Innehållsförteckning för 7th January 2022 från Guardian Weekly

Richard Leakey Kenyan conservationist and fossil hunter whose groundbreaking discoveries helped prove that humankind evolved in Africa. He died on 2 January, aged 77. John Madden NFLcoach turned sportscaster. He died on 28 December, aged 85. Edward O Wilson US naturalist known to some as the “modern-day Darwin”. He died on 26 December, aged 92. Betty White Veteran American actor and star of hit TV comedy The Golden Girls. She died on 31 December, aged 99. Harry Reid Democratic senator of Nevada who shepherded Obamacare on its passage into law. He died on 28 December, aged 82. Jean-Marc Vallée Canadian film director who made The Dallas Buyers Club and the TV series Big Little Lies. He died on 26 December, aged 58.…

In late July 2021, Robert Garry, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane medical school in Louisiana, got a call from his university management, telling him that agents from the FBI and CIA had requested a chat about his research into the origins of Covid-19. Garry agreed and three agents flew down to Louisiana to talk to him in person. “I presented my evidence to the agents, who were properly trained scientists themselves. They asked all the right questions,” Garry said. “I told them: there is no way this virus could have been a manufactured weapon. There is also no evidence to suggest it was a lab leak. But I’m also conscious there are people out there who will always disagree.” Their conversation came two months after Joe Biden…

The conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell on sex-trafficking charges last week has increased the scrutiny of others who worked for or socialised with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein for years, and their knowledge of the pair’s activities. Attention has largely focused on prominent male associates of Epstein, including Prince Andrew, who faces a civil suit brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Giuffre alleges he had sex with her on three occasions two decades ago when, aged 17, she had been sexually trafficked by Epstein, allegations Andrew vehemently denies. Four Epstein employees and assistants were described in a 2007 non-prosecution agreement as “potential co-conspirators” when Epstein pleaded guilty to solicitation in Florida in return for a lenient sentence. Giuffre has said she hopes Maxwell’s conviction “is not the end but rather another step in…

Spectacular fireworks lit up the summer sky and the air filled with the smell of sulphur as trails of smoke descended on the crowds in Tiananmen Square. The throng cheered enthusiastically. “Go Beijing, go China, go Olympics,” they chanted. The collective pride was palpable. It was shortly after the opening cere mony of the Beijing Olympics, which began at 8:08pm on 8 August 2008; the Chinese believe eight is auspicious. That evening, Chinese-Ameri can Kaiser Kuo was watching from the balcony of his apartment in Beijing. “It was meant to be impressive, and watching as a Chinese person, it certainly was: all the pageantry of history, the flawless performances, the grand scale,” Kuo says. “But watching through my western eyes, this spectacular event also played into a sense of fear:…

Nicole Kidman sleeps badly. Recently she got up at 3am to Google that thing, with the leg, where, “It feels like it needs to move?” But often she will lie there in the dark beside her husband, in her Nashville bed, their two daughters sleeping some rooms away, and make decisions. Between midnight and seven, she says, is the most “confronting time”. It says a lot about Kidman, her prolific career, her sustained presence on film and glossy TV, that we can immediately picture her there, hair coiled on a pillow, eyes wide open. Kidman, 54, has been acting since she was 14. She started in theatre, and a year later she was already making a name locally. Over the next 40 years she extended that repertoire, and is known…

In the final section of Hanya Yanagihara’s tripartite novel, there is an episode that functions as an emblem of the book’s intricately assembled themes and intensely anxious preoccupations. Having already been immersed in narratives set in the 19th and 20th centuries, the reader is now taken far into the 21st, an era in which pandemics sweep the globe in waves, each time altering the civic and political order. As a new virus threatens to take hold, a mother isolates her twin sons, survivors of an earlier sickness that has left them so immuno-compromised they can never again leave the house. After she herself succumbs, and they run out of food, they venture outside, and die. The scientist who discovers their bodies wonders why they didn’t call for help, hypothesising that…

Buried in the 10 January 2020 edition of Guardian Weekly was a small but significant story. “Respiratory contagion is not Sars, authorities say” was the headline on a short global report, at the foot of page 7, about a mysterious infection in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. Two years on, it’s fair to say we now know a little more than we did about that mysterious illness. But the broader context of the pandemic can still be tricky to understand. This week, the Guardian’s data and visuals teams have collaborated to produce some beautiful graphics and analysis, revealing the pandemic’s global impact in a new light. Then, our China affairs correspondent, Vincent Ni, explores why, after two years, the search for Covid’s origins remains shrouded in politics and confusion.…

