Innehållsförteckning för 13 May 2022 från Guardian Weekly

Residents use hoses to syphon water from a tanker deployed by authorities to prevent drinking water shortages in Delhi. Like much of India, the capital has been to enduring a brutal heatwave, with temperatures reaching 40C across several consecutive days. The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol 206 | Issue № 20 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 to account in the name of the public interest, to uphold…

YOU PUT YOUR BABIES IN THE WOMB, you will be held accountable!” yelled Steve Corson, tall, bearded and jabbing a finger at women who chanted back: “My body, my choice!” Corson, 65, from Fredonia, Arizona, took a deep breath and blew into a shofar. Then Nathan Darnell, wearing a “Jesus Christ is king” cap and holding up a cross, grabbed a megaphone. “You guys are demon-possessed!” declared the 19-year-old from Haymarket, Virginia. “Every child has a right to life.” Suddenly, Darnell was surrounded by abortion rights protesters brandishing placards. He kept talking. “You guys are evil. The downfall of America is because of every one of you.” The national day of prayer last Thursday was anything but a solemn occasion outside the supreme court in Washington, where hours earlier an…

In cities across Russia on Monday, tanks and missile trucks growled their way along the main streets. Soldiers marched across central squares. Fighter jets roared overhead. Victory Day, when Russians celebrate the 1945 endpoint of what they still call the “great patriotic war”, has become the centrepiece of Vladimir Putin’s concept of Russian identity over his two decades in charge. This year, as the Russian army’s gruesome assault on Ukraine grinds on, the day held particular resonance. Across Russia, some families quietly remembered the ancestors who gave their lives in the fight against Nazism, or toasted the few veterans still alive. Others took a more bombastic approach in line with the official messaging, perhaps adding a papier mache turret to their child’s pushchair to make it look like a tank,…

As an emergency measure for the pandemic, New York City’s banishment of cars from certain streets saw unexpected space open up for pedestrians, restaurant tables and playing children. A campaign backed by the city’s new mayor aims to permanently wrest dominance away from vehicles and preserve these outdoor havens. The alternative vision for America’s largest city demands that 25% of its street space is converted from car use to walkable pedestrian plazas, green space, bus lanes and dedicated cycle paths by 2025. The campaign, called 25x25, has been adopted by activists in Los Angeles Cities should consider a formula of “space minus cars equals quality of life”, according to Danny Harris, executive director of Transportation Alternatives. The group cites the climate crisis, air pollution, the death toll from car crashes…

BENEATH OUR FEET IS AN ECOSYSTEM SO ASTONISHING that it tests the limits of our imagination. It’s as diverse as a rainforest or a coral reef. We depend on it for 99% of our food, yet we scarcely know it. Soil. Under one square metre of undisturbed ground in the Earth’s midlatitudes there might live several hundred thousand small animals. Roughly 90% of the species to which they belong have yet to be named. One gram of this soil – less than a teaspoonful – contains a kilometre of fungal filaments. When I first examined a lump of soil with a powerful lens, I could scarcely believe what I was seeing. As soon as I found the focal length, it burst into life. I saw springtails – tiny animals similar…

Ukraine, with some western help, has won a great victory, and the original aim of Russia’s invasion – to capture Kyiv and replace the Ukrainian government – has been utterly defeated. The Russian army has regrouped in the east for a much more limited objective: that of capturing the Russian-populated Donbas region, which Moscow has already recognised as independent. If the Russian army can achieve this in the coming weeks then we cannot say for sure what Moscow’s next move would be. However, Russia has suffered huge casualties among its elite troops, and even taking the relatively small city of Mariupol has taken two months, requiring reducing the city to ruins. In view of this, a further Russian campaign to capture much bigger cities looks implausible, and it seems possible…

‘CHRIST. THEY’RE GOING AFTER MICKEY MOUSE,” said President Joe Biden in April, bemoaning the Republican party’s targeting of another American institution. A few days earlier, Florida governor Ron DeSantis had stripped Disney World of its self-governing status. Since its inception in 1967, Disney’s Florida estate has effectively operated under its own jurisdiction. Disney funds and manages public services in the district in return for autonomy over governance and development. Disney World has become the cornerstone of Florida’s tourist economy, employing 75,000 people. In Disney World’s 50th year, the company is in danger of being cast out of its own magic kingdom. DeSantis’s move was explicitly in retaliation to Disney’s opposition to HB 1557, better known as the “Don’t say gay” law. This vaguely worded bill prohibits discussion of, or instruction…

I have been divorced for eight years and my daughter, who is 10, lives with her mum. I usually see her every other weekend. But for four years now, my daughter’s timetable is driven by her mother and seeing me is a “fit in”. My ex and I both have new relationships. On occasions, my ex and I have argued about the time my daughter spends with me. My daughter will call and tell me she wants to do something else (go to a birthday party, say) on a weekend she had been supposed to be with me. When my ex and I argue, it understandably upsets my daughter. I think she feels conflicted over which parent to support. When my daughter is with me, we have great fun and…

