Innehållsförteckning för 24 March 2023 från Guardian Weekly

Are we in a banking crisis? Opinions diverge on this. The California-based Silicon Valley Bank is the biggest US bank collapse since 2008, and Credit Suisse has joined peers that were sold at fire-sale prices during the financial crisis. Shane Oliver, the chief economist of financial services company AMP, says while the bank failures do not look like a rerun of the 2008 crisis, they do represent contagion risks. Investors have been selling down regional US banks, in particular, over concerns they might have balance sheets that resemble SVB’s finances. But other parts of the market, including US tech stocks, have held up well during a volatile few weeks, indicating some investors expect the threat of a banking crisis to subside. It is clear, however, that the speed of the…

Lion conservation efforts in the Indian state of Gujarat have been so successful that a new sanctuary will be opened to house the abundant numbers of big cats. Gir national park is home to the world’s only Asiatic lion population and the only place outside Africa where a lion can be seen in its natural habitat. The number of the endangered animals has risen so high – with about 400 in Gir and 300 in other parts of the state – that Gir has been overcrowded for years. Lack of space has forced lions to stray into villages and coastal areas. Conservationists have been pleading with the Gujarat government to move some lions to other parts of India to give those in Gir enough breathing space. Keeping so many of…

A Mediterranean diet of nuts, seafood, grains and vegetables could lower the risk of dementia by almost a quarter, according to new research. The data suggests eating plant-based foods may have a “protective effect” against dementia, regardless of genetic risk, which researchers said could form the basis for future public health strategies if confirmed. Joint lead author of the study Dr Janice Ranson, a senior research fellow at the University of Exeter, said: “This is likely to be a beneficial lifestyle choice for people looking to make healthy dietary choices and reduce their risk of dementia.” The findings, in the journal BMC Medicine, are based on data from more than 60,000 individuals from the UK Biobank, an online database of medical and lifestyle records. Over nearly a decade, there were…

‘THERE WAS THIS ENTIRE PART of Mum that I never knew about,” Ben Leyland says. Brenda Leyland was a stylish, well-spoken and rather private woman who lived in a picturesque village in Leicestershire. He knew she told stories, and that some of them may have been on the tall side. He also knew that she spent a lot of time on her laptop and was increasingly living online. What he didn’t know was that his mother had become a Twitter troll who spent the final years of her life relentlessly attacking the parents of Madeleine McCann, the girl who disappeared in Portugal in 2007 at the age of three and hasn’t been seen since. In 2014, Brenda was approached by a Sky News journalist who asked her why she was…

The BBC ought to look at its own conduct first In contrast to some other presenters, Gary Lineker was not revealing any party preferences nor his voting intentions in his tweet (Spotlight, 17 March). He was not offering general criticism or endorsement of any party per se. He was simply commenting on a single government policy affecting a human rights issue to which he is committed. Given the BBC director-general’s own history of Tory activism, isn’t it he who needs to defend himself – and thus the BBC – against charges of political partisanship in this matter? Ian McCormack Leicester, England, UK • Does anyone think Gary Lineker would have been suspended or even noticed if he had tweeted in favour of government policy? This, together with not broadcasting an…

Green-eyed monster “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster” Othello, Act III, Scene III Fair play “For a score of kingdoms you should wrangle, and I would call it fair play” The Tempest, Act V, Scene I Be cruel to be kind “I must be cruel only to be kind” Hamlet, Act III, Scene IV It’s Greek to me “Nay, an I tell you that, Ill ne’er look you i’ the face again: but those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me” Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene II Love is blind “Love is blind, and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit” The Merchant of Venice, Act II, Scene VI Too much of a good…

Strange Sally Diamond By Liz Nugent Sally doesn’t see why everyone is up in arms when she attempts to incinerate her adoptive father’s corpse. Psychiatrist Thomas Diamond, to whom she was case study as much as daughter and with whom she has lived a reclusive life in an isolated County Roscommon bungalow, specifically told her to “put [him] out with the bins”. He has left letters detailing what he knows of the horrific events that led up to her adoption, but we know, from a second narrator, that the truth is even worse. Nugent’s fifth novel is her best yet: evil perpetuates evil in a heartbreaking but humane tale of people damaged beyond repair. The Shadows of London By Andrew Taylor In the sixth novel in Taylor’s series set in…

