Innehållsförteckning för 10 February 2023 från Guardian Weekly

The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 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 liberal and progressive values, to fight for the common good, and to build hope. Our values, as laid out by editor CP Scott in 1921, are honesty, integrity, courage, fairness, and a sense of duty to the reader and the community. The Guardian is wholly owned by…

Taras, Vladyslav, and their commander, Olexiy, understand that, if the worst were to happen, the Ukrainian government will deny any knowledge of them. In western capitals, there is a collective shudder at the very thought of them. They are members of Bratstvo battalion, a volunteer group of Ukrainian special forces, taking the fight against Vladimir Putin beyond the frontlines of the war in Ukraine, past the occupied areas of their country – and deep into Russia. Their work ranges from the kidnapping of senior Kremlin officials, to the destruction of key military infrastructure and the downing of enemy aircraft on Russian territory. It might seem odd for a battalion such as theirs to allow their stories to be heard. But that is to misunderstand their purpose. In everything they do,…

A limited amnesty is to be offered to many of those detained in the recent Iranian protests, the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has agreed. But the amnesty does not apply to dual nationals, those convicted of offences carrying the death penalty or those who refuse to admit and regret their crimes, Iranian officials said. The amnesty will not apply to those deemed to have cooperated with foreign agents, or those charged with committing acts of arson against government buildings. Those “affiliated with groups hostile to the Islamic Republic” will also be excluded, a catch-all that suggests the authorities may only be interested in releasing youngsters with minimal political motives, who can be portrayed as being swayed by emotion or foreign propaganda online. The conditional amnesty was proposed to…

It was early evening, and people had gathered at a pandal in Moe Dar Lay village, in Myanmar’s Sagaing region, to prepare for a Buddhist novice ordination ceremony the following day. Just as they began to cook, fighter jets appeared in the sky. Then the sound of explosions boomed through the air. “The jets dropped the bombs out of nowhere,” said Naing Ko*, who was just a few houses from the pandal when the attack happened last month. He recalled grabbing his wife and son and rushing to see what had happened. His parents’ home, a few kilometres away, was engulfed in flames. His mother, 68, was among eight people killed. She died instantly. Such attacks have become an almost daily occurrence across Myanmar, where the military junta, which seized…

Masked men raced around Port-au-Prince on motor-bikes, firing their guns into the air, blocking roads with burning tyres and bringing the Haitian capital to a standstill. At one stage, the rioters flooded into the airport, trapping prime minister Ariel Henry inside, and also attempted to break into Henry’s residence. Given the gang violence that has seized Haiti in the past year, the disorder was in some ways unsurprising. This time, however, it was not the bandits terrorising the capital, but the country’s police force: enraged by a spate of police killings, officers took to the streets late last month to demand a government response. The riots were initially attributed to Fantom 509, a group of renegade cops who broke rank in 2020 and 2021, but as the protests spread it…

Among the most popular traditions at Florida’s Disney World are the daily character appearances that allow the public to get up close to the theme parks’ star attractions. Just a few kilometres down the road, beneath the palm trees of the lushly landscaped Encore resort at Reunion, Brazil’s exiled former president appears to have embraced the custom. From the rented villa where he’s been holed up for a month, Jair Bolsonaro regularly steps out to mingle and be photographed with adoring supporters, many of them holidaymakers from his own country. Now, after more than 30 days as a temporary guest in the US, since his tearful farewell from Brazil two days before the inauguration of leftist successor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro has decided he likes Florida so much…

I spoke last week to Daniel Kahneman, who is known for winning a Nobel prize for economics and soon turns 89. The professor told me: “This is the worst threat to Israel since 1948 [the year it was founded].” It was worse even than the Yom Kippur war of 1973, when Israel’s survival seemed to hang in the balance – because this time the damage “may be impossible to repair”. Kahneman was not speaking about a foreign army massing on the country’s borders, an Iranian nuclear bomb or the gathering prospect of a third Palestinian uprising, but rather something Israel is doing to itself: what Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, gently calls his “judicial reform” plan, but what others describe as the evisceration of the Israeli courts, handing unchecked power…

