Indholdsfortegnelse for 6 January 2023 i Guardian Weekly

Lula’s return Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (left) next to his wife, Rosângela, and vice-president-elect Geraldo Alckmin with his wife Lu, on their way to the presidential inauguration ceremony in Brasília last Sunday. The 77-year-old vowed to haul Brazil out of Jair Bolsonaro’s era of ‘devastation’ after being sworn in as president. Spotlight Page 27 The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol 208 | Issue №1 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…

The so-called paramount leader, Xi Jinping, became even more powerful last year. In October he secured a third five-year term as leader, purging anyone not deemed utterly loyal from the senior party ranks. With almost unchecked political power and with no known dissenting voices in his close circles, analysts are watching his moves on Taiwan in particular. Xi has long pledged to annex the island of 23 million people, despite their overwhelming opposition. Last year, China’s People’s Liberation Army activities increased (the post-Nancy Pelosi drills gave a taste of what they can do), and official rhetoric escalated. One possible tempering factor is Ukraine, where Russia’s similar invasion dreams did not go to plan. Xi is likely to be taking lessons. The invasion has also caused China headaches. Xi is a…

Will 2023 break fresh records as the hottest year on record, and will greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise? Extreme weather events battered swathes of the globe in 2022, with record heatwaves stretching from India to Europe, China and the US, and at both poles. Flooding devastated Pakistan and famine threatens 150 million people in Africa amid the worst drought there for 40 years. Whether or not temperature records are broken again, there will be little let up in this rising drumbeat of climate chaos. Greenhouse gas emissions rose in 2022, when they need to be reduced by nearly half this decade, for the world to stay within the scientifically advised limit of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. The chances of them coming down in 2023 remain slim. Global talks on…

The optimists will point to the rich creativity of African artists, the success of start-ups and the ingenuity of change agents across the continent. The pessimists will stress the threats of flagging economies, war, famine and the climate crisis. In this, 2023 will be little different from recent years. But there are some things that will mark the coming 12 months out. One is the double impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the damage done by the Covid pandemic. Inflation has sent food prices soaring, threatening malnutrition and social unrest. Both will be a factor in elections in Nigeria in February and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in December. Then there is the trouble with debt, which has left countries from tiny Djibouti in the far north-east to…

NHS strikes could continue for many months amid anger at UK government plans to raise staff salaries by only 2% next year, which health unions have condemned as more “real-terms pay cut misery”. Ministers have asked the NHS pay review body to cap the increase in frontline health workers’ pay to 2% in 2023-24 to help the government achieve its ambition to curb soaring inflation. But the attempt by the health secretary, Steve Barclay, to cap the annual salary rise at such a low level could lead to the NHS facing prolonged industrial action, health service bosses are warning. The 2% is barely a third of the estimate by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) that inflation as measured by the consumer price index will average 5.5% during 2023-24. The…

I thought it was a blood moon at first. The dark orange glow appeared at dusk on the far side of the shimmering silver band that is the Xingu River. It was just before 8pm, after the parrots had squawked back to their nests and the insects and frogs were noisily starting the forest nightshift. There was a flash of lightning but the rest of the sky was clear. How could there be a storm? I peered more intently and took a photograph that I could magnify. And there was the answer – a fire, which grew fiercer as I watched, the flames spreading sideways and upwards, flickering red and yellow, billowing smoke into the sky, sparking flashes of lightning every couple of minutes. I felt sick. The Amazon rainforest…

US federal courts look quite different than they did two years ago. Since taking office, Joe Biden has made it a top priority to appoint a diverse slate of judicial nominees, who have helped change the face of the nation’s court system. Democrats have used their narrow majority in the Senate to confirm roughly 100 of Biden’s judicial nominees – including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the supreme court. After maintaining control of the Senate in the midterm elections, Democrats are well positioned to confirm even more federal judges in the next two years. But Biden has a long way to go before he can match Donald Trump’s historic impact on the federal judiciary. Federal judges carry a unique responsibility in the US system…

Half the room is jumping up and down, screaming, “Gotcha!”. The other half shrugs its shoulders, muttering, “So what’s new?”. Welcome to the war over the so-called Twitter Files. Over the past month, Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, has made internal documents and conversations that took place before his takeover available to a handpicked group of journalists. The files are mainly discussions about who and what should be moderated or banned, ranging from the Hunter Biden laptop story to the question of whether to remove Donald Trump from the platform. The journalists have released this information through a drip feed of Twitter threads. For some, the Twitter Files are evidence of collusion between tech companies, liberal politicians and the “deep state” to silence conservatives. For others, they constitute little more…

