Innehållsförteckning för 29 March 2024 från Guardian Weekly

The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol210 | Issue№ 13 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 Guardian…

The woman lay in a hospital bed, staring straight toward the ceiling. The left side of her face was swollen, her left arm wrapped in gauze. In a preternaturally calm voice, she spoke on camera of how the gunmen in the Crocus City Hall music venue spotted her and a small group of people as they fled the carnage of the worst terror attack on Russian soil in decades. “They saw us,” she told RT, a Russian state-funded news agency. “One of them ran back and started shooting at people. I fell to the floor and pretended to be dead. I was bleeding.” The gunmen opened fire into some of the bodies as they lay on the ground, she said. “The girl lying next to me was killed.” The gunmen…

Diplomacy occasionally has the capacity to surprise, and when it does it often portends a deep shift. As recently as the end of last week, few saw much chance that the UN security council would be able to agree terms for an immediate ceasefire, yet on Monday that is what happened, in no small part due to some British diplomatic persuasion and a significant American change of heart. As a result the US did not use its veto to block a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. What practical difference it will make on the ground in Rafah and Khan Younis was hard to say at first, but judging by the initial furious Israeli reaction, and cries of US betrayal, this was about more than some words in the…

There was no carpet of roses outside Windsor Castle last Saturday, no bunches of daffodils blocking the entrance to Kensington Palace – just an occasional bouquet. The royal family wanted things to be business as usual after the Princess of Wales revealed her cancer diagnosis the day before, and the public has been keen to oblige. Tourists watched the changing of the guard at Windsor, while visitors in London trooped into Kensington Palace to see the regalia of past monarchs. Little more than a year after the death of the Queen, King Charles is focusing on his own cancer struggle. The Prince of Wales is caring for his wife and their three children, and there is no sign of an end to William’s estrangement from Prince Harry. Among the more…

The films claim to tell the “real story” of India’s history, taking aim at the evils of “leftists” and “intellectuals” and even the freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi. As Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) seek a third term in next month’s election, a feverish pro-government momentum has gripped Bollywood, blurring the lines between entertainment and political campaigning in India’s largest film industry. Almost a dozen new films promoting the prime minister and his government’s Hindu nationalist policies and ideology have been released or will come out at cinemas in coming days and weeks. The election, which will determine the direction of the country for the next five years, begins on 19 April and will run for six weeks. Film critics and analysts have accused several titles of pushing…

The end of democracy, riots in the streets … Donald Trump has made such apocalyptic imagery a defining feature of his presidential election campaign, warning that if he does not win – and avoid criminal prosecution – America will enter its death throes. The prophecies of doom have raised fears that the former president is making an electoral tinderbox that could explode in November. While much commentary has assessed the implications of a Trump win, some experts warn that a Trump defeat could provide an equally severe stress test of American democracy. “Regardless of whether Donald Trump wins or loses, there’s going to be violence,” said Michael Fanone, a retired police officer who was seriously injured by pro-Trump rioters at the US Capitol on 6 January, 2021. “If Donald Trump…

THE CELEBRITY AGENT MARK ROESLER is telling me about a new client he’s just taken on – a big name with global reach. Roesler has already managed – in the four months they’ve been working together – to secure him a top advertising gig that went out during this year’s Super Bowl to an estimated 120 million viewers. “I’ve really learned just how big he is, that’s for sure,” enthuses Roesler. He’s talking about Albert Einstein. Roesler, you see, is a celebrity agent with a difference – the 68-year-old works predominantly with famous people who are no longer alive. Also on his books are Neil Armstrong, Aaliyah, Rosa Parks, Burt Reynolds, Bette Davis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Ingrid Bergman, Alan Turing and hundreds more dead celebrities – or “delebrities” as they’re…

Last week, the woman likely to become Britain’s first female chancellor was invited to give a lecture at the heart of the economic establishment. And in it, Rachel Reeves briefly paid credit to a woman who went before her. Not Margaret Thatcher – Reeves came more to bury than to praise her – but Mary Paley Marshall, the pioneering economist who in 1874 became one of the first two women allowed to sit her finals at Newnham College, Cambridge, in what was then called moral sciences. Though Marshall passed with flying colours and went on to lecture in economics at Cambridge, she was never awarded a degree, because those were only for men. So jealously was this privilege guarded that almost two decades later, proposals to award degrees to women…

I didn’t expect Steve Martin to be funny. Sure, it was his skewwhiff sensibility that made The Jerk, The Man With Two Brains, LA Story and Bowfinger so deliriously inspired. And he was comedy’s first double-platinum-record-selling, stadium-touring megastar. He crafted riotous slapstick crescendos in All of Me and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and displayed a literary flair even at his silliest. No one who has seen Roxanne, the modern-day interpretation of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac that found Martin investing his comedy with emotional weight for the first time, will dispute the Edward-Lear-like genius of the line “earn more sessions by sleeving”. But when he isn’t starring in the crime-comedy series Only Murders in the Building, which he co-created, he is a serious sort. He writes plays, makes bluegrass records, collects…

I’m setting up a new kitchen after downsizing. What are the three most important and/or useful pots and pans, and the same for bakeware? Kate, Des Moines, Iowa, US A great question, and one that everyone will have a slightly different answer to depending on how they cook and how many they’re cooking for and possibly even the season. Assuming that downsizing means you’re now mostly cooking for one or two, I’d say there are three must-haves: a small saucepan (to boil or poach eggs, say, or to heat up soup or to make a small amount of pasta sauce); a medium, roughly 22cm saute pan (for frying eggs, making crepes and to give onions plenty of space to sweat down properly before becoming the base of all sorts of…

1 UKRAINE/RUSSIA Kyiv pleads for air defence aid after missile strikes Russia launched several waves of missile strikes against Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, as part of its escalating aerial bombardment of the city. Five people were injured in a strike on Monday, said Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, as Ukraine’s foreign minister called on international allies to supply more air defences to his country. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, renewed his appeal to western partners to provide more weaponry to protect against the unrelenting aerial attacks. “We never tire of repeating that Ukraine needs more air defence,” he said. “This is security for our cities and saves human lives.” The strikes occurred amid Russian attempts to suggest a link between last Friday’s deadly terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall and Ukraine. The attack has…

They burst into the room, yanking the boy out from under a bed. His eyes wide open with terror, they put a gun to his temple. Two shots. Nadifa Ismail ran towards the body, but the intruders shoved the mother out of her home. Moments later, armed men set it ablaze, cremating her child’s body, destroying everything she had. Weeks later, on 28 February in Sudan’s Darfur region, Ismail, her clothing streaked red with dust, passed the paramilitary group who had executed her 16-year-old son. “Hopefully, it is the last time I will see them,” she said. “They beat me too.” Ismail was the 212th person that day to make it through the border crossing and into the town of Adré in eastern Chad. Like those who had gone before,…

As part of its devastating war strategy against Hamas, Israel has restricted shipments of food and medicine to just a fraction of what Palestinian civilians need to survive. The crisis is an artificially created one. Gaza, population roughly 2.3 million, is not geographically isolated. The small strip of land on the eastern Mediterranean coast served as a wellconnected port for centuries. “Starvation is used as a weapon of war,” the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said last week. “Israel is provoking famine.” Gaza used to have multiple land border crossings, but only two remain open – Rafah and Kerem Shalom. Israel ripped up the strip’s only international airport 20 years ago, and years of blockade and isolation means Gaza has no capacity for big ships to dock. Aid arriving…

Elliot Peters works as scuba diving instructor at a resort on Heron Island, Queensland, in the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef and, in recent weeks, he’s had to tell curious guests why so many of the corals around the island are turning bone white. “You can see it on their faces,” said Peters. “There’s definitely some remorse and sadness.” The reef is in the middle of its fifth mass bleaching event in only eight years – an alarming trend driven by global heating in a year that has seen record global ocean temperatures. Peters has never seen a mass coral bleaching event up close before, but this summer he’s seen ancient boulder corals that can live for hundreds of years bleaching and showing signs of death. “If anything…

Among the joyful family reunions at the arrivals gate at Dhaka’s international airport, one group of travellers stands out. These men appear gaunt and dazed, most of them carrying nothing but a thin blanket they picked up on the plane. They wear tracksuits and blue rubber sandals or shoes without laces. Some walk barefoot. All have been deported from Saudi Arabia, and each day they arrive by the planeload. Nearly 70,000 Bangladeshi migrant workers were deported from the Gulf kingdom in 2022, mostly for not having a valid residence permit, known as an iqama. They return from one of the wealthiest countries in the world, hungry, traumatised and without even the money for a bus ticket home. The only thing the men do bring back are horrific stories of abuse,…

Something is going wrong for young people between the ages of 15 and 24 across Europe, the US and Australia. The latest World Happiness Report shows that while not all teenagers and young adults are suffering, a large and growing number cannot cope with being left adrift with few qualifications on an economic sea that is more testing with each passing year. Social media is believed to play a part in driving down self-esteem and robbing young people of their wellbeing. But it is the lack of education, skills training and affordable housing that underpins the decline in the positive outlook traditionally displayed in surveys of those broadly fitting the gen Z age group. The report found that young people are becoming more like their beleaguered parents, who have always…