The voice is unmistakable. That rich grain and mournful, lived-in tone can only be Leonard Cohen. His song Suzanne plays, while on stage a woman falls into the arms of a man. He curls then lifts and balances her body again and again, without her feet ever touching the ground. The dancers are from Canadian company Ballets Jazz Montréal, and Cohen gave his blessing to the creation of this show set to his songs. He agreed to the music selections and chose specific recordings, but died in November 2016 at the age of 82, before the rehearsal process had begun. “He was supposed to be at the premiere,” says dancer Andrew Mikhaiel. “He was supposed to see the show. So the moment we stepped into the studio on the first…

The Vijayanagara empire covered most of south India in the 15th and 16th centuries. Viewed from one angle, it was a seedbed for the globalised modern world, in that it became a haven for art and new ideas and an economic powerhouse that traded with China and Venice. Viewed from another, it was a thicket of intrigue, rocked by rival factions, foreign wars and palace coups. Which is to say it was everything: noble and vile, progressive and regressive, the Hindu heaven of Svarga twinned with Game of Thrones’ King’s Landing. Only the most brilliant or foolhardy scholar would dream of tackling its history in a single volume. According to Victory City, one such scholar was the demigod Pampa Kampana, the empire’s mother, midwife and general overseer, who documented the…

Across 5 Breed of tiny dog, originally from Mexico (9) 8 Sound of heavy object hitting the ground (4) 9 Singing celebrity (4,4) 10 Haughty (6) 11 Use fingertips to excite another (6) 13 Heavy and unappetising (6) 15 Home for Franciscans, say (6) 16 Con (8) 18 Player ranked according to their ability in a knock-out competition (4) 19 Safe (9) Down 1 Great number (8) 2 Annoyed (informal) (6) 3 Adopted symbolic character, animal or object (6) 4 Bickering (4) 6 District whose residents are mainly of east Asian origin (9) 7 Big ask (4,5) 12 Place selling deep-fried food (4,4) 14 Like lemons or custard? (6) 15 Look around for food (6) 17 Jot down (4) Solution No 16,448…

The worst-case scenarios piled up over the summer months. Germany’s economic minister warned of “catastrophic” industrial shutdowns, fraying supply chains and mass unemployment. France’s president urged citizens to turn down the heating. Spain asked why countries that hadn’t got hooked on Russian gas should bail out neighbours who had lectured them about fiscal discipline in the past. The former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev gleefully predicted that Europeans would be “freezing in their homes”. “The cold is coming soon,” he said, menacingly, in June. But signs are becoming clearer that EU members have weathered a historic crisis. Within eight months of Russian troops setting foot on Ukrainian soil, the bloc of 27 European states replaced about 80% of the natural gas it used to draw through pipelines with Russia, by rapidly…

The dodo, a Mauritian bird last seen in the 17th century, will be brought back to at least a semblance of life if attempts by a gene editing company are successful. Gene editing techniques now exist that allow scientists to mine the dodo genome for key traits that they believe they can then effectively reassemble within the body of a living relative. Dodos are most closely related to pigeons, according to sequencing of the proverbially dead bird’s genome. The scientists in question said their work, beyond providing an insight into the extinct dodo’s existence, could help inform the conservation of rare species that are not yet extinct. How-ever, there is a fierce debate among biologists over whether this sort of research should be pursued. Colossal Biosciences, the US-based gene editing…

There is a virtual reality plane trip, a quiz, a presentation from the world’s “most powerful woman”, and a souvenir photo: it is all part of the offer at one of the latest tourist attractions to arrive in Brussels – the European Commission exhibition centre. Experience Europe, which has been open just under a year, seeks to explain the work of the commission, which proposes and enforces EU law, and for many is the epitome of “Brussels”. It is the latest example of how the bloc is trying to appeal to the public. Stung by criticism of being an elite project with bamboozling and opaque processes, the EU has sharpened up communication efforts in the past 15 years. The European parliament opened a visitors’ centre, the Parlamentarium, in 2011, followed…

