Month: April 2019

James Bond is a "severe" alcoholic and should have been provided with professional help by MI6, according to an academic study.

Public health researchers at the University of Otago in New Zealand analysed 24 Bond films and concluded that the martini-swilling secret agent suffered from "chronic" alcohol use disorder.

They wrote: "There is strong and consistent evidence that James Bond has a chronic alcohol consumption problem at the ‘severe’ end of the spectrum."

The analysis, published in the Medical Journal of Australia, found Bond sipped a drink 109 times, or an average of 4.5 times in each film.

His record binge was on a plane during the 2008 film Quantum of Solace when the character, played by Daniel Craig, appeared to consume 24 units of alcohol, which would have left him with a potentially fatal blood alcohol level, the researchers wrote.

They found drinking led to Bond engaging in "risky" behaviour like fights, high-speed driving, and extreme physical efforts while under the influence of alcohol.

Researchers analysed the character’s behaviour with reference to The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, which is used by mental health professionals to assess disorders.

Bond, as portrayed in the films, fitted at least six, and possibly nine, of the 11 criteria of Alcohol Use Disorder [AUD]. That meant the character had a "severe" drinking problem.

The study was also critical of his employer, MI6, suggesting that it should have been shown being more "responsible" in the films.

"MI6 management needs to redefine Bond’s job to reduce his stress levels," the study said.

"More field support and a stronger team approach are needed so that his duties do not weigh as heavily upon him."   Lead authorr Professor Nick Wilson, at the University of Otago’s Department of Public Health, said if Bond was a real person he should have been advised to seek out professional help, including from his employer.

He added: "To start with, M should no longer offer Bond drinks in workplace settings."

Japan is considering pulling out of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), officials said on Thursday, as Tokyo reportedly gears up to resume commercial whaling activity next year.

Such a move would spark international criticism against Japan over whale conservation and deepen the divide between anti- and pro-whaling countries.

"We are considering all options" including the possibility of withdrawal from the 89-member IWC, Fisheries Agency official Yuki Morita said.

Another official at the foreign ministry confirmed "all options are on the table but nothing formal has been decided yet".

Both stressed Tokyo has not yet changed its whaling policy but Japan threatened to pull out of the IWC in September when the commission rejected its bid to return to commercial whaling.

Citing unnamed government sources, local news agency Kyodo said a formal decision to withdraw from the IWC would come by the end of the year.

After a tense September vote in Brazil, the IWC rejected Japan’s bid to return to commercial whaling, prompting vice-minister for fisheries Masaaki Taniai to say Tokyo would be "pressed to undertake a fundamental reassessment of its position as a member of the IWC".

Anti-whaling nations – led by Australia, the European Union and the United States – defeated Japan’s "Way Forward" proposal in a 41-to-27 vote.

Following the ballot, Japan’s IWC commissioner Joji Morishita said differences with anti-whaling nations were "very clear" and Japan would now plan its "next steps".

The IWC was established in 1946 to conserve and manage the world’s whale and cetacean population. It introduced a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986 after some species had been fished to near extinction.

Japan insists whale stocks have now recovered sufficiently to allow commercial hunting to resume.

Tokyo currently observes the moratorium but exploits a loophole to kill hundreds of whales every year for "scientific purposes" as well as to sell the meat.

According to Kyodo News, the country is unlikely to catch whales in the Antarctic Ocean even if it did withdraw from the IWC, as it is eyeing commercial whaling only in seas near Japan and its exclusive economic zone.

Iceland, along with Norway, openly defies the IWC’s 1986 ban on commercial whale hunting.

Grace Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s millionaire former first lady forced forced from power in last year’s coup, has not paid her farm workers for months despite living a luxury lifestyle paid for by the state she and her husband once ruled, The Sunday Telegraph has learned. 

Workers on the Mugabes’ network of Zimbabwean farms – several of which were appropriated from white farmers – said they had not received salaries for three months.

Robert and Grace Mugabe have a vast property portfolio in Zimbabwe and South Africa worth more than £50 million. Despite being ousted last year, the Zimbabwean state still spends millions flying the couple by private jet for medical treatment in Singapore.   

