Innehållsförteckning för 5 January 2024 från Guardian Weekly

This is a momentous year for elections. Around 2 billion people have the opportunity to cast their ballots in polls that span the globe from the United States to Taiwan, and India to Mexico. The outcomes, as our analysts and correspondents explain, have implications for us all. It is an almost foregone conclusion that Narendra Modi will be back for a third term as Indian prime minster, certain that Vladimir Putin will continue as president in Russia and highly likely that November’s US election will be a rerun of 2020’s Biden v Trump contest. Other elections have broad geopolitical implications and could reveal how vulnerable democracies now are to misinformation and cyber interference from malign actors Away from the ballot boxes, our reporters reveal which other big stories to watch…

John Pilger Australian journalist and documentarian. He died on 30 December, aged 84. Jacques Delors French former president of the European commission. He died on 27 December, aged 98. Wolfgang Schäuble German politician who helped forge reunification. He died on 26 December, aged 81. Bill Granger Australian cook and restaurateur. He died on 25 December, aged 54. Ana Ofelia Murguía Mexican actor who voiced Mama Coco in the animated film Coco. She died on 31 December, aged 90. Lee Sun-kyun South Korean actor, best known for his role in the film Parasite. He died on 27 December, aged 48. Tom Wilkinson British actor. He died on 30 December, aged 75.…

The 60th US presidential election will be quite unlike any that has gone before as America, and the rest of the world, braces for a contest amid fears of eroding democracy and the looming threat of authoritarianism. It will be a fight marked by numerous unwanted firsts as the oldest president in the country’s history is likely to face the first former US president to stand trial on criminal charges. A once aspirational nation will continue its plunge into anxiety and divisions about crime, immigration, race, foreign wars and the cost of living. Democrat Joe Biden, 81, is preparing for the kind of gruelling campaign he was able to avoid during coronavirus lockdowns in 2020. Republican Donald Trump will spend some of his campaign in a courtroom and has vowed…

2024 The year most political pundits expect Rishi Sunak to call a general election 40m Voters whose data was accessed in a cyber-attack on the UK Electoral Commission While the general election date itself remains in the hands of Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, one thing is certain: when the campaign does begin it has the potential to be one of the more perilous and chaotic in UK history. Sunak could hold the election as late as January 2025, maximising the Conservatives’ full five-year term. But assuming he opts for a spring or autumn election, as most pundits expect, beyond even the politics there will be a series of new factors at play that are making electoral officials and even government ministers fairly nervous. It will be the first national…

In news that probably shocked no one, Vladimir Putin announced last month that he will seek a fifth presidential term in the upcoming March elections. Putin, 71, has come to dominate Russia’s political system and the media over the past two decades. But while the election appears to be a formality, it will be held in an ever more conservative country that has been fundamentally changed by war, where all dissent has been criminalised and with prominent opposition politicians behind bars. The elections will be different in terms of the ground they cover too, with voting taking place in what Russia calls its new territories; parts of Ukraine now occupied by Russian forces. “These elections are a means for Putin to legitimise his decision to go the war in Ukraine,”…

Japan’s prime minister said the country was facing a “battle against time” to rescue those affected by a series of major earthquakes that reportedly killed at least 48 people, injured dozens and sparked fires that destroyed homes. Police and local authorities early on Tuesday reported cases of bodies being pulled from the rubble of collapsed buildings while others remained trapped. “We must rescue them as quickly as possible, especially those who are trapped under collapsed structures,” Fumio Kishida said The powerful earthquake that struck central Japan’s western coastline on Monday triggered waves over a metre high and prompted tsunami alerts and warnings for people to evacuate. The quake struck the Noto peninsula in Ishikawa prefecture on the main central island of Honshu at about 4.10pm local time. It knocked out…

ANANYA JAIN NEVER PLANNED ON BECOMING ADDICTED TO TIKTOK. Jain, who is 24 years old, downloaded the app at the peak of the Covid pandemic. She had heard about TikTok’s data privacy issues, so she promised herself that she wouldn’t post or comment on anything – just watch a few videos and call it a day. That lasted less than a month. “It just pulled me in because I was so lonely,” Jain said. “I was looking for friends.” And TikTok delivered. A huge Harry Potter fan, Jain was roped into the BookTalk community. She was struggling with acne, but dancing dermatologists told her about over-the-counter skincare products. Later, #polo and #horsesoftiktok became enthralling since she could live vicariously through the players – from underneath her covers. Whenever Jain felt…

Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos and US actor Emma Stone are quite the collaborative powerhouse. Since working together on dark period comedy The Favourite (2018), which earned 10 Oscar nominations and seven Bafta wins, they have made the short film Bleat and the Oscar-tipped feature Poor Things, and shot another feature, currently entitled Kind of Kindness . Their working relationship is clearly nothing if not productive. In Poor Things, which has been described as a “twisted science-fiction romantic comedy” (and that doesn’t get close to quite how strange it is), Stone plays Bella Baxter – a reborn 19th-century woman, living under the paternalistic care of Frankenstein-like surgeon Godwin Baxter (a makeup-laden Willem Dafoe), whom she calls “God” and who appears to have gifted her with the rapidly developing brain of a…

The Delivery By Margarita García Robaya, translated by Megan McDowell A young Colombian woman living in Argentina is estranged from her family but is still in touch with her sister, who sends regular packages. One day a huge crate arrives that occupies the whole living room: it contains her mother. “I don’t want to bother you,” she says. “Did you eat breakfast?” As our narrator adjusts to becoming a daughter again, she also has to work for an ad agency, writing an “appealing story about a cow who is happy … so her meat will be optimal”. And she must deal with disputes between neighbours, who “tore down walls and more walls until they created not space, but emptiness”. This multi-centred novel (family, work, home) contains everything: death, life and…

Prep 10 min Cook 40 min Serves 4 • VEGAN Ingredients 225g smoked tofu, drained4 tbsp cornflour15 dried shiitake mushrooms (15g)4 tsp dark brown sugar4 tbsp light soy sauce1½ tbsp black garlic paste3 tbsp gochujang2 tsp rice vinegarRapeseed oil1 large leek (200g), finely sliced into coins¼ tsp fine salt250g ramen noodles300g Tenderstem or other sprouting broccoli, trimmed and halved on an angle Method Press the tofu with kitchen paper to remove excess water, cut into 2.5cm cubes and put in a bowl. Add the cornflour, stir to coat, then set aside. Put the mushrooms in a heatproof bowl, pour over 400ml just-boiled water and leave to soak. Put the sugar, soy, black garlic paste, gochujang and vinegar in a bowl, stir to combine and set aside. Put two tablespoons of…

Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol 210 | Issue № 1 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…

BIOLOGY Women’s tears damp down male aggression Human tears carry a substance that dampens down aggression, according to researchers, who believe the drops may have evolved to protect wailing babies. Sniffing emotional tears from women reduced male aggression by more than 40% and prompted corresponding changes in the brain, though the scientists behind the study, from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and published in Plos Biology journal, think all human tears would have a similar effect. The experiments involved 31 men who sniffed either saline or women’s tears before having swabs dabbed with the droplets stuck to their upper lip. They then took part in a computerised game to provoke aggression. Aggressive behaviour was 43.7% lower when men were sniffing women’s tears versus saline. MEDICAL RESEARCH 3D-printed chip…

January 7 Bangladesh 13 Taiwan 26 Tuvalu February 4 El Salvador 7 Azerbaijan 8 Pakistan 14 Indonesia 25 Senegal 25 Belarus March 1 Iran 10 Portugal 15-17 Russia April 10 South Korea India from April to May May 5 Panama 19 Dominican Republic June 2 Mexico 6-9 European Union parliament 9 Belgium 28 Mongolia July 15-16 Rwanda October 6 Lithuania 9 Mozambique 27 Uruguay November 5 United States December 7 Ghana Elections are due to be held this year but without a date yet set in Algeria, Croatia, Georgia, Moldova, North Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, the Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, South Africa, South Sudan, Tunisia and Venezuela The UK is expected to hold a general election this year; the latest date a general election can be held is 28 January 2025…