It was over the Thanksgiving holiday, catching up with old high school friends, that Frances Beal heard that Cordelia had died. Just like the now 82-year-old Black feminist and activist, her friend had gone to college, but she didn’t make it through her first year because, like anybody who wanted to terminate a pregnancy in the US in 1958, she had to undergo a backstreet abortion. “She was dead because she’d had an illegal abortion. And it had gone bad. And if you take a look at the statistics, the number of women that died from illegal abortions was tremendous,” Beal, who later joined the movement to legalise abortion, said. Now, more than 60 years after Cordelia’s death and nearly half a century since Roe v Wade legalised abortion, she…

Vladimir Putin told Russian soldiers they are “fighting for the same thing their fathers and grandfathers did” as he used his Victory Day speech to justify his invasion of Ukraine. As Putin sought to rally his country, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy made his own address. “We will not allow anyone to annex this victory, we will not allow it to be appropriated,” he said. “Nato countries did not want to listen to us,” Putin said. “They had different plans, and we saw it. They were planning an invasion into our historic lands, including Crimea … Russia gave a preemptive rebuff to aggression, it was a forced, timely and only right decision.” The Russian president addressed troop losses in the war, saying he had signed a new order that would give…

As Australia’s election campaign draws to a close ahead of the 21 May vote, cost of living pressures and the rising prominence of independent pro-climate action candidates have made the future of the country’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, increasingly uncertain. Multiple newspapers have released polls pointing to a slight advantage for Anthony Albanese’s Labor opposition over the conservative Coalition comprising the Liberal party under Morrison and the rural-based National party. However, the polls failed to predict Morrison’s narrow win in 2019, and support for both major parties is in decline, leaving several outcomes open, including the prospect of a hung parliament. Morrison’s task is to retain the 76 seats the Coalition currently holds – the minimum required to form government in a parliament of 151 – which would extend Labor’s…

One of José Vásquez Chogue’s enduring childhood memories is of his grandfather on the doorstep of his home in Santiago staring at the night sky. “He would always face south,” Vásquez recalled. “He would point out the Southern Cross and show me the stars which represent our ancestors.” The older man had grown up on a frozen and remote island in Patagonia and was a member of the Selk’nam tribe. But Chilean history books had declared the people extinct. When Jos é, captivated by the anthropological displays of Chile’s National History Museum, tried to explain his bloodline to a member of staff he was met with derision. “I told him that they were my people, but he didn’t believe me. We were taught at school that all our brothers were…

It was described as the Mona Lisa of the digital world and it came with a connoisseur’s price tag: $2.9m for the first tweet by Twitter’s co-founder. This was March 2021 and non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, were bursting into the mainstream. One year on, an attempt to sell on Jack Dorsey’s Twitter debut for $25m was pulled after auction bids topped out at just $14,000. Explosive growth of NFTs over the past 12 months has levelled off, and may be in decline, according to analysis of the sector. The NFT rush in 2021 saw sales of the novel digital assets hit staggering sums. A collection of images by the visual artist Beeple sold for $69m, the main token for the “play to earn” video game Axie Infinity hit $9.75bn and…

In 2021, a hundred years after the creation of Northern Ireland, Boris Johnson tweeted: “Let me underline that, now & in the future, Northern Ireland’s place in the UK will be protected and strengthened.” Since the word “not” has to be inserted automatically into every positive statement Johnson makes, unionists ought to have taken this as fair warning: Year 101 of Northern Ireland’s existence would be its equivalent of George Orwell’s Room 101, where you are confronted by your own worst nightmares. After last week’s assembly elections, the unionist nightmare takes the form of Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Féin’s vice-president and now putative first minister of the Northern Ireland executive. The source of dread is not so much O’Neill as the historic moment she embodies: Catholic nationalism outstripping Protestant unionism. Her…

We know that clingfilm and plastic ziplock bags are environmentally unfriendly, but what are the alternatives? What other storage options are worth investing in?Jane, London, England “You’ve got to have zero tolerance for everything to do with plastic, whether that’s in the house or what’s coming into the house,” says chef Ollie Hunter, who runs the sustainable pub The Wheatsheaf in Wiltshire. But when it comes to eco-friendly replacements, it’s worth remembering that new isn’t always better: “I’m a purist,” Hunter says. “Let’s just reuse what we’ve already taken out of the planet.” He suggests getting into “the mindset of a bowl and a plate” – simple, yes, but achievable and affordable. This is also a favoured storage tactic of Anshu Ahuja and Renée Williams, co-founders of DabbaDrop in London,…

