Innehållsförteckning för 23 February 2024 från Guardian Weekly

Vladimir Putin smiled and looked unusually festive last Friday as he praised factory workers and joked with state reporters at an industrial plant in the Ural city of Chelyabinsk. Putin’s confidence was unmistakable – a sign of his belief he would get away with the death that day of his biggest critic in jail while outlasting Ukraine on the battlefield. The world might never know what specifically happened on the day of Alexei Navalny’s death at a remote prison above the Arctic Circle. Navalny spent years enduring some of the worst excesses of the Russian prison system. The country’s penal colonies are notorious for their grim conditions and the opposition leader was singled out for particularly cruel treatment. Whatever the circumstances of his death, years of mistreatment support the widespread…

At times of great upheaval in Palestine, people start to talk about Marwan Barghouti. The 64-year-old political leader serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli prison for murder represents the prospect of a shake-up to the status quo. Palestinian towns – and the Israeli-built concrete walls that cut them up – are covered in graffitied images of Barghouti, his handcuffed hands held high above his head. Virtually every opinion poll since his imprisonment two decades ago show Barghouti to be the favourite presidential candidate for the Palestinian people, were they able to hold free elections. A December survey showed him 40 points ahead of the deeply unpopular current leader Mahmoud Abbas but also beating Hamas candidates, including the Islamist militant group’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh. With Palestinian factions deeply divided,…

February is on course to break a record number of heat records, meteorologists say, as human-made global heating and the natural El Niño climate pattern drive up temperatures on land and oceans around the world. A little over halfway into the shortest month of the year, the heating spike had become so pronounced that climate charts were entering new territory, particularly for sea-surface temperatures that have persisted and accelerated to the point where expert observers are struggling to explain how the change is happening. “The planet is warming at an accelerating rate. We are seeing rapid temperature increases in the ocean, the climate’s largest reservoir of heat,” said Dr Joel Hirschi, the associate head of marine systems modelling at the UK National Oceanography Centre. “The amplitude by which previous sea…

I an Doncaster is remarkably chipper for a man about to undergo major surgery. “I have a busy life. So it’s nice to have a break,” he jokes. It is 8.30am on a chilly December morning and here at Warwick hospital he is about to receive a new knee – or part of one. At 62, Doncaster has always been active: he played rugby when young, until a knee injury and subsequent operation meant he had to trade that in for other sports. But now the knee is causing problems again. As a self-employed chartered engineer, he needs to be able to get up and down tower blocks. Even going hiking with his wife seems a wistful dream. “Going forward, it’s only going to get worse,” he says. Which is why…

ELIEZER YUDKOWSKY, A 44-YEAR-OLD academic wearing a grey polo shirt, rocks slowly on his office chair and explains with real patience – taking things slowly for a novice like me – that every single person we know and love will soon be dead. They will be murdered by rebellious self-aware machines. “The difficulty is, people do not realise,” Yudkowsky says mildly, maybe sounding just a bit frustrated, as if irritated by a neighbour’s leaf blower or let down by the last pages of a novel. “We have a shred of a chance that humanity survives.” It’s January. I have set out to meet and talk to a small but growing band of luddites, doomsayers, disruptors and other AI-era sceptics who see only the bad in the way our spyware-steeped, infinitely…

The first time I attempted to use a naughty word at school, aged seven, has become family folklore. I was aching to try out a grownup term that I’d heard an older girl utter in the playground, so when my friend was standing at the classroom sink, washing her poster paint-covered brushes, I took my chance. “Hey, move your bom,” I loudly declared, my cheeks turning bright red as I realised the whole thing had come out wrong. I scuttled away as fast as I could, shocked by the power a single word could hold – and how shaming it could feel if not deployed just right. I have swearing on my mind thanks to Olivia Colman, who is promoting her new film Wicked Little Letters – the true story…

I make a tomato, kale and lemon one-pot pasta on repeat, but what other one-pot pastas should I try? Linda, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK “One-pot pastas have a particular brilliance to them,” says Anna Jones, who is behind your recipe and whose latest book, Easy Wins, is published next month. This method, where you put the sauce ingredients, the pasta and the cooking water all in one vessel, can be taken in numerous directions. To achieve carb comfort, there are two schools of thought. The first, says Mateo Zielonka, author of The Pasta Man, is “to mix chopped vegetables – broccoli, onion, tomatoes, herbs – pasta and water in a pan and bring to a boil”. The other would be to “cook onions, garlic and other vegetables in olive oil,…

High above the jostling treetops, a buzzard gains lift with the wind. It’s another buffeting day in a winter of many gales. I’m glad to have left the fields for the shelter of this wood. The footpath that led up from Corbridge follows its namesake, the Cor Burn, a twisting stream that gathers water from the north side of the Tyne valley. This path must have been here for centuries. Sunk between root encrusted banks, it’s a hollow way, dappled brown with oak leaves. A simple bridge crosses the burn where sound is patterned by shallow waterfalls over flat slabs of rock. As we climb, it’s clear why this was a defensive site. The blocky outline of masonry glimpsed through skyline trees is Aydon Castle. Pillaged and burnt during the…

1 RUSSIA Widow of Alexei Navalny vows to continue his fight Yulia Navalnaya has vowed to continue her late husband’s political work and called on Russians to rally around her as Alexei Navalny’s family were told they would not get access to his body for another two weeks. “I call on you to stand with me. To share not only grief and endless pain … I ask you to share with me the rage. The fury, anger, hatred for those who dare to kill our future,” she said in a nine-minute video published on social media. On Monday, Navalnaya accused the Russian authorities of murdering her husband. She said she knew “why exactly Putin killed Alexei three days ago”. “And we will tell you that soon.” Earlier, Navalny’s aides said his…

On the top floor of Literaturhaus in Munich, the Ukrainian veteran Yuliia Paievska was asked to speak to the elite of the transatlantic security and political establishment, including Hillary Clinton and the Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, as they lunched on a three-course meal, served with military precision. “We are the dogs of war,” Paiev ska said as she introduced herself, explaining how she had started out as a volunteer and then worked as the chief medic at a hospital on the frontline during the siege of Ma riupol. “I had children die in my hands, civilians, elderly. I do not know how you can forgive that. Thousands of soldiers have gone through my hands, thousands of civilians, streams of blood, rivers of suffering.” She had herself been captured,…

Every Thursday for the past 17 years, in searing heat and pouring rain, Maria Catarina Sumarsih has stood outside the Indonesian presidential palace, demanding justice for her son. He was shot dead in 1998, when authorities opened fire on students protesting against the rule of dictator Suharto. Soon, it is assumed, the palace behind her will be inhabited by Prabowo Subianto – former son-in-law of Suharto and a special commander under his 32-year brutal and corrupt regime. He is accused of involvement in a series of rights abuses, including enforced disappearances and torture in the Suharto era, which ended in the same year that Sumarsih’s son died. At last week’s vigil, held the day after Prabowo declared victory in Indonesia’s presidential election, Sumarsih vowed to continue her fight for accountability…

On an overcast morning, several kilometres off the east coast of Sardinia, four men jump into a net where 49 giant Atlantic bluefin tuna are fighting for their lives. For more than 30 minutes, the men struggle in a frenzy of nets, tails, fins and sleek silvery bodies before finally securing a metal hook through the gills of the nearest fish. From one of the seven wooden boats that frame this càmira dâ morti (“chamber of death”), Luigi Biggio yells for his men to pull. As 28 men look on, a majestic creature about three metres long, weighing 120kg is raised out of the water with a pulley. On the biggest boat, one man swiftly cuts its jugular and the vessel fills with blood. Biggio, 57, runs a tonnara, the…

From Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue to the Trump Building on Wall Street, the Trump World Tower by the United Nations to the Trump International overlooking Central Park, Donald Trump has stamped his name on skyscrapers across New York City. This real estate empire was the springboard for Trump’s ascent from tabloid fodder to reality TV stardom, and ultimately the presidency, all built on his self-projected image as America’s most famous businessman. While the reality of Trump’s business acumen – and the true extent of his wealth – have long been questioned, last Friday Judge Arthur Engoron for ever tarnished his gilded image, finding Trump and his allies guilty of frauds that “shock the conscience” and a “lack of contrition and remorse [that] borders on pathological”. Trump was ordered to…

