Indholdsfortegnelse for 1 March 2024 i Guardian Weekly

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The view from the window of the Almodallals’ kitchen in Rafah is nothing but rubble. Piles of debris that used to be their neighbours’ homes surround them in the al-Zuhour neighbourhood, gaping holes ripped the remains of walls, leaving only mounds of broken glass and concrete that crack in the silent air when people tread on them. “We were targeted three times: To the right of our house, the left, and behind it. Now we joke that we’re next,” said Shahed Almodallal, a 21-year-old student who has spent the last four months living at her family home in Rafah, unable to return to her apartment or her university in Gaza City after both were destroyed in Israel’s bombardment of the territory. Her mother, Naima, often refuses to look out the…

Just a few short months ago, Sweden’s Nato membership seemed a very long way from being a done deal. Having submitted its application to join in May 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it seemed at times as though Stockholm might be left hanging interminably. While Finland, which had applied to join the alliance at the same time, became a member at record speed last April, Sweden got stuck in a diplomatic quagmire. Last year a series of Qur’an burnings in Sweden inflamed ties with Turkey. As recently as September, Viktor Orbán’s government was embroiled in a public war of words with Sweden over criticism of Hungary’s democracy and teaching in Swedish schools. Late in January, after Turkey’s parliament gave Sweden the green light, the Hungarian prime minister pushed for…

In March 2022, I published an investigation into the crimes of Matthew Hardy, who had been sentenced to nine years in prison in what was then believed to be the UK’s worst-ever case of cyberstalking. The story caught the public’s attention and I later turned it into a six-part Guardian podcast series, Can I Tell You a Secret?, which topped the UK podcast charts. It has now inspired a new, two-part Netflix documentary of the same name. Hardy tormented people, mostly women, for years. He broke apart families, relationships and professional relationships. He sent nude photos of his victims to their work contacts. He called them late at night and breathed down the phone; when the women cried from stress and fear, he’d send them mocking messages. On one occasion…

In the dark times / Will there also be singing?” muses Brecht in the Svendborg Poems. “Yes, there will also be singing / About the dark times.” The impulse for lamentation in a crisis is instinctive and, perhaps, socially useful. But how we voice a response to catastrophe can be contentious, not least with the recent Covid pandemic. And while it may be too early to judge the overall effect of the crisis on the written word, we seem to have come out of it with more of a feeling of discord than harmony, and a sense that the plague and its quarantine accelerated an already existing divisiveness and cultural dissonance. So in many ways the publication of Fourteen Days could not have been more timely. Commissioned by the US…

East Sussex, England, UK On the allotment, the trees sing with starlings, as if the birds were decorating them, as if it were Christmas. I listen to them whistle as I clear a bed to sow seeds. They chatter while I repaint my shed. They’re famous for murmurating around Brighton pier, said to be one of the best places in the country to watch their heart-stopping displays. Sometimes I join the crowds to watch them shape-shift into the sky, as an orange sun sinks into the sea. I love the display, but I prefer the buildup. I prefer hanging back on the allotment as they get ready for their party. I prefer watching clouds of them pulse towards the seafront as I walk the dog, feeling their wingbeats over me…

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1 UKRAINE Zelenskiy gives battlefield death toll for the first time Volodymyr Zelenskiy has given a figure for the number of Ukrainian battlefield deaths in the war with Russia for the first time, acknowledging that 31,000 soldiers have been killed. Speaking in Kyiv a day after the two-year anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, the Ukrainian president said he believed his country would win despite recent military setbacks. He conceded western weapons were in short supply. His troops were running low on ammunition and at one point late last year were firing one shell for every 12 unleashed by the Russians, he said. The ratio was now 1:7. “They have a great superiority,” he admitted. He refused to say how many service personnel had been wounded, saying such details might help Moscow,…

The African Union (AU) is marking 2024 as its first Year of Education. This could not have come at a better time. Commitment to education has marked the continent’s progress since the 1960s era of independence. Now more than ever, this resolve must transform Africa into the world’s powerhouse for the 21st century. In 60 years Africa has made considerable progress in education, with more children finishing school. Primary school completion rates across the region between 2000 and 2022 rose from 52% to 6 7%. High school dropout rates slowed too, with 50% of pupils completing lower secondary, up from 35%, and 33% in upper secondary education, up from 23%, while the number of tertiary education students has risen from fewer than 800,000 in 1970 to above 17 million today.…

