Indholdsfortegnelse for 4 November 2022 i Guardian Weekly

Fire fighters Cadets of the Sikh Regimental Centre perform Gatka martial arts stunts during a display ahead of a graduation ceremony at the Indian army’s officer training academy in Chennai. G The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol 207 | Issue№ 19 Guardian Weekly is an edited selection of some of the best journalism found in the Guardian and Observer newspapers in the UK and the Guardian’s digital editions in the UK, US and Australia. The weekly magazine has an international focus and three editions: global, Australia and North America. The Guardian was founded in 1821, and Guardian Weekly in 1919. We exist to hold power to account in the name of the public interest, to uphold liberal and progressive values, to fight for the common…

COP27 CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES The “Dixie Fire” started in Butte County on 13 July 2021 and burned 390,000 hectares before being contained on 25 October. It was the largest single wildfi re in California’s history and damaged or destroyed several small towns. It has been an alarming time for climate scientists. One by one, the grim scenarios they had outlined for the near future have been overtaken by events: extreme storms, droughts, floods and ice-sheet collapses whose sudden appearances have outstripped researchers’ worst predictions. Catastrophic climate change is happening more rapidly and with greater intensity than their grimmest warnings, it transpires. Examples include this summer’s record high temperature of 40.3C in the UK, a massive jump of 1.6C on the previous hottest day; torrential rains that triggered the most severe flooding…

Russia’s cynical decision to target Ukraine’s network of hydroelectric power stations on Monday represents a further, dispiriting escalation in its efforts to destroy the country’s power supply. The electricity network is reeling from three weeks of attacks focused on coal- and gas-fired power stations and, above all, the electricity substations that link up different parts of the grid. Power cuts are the new normal as winter looms. It may not be clear how damaging Monday’s attacks involving the two hydro plants on the Dnipro river and a third on the western Dniester are. But their targeting suggests Russia intends to push further in its attempts to bomb Ukraine into darkness: before the war, hydro contributed around 14% of the country’s energy capacity. At the same time, Ukraine has warned that…

It would take a lot to make Arran Kent ditch the train and drive across the country for gigs. The musician has persisted with Avanti West Coast, even on a strike day or when unable to book a ticket. He paid top price to travel from Preston, Lancashire, to London, almost missing his performance because the train arrived two hours late. If that was bad, the return trip was “like an apocalyptic film”. “I couldn’t believe what was going on,” said Kent, 32. “There were pregnant women lying on the floor in the corridors to try and be near the breeze because they were overheating. You couldn’t get into the toilets. Some men were having to urinate in empty Pringles pots.” A direct 300km, three-hour journey turned into an 11-hour…

In 2009, Kanye West was riding high. 808s & Heartbreak, his fourth studio album, proved a resounding critical and commercial triumph. A foray into clothing design had culminated in a Paris fashion week sneaker show with Louis Vuitton and a shoe line with Nike. No longer was West the dorky producer turned rapper agitating to break out of Jay-Z’s shadow. He had become a true star. The only person who could stop Kanye was Kanye – or Ye, as he prefers to be known of late. His empire lies in a smouldering heap in the wake of the 45-year-old artist’s October media blitz. West says he lost $2bn in a single day last week. First there was the smear campaign against his ex-wife Kim Kardashian, then the White Lives Matter…

Last month, amid all the turmoil in the Tory party, there was a brief flurry of interest in the emergence as a candidate for prime minister of the man more than one British reporter referred to as “the Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis”. Lewis was not the Northern Ireland secretary. He wasn’t even the previous holder of the office – he was the one before that. Likewise, when Rishi Sunak was eventually selected, at least one distinguished British commentator proclaimed him the first person of Asian heritage to become prime minister of a European country. Actually, he had been preceded by Leo Varadkar, who became taoiseach in Dublin five years ago, while Portugal’s António Costa can claim to be the first. These are minor slips, and all the easier to…

Iam staring at the band Dry Cleaning, appropriately enough, across a mountain of food. The south London four-piece are known for their distinctive, enveloping post-punk overlaid with hypnotic spoken-word lyrics that are by turns profound, poetic, and replete with references to snacks. One of their most important discussions, about whether to continue with the band in earnest rather than as a fun pastime, happened in a Wimpy hamburger joint. “The big Wimpy meeting,” says drummer Nick Buxton. “I went past it the other day. They should have a blue plaque now.” It’s a good thing they did decide to persist with the band. Their debut album, New Long Leg, recorded with PJ Harvey producer John Parish, was released to rave reviews in April 2021 and made many end-of-year lists; it…

