Indholdsfortegnelse for 8 March 2024 i Guardian Weekly

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It has been more than six years since Myanmar’s military launched a campaign of massacres that killed about 7,000 Rohingya in a single month and compelled 700,000 to flee for the Bangladeshi border. Since the first major military operation against the minority in 1978, which forced out 200,000, the Rohingya have been collectively stripped of their citizenship and targeted with increasing violence and discrimination that culminated in the “clearance operations” that began in 2017. Those operations were years in the planning, according to military documents uncovered by the Commission for International Justice and Accountability and sent to the international criminal court. One million Rohingya have been left to live in temporary shelters in Bangladesh. More than 30,000 have been moved to Bhasan Char, a remote island camp in the Bay…

A few weeks before his death, Bilal el-Essi took a photo of a man’s body, sprawled under a women’s bike in a Gaza City street, a child’s pink backpack fallen from the basket. The man was killed trying to find food for his family, Essi told friends and family when he shared the image, a snapshot of the tragedy and desperation in Gaza City. Essi knew the terrible pain of not being able to feed the people you love, and it got sharper every day that he could not find milk for his two girls, five-year-old Layan and two-year-old Mila, or bread for his father. So when he heard that a rare delivery of food aid might reach northern Gaza in the early hours of last Thursday, he made his way…

An extraordinary leak of an online call involving Germany’s air force chief and three subordinates emerged last Friday, in which they discussed whether it might be possible to persuade a reluctant chancellor Olaf Scholz to approve giving the long-range Taurus missile to Ukraine, and whether the munition could blow up the strategic Kerch Bridge that connects Russia to occupied Crimea. How did the leak get into the public domain? The 38-minute recording was gleefully released on social media by Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of TV network RT. A day later she offered to help Scholz get to the bottom of the leak, after he announced an inquiry to find out how a recording of the top secret conversation, accepted by Berlin to be genuine, had entered the public…

Influencers such as Andrew Tate have become bywords for “toxic masculinity”, attracting huge audiences of young men and boys with a mixture of quasi-motivational pep talks, fast cars and demonstrations of sexual prowess. But what about the other side of the coin? Are there any people making content for the same audience with healthier messages – or do men and boys just not want to hear it? Jago Sherman, the head of strategy at Goat Agency, the influencer subsidiary of marketing titan WPP, said: “There are plenty of male influencers and creators advocating for and creating content around topics as varied as mental health, fitness and wellness, parenting, self-love, self-expression, anti-knife crime, education, but they don’t necessarily make the headlines. “The likes of Andrew Tate are able to use social…

Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state in Sudan, can feel like two cities in one. There are mass graves, abandoned armoured vehicles and homeless children, but also new restaurants, bustling markets and factory-fresh Toyotas, nicknamed Kenjcanjia – meaning stolen in the local dialect – owing to their lack of registration plates. Since war broke out between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April last year, the city has witnessed two major massacres. Decomposing bodies lay out on the streets for up to 10 days on both occasions, their flesh eaten by dogs and chickens. Residues from the bodies of the dead remain even now, stepped over by people as they go about their daily business. Some districts in the centre of the city, where people…

Feeling lost and angry over the death of his father, Lucas Sykes started vaping in 2021 after his friends suggested it would help the grieving process. He was 10. What started as a “dumb move” developed into a nicotine addiction, Lucas said. Although retailers in New Zealand are prohibited from selling products to children, Lucas had no trouble purchasing “very affordable, easy-to-get, and pleasant to taste” vapes from a store just 10 metres from his school. Despite playing basketball and kickboxing, Lucas now sometimes finds himself “bent over coughing” and unable to breathe. Efforts to stop vaping have led to headaches and worsened anxiety, with his mood going from “cheery to very dark”. “When I started vaping, I got quite cocky and would be a smart arse to teachers, thinking…

The US supreme court’s decision last month to hear Donald Trump’s claims that he cannot be prosecuted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election marked the court’s direct entry into the 2024 presidential election. The decision to hear the case and delay his criminal trial in Washington DC was unquestionably one of Trump’s biggest legal victories to date. Fending off the 91 criminal charges against him, the cornerstone of Trump’s legal strategy has been to try to delay the four criminal trials against him until after the election. If he wins the presidency, he would have the power to install an attorney general who would dismiss the federal cases against him. His claim of immunity in the federal election interference case brought by Jack Smith, the justice department’s special…

Who is behind the most notorious “deepfake” app on the internet? Trying to answer that question these past few months, for a new Guardian podcast series, Black Box, has been like wandering through a hall of mirrors. The app, ClothOff, has hundreds of thousands of followers and has already been used in a least two cases to generate dozens of images of underage girls – pictures that have left the girls traumatised, their parents outraged and the police baffled at how to stop it. Producers Josh Kelly, Alex Atack and I have followed ClothOff’s trail to nondescript addresses in central London that appear to be unoccupied. We have encountered sham businesses, distorted voices and photographs of fake employees. It has been a frightening insight into the future that we are…

There has been a lot of talk about George Galloway in recent days, much of it negative and almost all of it true. But one charge thrown at the new member for Rochdale – winner of a byelection victory last week as sweeping as the triumph he recorded in Bradford West more than a decade ago – is false and unfair. Start with the accusations that stand up. Galloway poses as a man of the left – his latest vehicle is called the Workers party of Britain. But he backed Nigel Farage’s Brexit party (now Reform) in 2019 and the Conservatives in Scotland in 2021. In Rochdale, he won the warm endorsement of Nick Griffin, the former leader of the British National party. “George Galloway isn’t just right on keeping…

Fried aubergines guzzle up so much oil. Here are the alternatives. “Frying aubergine isn’t a bad thing, and oil isn’t a bad thing,” says Balkan cook Spasia Pandora Dinkovski, founder of Mystic Burek and author of Doma (out in April). When it comes to recipes that require pre-frying (moussaka, say), Dinkovski’s mum “coats sliced aubergine in flour, so the oil doesn’t seep into them”. A kindred spirit is Italian chef Gennaro Contaldo. He agrees frying gives “the best flavour”, but it isn’t the only option: “Bake them, grill them, they both work fantastically.” Either treatment is ideal for Vivek Singh’s Hyderabadi aubergine curry inspired dish. The founder of the Cinnamon Collection cuts long, thin aubergines in half, scores the flesh, then sprinkles them with salt, chilli powder, turmeric, fennel, ajwain…

1 HAITI Weekend of violence puts government future in doubt The future of Haiti’s government appeared increasingly uncertain early this week, after armed gangs attacked the country’s international airport and freed more than 3,800 prisoners last weekend in what appeared to be a coordinated effort to topple the prime minister, Ariel Henry. Officials declared a three-day state of emergency and imposed a nightly curfew in an effort to calm the growing unrest but national police were outgunned, and senior officials – including Henry, who is also acting president – were outside the country. The measures came after a deadly weekend that marked a new low in Haiti’s spiral of violence. But just hours after the decree, gunmen launched a new attack on the country’s main airport on Monday, exchanging fire with…

Even as dehydration was getting to their passengers, the traffickers using boats to carry hundreds of Rohingya away from refugee camps in Bangladesh thrust phones into their hands and demanded they ask their relatives for money. It was only after 28-year-old Rehana Begum’s relatives had paid almost $2,500 to the traffickers that they agreed to continue their journey, but a few days later, still onboard the boat, she fell unconscious and later died from dehydration. Death, abuse and torture are common features of the journeys provided by a growing network of traffickers. They offer an escape from deteriorating conditions in Bangladesh refugee camps, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya – a mostly Muslim ethnic minority – were forced to flee after being expelled from Myanmar. Rohingya trafficking victims and their…

Last week, Joe Biden said he believed that a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas could soon be reached. But while talks continued this week, there was no respite in Gaza. Still, hopes remained that an agreement could be finalised before the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. What might a deal look like? Last Saturday, a senior US official told reporters that “the path to a ceasefire right now, literally at this hour, is straightforward”. They added: “We’re working around the clock to see if we can get this in place here over the coming week.” Some of the key parameters included: Which hostages would be released of those still alive in Gaza, estimated to be fewer than 100. The senior US official said Israel appeared to…

Alexei Navalny lay in an open casket in a Moscow church last Friday under a bed of roses, carnations and chrysanthemums, his face pale in candlelight, surrounded by grieving relatives and supporters. Despite appearances, it was anything but a normal funeral. His mother, Lyudmila, in a black headscarf and sunglasses, had just returned from wresting his body from Russian investigators in the Arctic. Many of those closest to the late opposition leader were not there at all. Absent was Navalny’s wife, Yulia, who has vowed to carry on her husband’s work, and can no longer be in Russia without risking charges of “extremism”. Her message of farewell was conveyed in an Instagram post, using the common Russian nickname for Alexei. “Lyosha, thank you for 26 years of absolute happiness,” she…

When the Ugandan musician turned politician Bobi Wine ran for president, his 2020 campaign was thwarted by violent crackdowns by Yoweri Museveni’s regime. Since the election, Bobi Wine – whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu – and his wife, Barbie, say that, from phone tapping to abductions of his supporters, things have been “pretty much the same” in many ways. With one key difference: the release of the feature documentary Bobi Wine: The People’s President. Shot over five years, the film is a profile of Wine’s rise in politics and his run for the presidency, during which he endures military detention, torture and the loss of people close to him. The film was nominated for a Bafta and is up for best documentary feature at the Oscars. Moses Bwayo,…

Every winter when the temperatures drop, the IJsmeester (ice master) in villages around the Netherlands carefully starts to flood a field with water to form enough thin layers of ice to create a perfect outdoor skating rink. Now a Dutch startup wants to use the same technique to help solve a major ecological problem: melting Arctic ice and its devastating effect on the climate. “In cold weather, the IJsmeesters start a frantic race to be the first village that can organise an ice-skating marathon,” said Fonger Ypma, chief executive of Arctic Reflections. “They flood a meadow with a thin layer that becomes ice, and every night they apply more thin layers on top. And then, once it’s thick enough, they start skating. It’s our cultural heritage.” Arctic ice is shrinking…

THE OPENING bars of the Cossack March rang out from the platform speakers at Zaporizhzhia-1 train station, jaunty trumpets transitioning into a rousing military march, heralding the departure of train number four, the 17.53 to Uzhhorod. Carriage attendants slammed shut the heavy metal doors, a few people on the platform waved forlorn goodbyes in the evening gloom, and the train clattered off on its journey across the entire breadth of Ukraine, a 1,400km ride from close to the frontline all the way to the border with the European Union. In the two years since Vladimir Putin’s invasion, the railways have been Ukraine’s lifeline, connecting cities and carrying millions of people to safety. Train number four has 10 carriages, nine with second-class, four-bed sleeper compartments, and one luxury carriage of two-bed…

There’s a flaw in the plan. It’s not a small one: it is an Earth-sized hole in our calculations. To keep pace with the global demand for food, crop production needs to grow by at least 50% by 2050. In principle, if nothing else changes, this is feasible, thanks mostly to improvements in crop breeding and farming techniques. But everything else is going to change. Even if we set aside all other issues – heat impacts, soil degradation, epidemic plant diseases accelerated by the loss of genetic diversity – there is one that, without help from any other cause, could prevent the world’s people from being fed. Water. A paper published in 2017 estimated that to match crop production to expected demand, water use for irrigation would have to increase…

In an extended dialogue between Marilynne Robinson and Barack Obama, published a few years ago in the New York Review of Books, Obama homes in on the dimension of Robinson’s writing that makes her so unusual as a 21st-century literary figure. “You’re a novelist,” he observes, “but you’re also – can I call you a theologian? Does that sound, like, too stuffy? You care a lot about Christian thought.” Robinson wears her faith on the sleeves of most of her books. In the epic Gilead series, she probes with forensic subtlety the religious preoccupations – and doubts – of two fictional midwest pastors. More recently, in collections of essays such as What Are We Doing Here?, she combines theology with cultural commentary to explore what her vision of a Christian…

Across 5 Northern peninsula (11) 7 Skating arena (4) 8 Cut of meat on bone – old puppet (4,4) 9 Horizon arc (7) 11 Hot (temper?) (5) 13 Straightforward (5) 14 Capital of Lithuania (7) 16 High voice (8) 17 Trio (anag.) (4) 18 Stab (someone) in the back (6-5) Down 1 Sycamore skin? (4) 2 Flatter (7) 3 Japanese cartoon (5) 4 Banishment (8) 5 CH (11) 6 Weight system (11) 10 Curved surface of liquid, caused by surface tension (8) 12 Split (7) 15 Follow – stem (5) 17 Castle (4) Solution No 16,783 Guardian Puzzles & Crosswords Access over 15,000 puzzles on our app. Download from the App Store or Google Play. Read more: theguardian.com/puzzles-app…

POLITICS Sunak speech fails to dampen ‘Islamophobia’ row Sadiq Khan condemned Rishi Sunak for failing to call out “racist, anti-Muslim and Islamophobic” remarks by a senior Tory MP, following an address by the prime minister last Friday in which he criticised political extremists. In a blunt response to Sunak’s unusual speech, the London mayor said the prime minister had still not fully addressed the nature of the remarks made last month by former Tory vice-chair Lee Anderson, who said Islamists had “got control” of Khan and London. Khan, one of the most powerful Muslims in public life, warned that the past few weeks had seen “a concerted and growing attempt by some to degrade and humiliate minorities for political and electoral gain”. It followed a fractious week in which the…

The tumours that kept growing in her chest were cut out three times before Noor Saimun, a Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh, was tested for cancer. By the time it was diagnosed, the cancer had spread from her breast throughout her body. Saimun now spends her days incapacitated by pain, lying on the floor of her bamboo shelter. Around her, many of her neighbours suffer other types of non-communicable and chronic illnesses – cancers, diabetes and hypertension – but they often go without treatment and the tools they need to manage their conditions. “My life is meaningless, I can’t move anywhere, I can’t do anything,” said Saimun. “I sit here in pain, I can’t even get up to eat. I spend my whole day lying in bed. I can’t explain how…

Across Myanmar, the young and middle aged, both men and women, are desperately searching for ways to flee their homes, after it was announced the military junta will impose a mandatory conscription law from mid-April. The law, which would force people to serve a military many despise, has sent a wave of terror across the country. Passport offices and embassies in Myanmar have been flooded with applications, with a queue of more than a thousand people on a single day trying to secure a visa for neighbouring Thailand. Helplines offering advice on ways to leave the country – how to manage checkpoints, what documents are needed – have been inundated. “If I joined the military, I would have to fight my own people. I do not want to do that,”…

China held its most high-profile annual political gathering this week as thousands of delegates arrived in Beijing for the Two Sessions, a closely observed series of meetings that laid out the government’s policy blueprint for the year ahead. The gathering came against a backdrop of major economic headwinds, decreasing transparency on government indicators, and growing concern among international business and investors. The event began on Monday as China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), convened alongside a separate but parallel meeting of the country’s top political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). The nearly 3,000 NPC delegates can amend the constitution, enact new legislation, approve the government budget and fill vacancies in state offices. But in reality the NPC is a rubber-stamp parliament. It has never voted…

The claim by a former government minister last week that parts of London and Birmingham with large Muslim populations are “no-go areas” has highlighted the enduring myth that there are UK neighbourhoods and towns unsafe for white people. Paul Scully, the MP for Sutton and Cheam in Greater London, later retracted his suggestion that Tower Hamlets and Sparkhill were unsafe for non-Muslims to enter, made during a BBC interview about allegations of anti-Muslim sentiments within the Conservative party. But he also defended invoking the Islamophobic trope on the grounds that people told him they perceived there to be a threat. Scully has since announced that he will stand down at the next election. Rightwing politicians and commentators in the US, the UK and Europe have promoted the notion of such…