Zimbabwe’s government also said this week that it would not extradite Mrs Mugabe, 53, to South Africa, which issued an arrest warrant on Wednesday for allegedly attacking a 21-year-old model with an electrical extension chord in a Johannesburg hotel last year.

Mrs Mugabe is deeply unpopular in Zimbabwe, where she was seen by many as a free-spending, greedy, aloof and arrogant puppet master operating in the shadows behind her husband. Known as Gucci Grace,  her excessive spending – including on Rolly Royces – was shamelessly flaunted while millions went without basics amid grinding poverty.

However her 94-year-old husband, who can reportedly no longer walk, still has many supporters among the people and in the government. Zimbabwean officials are unlikely to move against Mrs Mugabe while her husband is still alive. 

South African prosecutors allege that Mrs Mugabe burst into a hotel room where her sons, Robert Mugabe Jr, 26, and Chatunga Bellarmine, 21, were drinking with Gabriella Engels, a 21-year-old model. 

Mrs Mugabe allegedly struck Ms Engels with a power chord, leaving her with injuries to her forehead and to the back of her head, as her sons looked on. She faces up to two years in prison if convicted on charges of grievous bodily harm. 

South African police allowed Mrs Mugabe to leave the country, which had become the base for her second home, after the incident when she claimed diplomatic immunity. Her diplomatic status was revoked by a South African court this summer following last year’s coup d’etat which forced the Mugabes from power. 

Energy Mutodi, Zimbabwe’s deputy information minister, said his country would view any attempt to extradite Mrs Mugabe as “harassment”.   

“We will not smile on any attempt to embarrass‚ ill-treat or diminish the image of former president Robert Mugabe or his immediate family members,” Mr Mutodi said. “An attack on Grace Mugabe is an attack on the former president…our founding father and liberation icon and his misery is undesirable to us.” 

Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mr Mugabe’s replacement as Zimbabwe’s president, pledged to continue supporting the Mugabes’ generous pension package which includes healthcare for both of them in Singapore.

The couple dislike commercial travel and so Mr Mnangagwa hired private jets several times this year which flew Mr and Mrs Mugabe directly from Harare to Singapore’s exclusive Gleneagles Hospital.

The medical treatments and travel cost Zimbabwe at least £25 million this year, when the state cannot afford to import basic medication for public hospitals and most state medical staff, including senior doctors, are on strike over poor wages.

Sources close to Mrs Mugabe in Singapore told The Sunday Telegraph she “spends money like water”. They say the Mugabe cash is held outside the country. 

Mr Mugabe bought a farm in 2000 but went on to seize a further four adjoining properties from which white farmers, who were expelled without compensation. They employ around 100 workers across 12 farms.    

The state ran the farms for the Mugabes and also secretly bought Zimbabwe’s most successful dairy in 2003 for Mrs Mugabe from a white farmer. She  invested heavily in the dairy, but it has never yet covered its costs.

Most of their rural assets and the two expensive schools built by Mrs Mugabe on appropriated land are no longer fully operational since Mr Mugabe was ousted from power in last November’s coup. 

Farmers told The Sunday Telegraph they were hoping Mrs Mugabe would pay them by Christmas Eve.

“We are worried for the last months, but we got a message will be paid next week, on December 24,” said one worker.

Mrs Mugabe and her associates, and the Zimbabwean government, declined to respond to requests for comment this week from The Sunday Telegraph.

Italy has come up with a drastic solution for dealing with the pothole-ridden roads of Rome – bring in the army.

The radical new measure has been put forward by Francesco Silvestri, an MP from the Five Star Movement, which makes up one half of Italy’s populist government along with the hard-Right League party.

Under the proposal, the army would be given the task of repairing around 125 miles of road in and around the capital, with a budget of €240 million.

“We’ll bring the technology of the engineering corps to the roads of Rome, to the benefit of Romans,” said Mr Silvestri. “It will be a revolution for the city.”