It’s the depth of the darkness that spooks Bobby Western, the haunted man at the heart of Cormac McCarthy’s extraordinary new novel. Western works as a salvage diver in the Gulf of Mexico, tending to sunken barges and stricken oil rigs. He’s kicking up clouds in the clay-coloured water and pressing further into the unknown with every weighted step. His colleagues are blase but experience has taught him to take care. He asks, “You ever bump into something down there that you didn’t know what it was?” Published a full 16 years after the Pulitzer prize-winning The Road, The Passenger is like a submerged ship itself; a gorgeous ruin in the shape of a hardboiled noir thriller. McCarthy’s generational saga covers everything from the atomic bomb to the Kennedy assassination…

My parents visiting us ruins Christmas. How do I tell them? My parents and sister always want to have Christmas with us, because my husband and I have small children and apparently Christmas is “rubbish” with no kids. But my husband says they just ruin it. My husband and I love Christmas, my wider family do not. He hates the way they never help out or appreciate our efforts; they criticise our gifts; they judge our children (they open the presents “too fast” or forget to say thank you); and are just generally quite negative to have around. We always wind up feeling robbed of what should be a wonderful memory. With my parents getting on in years, do I suck it up and risk ruining Christmas for my kids…

After a catastrophic climate year, expect to hear lots about loss and damage at Cop27, but what does it mean and why is it so contentious? What is loss and damage? It refers to the economic and non-economic costs of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, heatwaves, drought and wildfires, and slow onset climate disasters such as sea level rise and melting glaciers. It’s about holding the biggest fossil fuel polluters liable for the suffering already caused by the climate crisis, separately and in addition to securing climate finance for mitigation and adaptation. Economic costs include the lives, livelihoods, homes, food systems and territory irreversibly lost, while the harder to quantify non-economic costs refer to the loss of culture, identity, sovereignty, human dignity, biodiversity and psychological wellbeing. Why are we…

While many Brazilians will have woken up with a hangover after celebrating the defeat of Jair Bolsonaro, president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will soon have his own headaches to deal with. He takes power on 1 January 2023 and will be charged with rebuilding a nation that has been left damaged and bitterly divided after four years of Bolsonaro’s far-right policies. The challenges are immense: 33 million Brazilians face acute hunger and 100 million live in poverty, the highest numbers in years. Bolsonaro’s policies, particularly in the Amazon, have led to Brazil becoming an international pariah. Lula addressed these and myriad other issues in his victory speech but made it clear his first priority was the one that has accompanied him throughout his long political career: improving the lot…

In a war, there are many different fronts and forms of resistance. Ievgen Klopotenko, a Ukrainian chef, is fighting with soup. In defiance of the Russian cruise missile and drone attacks that have hit Kyiv recently, Klopotenko, 35, was presiding over his bustling city centre restaurant. On the menu were dishes such as beetroot and herring salad with smoked pear from the Odesa region, venison from the Carpathians, and a dessert named “Kherson is Ukraine”. Alongside a citrus semifreddo, the pudding included watermelon he had bought last season in Kherson and fermented. The region, which Vladimir Putin claimed to have annexed in September but is now the site of fierce fighting, is famous for the fruit. And, of course, Klopotenko was serving borscht. He insists it is a Ukrainian dish,…

‘I don’t know what I’d go for if I didn’t have the Fiesta,” said Karen Fox, a civil servant in Edinburgh. She was due to pick up her fourth version of the model but it is likely to be her last: Ford confirmed it will end production of the UK’s all-time bestselling car next June. The model’s end is the latest symbol of the shift from internal combustion engines to batteries: the factory in Cologne, Germany, where the last Fiestas are being made will switch to producing two new electric models. During the 47 years since the first Fiestas rolled off the production line at Ford’s factory in Valencia, Spain, more than 22m have been sold around the world. Of those, 4.8m were in the UK, where the Fiesta was…

Upon entering the drab building housing Iraq’s culture ministry, visitors unexpectedly stumble upon some of the country’s greatest treasures. In a newly refurbished hall, 76 precious paintings and sculptures from Iraq’s foremost artists are on display for the first time since the National Museum of Modern Art was pillaged in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq invasion. “Art is the memory and conscience of the people,” said Fakhir Mohammed, head of the ministry’s “plastic arts directorate” that deals with contemporary paintings and sculptures. During a tour of the recently opened exhibition hall, Mohammed said the return of artwork “to these walls is just part of our ambition”. He added: “Now there’s a real will to restore Iraqi culture to the previous level.” Roughly 11,000 works of art were at the…

