Society

The puzzle marked a DOUBLE TON (42/27) by DUMPYNOSE (11) in THE SPECTATOR (17/19). Remaining unclued lights suggest a DOUBLETON: two hearts (13 & 7), one diamond (1), one spade (6A) and one club (29). PLUCK (13) & SPIRIT (7) were to be shaded.   First prize Elizabeth Feinberg, Carlsbad, CA, USA Runners-up Ian Shiels, Leeds; Nigel Wooliscroft, Eccleshall

The national treasure and naturalist, David Attenborough, has been pronouncing, yet again, on the subject of world population growth. In an interview with the Daily Telegraph he opined that the famines in Ethiopia are about too many people competing for too little land and in the circumstances it’s ‘barmy’ to address the problem by sending them bags of flour. The great thing about being 87 is that you can stop worrying what people think but Sir David seems unusually alert to the ‘huge, huge sensitivities’ about his opinions. And one is that: ‘When you talk about world population … the areas we are talking about are Africa and Asia. To

Just 9 months after the horsemeat scandal revealed that products labelled as beef did, in fact, contain horsemeat, one might have expected the food standards authority to have cracked down on food labelling – particularly when it comes to meat. But in an investigation broadcast earlier this week by the BBC’s Farming Today programme, a reporter bought a pork chop ‘at random’ from Tesco. It was labelled with the ‘Red Tractor’ logo, which ought to mean that it ‘is fully traceable back to independently inspected farms in the UK’. However, lab tests showed that the meat probably came from a Dutch farm – in fact there’s less than a 1%