Innehållsförteckning för 1 September 2023 från Guardian Weekly

The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol209 | Issue№ 9 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.…

Deadly risk The horrifying fates of those who have opposed Putin Page 13 → What next? Wagner’s operations in Africa are still active Page 14 → In a 2018 documentary, Vladimir Putin answers instantly when asked if there is anything he cannot forgive. “Betrayal,” he says with no hesitation. The Wagner mercenary group chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in a probable assassination last week on board his Embraer private jet, held a similar belief. One of his fighters’ tactics to punish deserters was to tape their heads to a block of concrete and then bludgeon them to death with a sledgehammer. The hammer became their symbol. For years, Prigozhin did the Kremlin’s dirty work and sought to spread Russian influence and sow discord among its enemies around the globe.…

AFGHANISTAN Female suicide rates soar under Taliban regime Page 19 → A plume of red erupts in the grey-blue waters and Martin Shiwak accelerates his boat to grab the seal he has shot before it sinks out of sight. Shiwak has hunted for years in the waters of Lake Melville, close to the Inuit community of Rigolet in Nunatsiavut. As he hauls the ringed seal into the vessel, he says he counts himself lucky to have found one so quickly. “Sometimes you have to drive around here in the boat nearly all day to find a seal,” Shiwak says. “Nowadays you can’t even afford to – $60 only gets you five gallons of gas.” Nunatsiavut – one of four Inuit homelands in Canada – is where the subarctic becomes the…

When Jenni Hermoso arrived in the stands, the standing ovation was thundering. On the field below, Atlético de Madrid and AC Milan were battling it out for the Women’s Cup, but the message – scrawled on posters, temporary tattoos and a metres-long banner unfurled by the players – was unanimous at the stadium in Madrid last Saturday night: “We’re with you, Jenni Hermoso.” It was a hint of how the tumultuous events of the week since La Roja’s dazzling World Cup win had supercharged the long-running battle for equality in women’s football. As the hashtag #SeAcabó, meaning “it’s over”, was embraced from Sevilla to Santander, it was clear that Spanish football’s #MeToo moment had arrived. Hours earlier, Luis Rubiales, the head of the Spanish football federation, had lashed out at…

He survived the Nazis, made a fortune on Wall Street and became one of the most steadfast backers of democracy and human rights in the eastern bloc. But there are now fears about the commitment of the billionaire philanthropist George Soros, 93, to his homelands, as his donor network announced it will curb its activities across the EU from 2024. Several beneficiaries of Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF), chaired since the start of this year by his son Alex, told the Observer they would struggle without its support amid an authoritarian rollback. “When the Open Society Foundations left Budapest under severe political pressure in 2018, they said they would lose their physical presence but not their focus on the region,” said Márta Pardavi, co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a…

Mugshots define eras. Bugsy Siegel peering from beneath his fedora in a 1928 booking photo summed up the perverse romance of gangsters in the prohibition age. Later, mugshots of David Bowie, dead-eyed after his drugs arrest, and a dishevelled Janis Joplin (“vulgar and indecent language”) spoke to the shockwaves of 1960s counterculture. Now comes what Donald Trump Jr described as “the most iconic photo in the history of US politics” before the booking picture of his father glaring into the camera was even taken. But whether divided Americans view the first mugshot of a former president as that of a gangster or a rock star is very much in the politics of the beholder. Trump’s hostility shines through in the image, as he turns his eyes up toward the camera…

Late one night in 1867, Benjamin Disraeli, chancellor of the exchequer in Lord Derby’s Tory government, cunningly thwarted a Liberal wrecking amendment in the Commons to his second reform bill. Having written to Queen Victoria at 2am, he went to the Carlton Club in London, where he was cheered and toasted as “ the man who rode the race, who took the time, who kept the time, and who did the trick”. The following year, he became prime minister. Much the same words might have been used in the small hours of 13 December 2019, when Boris Johnson pranced about Conservative central office in London, pumping his fists in the air as his adoring staff and colleagues embraced him. In the less than five months he had been Tory leader…