Virginia Raggi, the much-maligned mayor and a member of the Five Star Movement, who has been criticised for failing to tackle the city’s problems, hailed the proposal as “a great victory for Rome”.

The proposal will be discussed by parliament, but the fact that drafting in soldiers is being contemplated is a measure of how bad Rome’s roads are.

Deep potholes and long stretches of bumpy, degraded road surface provide a dangerous obstacle course for motorists and motorcyclists, with the latter particularly vulnerable to coming a cropper. Winter weather only makes the cracks and craters worse.

Exasperated by the failure of the city council to tackle the problem, Romans have taken to circling the worst potholes with yellow or orange spray paint.

When roads are repaired by private contractors, the work is often slapdash – along one road, repairers recently laid fresh bitumen over thick swards of pine needles, piles of leaves and rubbish, with the result that the surface began to crumble almost immediately.

But the proposal has already run into opposition. General Vincenzo Camporini, a former chief of the defence force, said filling in potholes had nothing to do with the army’s mission and was beneath its dignity.

Its first priority was to defend the country, followed by a duty to help in emergency situations and natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes.

Deploying the army as “free manual labour” was unacceptable, he said.

Luca Marco Comellini, the head of a union representing the army, was also deeply unhappy with the idea.

“I’ll suggest an alternative – that MPs should go and fill in Rome’s potholes, given that they seem to think it is such noble work,” he said.

The job of the engineering corps was to build bridges and roads in conflict and emergency situations, not to act as “a substitute roads authority”.

Elisabetta Trenta, the defence minister and also a Five Star politician, said the army would be used to repair roads where the accident rate was particularly dire.

“The military will intervene in emergency situations where the mortality rate is very high,” she said.

Opposition MPs said that drafting in the military was an admission of failure by the Five Star administration of Rome.

President Donald Trump on Friday picked budget director Mick Mulvaney to be his next chief of staff, ending a chaotic search that had been inching forward with the feel of an unfolding reality TV show.

Trump tweeted that Mr Mulvaney "will be named Acting White House Chief of Staff, replacing General John Kelly, who has served our Country with distinction."

"Mick has done an outstanding job while in the Administration," Trump posted. "I look forward to working with him in this new capacity as we continue to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! John will be staying until the end of the year. He is a GREAT PATRIOT and I want to personally thank him for his service!"

Though deemed an "acting" chief of staff, Mr Mulvaney’s term will be open-ended, according to a senior White House official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters. The position does not require confirmation.

Video emerged yesterday of Mr Mulvaney calling Mr Trump a "terrible human being" in the run-up to the 2016 election.

Mr Mulvaney, who will be Mr Trump’s third chief of staff, will now take on his third job in the administration; he is the head of the Office of Management and had simultaneously led the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

A former Tea Party congressman, Mick Mulvaney was among a faction on the hard right that bullied GOP leaders into a 2013 government shutdown confrontation by insisting on lacing a must-pass spending bill with provisions designed to cripple President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.

The appointment of the affable, fast-talking South Carolinian came just hours after another candidate for the post, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, took himself out of contention for the job. Christie cited family reasons in a statement saying that he was asking the President to remove him from consideration. He had met with Mr Trump on Thursday to discuss the job, according to a person familiar with the meeting who was not authorised to discuss it publicly.

Governor Christie’s departure is the latest twist in a search triggered when Trump’s preferred candidate to replace Mr Kelly bowed out.

Mr Trump said Thursday that he was weighing five possibilities. Among the others he considered: his 2016 deputy campaign manager David Bossie, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

The President’s senior aide and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who had also been the subject of speculation, signaled his lack of interest. A person familiar with the matter said Kushner believed that he could serve the president best in his current role.  The names of acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker and even White House communications director Bill Shine and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had also been floated.

The president’s hunt for a new chief reverted to square one last weekend when Nick Ayers, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, took himself out of the running and decided that he would instead leave the White House. The announcement surprised even senior staffers who believed that Ayers’ ascension was a done deal.

Trump’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, served for six months before leaving in July 2017.