the great champions of freedom and liberty" and claiming her as an Obama family heroine - a feminist "example to our daughters that there is no glass ceiling that can't be shattered".

The New York Times concluded an editorial with words that not even the Daily Mail would dare set down in type: "The passage of time has drained much of the old anger and left behind her record of accomplishments."

Americans always loved Mrs T. To them she was, above all, Ronald Reagan's favourite dance partner and natural ally, the kind of Brit "we can do business with", to borrow her own phrase.

Remembering Thatcher means remembering Reagan with rose-tinted specs firmly in place, his campaign slogan 'Morning in America' suggesting that that Americans enjoyed a bright dawn under the Gipper's leadership.

Would smashing the last glass ceiling by putting Hillary, a woman, in the White House bring that sunny dawn up one more time? It is the kind of political juju that can carry more weight in America than hard-drives full of statistics.

And the gods might be backing the idea. By coincidence, just last week a group supported by the old inner tabernacle of the Clinton coterie launched the Ready for Hillary 'super-Pac' - or independent political action committee - one of those devices of American politics that enable supporters to "bundle" infinite amounts of cash to spend independently of a candidate's audited campaign accounts.

James Carville, the political strategist from Louisiana who did more than anyone to take the unlikely Bill Clinton to Washington in 1992, has declared his support. And so has Harold Ickes, the manager of that first campaign who is credited with first steering the big money to the Clintons.

So far, Ready for Hillary is at that nascent stage at which everyone says that they have no idea whether Hillary will actually run, and that they cannot speak for her.

But Ickes told the Sunday Times that the organisers were "very solid and know what they are doing", while the super-Pac was "off to a very strong start". The money was already rolling-in, he said.

Carville, as usual, is more forthright. Last Thursday, he posted an e-mail to the Ready for Hillary website, urging supporters to sign-up, claiming that the "hunger for a Hillary Clinton presidency is unlike anything I have ever seen".

Opinion polls bear him out. After retiring as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has a 61 per cent approval rating, the highest of any American politician. A National Journal poll of Democratic staffers and elected officials found that 81 per cent agreed that she would be the 2016 nominee. It also found that 69 per cent of their Republican counterparts believed not only that she would run, but she would win.

At the weekend, Clinton stepped back onto the national stage as the top guest at a "power women" conference organised by Tina Brown of The Daily Beast. She sported a new, trimmer hair-do, and had junked the bottle-bottom glasses she wore after falling and suffering from concussion before Christmas.

She smiled enigmatically when Brown told the gathering that the "big question about Hillary is: what's next?" There were calls of "2016" from the auditorium.

And in her speech, Clinton described women's rights as "the great unfinished business of the 21st century".

What Thatcher would have made of that assertion is anybody's guess. But as America gazes over the pond and bangs the drum for Reagan's old comrade-in-arms, the idea that it is Clinton's destiny to follow her through the glass ceiling is more enticing than ever. The bandwagon rolls.

There really isn't anywhere else for a young charismatic Democrat president to go for his summer holiday. Like Kennedy and Clinton, Barack Obama is expected spend a good part of August in the peaceful seclusion of Martha's Vineyard, the island off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Obama went to Martha's Vineyard two years ago, and enthused at a fundraiser that it was "one of those magical places where people of all different walks of life come together. Where they take each other at face value."

He added: "I can wander around in shorts and not shave in the morning and no one talks about it." Now, there are reports that the President has sent his entourage ahead to scout out a suitable family holiday home, while some hotel owners say the Secret Service has been booking rooms. The big question is whether Obama will head to the part of the island favoured by the ex-Presidents and an array of Hollywood royalty, or whether he'll stay in the area to the northeast of the island favoured by America's black elite. The former, labelled Hollywood East, plays host to the Kennedy clan, Sir Paul McCartney, Carly Simon and many other stars. The latter, centred around Oak Bluffs and a beach called the Ink Well, is where Oprah Winfrey, Spike Lee and many other rich black Americans hang out. Lawrence Otis Graham, an acclaimed black author, said that the community there would be doing whatever they could to be seen with Obama. "The Obamas provide the international imprimatur which the black elite craves", he said.

But the social scene was an exclusive one, he noted: "They are very elitist and unapologetic about it. They are not interested in celebrities or entertainment and sports figures. They want to know where your great-grandfather went to medical school, and the school your grandmother went to before she 'came out' as a black debutante, and who presented her." The island's reputation as a summer colony for rich liberals once led George W Bush, who preferred to holiday at his own ranch in Texas, to deride its inhabitants as elitist white wine swillers. In 1996, on the advice of his pollster Dick Morris, Bill Clinton swapped his annual, sociable jaunt there for a hiking trip to Wyoming, to convince the American electorate that he too loved the great outdoors. The holiday was a disaster.