Innehållsförteckning för 28 April 2023 från Guardian Weekly

The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol208 | Issue№ 17 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.…

Precious petal A coronation cloak made from flowers and celebrating the upcoming crowning of King Charles was the centrepiece of the Harrogate Spring Flower Show last weekend. The crown, sceptre and orb are replicas of those originally created for King Charles II in 1660 while the cloak was designed by the Yorkshire florist Helen James. Organised by the North of England Horticultural Society, the Harrogate show kicks off thespringandsummer season of horticultural events across Britain.…

EUROPE An atomic split over nuclear energy Page 18 → The staggering $787.5m settlement between Fox and voting equipment company Dominion marked the end of one of the most aggressive efforts to hold someone accountable for misinformation after the 2020 US election. Dominion sued Fox for $1.6bn in damages for knowingly broadcasting false information about the company after the election. The money from the settlement, one of the largest libel payouts in media history, was just the icing on a cake Dominion had, in many ways, already won. Yet, while Fox doled out an unprecedented sum, it was able to avoid something priceless: the public humiliation of a trial and an apology. Over recent months, Dominion has created a valuable historical artefact, publishing an internal trove of messages that showed…

Less than two years ago, Object No 2, a gigantic bomb shelter underneath the city of Samara’s Kuybyshev Square, was being considered by officials for transformation into a museum. The design and decor of the 1940s shelter – built about 40 metres underground, with office furniture and details from the pre-nuclear age – would have been a logical addition to the city’s subterranean attractions. As the Soviet Union’s reserve capital city during the second world war, Samara sits on top of a huge complex of underground bunkers, of which Object No 2 is thought to be one of the largest. Photos of Object No 2 show a seemingly endless corridor with benches for hundreds of officials to sit out bombardment or chemical attack. Original elements, such as electrical shielding made…

If there is one impression that Rishi Sunak wants to convey about his premiership, after the chaotic Boris Johnson years and the wild 49 days of Liz Truss, it is one of calm competence. So it was that the prime minister took a full day to study the report on bullying allegations against his deputy, written by Adam Tolley KC, before picking up the phone to Dominic Raab last Friday morning. Sunak had promised on his first day in office to lead a government of “integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level”, so any bullying claims made by civil servants against Raab, if upheld, could not be tolerated. But the PM also knew he owed Raab, a close ally who had stuck his neck out to support Sunak’s leadership campaign,…

For a short while in the late 1970s, Krystyna Chojnowska-Liskiewicz was probably the most famous woman in communist Poland. As the first woman to sail solo around the world, she was feted in the media, paraded at official events and sent on speaking tours to show off her achievement. In today’s Poland, however, her name has been all but forgotten – something the author of a new book about her life and journey hopes to change. “We are a country that is usually very proud of its heroes … So when I first learned about her voyage I thought it was strange I had never heard of her before,” said Paulina Reiter, a journalist and author of The Lonely Ocean. Chojnowska-Liskiewicz left Las Palmas in the Canary Islands in March…

Alice Rigney was born on the northern shores of the Athabasca River, a mighty body of water that flows from Canada’s western ice fields to the far reaches of Alberta province. Alongside her 16 siblings, she spent her youth harvesting berries and drying white fish in a tiny village known as Jackfish Lake. Despite living without electricity or running water, Rigney feels lucky to have been born there. “What more could a child want?” All of that has changed. The village and the whitefish are gone, displaced by a dam built in the 1960s. Global demand for oil saw a rush to mine the region and the waters that had long sustained the Dene, Cree and Métis peoples became something to fear. “We don’t drink from the river any more.…

ARTEM MAZHULIN Borders are no longer blurred in Ukraine Page 47 → In Kansas City this month, an elderly white man who lives alone heard the doorbell ring. He didn’t need to open the glass front door to see that a young black boy was standing there. He reacted instantly, firing two shots through the glass, one of which struck 16-year-old Ralph Yarl in the head. Ralph had set out to pick up his younger siblings at a nearby house with a similar address: he’d made a mistake, for which he is now fighting for his life. Meanwhile, 84-year-old Andrew Lester has entered a plea of not guilty on a charge of first-degree assault. But listen to the words of Lester’s grandson. He said they used to get on well…

Welcome to Snailbrook, Texas. Established: 2021. Population: about 12, but with many more to come. In fact, in a decade or two, Snailbrook could be a gleaming, utopian city, shaped by the futuristic vision of the unavoidable tech titan of our day, Elon Musk. Musk is moving into Texas big time. According to reports, he has bought as many as 2,430 hectares in the Austin area – where his core business, Tesla, has been headquartered since 2021 – upon which factories and facilities are under construction for the rocket company SpaceX and the tunnelling company Boring (whose mascot is a snail, hence the town’s name). Now, Musk is adding housing for workers (which reportedly will be more affordable to rent than homes in Austin) and Boring executives are talking of…

The outsider general How the warlord known as Hemedti captured the country’s politics. By Nesrine Malik Page 34 → On one street is a small cafe where diplomats, successful business-people and visiting dignitaries used to enjoy smoothies and burgers under umbrellas set against the blistering sun. On another is a showroom for custom-designed kitchens imported from Europe. Down dusty potholed roads, there are villas behind high walls and apartment blocks where chandeliers hang above shining marble stairways. These central Khartoum neighbour-hoods, once the most sought-after addresses in Sudan’s capital city, are now so dangerous that residents cannot wait to flee. In recent days, they have been the stage for a brutal power struggle, shattered by shells, grenades and automatic rifle fire that trapped tens of thousands in their homes. Some…

Tucker Carlson, the far-right TV host whose embrace of racist conspiracy theories came to signify a shift further right at Fox News, leaves a legacy of bringing extremism to the mainstream and speculation is turning to any next step in an incendiary career. The departure of Carlson, Fox News’ most-watched and highest-profile host, was the second seismic moment at the news channel in days. Fox News agreed to pay a $787.5m settlement to Dominion Voting Systems last week after airing election conspiracy theories. Fox News announced the split in a terse statement on Monday: the channel and Carlson had “agreed to part ways”. But the pithiness of the statement barely hinted at the dubious repercussions of Carlson’s seven-year tenure as a regular host: a spell where he seemed to grow…

When Europe’s first new nuclear reactor in 16 years came online in Finland, it was hailed by its operator for playing an “important role in the green transition”. The opening this month of the long-delayed Olkiluoto 3 plant, Europe’s largest, means about 40% of Finland’s electricity will soon come from nuclear reactors, which the government says will boost energy security and help it achieve its carbon neutrality targets. Across the Baltic Sea and just hours before the Finnish plant came on stream, Germany was pulling the plug on its last three nuclear plants, Isar II, Emsland and Neckarwestheim II. Greenpeace, the environmental group at the heart of Germany’s anti-nuclear movement, organised a party at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. “Finally, nuclear energy belongs to history,” it proclaimed. There are few…

The future of the Confederation of British Industry was in the balance this week as one business leader warned its brand was “beyond repair”. A CBI board statement last Friday said there was demand for “far-reaching change” after allegations of sexual attacks and harassment, first revealed by the Guardian. The organisation has suspended key activities until June after an exodus of business members. It is now embroiled in a police inquiry into an alleged rape at a CBI staff party and an inquiry by the law firm Fox Williams into allegations of harassment and sexual misconduct. The CBI experienced an exodus of major member businesses at the end of last week, including the insurer Aviva, the retailer John Lewis, the manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover and the banking firm NatWest Group.…

WHEN I LANDED IN KHARTOUM in late February, the city was tense. On the short journey to my family home in the suburbs of Sudan’s capital, our car was stopped twice at checkpoints that in recent months have been erected after midnight. A car full of women – my mother, my sister and me – was clearly not the threat the officers were looking out for, so we were ushered onwards. Those manning the checkpoints were an inconsistent crew. Some were in plainclothes, others in military fatigues, the rest in police uniform. You never quite knew who you were dealing with, or what they were afraid of. The only feature they shared was a jittery menace. They were keeping a close eye on movements in a city where tensions had…