Prep 15 min Cook 45 min Serves 4 • DAIRY FREE • GLUTEN FREE Ingredients Vegetable oil1 onion, peeled and finely choppedSalt½ tsp smoked paprika½ tsp ground turmeric1 tsp ground cumin1 tsp ground coriander½ tsp black pepper2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed3 thyme stalks1cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and finely grated2 spring onions, trimmed and finely chopped½ red pepper, chopped1 carrot, halved lengthwise and cut into 3mm-thick half-moons400ml coconut milk150ml vegetable stock200g butternut squash or pumpkin (frozen is fine), cut into 1cm dice1 scotch bonnet200g sweetcorn300g smoked haddock, cut into large piecesParsley or chives, chopped finely, to garnish This soup riffs somewhere between a chowder and rundown, a Jamaican stew that’s “cooked down” with coconut milk. The smokiness of the fish and paprika add depth, while the sweetcorn gives welcome…

ASTRONOMY Space telescope captures rare image of dying star The James Webb space telescope has captured the rare and fleeting phase of a star on the cusp of death. The observation was among the first made by the telescope following its launch in late 2021, but the picture was only released last week. It shows the gas and dust flung into space by the star 15,000 light years away. Shimmering in purple, the castoff material once comprised the star’s outer layer. The Hubble space telescope snapped a shot of the same star a few decades ago, but without the delicate details. “We’ve never seen it like that before. It’s really exciting,” said Macarena Garcia Marin, a European Space Agency scientist from the project. PFAS Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ found in toilet…

After a 10,000-year journey, our human civilisation has reached a climate crossroads: what we choose to do in the next few years will determine our fate for millennia. That choice was laid bare in the landmark report published on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), assembled by the foremost climate experts and approved by all the governments. The next update will be published about 2030 – by that time the most critical choices will have been made. The report is clear about what is at stake – everything: “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.” “The choices and actions implemented in this decade [ie by 2030] will have impacts now and for thousands of years,” it said.…

So many of their sons loved football. The game meant inclusion and friendship regardless of language or culture; it cemented bonds in their own community and promised a way to forge new ones outside of it. As Noraini Abbas readies team shirts and prepares lunches for a football festival, she recalls years of ferrying her soccer-mad sons to games in Christchurch on weekend mornings that always seemed freezing, no matter the time of year. Abbas is hosting the second annual event in memory of her youngest son, Sayyad Abbas Milne, and 50 other Muslim worshipers who were killed when a white supremacist opened fire at their mosques during Friday prayers, four years ago. Sayyad – 14 when he died – was the youngest of five shining soccer stars murdered on…

The French statesman Georges Clemenceau once said: “War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.” In the case of the invasion of Iraq, however, the war that began 20 years ago started in victory and has ended in a series of catastrophes. The US military withdrawal from Iraq was ultimately completed by 2011, finally answering the question posed by Gen David Petraeus during that first push to Baghdad in 2003: “Tell me, how does this end?” Yet the long shadow of the invasion still looms over the international order, staining the reputation of those who instigated it and dealing a heavy blow to the confidence that had buoyed the west after the fall of the Berlin Wall. At this distance, 20 years on, it seems to matter…

Show goes on for Shakespeare’s First Folios Page 54 Is the sequin perhaps the most glamorous product of evolutionary biology? Psychologists say humans are drawn to things that sparkle because once our ancestors searched for light reflecting on rivers in their search for water. Now we search for sparkle elsewhere – a diamond ring, a disco ball – and find new meaning in it beyond survival. Like glamour, or value, or – in the case of Ashish Gupta, a fashion designer renowned for his artistry with sequins – freedom. Next month sees Ashish’s first retrospective, showcasing 20 years of his label’s hand-embroidered sequined clothes, like the dressing gown in zardozi, a south Asian embroidery method using gold thread, and the pink T-shirt with the slogan “Fall in love and be…

In March 2000, three weeks before the 72nd Academy Awards, that year’s shipment of Oscars – 55 individually marked, 24-carat gold-plated statuettes – disappeared en route from the manufacturer in Chicago to Los Angeles. The story briefly became a showbiz sensation: the Academy set up a 24-hour tip line; the handling company offered a $ 50,000 reward; the FBI became involved. The culprits were a couple of light-fingered delivery workers. They were arrested within days and the show went on. Had these thieves been able to sell the Oscars on the open market, they might have been in for a shock. The going rate for 55 new Oscar statues is $55. Since 1951, all Academy Award winners must sign an agreement that they “shall not sell or otherwise dispose of…

The gap between the side of the house and the garden wall is roofed over with sheets of clear corrugated plastic. It’s where we keep things that don’t need to be warm, but do need to be dry: paint, scrap wood, garden tools and a toaster that isn’t quite broken enough to throw away. I notice the plastic roof has a hole in it, about 15cm in diameter. I think a fox probably put its foot through it while gnawing on the chicken bones I found up there when I finally dragged the ladder out for a look. The problem qualifies as urgent, because the stuff that sits under the plastic roof is getting wet. But corrugated roofing sheets come in many different sizes and thicknesses, not to mention varying…

