Innehållsförteckning för 24 February 2023 från Guardian Weekly

The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol207 | Issue№ 8 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…

‘The Russian economy is on track to be cut in half,” Joe Biden said in March last year, as he heralded sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine. In Europe, too, the talk was tough: Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, said the sanctions were “hitting the Putin system … at its core of power”. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the aim was to “cripple Putin’s ability to finance his war machine”. The reality was somewhat different, reflecting what analysts say was a hubristic over-confidence about the speed sanctions agreed with unprecedented coordination by the G7 could damage Russia. The Russian economy contracted by only 2.2% last year. Unemployment, according to admittedly dubious official figures, stands at 3.7%. The car and electronics industries have suffered but…

For those close friends who got a text from Nicola Sturgeon in the hours before she publicly announced her resignation as Scotland’s first minister, it was the timing and not the fact of her departure that came as the shock. But Sturgeon is a woman who likes by decisions not of her making – the supreme court ruling that she cannot hold a second independence referendum without Westminster approval, the UK government blocking Holy domestic headwinds around the NHS, education and transport grew ever more unfavourable. a decade, as “formidable”, “unparalleled”, “tireless”. She leaves her party with no obvious successor and those same challenges unresolved – and herself, at the age of 52, with plenty of road ahead of her. The superlatives flooded in from supporters and opponents alike, describing…

‘It was a tsunami from the hills. It was bigger than the tides. The noise – it was like Huka Falls.” Rikki Reed gazed at the wall for a moment, and you got the impression he could still hear the sound of water flooding into Esk Valley. His five-year-old son, Parker, sat nearby, quietly playing. Reed was part of a night-time road crew that came in to help when Cyclone Gabrielle struck – blocking off parts of the state highway, where huge trees had fallen. At around midnight, as waters started rising fast, they began evacuating people – but then he realised the truck he was in was stranded. “There were waves over the highway. The rapids were on both sides,” he said. Sitting in the marooned truck, he took…

The area of sea ice around Antarctica has hit a record low, with scientists reporting “never having seen such an extreme situation before”. The ice extent is expected to shrink even further before this year’s summer melting season ends. The impact of the climate crisis in melting sea ice in the Arctic is clear in records that stretch back to 1979. Antarctic sea ice varies much more from year to year, which has made it harder to see an effect from global heating. However, “remarkable” losses of Antarctic sea ice in the last six years indicate that the record levels of heat now in the ocean and related changes in weather patterns may mean that the climate crisis is finally manifesting in the observations. Scientists were already very concerned about…

On most mornings, Mylène Ebrard hops on a waterbus from her home in Giudecca, a neighbourhood of Venice with a village-like feel, and across the canal to her favourite bar, where over a hot chocolate she works from her mobile phone. The ritual has become sacred to the rhythm of her day in Venice, where the French communications specialist has lived since October as part of a project aimed at attracting remote workers to help repopulate the lagoon city. “I was just working on social media for one of my clients. They don’t see the difference if I’m here or in Paris,” said Ebrard, 38. “I love this bar during the day as you get the sun on the terrace. It’s impossible to say it’s ugly in Venice, even when…

The release last week of a portion of the Fulton county special purpose grand jury’s report marks a new step toward potential criminal charges holding Donald Trump and his allies accountable for election interference. Georgia was crucial in the 2020 presidential election, providing a key victory for Joe Biden and drawing the intense focus of Trump and his backers. “I just want to find 11,780 votes,” Trump said on the now infamous phone call to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. During the call, Trump maintained that widespread voter fraud took place in Georgia, claiming he had in fact won the state despite audits confirming the validity of election results. This call sparked the initial Fulton county investigation and now fuels Fulton district attorney Fani Willis’s ability to bring…

How to whiz up a perfect smoothie and get the consistency just right What’s the best way to make a smoothie? I find it hard to get the right texture. Emily, Gateshead, England, UK Smoothies are a great way to get more fruit and veg into your diet, but success hinges on getting the consistency right. As Lily Simpson, founder of Detox Kitchen, says: “Too thick and you’ll need to grab a spoon; too thin and you’ll miss the indulgent creaminess.” But while you don’t necessarily need to follow a recipe, Emily, hitting that texture sweet spot is a numbers game. Cook Anna Jones, whose books include One: Pot, Pan, Planet, says: “A good smoothie is all about getting the ratio right.” She divides hers into five parts. She takes…

