Indholdsfortegnelse for 10 May 2024 i Guardian Weekly

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The 40 sq metre apartment had everything Hamado Dipama was looking for: one bedroom, a bath and a good location in the southern German city of Augsburg. When he called to set up a viewing, however, the landlord kept asking him where he was from. “It was bizarre,” said Dipama. “I told him that I didn’t know what that had to do with his rental. And he hung up on me.” Dipama, originally from Burkina Faso, swiftly realised he had overlooked a stipulation listed plainly in the 2019 newspaper advert: “Germans Only.” It was a window – albeit far more overt than usual – into the kind of discrimination that racialised minorities across Europe have long faced in the housing market. In recent years, as cities across the European Union…

“To interpret these protests as antisemitic or pro-Palestinian is to miss the essence of what’s going on I’ve been spending the last several weeks trying to find out what’s really going on with the campus protests. I’ve met with students at Berkeley, where I teach. I’ve visited with faculty at Columbia. I’ve spoken by phone with young people and professors at many other universities. My conclusion: while protest movements attract an assortment of people with a range of motives, this one is centred on one thing – moral outrage at the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people in Gaza. To interpret these protests as anything else – as antisemitic or anti-Zionist or anti-American or pro-Palestinian – is to miss the essence of what’s going on and why. Most…

Nick Malyon was seduced by neon lighting at the end of the 1980s while travelling in America. He left home after failing his A-levels and doing a disastrous four-year stint as a vintage car salesman in London. “I was introduced to a sign painter and a neon signmaker, and it seemed like an alternative life-style to the one I’d left behind. On my return to the UK, I was probably attempting to carry on some American dream by training, but I loved the weird alchemy of illuminating a piece of bent glass tubing – the change from nothing to something.” Malyon’s art is on display this month during London Craft Week (LCW). His work will represent one of the many endangered crafts on show this year. “Over the centuries, crafts…

Rafael Soares’s phone rang and his blood froze. “Ronnie Lessa Googled you,” a federal police contact on the other end of the line told the Brazilian reporter as he stood in his newsroom one morning in 2019. Any Rio crime journalist worth their salt knew that being investigated by such a man was extremely bad news. Lessa was reputedly one of the city’s most in-demand contract killers, a battle-hardened police combatant turned assassin. Some called Lessa “Perneta” – one leg – because of a bomb attack in which he lost his left limb. A former colleague called him “a killing machine”. “I freaked out … my hands went cold,” Soares said of his source’s telephone warning. “I didn’t tell anyone. Not my mum, not my wife. No one.” But despite…

Opposite the Nigerian National Museum in central Lagos, a swimming pool and a memorial hall once stood as an integral part of the city, a popular congregation point that evoked a sense of pride. This year, decades after the compound fell into disrepair, a new pool is opening to the public alongside a state-of-the-art museum dedicated to Yoruba culture. The John Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History, which describes itself as “a fitting symbol of the multiplicity of identities in the metropolis”, is in the Onikan area, the cultural heart of Lagos island. Unlike the National Museum, built in the late 1950s on a western model, the centre is “unapologetically Yoruba”, according to Seun Oduwole, the site’s lead architect. “If you go to a western museum, the African section…

If the 20th-century space race was about political power, this century’s will be about money. But for those who dream of sending humans back to the moon and possibly Mars, it’s an exciting time to be alive whether it’s presidents or billionaires paying the fare. Space flight is having a renaissance moment, bringing a fresh energy not seen since the days of the Apollo programme and, for the first time, with private companies rather than governments leading the charge. A series of recent milestone missions, not least the increasingly successful test flights of the largest rocket ever made and the first privately built probe to land on the lunar surface, have embedded a growing idea that humans are entering what has been termed the “third space age”. “To say we’re…

In these times of planetary polycrisis, we try to get our bearings by looking to the past. Are we perhaps in The New Cold War, as Robin Niblett, the former director of the foreign affairs thinktank Chatham House, proposes in a new book? Is this bringing us towards the brink of a third world war, as the historian Niall Ferguson has argued? Or is the world beginning to resemble the late 19th-century Europe of competing empires and great powers writ large? Another way of trying to put our travails into historically comprehensible shape is to label them as an “age of …”, with the words that follow suggesting either a parallel with or a sharp contrast to an earlier age. So the CNN foreign affairs guru Fareed Zakaria suggests in…

