Innehållsförteckning för 12 January 2024 från Guardian Weekly

Mohammad Atout, a Palestinian resident of the Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp in Beirut, was eating with his children last Tuesday evening when the news broke across the Lebanese capital that Saleh al-Arouri, deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau, had been assassinated. “Someone told me there had been an attack [in Beirut]. Moments later the television said it was Arouri. Then people came out in the streets. It hit them very hard. He was an important leader for us,” Atout said. In the coffee shop he owns, which opens on to a street decorated with Palestinian banners, his customers have been watching Al Jazeera foot-age of the war in Gaza. “We never thought that the Israelis would dare to do this in Beirut,” Atout said. He believes the reason for Arouri’s…

Outside, traders braved the bitter cold to sell Trump hats, T-shirts and other merchandise. Inside, hundreds of Trump supporters were sporting Make America Great Again (Maga) regalia. They were surrounded by big screens, loudspeakers, TV cameras, patriotic flags and Team Trump logos. It had all the trappings of a Donald Trump campaign rally but one thing was missing: Trump. The former US president was content to let South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem, speak on his behalf at the convention centre in Sioux City, Iowa, last Wednesday. “We would never have the situation going on like we see in the Middle East right now,” Noem said. “If he had been in the White House, we would never see what was going on with Russia and Ukraine.” It was not the first…

It took firefighters more than six hours to extinguish the blaze that engulfed a Japan Airlines jet after it struck another plane on landing at Tokyo’s Haneda airport last Tuesday. Earlier, it had taken the 12 crew members just minutes to usher hundreds of people on board to safety. As petrified passengers watched flames lick the windows while the cabin filled with smoke, JAL flight attendants hid their unease and drew on every last detail of their safety training. According to the airline, all 367 passengers and 12 crew disembarked in under 20 minutes. As Japanese and international aviation experts attempt to establish how a Japan Coast Guard Bombardier DHC8-300 – five of whose six occupants perished – came to lie directly in the path of the Airbus A350, the…

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Channel tunnel, Britain’s first fixed connection to the European mainland since the Channel washed away the land bridge probably about 450,000 years ago. The tunnel was the cause of much celebration. The possibilities seemed endless and exciting. The Le Shuttle car service between Folkestone and Calais was expected to drive the ferries out of business, while the Eurostar train services linking London with Brussels and Paris would similarly end the frequent flights between these capitals. Moreover, freight trains would knock thousands of lorries off the roads. Most of this has not happened. Rather than Eurostar passenger numbers reaching 20m by the end of the century, they had barely hit half that prediction by the time Covid hit. The rival…

Darkness is falling and I’m on the bridge of the research vessel Maria S Merian. This is its control centre, with big windows providing an uninterrupted view of the stormy sea in all directions, and long banks of screens and maps displaying data funnelled from inside, around, above and below the ship. Out here in the open ocean, keeping a close eye on what nature is up to is essential. The lights are off so that dark-adapted eyes can scan the waves, and the first officer is using the speakers to fill the space with smooth jazz and calm. I am holding on to the rail beneath the window with both hands, one leg braced against the desk behind me, as the ship rides up a wave about 8 metres…

Who’s in the mood to throw a pity party for Oscar Pistorius? Anyone? Or, like me, do you find his crime so disturbing it sticks in the craw to feel you’re being sold a “broken man” narrative? Pistorius, 37, the South African double-amputee former Olympic sprinter, has been released on parole, after serving nine years for the murder of 29-year-old paralegal and model, Reeva Steenkamp. They’d been dating for three months when Pistorius fired his 9mm pistol several times through the locked bathroom door of his Pretoria home early on Valentine’s Day, 2013. Pistorius pleaded not guilty (claiming he thought there was an intruder). In a complex series of events, he was initially convicted of culpable homicide (similar to manslaughter), later changed to murder. Eventually, his sentence was increased to…

Tins of white beans are a staple round at mine, but I only ever use them in soups and stews. How can I get out of my bean rut? Emily, Nottingham, England, UK We hear you, Emily. Beans are great for bulking out soups and stews, but there is a whole world of #beanspo just waiting to be discovered. “For something really low-effort but nourishing, whip up a simple tomato and olive sauce, then shove a jar of beans in there,” says Amelia Christie-Miller, founder of Bold Bean Co. “You don’t have to cook the beans, so that makes them easier even than pasta.” Ragu would be another good sauce shout, says Sophie Wyburd, cook and author of Tucking In (out in June), or “layer them up with bolognese and…