It has long been said that no one knows with any certainty the population of Lagos, Nigeria. When I spent time there a decade ago, the United Nations conservatively put the number at 11.5 million, but other estimates ranged as high as 18 million. The one thing everyone agreed was that Lagos was growing very fast. The population was already 40 times bigger than it had been in 1960, when Nigeria gained independence. One local demographer told me that 5,000 people were migrating to Lagos every day, mostly from the Nigerian countryside. Since then, the city has continued to swell. By 2035, the UN projects that Lagos will be home to 24.5 million people.What is happening in Lagos is happening across the continent. Today, Africa has 1.4 billion people. By…

On 24 October, 30 members of the House Democratic Progressive Caucus released a letter to Joe Biden calling for a “proactive diplomatic push” on Kyiv to work toward a ceasefire and “direct [US] engagement” with Moscow to end the Russia-Ukraine war. One week earlier, Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy’s no “blank cheque” for Ukraine comment raised questions about future congressional support for US assistance to that embattled country. The letter, even though it has now been withdrawn, and McCarthy’s comment are unfortunate. Vladimir Putin will take encouragement from both as Russia wages its war. The suggestion of cracks in US backing for Ukraine will increase his incentives to continue fighting. The war has not gone as Putin hoped. The Russian army failed to take Kyiv. More recently, the Ukrainian military…

What can I do with leftover parmesan rinds? People always say not to discard them. Leah, London SW1 Parmesan rinds are real imparters of flavour, so you’re right to think twice about tossing them, Leah. “When I was young, my parents used to give me them to chew on when I was losing my baby teeth,” recalls Filippo La Gattuta, executive chef at Big Mamma Group in London. He has since found other solutions. “My favourite now is to scrape the rind with a knife [just to remove the waxy coating], cut it up into small pieces, then pop in a microwave for a minute or so, until they puff up.” Once cooled, you’ll have the perfect, crunchy snack to accompany aperitivo hour. If you don’t have a microwave, however,…

STANMER WOODS East Sussex It’s raining in Stanmer Woods, great fat droplets tap-tapping on leaves while a thousand rivers stream down tree trunks. I wonder where the rain has come from, when it last made land, and which trees and leaves it has known. Autumn is just beginning here. I walk crunching beech mast and kicking the first of the fallen leaves. The floor is dappled with patches of the brightest orange, while stubborn greens hold tight to trees. There are mushrooms: jelly fungus on a stump; sulphur tuft and King Alfred’s cakes on logs. I search for earthstars and amethyst deceivers. Bracket fungi helter-skelter up a tree that stands dead among the living. There’s magic to the woods when it rains. Something otherworldly, Narnia-esque. The rain falls on leaves…

1 CLIMATE CRISIS World close to ‘irreversible’ breakdown, studies warn The climate crisis has reached a “really bleak moment”, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has said, after a slew of major reports laid bare how close the planet is to catastrophe. Collective action is needed by the world’s nations more now than at any point since the second world war to avoid climate tipping points, Prof Johan Rockström said, but geopolitical tensions are at a high. He said the world was coming “very, very close to irreversible changes … time is really running out very, very fast”. Emissions must fall by about half by 2030 to meet the internationally agreed target of 1.5C of heating but are still rising, the reports showed – at a time when oil giants…

Braverman denies blame for asylum centre crisis The home secretary, Suella Braverman, insisted she was not to blame for the crisis at Manston refugee centre, as she attempted to shore up her political position by aggressively ramping up her rhetoric over immigration. The embattled secretary of state claimed she had “never blocked” the use of hotels to ease pressure on the asylum processing centre in Kent or ignored legal advice on the matter – despite multiple sources insisting that she had been warned over the conditions. Senior government sources said she had “commissioned” external legal advice because she disagreed with the internal Home Office view that more hotel accommodation should be procured for refugees to address overcrowding. Braverman, already under fire over the security breach that saw her sacked as…

Not for the first time, a protest by climate activists descended into acrimony and the threat of violence last weekend. At midday, a dozen or so Just Stop Oil activists brought weekend traffic to a halt in south London. Irate motorists dragged protesters aggressively off the road. Yet, their anger also feeds into a broader, increasingly vigorous, debate over how many other people have been alienated by the strategy of Just Stop Oil in recent weeks. As the campaign group concluded a month of direct action, organisers were able to reflect on huge global media coverage at the same time as tensions rise among environmentalists over how extreme their tactics should become in order to grab the public’s attention. In one camp are those who argue that direct action cannot…