The FBI has called it a national security threat. The US government has passed a law forcing officials to delete it from their phones. Texas senator Ted Cruz has denounced it as “a Trojan horse the Chinese Communist party can use to influence what Americans see, hear, and ultimately think”. And in March its CEO will defend its existence before the US Congress. The target of this strong rhetoric might prove surprising to some: an app best known for viral dances, launching generation Z media stars, and sucking teens down an hours-long content abyss. In addition, at least 27 US states have blocked TikTok on devices they’ve issued, affecting state schools and universities, too. A bipartisan bill, introduced in Congress last December, stipulates banning the app’s use by everyone in…

European governments have for many years basked in a sense of climate superiority over the US. We had the most ambitious climate goals; we were the constructive actor at Cop conferences; we had carbon-pricing mechanisms; and since 1990, we have reduced emissions by 28% against just 2% in the US. The US, by contrast, had climatedenying Republicans. The Biden administration now has the world’s most generous package of climate incentives – a $370bn green subsidy package, which goes by the misnomer Inflation Reduction Act. But instead of celebrating the US handouts and tax breaks for investment in such things as electric vehicles and solar panels, many European governments are furious. Yes, it’s good for the planet. But it’s even better for American industry as the new US green subsidies are…

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 ‘Two posh boys’ laid the foundation for today’s ills Nesrine Malik’s excellent article (The old boys’ club has evolved into “the network” of rich financiers, Opinion, 3 February) calls to mind the two great architects of Britain’s recent decline, George Osborne and David Cameron –…

Though the shipping forecast is still broadcast daily on BBC Radio 4, the strange resonance of what Seamus Heaney called “that strong gale-warning voice” may not, in an age of digital information overload, cast quite the same spell it once did on the collective imagination. It nevertheless remains a constant for many listeners, reassuring in its steadiness even as it gives notice of unruly swells and approaching storms in those faraway-sounding hinterlands of Dogger, Viking and German Bight. “It occupies a deeply rooted place in our culture,” says Mark Power, whose book The Shipping Forecast comprises photographs from the 31 sea areas that are enumerated in the daily radio litany. “For many of us there is an essential mystery to the shipping forecast that perhaps comes from hearing it in…

The physicist Stephen Hawking once hosted a party for time travellers, but only sent out the invitations after the date had already passed. No one came. If people from the future had turned up, what would most appal them about our society today? For the prominent American philosopher Martha C Nussbaum, the answer is our treatment of animals, which her sober and sobering new book argues is a moral crime on a monumental scale. To make her scholarly case, Nussbaum points to the “barbarous cruelties of the factory meat industry”, “habitat destruction” and “pollution of the air and seas” – but casts the ethical net even more widely to ensnare all of us who “dwell in areas in which elephants and bears once roamed” or “live in high-rise buildings that…

1 Who lived in Brussels at 23 quai du Commerce? 2 Where has the euro replaced the kuna? 3 Which vitamin is named from the German for coagulation? 4 Nasa’s Tess mission is looking for what objects? 5 Which drummer led the Jazz Messengers for 35 years? 6 Which learned society met at Soho House in Handsworth? 7 What is the lowest number not allocated to a UK motorway? 8 Frederick Belmont established which cafe in Harrogate in 1919? What links: 9 Jenny Lind; Jenny Berggren; Nina Persson; Marie Fredriksson? 10 Andre Agassi; Phil Knight; Prince Harry? 11 1900; 1924; 2024? 12 St Kilda, Scotland; Blasket Islands, Ireland; Ambae, Vanuatu? 13 Adams; de Blasio; Bloomberg; Giuliani; Dinkins? 14 Burchell’s; Chapman’s; Crawshay’s; Grant’s; Grévy’s? 15 Lucy Munro’s face; Neville St Clair’s…

