Image of the week: Monday motivation
On Monday, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket with Nasa’s Europa Clipper spacecraft – the largest that the US space agency has ever developed for a planetary mission – launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on a decade-long quest to see if the ocean world of Europa, which has more water than Earth, has conditions suitable to support life.
If that seems like a more worthwhile way of starting the week than how you started yours, bear in mind that this journey has been some time in the making.
Technically, curiosity about Europa dates back to when Galileo Galilei discovered it, together with three other moons orbiting Jupiter, in January 1610, which again sounds like overachieving for a January. The launch of this particular mission – delayed a week by Hurricane Milton – has been in the works since 1995, meaning that one of the scientists involved in planning it back then, Tom McCord, is now 85.
McCord will be “91 or something like that” when the solar-powered Europa Clipper probe finally reaches its destination, he told the New York Times, at which point it will spend four years doing fly-bys of the moon to study its vast saltwater ocean. The water on Europa is believed to be as much as 60km to 150km deep beneath an icy shell thought to be at least 20km thick. File under “exciting in theory, but a bit nippy”.
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In numbers: Wine fraud
6
Number of people arrested in Paris, Turin and Milan this week on suspicion of being part of an international fraud ring that passed off poor-quality bottles of Italian wine as fine French vintages. Equipment valued at €1.4 million was also seized.
€15,000
Sums charged for bottles that bore the fake labels representing French Grand Cru wines. Wine fraud is on the rise, but investigators say that because many victims store rather than drink their purchases, they often never find out.
€2 million
Amount the gang is thought to have made from counterfeiting the wine in Italy, then exporting it around the world.
Getting to know: Greggs champagne bar
“Fizz the season to visit the Greggs Champagne Bar,” says Britain’s largest bakery chain – at least if you’re in the vicinity of Newcastle, where it’s headquartered. The company, best known for selling cheap sausage rolls, is opening a Christmas pop-up in the city’s Fenwick Food Hall where its freshly-baked items will be “specially adapted” by Fenwick executive head chef Mark Reid and then “paired” with champagnes in a venue “inspired by 1920s Paris wine bars”. Yes, this does mean that the steak bake – now accompanied by some “peppercorn aioli” – and other familiar pastries will be twice the normal price. Greggs, which last year ran a hit “bistro” pop-up at which its baked goods were served under silver cloches, says it is widely known that sausage rolls are “infinitely better with a glass of Perrier-Jouët”. You don’t have to be drunk to eat them, but it helps?
The list: Luxury fallers
China’s economic slowdown has prompted a slump in the shares of luxury goods brands, with weaker spending by Chinese consumers on handbags and other items sending their stock prices lower. Which big-name players are in the doldrums?
1. LVMH: The owner of Louis Vuitton, Dior and Tiffany this week warned of an “uncertain economic and geopolitical environment” as it reported a 3 per cent drop in third-quarter sales. Over the past 18 months, controlling shareholder Bernard Arnault has gone from being the richest person in the world to merely the fifth-richest.
2. Kering: Gucci’s parent company was one of the luxury groups rattled by LVMH’s weak earnings update, but its suffering predates it, with the stock recently falling to a seven-year low.
3. Hermès: To date, Hermès has managed to escape the brunt of China’s economic weakness, even posting sales increases back in July. Will its next quarterly figures, due next week, repeat the trick?
4. Richemont: The Swiss luxury group, owner of Cartier jewellery and Chloé fashion brands, will be hoping to soon mitigate the damage of a glum phase that saw its fiscal first-quarter sales in China tumble 27 per cent.
5. Burberry: The British company, best known for its check pattern, rarely seems to be too far away from the word “woes”. It now falls to new chief executive Joshua Schulman to try to pull off the latest turnaround at a difficult time.
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