Innehållsförteckning för 1 April 2022 från Guardian Weekly

Up, up and away Hot air balloon enthusiasts gather at Milawa airfield for an early morning flight last weekend. More than 3,500 people – pilots, passengers and spectators – and one inflatable sloth travelled to King Valley in Victoria’s high country for the three-day festival celebrating this 239-year-old mode of transport. The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol 206 | Issue № 14 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 exist to hold power…

AT 3.50 ON THE COLD MORNING OF 24 FEBRUARY, Iryna Prud-kova, 50, received a message on Telegram from her daughter, Valeria, 24, who lives in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. “Are you listening to Putin?” Valeria’s message read. “That’s totally fucked up. There is a special military operation.” At 4.08am Valeria messaged again: “Mum, Kyiv is being shelled.” Sitting in her small flat on the first floor of a nine-storey apartment block in the leafy Kirovsky residential area of Mariupol, a port city on the Azov Sea, whose name has now passed into infamy, Iryna knew what she had to do. She had already packed a small bag containing money, some jewellery to trade for food and shelter, and documents. Her husband, Alexandr, 46, argued that they could stay a day or…

One month after Vladimir Putin asserted that Ukraine should be liberated from the historical mistake of its independence, the Russian defence ministry announced that Russia’s war aims were limited to the Donbas region, and nearing completion. This climbdown undoubtedly lays the groundwork for selling the operation as a success to the Russian public despite an abysmal military combat performance. But that does not mean a rapid end to the war. Having failed in its initial attempts to seize several Ukrainian cities, and with its logistics in disarray, Russia has been forced to focus on one target at a time. Mariupol has been the most recent main effort. Once that port city falls, Kharkiv is likely to be the next target, followed by an attempt to push north along the Dnieper…

Until the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Hungary’s general election campaign was dominated by such ruling party preoccupations as “traditional values” and protecting children from “LGBT propaganda”. Neither Russia nor Ukraine featured in the slogans of Viktor Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party or the opposition parties, which have united to dislodge him. But the war, the ensuing refugee exodus and the reshaping of Europe’s geopolitical calculations have dramatically altered the political context ahead of Hungary’s 3 April vote. Warmly received at the Kremlin just three weeks before the invasion, Orbán has had to condemn it, publicly distance himself from a decade-long friendship with Vladimir Putin and join Hungary’s EU partners in imposing punitive sanctions on Russia. Overt hostility to refugees has been a defining issue of Orbán’s rule, but on this too,…

It was supposed to be a visit to mark the Queen’s platinum jubilee – a chance to present the modern face of the British monarchy to a region where republican sentiment is on the rise. But it didn’t turn out that way. After the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge ended their week-long tour of the Caribbean last weekend, they will have reported back that it may have accelerated moves to ditch the Queen as head of state. Calls for slavery reparations and enduring fury about the Windrush scandal followed them across Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas – over-shadowing a trip aimed at strengthening the Commonwealth and discouraging other countries from following Barba-dos in becoming a republic. In Belize, the couple were met with protests from villagers over a land dispute…

I’m travelling with photographer Carlton Ward Jr through southwestern Florida. We’re following the path of the elusive Florida panther. Our chances to spot one are slim: scientists estimate that only 200 of them remain in the wild in the US. Lean and fawn-coloured, these carnivores once roamed across the southeastern US. At one point, the panther population dwindled to an estimated 20 individuals, bottlenecked in southwestern Florida. Ward, an accomplished conservation photographer and National Geographic explorer, has captured some of the most thrilling – and up close – images of the big cats, in hopes of drawing attention to their battle against extinction. The panthers require large swathes of contiguous habitat to hunt, mate and raise their offspring. Climate change and development are straining their already-fragmented habitat. Ward, an eighth-generation…

IN LATE SEPTEMBER 2021, Firas, his wife and four-month-old son have been checked in to a smart business hotel in London. With green velvet sofas in the lobby and pink orchids at reception, it seems designed to bathe visitors in an atmosphere of corporate calm; in sharp contrast, Firas, 32, a former guard at the British embassy in Kabul, exudes a jangling, nervous sense of distress. Six weeks after a dramatic evacuation from Afghanistan, he remains so shaken that he wakes most nights at 3am and paces the hotel corridors in tears. “I can’t concentrate on my new life. I’m too worried about the people I’ve left behind,” he says, bent over a table, head in his hands. A few miles away in another part of south London, Ali,…