Last week had started well for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). Keir Starmer had finally backed calls for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the Prince of Wales had raised his concerns about the appalling loss of life in Gaza. But last Saturday, as more than 200 people gathered at Conway Hall in London for the campaign’s annual general meeting, optimism that the Middle East debate might be turning the PSC’s way had been superseded by puzzlement – and some anger. “It’s not extremist to be against the war,” said Fiona Goldie, an activist from Carlisle in Cumbria. “It’s the norm to want peace.” She was referring to suggestions that pro-Palestinian activists like her had been in some way responsible for the chaotic scenes inside the House of…

The billboard in Buenos Aires shows a piglet standing forlornly by a butcher’s fridge. “Dónde están mis amigos ?” – “where are my friends?” – it reads. Such adverts have sprung up around Argentina’s capital as part of a concerted campaign by the animal rights groups Animal Save Movement and Voicot, an Argentinian organisation, to promote vegan diets. In Argentina, eating meat – and in particular a steak – prepared on the asado, or barbecue, is a cherished national tradition. The typical Argentinian restaurant is a parrilla – a steakhouse that can serve a bewildering variety of grilled meat, with some menus offering beef 30 different ways. Between 1914 and 2021, the average annual figure for beef consumption in Argentina was 73.4kg per person. This figure takes in the peak…

As dusk fell over the verdant grounds of the Marriott Mena House hotel, the reflection of the Great Pyramid of Giza grew darker. A band played a smooth jazz rendition of the Eagles’ Hotel California on the grassy lawns as guests assembled for dinner, while the staff attempted to project a sense of business as usual, despite the hotel’s recent acquisition by an infamous Egyptian real estate tycoon, Hisham Talaat Moustafa, and two powerful Emirati conglomerates. The sale of Mena House and six other historic hotels – financed by the Emirates – is part of what Timothy E Kaldas, an analyst of Egypt’s struggling and often opaque economy, termed “an underwhelming fire sale” of state assets, as the government clamours for cash injections. Moustafa is Egypt’s largest real estate developer,…

“I said earlier, no matter what happens, I would continue to run. I’m a woman of my word Losing South Carolina is almost always a bad omen for presidential hopefuls and defeat in a candidate’s home state is viewed as irrevocable. But as the last Republican standing between Donald Trump and the party nomination, Nikki Haley thrilled supporters last Saturday by deftly capitalising on her small but consistent show of support from voters desperate for an alternative. Trump was declared the winner within one minute of polls closing in the Palmetto State, an unsurprising but nevertheless stinging rebuke for Haley at the hands of the voters who twice elected her governor. “That is really something,” Trump told supporters in Columbia, the state’s capital. “This was a little sooner than we…

AT THE HEART OF LINGUISTICS is a radical premise: all languages are equal. This underlies everything we do at the Endangered Language Alliance, an eccentric extended family of linguists, language activists, polyglots and ordinary people, whose mission is to document endangered languages and support linguistic diversity, especially in the world’s hyperdiverse cities. Language is a universal and democratic fact cutting across all human societies: no human group is without it, and no language is superior to any other. More than race or religion, language is a window on to the deepest levels of human diversity. The familiar map of the world’s 200 or so nation-states is superficial compared with the little-known map of its 7,000 languages. Some languages may specialise in talking about melancholy, seaweed or atomic structure; some grammars may…

Russia’s war against Ukraine has never been only about territory and artillery, about politicians and putative peace deals. Of course, that is the easiest and most acceptable register in which to consider unthinkable violence: as a geopolitical problem happening at a far distance. But Russia’s aggression is an event of shocking magnitude in every individual life in Ukraine, and in lives elsewhere, too. The war is not only happening on the frontline but in homes and hearts. Deaths are mourned. Lives that were once straightforward have been propelled into directions that were never sought or wanted. Ambitions have been abandoned and plans have been cast aside. The war has crept like a mist into every aspect of domestic life, into the tender, tremulous matters of love and sex, into the…

What’s the deal with brown butter? I keep seeing it in recipes and on menus. Ben, Sheffield, England, UK Achieved by heating butter until the water evaporates and the milk solids caramelise, brown butter (or beurre noisette) can enhance the flavour of all the good things – cookies, cakes, pasta, pork chops. “It can be a beautiful thing,” agrees baker Lily Jones, of Lily Vanilli in east London, who recently launched an initiative across the capital to get birthday cakes to those who would otherwise go without. “It has a subtle, nutty, toffee caramel flavour that brings extra sweetness and richness.” You’ll need a heavy-based pan and some good-quality butter cut into pieces. (“Better-quality butter equals better-tasting brown butter,” Jones insists.) As the butter melts, swirl the pan to prevent…