Four years on from the first Covid lockdown, life feels to be largely back to normal, although legacies of the pandemic remain. Collective amnesia seems to have set in. Politicians seem eager to move forward and not relive the decisions, delays and deaths that characterised public policy and press briefings. Yet we can’t forget such a brutal event, when Covid is estimated to have killed nearly 16 million people worldwide in 2020 and 2021, and caused life expectancy to decline in 84% of countries. Pandemics aren’t a one-off event. There’s still a risk of another happening within our lifetimes. Fortunately, what to do about the next pandemic is still very much at the top of the global health agenda. In 2021, I was asked to co-chair the US National Academy…

Perhaps we should have pity for Damien Hirst. Artistic decline is a terrible fate, even if you have immense wealth to cushion the blow. What artist, what person, wants to think all the good stuff is in the past? But Hirst apparently does think that. He could hardly confess it more clearly than by pre-dating formaldehyde animal sculptures made in 2017 to the 1990s, as whistleblowers have revealed to the Guardian. The young Damien Hirst lived fast and thought constantly about death. At 16 he posed for a photo with a severed head in a Leeds morgue. As an emerging artist he came up with a totally new spin on the ancient theme of the memento mori by putting dead animals, including a four-metre-long tiger shark, in tanks of formaldehyde…

At the start of the 2010s, rates of teenage mental illness took a sharp upward turn, and they have been rising ever since. Among US college students, diagnoses of depression and anxiety more than doubled between 2010 and 2018. More worrying still, in the decade to 2020 the number of emergency room visits for self-harm rose by 188% among teenage girls in the US and 48% among boys. The suicide rate for younger adolescents also increased, by 167% among girls and 91% among boys. A similar trend has been observed in the UK and many other western countries. The American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt believes this mental health crisis has been driven by the mass adoption of smartphones, along with the advent of social media and addictive online gaming. He…

Freestyle Chess, which made an impressive debut last month, has firmed up its plans to expand into five continents next year, as well as enlisting the top 25 elite grandmasters into a new club for its competing players. The variant, also known as Fischer Random and Chess 960, has the back rank pieces on both sides on random squares, with Black’s pieces placed equal-and-opposite to their White counterparts. Top grandmasters are enthusiastic. Freestyle offers a generously rewarded escape from the many hours of drudgery spent preparing for classical games. If Freestyle is to gain traction, The German promoter Jan Buettner, who heads Freestyle along with the world No 1 Magnus Carlsen, will have to justify his declared ambition of “making it as commercially successful as iconic sports events”. 3912 Jin…

SECURITY Chinese-backed hackers accessed 40m voters’ data Chinese state-backed hackers were responsible for two malicious digital campaigns targeting the UK’s democratic institutions and politicians, the security services have found. The UK holds China responsible for a prolonged cyber-attack on the Electoral Commission, during which Beijing allegedly accessed the personal details of about 40 million voters. The National Cyber Security Centre, part of GCHQ, also found that four British parliamentarians who have been critical of Beijing were targeted in a separate attack, although the activity was identified before any systems were compromised. Two individuals and a front company linked to the Chinese state sponsored cyber-group APT31, which is associated with Chinese ministry of state security and is believed to have been behind the hack, have been hit with sanctions by the…

How did the current conflict begin? Fighting broke out in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, on 15 April 2023 as an escalating power struggle between the two main factions of the military regime finally turned deadly. On one side are the Sudanese armed forces who remain broadly loyal to Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s de facto ruler. Against him are the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a collection of militia who follow the former warlord Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti. The RSF was founded by the former dictatorial ruler Omar al-Bashir as an Arab counterinsurgency militia. He wanted to crush a rebellion in the region of Darfur that began more than 20 years ago due to the political and economic marginalisation of the local population. Initially known…

As Russia observed a day of mourning last Sunday for the victims of the terror attack two days earlier, along with the sorrow came the hard question that follows most similar incidents: how could this have happened? Rooting out determined and well-trained terrorist cells is not an easy task for security services in any country, but there are numerous signs that failing to prevent last Friday’s attack was in large part down to a catastrophic security failure on the part of Russian authorities. First, there was the public warning from the US government earlier this month that it had learned of “imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow” by terrorists. The warning, also shared privately with the Russian government, suggested Washington had picked up some fairly specific intelligence relating…

In March last year an integrated review of the UK’s defence and foreign policy said it would protect the country’s “democratic freedoms” from Chinese state attacks. A few months later the Electoral Commission confirmed why institutions and processes were on the threat list as it revealed that a cyber-attack had accessed the data of 40 million voters. On Monday the government announced that a unnamed Chinese state-backed actor was behind the sortie and said a Beijing-affiliated group, called ATP31, was likely to have been responsible for targeting the email accounts of four British parliamentarians who have been critical of China. The list of targets cited by the review went beyond democratic institutions and processes, however, and outlined the scale of the Chinese cyber-threat. The economy, national infrastructure and supply chains…

Coral bleaching describes a process where the coral animal expels the algae that live in their tissues and give them their colour and much of their nutrients. Without their algae, a coral’s white skeleton can be seen through their translucent flesh, giving a bleached appearance. Mass coral bleaching over large areas, first noticed in the 1980s around the Caribbean, is caused by rising ocean temperatures. Some corals also display fluorescent colours under stress when they release a pigment that filters light. Sunlight also plays a role in triggering bleaching. Corals can survive bleaching if temperatures are not too extreme or prolonged. But extreme marine heatwaves can kill corals outright. Coral bleaching can also have sub-lethal effects, including increased susceptibility to disease and reduced rates of growth and reproduction. Scientists say…

Since the Colombian navy discovered the final resting place of the Spanish galleon San José in 2015, its location has remained a state secret, the wreck – and its precious cargo – left deep under the waters of the Caribbean. Efforts to conserve the ship and recover its cargo have been caught up in a string of international legal disputes, with Colombia, Spain, Bolivian Indigenous groups and a US salvage company laying claim to the wreck. The gold, silver and emeralds onboard are thought to be worth as much as $17bn. When Colombia tried to auction off part of the bounty to fund the colossal costs of recovering the ship, Unesco and the country’s high courts intervened. But eight years after the discovery, officials now say they are pushing politics…

Since the start of her career, Aya Nakamura has faced setbacks, discrimination and harassment. She is the most-listened-to French-speaking artist in the world, and the only woman to feature in the country’s top 20 bestselling albums of 2023. When she announced two concerts at the legendary Bercy arena in Paris last year, tickets sold out in 15 minutes – unprecedented for a French-speaking artist. Yet from shows where presenters struggle to pronounce her name to public debate about the way she uses a mixture of French and other languages in her lyrics, the French-Malian singer can, it seems, never be judged solely on her music. When speculation appeared in the media that the French president Emmanuel Macron had asked Nakamura to sing at the opening ceremony for this year’s Paris…

‘The morning after our whipping, we all had to go to work, as if nothing had happened. I was so sore I could hardly do anything,” recalled James Matthews, who, like many enslaved people after a severe whipping, ran away into the woods. “I have known a great many who never came back; they were whipped so bad they never got well, but died in the woods, and their bodies have been found by people hunting. White men come in sometimes with collars and chains and bells, which they had taken from dead slaves.” This quotation from Matthews’s Recollections of Slavery by a Runaway Slave (1838) appears on a panel in the woodland setting of the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park in Montgomery, Alabama, a seamless blend of art and history…

Peloponnese, Greece The almonds here, which at present are blanketed in blossom, may be the most colourful crop-bearing trees in this part of mainland Greece. For sound, however, the olives win hands down. The groves surround every Maniot village and are more full of winter migrants – many of them summer birds further north – than any habitat I’ve seen in Europe. Every line of trees holds dozens: blackcaps, song thrushes with chiffchaffs and black redstarts. While none of them probably nest here, they’re all starting to sing, a kind of experimental pre-season rehearsal for the moment they occupy true breeding places. It is vigorous but cacophonous, and in one glorious moment, near Exochori village, up it blasted like a choral wind full of motes of fluted, warbling and harsher…

Across 1 Sudden, surprise attack (6) 4 Wheel’s cover (6) 8 Elite squad (5) 9 Humourless (2-5) 10 Barnum, perhaps (7) 11 Vast expanse (5) 12 It’ll unlock several doors (6,3) 17 Hold on tight (to something or someone) (5) 19 Eight-sided shape (7) 21 Speedy service (7) 22 Relish – impertinence (5) 23 Evolve (6) 24 Strength of character (6) Down 1 Hold responsible (for wrongdoing) (6) 2 Place to retire to? (7) 3 Old engine driver? (5) 5 Dismiss from the priesthood (7) 6 It stores data on a computer (5) 7 One’s obsessed with tiny details (6) 9 Proud one’s (anag) – dull and slow (9) 13 Orange bit (7) 14 Result of adding bacteria to milk (7) 15 (A) hoot – or yell (6) 16 Sign…