Just how long has the British monarchy been in crisis? This time – after “Megxit”, after Prince Andrew – it was the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s disastrous trip to the Caribbean. What was supposed to be a “charm offensive”, drumming up enthusiasm in the year of the Queen’s platinum jubilee, ended up looking more like a long goodbye, with the headlines spotlighting anti-royal protests from Belize to the Bahamas, failures to address legacies of slavery, and the news that Jamaica is planning to ditch the Queen as head of state. It may well be time for the royal family to face up to the fact that the sun is setting on the Commonwealth realms, those final remnants of the empire that they once embodied – and not a moment…

Punchdrunk, the company that has for 20 years enthralled theatregoers by exploding traditional dramatic form and setting performers and audiences loose into the same vast, detailed, labyrinthine spaces, is taking on what might be the biggest, most fundamental story of them all – and one, alas, with terrible resonance in this particular moment. It is the siege of Troy: the subject of Homer’s Iliad, the focus of many Greek tragedies and, in many ways, the literary war that has, over millennia, served as a proxy for thinking about other, more recent conflicts. The Burnt City will be the company’s first show on a large scale in the UK since 2013, when it turned an old sorting office near Paddington station in London into a flyblown old Hollywood for The Drowned…

Nine years ago, NoViolet Bulawayo published her debut novel We Need New Names. This coming-of-age tale, which grew from her Caine prize-winning short story Hitting Budapest, features 10-year-old Darling and friends struggling to survive in a Zimbabwean shantytown. They do so with extraordinary resilience and humour; a thread that runs powerfully through her second novel, Glory. We Need New Names was widely acclaimed as a powerful story of displacement written in distinctive and poetic prose, and made Bulawayo the first Black African woman to be shortlisted for the Booker prize. The language in Glory is just as spellbinding, with added stylistic dexterity. Inspired by George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Glory is set in the animal kingdom of Jidada. After a 40-year rule, the “Old Horse” is ousted in a coup, along…

The rubbish collectors in Kharkiv wear flak jackets. Several of their trucks are peppered with shrapnel holes from shells that landed during their rounds. The bins they empty are packed with the shattered, twisted remains of homes destroyed by explosions. Every morning they go out to keep Kharkiv clean. Ukraine’s second city is perhaps the most shelled after besieged Mariupol. Every day brings a hail of Grad rockets, cluster bombs, shells and missiles. Hundreds are dead. The morgues cannot cope with the daily toll inflicted by Russia. At one city-centre facility, dozens of bodies, wrapped in plastic bags or blankets, are stacked in a courtyard. Yet Kharkiv’s people are determined that life must continue among the ruins, even if for now it is a terrifying half-existence in the shadow of…

Despite reaching one of the darkest moments in more than 40 years as a dissident and rights activist, Oleg Orlov says he has no plans to flee Russia. “Even though it’s never been so bad.” That’s saying something for Orlov, who can recall printing homemade anti-war posters in the late 1970s to protest against the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and was an observer and negotiator during the bloody war in Chechnya in the 1990s. He has been arrested three times since late February and doesn’t rule out a prison term. Tens of thousands of Russians have fled the country since it invaded Ukraine, fearing government repression and possible borders closures similar to during the Soviet Union. However, a devoted, diverse cadre has stayed to protest, post online, fund-raise and organise…

Kiril Petkov is not a typical Bulgarian prime minister. The 41-year-old probiotics entrepreneur and Harvard Business School graduate is a political newcomer. He could not be more different to Boyko Borissov, the burly former bodyguard who dominated Bulgarian politics for 12 years, until he resigned last year after months-long street protests against corruption. After three general elections in eight months, Petkov’s newly created We Continue the Change party swept to power at the head of a four-party coalition, vowing to tackle Bulgaria’s most pernicious problem: corruption. Petkov said he wanted to eradicate corruption. “I don’t say decreasing corruption, I say full eradication,” he said. “And I don’t think it’s so hard. Bulgaria has 6.5 million people – it’s not such a huge country – so what looks like an insurmountable…

‘At Warbrick as he crosses the height of summer, we would get maybe 4,000 people a day,” says James the bridge into Whakarewarewa, a tiny Māori village pocketed between hundreds of steaming, bubbling geo-thermal pools – a place like no other and one at the heart of New Zealand’s tourism industry. But today there are no tourists in sight. When New Zealand shut its border two years ago as the Covid pandemic hit, Whakarewarewa lost 96% of its visitors overnight. Now, as the country prepares to start reopening to foreign visitors this month, its in-habitants are torn between their economic needs and trepidation at the destructive impact of tourism. Whakarewarewa, in the North Island town of Rotorua, is both a time capsule and a living, evolving place – the 27…