South Korea was in mourning as an investigation opened into the deaths of more than 150 people, mostly young adults, when a huge Halloween party crowd surged into a narrow alley in Seoul. The prime minister, Han Duck-soo, called last Saturday’s deadly crush a “disastrous accident that should not have happened”, as the first memorial services were held amid growing public anger. Expressing sorrow to bereaved families, he admitted that institutional failures in managing crowds played a role in the disaster, and said the government would work with ministries, agencies and medical institutions to ensure such problems during spontaneous events never happened again. The country’s police chief has apologised for the emergency response to the deadly crush. Yoon Hee-keun said: “We’ve judged that the response to the emergency calls was…

Stop a person on the street in Sarajevo and ask them what they think about the war in Ukraine, and they’ll tell you they think that almost everything that happened in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina is happening in Ukraine. In April, we commemorated the 30th anniversary of the war against Bosnia. We consider early April 1992 the moment a new era began: we have the before, during and after the catastrophe. A month into the war in Ukraine I saw Ukrainians starting to use the phrase “before the war”. We went through everything that’s happening to them, but no one asks us about it or wants us to help. War leads you to start looking at life and death with different eyes. Before our “smallish war” (an ironic phrase I…

Once Spaniards looked across el charco (the pond) for refuge. Now traffic is expected to go the other way after Spain passed a law granting citizenship to the grandchildren of people exiled under the Franco dictatorship. Lawyers in central and South America say they have been inundated with inquiries after the passing of the democratic memory law, which seeks “to settle Spanish democracy’s debt to its past”. It is estimated that as many as 700,000 people could be eligible for citizenship under the law, which came into effect last month. It goes further than similar legislation in 2007, which offered citizenship to some offspring of Spanish exiles, with about 70,000 Latin Americans becoming Spanish citizens. According to Mónica Fernández Álvarez, a Madrid-based Argentinian lawyer, the legislation entitles any descendant of…

Affordable, friendly and ready for tourists – this is the message behind a new drive to promote Syria as a holiday destination, despite a recent human rights report determining the Assad government was responsible for “crimes against humanity”. In a bid to revive the country’s once thriving tourism industry before the devastating civil war killed thousands, levelled cities and drove 13 million people from their homes, the government has begun a concerted campaign to convince investors – and holidaymakers – that Syria has much to offer. In October, the Ministry of Tourism launched 25 tourism projects at an investment conference in Damascus after the announcement of a $60m Russian-backed deal to build a hotel complex in the coastal town of Latakia. Whether tourists will want to holiday in a country…

When Barack Obama came to campaign last week, Emma Berlage wouldn’t have missed him for the world. “It’s a Friday night … and everybody’s here,” the 24-year-old said. “After he was president he’s continued to stay cool and very popular with Democrats.” Obama has played many parts in America’s political life – new hope, history maker, elder statesman. Now he had arrived as would-be saviour. The first Black president was in Atlanta, Georgia, to fire up voters ahead of midterm elections that will decide control of Congress and perhaps the fate of American democracy. Opinion polls suggest that the contest is slipping away from Joe Biden’s Democrats in favour of a Republican party still in thrall to Donald Trump. Tide turning In August, Democrats took the lead on the…

Mondays are washdays. In the kitchen, steam rises from the sink and my mother squeezes sopping wet clothes through the mangle. On the radio a man sings Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’ from the musical Oklahoma. Later in my childhood other songs made their mark: Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better), (How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?. But the opening number in Oklahoma is the first music I can remember and put a name to: a memory preserved, possibly, via the song’s association with sunshine and sunshine’s importance to washdays. I had no idea of the song’s origins or how songs came about; wouldn’t know corn (“as high as an elephant’s eye” or otherwise) if I met it dancing in the street. Nor did I know…

LETTERS John le Carré – David Cornwell as he then was – grew up among the lies of his fraudster father Ronnie. He then entered a world of secrets, reporting on leftist students when he was at Oxford before working in intelligence for MI5 and MI6. Deception was his domain, and as much as he hated Ronnie he worried about coming from the same “mad genes-bank”. Instead, he became a novelist; a less damaging way to tell lies. Le Carré felt intruded on by the “nice” Adam Sisman’s 2015 biography and quickly offered an “antidote” in the autobiographical The Pigeon Tunnel. The letters bring further exposure but they’ve been sensitively edited by his son Tim, who died suddenly in June, with the emphasis thrown on his father’s best self and…