North Yorkshire, England, UK Only one other human has set foot up this Moors-edge dale since a sprinkling of snow fell, and as I ascend a lone oak-bark grey roebuck melts into the trees. I emerge on to a plateau where a band of starlings roves along a row of spindly pines which do little to curb the icy wind. Chattering goldfinches and twite racket about a cover crop gone to seed. There’s little to suggest what else is hidden here, among the dry stems, until I’m just a few paces away. If not for a rusty iron frame, I’d maybe notice nothing until an ill-fated step sent me down a brutal, near vertical 20-plus-metre fall. Most unsettling of all though, this ominous pit is breathing. A soft, warm, continuous…

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1 UNITED STATES China accuses Washington of spy balloon ‘overreaction’ China accused the US of “overreaction” and the “indiscriminate use of military force” in shooting down a Chinese balloon that traversed US airspace, saying that the move has damaged bilateral relations. The Pentagon described the high-altitude balloon as a surveillance aircraft able to manoeuvre and a US warplane shot it down on last Saturday over the Atlantic Ocean after it had crossed the entire US. China said it was a weather balloon that had been blown off course. China’s vice-foreign minister, Xie Feng, lodged a formal complaint with the US embassy over the incident, accusing Washington of overreacting to an accident “caused by force majeure”, according to a statement. He accused Washington of “dealing a serious blow” to progress in…

SLAVERY Sugar-growing family to set up reparations fund An aristocratic British family is to make history by travelling to the Caribbean and publicly apologising for its ownership of more than 1,000 enslaved Africans. The Trevelyan family is also paying reparations to the people of Grenada, where it owned six sugar plantations. Family members met online last month and agreed to sign a letter of apology for the enslavement of Africans. Forty-two members of the family have signed and more signatures are expected. In 1835, the Trevelyan family received £26,898, a huge sum at the time, in compensation from the British government for the abolition of slavery a year earlier. The enslaved men, women and children received nothing and were forced to work a further eight years unpaid as “apprentices”. A…

There is no joy in it for those who always knew Brexit was a con, but it is finally dawning on more people that leaving the EU was a colossal mistake. Those who led the project still talk the same old nonsense about the purported benefits of Brexit but they, like most government assertions these days, sound like echoes of a bygone time. Brexit’s arrival has caused supply chain disruptions, staffing shortages, higher food prices and extra red tape for business. Public opinion is shifting towards remorse. Instead of hurtling away from the EU into the swaggering prosperity promised by the leave campaign, Britain is receding into a dark timeline of recession, strikes and political instability. Last week, it was forecast that Britain will be the only G7 economy to…

On the evening of 15 October 2022, when street protests in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini were at their peak, 25-year-old Dorsa* was stopped at a checkpoint while driving through a city in the northern Gilan province. The checkpoint was chaotic; 25 to 30 heavily armed security officers were shouting and screaming at people to get out of their vehicles. Dorsa was with her sister and two male friends. Their car was searched and when two cans of spray paint were found in her sister’s bag, all hell broke loose. The sisters said they had been blindfolded and had their hands tied behind their backs before they were pushed into a police car. Dorsa said they had been forced to sign a confession saying they had been protesting,…

The bomber struck shortly before afternoon prayers, when the mosque in Peshawar’s bustling Police Lines district would be at its busiest. Hundreds of people, including many police officers, were inside as the device detonated, creating a blast so strong the roof and a wall collapsed and 100 people were killed. The attack last Monday was among the worst in years to hit Peshawar, a city in north-west Pakistan that has been ravaged relentlessly by deadly terrorist violence over decades. Hours after the attack, responsibility was claimed by a low-level commander from one faction of the Pakistan Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), as revenge for the death of a fighter in Afghanistan. Later, an official spokesperson from the TTP distanced themselves from the incident, stating it was not their policy…

