Innehållsförteckning för 9 February 2024 från Guardian Weekly

Europe’s farming sector is facing a big crisis and must “profoundly” change its rules, Emmanuel Macron said after a European Union leaders’ summit in Brussels was overshadowed by protesting farmers hurling eggs, dumping manure and lighting fires. Speaking as hundreds of farmers from Belgium, the Netherlands and elsewhere blocked streets around the European parliament with tractors, the French president said there should be a joint EU mechanism to guarantee fair prices paid to farmers by food giants and supermarkets. He said regulations should be simplified, after weeks of farmer protests across Europe have blockaded motorways. Although agriculture had not been on the agenda of the leaders’ summit, the proximity and intensity of the farmers’ protests made it impossible for politicians in Brussels to ignore. Praising farmers’ “remarkable resilience”, the president…

Last Monday, King Charles emerged from a private clinic alongside Queen Camilla to wave to a small crowd. The message that Buckingham Palace wished to convey was obvious: the monarch is strong and will carry out his duties despite the health setback. Hours earlier, his daughter-in-law Catherine, the Princess of Wales, left the same hospital after planned abdominal surgery. For several days, the global media speculation over their health – and that of the monarchy as a whole – died down. But this Monday’s surprise announcement that Charles has been diagnosed with a form of cancer inevitably provoked another frenzy – and will once again raise questions about whether it is fair to expect a man in his mid-70s to fulfil a rota of public duties. He started his new…

More potholes on the roads, fewer bus services, and libraries and leisure centres shutting their doors for good: the evidence of squeezed local government budgets has been growing across England for more than a decade. An exclusive Guardian analysis of 13 years of council data has detailed how local spending patterns have changed under austerity budgets. Between 2010-11 and 2022-23, net spending per person on cultural services was cut by 43% in real terms, on roads and transport spending by 40%, on housing by 35% and on planning and development by a third – with more cuts pencilled in for this year. While some spending changes are a result of evolving responsibilities over the years, others are down to shifts in budgetary pressure. Institute for Government figures show the core…

In a country ravaged by food and health emergencies, art is vital, said Hobisoa Raininoro. “It is important to bring a note of hope, to show beauty, creativity, and provide nourishment for the mind and imagination,” added the co-curator of the inaugural exhibition at Madagascar’s first major contemporary art venue, Fondation H. Until last year, Madagascar had a vibrant art scene but no public museum of modern art or art school. Then, in April – after two years of restoration – a former post office in the capital, Antananarivo, opened its doors as Fondation H’s new gallery. Its first exhibition, Bientôt je vous tisse tous (Soon I will weave you all), runs until the end of February, and has been dedicated to Zoarinivo Razakaratrimo, a doyenne of Malagasy art. Known…

Surprise! Joe Biden won the Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina with a high-90s percentage that would make even Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un blush. But there was a wider narrative last Saturday about representation, the changing face of the US and a rebuke to the white identity politics of Donald Trump. Biden, 81, last year tore up the tradition, which took hold with Jimmy Carter in 1976, of Iowa and New Hampshire going first in picking the Democratic candidate for president. At his behest, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) rearranged the electoral calendar so that South Carolina would have first say in shaping the race this time. Still, anyone who spent parts of last month freezing in Iowa and New Hampshire after the Republican primary was reminded how demographically…

Taylor Swift is a “Pentagon asset”, an “election interference psyop” who, with unnamed left-leaning forces, has conspired to “rig” the Super Bowl and endorse Joe Biden in the presidential election. That’s according to a number of influential rightwing figures, who have begun to spread a conspiracy theory that Swift, a pop star, is part of a nefarious plot ahead of November’s presidential election. Swift has found herself at the centre of the rightwing commentariat’s attention in recent weeks after intense media focus on her relationship with Travis Kelce, a star tight-end for the Kansas City Chiefs NFL team. She has been in the crowd as the Chiefs have progressed to the Super Bowl on 11 February. The attention their romance has received has led to several conspiracy theories. “I think…