A bright, cold day promises firm going across the miry moorland that leads to the fine, remote hill of Drygarn Fawr, presiding spirit of what the late Wynford Vaughan-Thomas called the Great Wilderness, stretching from Machynlleth in the north to Bannau Brycheiniog in the south. I set off through forestry plantation, on a short approach best suited to a winter ascent. Bramblings glide among the wood margins, their repetitive callnotes piercing among the silence of the trees. Few footprints mark the snow beyond the moor gate. I labour across Blaen Gwesyn to Drygarn’s rocky summit ridge and climb to the higher easternmost summit. It’s 3 metres tall, perhaps 20 in circumference, visible for kilometres around. Its gleaming white quartzite core is concealed within a pebbly grey conglomerate cladding. Quartzite cores…

Vitaliy Savchenko showed off the damage from a Russian shell that had landed right across the street. Shrapnel tore holes in his garage and blew off the kitchen door. There were three neat gaps in his car. “When it’s a mortar you have five seconds to react. With a Grad missile it’s a bit longer – about 18 seconds,” he said. “A tank round is instantaneous. There’s no time to hide.” Savchenko lives in Kherson, the southern city triumphantly liberated on 11 November by Ukrainian forces. He spent nine months under occupation. When friendly troops came down the main Ushakov avenue, Savchenko waved a blue and yellow flag he had hidden under the stairs, along with his mobile phone. The next evening he held a party with friends. The euphoria…

Amid a wasteland strewn with bricks and iron and a city reeling from unfathomable loss, a lone new building stands unscathed. The European cultural centre at the heart of Adıyaman looks like a place that the earthquake bypassed; the thumps of nearby diggers echo from its robust walls and the images of passing rescuers are reflected in its pristine glass facade. The centre is considered by some as a monument to survival that somehow endured a disaster that destroyed almost everything around it. But to many others, it’s a sign of what should have been for the rest of a ruined city. Shock and despair following the devastation that hit south-eastern Turkey and Syria earlier this month is slowly being subsumed by a search for answers. First among the questions…

The high profile race to enhance their search products has underscored the importance of artificial intelligence to Google and Microsoft – and the rest of the economy, too. Two of the world’s largest tech companies announced plans for AI-enhanced search this month, ratcheting up a tussle for supremacy in the artificial intelligence space. However, the debut of Google’s new chatbot, Bard, was scuppered when an error appeared, knocking $163bn off the parent company Alphabet’s share price. The stock’s plunge showed how crucial investors think AI could be to Google’s future. But the increasing prominence of AI has implications for every corner of the economy. From retail to transport, here’s how AI promises to usher in a wave of change across industries. Farming Monitoring weather patterns, managing pests and disease, working…

The mercury is already nudging 40C on a February morning in Birdsville and, walking down the main drag, you could be forgiven for mistaking yourself in the nearby ghost town of Betoota. A guard dog barks half-heartedly without emerging from the shade beneath a set of stairs while a raptor wheels above. There is not a person in sight. The last census recorded Birdsville’s population as 110, but that figure drops by more than half over summer. Those who stick it out use terms like “hibernate” and “bunkering down” to describe how they survive the three months from December to March. Yet while others have fled the heat, an Australian human rights lawyer has travelled in the opposite direction, as she seeks adaptation strategies she hopes will save lives as…

For a Ugandan general trained by the British army at Sandhurst, Muhoozi Kainerugaba is an unorthodox kind of guy. Last October he offered 100 cows as a bride price for Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. In another reportedly well-lubricated Twitter escapade, Muhoozi threatened to invade Kenya, which led to his removal as commander of the Uganda People’s Defence Force. Bizarrely, he was simultaneously promoted to four-star rank. In other late-night online interventions, Muhoozi has backed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and praised Donald Trump as “the only white man I have ever respected”. He also has a much darker side. While leading the Special Forces Command, he was implicated in the abduction and torture of political opponents. In 2021, in a chilly echo of Idi Amin, he defended his right to…