QUIZ Thomas Eaton 1 Three-year-old Eliza Armstrong was the first patient at which hospital? 2 What is the world’s largest trade book fair? 3 Marduk was the chief god of which city? 4 Which songwriter was musical director for Marlene Dietrich? 5 Which three countries border both Russia and China? 6 Hakuhō Shō is considered the greatest ever competitor in which sport? 7 Where is England’s only statue of Bonnie Prince Charlie? 8 How is the boss of Stratton Oakmont described in a film title? 9 Labino; Lalique; Lipofsky; Liskova; Littleton? 10 Arius; Marcion; Nestorius; Pelagius; Sabellius? 11 Zika virus; Chikungunya; West Nile virus; dengue; malaria? 12 Pui Fan Lee; voice of Jack Black; Turin and Piacenza; 84? 13 Cunningham; Owen; Beckham; McManaman; Woodgate? 14 Washington DC (1st and 2nd);…

You’d be forgiven for having allowed the collapse of the tech industry lender Silicon Valley Bank, earlier this month, to pass you by. Even the news that SVB’s UK operation had been salvaged in a deal brokered by the British government might not have registered much. But the rescue this week of Switzerland’s second-largest lender Credit Suisse had a more ominous feel to it, a sense of fiscal dominoes cascading slowly into one another. For our big story this week, Anna Isaac and Kalyeena Makortoff report on a week that brought back anxious memories of the 2008 financial crash, while economics editor Larry Elliott argues that only the era of ultra-low interest rates that followed the previous crash has prevented a further correction happening sooner. The big story Page 12 → Chinese president…

ENVIRONMENT ‘Final warning’ issued on climate crisis Page 22 → Xi Jinping said China is ready with Russia “to stand guard over the world order based on international law” as he arrived in Moscow for a state visit on Monday, days after Vladimir Putin was made the subject of an arrest warrant by the international criminal court. A military brass band greeted Xi at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport. “I am very glad, at the invitation of President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, to come back to the land of our close neighbour on a state visit,” Xi said upon arrival, according to Russia’s state-run Tass news agency. “I am confident the visit will be fruitful and give new momentum to the healthy and stable development of Chinese-Russian relations.” Xi added that together with…

STEFAN STERN Perk-cession means a work culture rethink Page 47 → In the two decades since the second Iraq war, the United States appears like the Bourbon kings who had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. The illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq was a story of geopolitical failure and domestic political disaster. To understand the foolhardy decision to launch the war, one must first understand the US grand strategy of global hegemony, pursued by Washington since 1945. The “war on terror” provided political cover for the further pursuit of supremacy, despite threatening democratic government with lies, fraud and violence. George W Bush’s rash actions did provoke some murmurs of concern about the damage being inflicted but these faded from the corridors of power. Instead the US has refused to move…

The hungry and desperate are now much more so. Last month, the rations to Rohingya living in the world’s largest refugee camp – Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh – were slashed. This is, as a UN expert warned, a matter of life and death. The Rohingya have lived on a knife edge for too long. Their suffering made global headlines in 2017, when the Myanmar military, supported by militias, launched a murderous campaign that took thousands of lives, forced 700,000 to flee Rakhine state for Bangladesh and was described by a UN human rights expert as genocide. In the last two years, what little attention has been paid to Myanmar has focused on the military’s coup and attempts to crush civilian resistance. But the suffering of the Rohingya began decades ago and…

MUSIC Lizzo Ovo Hydro, Glasgow, Scotland The US singer’s UK tour kicked off on International Women’s Day with an all-female band, three female backing vocalists, the Little Bigs, Lizzo’s longtime DJ, Sophia Eris, and the 10-strong Big Grrrls dance troupe, stars of Lizzo’s triple-Emmywinning reality competition show, Watch Out for the Big Grrrls. We know we are in Glasgow because Lizzo revels in shouting it – “GlasGOH!” she hollers, often – and twice starts a chant of “here we, here we fucking go”. Tonight’s extravaganza of glitter and sisterhood is both slick and authentic. As has become customary – certainly since Lizzo’s breakout album of 2019, Cuz I Love You, but in her previous indie career as well – a night out in Lizzo’s company is like downing a quadruple…

Time took on an elastic and sinuous quality during the Covid-19 lockdowns, if it retained any coherence at all. Days bled into each other, as did walks and Zoom catchups and Sopranos episodes. Feeling a sense of “temporal weirdness”, California artist and writer Jenny Odell set up a camera on a tripod facing her window. “Time felt the same in my room, but in the photos, it rained, it stormed, and the fog rolled in from San Francisco,” she says. Flicking through the photos, Odell felt an emotion that she calls “it” – being tak en out of the present, with all that was familiar made strange. This feeling of “it” runs through her cultural and political meditation, Saving Time. Odell sets the stakes high for her investigation. Observing that…