ChinaObituaryRoderick MacFarquhar obituaryScholar with a crucial role in helping the west understand China’s opaque politicsRoderick MacFarquhar, who has died aged 88, was one of the most significant sinologists of the last 100 years, a figure who through a variety of academic posts and a series of books from the 1960s onwards opened up to the outside world the opaque machinations of elite politics in the People’s Republic of China. The three volumes of his best-known book, Origins of the Cultural Revolution, published between 1974 and 1997, remain a monument of scholarship, a meticulous account of the years from the 50s onwards as Mao Zedong seemed to be growing increasingly marginalised in Beijing before his spectacular, and in many ways disastrous, comeback in 1966 at the start of the Cultural Revolution.

Donald Trump This article is more than 2 years oldSteve Bannon believed Trump had early stage dementia, TV producer claimsThis article is more than 2 years old Ira Rosen says Bannon had ‘great frustrations with Trump’ Bannon ‘spoke of removing president with 25th amendment’ US politics – live coverage Former White House strategist Steve Bannon thought Donald Trump was suffering from early-stage dementia and campaigned covertly to remove him from office via the 25th amendment, according to a veteran TV producer.

ShortcutsParis HiltonAfter fake family reunions, pretending to murder your child and kidnappings, is an Egyptian trick on the celebrity heiress the meanest stunt yet? Congratulations should surely go to Egyptian television programme Ramez in Control, for it has finally achieved the impossible. Until now, everything that Paris Hilton touched has been hilarious. Her singing career? Hilarious. That perfume she created called Fairy Dust? Hilarious. Her speaking voice, sense of entitlement and time spent in prison?

SpecieswatchWildlifeFor those with vivid imaginations the white markings on the black back of a noble false widow spider (Steatoda nobilis) can look like a skull and crossbones, or in other cases just a skull. Perhaps it is a warning that the spider has a nasty bite. The poison will not be fatal, however, rather on a par with being stung by a wasp and or a bee. The species is one of six similar spider varieties found in Britain, but is not native, having arrived in 1879 in a bunch of bananas from Madeira.

Graham Norton: ‘something to say about the vagaries of contemporary life’. Photograph: Sophia SpringGraham Norton: ‘something to say about the vagaries of contemporary life’. Photograph: Sophia SpringThe ObserverFictionReviewThe fourth novel by the chatshow host is a darkly comic Irish domestic drama that has emotional depth but is undemanding When Graham Norton surprised the literary world with his adept fiction debut, Holding, adroitly adapted into a Kathy Burke-directed television series earlier this year, the amiable narrative spun around a body uncovered in a sleepy Irish hamlet and the secrets the community held close to their hearts.