Devolution is in disarray. A quarter of a century after its introduction by the Blair government, the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish constitutions are tired and tarnished. Last week’s Covid inquiry in Scotland has revealed Nicola Sturgeon’s nationalist rule to be cliquish and shrouded in secrecy. Wales’s first minister, Labour’s Mark Drakeford, has resigned after plummeting approval ratings. Northern Ireland’s power-sharing has just stumbled back to a half-life after two years of total nonexistence. The UK is the only western European state whose unity is unstable, except for possibly Spain. Almost half of Northern Irish voters expect to rejoin the rest of Ireland within 20 years, and nearly 60% of Scots want some form of independence. Even in Wales, independence is favoured by almost a third. Covid gave devolution a…

In 1891, as the British empire continued to expand, Rudyard Kipling put his pen to its service with The English Flag. “And what should they know of England who only England know?” asked the poet, lamenting his compatriots’ ignorance of what he saw as the civilising mission of their empire. In Empireworld, Sathnam Sanghera questions Britain’s wilful amnesia over the discomfiting legacy of empire across the globe. It’s a sequel to Empireland (2021), which looked inward at legacies of empire in Britain – from the mass migration that enabled the NHS to thrive to the popularity of Indian restaurants. Sanghera, who was born in Wolverhampton in 1976 to Indian migrants, writes with the sensitivity and earnestness of someone with skin in the game. The racial abuse he received after the…

1 UKRAINE Zelenskiy plans to replace military commander The president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has admitted publicly that he is seeking to replace the country’s most senior military commander, Valerii Zaluzhnyi. “A reset, a new beginning, is necessary,” Zelenskiy told Rai News in an interview broadcast on Sunday night. Zaluzhnyi, who has led the armed forces since before Russia’s full-scale invasion, is a largely popular figure among soldiers and society at large, meaning replacing him could be a politically risky decision. At a meeting last Monday, Zelenskiy told Zaluzhnyi he planned to replace him, according to those with knowledge of the conversation, and offered him a chance to resign. But the general refused to step down. When news of the conversation leaked, Zelenskiy’s press secretary, Serhiy Nykyforov, denied it. “There is no order,”…

Farmers’ protests have been sweeping Europe in countries such as Greece, Germany, Portugal, Poland and France, where the government was taken by surprise late last month by a motorway blockade of Paris. Some concerns, such as a plan by Berlin to phase out tax breaks on agricultural diesel to balance the budget, or a requirement in the Netherlands to reduce nitrogen emissions – are country-specific. But many are shared continent-wide. Farmers have said they face falling sale prices, rising costs, heavy regulation, domineering retailers, debt, the climate crisis and cheap imports, all within an EU agricultural system based on the premise that “bigger is better”. Costs are up, prices are down Farmers’ costs – notably for energy, fertiliser and transport – have risen in many EU countries, particularly since Russia’s…

The elevation of Michelle O’Neill as Northern Ireland’s first minister is a historic moment that breathes new life into the republican slogan “tiocfaidh ár lá” – “our day will come”. The Sinn Féin deputy leader has taken charge of a state that was designed in 1921 to enshrine a unionist majority in perpetuity, and that the IRA vowed to destroy. Even in 1998, when the Good Friday agreement drew a line under the Troubles, it seemed inconceivable that the IRA’s political wing, the fourth-biggest party, would one day claim the top post at the Stormont executive. But the Democratic Unionist party’s decision to drop a boycott of power sharing in return for an easing of post-Brexit trade arrangements means that O’Neill, 47, has belatedly become first minister in accordance with…

It took 13 years to turn a historic building into eco-friendly co-housing, planned to see its members into older age ‘Look at this – can you see what it is?” The architect Anne Thorne is showing me around Cannock Mill, the eco-village on the outskirts of Colchester, Essex, that she designed in collaboration with a group of her friends who had grown tired of London life. We are standing behind a terrace of terracotta and honey-toned houses; even on a dreich day, the 1-hectare site has a distinctly Mediterranean vibe. There are well-tended grounds, a communal allotment and a fire pit. Thorne gesticulates at a tiny path. “It’s a frog passerelle, ” she enthuses. “So frogs can get safely to the mill pond down there.” I can’t see any amphibious…

