Which industries have the most workers still furloughed?

Happy valet

Police Scotland dropped what they said was a randomly generated codeword — ‘Bunter’ — for the security operation when Boris Johnson visited Scotland. While the name invited comparisons between the PM and Billy Bunter, the overweight public schoolboy in the Greyfriars stories, there is another Bunter in fiction. Mervyn Bunter was the immaculate and well-organised manservant to private detective Lord Peter Wimsey in Dorothy L. Sayers’ crime stories. This Bunter’s defining characteristics were knowledge, accuracy and loyalty — and he was always on hand to correct Wimsey before he committed any social faux pas.

Making a run for it

Belarussian athlete Krystina Timanovskaya was offered asylum by Poland after criticising her coach at the Olympic Games and an apparent attempt by Belarussian authorities to remove her from Japan. There is nothing new about Olympians claiming asylum:

— After London 2012, 82 athletes and their support staff claimed asylum. They included a sprinter from Guinea, a judo fighter from Congo, and a wrestling coach from the Ivory Coast. A year later, asylum had been granted to 52, with a further 50 granted the right to remain for other reasons.

—A year after the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, 39 athletes and staff were reported still to be in Britain, 21 of whom had been granted asylum.

Sum and substance

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Scotland was revealed to have suffered 1,339 drug-related deaths in 2020, which, at a rate of 25.2 per 100,000 people, was the highest in Europe and three times higher than any other part of the UK. Who else has high drug-death rates per 100,000?

US 22

Russia 19.9

Estonia 19.3

Ukraine 17.2

Mongolia 15.2

Guatemala 15

Greenland 13.9

Source: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation