Innehållsförteckning för 10 March 2023 från Guardian Weekly

The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol 208 | Issue№ 10 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…

More than 1,000 “super-emitter” sites gushed the potent greenhouse gas methane into the global atmosphere in 2022, the Guardian can reveal, mostly from oil and gas facilities. The worst single leak spewed the pollution at a rate equivalent to 67m running cars. Separate data also reveals 55 “methane bombs” around the world – fossil fuel extraction sites where gas leaks alone from future production would release levels of methane equivalent to 30 years of all US green-house gas emissions. Methane emissions cause 25% of global heating today and there has been a “scary” surge since 2007, according to scientists. This acceleration may be the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating and seriously risks triggering catastrophic climate tipping points, researchers say. The two new datasets identify the sites…

Before they were bussed off to Windsor last Thursday for a fun-filled awayday on how to approach the next general election, many Conservative MPs believed a corner might just have been turned in their party’s fortunes. Rishi Sunak appeared to have pulled off a remarkable success with his deal on the Northern Ireland protocol. The newspapers had been full of stories suggesting the prime minister might be about to betray the Brexiters and sell out the Democratic Unionist party (DUP). And they were raising questions about how Boris Johnson, still furious over Sunak’s role in ousting him from No 10 last summer, might exploit this moment of maximum danger to advance his own plans for a sensational comeback to Downing Street. The choreography of the European Commission’s president Ursula von…

It is blockbuster TV, with Romans and Vikings, knights and Neanderthals, trains and the trenches of the first world war – and a hefty dose of political controversy. The Story of Flanders, a 10-part history series airing in Belgium’s northern region since January, has been a cultural landmark. But the apparently lavish funding from the region’s government, run by the separatist New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) party, which seeks to make Flanders independent from Belgium, has led to accusations of propaganda. The series, broken into 50-minute episodes, recounts 38,000 years of history in this corner of north-western Europe. It has been an epic production: three years in the making, with lavish historical reconstructions, involving 700 actors and extras in period costume, 100 locations and a team of stunt horses. More than…

The Chinese spy balloon that hovered over the US earlier this year did not just damage relations between Beijing and Washington, it also cast a shadow over the future of TikTok. Last week, a US congressional committee backed legislation that would give the US president the power to ban the Chinese-owned social video app. The Republican chair of the committee, Michael McCaul, said the incident had reinforced fears of Chinese state surveillance, describing Tik-Tok as a “spy balloon in your phone”. It came after Canada announced it would join the US in barring TikTok from government mobile devices. The EU’s executive arm and the European parliament have also banned the app from staff phones. TikTok faces the threat of these narrow bans escalating. Banning the app entirely would leave a…

Awar of words played out over the first two years of the pandemic. On one side were commentators and scientists opposed to any form of social restriction as a way of keeping infection rates down. On the other, those who argued the government should be pursuing a “zero Covid” policy to eliminate the disease at all costs. Caught between this tug of war were the majority of scientists and the British public. Sometime last summer, those debates melted into the background with the promise of “to be continued” when the statutory inquiry into Covid starts to publish its findings. But the second season of Lockdown Wars has been thrust on us sooner than expected after the Daily Telegraph obtained more than 100,000 pandemic WhatsApp messages. They were passed on by…

SCREEN Close call: how Lukas Dhont beat the bullies Page 55 → On the face of things, it appears we are living in a golden age for live arena music. In the UK alone, eight new purpose-built large venues – in London, Manchester, Gateshead, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Bristol, Sunderland and Dundee – are currently in various stages of completion or planning. Some, such as Bristol’s, are proposed for areas that have long been underserved. Meanwhile, in December, when Manchester gets the £365m ($440m), 23,500-capacity Co-op Live, it will join London and Birmingham as a two-arena city, its other being the refurbished 21,000-capacity AO Arena. But is there really a demand for all these vast venues? Neil Warnock, the global head of touring at United Talent Agency, who represents 250 artists, says…

What else can I do with my wonderful rice cooker? Jo, London, England, UK “Oh, so much,” says Amy Poon, the founder of Poon’s London. “I use my rice cooker like a (not so) slow cooker.” To best understand what else you can do with it, consider how rice cookers function. “They work on weight,” explains Ping Coombes, a former MasterChef champion and the author of Malaysia. “You add water and, as the rice cooks, the water soaks into the grain.” So you’re really looking at liquid-based things. But let’s stick with rice for a second because there are many possibilities. You could, for example, knock up a risotto, biryani, jambalaya or, as Poon suggests, a “cheat’s” clay pot rice. “Cut boneless chicken thighs into small pieces, marinate with potato…