It is not unknown for tourists to faint in front of Botticelli’s 1486 masterpiece The Birth of Venus. Such swoons of delight have been labelled “Stendhal syndrome” after the French novelist, who first reported feeling overwhelmed by the art and monuments of Florence in 1817. Those who emerge today from the Uffizi Gallery needing a lie-down explain that it is because of the sheer beauty of Botticelli’s strawberry-blond goddess, arriving on land in her giant scallop shell. The image, at once fleshy and refined, luscious and bookish, is the perfect picture of an earthly paradise. All of which makes it strange that, for centuries, Botticelli was a forgotten name. Or, if he was remembered at all, it was as a minor painter whose synthetic charm represented everything that was glib…

Will the Ukraine war end in 2023? It’s impossible to imagine a handshake between Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Vladimir Putin, suggesting that a negotiated peace between Ukraine and Russia after 10 months of hard fighting and tens of thousands of casualties on both sides is a long way off. Ukraine is demanding the creation of a war crimes court for the Russian leadership and reparations from the Kremlin, as well as the restoration of its entire territory. None of this will be conceded by Moscow, which is never going to be faced with a 1945-style total defeat. A more realistic endpoint would be a military ceasefire, in which two increasingly exhausted combatants see frontline positions harden around a line of control, in effect a repeat of what happened after the fighting…

After the political earthquake of nationwide protests over women’s rights, Iran faces a defining year in which the regime will either wrestle back control of a cowed population or see resistance grow into something that genuinely threatens the Islamic Republic’s 43-year rule. Although many say something irreversible has been set in train since the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, which prompted the rallies, Iran has a long history of repressing dissent. But a movement that has no stated goals and no leadership, but deep cultural roots, may be harder to control. Much may depend on whether the economy continues to suffer, encouraging a broader impoverished group in society to abandon faith not just in the government, but in the entire system of clerical rule. Ebrahim Raisi came to power…

Brazil will reboot in 2023 after four chaotic years under the far-right radical Jair Bolsonaro, during which South America’s largest democracy became an international pariah notorious for environmental devastation. Bolsonaro failed to win a second term in October’s election and has been replaced by the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a moderate leftist whose victory cemented his status as Brazil’s most dominant living politician. At his inauguration ceremony last Sunday, a tearful Lula vowed to haul Brazil out of an era of “devastation” and kickstart a new phase of reconciliation, environmental preservation and social justice. Crucially, after Bolsonaro’s era of environmental wrecking and international isolation, Lula has pledged to make the Amazon and climate emergency priorities and return Brazil to its place on the world stage. A veteran…

Speculation that Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories are on the brink of a third intifada surfaces whenever there is a rise in violence in the conflict. But the convergence of several elements means that this is more likely in 2023 than ever before. According to the UN, last year was the deadliest for Palestinians living in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank since 2005, with 140 Palestinians killed. Other developments that hark back to the violence of the 2000-2005 intifada include Israel’s return to targeted assassinations in the West Bank, the use of sieges on Palestinian neighbourhoods and the first bus bombings in Jerusalem in years. On the political front there is also a marked deterioration of affairs. The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, is in ill health, and…

A late morning in Khartoum. Inside a low, dusty building in the centre of the Sudanese capital, there are crates of artefacts, a 2.1-metre replica of a 2,000-year-old stone statue of a Nubian god and students rushing through the corridors. Outside is noisy traffic, blinding sunlight and both branches of the Nile. Heading down one staircase are Sabrine Jamal, Nadia Musa, Athar Bela and Sabrine al-Sadiq, all studying archaeology at Khartoum University. Not one of them is older than 24 and they see themselves as pioneers, breaking new ground on a continent that has long attracted western expeditions, specialists and adventurers but whose own archaeologists have received less attention overseas. “It is very important that Africans do African archaeology … because then we will have our own archaeological cultures. There…

Few words in the English language conjure up more negative emotions than stress. The mere mention of it may elicit images of looming deadlines, unpaid bills, or exam pressure, to list just a few scenarios. But what if I told you that stress can also be positive? That just as it can harm us, it also plays a key role in strengthening our immune system, forging connections in our brain that improve mental performance and building the resilience we need to navigate our way through life. This first came to light through the work of an American psychiatrist called Firdaus Dhabhar, who was intrigued by the intricate connection between mind and body. In the mid-1990s, stress was almost unanimously viewed as bad for us, but to Dhabhar this was illogical.…