Just as the first lockdown was beginning to lift in late summer 2020, Tom Bullough set out to walk Sarn Helen, the Roman road that once cut through Wales from Neath in the south to Caerhun in the north. The road gets its name from the fourth-century princess-turned-saint, Elen Luyddog, who, according to the Mabinogion, insisted that her Roman husband Magnus Maximus build her “a great road” linking her home town in the foothills of Snowdonia all the way to the Bristol Channel. Sadly, the timings don’t work. The Romans laid down their roads shortly after settling in Britain in the first century, long before the historical Elen was in any position to start making demands about infrastructure. Still, it is these layering, time-shifting stories that Bullough holds in his…

Across 1 Skip school (4,6) 7 Without disruption (7) 8 Pea family plant cultivated for silage or as fodder (5) 10 Nifty (4) 11 Legal (8) 13 Socialist (informally) (6) 15 Peak (6) 17 Collection of exercises for students (8) 18 ‘Wherefore art ___ Romeo?’ (Juliet) (4) 21 Adjust again (5) 22 Crush completely (informal) (7) 23 By comparison (10) Down 1 City setting for The Taming of the Shrew (5) 2 Speculative (4) 3 Experiment (3,3) 4 Not expressed (8) 5 Woven barrier (7) 6 Shade of blue – clown or ref (anag) (10) 9 Deceptive statements (4-6) 12 Bread – bait a cat (anag) (8) 14 Predict (7) 16 Art of growing dwarf plants (6) 19 With many ups and downs? (5) 20 Backless footwear (4)…

1 UKRAINE Biden visits Zelenskiy on surprise trip to Kyiv Joe Biden visited the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Monday, defying threats of Russian missile attacks, to announce a new package of additional US weapons supplies worth $500m, as Ukraine prepares to mark the sombre anniversary of last year’s full-scale Russian invasion. The US president, closely surrounded by a large security detail, was escorted by his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on a walkabout around central Kyiv as air sirens could be heard, confirming rumours of a visit that had been circulating during the morning. In a post on his social media channels, Zelenskiy welcomed Biden to Kyiv posting a photograph of the two men standing in front of Ukrainian and US flags. The timing – before a planned address by Vladimir Putin…

BREXIT Doubts over resolution to Northern Ireland protocol A deal to solve the post-Brexit impasse in Northern Ireland was unlikely to emerge imminently, a senior Democratic Unionist politician warned, as Rishi Sunak came under increasing pressure from the DUP and a number of Conservative backbenchers. Sammy Wilson, who speaks on Brexit issues for the DUP, reiterated the party’s pledge that Sunak agreeing a deal with the EU without the consent of the unionist party would mean a continued boycott of Northern Ireland’s devolved assembly. After talks with the EU last week, Downing Street had been hopeful of presenting a deal this week. But on Monday the prime minister’s spokesperson told journalists that “no deal has been done as yet”. Adding to the headache for No 10 was an intervention from…

As the light faded and tens of thousands of protesters made their way back from the Knesset to Jerusalem’s train station last week, the mood was tired but determined. Israel’s newly re-elected prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is no stranger to demonstrations calling for him to resign. But the now two-month-old movement against his far-right coalition’s plans to overhaul the judicial system is not like those he has faced before – or like any in the country’s history. The “Israeli spring” is a rare show of unity in what is normally a deeply polarised society. Afraid that the proposals curbing the power of the supreme court will start Israel down an authoritarian path similar to that of Turkey and Hungary in recent years, upwards of 100,000 people have taken to the…

Almost 12 years have passed since the strongest earthquake in Japan’s recorded history resulted in a tsunami that killed more than 18,000 people along its north-east coast. As the country prepares for the 11 March anniversary, one of its most troubling legacies is about to come into view with the release of more than 1m tonnes of “treated” water from the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The tsunami knocked out the plant’s backup electricity supply, leading to meltdowns in three reactors, in the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl 25 years earlier. Much has changed since the Guardian’s first visit to the plant in 2012, when the cleanup had barely begun and visitors were required to wear protective clothing and full-face masks. Atmospheric radiation levels have dropped, damaged reactor…