‘I remember this street being covered with hundreds of these all over the floor,” says George Georgiou, handing me an original smiley-face flyer he designed for the acid house club night Shoom. “I wish I’d picked them up because now they sell for up to a grand.” The doorway we’re standing outside in London Bridge is one of many locations we’ll visit today, as Georgiou places acid house heritage plaques outside buildings that were once home to clubs such as Shoom, The Trip, Raw and Sin. These locations are then tagged on an interactive acid house map on his website. We kick off the day 15 minutes’ walk away on Tooley Street, where the Special Branch club began life in 1984. It was here that resident DJs Nicky Holloway and Pete…

How do you quiet a warring soul? Every one of Sarah Perry’s novels has grappled lavishly with this question. Fate v free will; doubt v certainty; science v God. The metaphysical battleground is Perry’s literary terrain. She cannot seem to escape its gravitational pull, nor the estuarine mud of her home county. And so it seems only fitting that the Essex author’s new novel, Enlightenment, is a tale of orbits, collisions and other cosmic ellipses: inescapable loops. We begin in the winter of 1997 in the fictional riverside village of Aldleigh, a version of Chelmsford, where Perry grew up. This was a decisive year for Britain: the year of Tony Blair and the New Labour landslide, the handover of Hong Kong, and Princess Diana’s funeral pageantry. But the only event…

Across 1 Tap disc – user of tap! (6) 4 Pip-squeak (6) 8 Roans (anag.) – arson (anag.) (5) 9 Cavil (7) 10 Petrol additive (7) 11 Large US state (5) 12 Technique where 24 acrosses are inlaid into wood, for decoration (9) 17 US youth? (5) 19 Crime (7) 21 German architectural style (7) 22 Totem (anag.) (5) 23 Bather (anag.) (6) 24 Attractive appearance that covers true nature or feelings (6) Down 1 Japanese condiment (6) 2 Word with same meaning (7) 3 Bird of prey’s nest (5) 5 Group of five players (7) 6 Where emails arrive (5) 7 Belief in at least one God (6) 9 Petulant (9) 13 Read someone the __, formally warn (4,3) 14 River that flows to the East China Sea (7)…

1 ISRAEL/GAZA Ceasef ire hopes in balance as Rafah strikes begin Prospects for a ceasefire in the seven-month Israel-Hamas war were in the balance this week as talks continued in Cairo and Israeli military forces took control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt. Aid officials in the territory said the flow of aid through the crossing had been halted. The Israeli military also began conducting targeted strikes against Hamas in Rafah, after calling for Palestinians in several neighbourhoods to leave for an “expanded humanitarian area” to the west and north of the city before a ground incursion. The Israeli operation took place before a fresh round of indirect negotiations on a ceasefire in Cairo after Hamas leaders indicated on Monday night that they would accept…

Decades in the making, Europe’s housing crisis is being felt from the Netherlands to Portugal, Greece to Germany, and in Britain. Prices and rents have soared, availability and affordability have plunged and housing has become a political issue. Between 2010 and 2022, property prices across the 27-member bloc surged by 47%, according to a 2023 Eurostat report. In some countries they almost trebled: Estonia recorded a 192% rise. Only in two member states, Italy and Cyprus, did they decline. Rents, meanwhile, rose by an average 18% over the same period, increasing in every single EU member state except Greece (where they have risen by 37% since 2018). Some of the biggest increases were in the Baltic state of Lithuania, up 144%, and Ireland, up 84%. Partly as a consequence, the…

The finale of Beethoven’s “revolutionary” fifth symphony was met with deafening applause at the National Opera and Ballet Theatre in Tbilisi last Thursday night. The cheers grew into a powerful expression of solidarity with the protests outside. People hung EU flags from the theatre’s balconies and shouted: “No to the Russian law! Europe! Georgia!” They were responding to the Georgian parliament’s decision the previous day to push ahead with a second reading for a controversial bill that would oblige NGOs, civil rights groups and media organisations to register as “foreign agents” if more than 20% of their funding comes from abroad. Protesters say the law is inspired by Russian authoritarian legislation and could be used to crush opposition ahead of an election later this year. The ruling party, Georgian…

As terrible council and mayoral results rolled in for the Conservatives last Friday, was there any part of Rishi Sunak that regretted sealing Boris Johnson’s fate as prime minister by resigning as his chancellor less than two years ago? This could have been Johnson’s defeat, hurtling towards a Labour landslide at a general election, with Sunak and his allies plotting how to replace him thereafter. Instead, Sunak has almost 500 disappointed councillors, panicking MPs and a scathing, sacked former cabinet minister, Suella Braverman, to contend with – on top of polls that suggest he is heading for defeat. Even his close ally Mark Harper could only muster an assurance that the general election was “not a foregone conclusion” for Labour. Adding to Sunak’s woes, the Sunday papers contained talk of…