ARCHAEOLOGY CT scans digitally ‘unwrap’ remains of young pharaoh With his narrow chin, small nose and curly hair, he resembles his father, said Sahar Saleem, a radiologist. Perhaps surprisingly for someone who lived 3,500 years ago, he also has strikingly good teeth. Saleem, a professor at Cairo University, is part of a team that digitally unwrapped the mummified body of the pharaoh Amenhotep I. The results, using 3D computed tomography (CT) scan s, provide details about his appearance and the lavishness of the jewellery he was buried with after his death, thought to be around 1504BC. “Amenhotep I was approximately 35 years old when he died,” Saleem said. “He was approximately 169cm tall, circumcised, and had good teeth. Within his wrappings, he wore 30 amulets and a unique golden girdle…

PLUS Return to the source What we know – and what we may never know – about Covid’s origins Page 13 Cases across the world Europe and the Americas have recorded the most cases throughout the pandemic Source: Our World in Data. Different countries' methodologies for counting Covid-19 may differ from each other. Testing rates differ across the world and influence case rates Consequences and interventions High-income countries have recorded the most deaths throughout the pandemic – but vaccines have changed the picture Source: Our World in Data. As countries have different methodologies for counting and reporting a Covid-19 death, these numbers need to be interpreted with care 5m Number of people who are recorded as having died with a Covid-19 infection 8.8bn Number of Covid-19 vaccine doses administered to…

One evening a week, Natasha Msweswe and Zanele Madasi leave their children at home and patrol the streets of Thembokwezi. They return at midnight. It is potentially dangerous but they feel they have little choice. “We want to protect our community,” said Madasi, 31. “We want to make a difference.” Thembokwezi is a neighbour-hood of Khayelitsha, a sprawling, overcrowded township overlooked by Table Mountain that has long been infamous for high levels of gang violence, drug abuse and unemployment. South African police are stretched thin and so a network of neighbourhood watch organisations play a key role in fighting crime here. Thembokwezi is more prosperous and safer than much of the township, and those who live here want to keep it that way. “We work with the police … but…

Not for nothing is the parish church of the Spanish village of Villamorón known as the Cathedral of the Moorland. For eight centuries, the church of Saint James the Apostle has held out in the northern wilds of Castillay León, a Romanesque-creeping-into-Gothic treasure that sits amid endless fields and at the edge of a village that gave up the ghost almost 50 years ago. Around it, save for a handful of renovated holiday homes, crouch the roofless, broken-backed houses whose gaping doorways and rotting beams offer a mute lesson in depopulation and demographic shifts. Although the church stopped being used as a place of worship in the late 1970s, it could yet help reverse Villamorón’s decline. A campaign group, the Friends of Villamorón, is working to undo the damage caused…

Though at times it can feel hard to believe, this pandemic will not last for ever. With more than 5 million dead and huge economic and social costs, its toll has been immense, and unnecessarily so. Secrecy in China, complacency in Europe, reckless rightwing populism in the US and Brazil, and the inequity in vaccine distribution have all contributed. Yet if we learn its lessons, we will be better prepared next time. For there will be a next time. A pandemic of similar scale is likely within the next six decades, and could happen at any time, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in August; others have put the risk of a comparable crisis within the next decade at around one in four.…

For Paul Bowles, the Sahara was “one of the last great terrae incognitae left on this shrinking planet”. His 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky was inspired by the desert’s “intensely poetic” dunes and in an essay he described its impact on him: “In this wholly mineral landscape lighted by stars like flares, even memory disappears; nothing is left but your own breathing and the sound of your heart beating.” It is, said Bowles, “a continent within a continent”, with its own mountain ranges, plains, valleys and volcanic craters. And yet its lakes are made of salt and its forests are petrified fossils. For most of this lunar landscape is without vegetation or even soil. But it has not always been like this. Martin Williams, a professor of earth sciences at…

QUIZ Thomas Eaton 1 Whose albums have an average title of 23.75? 2 Pull, aim, squeeze and sweep is the drill for operating what? 3 Who flew Jason from Croydon to Australia? 4 Deposed in 1974,who was the last monarch of the Solomonic dynasty? 5 Which planet rotates on its side? 6 Lagomorphs are hares, rabbits and which other animal? 7 Which sport has a 107% rule? 8 Who founded the Left Book Club in 1936? What links: 9 Oriental, Co-operative and Bolivarian Republics; Plurinational State? 10 Tabla; tabor; taiko; tapan; tasha? 11 Alan Clark; Caligula; Stephen Ward; Quentin Crisp; Joseph Merrick? 12 Spitsbergen; Nordaustlandet; Edgeøya? 13 Memory tag; age identifier; random letters? 14 Christopher Marlowe; George Villiers; George Cornell? 15 More Than a Feeling; Take My Breath Away; If…