Last month, the Taliban announced that they will ban women from attending university or teaching in Afghanistan. It is a decision that did more in a single day to entrench discrimination against women and girls and set back their empowerment than any other single policy decision I can remember. Since the Taliban returned to power, girls have been banned from attending secondary school. Now they are being banned from primary school. Thousands of female government have been told to stay at home. Other recent rulings prevent women from travelling without a male relative or attending mosques or religious seminaries. In November, girls and women were banned from entering public places, including parks. The rest of the world cannot stay silent in the illusory hope that these bans are temporary. It…

WRITE TO US Letters for publication weekly.letters@theguardian.com Please include a full postal address and a reference to the article. We may edit letters. Submission and publication of all letters is subject to our terms and conditions, see: THEGUARDIAN.COM/LETTERS-TERMS Editorial Editor: Graham Snowdon Guardian Weekly, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, UK To contact the editor directly: editorial.feedback@theguardian.com Corrections Our policy is to correct significant errors as soon as possible. Please write to guardian.readers@theguardian.com or the readers’ editor, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, UK Nuclear fusion is no answer to energy prayers You report on the alleged “breakthrough” on nuclear fusion, in which US researchers claim that break-even has been achieved (Global report, 16 December). To go from break-even, where energy output is greater than total energy input, to a commercial…

In August, Pakistan’s three censor boards cleared Saim Sadiq’s award-winning film Joyland for release. Shot in Lahore, it is about a young married man from a conservative family who finds work at a dance theatre and falls in love with a trans woman struggling to land her moment on stage. It was the first Pakistani film to screen at Cannes and it won the Un Certain Regard prize, receiving a standing ovation nearly 10 minutes long. Even though the film was then subject to various bans in Pakistan, after being accused of pushing an LGBTQ+ agenda and misrepresenting Pakistani culture, it finally appeared in Pakistani cinemas in November, with Malala Yousafzai signing on as executive producer. Whatever happens at home (the whiplash never seemed to end, as the Punjab censor…

1 UNITED STATES Republican ‘fears for the future’ if Trump not charged The Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger said he believed the Department of Justice would “do the right thing” and bring criminal charges against Donald Trump for his role in the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. “I think he will be charged, and I frankly think he should be,” Kinzinger told CNN’s State of Union last Sunday. The House select committee investigating the attack, on which Kinzinger sits, voted last month to refer the former president to the justice department on charges of obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the US, conspiracy to make a false statement and “incite”, “assist” or “aid or comfort” an insurrection. The recommendations relate to the former president’s role in…

NHS Senior health official warns of ‘unsafe’ care at A&E The deaths of an estimated 300 to 500 people each week caused by delays in emergency care is “not a short-term thing”, a senior UK health official has said. Ian Higginson, a vice-president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, warned about attempts to “discredit” figures estimating that as many as 500 people are dying each week because of the delays. Official data will not be released until later this month but the organisation said it was expecting it to show that December was the worst month on record for waiting times at accident and emergency departments, leading to what it described as “unsafe and undignified” care. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday, Higginson said the “appalling”…

Russia’s war on Ukraine, the ensuing continent-wide energy crisis and rampant inflation largely dictated Europe’s fortunes last year, a state of affairs that experts say is unlikely to improve – and may well worsen – in 2023. Europe may be steadily weaning itself off its biggest source of energy – Russian oil and gas – but the cost has been immense, with soaring energy prices hitting households and businesses and governments forced to fund hundreds of billions in subsidies. Blackouts and gas rationing remain possible across the continent this winter and despite many countries sourcing alternative supplies mainly of liquid natural gas, next winter could be worse, with analysts forecasting a worst-case gas shortfall approaching 10%. Much will clearly depend on the severity of the weather – but “sensible” energy…

The US’s fragile democracy is set for yet another stress test in the coming year with an octogenarian president facing a divided Congress, an economy threatened by recession and the prospect of a comeback by Donald Trump. Joe Biden goes into the year with political momentum. Since he took office, the US has created 11m new jobs. He signed legislation investing billions of dollars in Covid relief, infrastructure, manufacturing and climate, appointed the first African American woman to the supreme court and rallied the west in defence of Ukraine. But now it gets harder. In January Republicans take control of the House of Representatives, determined to deny Biden further wins and unleash investigations into his pandemic response, his withdrawal from Afghanistan and his son Hunter’s business dealings. Much of 2023…

China’s leader Xi Jinping told his country it stands on “the right side of history” in a new year address last Saturday, but experts have warned that the president starts 2023 diminished by his chaotic U-turn on Covid strategy. He may struggle to deflect blame for the human and economic costs of zero-Covid’s failure, and control the national narrative, even if public signs of dissent are crushed. Officially, China has registered just over 5,200 deaths from Covid, but there is a yawning gap between the picture presented by the usually efficient communist propaganda apparatus and the reality reflected in social media posts and anecdotes. Hospital emergency wards are overflowing with desperate patients. Medical supplies are running low, with pharmacies selling out of drugs ranging from anti-viral to basic painkillers. Police…

