Indholdsfortegnelse for 11 November 2022 i Guardian Weekly

Crossing continents An aerial view of the 15 July Martyrs Bridge during the 44th Istanbul marathon. The suspension bridge across the Bosphorus connects Asia with Europe, and more than 60,000 runners, participating in a range of differing distance races, crossed continents during last Sunday’s event. The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 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…

ISRAEL ‘We are in the abyss’ Defeat shatters the left, page 15 → For Palestine, this means nothing Yara Hawari, page 16 → Don’t call it a comeback. Benjamin Netanyahu was booted from office last summer by a broad coalition united by their distaste for the conservative Likud leader. But after last Tuesday’s election – an unprecedented fifth poll in less than four years – the short-lived “government of change” looks likely to prove no more than a brief intermission in the political behemoth’s long career. Having won a decisive majority, the former prime minister has begun coalition negotiations on forming a government with the help of ultra-Orthodox parties and a new alliance with the far right. After a year in opposition, and years of political chaos triggered by…

Things are disappearing in the Ukrainian city of Kherson at a rapid rate. Russian troops are taking away ambulances, tractors and stolen private cars. Cultural things are going too: archives, and paintings and sculptures from museums. Even the bones of Catherine the Great’s friend and lover, Grigory Potemkin, have been grubbed up from a crypt in St Catherine’s cathedral and spirited away. Russian soldiers are ferrying this loot across the Dnieper river, to the left bank of the Kherson region. They have also been deporting local citizens under the guise of a humanitarian rescue mission. Others have refused to leave. A round-the-clock curfew has been introduced. Nobody knows how many of Kherson’s 300,000 prewar inhabitants remain. According to relatives of those still there, the city is mostly empty, its ghostly…

It has been all go for his majesty’s ambassador to Albania, Alastair King-Smith. The crisis in relations between the two countries, arising from the boats crossing the Channel with reportedly growing numbers of Albanians, has been reflected in the calibre of officials, both military and political, visiting the British mission. Last week it was Lt Gen Stuart Skeates, the Afghanistan veteran now leading efforts to stem the crossings, who flew in. This week the home secretary, Suella Braverman, was expected for a visit that, it was hoped, might dampen the outrage sparked by her description of Albanians as staging an “invasion” of the UK. Last Thursday, the row escalated and Albania’s prime minister, Edi Rama, compared the British government’s rhetoric to “screams from a madhouse”. But the real centre of…

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has criticised the west for pressuring it to halt oil and gas exploration in the Congo basin rainforest, while continuing to search for fossil fuels in their own countries. The Congo basin, more than half of which is located in DRC, is the last rainforest on Earth that sucks in more carbon than it releases and is second only to the Amazon in size. The DRC announced in July that oil and gas permits in parts of the rainforest would be auctioned off, prompting behindthe-scenes efforts to avert oil and gas exploration in DRC’s vital ecosystems. But DRC officials say the auction is important for economic development in one of Earth’s poorest countries. Last month, Eve Bazaiba, DRC’s environment minister, rejected a suggestion…

When a southern Mexican state effectively out lawed sales of sugary drinks and sweets to children to protect public health, the ban made international news. But few people in Oaxaca are aware of the rule and the authorities have not enforced the measure, despite tens of thousands of deaths nationally a year linked to sugary beverages, as obesity and diabetes rates soar. Diets in Mexico have shifted towards ultra-processed foods and higher meat consumption – as well as sugary drinks. Today the state has the highest rate of child obesity in Mexico and the second highest among adults. The ban on selling fizzy drinks to children, announced in 2020, was earmarked to be implemented within a year, but there has been inaction. Campaigners say the ban would face stiff opposition…

Budleigh Salterton, on the south coast of Engand, sits above the most frightening cliffs on Earth. They are not particularly high or especially prone to collapse. The horror is contained in the story they tell. For they capture the moment at which life on Earth almost came to an end. The sediments preserved in these cliffs were laid down in the early Triassic period, just after the greatest mass extinction in the history of multicellular life that brought the Permian period to an end 252m years ago. About 90% of species died, and fish and four-footed animals were more or less exterminated between 30 degrees north of the equator and 40 degrees south. While biological abundance (if not diversity) tends to recover from mass extinctions within a few hundred thousand…