Where do you call home? I’ve travelled and lived in so many places, the question sometimes confused me. Being eastern Ukrainian doesn’t make it easy to look for your roots, either. Two world wars, the Holodomor famine, Stalin’s red terror, the collapse of the USSR, decades of isolation from the outside world. But I know from tracing my family tree – as best I could – back to the 18th century that the place I was born into is my ancestral home. A small town called Dvorichna and the villages around it in Kharkiv oblast, 30km from the Russian border. Since the war, that home has become a frontline; my parents’ house a lair for the occupiers, my school a shooting range and my village a battlefield. Living on the…

What would you do with an extra £ 730 ($900)? That’s the amount the average UK household wastes each year, by throwing away untouched food, according to the waste and sustainability charity Wrap. That’s a staggering 2m tonnes and the equivalent of roughly one in every three bags of groceries we bring into our homes. Food waste is clearly bad for our pockets, but it’s bad for the environment, too: 36 m tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions could be saved if we stopped throwing it into landfill. Storing ingredients properly to keep them fresher for longer, planning mealtimes and getting creative with leftovers are three simple ways to reduce our food-waste footprint. Let’s start with the UK’s five most-wasted ingredients. Bread We chuck out about 20m slices of bread every…

I’m walking through the woods to a huge old granny pine that’s gnarled and twisted, its lower branches thicker than the old plantation pines around it. The woods feel lush and full of birdsong. Thick strands of new-growth heather poke up. In the afternoon sunshine the mosses glow and creep up and along the trees. There’s a lovely old Scots phrase, moss fa’en, to describe a fallen tree that’s now shrouded in green. Near the granny lies a deep chocolatey-brown peaty mire that often has hoof prints in it, and I’ve had a camera on it just to see what is there when I am not. It’s clear that deer visit this place quite regularly and use it as a wallow. At night, they’re reduced to the vaguest of shadows,…

Across 1 Without any movement (5-5) 7 Exchange as (part) payment for something else (5,2) 8 Impulses (5) 10 Victim (4) 11 Overwordy speech or writing (8) 13 In a prying manner (6) 15 Adjust the pitch(es) of a musical instrument (4,2) 17 Authorised – representative of an organisation (8) 18 Somewhat (1,3) 21 Brush (anag) (5) 22 Projection behind and above a horse’s hoof (7) 23 Near to death (2,8) Down 1 Catch (5) 2 Town crier’s traditional appeal? (4) 3 Doghouse (6) 4 Unswervingly loyal (to the Conservatives?) (4-4) 5 Traveller’s things (7) 6 Impressive – sunspot due (anag) (10) 9 One way to gamble on the horses! (10) 12 Flight recorder (5,3) 14 Spice derived from dried stigmas of a particular crocus (7) 16 (The) boss (informal)…

1 UKRAINE New positions may signal start of spring offensive Ukraine’s military has set up positions on the eastern side of the Dnipro River, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) cited Russian military bloggers as saying. Infiltrating the area could be a first step towards trying to dislodge Russian forces from positions they are using to shell and shoot at Kherson (below), which was liberated from occupation in November. Ukrainian military forays across the river could also mark the first steps towards launching a spring offensive. “This is the first time ISW has observed reliable geolocated imagery of Ukrainian positions on the east bank along with multi-sourced Russian reports of an enduring Ukrainian presence there,” the thinktank said. The Russian bloggers reported Ukrainian forces had established stable supply…

LABOUR Diane Abbott suspended in new antisemitism storm Labour sought to head off a new antisemitism storm by suspending the party whip from Diane Abbott, after the former shadow home secretary played down suggestions of racism against Jewish people. In comments that were swiftly condemned by senior politicians and faith groups, the MP argued that minority groups – such as Jewish people and Irish, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people – faced similar levels of prejudice to people with red hair. Hours after her remarks about how “white people with points of difference” are discriminated against in society were published, Abbott apologised and claimed an “initial draft” of her thoughts had been sent for publication by accident. She still faced swift action by Labour whips who suspended the party whip and…

The Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar helped to prepare the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a militia fighting for control of Sudan, for battle in the months before the devastating violence that broke out on 15 April, according to former officials, militia commanders and sources in Sudan and the UK. The involvement of Haftar, who runs much of the eastern part of Libya, will raise fears of a long-drawn-out conflict in Sudan fuelled by outside interests. Analysts have described a “nightmare scenario” of multiple regional actors and powers fighting a proxy war in the country of more than 45 million people. The conflict has pitted army units loyal to Sudan’s military ruler, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, against the RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, the deputy head of the…