Across 1 Slander (6) 4 Tool – cheat (6) 8 Greek woodland deity (5) 9 Cabal (7) 10 If (7) 11 Jargon (5) 12 Jane Eyre, say (9) 17 Small but desirable (5) 19 Artificial (3-4) 21 Descriptive phrase (7) 22 Boot out (5) 23 Sew up in surgery (6) 24 Ugly duckling, really (6) Down 1 Renounce (6) 2 Sewer obstruction (7) 3 Hilarity (5) 5 Land measure (7) 6 1930s jazz style (5) 7 Distance (6) 9 Au contraire! (3,4,2) 13 Coupon (7) 14 Hone (7) 15 Senior nun (6) 16 Fanatic (6) 18 Beam in a building (5) 20 Craving affection (5) Solution No 16,735 Guardian Puzzles & Crosswords Access over 15,000 puzzles on our app. Download from the App Store or Google Play. Read more: theguardian.com/puzzles-app…

1 ISRAEL/PALESTINE Blinken arrives in Israel in push to stop war spreading The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, visited Israel this week for meetings with Israeli leaders and officials who have repeatedly proved resistant to pressure from Washington over their conduct of the war against Hamas. Earlier, Blinken held talks with the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, on a Middle East tour aimed at reaching a consensus on Gaza’s future. He said key Arab states and Turkey had agreed to begin planning for the reconstruction and governance of Gaza once Israel’s war against Hamas ended. The secretary of state said Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey “agreed to work together and to coordinate our efforts to help Gaza stabilise and recover, to chart a political path…

The dramatic first week of 2024 has tipped the scale towards those who say the daily diet of drone strikes, assassinations and maritime assaults will at some point combust into a major war across the Middle East. But the likelihood of a regional conflagration turns on the unclear intentions of Iran and the contested degree of control it exercises over the numerous linked but autonomous groups it has nurtured over the past decade in five sovereign countries. With so many variables, what looks like being a long war in Gaza increases the risk of miscalculation, accident or that one of the many players loses patience and lights the touch paper. Iran makes up for its lack of regional diplomatic clout through the “axis of resistance” that is the lasting legacy…

This time it’s personal. Last Friday Joe Biden tore into his predecessor Donald Trump as never before. He brimmed with anger, disdain and contempt. He apparently had to stop himself from swearing. So much for “ when they go low, we go high” – and plenty of Democrats will be just fine with that. If Biden, 81, was seeking to jolt his half-conscious 2024 re-election campaign into life, this may have done the trick. The palpable loathing of Trump took a good 10 or 20 years off him. Keep hating like this and he might do a Benjamin Button all the way to election day. Trump’s failure to act as a violent mob stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, despite the pleas of staff and family members, was…

Hit parade Large crowds gather to watch the floats pass by during the Carnival of Blacks and Whites in the southern Andean city of Pasto. This Unesco-recognised festival takes place every January and has its origins in a mix of Amazonian, Andean, Spanish and Pacific cultures. With its roots in Indigenous harvest festivals, the carnival sees participants paint their bodies in black and white, using talc, flour, foam and cosmetic creams, to symbolise racial and cultural integration.…

The symbolism that German farmers chose to express their discontent with the government in the first days of the new year was as unambiguous as it was ominous: by the side of rural roads across the country, there were sightings of makeshift gallows dangling traffic-light signs, referring to the colours of the three governing parties. The chilling sculptures were harbingers of unprecedented protests and strikes that hit German roads and railways this week, and represent a dramatic change of mood in a country long feted for its consensus-seeking approach to industrial relations, especially compared with its more traditionally strike-prone neighbour France. With key elections coming up in eastern German states this year, even some farmers fear the new revolutionary spirit could play straight into the hands of a buoyant far…

“One unknown is how a player so young will cope with so much The dust has barely settled on Luke Littler’s extraordinary performance at the PDC World Darts Championship last week, where he reached the final before losing to Luke Humphries. But attention is already beginning to turn to just how far the 16-year-old’s unquestionable talent can take him. Fortunately, those who have been captivated by his arrival as a major player do not have long to wait to discover what is next. Already no stranger to an unprecedented situation, Littler will begin 2024 – his first year as a professional – inside the world’s top 32 thanks to his run to the Alexandra Palace final, which earned him £200,000 ($254,000) in prize money. It is a remarkable achievement for…