Sitting in a smart hotel foyer near Berlin’s Philharmonie concert hall, there’s little indication of the dramatic week Daniel Harding has had. He is in town conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in a programme of Vaughan Williams, Strauss and Unsuk Chin’s complex 2008 work Rocaná. As we settle down to chat, I mention how much I enjoyed the concert – and that he seemed to, as well. “I’m glad that was the impression,” he says with a laugh, and tells me of the dramas behind the scenes: a whole day of precious rehearsal lost to food poisoning made the first concert – and especially the Chin piece – somewhat nerveracking. “The piece is very gripping but it’s very difficult,” he says. “There is something about seeing everyone on stage buckling in,…

Cells build organisms from the ground up, and therefore to write about them is to give oneself permission to explore almost any aspect of the living world. They are “a life within a life” as Siddhartha Mukherjee puts it in his latest book, which takes advantage of that licence to offer a comprehensive account of basic biology, alongside a history of the great minds that have helped us to see beyond misconceptions to scientific truth. This is not just about clearcut successes: alongside the stories of diligent scientists, there are intriguing tales of the eccentrics whose contributions were vital. As such, this is a book filled with missteps, arguments and prejudices. Among the many colourful characters is the English polymath Robert Hooke. More than 350 years ago, he put a…

Adverts on Ukraine’s underground system carry motivational messaging: “Together to the victory”, “Bravery is carrying on” or “Just a bit more and it will get easier”. Psychologists are invited on to TV shows almost daily to offer tips on how to manage anxiety and the breaks are filled with videos in support of the army. Positive messaging, mental health advice and examples of how to “do your bit” are all part of the information ecosystem helping Ukrainians sustain their morale throughout the war. Experts say this partly top-down, partly organic approach will play a significant role through what is likely to be a punishing winter. Ukrainian TV channels are running adverts on how people can save energy amid government pleas for consumers to reduce usage. Under the slogan “The rules…

What is Cop27? For almost three decades, world governments have met nearly every year to forge a global response to the climate emergency. Under the 1992 UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC), every country is treaty-bound to “avoid dangerous climate change” and find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an equitable way. Cop stands for conference of the parties under the UNFCCC. Meetings have swung between fractious and soporific with moments of drama and the occasional triumph (the 2015 Paris agreement) and disaster (Copenhagen in 2009). This year promises to be a difficult follow-up to Cop26 in Glasgow. When does it finish? The conference is being hosted by the Egyptian government in Sharm el-Sheikh. The talks are scheduled to end at 6pm on Friday 18 November but they…

Two months ago, Brazil’s farright president, Jair Bolsonaro, stood before a sea of supporters in his nation’s capital and used a phallic mantra to declare himself politically “unfloppable”. But last month Bolsonaro suffered a chastening defeat by his leftwing foe Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a make-orbreak presidential election. As Lula’s win was confirmed, supporters flooded São Paulo’s streets to celebrate Bolsonaro’s loss of potency. “The unfloppable flopped! The unfloppable flopped!” bellowed Gil Alvarenga, a 37-year-old activist from Brazil’s landless movement, as he bounded through the crowds. Experts say the story of how Brazil’s leader went flaccid involves a litany of outrages, ineptitudes and errors committed during a chaotic four-year reign that saw nearly 700,000 Covid deaths, tens of millions plunged into poverty, and South America’s largest economy become…

Last summer, after months of unusually heavy monsoon rains, and temperatures that approached the limits of human survivability, Pakistan experienced some of the worst floods in its history. The most extensive destruction was in the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan, but up to a third of the country was estimated to be submerged. The floods killed more than 1,700 people and displaced a further 32 million. Some of the country’s most fertile agricultural areas became giant lakes, drowning livestock and destroying crops and infrastructure. The cost of the disaster runs to tens of billions of dollars. In late August, as the scale of this catastrophe was becoming clear, the Pakistani government was trying to avert a second disaster. It was finally reaching a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF)…

