Daggers drawn in Downing Street

Villain
Sarah Jessica Parker, for being such an insufferable bore over her role as a Booker Prize judge, says Emma Brockes in The Guardian. The Sex and the City actress has written a New York Times piece documenting how extremely seriously she took the process: never watching TV with her family in order to get through all 153 entries; heroically grappling with the “traffic light” rating system; occasionally texting the panel chairman to ask whether she was wrong to dislike a particular book (naturally, he didn’t think she was wrong). It’s essentially the story of how one brave woman “managed to pull off being a famous actor while also reading some books”.

Villains
A ferry company that left children screaming in horror after accidentally playing a hardcore porn movie in the lounge of one of its ships. DFDS apologised for the incident on its Dieppe-Newhaven service, explaining that the (presumably French) channel had been broadcasting a Formula One grand prix and switched to the adult film after the race finished.

Hero
Miss Chile, for getting into the spirit of things at the Miss Universe beauty pageant in Thailand by recording a video of herself pretending to snort cocaine. Inna Moll, 28, dabbed makeup powder on her arm before hoovering it up to the Shakira song Addicted to You. She later apologised for the gakky gaffe, blaming a makeup artist and the “language barrier”.

Villain
Derek Dunne, a 24-year-old Irishman, who stole a bus and drove it 150 miles after being told the one he wanted to take was full. Dunne sneaked into the Letterkenny depot after the drivers had left, drove the £345,000 vehicle up the M1 motorway and into north Dublin, then abandoned it with no damage done and the key in the ignition. The judge gave him a suspended 18-month sentence, calling it a “very unusual offence”.

Villains
A pub quiz team that has been banned from The Barking Dog in Urmston, Greater Manchester, for using their smartwatches to repeatedly cheat their way to victory. “As pointless behaviour goes,” says The Times, “this takes some beating.” Infamous cheats like Lance Armstrong did it for fame, glory and piles of cash. These guys scammed their local, week after week, for a measly £30 bar tab. It’s like those youngsters who pay to visit escape rooms then use AI to decipher the clues. “Why bother?”

The world’s new energy superpower

As the Trump administration torpedoes climate action and Europe struggles to fulfil its green ambitions, say Somini Sengupta and Brad Plumer in The New York Times, many of the world’s fastest-growing economies are moving in the opposite direction. The likes of Brazil, India and Vietnam are rapidly expanding solar and wind power. Ethiopia has taken the “extraordinary step” of banning the import of petrol-powered cars; Nepal has reduced import duties on electric vehicles so much that they’re now cheaper than internal combustion engine models. Driving this shift is China, the world’s new “renewable energy superpower”.

Having saturated their own market with cut-price solar panels, wind turbines and batteries, Chinese firms are exporting their renewable wares to “energy-hungry” countries in the developing world. Not only that, they’re also ploughing billions of dollars into building green tech factories in those same countries: solar panels in Vietnam, electric cars in Brazil, and so on. Since 2011, Chinese manufacturing investments worldwide have exceeded $225bn – more, adjusted for inflation, than the US poured into the Marshall Plan after World War Two. These countries aren’t doing this because haughty G7 types told them to, as they did when the Paris agreement was signed 10 years ago, or out of the goodness of their heart. They’re doing it for the cost savings and to reduce their reliance on energy imports. This alone won’t solve climate change – most developing countries still get the majority of their energy from fossil fuels. But it’s proof, contrary to some of the doomsterism of the past decade, that economic development can go “hand in hand” with reducing emissions.

The bon viveur with an LSD factory in his attic

When the police raided Henry Todd’s London house in March 1977, says The Times, he glanced at the broken-down door, smiled and said: “I suppose you’ve come about the television licence.” Todd, who has died aged 80, was of course “fully aware” why they were there. He had turned his home into “Britain’s most productive LSD factory”. With a laboratory in the attic, he and his accomplices were manufacturing and distributing millions of acid tabs to dealers across the country and to an export market including France, the Netherlands, Germany and even Australia. When three uniformed officers were tasked with taking up the laboratory’s carpet after the bust, it was so saturated with spilt liquid LSD that they started tripping and had to be taken to hospital.

Born near Dundee in 1945, Todd was a “bon viveur with expensive tastes”. He lunched at the Savoy, dined at Wheeler’s and “thought nothing of flying to the Bahamas for a weekend”. Even the officer who led the bust called him a “natural leader who swaggered with the confidence of James Cagney”. After serving seven years in prison, Todd emerged, “self-confidence intact”, ready to devote himself to “highs of a different kind”. He joined the North London Mountaineering Club and before long had set up Himalayan Guides, providing everything climbers needed for scaling Nepal’s loftiest peaks. He led his first Everest ascent in 1995, counted a 23-year-old Bear Grylls among his early clients, and became a celebrity in the climbing world, nicknamed “the Toddfather”.