Science and business are heading for an astronomical clash – over the future exploration of the moon and the exploitation of its resources. The celestial skirmish threatens to break out over companies’ plans to launch dozens of probes to survey the lunar landscape over the next few years. Peregrine mission one, which launched on Monday carrying Nasa scientific equipment to the moon, appeared to have suffered critical problems due to a loss of propellant. But it is just one of an extraterrestrial armada – largely funded through Nasa’s $2.6bn Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative – whose aim is to survey the moon so minerals, water and other resources can be extracted to build permanent, habitable bases there. These would later provide a springboard for crewed missions to Mars. But astronomers…

IN THE ORDINARY WAY OF THINGS, WHEN PEOPLE SAY THAT THEY ARE GIVING UP, they are usually referring to something like smoking, or alcohol, or chocolate, or any of the other anaesthetic pleasures of everyday life; they are not, on the whole, talking about suicide (though people do tend to want to give up only their supposedly self-harming habits). Giving up certain things may be good for us, and yet the idea of someone just giving up is never appealing. Like alcoholics who need everybody to drink, there tends to be a determined cultural consensus that life is, and has to be, worth living (if not, of course, actually sacred). There are, to put it as simply as possible, what turn out to be good and bad sacrifices (and sacrifice…

There are elements of fascism, elements borrowed from the Chinese state and elements that reflect Argentina’s history of dictatorship. But most of the programme for government announced by Javier Milei, the demagogic new Argentinian president, feels eerily familiar, here in the northern hemisphere. A crash programme of massive cuts; demolishing public services; privatising public assets; centralising political power; sacking civil servants; sweeping away constraints on corporations and oligarchs; destroying regulations that protect workers, vulnerable people and the living world; supporting landlords against tenants; criminalising peaceful protest; restricting the right to strike. Anything ring a bell? Milei is attempting, with a vast “emergency” decree and a monster “reform bill”, what the Conservatives have done in the UK over 45 years. The crash programme bears striking similarities to Liz Truss’s “mini” (maxi)…

Data scientist Hannah Ritchie has written a good-hearted, generous book that tries to reassure us about the various environmental crises we face. Which, obviously, is much appreciated: God knows we need all the optimism we can get. Ritchie is lead researcher at the groundbreaking Our World in Data, a website run out of Oxford University. She describes the moment of revelation when, after years of feeling helpless and anxious, she discovered the Swedish professor Hans Rosling, and “everything changed”. Rosling, who died in 2017, was one of what you might call the “big optimists”, alongside cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker. Like Pinker, he tried to present a counterpoint to the sense of global doominess – what he called the “overdramatic worldview” – that has overtaken many of us in the past…

The Post Office’s pursuit of 3,500 post office operators over 16 years with wrongful allegations of theft, fraud and false accounting has had a life-changing impact on those targeted. Despite knowing there were faults with the Horizon accounting software that the operators were using, more than 700 were prosecuted and at least four suicides have been linked to the scandal. Many of those affected have told heart-breaking stories about the financial and personal ramifications of being prosecuted and convicted to the ongoing public inquiry into one of the worst miscarriages of justice in UK history. Lee Castleton The former Bridlington, East Yorkshire, post office owner was made bankrupt by the Post Office after a two-year legal battle, in one of the most high-profile Horizon cases. Castleton bought a post office…

The queue for water at Metche, a camp of 40,000 refugees on the Sudan-Chad border, starts at dawn and lasts until sunset. The aid agencies helping the people there, who fled fighting in Sudan earlier this year, do not have enough money to drill boreholes, so there is a chronic water shortage. Latrines have yet to be dug and the desert serves as an open-air toilet. There are no blankets or mosquito nets, even though nights are cold and the area is plagued by malaria. There are similar shortages at all the hastily built camps for the 500,000 refugees who have crossed into Chad since Sudan’s war erupted last April. “I’ve never seen an operation at such a scale that is so poorly funded,” said Pierre Honnorat, the local head…