I never know which tomatoes (fresh, tinned etc) to use for what. Help! Rob, London, England, UK You’re looking at five options, Rob: fresh, tinned, passata (pureed and sieved tomato sauce), concentrate (or puree) and sun-dried. Let’s park sun-dried tomatoes, because, as Jacob Kenedy, chef-owner of Bocca di Lupo in London, notes, they’re more a “standalone ingredient”. Fresh, however, are in season in the UK now, and their quality will depend on where you’re buying them. “If I’m in a hot country, I almost exclusively use fresh, whether they’re for a salad, sauce or stew,” Kenedy says. In the UK, however, “it’s harder to get those flavoursome tomatoes, especially at the supermarket”. There are, of course, scenarios where only fresh will do. Sophia Massarella, who is behind Polentina in east…

STOW BEDON Norfolk, England, UK My son leads the way, setting a fast pace, while my daughter wants to stop and look at everything – a tiny froglet crossing our path, a peacock butterfly that settles on her hand. Our first pingo was quickly followed by our second, third and fourth, as we pushed further into an unknown landscape. In the ice age, as glaciers retreated, areas of water remained frozen underground, hard lens-like discs of ice shrouded in soil. When it thawed, the soil sank down, leaving shallow hollows that then filled with water to become a rare type of pond. Known as kettle ponds or pingos, Norfolk’s Breckland is pocked with hundreds of them, forming a swampy, nature-rich wetland habitat that can be explored on the Great Eastern…

Strained relations on the ISS p34→ For all the risks, for all that was riding on a successful landing, the descent to the moon’s surface was remarkably uneventful, if not exactly stress-free. The Vikram lander, part of India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission, dropped steadily on its thrusters to the rock below, slowed to a hover as it approached the ground, and finally came to a rest on the dusty terrain. When confirmation came that the lander was down, anxiety in the control room gave way to cheers and applause. With the soft touchdown, India became the first country to land a probe at the moon’s south pole, a rugged region where deep craters lie in permanent shadow and where ice could provide water, oxygen and fuel for future missions. The first will be…

Around Loch Ness last Saturday, the hope was for sunshine. Would-be champions prepared for the Glenurquhart Highland Games, dedicated runners warmed up for the Loch Ness 24 endurance race – and volunteers readied their binoculars and notepads for the biggest search for the Loch Ness monster in 50 years. The weather wasn’t on their side – most of the Highland Games was called off and runners’ endurance was certainly tested in relentless rain. But as Alan McKenna from Loch Ness Exploration (LNE) greeted bright-eyed monster-hunters under a grey sky at 8.30am, the message was clear: “The weather is not perfect but that’s not going to stop us.” An estimated 100 volunteers set up a vigil along the loch’s 37km of shore-line, hoping for a sight of the monster Nessie. Hundreds…

In one corner of the ring stands Javier Milei, 52, self-described former tantric sex coach, outsider anarcho-capitalist and frontrunner in Argentina’s upcoming presidential elections; in the other, his compatriot Pope Francis, 86, champion of the poor, repeatedly derided by Argentina’s likely next president as “a f ucking communist” and “the representative of the evil one on Earth” for promoting the doctrine of “social justice” to aid the underprivileged. Milei, a political unknown until 2020, has pledged to wage a “cultural battle” to transform Argentina into a libertarian paradise where capitalist efficiency replaces social assistance, taxes are reduced to a minimum and cash-strapped individuals are allowed to sell their body organs. From Rome, Pope Francis has expressed concern about the rise of such callous policies in his home country. “The extreme…

OLIVER HAYNES Shifting to the right is wrong for Europe Page 47 → Joy and hope are all too rarely associated with the environmental movement, but both have been in abundant supply since Ecuador voted last month to keep its oil in the subsoil of the Yasuní national park. The question now is whether this is a one-off triumph, or something that can be replicated in other countries. The referendum result obliges the state oil company to dismantle operations – 12 drilling platforms and 225 wells that produce up to 57,000 barrels a day – in block 43 of the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini project, an area of the Amazon rainforest famed for its ecological diversity, and which is home to two tribes that live in voluntary isolation. With more than 5. 4…