FLORENCE MEOWMALADE came to me on a chilly winter’s night last year. A one-year-old orange tabby with a little pink nose, she arrived at my door in London after travelling for three days in a van with 30 dogs across continental Europe. She brought with her an EU pet passport, a soiled pink blanket and a penchant for snuggling into any available lap. Growing up, I had a dog (a husky), a goldfish that jumped out of its bowl and a clutch of gerbils that refused to stop procreating – but those had all been family pets. The arrival of Florence, or Lady Meowmalade as she shall be addressed by her lessers, marked the first time in my life that I had a small creature entirely dependent upon me for…

Ursula von der Leyen surrendered to angry farmers this month faster than you could shake a pitchfork or dump a tractor-load of manure outside the European parliament. The European Commission president, who announced her candidacy for a second term heading the EU executive this week, told lawmakers that the commission was withdrawing a bill to halve the use of chemical pesticides by 2030 and would hold more consultations instead. The proposed measure was a key plank in the commission’s European Green Deal and its Farm to Fork strategy, intended to make the EU carbon-neutral by 2050, make agriculture more environmentally friendly and preserve biodiversity. Von der Leyen’s sudden U-turn was not just an attempt to defuse a spreading continent-wide rural revolt over rising fuel costs, burdensome environmental regulations, retailers’ price…

When Maurice and Maralyn Bailey decided to build a boat and sail to the other side of the world, it was not on a whim. The couple from Derby had long hankered for adventures that would lift them out of their dreary suburban existence. Over six years, they diligently studied boat designs, routes, timetables and supplies. They gave up their jobs, sold their bungalow and the bulk of their belongings, and oversaw the building of a boat they called “Auralyn”, a composite of their first names. Auralyn would have no radio transmitter as Maurice was keen “to preserve their freedom from outside interference”. By the time they set off for New Zealand in the summer of 1972, Maurice and Maralyn were confident sailors who had considered every eventuality. But even…

CONSERVATIVES Rebel Tory MPs pushing for PM Rishi Sunak to quit Tory MPs critical of Rishi Sunak’s leadership are hoping he will stand down voluntarily to avoid the spectacle of a damaging coup and are looking to May’s local elections as a potential crunch point, the Guardian has been told. A former minister said several Conservative MPs had contacted Graham Brady, who heads the 1922 Committee of backbench Tories, to say they want the prime minister to quit, but that they had not sent in letters of no confidence yet. The former minister said they believed Sunak’s Downing Street was too complacent about the risk he faces after no new public challenges emerged after two heavy byelection defeats for the party last week. “I know it’s happening,” they said. “The…

Had he remained outside Russia, Navalny may have been able to coordinate a powerful anti-war movement. Instead, he is silenced for ever For years, Alexei Navalny remained clear on a key message: he was a Russian opposition politician and he was determined to stay in Russia. Exile, he believed, would lead to political irrelevance, and calling on Russians to oppose Vladimir Putin from the safety of the west would mark him as a hypocrite. Navalny, who died last week aged 47, while serving a lengthy prison term in an Arctic penal colony, stuck to this belief as the political climate in Russia deteriorated and the space for dissent narrowed ever further, and even after he was poisoned with novichok in 2020, leading to his ill-fated decision to return early the…

The annual meeting of western leaders and security officials in Munich was held this year under a dark cloud of foreboding surrounding Donald Trump’s potential return to the US presidency. European governments have been shaken by Trump’s apparent strength, and Joe Biden’s weakness, in swing states, and what the former president has said this month about Nato. Trump reportedly contemplated withdrawal from Nato in his first term, and in recent statements he has made clear that, at the very least, he would not order American troops to go to the defence of any alliance member against Russia that had not spent the Nato target of 2% of GDP on defence. “No, I would not protect you,” Trump recalled telling an unnamed head of state of an important Nato member. “In…

The mainstay of British casual conversation – the unexpected state of the weather – is under existential threat. Scientists plan to make forecasts so accurate they will be able to determine weather patterns a month into the future. Barbecue misery and Wimbledon washouts could take a serious hit – thanks to the new 15-year research programme that has been launched by Reading University, in partnership with the UK’s Met Office and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. The aim is to transform the ability to unravel the minute influences that determine weather patterns and uncover the limits of predictability in the real world. “A major goal of our work is to be able to say what the weather will be like a month ahead,” said Prof Rowan Sutton, research…

