1. Michael Robinson, from European Cup winner to the voice of Spanish TV
‘Michael Robinson had a big heart and loved telling stories. He told stories on the telly, he told stories on the radio and he told stories every time you were with him. Warm, funny, human stories. Endlessly. He could talk and talk, though he listened too. You couldn’t meet him for lunch and get back before dinner. He loved football but above all he loved people, good people.’
2. Angus Taylor makes distinction between ‘downloading’ and ‘accessing’ document in Clover Moore attack
‘The energy minister, Angus Taylor, is making a distinction between “downloading” and “accessing” documents on a website as his bungled attack on Sydney city council eight months ago continues to trouble him.’
3. Dutch researchers coax secrets from Girl with a Pearl Earring
‘The Netherlands’ researchers were stunned to discover, for the first time, delicate eyelashes on the girl’s face and evidence of a green curtain behind her head. They have also gained fresh insights into how Vermeer painted the work, what changes he made and which pigments he used, including discovering that the white for the earring originated in England’s Peak District.’
4. Britain breaks record for coal-free power generation
‘The collapse of coal and rise of renewable energy sources have led to a drastic reduction in carbon emissions from the UK power sector. Since 2012, the average carbon intensity of the grid – the amount of emissions required to produce one kilowatt hour of energy – has declined by more than two-thirds.’
5. Compton’s summer of ‘47 is the kind of succour the nation needs now
‘The crowds came in tens and then, by the end, hundreds of thousands. Everyone, everywhere watching Compton and Edrich, listening to Compton and Edrich, talking of Compton and Edrich. Attlee followed their progress on the new ticker-tape machine his press secretary had installed outside the Cabinet Office.’
6. Commemorating Captain James Cook’s arrival, Australia should not omit his role in the suffering that followed
‘What strikes me most when I read Cook’s journals is how fortunate he was (despite his own stupidity and arrogance, and due to the restraint of the Indigenous people he mistreated on his three voyages of discovery) not to have died much earlier in the way he did in 1779 when the Hawaiian locals chopped him to bits for abusing their customs and generosity.’
7. Angus Taylor and Scott Morrison won’t be able to brush off uncomfortable questions much longer
‘But if the prime minister wants to ignore uncomfortable issues – and he has practised this strategy since he was immigration minister – there are others prepared to talk.’
8. Juan Antonio Pizzi: ‘Bobby Robson led Barcelona through the hardest era in 20 years’
‘Most of the time, you fail; there are many more defeats than victories,” Juan Antonio Pizzi says. He is right, even when it comes to his peer group – possibly the most successful coaching class in history – but it is still an unusual reflection for a man who was La Liga’s top scorer and, as a player and manager, won the league in three countries.’
9. Norwegian tycoon charged over wife’s disappearance in 2018
‘By June 2019, when no trace of Hagen had been found, while the presumed kidnappers were unable to prove they were holding her, the main police hypothesis switched to murder disguised as kidnapping. According to Norway’s public broadcaster NRK, police began investigating Tom Hagen in secret last summer.’
10. Shot in their friend’s car: survivors on learning how to live after a shooting
‘Caheri Gutierrez and her friend were waiting at a red light in downtown Oakland when another car pulled up alongside them. Looking straight ahead she didn’t see the window of the other car roll down, nor the gun pointed at them. She just remembers a bullet busting through the window, feeling a jolt of electricity, and then seeing blood coming from her friend’s arm.’