Across 1 One powerful goal, with rich result (8) 5 Protest article’s purpose (6) 9 Writer, some lefties say, is Tory (8) 10 Notice Nick appearing in … (6) 12 Dusty town in an unspecified location (11) 15 Relish short dance (5) 17 Britain’s entanglement with EU law starts a tense situation (4-5) 18 Model style mostly followed by one in five (9) 19 Island egg shelled, so to speak? (5) 20 One way of seeing action is to have a row (11) 24 Throw covers not even cheap! (6) 25 Start fishing for one of a pair (8) 26 Be quiet, be human and, finally, enjoy this wine (6) 27 Matilda’s mate? Crikey! Right into the devil’s clutches (2,6) Down 1 One’s silly to accept portal entry initials with…

For 44 years, satellites have helped scientists track how much ice is floating on the ocean around Antarctica’s 18,000km coastline. The continent’s fringing waters undergo a massive shift each year, with sea ice peaking at about 18m sq km each September before dropping to just above 2m sq km by February. But across four decades of satellite observations, there has never been less ice around the continent than there was last week. “By the end of January, we could tell it was only a matter of time. It wasn’t even a close-run thing,” says Dr Will Hobbs, an Antarctic sea ice expert at the University of Tasmania with the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership. In the southern hemisphere summer of 2022, the amount of sea ice dropped to 1.92m sq km…

More than 1,000 Iranian girls in schools across the country appear to have suffered “mild poison” attacks since November, when first cases emerged in Qom city, according to state media and officials. The suspected attacks have been described by some observers as part of an extremist response – perhaps with tacit state endorsement – to the protests led by women and girls that have convulsed Iran since the death of Mahsa Amini in September. But there are also suggestions that some cases may be evidence of mass sociogenic illness – symptoms without a biomedical cause – stemming from the repression of schoolgirls who have played a leading role in that movement. One of the reasons why the suspected attacks have been so shocking is that girls’ education has been an…

In a frustrating final report, the chair of the Manchester Arena inquiry half got at the truth. Could the suicide bombing at the Ariana Grande concert on 22 May 2017 have been prevented? Sir John Saunders admitted his approach will have “raised more questions” in the minds of the families of the 22 who lost their lives. Saunders cannot fully explain two pieces of intelligence that MI5 obtained in early 2017 which, if acted upon, might have prevented Salman Abedi’s attack. It was “a significant missed opportunity” but such is the British state’s addiction to secrecy that the details cannot be published. A public inquiry is a rare opportunity to overcome Britain’s dysfunctional intelligence oversight system whereby spy chiefs do not face public select committees, instead facing the intelligence and…

It fell to Steve Bannon, far-right podcaster and political pugilist, to wake up the crowd with a jolt. “Don’t fall for the primary stuff,” he urged in a fiery speech. “It’s not relevant. We don’t have time for on-the-job training [instead of] a man that gave us four years of peace and prosperity.” What had been a low-energy Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) erupted in cheers. It did again when Bannon – who is facing four months in prison for contempt of Congress – said “Donald J Trump” would win both the Republican nomination and US presidency in 2024. Finally, here was someone who was speaking the language of CPAC. But there was row upon row of empty seats in the convention centre’s ballroom. The “Make America Great Again” (Maga)…

It has taken a very short time for artificial intelligence application ChatGPT to have a disruptive effect on journalism. A technology columnist for the New York Times wrote that a chatbot expressed feelings (which is impossible). Other media outlets filled with examples of “Sydney” the Microsoft-owned Bing AI search experiment being “rude” and “bullying” (also impossible). Ben Thompson, who writes the Stratechery newsletter, declared Sydney gave him the “most mind-blowing computer experience of my life” and deduced the AI was trained to elicit emotional reactions – and it seemed to have succeeded. To be clear, it is not possible for AI such as ChatGPT and Sydney to have emotions. Nor can they tell whether they are making sense or not. What these systems are incredibly good at is emulating human…

The revered French fashion house Louis Vuitton made a surprise announcement in December 2015 about the advertising campaign for its forthcoming spring-summer collection. The range of clothes and accessories would be modelled on screen and in the pages of glossy magazines not by a famous actor or popstar but by a video game character: the pink-haired warrior Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII. Nicolas Ghesquière, the brand’s creative director, said he considered Lightning to be the “perfect avatar for a global heroic woman”. The fictional character even did interviews to promote the partnership. It was not the first time a fashion brand had collaborated with a popular video game. H&M, Moschino and Diesel had made digital clothes for The Sims. Diesel had its own island in Play-Station 3’s ambitious metaverse forerunner,…