The Chacoan peccary is so elusive that scientists believed it was extinct until its “discovery” in 1975. Today, only 3,000 remain in the inhospitable forests and lagoons of the Gran Chaco region, which stretches across northern Argentina, Paraguay and southern Bolivia, and comprises more than 50 different ecosystems. Micaela Camino, who works with the Indigenous Wichí and Criollo communities to protect the animals and their land rights in Argentina, knows how difficult to find they can be. She has only seen one Chacoan peccary, or quimilero, in 13 years since she set up her NGO, Proyecto Quimilero, but has fallen in love with the critically endangered mammal, which looks like a peculiar cross between a boar and a hedgehog. “I was told that the Chacoan peccary was extinct outside protected…

Burning pyres of rubbish and bullet-pocked walls. Troops holed up in the airport with AK-47s and riot shields, waiting for a truce. A mayor holding court behind the broken windows of a vandalised city hall. “I feel that my city is destroying itself,” lamented Oscar Cáceres as angry protesters gathered outside his municipal headquarters to demand political change and justice for the 17 people killed here during the most deadly day of violence in the two-month uprising against the government of Peru. The political upheaval in the country has given the Andean city of Juliaca – the biggest in the southern department of Puno – the atmosphere and appearance of a war zone. Near the pulverised international airport – the scene of ferocious clashes between protesters and security forces on…

A Chinese balloon was brought down in a puff of smoke and debris by an air-launched missile, after perplexing Washington with its three-day odyssey over the continental US. The question is: what was it all for? Once the balloon had been spotted, Beijing claimed it was a weather observation airship blown off course, drawing a snort of derision from the Pentagon, which said the balloon had made some deliberate turns, bringing it at one point over Montana, home of some of the US arsenal of nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles. If it was indeed a spy balloon, the whole episode raises a lot of questions about decision-making in Beijing. It was quite predictable that the balloon would be spotted, tracked and even shot down, and that all this would happen in…

A couple of weeks ago, at a moment of huge frustration over Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s foot-dragging on allowing Leopard tanks to go to Ukraine, a Ukrainian friend sent me a satirical mockup on “Scholzing”. Next to a photograph of the chancellor, it defined Scholzing, dictionary-style, as: “verb: communicating good intentions only to use/find/invent any reason imaginable to delay these and/or prevent them from happening”. I found this amusing, quickly retweeted it, and thought no more about it. My Twitter account seemed to be buzzing, but then I’d been writing a lot about the issue. Six days later, I was watching an interview with Scholz on German television when the interviewer confronted him with “Scholzing”, attributing the coinage to “a British historian”. I went back Twitter to find that this one…

I see buckwheat in lots of recipes. How best to cook it? Mine turned out mushy. Zeena, London, England, UK When Alissa Timoshkina was growing up, buckwheat was something of a staple: “We’d have it for breakfast with milk and sugar, as a side to savoury dishes, or as a stuffing for pies or cabbage rolls,” says the Russian author of Salt & Time: Recipes from a Russian Kitchen. “It’s not just comforting because it tastes like childhood, but it’s nutritionally good as well.” The first thing to note is that buckwheat comes two ways: green (or untoasted) and toasted (known as kasha, or kasza in Polish). “It makes a big difference,” Timoshkina says. While the toasted stuff “has a lovely, nutty quality”, green has a habit of “coming out…

Across 1,2 Winning spirit with just defeat and a tie – a draw in 17? (7,6) 5 God, one with a magic bullet? (7) 9 Conceal a capital city on island (5) 10 See 24 11 Separation of state and religion curses Mali after Reformation (10) 12,21 A law committed to memory by 1st of October for test (4,4) 14 Allergic reaction having taken LSD, perhaps: expression of support welcomed (11) 18 Appalling? It’s impossible to say (11) 21 See 12 22 Those carrying lots of money in shops act stupid (10) 25 Delicious salami in the soup, sibling tucking in (9) 26 Tree in lime, leaning backwards (5) 27 Cocktail fruit dropping on needle shortly (7) 28 Boris playing intellectual game, heavens above, admitting ‘I haven’t a clue’ (7)…