It is calving season. By my estimation, having tracked her cycle from when she ran with the bull last summer, this beast is overdue. That’s not unusual, but she is a heifer – a first-time mother – so I have been monitoring closely. She had behaved normally at feeding, giving no reason to suspect change, but later on, I see her down. By habit, I inspect. She seems uncomfortable, her breath pulses shallow and quick, though she has been doing this intermittently for days. As I look, there is a sudden expulsion of fluid at my feet. She stands abruptly, just as surprised as me, and sniffs at the ground. Then she makes the tenderest of sounds, instinctively communicating with her unborn calf. There is a primitive power in this…

1 CORONAVIRUS Covid death toll likely to be twice official total at 15m Almost 15 million people worldwide have died as a result of the Covid pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated – a figure more than double the official death toll. The figure is based on the concept of excess mortality – the number of deaths that occurred beyond those expected without the pandemic – and encompasses those who died as a result of Covid and those who died indirectly because of the pandemic. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO, described the figures as “sobering”, while Dr Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, said that too often during the course of the pandemic, world leaders “have failed to act at the level needed…

LOCAL ELECTIONS Boris Johnson in peril as Tories lose council seats Boris Johnson’s leadership fac ed fresh peril after senior Conservatives blamed him for losing swathes of the party’s southern heartlands to the Liberal Democrats and flagship London boroughs to Labour. In a punishing set of local elections for the Tories, the party lost hundreds of seats across the country, ceding control of Westminster and Wandsworth in London to Labour for the first time since the 1970s, and plunging to its worst position in Scotland for a decade. Conservative MPs and council leaders questioned Johnson’s leadership, demanding action to tackle the cost of living crisis and rebuild trust in the wake of the Partygate scandal after a damaging series of losses across the “blue wall” in Somerset, Kent, Oxfordshire and…

How do you strip away cherished rights? The best strategy is incrementally and undramatically, a death of a thousand cuts. That’s how Republicans were hacking at voting rights until recently, when the rest of us woke up and began to pay attention to the cumulative impact of voter ID laws, the shuttering of polling places, restrictions on voting by mail, and all the rest. Reproductive rights have been under attack for more than 30 years – by rightwing terrorism against abortion providers all through the 1990s and as recently as 2015 in Colorado Springs, but also by a sort of attrition, narrowing down access by shutting clinics, limiting how many weeks pregnant you can be, and other such measures. Overturning Roe v Wade upends all this stealth and incrementalism. Judging…

Spike, the quarrelsome dachshund, got something every meal, even as the humans trapped in the bunker under Azovstal steelworks were wasting away from hunger. By the end there was so little food and water that adults were eating one tiny meal a day. Two cups of macaroni went into 10 litres of water, and that “soup” had to feed 30 people. The children ate twice. Still, they all shared their food with their pet. “Someone would give him a spoon of porridge and everyone in the family would give him three or four spoons when they ate. Luckily, he is small,” said Olena Chekhonatski. She fled underground to escape shelling at the start of the war with her husband, Yegor, and two sons, 12-year-old Artem and 17-year-old Dmitry. They expected…

If there’s one place in the nation where the rubber hits the road on Australia’s decades-long discussion about the climate crisis, fossil fuels, mining and jobs – it’s the seat of Hunter. The coal-rich electorate, which spans from Lake Macquarie in the south to north-west of New castle, is at the centre of seismic shifts in the landscape; giant changes that are political, economic and literal. The economic shift comes as the proud mining region begins to ponder a future after coal. Both the Coalition and Labor are telling the Hunter some variation of “if the world wants to buy our coal, we’ll sell it”. But both sides also talk up the Hunter as a potential global hub for clean energy, hydrogen, green steel and aluminium. Billions of dollars are…

If Stephen Smartt gets lucky, he may one day receive a message that will give the astrophysicist an advance warning that one of the most extraordinary displays known to science is about to light up the night sky. Signals relayed by automated telescope arrays and underground detectors will reveal that a star in our galactic neighbourhood has just turned supernova. A supernova occurs when a star destroys itself so completely it can outshine the light of an entire galaxy. In the last 1,000 years, only five have been visible to the naked eye. All occurred before the invention of the telescope. “We know about supernovae from their appearance in other galaxies and from remnants left behind in our own galaxy,” said Smartt, an astrophysicist based at Queen’s University Belfast. “But…

In 1895, the German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen noticed that a phosphor-coated screen gave off a green light when exposed to a cathode ray tube. He spent seven weeks investigating, locked away in his laboratory and only coming out when his wife, Anna, insisted he eat something. He rewarded her concern for his wellbeing by using the unknown rays to make an image of her hand on a photographic plate. It proved that they could travel through skin and flesh: the plate revealed her bones and wedding ring. When she saw the image, she was appalled, saying: “I have seen my death!” In his notebook, Röntgen used a letter to denote the unknown rays: “X-rays”. As Australian physicist Suzie Sheehy says, this is “possibly the best unintentional branding in the history…

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