CONSERVATIVES Suspended Tory says he does not rule out defecting Lee Anderson said he does not rule out defecting to Reform UK, in a move that would give the rightwing populist party its first MP. Anderson, a former Conservative party deputy chair, who has been suspended from sitting as a Tory MP because of his comments about the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said he had “been on a political journey” when pressed about whether he would join Reform. “You’ll say Lee Anderson rules out/doesn’t rule out joining the Reform party, so I’m making no comment on my future,” he said in his latest interview with his employer GB News. When asked if he would be a Conservative candidate at the next election, Anderson said: “That’s not up to me,”…

A closed-door meeting of spy chiefs, military officials and diplomats late last week – backed up by comments by US president Joe Biden on Monday – renewed hopes of a ceasefire deal amid fierce debates at the United Nations, but observers warned that time was running out to prevent a Israeli offensive on Gaza’s southernmost city. During a visit to New York, Biden told reporters that he believed a new, temporary ceasefire in Gaza was possible by 4 March, as Hamas was reportedly considering a draft agreement for a 40-day pause in fighting and the exchange of dozens of Israeli hostages for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, according to a Reuters source. In an interview on NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers, Biden also said Israel would be willing to temporarily…

Factories destroyed. Roads blown to pieces. Power plants put out of action. Steel exports decimated. A flood of refugees out of the country. Ukraine – the poorest country in Europe – has paid a heavy economic price for a two-year war against Russia waged almost entirely on its own soil. More than 7 million people – about a fifth of the population – have been plunged into poverty. Fifteen years of human development have been lost. In the first year of the war, the economy contracted by 30%. Yet it could have been even worse. Beata Javorcik, chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, said 90% of businesses in the areas of Ukraine where there was no fighting are still going concerns. Inflation has come down from…

Italy’s first facility breeding crickets for human food hopes to challenge the country’s deep-rooted preconceptions ‘Go on, try it, it is good,” said José Francesco Cianni as he handed over a packet containing a light brown powder with a crispy texture. Sitting in his office in a pristine warehouse-like building, down the corridor from five rooms where millions of crickets are being bred, Cianni is in jubilant spirits. In January, Nutrinsect, the startup founded by Cianni and his brother in Italy’s central Marche region, was the country’s first company to be given a licence to produce and sell insectbased food for human consumption. The licence was a just reward for the years the siblings had spent pursuing their conviction that protein-and vitamin-packed crickets were not only good for human health,…

Tucker Legerski and his wife, Megan, have spent more than two years and tens of thousands of dollars trying to have a baby. Married since 2021, the Alabama couple last year embarked on in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). After they retrieved eggs, a specialist combined those eggs with sperm to create four quality embryos. Last autumn, they successfully transferred one embryo, resulting in a pregnancy – but eight weeks in, it ended in a miscarriage. The couple had planned to attempt another embryo transfer this autumn. But now, in the wake of an Alabama supreme court decision that ruled that embryos are “extrauterine children”, the Legerskis don’t know what will happen to their hopes of having children in Alabama. At least three Alabama IVF providers, including the Legerskis’, have paused their IVF…

Both sides in the war between Israel and Hamas now face a fresh set of fateful choices. The decisions they take in the coming days are not only a matter of life and death for many thousands of Palestinians, and for the remaining 134 hostages held by Hamas. They also have the power to shape events for years, if not decades to come. The start of Ramadan, on 10 March, is the crucial deadline, and the clock is ticking. I say “both sides”, though that can easily get forgotten. The Israeli bombardment of Gaza has been so relentless, the destruction so intense and the death toll so high, that many stopped seeing it as a war long ago. It was striking how often in last week’s UK parliamentary debate on…

‘This is bigger than going from A to B,” says Edward Fuglø. “This is a route into another world.” Fuglø is a Faroe Islands artist who has created the paintings decorating the arching interior of a new tunnel snaking beneath the north Atlantic. Glowing, stylised human figures, many wearing Viking helmets and carrying spears, loom with a 3D intensity from steely grey walls. The figures are accompanied by longships, mythic enchanted horses, cattle, birds and depictions of ancient stone ruins. Using the latest projector technology, the 10 images – each several metres high and produced from Fuglø’s originals – are as bright as neon, and represent fantastical creatures and characters from Faroese legend. “Inside the tunnel we are dry,” Fuglø muses, “but we have the sense of the weight of…

Keir Starmer can be a hard man to read. The backstory we will hear endlessly in the run-up to the election – that his father was a rather emotionally distant toolmaker, his mother a nurse who suffered with a painful form of arthritis, and that they raised four children on a tight budget in a pebble-dashed semi – explains him to some extent. But he tells it with a slight stiffness that leaves many wondering if there isn’t something more. A genuinely revealing account of the rather private man on course to lead the country feels badly overdue. The former journalist turned spin doctor Tom Baldwin is at pains to insist this isn’t an authorised biography, but it doesn’t seem entirely unauthorised either. Baldwin was originally recruited to help the…