THE COMBIN DE VALSOREY is a rocky Alpine peak that stands nearly 4,200 metres above sea level near the Swiss-Italian border. Its north-west face rises 670 metres, at a gradient of about 50 degrees, steep enough that you can stand on the slope and touch the higher ground beside you without bending down. In May 2016, when Jérémie Heitz climbed the Combin for the first time, the north-west face of the mountain looked like a vertical curtain of white, fringed by bands of dark rock. Heitz’s ascent was nothing extraordinary in mountaineering terms: this face was first ascended in 1958, by Egbert Eigher and Erich Vanis. But Heitz was not climbing the Combin because he cared about going up – his plan was to ski down it. Heitz, who was…

Why are peaceful protesters treated like terrorists, while actual terrorists (especially on the far right) often remain unmolested by the law? Why, in the UK, can you potentially receive a longer sentence for “ public nuisance” – non-violent civil disobedience – than for rape or manslaughter? Why are criminals being released early to make space in overcrowded prisons, only for the space to be refilled with political prisoners: people trying peacefully to defend the habitable planet? There’s a simple explanation. It was clearly expressed by a former analyst at the US Department of Homeland Security. “ You don’t have a bunch of companies coming forward saying: ‘I wish you’d do something about these rightwing extremists.’ ” The disproportionate policing of environmental protest, the new offences and extreme sentences, the campaigns…

On the eastern outskirts of Berlin, a big top has been erected by theatre company Rimini Protokoll for a circus with a twist. These acrobatics come wrapped in metaphor and high concept: the show is about shopping giant Amazon and the processes of the virtual marketplace. Upon entering, we are given clickers to use instead of clapping to imitate the click of online transactions. We view secret footage filmed inside fulfilment centres, listen to testimonies from workers and watch piles of packages heaved across the stage. We hear from Gisela and Dietmar Winkler, who ran a real-life circus near here, and there is a clip of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos speaking about a German circus he saw that was the inspiration behind Amazon. Comparisons between the circus and the online…

The Hampstead adultery novel is an extinct species that is constantly turning out, like the coelacanth, not to be extinct at all. I mean, of course, the sort of novel that tells you about middle-class London media professionals sleeping with people who aren’t their spouses – Iris Murdoch wrote several of the best (see, among others, 1961’s A Severed Head). There’s probably no getting away from it, at least until climate change renders cities uninhabitable and media careers unlikely. After all, novelists are often middle class media professionals who live in London, and sometimes they sleep with people who aren’t their spouses. And complaints about the adultery novel are almost as old as the adultery novel itself. “ There are other [subjects],” Henry James wrote in 1899, “than those of…

MONARCHY King Charles begins treatment for cancer King Charles has been diagnosed with cancer and is already receiving treatment that will prevent him from undertaking public duties for the immediate future, Buckingham Palace announced on Monday. Although no further details about what type of cancer he has were released, the palace said it was not prostate cancer. It was discovered when the 75-year-old monarch recently underwent treatment at the London Clinic for a benign enlarged prostate. Prince Harry, who lives in the US, will travel to the UK to see him, the Office of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex confirmed. In a statement, Buckingham Palace said: “During the king’s recent hospital procedure for benign prostate enlargement, a separate issue of concern was noted. Subsequent diagnostic tests have identified a…

Sometimes a disaster is so large that it obscures its own details. Behind the number of dead and displaced in Gaza, for women and girls the conflict has been disproportionately grinding. In a “cruel inversion” of the history of this conflict, the head of UN Women told the Associated Press, women and children have borne the brunt of the war. There are about 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza and 40% of those pregnancies have been classed as high risk; 180 give birth daily. The healthcare infrastructure has been all but obliterated. Babies are born on the ground in the wilderness, umbilical cords cut with whatever sharp object is to hand and tins filled with hot water keep the newborn warm. C-sections are being performed without any anaesthesia, by surgeons who…