Pope Benedict XVI, who served as leader of the Catholic church from 2005 until his resignation in 2013, died last Saturday aged 95, three days after his successor, Pope Francis, warned the world that he was gravely ill. His funeral was due to be held this week. Benedict’s death brings to a close an unprecedented period in recent history where two popes have coexisted, a situation that has caused tensions within rival camps in the Vatican. It eases the way for his successor, Pope Francis, to consider whether to follow Benedict by retiring at some point – impossible while the outcome would have been three popes. Last Sunday, looking weary with his head bowed, Francis prayed for Benedict’s passage to heaven at a special New Year’s Day mass. “Today we…

Marianela Hernández Valencia knows what life off-grid is like. “As a child, I grew up in a house without electricity, which meant having to do homework by candlelight,” she said. “It was difficult.” The 28-year-old is among 15 women hoping to graduate as one of Colombia’s first intake of apprentice linewomen, in La Ceja, a small town about 40km south-east of Medellín, the country’s second-largest city. Line workers scale towers and transmission lines high above the ground to install and repair power cables. They are often the first responders after a storm or natural disaster and are regularly away from home for long periods. Graduates of the year-long pilot project, led by ISA, Latin America’s largest energy transmission company, with the training group Tener Futuro Corporation, are guaranteed a job…

Six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns were made public by a congressional committee last Friday, ending the former president’s long-running effort to break precedent and keep them secret. The documents, dating from 2015 to 2020, offer insights into the complex finances and foreign bank accounts of a man who was accused of abusing the presidency for personal profit and who has already announced another bid for the White House. A House of Representatives report released last month analysed the documents and showed Trump and his wife Melania paid no federal income tax in 2020, the last year he was in office. Trump reported bank accounts in Britain, China and Ireland from 2015 to 2017, and from 2018 only reported a bank account in Britain. Responding to the release, Daniel…

I USED TO THINK I WAS A GOOD PERSON. I was caring to my friends, my partner, my family; I gave to charity and I volunteered; I wasn’t racist, homophobic or sexist. Boxes: ticked. But when I started training to become a therapist in the NHS, I began to understand that however much we might like to think of ourselves as good people, we don’t actually know ourselves very well. We don’t know what’s really going on under the surface; why we do the things we do. I learned about how we might, without consciously realising it, deny the feelings and motivations we consider to be bad, pushing them down into our unconscious and projecting them out on to others, so they become the bad people. I learned that deep…

In the final seconds of the 1958 World Cup final, with Brazil already 4-2 ahead, Pelé, then just 17 years old, received a long ball near the Swedish penalty area. He caught it on his chest, stunning it so smartly that the ball dropped at his feet. He stepped over the ball and effortlessly back-heeled it to a teammate. With the crowd still cheering this, the ball was lobbed back into the area and, insouciantly, Pelé flicked it with the side of his head into the goal. Within moments, Brazil had won their first World Cup, making the nation’s identity, then better known for coffee, synonymous with football. Pelé, reduced to floods of tears on the pitch, began his life as the embodiment of Brazilian football. It is worth recalling…

Mandy Matney is tired. It is late November, and she is finishing up the 69th episode of her podcast Murdaugh Murders, a true-crime investigation she began in 2019 and has evolved into a complex puzzle of unsolved deaths, insurance fraud, drugs, power and murder. The previous day, a jury in Charleston, South Carolina, delivered the first guilty verdict related to the case, and Matney was there to cover it. “It was super exciting, and really felt like a huge sigh of relief,” she says. Hedley Thomas knows this feeling well. He experienced a similar vindication when his 2018 podcast series The Teacher’s Pet led to the conviction last year of former high school PE teacher Chris Dawson for the murder of his wife, Lynette, who disappeared from the couple’s Sydney…

I made Felicity Cloake’s tiramisu, which was delicious, but I still have a nearly full bottle of marsala. What else can I make with it? Viv, Cardiff, Wales, UK Not all marsala is made equal: you have secco (dry), semi-secco (medium-dry) and dolce (sweet), but I’m going to assume it’s the last that’s in need of using up. However, before we dive into that, Feast’s drinks expert Fiona Beckett says it’s worth noting that this Sicilian fortified wine is often sold in half-bottles, although she grants that’s not much use to Viv now. “That said,” Beckett adds, “you can essentially use it wherever you would use a sweet sherry.” First and foremost, consider spent marsala a cook’s treat. Beckett suggests sipping it with leftover Christmas cake, chocolate or stilton. Or…