If architects are people who like to think their way around challenges, building schools in Burkina Faso must be the dream job. The challenges, after all, are legion: scorching temperatures in the high seasons, limited funds, materials, electricity and water, and clients who are vulnerable and young. How do you keep a building cool under a baking sun when there is no air conditioning? Architect Diébédo Francis Kéré grew up in the small village of Gando and knows the challenges well. He and other architects such as Albert Faus are finding ingenious ways to use cheap materials to make sure that the schools and orphanages that they have built around Burkina Faso are cool, welcoming places. Kéré, who won the Pritzker prize in 2022, has spoken movingly about the support…

Japanese audiences could have been forgiven for bracing themselves when Disney announced Shōgun, a 10-part adaptation of James Clavell’s classic 1975 novel. With few exceptions, Hollywood depictions of Japan and the Japanese have relied on one-dimensional characters whose purpose is to confirm cultural stereotypes, set against the backdrop of an inscrutable archipelago whose people have much to learn from the western hero. But Shōgun, which began airing late last month, may have broken the mould, with FX’s high-budget series winning plaudits in Japan not only for its lavish production values and illustrious Japanese cast, but also its respect for the smallest details of the country’s culture and politics. In echoes of previous Japan themed productions – such as Lost in Translation and Mr Baseball – Shōgun draws heavily on the…

Wearing an olive-green jacket over a black shirt, Steve Bannon blew the doors off a subject most other speakers had tiptoed around. “Media, I want you to suck on this, I want the White House to suck on this: you lost in 2020!” he roared. “Donald Trump is the legitimate president of the United States!” A thrill of transgression swept through the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the National Harbor in Maryland. “Trump won!” Bannon barked, pointing a finger. “Trump won!” he repeated, shaking a fist. His audience chanted the brazen lie. It was a blunt reminder that Bannon, an architect of Trumpism variously compared to Thomas Cromwell, Rasputin and Joseph Goebbels, remains a force in American politics, as the 2024 US presidential election looms into…

There is a joke in the first season of the HBO show Hacks, pitched by Hannah Einbinder’s gen Z character, Ava, to her boomer employer, Deborah Vance: “I had a horrible nightmare that I got a voicemail,” she says. Ha – gen Z hates voicemail; boomers don’t understand jokes without punchlines. “What?” shrieks Jean Smart’s Vance. Ha – everyone’s disgusting, and no single generation will give an inch to another. Sorry to insert gen X into the mix, but in the context of this particular flashpoint, we need to talk about voice memos. (Or audio messages, or voice texts, not to be confused with voice-to-text, which is something else entirely – all right, Grandma?) It started, for me, a few years ago, with friends leaving voice memos because they were…

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 Nations wring their hands while selling weapons Peter Beaumont’s article on the war in Gaza reminded me of second world war refugees with whom my family became friends in the 1950s (Big story, 16 February). They had settled on a farm near Sarnia, Ontario,…

‘It ended how I wanted it to end,” says Edward Enninful firmly, speaking a few days after his final issue as editor-in-chief of British Vogue hit the shelves. The parting cover is a paean to Enninful’s past, and his achievements at the magazine, but now his eyes are fixed on the future. His next venture is an unexpected move away from fashion and London – his take on Robert Mapplethorpe, in a show at Thaddaeus Ropac gallery in Paris. Enninful declines to discuss a rumoured rift with Vogue supremo Anna Wintour, but in his six and half years at the magazine, he set a string of precedents, including British Vogue’s first trans cover star, Paris Lees, and its oldest, an 85-year-old Judi Dench in June 2020. “Inclusivity and diversity weren’t…

London, England, UK Before the deciduous trees come into leaf, walking underneath them is dizzying. It is like moving through a large, deconstructed nest – one that expands from tree to tree. Without leaves, the nest is airy and flooded with light, made from whole branches and lined with the sky. The trees lose some of their familiarity when leaves do not reveal their names, and it is their silhouettes that speak. A crown of fine twigs reveals a beech. The horse chestnut’s branches, upturned at the ends, hang like chandeliers. There is an invitation to drift under all this uplift, to trace new pathways through wooden cobwebs. A large English oak draws me to a standstill. I am caught in the web as I follow the outstretched branches. High…