Anne Enright is one of our acutest chroniclers of relational complexity, whether she’s skewering filial pieties in The Wig My Father Wore (1995), staging a tragicomedy of intergenerational fall-out in the Booker-winning The Gathering (2007), or unpicking the cliche of motherhood in her essay collection Making Babies (2004). In her eighth novel, Enright again gives us a portrait of a uniquely unhappy family. Intimate and ambiguous, refusing to settle anywhere for long, The Wren, The Wren is told in three voices. There’s middle-aged Carmel, recalling her childhood on the outskirts of Dublin with her ailing mother, resentful older sister and womanising father; there’s Carmel’s free-spirited daughter Nell, who is trying to escape the intensity of their bond but only succeeds in swapping it for a far riskier one with an…

Across 1 Agreement reached following concessions (10)7 Taxi that can’t be hailed (7)8 A clean one is a total victory (5)10 Broadway theatre award (4)11 The Taj Mahal, for example (8)13 Take on (6)15 Animal skin parchment (6)17 Plot (8)18 Chimpanzees and gorillas, say (4)21 First British colony in Africa to gain independence (5)22 Demanding (7)23 A hero’s weak point? (4,2,4) Down 1 Cathedral-based cleric (5)2 Tudor, orange or examination (4)3 One who commits theft by force (6)4 Flying fox or koala bear, say (8)5 Particular (7)6 eg transmit (anag) – a little knowledge? (10)9 Manuscript where text has been written over earlier writing – sample tips (anag) (10)12 Exercising control (8)14 Thick soup or stew (7)16 Deadline (3-3)19 One acting on another’s behalf (5)20 Get better (4) Solution No…

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1 UNITED STATES White gunman kills three in ‘racist’ Florida shooting The FBI was investigating the shooting that killed three people inside a store in Jacksonville, Florida, which officials said was racially motivated, as community leaders expressed horror. A white man, armed with a high-powered rifle with swastikas painted on it, a handgun, and wearing a tactical vest and mask, entered the discount Dollar General store just before 2pm last Saturday and shot and killed two men and one woman, before fatally shooting himself. All three victims were Black. Alejandro Mayorkas, the US secretary of homeland security, condemned the shooting. “Too many Americans have lost a loved one because of racially motivated violence,” he said. The Jacksonville sheriff, TK Waters, last Sunday named the gunman as Ryan Christopher Palmeter, 21, and…

TRANSPORT Air traffic control failure strands holiday travellers Flight passengers were set to face the effects of UK air traffic control failures for much of this week, the transport secretary warned as he urged airlines to fulfil their responsibilities to passengers. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mark Harper said National Air Traffic Services, which provides the air traffic control systems in the UK, had apologised for disruption. Air travellers to and from the UK were hit by the delays on Monday after a technical failure meant flight plans had to be logged manually by controllers. By Monday afternoon, 232 flights that had been due to depart from UK airports had been cancelled as well as 271 inbound flights, according to aviationanalystsCirium. On Tuesday, Harper said it was clear…

Last week, before Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash, the founder of the Russian mercenary group Wagner appeared bullish in a publicity video, holding a rifle and dressed in desert camouflage. He was understood to be somewhere in Africa, and stated that he was proud to be “making Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa more free”. Days later, Prigozhin’s death raises questions about how Russia will continue to influence Africa at a time of increasing global competition for its resources. Wagner’s first notable deployment into Africa was in 2018, when it sent trainers and combat units to Central African Republic, becoming indispensable to that country’s president and his efforts to stave off rebel forces. The mercenary group, which was accused of atrocities in the country, was granted…

First, her dreams of becoming a doctor were dashed by the Taliban’s ban on women’s education. Then her family set up a forced marriage to her cousin, a heroin addict. Latifa* felt her future had been snatched away. “I had two options: to marry an addict and live a life of misery or take my own life,” said the 18-year-old in a phone interview from her home in central Ghor province. “I chose the latter.” Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, there has been a surge in the number of women taking their own lives or attempting to do so, data collected from public hospitals and mental health clinics across a third of Afghanistan’s provinces shows. Taliban authorities have not published data on suicides…