It was 6am, and the espresso machine was whirring. Mohammed set up his breakfast kiosk near the West Bank town of Shuweika three weeks ago, and trade has been good: hundreds of people pass by every day on their walk to work. Two years ago, Palestinians entering this 200-metre-wide part of the “seam zone” between Israel’s West Bank separation barrier and the 1949 armistice line would have been shot at. Israeli soldiers still patrol just a few metres away. But on a bright March morning, a steady stream of commuters were clambering through a nearby hole in the fencing, the majority on their way to work in illegal construction, cleaning and agriculture jobs in Israeli communities. “I’m just happy to find a good job,” said Mohammed. “For years I made…

The confirmation hearings of Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe Biden’s supreme court nominee, officially wrapped up last week after four days of extensive questioning, heated exchanges and other contentious moments. Jackson, who was questioned by Republican senators, was widely praised for her patient demeanour and thoughtful responses. Here are some of the best moments. Ketanji Brown Jackson’s family In her opening remarks, Jackson gave several shoutouts to her family, sharing gratitude and love for their support throughout her extensive law career. Several members of her family were present for the almost 22 hours of questioning she faced. Her husband, Patrick Jackson, and her two daughters, Leila and Talia, sat in the audience as the former federal judge on the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit fielded questions…

WHEN THE OWNERS OF A TENNESSEE COMICS SHOP learned that a local school board had voted to remove Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust classic Maus from its curriculum, they sprang into action with an appeal calling for donations to fund free copies for schoolchildren. Within hours, money started pouring in from all over the world. “We had donations from Israel, the UK and Canada as well as from the US,” says Richard Davis, co-owner of Nirvana Comics. Ten days later, they closed the appeal, after raising $110,000 from 3,500 donors. “We bought up all the copies the publisher had in its warehouse and we’re now in the process of shipping 3,000 copies of Maus to students all over the country, along with a study guide written by a local schoolteacher,” says Davis.…

I’m in a relationship with a man who is separated from his wife but not divorced. He left her five years ago and says their marriage had been over long before that, but he decided to stay until his children left home. We are both in our 50s and his children are now young adults. I was divorced in my 40s and have no children. We live separately. We’ve had a very happy relationship for several years, but there has always been the elephant in the room of his marriage and the block it presents to our planning a future together. He has made some moves towards a divorce – contacting a solicitor and gathering information about his finances – but as far as I know, has done nothing beyond…

1 CULTURE Will Smith overshadows Oscars with viral slap Coda was named this year’s best picture at an Oscars ceremony overshadowed by an on-stage confrontation between the actors Will Smith and Chris Rock. The Apple TV+ drama became the first film from a streaming service to win the award. It is a remake of La Famille Bélier, focusing on the only hearing member of a deaf family and was bought from Sundance in 2021 for $25m, a record for that festival. Troy Kotsur won best supporting actor for his role in the film, making him the second deaf actor to bring home an Oscar, joining his co-star Marlee Matlin who won for Children of a Lesser God in 1987. The award for best director went to Jane Campion for The…

ECONOMY Most vulnerable left to take brunt of cost of living crisis Britain’s most vulnerable households will face the biggest squeeze on living standards on record after Rishi Sunak targeted better-off workers for help in his £9bn ($11.7bn) mini-budget package of tax and duty cuts. The chancellor responded to the highest inflation in three decades with a 5p-a-litre cut in fuel duty and a £3,000 increase in the threshold for national insurance contributions but faced criticism for failing to shield pensioners and those dependent on state benefits from the impact of a cost-of-living crisis. Sunak cut fuel duty by 5p a litre – taking prices back to their level of a week ago – and said the NI change would benefit the average worker by about £6 a week. The…

However desirable [regime change] may be, it is not within our power Richard Haass Council on Foreign Relations At the end of what had been a largely flawless visit to Europe, during which he focused on the misery Vladimir Putin was imposing on Russia, Joe Biden closed his 27-minute speech last Saturday evening in Warsaw by conjuring up the image of a less popular US president – George W Bush – when he said: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” The US president has previously called Putin a killer, a pure thug, a war criminal and a butcher, but he had never advocated regime change, risking turning the war for the defence of Ukraine to a familiar one of US aggression. Biden can fairly say it was a…