Two years ago this week, as New Year’s Eve fireworks lit up skies across the world, news reached the World Health Organization about an outbreak of “pneumonia” in Wuhan, China, the cause of which was unknown. There had been several cases in December, and possibly as far back as November, in the region. But the subsequent announcement by the WHO was the first time the world at large was made aware of their existence. At first, the announcement garnered little public attention: like the fireworks that had preceded the announcement, fears of potential diseases usually just flared then faded. But as it turned out, the disease that came to be known as Covid-19 was something entirely different. In the two years since, more than 5 million people worldwide have lost…

At the cafe that doubles as a newsagent in Galliano di Mugello, a medieval hamlet in Tuscany, there are no pings from mobile phones, people aimlessly browsing the internet or uploading pictures of their cappuccino to Instagram. Instead, customers read the newspaper – their main source of information on the outside world – or talk to each other. Surrounded by Tuscany’s postcard - -perfect cypress trees and rolling hills, Galliano would be a haven for those wanting a digital detox. But the absence of mobile phone coverage is a much less endearing quirk for the 1,300 or so inhabitants, who are starting to rise up against not being able to make a call, send a text or Google search on their handsets. “Look at this,” said Daniela Suggelli as she…

Michael has come to regard the United States, the nation of which he has been a citizen all his life, as an abusive parent. “I can acknowledge my past association with that person while at the same time wanting to keep future association to a minimum,” he said. Michael – the name is false as he requested anonymity to avoid being inundated with hate mail – found his disaffection with his native country reach crunch point in 2020. The chaotic end of the Donald Trump era combined with the inequities exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic made him despair of being an American. “Coronavirus made me realise that, in the US, if you’re not a member of the moneyed elite, you’re left to fend for yourself with virtually no help from…

1. The increase in speed, switching and filtering in our daily lives Your attention starts to collapse if you go too fast, you switch between tasks too much, or you are bombarded with so much stimuli you have to mentally filter a lot of it out. 2. The crippling of our flow states A flow state is when you are doing one thing and you get immersed in it, and your sense of time and ego fall away. It’s the deepest form of attention – and it’s being deeply disrupted at the moment. 3. The rise of physical and mental exhaustion Sleep and rest are essential for focus – and we are doing far less of both. 4. The collapse of sustained reading The practice of reading books trains us…

English class head to Ireland in Brexit twist I’m an English teacher at a German secondary school. For the past 12 years, I’ve taken my A-level class to England for a week-long trip (Big story, Brexit one year on, 31 December). We spent a lot of money on those trips: four nights in a hotel, meals, theatre visits, guided tours, plus the money the students would spend on food and shopping. It was always possible to go to the UK because I could take all the students, even th ose with a non-European passport. However, this has changed. Students with a non-European passport have to apply for a visa and pay the fees. Or stay at home. So, with a somewhat heavy heart, I booked a trip to Dublin. Karen…

A round-up of the best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson Stephenson opens about 10 years in the future, on a day when the air in Houston is too hot to support planes. This means the private jet flown by the queen of the Netherlands must be diverted, on the way to a meeting with a Texas billionaire who has a radical plan to cool the planet. How it could work, how it does work, why not everyone is pleased by this privately financed feat of geoengineering and how they might foil it comprises the plot. It’s an absorbing speculative fiction about our climate crisis. The Actual Star by Monica Byrn e In her second novel, Byrne braids together three storylines, each set a thousand…

Prep 15 min Cook 45 min Serves 4 VEGAN Ingredients For the ‘meatballs’ 1 x 400g tin borlotti beans, drained and rinsed60g panko breadcrumbs50ml boiling water2 tbsp vegan bouillon, or stock powder2 tsp vegan gravy granules1 tsp Marmite25g vegan butter or margarine1 medium onion, peeled and finely chopped85g shiitake mushrooms, finely chopped½ tsp fine sea salt½ tsp ground black pepper⅛ tsp ground nutmeg¼ tsp allspice1 tbsp vegetable oilFinely chopped parsley, to serveLingonberry or cranberry sauce, to serveFor the gravy40g vegan butter3 tbsp plain white flour380ml vegetable stock150ml unsweetened and unflavoured soy milk Don’t be tempted to mash the beans to oblivion – you want them a chunky texture – so I’d advise against using a food processor. A or potato masher should do the job. Method In a medium bowl,…