India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, cut a confident figure as 2023 drew to a close. As his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) swept three major state elections in December, Modi did not hold back from predicting that “this hat-trick has guaranteed the 2024 victory”. It was a sign that with less than six months to go before the general election, in which Modi seeks a third term in power, campaign season has begun with gusto. In India’s current political landscape, the consensus among political analysts is that a win for Modi and the BJP is the most plausible outcome. The prime minister’s popularity as a political strongman, alongside the BJP’s Hindu nationalist agenda, continues to appeal to the large Hindu majority of the country, particularly in the populous Hindi belt of…

The year 2024 will be a critical one. The future of Gaza and the West Bank may hinge in part on whether Donald Trump returns to the White House – as may the outcome of the war in Ukraine. China will be locked in a race against time as its population ages. And the natural world will reach a new series of tipping points. As well as gloomy forecasts, there are some reasons for cautious optimism. Gaza conflict could spread to the West Bank The fifth and bloodiest Gaza war has not shown any sign of slowing or stopping. What “the day after” in Gaza will look like is unclear. Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out allowing control of Gaza to revert to the West Bank’s corrupt Palestinian Authority, which is…

Barcelona When the newspaper El País timed the same 8km journey across Barcelona by car, motorcycle, bicycle and public transport, the motorbike won, followed 2.5 minutes later by public transport, with the bicycle third and the car last. And yet the association of cars with personal freedom is proving a hard one to break, as Jaume Collboni discovered when he won the Barcelona mayoral race last May – after unashamedly presenting himself as the “pro-car” candidate. Ada Colau, the outgoing mayor, was acclaimed for her administration’s policies on restricting car use and improving air quality, including a €50m ($55m) project, where 21 blocks of Consell de Cent, formerly a four-lane cross-town street, have been pedestrianised, converting the area into an urban park. Barcelona has the EU’s highest density of cars:…

To many, the news that sales of vinyl records are at their highest this century – in 2023, they rose for a 16th consecutive year to 5.9m – will come as little surprise, for all that we were once told the format would soon be as dead as a dodo. Yes, streaming is highly convenient; we can download an album as we run in the park, or wait for an endlessly delayed train. But the sound of digital music, as every vinyl fan knows, will never be as rich and warm as the sound of an LP, and playing it does not tend to encourage, as spinning a record does, truly serious listening. The ritual of the turntable demands concentration and invites respect. An album’s tracks, whether by Taylor Swift,…

My wife is going away for a few days, and I will be completely alone in the house for the first time in a very long while. The last time it happened, it was a different house. I’m happy with this, even though I know I probably won’t be able to choose between the many profitable ways I might spend this time. I’ll end up slumped on the sofa in front of the TV, or asleep in the bath. That’s OK – no one has to know. My wife departs at 5.30am on Sunday, but my time alone does not really begin until the cat drives me from bed at 8 by repeatedly pressing its paw against my eyelids. Downstairs I notice clues suggesting less than total isolation: a pair…

QUIZ Thomas Eaton 1 Who was the first living person to appear on Roman coins? 2 Which art historian won the Booker prize? 3 What is Britain’s last surviving Georgian cloth hall? 4 What did Switzerland begin adding to salt in 1922? 5 Which politician wielded a chainsaw on the campaign trail this year? 6 1.618 is the approximate value of what number? 7 Visible loss of contact and bent knees are offences in what sport? 8 What, about 900,000 years old, were found at Happisburgh in Norfolk? What links: 9 Rizz; AI; authentic; hallucinate? 10 Christine Sinclair and Cristiano Ronaldo? 11 Abbotsford; Bateman’s; Greenway; Max Gate? 12 Celia Birtwell (frequently); Divine; Jacob Rothschild; Barry Humphries? 13 Millennium Falcon; Pumpkin Island, Queensland; Francis Drake’s Sampford Manor? 14 Martin Bell; Harland…