The rightwing presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse has promised to rewrite the French constitution in order to fight crime and illegal immigration, as she tried to boost a flagging campaign that risks her party imploding if she fails to reach the final round this month. “I want to show that I’m ready to govern,” Pécresse said in Paris last week, vowing to “restore order to the streets and to the public accounts”. Soon afterwards, Pécresse’s team said she had Covid and would be stepping back from public appearances for a few days. Polls have showed Pécresse sinking into a damaging fifth position. The mood is palpably tense in Les Républicains, the traditional rightwing party of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, which could break apart amid ideological in-fighting if Pécresse does not…

As much of North America was locked down during the early days of the corona-virus pandemic, Matty Clarke was in a boat full of supplies, motoring up the Yukon River. He was searching for wild lands where he could strike it rich. “Getting myself a gold mine,” he told viewers on his YouTube channel. “Everyone’s heard about all this gold up there … Can I just show up with all this stuff and end up having a goldmine?” For two years, Clarke has battled bitter cold and relentless mosquitoes while he set up home in Canada’s northern hinterlands, chronicling his survival in regular YouTube updates. But he now finds himself squaring off against frustrated officials trying to evict him from his homestead. The Yukon’s most famous poet, Robert W Service,…

Troops gathered on the border. The supreme leader decided it was time to invade, to teach the other side a lesson. Shortly afterwards, troops breached the internationally recognised border and clashed with local forces. Not Ukraine 2022, but Vietnam 1979. In January of that year, the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping told the US president, Jimmy Carter, that he wanted to “spank the butt” of his neighbours. For a month, Chinese and Vietnamese forces clashed, leading to a death toll of tens of thousands. Chinese troops withdrew in March 1979, when, unlike Vladimir Putin, Deng sensibly decided to declare a victory and head home. Since then, there has been no unambiguous breach of an international border by Chinese troops. China’s brief invasion of Vietnam isn’t much talked about today during the…

The way I write has such a northern sensibility. It’s a slightly dry delivery of humour WHEN IT FIRST AIRED IN 2019, Gentleman Jack seemed like quite a departure for Sally Wainwright. Previously, the director and screenwriter had been everything period drama wasn’t: she started her career on Coronation Street, found her voice with lottery-winners comedy At Home With the Braithwaites, went on to write septuagenarian romcom Last Tango in Halifax, and then created the globally lauded crime drama Happy Valley. And, more to the point, historical drama really isn’t her thing. “There has been this slavish adaptation of things like Jane Austen, which I just find irrelevant,” Wainwright says, ahead of a screening of the new series of Gentleman Jack. “They seem to be obsessed with, ‘Can you find…

If there’s a universal language of pop right now, then Fred Again speaks it fluently, translating ideas into worldwide smash hits for artists such as Ed Sheeran and Charli XCX. Stepping out from the backroom, the south Londoner, born Fred Gibson, is opening a tour built around last year’s Actual Life parts 1 and 2, two sample-heavy albums recorded at the encouragement of mentor Brian Eno. Gibson is a low-key and smiling presence surrounded by synths, keyboards and drum pads. The communication comes from a screen behind him – videos captured seemingly from his phone, short bursts of text message. The set is described as “a sort of diary from April to December 2020”. Digital intimacy coupled with broad-brush sentimentality is in keeping with Gibson’s production style. The beats may…

Some boys are taught by their fathers how to skim stones or bowl cricket balls. Mine taught me a far more important life skill: how to politely summon the bill in a restaurant from a distance. A hand raised. An eye caught across the dining room. The flourish of an invisible pen, writing a cheque in the air. Job done. Or at least it was once an important skill. Recently, I raised my hand and scribbled in the air at the delightful twentysomething who had been serving us. And I realised what a ludicrous gesture this now was. Sure, they understood, but God knows how. It’s likely they’ve never written a cheque. We have not yet come up with an internationally recognised gesture for putting your pin number into a…

Lifted out of a plastic tub, the wasp factory is spread out, floor by dismantled floor, over the dining room table. The smell of damp cardboard has evaporated, replaced by a mustiness, and what look like dried mushrooms sprout from the top of each egg tray layer. I expect all of the wasps to be gone. They are not. About a month ago, I stood on top of a ladder under the eaves in front of our sparrow nest box. A queen wasp had moved in the previous summer after the birds failed, and such was her demand for space that an extension spilled out of the nest hole, the entire face encrusted with papier-mache cells. I brushed them off, lifted the lid, then reached up and clawed out each…