Some years ago, an Australian friend gave me a necklace with a beautiful and distinct pendant. The pendant had been in Helen Pilkinton’s family for decades. It was made from a phosphate rock brought back from my homeland of Banaba – an island in the central Pacific about 3,000km from Australia – by her parents in 1935. It came from an ancestral place that many in Kiribati and Fiji understand to be taboo and haunted. Dozens of Australian families have jewellery and decorations similarly made out of Banaban rock. They are passed down along with family stories of a distant life on a tropical island in the centre of the Pacific. The rock is beautiful, but I cannot bring myself to wear it. Helen’s father had worked for the British…

Evening approaches Bilbao’s old port, bringing with it the joggers who pinball along the promenades, the tourists mulling a cruise on the dark green waters of the estuary, and the woman in the artisan ice-cream booth who keeps vigil behind tubs of dulce de leche and passionfruit ices. Close by, its titanium scales glowing yellow in the last of the sun, lies the building that helped make such scenes possible. Before the Guggenheim Museum opened in the Basque city 25 years ago this month – and before the massive urban regeneration project it helped to drive – Bilbao looked, felt and smelled very different. “Back then, it was a much greyer, dirtier city whose skies were polluted by the smoke from the steel factories and the shipyards in the centre,”…

Anyone fixated with rewilding as the only model to restore nature to denuded uplands would do well to visit Extremadura in Spain. From a spot called Peña Falcón at the heart of this national park, there unfolds an immense oak forest rolling to every horizon. Every tree has been hand-sculpted to be flat-topped. Each oak creates wood pasture that accommodates sheep, cattle, pigs, timber, cork and cereals, among others. It is among the richest wildlife places in western Europe. The most omnipresent symbols of this natural abundance are vultures. Often, there are scores, sometimes hundreds, floating on thermals at all daylight hours. Two species, griffon and cinereous vultures, have enjoyed decades of increase and may be more secure in Extremadura than any other vultures on Earth. The most affecting way…

1 CLIMATE CRISIS Past eight years hottest on record, UN report finds The past eight years were the eight hottest ever recorded, a UN report has found. The internationally agreed 1.5C limit for global heating is now “barely within reach”, it said. The report, by the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO), sets out how record high greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are driving sea level and ice melting to new highs and supercharging extreme weather from Pakistan to Puerto Rico. The stark assessment was published on the opening day of the UN’s Cop27 climate summit in Egypt, and as the UN secretary general warned that “our planet is on course to reach tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible”. The WMO estimates that the global average temperature in 2022…

Rishi Sunak renewed a promise to stop people being smuggled across the Channel, despite coming away from talks with Emmanuel Macron without any firm commitments. The prime minister promised details about the progress of cross-Channel talks “in the coming weeks”, with No 10 hoping to make a major announcement before Christmas. Deflecting questions about any concrete actions agreed or a timetable, the prime minister said: “We all want this situation to resolve itself as quickly as possible” but it remained a “complex issue”. Sunak struck a constructive tone about one of his first bilateral meetings with a foreign leader since his premiership began last month, and reasserted his belief that countries would be able to “get a grip of this situation”. Previous attempts to curb the number of people arriving…

Benjamin Netanyahu has made an impressive comeback after his ousting in 2021 amid corruption allegations. In last week’s election, his party, Likud, received more votes than any other party and his far-right allies came third, paving the way for a Likud-led coalition government. Although forming a coalition isn’t an easy game – indeed, Netanyahu has failed in the previous four elections to do so – this time he’s expected to form a comfortable majority bloc with ultra-Orthodox and far-right parties. Yet despite this prospect, for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza the Israeli elections have not been at the forefront of political discussion, as they continue to resist and fight for their survival on ever-shrinking territory. For them, it’s simply a matter of changing the prison guards – because…

The former home secretary Priti Patel had a whiteboard behind her ministerial desk on which she had written a list of her priorities. For much of her time in office the top three issues were: deal with small boats, cut crime, protect national security. When she left the cabinet in September, Patel was unable to point to much progress on priority No 1, and the situation she bequeathed Suella Braverman has disintegrated into chaos. Within the already beleaguered department, morale has plummeted further. “It’s a complete mess,” a Home Office source said. “It feels very depressing because we’ve applied massive resources to thinking about it, talking to the French, launching the Rwanda scheme, trying to set up new accommodation structures. None of it has worked.” Civil servants say there is…