Taiwan’s election on 13 January is the first of more than 40 national elections to be held around the world in 2024. It will determine the presidency and legislature governing 23.5 million people on a small but geopolitically important island. There are a host of issues for Taiwan’s voters, including the cost of living, housing and labour rights, energy, education and elderly care. The domestic campaign so far has seen standard cross-party sniping over competing promises, accusations of misconduct and corruption, and endless scandals ranging from allegedly plagiarised theses to charges of secret second nationalities. But across the Taiwan strait, Beijing is preparing to take over. The ruling Communist party claims Taiwan as a province of China, and it intends – at some point – to “reunify” it. Beijing has…

‘They’re not really about the EU and they don’t really matter” was long the popular take on elections to the European parliament, whose latest edition, from 6 to 9 June, will once more fill the 705 seats of the only directly elected EU body. That take was never really true, and has become less so since 2009, when the Lisbon treaty put the parliament on a more equal footing with national leaders in deciding what the EU does and how much it spends, plus more influence on who runs the bloc. This time, it looks likely to be even less accurate. On the upside, polling shows that more of the EU’s roughly 400 million voters than ever before believe the bloc is important, are interested in the elections and intend…

In a hospital in northern Norway, near the Arctic Circle, a landmark experiment is taking place that could transform the way we treat ageing. Called ExPlas – exercised plasma – the clinical trial involves taking blood plasma from young and healthy adults who exercise regularly and injecting it into people aged between 50 and 75 in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. The full results will be available in 2025, and the hope is that it will represent a new way of rejuvenating the minds and bodies of older people, and perhaps one day even all of us who lead largely sedentary lives. Scientists have long known that exercise is arguably the best medicine of all. Studies have found that exercising can slash the risk of dementia by up to…

I WOULD LIE AWAKE FOR HOURS, WHEN I WAS A LITTLE BOY, holding out against surrender to sleep, listening to the helicopters drone above our neighbourhood. After the government dismantled the border checkpoints in the late 1990s, including one at the end of our street, the watchtower the last part to go, a curious series of visitations took place. They began as a deviation in the hum of a city night and steadily grew. Even though it was mechanical, it had purpose, intention behind it. As the source of the sound grew closer, a light would grow in the corner of my room, next to a pile of books, beneath the switch, enlarging, then turning wild and tesseract on the ceiling. It became clear the hum that I was hearing…

Every 14 days, a language dies. Within the next century, about half of the 7,000 languages spoken on Earth today will have disappeared. I’m lucky enough to be one of 0.01% of the world’s population who speaks Welsh as their mother tongue. Its survival over 1,500 years is remarkable but Welsh now faces a genuine threat; it is classed as “vulnerable” by the Endangered Languages Project and “potentially vulnerable” by Unesco. The latest census showed that despite huge effort, in 2021 there were 24,000 fewer Welsh speakers in Wales than a decade earlier. But there have been reasons for optimism. Welsh-medium education in schools is on the rise. During the pandemic, people across the world began learning Welsh on apps. In December 2023, Duolingo announced that its Welsh course had…

WRITE TO US Letters for publication weekly.letters@theguardian.com Please include a full postal address and a reference to the article. We may edit letters. Submission and publication of all letters is subject to our terms and conditions, see: THEGUARDIAN.COM/LETTERS-TERMS Editorial Editor: Graham Snowdon Guardian Weekly, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, UK To contact the editor directly: editorial.feedback@theguardian.com Corrections Our policy is to correct significant errors as soon as possible. Please write to guardian.readers@theguardian.com or the readers’ editor, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, UK Realpolitik at play in gulf between west and south In A world in flux (Cover story, 22 December) Patrick Wintour argues for the inconsistent behaviour of the US (and the west) on the international stage. From a realpolitik viewpoint, I would argue that…

Ranging from the last ice age to the Anthropocene, Max Leonard’s beguiling history considers the nature of ice as well as its place “in the popular imagination, how it has inspired literature and poetry, and therefore how we might be being diminished as it disappears”. Its genesis was an experience of jarring but everyday incongruity: sitting in a pub one summer’s evening, ice clinking in his drink, Leonard was watching TV footage of “meltwater disgorging into the seas of Greenland”. He was struck by an urge to reconcile what was on the screen with what was in his glass. “My hope is that by bringing ice into a more intimate sphere … the catastrophe happening in remote places will become more tangible.” But A Cold Spell is less an elegy…