Here is a poor prediction from 40 years ago, 1984, when the FTSE 100 index was born. There is “no question of the FT 30 index disappearing”, opined the deputy chief executive of the Financial Times, arguing that the newfangled creation would sit happily alongside the paper’s own FT 30, the pre-eminent barometer of the UK stock market since 1935. It did not work out that way. The FTSE 100 grabbed attention from the off, just as its designers had intended. It was created by the London Stock Exchange and the early players in the futures and options market for the then emerging era of electronic trading and derivative products. A catchy shorthand – the Footsie – helped. Companies’ pure stock market capitalisations dictated weightings within the index, as they…

It is rare for India’s politicians to laugh at themselves, but a row over an act of mimicry has exposed the extent of the lack of humour and intolerance of satire in the country’s political and public life. Politicians have traded insults over an impersonation of India’s vicepresident, Jagdeep Dhankhar, by the opposition MP Kalyan Banerjee. He had mimicked Dhankhar’s voice, walk and mannerisms on the steps of parliament last month during protests at his suspension from the lower house – along with 14 2 other opposition MPs – for alleged unruly behaviour. Dhankhar, who is also chairman of the upper house of parliament, called Banerjee’s performance, caught on video, “shameful, ridiculous and unacceptable”. The prime minister, Narendra Modi, reportedly phoned Dhankhar to express his pain over the incident, while…

It has long been known that the disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein operated at the centre of a globe-spanning network of the rich, famous and powerful but the documents released last Wednesday were nonetheless shocking in revealing the sheer magnitude of his elite circle. Through the prism of a defamation lawsuit involving allegations against the Wall Street “estate planner” Epstein and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, the scale of their social network came into harsh focus. The 900 pages of documents released by the US judge Loretta Preska have been sought since 2016. They may be only the first to flesh out the extraordinary web Epstein and Maxwell spun as they hosted party after party at homes across the globe and as they created a horrifying sex-trafficking network that preyed on…

Over these last horrific months, Instagram has exploded with catastrophic images and videos of the genocide taking place in Gaza. We have seen formerly incubated babies found abandoned on hospital beds, huge craters where apartment buildings and neighbourhoods once stood, bones emerging from rubble. One particular video haunts me. I watch it on my phone. I watch it again. A dust-covered, anguished father crawls towards his limp, grey, dead 10-month-old baby. He covers him with his body. He holds the baby rocking and rocking him. He slaps the floor with his hand. He cries out over and over. Then the energy changes, suddenly terrifying, suddenly shocking. I have never seen a man’s body go mad from the inside. I have never seen legs scream – their movements convulsive, spasmodic, as…

Outside the futuristic glass-and-metal tiers of De Krook, Ghent’s city library, stands a statue: four giant, brightly painted figures leaning tightly in towards each other, their heads all but touching – as if telling each other something. “And that’s really what it’s about,” says service and communications coordinator Els Van Rompay. “This is more than a library, though books are its core. It’s also a place to learn, connect, develop, collaborate. Or just to be. A meeting place for our minds.” De Krook is not alone. All also built in the past seven or eight years, Helsinki’s Oodi central library, Dokk1 in Denmark’s Aarhus, and Deichman Bjørvika in Oslo share much the same vision of the library: effectively a living room for the 21st-century city. Walk through the front doors…

Just who is Vladimir Putin? In the 20-odd years he’s been in power, even the Russian leader’s physical appearance has undergone a series of ominous transformations. The alert but colourless apparatchik of his early years first became a smooth-faced enigma, then a tsar of such feline menace that you half expect to see bloody feathers at the corner of his mouth. And that’s nothing compared to the changes that have happened in Russia: at the dawn of the millennium it seemed to be stumbling towards democracy. It had, albeit imperfectly, such things as free speech and opposition politicians. Even Putin seemed to talk sincerely of partnership with his former cold war opponents. So what on earth happened? One person who is qualified to tell us is the protagonist of Giuliano…

The sun is already low in the sky when I arrive. The heath looks bleak in its winter shroud, but the hawthorns are decorated with lichen tinsel and crimson-berry baubles. Penwith is the land of bracken and bramble. Mostly agricultural and heathland, it is raw, wind-beaten and ancient. In a remote spot is Boscawen-Un. Erected between 2500BC and 1500BC, it comprises 19 standing stones, including one that’s white with quartz, which form a circle around one central leaning stone. Near the entrance lie a few horizontal slabs, potentially part of a burial chamber. We don’t know the true purpose of Boscawen-Un, but it was probably a place of ceremony and ritual. Even today I find offerings tucked into holes in the quartz stone: a posy of red campion, gorse flowers,…