Political attacks on press freedom, including the detention of journalists, suppression of independent media outlets and widespread dissemination of misinformation, have significantly intensified in the past year, according to the annual World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). The index ranks 180 countries on the ability of journalists to work and report freely and independently. In a year when more than half the world’s population will go to the polls in democratic elections, the RSF’s index shows an overall decline in press freedom globally and a steep rise in the political repression of journalists and independent media outlets. “RSF sees a worrying decline in support and respect for media autonomy and an increase in pressure from the state or other political actors,” said Anne Bocandé, RSF editorial…

At its glitzy 25th anniversary gala in Lausanne in March, the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) screened a slick montage highlighting how it had changed sport for the better. There were images of Muhammad Ali defying Parkinson’s to light the Olympic flame and Pelé lifting the World Cup, before a history lesson – and a promise. “Today Wada is a more representative, accountable and transparent organisation,” explained its director general, Olivier Niggli, “that truly has athletes at the heart of everything we do.” Not everyone in the room was buying it – one source felt it was too PR-focused, while another raised their eyebrows when Thomas Bach – the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) – and the former Wada president Sir Craig Reedie picked up awards. However, frustrations with…

I AM A CONSPIRACY THEORIST. I believe that groups of people conspire secretly against our interests to line their pockets, cover their backs or achieve political goals. By this definition I suspect you are, too. We see evidence of these conspiracies every day. We see them in the Horizon scandal, in which the Post Office kept prosecuting innocent operators. We see them in the UK government’s use of a “VIP” lane for procuring PPE from friends and donors at extortionate prices. We see them in the Windrush scandal, in which people were denied their legal rights and unlawfully deported by the UK government. In the Cambridge Analytica scandal: a secretive micro-targeting campaign likely to have influenced the Brexit vote. In the Panama Papers and the Pandora Papers, showing how the ultra-rich…

You may not be into snooker, dear reader. You may not be into sport. But really, this is not about sport. In losing last Wednesday to Stuart Bingham in the quarter-final of the World Snooker Championship, Ronnie O’Sullivan proved himself a contender for the world’s most sporting sports star. He may have lost, but in doing so he showed there are still standards in public life, and some people care about doing the right thing. Here’s what happened. Ronnie was leading by six frames to five, and he potted a black ball. When it was returned to its spot, it should have obstructed his next red ball, making it trickier for him to progress. But there was a tiny divot on the table, and the black ball wobbled ever so…

Arthur Hughes wants to go on adventures. “When I was little,” he says, “I loved films. I loved Jurassic Park. I loved Back to the Future. I loved things I probably wasn’t supposed to watch, like Predator. And then of course I loved all the Disney classics. To go to a world that isn’t your own is so exciting. I wanted to tell stories like that.” It was this desire that saw him first take to the stage in school plays, and then to eschew university in favour of drama school. “There was nothing else I wanted to do,” he says. The gamble paid off as he has landed some huge roles – including being the first disabled actor to play Richard III at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and co-starring…

Throughout the 500-plus pages of Dorian Lynskey’s overview of the art and literature of the end of the world, terrible things are done to the Earth. It is frozen, boiled, irradiated and desiccated. It is bombarded by asteroids, comets and rogue planets; volcanoes and earthquakes destroy it from within. The planet is depopulated, or overpopulated, then riven by pandemics, droughts and disease. The seas drain away or rise, drowning everything. Earth’s inhabitants are easy pickings for genocidal aliens, robots and artificial intelligences that artists have imagined along the way. In less skilled hands this 10-Arma-geddons-a-page pace might make for a depressing read, but Lynskey’s encyclopedic knowledge (we race from James Joyce to Joy Division, from Alan Turing to The Terminator), and his glee at the sheer inventiveness of the doomsayers’…

LOCAL ELECTIONS Results boost Labour hopes of general election win Labour is planning to target the south of England heavily at the general election as the local election results show some “blue wall” seats are turning red, Keir Starmer’s election chief has said. The shadow cabinet minister Pat McFadden said Labour was advancing in southern Tory heartlands and it was wrong to think the Lib Dems were the only challengers to the Conservatives in the south. Last Thursday’s local and mayoral elections had given Labour the “confidence and belief” that it can win a general election convincingly, he said. Rishi Sunak faces turmoil in his party after its heavy losses, as the former home secretary Suella Braverman said the prime minister’s “plan is not working”. Starmer hailed “seismic” results, including…

When student Lauren Brown first heard the commotion, including firecrackers, she assumed the sounds were coming from nearby frat houses. Then, at about four in the morning, she heard helicopters. Later, she awoke to news and footage of a violent attack by pro-Israeli protesters on an encampment set up to oppose the war in Gaza. “It was hard to watch,” said Brown, 19, a freshman at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose dorm was near the encampment. “And I wondered where the police were. I saw posts from people talking about them being teargassed and maced and campus security was just watching.” Eventually, a large police contingent did arrive and forcibly cleared the sprawling encampment. Flash-bangs were launched to disperse crowds gathered outside and more than 200 people were…

