Deals put UK-US trade relationship in the spotlight | Letters


Jimmy Kimmel on Trump’s Rob Reiner comments: ‘So hateful and vile’
Late-night hosts reacted to the murder of legendary director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, as well as Donald Trump’s 10-minute tangent about Christmas snakes.“This is the kind of weekend that makes you wonder if things will ever feel good again,” said Jimmy Kimmel on Monday evening, after a couple days of horrific news: the terror attack at a Hanukkah celebration on Australia’s Bondi Beach, a mass shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island, and the “murder of one of our greatest directors and patriots, Rob Reiner, and his wife, Michele Reiner”.“What we need in a time like this, besides common sense when it comes to guns and mental health care, is compassion and leadership,” he continued. “We did not get that from our president, because he has none of it to give. Instead, we got a fool rambling about nonsense

The Vietnam War ended 50 years ago. But its lessons live on in The Quiet American
Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser) was a “quiet American”, says Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine) to a French policeman. “A friend,” he adds, as the lifeless corpse of Pyle stares back at him with a wretched expression.This is the scene that opens Phillip Noyce’s Vietnam-set political drama before the film flashes back a few months earlier to 1952 Saigon, where Fowler, an ageing Englishman, lives leisurely as a journalist reporting on the first Indochina war. When Pyle, a young American aid worker advocating for US intervention, falls for Fowler’s 20-year-old Vietnamese lover, Phượng (Đỗ Thị Hải Yến), the jaded reporter’s tranquil existence begins to unravel.At Pyle and Fowler’s first meeting at the Continental hotel, it is clear that Pyle is anything but “quiet”: handsomely bespectacled, the American idealist is attentively reading Dangers to Democracy, a book on foreign policy

‘Fans stole my underwear – and even my car aerial’: how Roxette made It Must Have Been Love
‘We had 2,000 people outside our hotel room in Buenos Aires singing our songs all night. David Coulthard later told me that all the Formula One drivers were staying there and were annoyed because they couldn’t sleep’In my early 20s, I was in the biggest band in Sweden. But after Gyllene Tider [Golden Times] collapsed, I was depressed for two years. At first, Roxette only got together when Marie Fredriksson, our singer, wasn’t busy with solo stuff. To keep her in the band, I needed to make it successful, so I was very motivated

My cultural awakening: The Lehman Trilogy helped me to live with my sight loss
I began to notice my sight deteriorating in my 40s, but not just in the way that you expect it to with age. I had night blindness and blind spots in my field of view. At 44, I was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic eye condition that causes the retina cells to die. I had always been a very visually oriented person: I was a practising architect, and someone who loved to read, draw, go to the cinema and visit art exhibitions. So when black text disappeared on a glaring white page, films became impossible to follow and artworks only took shape once explained to me, I questioned who I would be without my vision

From Eleanor the Great to Emily in Paris: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
Eleanor the GreatOut nowJune Squibb stars in Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, which premiered at Cannes and tells the tale of the eponymous Eleanor, a senior citizen recently relocated to New York, who strikes up a friendship with a 19-year old – and then stumbles her way into pretending to be a Holocaust survivor.LurkerOut nowA hit at Sundance, this is the story of a lowly retail employee who happens to strike up a friendship with a rising pop star, becoming the Boswell to his Johnson, if Boswell was part of a pop star’s entourage. But the path of friendship with a famous person never did run smooth, and the uneven power dynamic soon prompts some desperate manoeuvring in this psychological thriller.Ella McCayOut nowEmma Mackey stars in the latest from James L Brooks (his first since 2010), a political comedy about an idealistic thirtysomething working in government and preparing to step into the shoes of her mentor, Governor Bill (Albert Brooks). Jamie Lee Curtis co-stars as Ella’s aunt

Stephen Colbert on Trump’s ‘gold card’: ‘Pay-to-play program for rich foreigners’
Late-night hosts tore into Donald Trump’s new “gold card” immigration program and his many weird tangents about grocery prices.Stephen Colbert opened Thursday’s Late Show with a new Christmas jingle about the president: “He’s making a list, checking it twice, then handing that list to the people at ICE. Donald Trump … ruins everything he touches,” he sang. “And lately he’s been pretty handsy, slapping his face on anything in sight.”On Wednesday, Trump put his face on what Colbert called “his long-promised pay-to-play program for rich foreigners”

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The 12 condiments of Christmas

‘Every chef should train here’: Turkish restaurant ranks fourth on list of London’s top food spots

Ho, ho, Hamburg: bringing the flavours of a true German Christmas market home