Three years after seizing power, Myanmar’s junta is struggling to assert control, with humiliating losses in recent months and growing criticism of its leader, Min Aung Hlaing, by pro-military figures. Images shared across social media show weapons seized from overrun military outposts in the north, exhausted soldiers surrendering en masse and even a military jet plunging from the sky after it was shot down. The UN says about two-thirds of the country remains gripped by conflict. The junta has lost key territory in the north along the border with China, and in the west, near the Indian border. Elsewhere, the military remains stuck in fierce battles, unable to quash a persistent resistance movement. On social media, pro-military commentators have voiced dissatisfaction at the leadership. Last month, an ultranationalist monk, Pauk…

Betty Kabatoff was eight years old when she was rushed from her home and taken into the mountains to hide from Canadian police. She and some other children slept under a shelter made from tree branches, but within days, a helicopter appeared overhead and they were forced to move on. Kabatoff, a member of a pacifist sect of Russian immigrants known as the Doukhobors, was whisked from one location to another. Eventually she was hidden in a tunnel under her family home in the town of Krestova, British Columbia. “And then one morning, there was screaming and hollering in the neighbourhood,” said Kabatoff, now 78. “The next thing I saw was somebody standing with black pants with a yellow stripe. They’d found us. I still can’t deal with cops to…

In 1905, in the Finnish city of Tampere, Vladimir Lenin met Joseph Stalin for the first time. They and two dozen or so revolutionaries began to map out plans to overthrow the tsar and bring down the Russian empire. The story is vividly chronicled in Tampere’s Lenin Museum, a venue that thousands of Soviet citizens used to descend on each year, in official groups; in these different times, it is seen as something of an embarrassment by the city authorities. Since the collapse of Soviet communism in 1991, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and Finland’s accession to Nato in 2023, the museum has successively changed its exhibits. It still tells the remarkable story of that secret meeting a century ago, when Finland was part of the tsarist Russian empire,…

I prefer to avoid puddings that need prep during the main course. Can a clafoutis or sticky toffee mix sit on the side for a while, and if not, what can I make instead? Alison, Lindfield, England, UK “The golden rule is to have it all done before people cross the threshold,” says Jeremy Lee, the undisputed king of puddings, and chef/co-proprietor of Quo Vadis in London. That’s not to say you can’t have warm, rib-sticking desserts, though. Sticky toffee pudding is indeed a splendid shout because, Lee says, you can cook it in advance, then “all you have to do is put it back in the oven for five minutes before serving to get it bubbling again”. And you can have your clafoutis, too, says Florence Stanton, author of…

Shropshire, England, UK When another storm came strap-hanging on the jet stream, pouring Atlantic rain over sodden ground, ditches burst, rivers flooded and water from this well rose out of its tank, over the skin of liverworts and across a little patio of slabs laid in a 1989 heritage restoration project whose plaque reads: “Oswald’s Well. Legend states King Oswald was killed in battle against King Penda at the battle of Maserfield. An eagle lifted, flew and then dropped his arm at this site from whence a spring of water has since bubbled.” This is Maserfield in Oswestry, where the terrible battle was fought on school playing fields, open-plan lawns of 60s semis and bungalows, between dwarf conifers and trees. Here, on a cold night, flowers of Prunus x subhirtella…

Across 1 Yummiest men’s (anag) – natural defences (6,6) 9 Gather large quantities (5) 10 Bird, butterfly or throne? (7) 11 Voucher (4) 12 Edible substance from a shell (8) 14 Make a gesture (6) 15 Calm down (6) 18 Foot soldiers (8) 20 Bottom-heavy fruit (4) 22 Container of horse feed (7) 23 Waned (5) 24 Situation in which people are forced to leave the area where they live (12) Down 2 Sense (7) 3 Reverse (4) 4 Sell (something) overseas (6) 5 Annual publication (8) 6 That’s plural (5) 7 Come up to scratch (4,3,5) 8 Unconcerned by critics – think Dickens (anag) (5-7) 13 Hannibal Lecter or one of Man Friday’s captors (8) 16 Betrayal (7) 17 Like Othello or Oedipus, say? (6) 19 Joins (5) 21…