‘The forest will never end,” said Papa Mbembe as he trekked through the swampy peatland of the rainforest behind his village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), nearly 650km from the capital, Kinshasa. As he walked barefoot through the rainforest, he pointed to the ferns, lianas and hardwood trees rising into the canopy. He hunts small antelope, collects timber for his house and is an expert in traditional medicine. He scraped the bark of a boala tree (Pentaclethra macrophylla) with his machete and collected the powder in a large leaf, explaining how he boils this up with other leaves and roots to treat stomach ache. “I have lived all my life in the forest; everything I do is in the forest,” he said. “The forest provides my food…

At a convenience store between a restaurant and hair salon on the outskirts of Toronto, a clerk serves customers on a drizzly autumn morning. In an office park a few kilometres away, a travel agent sorts through passports, arranging visas and booking tickets for her Chinese clientele. And on a quiet street in a nearby suburb, a resident is frustrated that he and his family have been roped into an international row over a supposed network of clandestine Chinese police stations. “I don’t know what this is all about,” the man said. “There’s some kind of mistake. We have nothing to do with this.” All three addresses have been linked to a purported network of unsanctioned and illegal Chinese “police stations” around the world, used to exert pressure on exiles…

I head to a bookshop on my lunch break to find something for my daughter’s 12th birthday. I never seem to get it quite right when choosing books for her, so I ask the bookseller (in her 20s) for a recommendation, and she directs me to the manga shelves. It’s cool, you read it from right to left, she’ll love it, I’m told. Komi Can’t Communicate, about a socially anxious high school student, could work. Or how about dark fantasy Tokyo Ghoul: slightly age-inappropriate, but that’s what preteens love. As we search the shelves, however – four whole bays, devoted to manga! – volume one in every potential series appears to be missing. The store just can’t keep them in stock, the bookseller explains, because they are so ridiculously popular.…

Britain exists in an imaginary state of crisis about immigration. Nothing soothes this anxiety – not facts, not real numbers of arrivals, not the distinction between migrants in general and asylum seekers in particular. In the past week alone, reports have emerged of illegally detained migrants at overcrowded centres falling ill, of underage sexual assault, and of others being dropped off in the middle of cities and promptly forgotten about. These appalling failures have occurred not because there are too many migrants, but because the government has broken its own asylum system. This is a crisis by design, not of arrivals. The UK government is keen to stress the recent increase in Channel crossings, yet asylum applications are half what they were 20 years ago. The real cause of the…

The Prince of Wales invites prime minister Sir John Major to a secret meeting to explore the possibility of becoming Charles III in 1991 not 2022. The Princess of Wales seduces heart surgeon Hasnat Khan by asking him to place his finger on her breasts and trace her valves and arteries. In a war within the BBC, the director general John Birt goes nuclear against chairman Marmaduke Hussey by agreeing to let Martin Bashir interview Diana for Panorama. Season five of The Crown is business as usual: melodrama presented in lavish quasi-documentary style, carried by near-hologrammatic performances by great actors, now including Elizabeth Debicki’s Princess Diana and Imelda Staunton’s Elizabeth II. But this run has one very significant difference. This time, episodes carry the following notice: “Inspired by real events,…

What can I do to soup to make it more interesting? Helen, Oxford, England, UK “You could really go down the rabbit hole with this,” says Nuno Mendes of Lisboeta in London. Soups are transformed by the addition of crunchy, creamy, fresh and/or herby things, but you can go as simple (yoghurt, soft-boiled eggs, toasted nuts) or fancy (fish tartare) as you like. Smooth vegetable soups always welcome some extra veg at the end, Mendes says – he suggests finely dicing some more of the veg you used as the base for the soup, then mix it with herbs and lemon zest and spoon on top. “Or blitz raw cauliflower or broccoli into ‘couscous’, season and add herbs,” he adds. Veg scraps, too, can give many a soup a lift,…