Anton* was on his way to work as a civilian volunteer in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Several men stopped him. They asked: “Can you show me your documents please?” One of the officers produced a tablet and scrolled down a list. He found Anton’s name. A single word was written next to it in red capital letters: ukhyliant, or draft dodger. The men took him to the nearest conscription office. That morning, Anton and his colleague Serhii were due to drive a truck full of humanitarian aid to a frontline zone. The two men – aged 32 and 31 – had been checked twice before, once outside a metro station, and on a second occasion while waiting for a tram. They received pieces of paper. The first was a…

For 50 years, Australian primary school students have been learning the steps to a dance that will carry them through social events and weddings and allow them to locate other Australians across crowded nightclubs anywhere in the world. Nowhere else do they do the Nutbush. But while almost every Australian knows the steps, no one knows who created the dance. Two professors – Panizza Allmark from Edith Cowan University in Western Australia and Jon Stratton from the University of South Australia – have narrowed down their search for the choreographer to a teacher’s conference in New South Wales in 1975. “What we seem to know is that there was a committee in the New South Wales education department that devised the idea of the Nutbush,” Stratton said. “Whether they devised…

As dawn broke last Saturday, thousands gathered outside Omaha’s CHI Health Center Arena. This is a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity”, said Larry Blivas, 70, near the front of the line. The realtor travelled from Los Angeles to see “an icon”, he said. “He’s a legend,” added Andrew Lee, 50, from New York. The masses had not descended to catch a weathered rock star’s farewell tour, but the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, a conglomerate, chaired by a nonagenarian billionaire: Warren Buffett, 93, was about to take the stage. Many of his loyal fans wonder how many more times he will appear, and what the future holds for Berkshire Hathaway – and Omaha. They call it “Woodstock for Capitalists”. For decades, tens of thousands of moneyed investors have flocked to the Nebraskan city…

The first passenger train from England to France carried Queen Elizabeth II to Calais on 6 May 1994. Trains carrying less exalted passengers would not set off until November of that year, and the more arresting image of English and French engineers shaking hands beneath the sea had come four years earlier. Officially, though, this week the Channel tunnel turns 30. It is almost too old to be going to nightclubs, and is starting to worry about its back. Its existence remains, by any sensible standard, astonishing: a physical link between Europe and its largest island, the first since the drowning of Doggerland around 6500BCE. It wasn’t just an engineering achievement, either, but a political one, the realisation of an idea discussed for nearly two centuries, and the moment that…

If you were an amateur cook (me), would you buy spices whole or ground ? Would you keep them for a month or a year ? And how would you use them? Add them at the beginning or mainly at the end? François, Paris, France The short answer is: all of the above, not least because spices are so easily available, and a very economical way of adding layers of flavour. At home, I buy spices in small jars or packets. Wherever possible, buy spices whole, then toast and grind as you need them, which is by far the best way to get maximum fragrance and flavour out of them. Lightly toast in a dry frying pan or spread out on an oven tray and toast in a 170C (150C…

Though common starfish (Asterias rubens) are easy to find in rockpools, they’re an unfamiliar sight on the pebbly shores of Hayling Island. So my curiosity was piqued last May when swimmers started mentioning that they’d spotted them clinging to the chains that anchor the swim zone marker buoys. When I swam out, there was no sign of the promised galaxy of echinoderms. I put it down to an unfavourable tide state, but the starfish remained elusive throughout summer and autumn. During winter and into spring, the water clarity has been poor and sea temperatures too cold to safely swim to the buoys, putting my quest on hold. But gale-force winds and powerful waves have battered the coast overnight, and when we gather for an early morning swim, we find the…

✱ All solutions published next week Across 1 151 + 10 confused customer? (6) 4 Exhibits left on board (6) 9 Terms of trade included tender (4) 10 How to make a round table in the cheapest manner? (3,7) 11 Very short dresses and short crimson pants (6) 12 Nervously making a bet (8) 13 Way of rising to beat a lost race (9) 15 Where to practise cricket catches (4) 16 Maybe Vietnam finally came to mind (4) 17 Details if I see in glasses (9) 21 Show cocaine smuggled into country by 3 on vacation? (8) 22 Very old literary festival turned away louts (6) 24 Debtor stuffing pennies into faulty socket (5,5) 25 Perhaps Morse caught over 500 people in the end (4) 26 Method of study?…