In a literary marketplace that sometimes seems oversupplied with novels about brittle intellectuals feeling alienated from their emotions, or twentysomethings grinding axes about their exes, there is the wonder of Eleanor Catton: a novelist of lavish technical gifts who addresses herself to the world. Catton’s first novel, 2008’s The Rehearsal, was a small miracle. Leaping acrobatically between fictional and metafictional modes, it tells the story of a secondary-school scandal (male teacher, female student) restaged by trainees at a local drama school. There is something almost Brechtian about the way it shocks you out of familiar fictional comfort zones, and something almost Wildean in the way it lobs its arch perceptions, like glittering little hand grenades, at all sorts of social and artistic pieties. Catton’s second novel, 2013’s The Luminaries, was…

Across 1 M in the James Bond films (9) 8 First James Bond film (2,2) 9 Hot-headed (9) 10 Horizontal – dull (4) 13 Bookmaker’s odds (5) 15 Harass – pester (6) 16 Philosophical study of morals (6) 17 Rigorous (6) 19 Location of Schönbrunn Palace (6) 20 Shere Khan, say (5) 21 Street atlas (1,2,1) 24 Study of the origin of words (9) 25 Departure (4) 26 Sinner (9) Down 2 Question – shoe (4) 3 Get together (4) 4 Illness caused by lack of vitamin C (6) 5 Horsey (6) 6 Amazing (9) 7 Polaris (5,4) 11 Tonya Harding or Nancy Kerrigan, say (3-6) 12 Harsh and corrosive in tone (9) 13 Kick out (5) 14 Step (5) 18 Giggle (6) 19 Troublesome insects or rodents (6) 22…

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1 ENVIRONMENT UN states finally agree treaty to protect high seas It had been almost two decades in the making, but late last Saturday night in New York, after days of gruelling round-the-clock debate and a full day after the deadline for talks had officially passed, UN member states finally agreed on a treaty to protect the high seas. The conference president, Rena Lee (pictured), of Singapore, received cheers and an ovation from delegates in the room. The historic treaty is crucial for enforcing the 30x30 pledge made at the UN biodiversity conference in December, to protect a third of the sea (and land) by 2030. Without a treaty, this target would certainly fail, as no legal mechanism existed to set up marine protected areas (MPAs) on the high seas.…

IMMIGRATION Sunak’s small boat plan ‘electioneering’ – Starmer Keir Starmer accused Rishi Sunak of electioneering as the prime minister’s plans to detain and swiftly deport thousands of asylum seekers were greeted with scepticism from unions, refugee charities and some former Conservative ministers. As more people seeking refuge in the UK arrived on Monday, the Labour leader said the plans echoed previous announcements made to shore up support before local elections. Sunak was due to publish legislation this week that was supposed to give ministers powers to detain thousands of people and place upon the home secretary a duty to remove them “as soon as reasonably practicable” to Rwanda or another country deemed to be safe. One part of the proposals would set out that anyone who had crossed the Channel…

A couple of kilometres from the crashing breakers of the Atlantic, in one of the most affluent parts of Lagos, visitors admire the paintings on the walls of the Nike Art Gallery, one of the biggest such private institutions in Africa. Among the gallery’s visitors last week was Ehi, a businesswoman in her 40s who lives nearby and came with her three children. Hours before, officials had announced the results of Nigeria’s presidential election, held four days earlier. These had left Ehi bitterly disappointed. Her favoured candidate – Peter Obi, a 61-year-old businessman who had promised reform and radical change for Nigeria – had been soundly beaten by Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a veteran “political godfather” who was the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress. “[Obi] articulated what he wanted to…

As I left Burin last Sunday – taking several buses to Amman in Jordan before a flight to London – news broke about violence in several villages, including mine, which is just south of the city of Nablus. The centre of the attacks has been on neighbouring Huwara, where nearly 400 Palestinians were injured by Israeli settlers. But Burin was also hit. Houses and cars have been burned, stones thrown and some of our goats killed or stolen. Sadly, this is nothing new – though the intensity these past few days has been frightening. I have lived in Burin since I was born, 61 years ago, working as a farmer for most of those years in groves I inherited from my father, plus others since bought by my family. My…