Defence spending in western and central Europe has surpassed that of the last year of the cold war, an annual report has found, as military expenditure across the world hit an all-time high of $2.24tn last year. The outbreak of war in Ukraine has triggered the steepest increase in military expenditure in Europe in three decades, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri). The thinktank reports that spending by central and western European states reached $345bn in 2022, a sum that, in real terms, surpasses that of 1989, the last year of the cold war. Their defence expenditure is 30% higher than a decade ago. Germany was among the nations breaking with the norms of the recent past. The Zeitenwende, or turning point, announced by the country’s chancellor,…

‘If you’re going to kill me, then kill me. But … you won’t silence me.” In a 37-minute Facebook video in July 2022, the independent Colombian journalist Rafael Moreno defied his detractors – and predicted his own death. In the recording, Moreno denounces alleged corruption in Córdoba, the northern province that is one of Colombia’s poorest and most violent and a corridor for drug smuggling. His accusations are many: inflated contracts, unfinished public works, embezzlement. “They’re stealing,” he claims. “Somebody has to point out the corruption in this region.” Moreno’s reporting spared no one, from powerful local politicians and mining companies to paramilitary groups and other journalists. In the video, he reads a note he had recently found on his motorbike – alongside a bullet. “We know all your movements…

Despite receiving a reprieve from the supreme court that halted an abortion pill ban, Democratic states are stockpiling the drug as the legal fight for access continues. Last Friday, the supreme court decided to temporarily block a lower court ruling that would have significantly restricted the availability of mifepristone, an FDA-approved abortion medication. Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas, this month issued a preliminary injunction that suspended the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, calling it a drug that is used to “kill the unborn human”. At the Massachusetts governor Maura Healey’s request, the University of Massachusetts Amherst bought approximately 15,000 doses of mifepristone. The stockpile is expected to offer “sufficient coverage” in the state for over a year. “Mifepristone has been used safely for more than 20 years and…

IT WAS MY HEN DO IN THE LAKE DISTRICT AND MY friends had organised a game of Mr and Mrs. The idea, for the uninitiated, is to test how well you know your future spouse. Beforehand, they quizzed Ian, my intended, and then repeated the exercise with me, with extra fizzy wine. It began with the usual stuff (Where was your first kiss? Who is the better dresser?), but then they asked a question that suddenly sobered me up: “What is your greatest fear?” I wondered whether to answer honestly. I instinctively knew the truth but was aware it might kill the vibe. I went for it anyway. “Not being able to have children,” I said. There was a momentary hush before one of the hens played a video of…

Cleverly by name. And perhaps even Cleverly by nature, too? Judging by his Guardian interview last week, and by his step-by-step rebuilding of Britain’s relations with Europe, James Cleverly seems to be quietly cajoling Conservative foreign policy down off the post-Brexit battlements and towards a more recognisably practical and stable place in world affairs. If so, two important questions follow. Where exactly is that new place for Britain? And will the Tory party let him do it? The foreign secretary’s interview in Tokyo exemplified Rishi Sunak-era pragmatism. The interview’s tone is less brazen towards China than anything that any of Cleverly’s recent predecessors would have either wanted or felt able to say. But it is also stronger on mood music than on measurable stuff. It reads in part like an…

Remember Liz Truss’s plan last summer to carpet-bomb Britain with investment zones? These were not just freeports – these would be zones modelled on the most anarchic capitalist zones in the world. There would be no tiresome planning laws, no irksome regulations, minimal labour laws, little taxation and only the lightest veneer of democracy. For Truss and her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, these would be the ultra-libertarian battering rams to ignite the capitalism flame – covering almost every city and town in the country. The idea did not survive their passing: Truss wanted an uncapped number, while even Kwarteng accepted the Treasury argument that the loss of tax revenue – estimated to be £12bn ($14.8bn) – if the UK government went full Truss was unacceptable. There had to be some limit,…

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