Many visitors to Graefekiez, a lively cobbledroad neighbourhood just south of Berlin’s centre, come in search of something new: a tattoo from an authentic Japanese parlour, a rare print from an off-grid gallery, a 4am dive-bar beer. This summer, they can brace themselves for another novelty: for at least three months, local authorities are planning to scrap almost all of the neighbourhood’s parking spaces as part of a social experiment to gauge the German capital’s car-free future. Exactly how long the trial will last, how many roads it will include, and whether the vacant parking spaces will be filled with ping-pong tables, plant pots or dining tables instead, the council will not reveal, with an impact expected from this month’s Berlin state elections, a repeat of the September 2021 vote…

The Guardian and the Observer have partnered with an international consortium of reporters to investigate global disinformation. Our project, Disinfo black ops, exposes how false information is deliberately spread by powerful states and private operatives who sell their covert services to political campaigns, companies and wealthy individuals. It also reveals how inconvenient truths can be erased from the internet by those who are rich enough to pay. The investigation is part of Story killers, a collaboration led by Forbidden Stories, a French nonprofit whose mission is to pursue the work of assassinated, threatened or jailed reporters. The eight-month investigation was inspired by the work of Gauri Lankesh, a 55-year-old journalist who was shot dead outside her Bengaluru home in 2017. A team of Israeli contractors who claim to have manipulated more…

A 13-YEAR-OLD I KNOW (WHOSE identity I am thinly veiling to preserve his privacy) came back from school the other day and told me that there was a year 9 kid “dealing Prime” at the back of the class. Apparently, this boy was sourcing the Prime from a supplier in London for £2 ($2.40) a unit before selling it on to children who didn’t know any better for eight quid. “Prime” isn’t, as I first thought, a drug but a sports drink in bright plastic bottles promoted by the YouTube stars KSI and Logan Paul. Prime Hydration contains coconut water, B vitamins and sweeteners, plus branched-chain amino acids (which are used by bodybuilders to promote muscles), and it comes in lurid flavours including Tropical Punch and Blue Raspberry. Another version of…

Last November, the Tim Burton-directed, Netflix Addams Family reboot, Wednesday, saw a dance scene go viral on Tik-Tok: Wednesday herself, played by Jenna Ortega, flailing beautifully in black organza to the Cramps’ goth-schlock-psychobilly 1981 cover, Goo Goo Muck. It came after Burberry showed a dramatic, extreme-goth collection for this spring; soon after, the Cure sold out three nights at Wembley Arena. Now, two hefty books are about to arrive documenting goth’s endurably undead history, John Robb’s The Art of Darkness: the History of Goth and Cathi Unsworth’s Season of the Witch: the Book of Goth. And summer sees the return of the long elusive goth sphinx herself, as Siouxsie Sioux headlines Latitude festival. This month brings the definitive original soundtrack, Young Limbs Rise Again: the story of the Batcave Nightclub…

When Puerto Rico started bankruptcy proceedings in 2016, the US island territory became McKinsey’s newest client. The company was hired to advise a federally appointed oversight board and, according to a report in New York magazine, set about creating an “aspirational vision” for Puerto Rico, appointing a 31-year-old Harvard graduate as the project’s senior full-time consultant. A 2016 Columbia graduate assisted with financial calculations and job cuts (euphemistically termed “rightsizing measures”), and a recent Yale graduate handled hurricane damage assessment. Ultimately, McKinsey advised on a “schema” for the island’s ailing economy that included privatising public enterprises and removing labour protections. The firm’s work in Puerto Rico is one of many stories in Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington’s new book, a brisk and approachable guide to the consulting industry and its…

Like Puzzles? Try the new Guardian Puzzles app. Download from the App Store or Google Play Read more: theguardian.com/puzzles-app 1 Who spent about 40% of their life as British prime minister? 2 Which literary character was born Marion Tweedy in Gibraltar? 3 What did Robert Wilson supposedly photograph in 1934? 4 Chablis is the northernmost part of which wine region? 5 In the Bible, who asked: “What is truth?” 6 What is measured by a nit? 7 What is the world record for stacking M&M’s? 8 Which city has statues of Desperate Dan and Minnie the Minx? What links: 9 Portugal, 2017; South Korea, 2007; Ghana, 1997; Egypt, 1992? 10 Monica Geller; Carmy Berzatto; Andy Jones; Gareth Blackstock? 11 Tor; Freenet; I2P; Riffle? 12 Hedy Lamarr; Tony Curtis; Norman Mailer;…

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