Attendants carry tea pots before the opening of the annual gathering of the Chinese Communist party’s advisory body at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The event runs concurrently alongside the National People’s Congress (NPC), with the “two sessions” forming the annual gathering of China’s rubber-stamping parliament. The meeting, which began last Sunday, will run until next week. Early reports revealed growing signs of China’s leadership prioritising self-sustainability. Among its concerns were restrictions by Washington on Chinese access to US semiconductor and AI technology due to national security grounds, foreign sanctions or restrictions on some Chinese companies and officials over issues including the crackdowns in Hong Kong and Xinjiang and signs of support for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. Beijing has responded by decrying the use of…

Albania, one of Europe’s fastest-growing travel destinations, will focus on alternative rather than mass tourism in a move that government officials hope will help set it apart from competitors. The small Balkan state has soared in popularity on the back of a reputation increasingly seen as both trendy and exotic. Last year it attracted 7.5 million visitors, more than twice its population and up from a record 6.4 million in 2019. “It’s another country compared with 10 years ago,” said the Albanian minister of tourism and environment, Mirela Kumbaro. “Things are changing so quickly … the Albania of 2023 is full of positive energy.” Visitor numbers are expected to grow thanks to pent-up demand post-pandemic and the appeal of a destination that offers incredible value for money. But Kumbaro said…

Ronald Mallett thinks he has cracked time travel. The secret, he says, is in twisting the fabric of space-time with a ring of rotating lasers to make a loop of time that would allow you to travel backwards. It will take a lot more explaining and experiments, but after a half century of work, the 77-year-old astrophysicist has got that down pat. His claim is not as ridiculous as it may seem. Entire academic departments are dedicated to studying the possibility of time travel. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is working on a “time-reversal machine” to detect dark matter. There are still lots of physicists who believe travelling to the past is impossible, but it is not the sci-fi pipe dream it once was. But the story of how Prof…

THERE IS A JAR of severed heads sitting on the windowsill of Gemma Whiddett’s waiting room. China heads, to be precise, that customers have gleefully smashed from the shoulders of figurines she finds in charity shops. She drops the latest head into the jar, with a satisfying clink: all ready for the next session. Whiddett manages Rage Rooms in Norwich, where customers can make an appointment to smash up heaps of unwanted crockery, small electrical appliances and miscellaneous jumble, using scaffolding poles. The concept first caught on in Japan as a way of working off stress, before spreading across the US and Europe, and is promoted as a fun, liberating means of venting everyday frustrations. And in Norwich around two-thirds of the customers are women. “We had a group of…

Shorter men appeared to be having a moment last year. A social movement, which had started in 2018 with a tweet by a young American comedian, was hitting the mainstream. Jaboukie Young-White had been tired of “short” being used as an insult. “‘Short’ gave you Donald Glover,” he said, before also listing the actors Tom Holland and Daniel Kaluuya as successful, shorter men. “Short kings are the enemy of body negativity, and I’ll be forever proud to defend them.” After percolating on TikTok and beyond, the “short king” tag grew into “short king spring”, a lighthearted, body-positive movement designed to big up smaller guys while also prompting a debate about arguably one of the last acceptable social stigmas: heightism. A year later, we learn that short men might be psychopaths,…

Most of the characters in Margaret Atwood’s latest book are old, or heading that way, and their stories unwrap what TS Eliot called the gifts reserved for age. There are fragments of lives, full of sass and sadness. The book is in three parts: a miscellaneous collection of stories is sandwiched between sections called Tig and Nell and Nell and Tig. The Nell and Tig stories tell the tale of a long and loving marriage, and what comes after. (The book is dedicated to Atwood’s partner, Graeme Gibson, who died in 2019.) When we meet Nell and Tig they are on a first aid course: they need a certificate to give talks on a cruise ship. The guests on the cruise ship, they reflect, will be “older than Nell and…

After a week with flu, I’m yearning for the outdoors. As it is, the dark clouds and close air make for an ominous atmosphere – but what I’m here for is hopeful and joyous. I’m at Hengistbury Head, a popular nature reserve in Bournemouth, to co-lead a youth bird walk for the British Trust for Ornithology. A group of young people aged 18-25 are joined by experts from the Christchurch Harbour Ornithological Group. We gaze at grazing flocks of wigeon and brent geese on the other side of the harbour. Closer, a crimson-legged redshank offers great views as it forages. Our route is a straight path leading to a sand spit, with views of mudflats on the way. A bird hide offers a welcome retreat from the wind. Brambles become…