At first glance, the aqua marine waters that surround the Marshall Islands seem like paradise. But this idyllic Pacific scene hides a dark secret: it was the location of 23 nuclear detonations as part of US military tests during the cold war between 1946 and 1958. The bombs were exploded above ground and underwater on Bikini and Enewetak Atolls, including one device 1,100 times larger than the Hiroshima atom bomb. Chornobyl-like levels of radiation forced hundreds from their homes. Bikini Atoll remains deserted. At the US government’s urging, residents have begun returning to Enewetak. Today, there is little visible evidence of the tests on the islands except for a 115-metre-wide cement dome that locals nickname the Tomb. Built in the late 1970s and now aged and cracking, the huge concrete…

Whatever the word for the opposite of heartwarming, it certainly applies to the story of Ruth and Peter Jaffe. The elderly couple from Ealing, west London, made headlines last month after being charged £110 ($140) by Ryanair for printing their tickets at Stansted airport. Even allowing for the exorbitant cost of inkjet printer ink, 55 quid for each sheet of paper is a shockingly creative example of punitive pricing. The Jaffes, aged 79 and 80, said they had become confused on the Ryanair website and accidentally printed out their return tickets instead of their outbound ones to Bergerac. It was the kind of error anyone could make, although octogenarians, many of whom struggle with the tech demands of digitalisation, are far more likely to make it. But as the company…

ONE EVENING IN JANUARY 2015, Terry Virts, a Nasa astronaut onboard the International Space Station (ISS), decided to pop over to the Russian quarters, catch up with his Russian colleagues and check out the view. For views, nothing beats the space station. From this orbiting perch approximately 400km above the Earth, scores of astronauts have waxed lyrical about the beauty of our planet: its mesmerising, fast-motion sunrises and sunsets, its brilliant colours and startling fragility. As a 47-year-old former space shuttle pilot, then on his second visit to the space station, Virts had experienced all of this himself and would do so many times again. But this night would be different. Joining Virts at the window was Alexsandr Samokutyayev. Three years younger than Virts, the Russian cosmonaut was also on…

European conservatism is in crisis. Traditional centre-right parties are increasingly facing challenges from their right by parties with more energy and extreme proposals for addressing the multitude of crises facing the continent. While centre-right parties may not have much in the way of ideas to resolve Europe’s polycrisis, they do still know how to fight for power. Their instinctive drive for self-preservation means conservatives are radicalising, particularly over issues of race, in order to cut off their insurgent rivals. Take France, where the formerly dominant Les Républicains (LR) party has entered a death spiral, with its last presidential candidate, Valerie Pécresse, failing to reach even the 5% vote threshold required to get her deposit back. LR’s response was to elect as leader Éric Ciotti, a far-rightist who once declared that…

Italian director Matteo Garrone is a reliable crusher of aspirations. In his 2008 break-through drama Gomorrah, two fresh-faced Neapolitan youngsters aspire to emulate the mobsters they’ve seen portrayed in gangster movies: they end up being shot by a bunch of pot-bellied mafia grandpas, and carted off by a digger. Garrone’s 2019 retelling of Pinocchio had the titular wooden boy headed for a mythical Land of Toys – only to be transformed into a donkey, crippled in a circus show, and thrown into the sea. Wide-eyed boys who dare to dream ending up as landfill is such a persistent theme in the 54-year-old Roman film-maker’s works; it’s probably quite useful that the two teenage protagonists of his most recent project weren’t familiar with his catalogue before they signed up. But then…

To a certain kind of imperial historian, empire is everywhere. Like latter-day John Hobsons, they believe they alone are keeping alive the anti-imperial tradition, courageously defying the curmudgeonly nostalgics sipping gin and tonic in the home counties like nabobs of old. But Hobson wrote his famous Imperialism: A Study in 1902, when empire was approaching its zenith and few among his peers counted as anti-imperialist. The same cannot be said of his contemporary heirs. “Britain is in denial,” Charlotte Lydia Riley tells us. “The British people as a whole tend to be resistant, when asked out-right, about any reappraisal of their nation’s imperial past.” It might be more accurate to say that hold-outs such as Robert Tombs periodically wax eloquent about the days of the Raj in the Spectator. But…