Cats chased shadows through the pre-dawn gloom as the men hit the streets of suburban Rio and set off towards their objective. “I’ve not slept,” said one early riser, a bushy-bearded office worker called Arthur Araújo, as he emerged from his home to fulfil a “dream” one year in the making. The group’s convoy navigated mountain roads and country lanes, before stopping at a farmstead in the rainforest-cloaked sierra separating the city from the rest of Brazil. They got out of their cars, jumped a barbed wire fence and hiked into the meadows. Onlookers might have mistaken them for landless activists occupying an unproductive ranch, or ravers flocking to an underground event. In fact, they were hot air balloon fanatics known in Brazil as baloeiros who gather once a year…

Landlines are nearing obsolescence. For many young people, they’ve gone the way of CD-Roms, cassette tapes and the humble printer. On TikTok, parents film their children holding wall phones like archival pieces, unsure of how to place a call. Payphones are long gone, too. But not everyone’s ready to hang up the curly-corded receiver. Nicole Randone, a 24-year-old from Westchester, New York, takes calls from her bedroom using a purple Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen-branded landline first sold in 2003, when she was three years old. “One of my first memories is the tan landline that my parents had mounted to the kitchen wall,” Randone said. “I always fantasised about the day I’d have one in my own room.” All of Randone’s style takes influence from what she calls “2000s nostalgia”…

On the assumption the Conservative party suffers a rout and Labour at last takes power, one place will be seen as the battleground where the Tory malaise finally became terminal: Wellingborough. Last Thursday also saw a byelection in the Bristol suburb of Kingswood, where the Tories’ vote share came down by about 20 percentage points, and Labour easily triumphed. But in the Northamptonshire town, the figure was a jaw-dropping 38 percentage points: the worst slump the Conservatives have ever suffered in such a contest. The local campaign was defined by the sleazy fall of the Tory MP Peter Bone, and the surreally stupid decision to make his girlfriend the prospective Conservative replacement, both of which spoke of a party in awful decay; nationally, the sense of a government gripped by…

‘I hope my ex has been killed by a rocket,” says one message. “I feel ashamed that I miss my cats more than my own dad,” writes somebody else. “I want to kill my father for his Soviet beliefs,” confesses a third. “I can’t wank,” confides one person. Another: “I wank every day.” And someone else: “I want to have amazing sex before the nuclear strike, but in two months, I haven’t had the emotional resources to even open Tinder.” These intimate confessions are displayed on a wall of the Jam Factory, an elegant arts centre in the city of Lviv in western Ukraine. They are from a collection of anonymous wartime “secrets” artist Bohdana Zaiats collated using an online Google form, and posted on Instagram. Each provides a fleeting insight…

Helen Oyeyemi’s latest novel is a story about stories; a tale that unpicks and exposes the threads that tie tales together. It’s set in Prague, with the city functioning as backdrop, cipher and, even, at times, narrator; the main characters slip, slide and transmute, and the bit-part players reappear in different roles and get-ups, like actors in a travelling theatre. Time in this city warps and winds backwards, contributing to the sense of the novel, and Prague itself, as a switchback ride: a “non-stop paternoster lift” that carries its passengers in circles, rather than launching them along straight lines. The themes are love, history, identity, and – most fundamentally of all – the essential subjectivity of the act of reading; the notion that, when we open a book, we’ll each…

Across 1 The ___, Franz Kafka novel published 1926 (6) 4 Starry (6) 8 Chicken or egg? (5) 9 Computer folder holding correspondence (7) 10 Sincere (7) 11 Pronounce – complete (5) 12 Crime of Oedipus and Orestes (9) 17 Slightest (5) 19 Sink back again (7) 21 A bit hot (7) 22 Stopped moving (5) 23 Help for those in need (6) 24 Stick of wax used for drawing (6) Down 1 Flavour of tiramisu (6) 2 Rider’s foothold (7) 3 Serving spoon (5) 5 Incentives (7) 6 Prove to be false (5) 7 Opulence (6) 9 Female head of the family (9) 13 Resembling a rodent (7) 14 Pleasing sound (7) 15 (Old-fashioned) telephone (6) 16 Humble (6) 18 Hearing-related (5) 20 Long-term prisoner (5) Solution No 16,771…