Innehållsförteckning för 14 June 2024 från Guardian Weekly

The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol210 | Issue№ 24 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…

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So in the end, with a couple of alarming wobbles, the centre held in Europe. As polls predicted, the mainstream pro-EU alliance of centre-right, centre-left, liberal and Green parties in the European parliament hung on, comfortably, to its majority. National conservative and far-right forces made big gains, ending up with just under a quarter of MEPs in the 720-seat assembly – their highest tally ever. But in some places they fared worse than forecast. Where they did do well, they did very well, most notably in France, where Emmanuel Macron’s humbling 15%-32% defeat by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) pushed the French president into the huge gamble of calling a snap legislative election. In Germany, too, despite a number of scandals including Nazi whitewashing, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) garnered…

Over the past 10 years, Europe has developed a serious cocaine problem. The drug, originating in the jungles of South America, is being transported, sold and consumed across the European continent in record amounts. The increasing demand from users – and the huge profits to be made in this booming marketplace – is reshaping the international drug-trafficking trade on both sides of the Atlantic and its widespread availability is leaving a trail of addiction, organised crime and human rights abuses in its wake. What is cocaine and how is it made? Cocaine is a highly addictive stimulant made from the leaves of the coca plant, native to Andean countries in South America, especially Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Usually manufactured in makeshift labs, cocaine is often cut with a variety of…

We may be living in a doughnut. It sounds like Homer Simpson’s fever dream, but that could be the shape of the entire universe – to be exact, a hyperdimensional doughnut that mathematicians call a 3-torus. This is just one of the many possibilities for the topology of the cosmos. “We’re trying to find the shape of space,” said Yashar Akrami of the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Madrid, a member of an international partnership called Compact (Collaboration for Observations, Models and Predictions of Anomalies and Cosmic Topology). In May, the Compact team explained that the question of the shape of the universe is wide open and surveyed the future prospects for pinning it down. “It’s high-risk, high-reward cosmology,” said team member Andrew Jaffe, a cosmologist at Imperial College London.…

DAVE IS AN ORDINARY OFFICE WORKER IN THE NORTH OF ENGLAND. He is about average height for a British man – 1.77 metres – and to catch a glimpse of him between 9am and 5pm, the only hint that his leisure time is spent shattering the natural limits of human growth might be his slightly ill-fitting XXL shirt, or the fact that he sometimes wears women’s trousers, to better accommodate the steep slope between his trim waist and bulging thighs. But in the videos and photos Dave posts online, to approving comments from other weightlifters (“huge progress ”), he is a total beast. His chest looks herculean, and the skin on his legs is pulled so tight that it has ceased to conceal the striated landscape of muscles underneath. Looking…

It’s January 2022 and my seven-year-old son is standing on his skateboard at the top of a concrete ramp that’s known in these parts as a “funbox”. Right now, it doesn’t seem so fun. I can feel the fear vibrating from him. I’m urging him to give it a go. Pleading, almost. The reason for my fervour? Only a few weeks earlier I’d stood, frozen, in that exact spot, before taking my own plunge. And I know how amazing he’ll feel afterwards. So, we take baby steps. First, we hold hands as he rolls down. Then we hold fingers. Then fingertips. Then, finally, he does it all on his own. As he makes it, the smile on his face lights up the entire skatepark. There’s a strange alchemy to skateboarding:…

For anyone with a love of early-2000s R&B and hip-hop, the line-up poster for this year’s Lovers & Friends festival in Las Vegas is a dreamland. Janet Jackson, Usher, Alicia Keys, Gwen Stefani and Lil Wayne are among the big-name acts at the top of the poster with Craig David, Brandy, Monica, Eve and Sean Paul lower down. It would be impossible to see all the big names at the one-day event. Fans commonly ask when they first hear about the festival whether it’s real or a convincingly Photoshopped poster. Lumidee, whose song Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh) is a staple of any R&B playlist, says she only believed last year’s Lovers & Friends was real when the deposit from the organisers landed in her bank account. “It’s…

What sauces can you make in the time it takes to boil noodles? “You can bash together a decent yakisoba sauce from soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, a little mirin and oyster sauce,” says noodle connoisseur Tim Anderson, author of Microwave Meals. “But it does beg the question: why not just buy yakisoba sauce? Most Japanese noodle sauces come ready-made and are as good as or better than anything you’d ever make at home.” Much the same goes for mentsuyu, a concentrated, dashi-based sauce that can be used as a dip for chilled noodles (soba, udon, somen) or diluted with hot water for a broth. “Make that from soy sauce, mirin, sugar and dashi, though the bottled versions are good, so you may as well buy one of them.” If the…

1 FRANCE Macron stuns nation by calling snap election President Emmanuel Macron announced snap legislative elections following a drubbing at the hands of the far-right National Rally (RN) in last Sunday’s European parliamentary elections. The RN won about 32% of the vote, more than double the 15% or so scored by Macron’s allies, according to exit polls. The Socialists on 14% came within a whisker of the Macron group. Macron’s Renaissance party currently has 169 deputies in the national assembly and the RN 88. The unexpected decision, which amounts to a roll of the dice on Macron’s political future, could hand major political power to the far right and neuter his presidency three years before it ends. If the far-right party wins an outright majority, the president would in effect lose…

Ursula von der Leyen this week began trying to craft a majority for a second term as European Commission president, after major gains for the far right that are likely to mean a less stable European parliament. Von der Leyen, a German Christian Democrat, was jubilant after her European People’s party (EPP) secured 186 of the 720 seats in the European elections, maintaining its 25-year hold as the largest group and leaving her a narrow path to a second term. But she has been presented with a wild card: the French president, Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call snap elections after his Renaissance party came a dismal second to Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally. Von der Leyen, the first woman to lead the commission, was the EPP’s lead candidate and…

A sign on the doorway said “For rent” and the house’s lights were out. But the assault team were convinced a group of armed gang members lurked inside. As darkness enveloped Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, six truckloads of military and police troopers screeched to a halt in front of the seemingly vacant home. Some pummelled its entrances with steel battering rams, crowbars and fists. Others scrambled up its outer wall. Their hunch was confirmed. One suspect leapt from a second-floor window and ran across a roof. As the house was stormed, a second man was wrestled to the ground inside a bedroom. A third suspect was bundled to the living-room floor as the house was searched for hidden guns and drugs. The raid took place in January, just hours after…

The market in Nuseirat was busy last Saturday morning. Among the crowds were Asia El-Nemer, looking for a pharmacy that still had stock of her sister’s medication, and Ansam Haroun, hoping to find new clothes to lift her daughters’ spirits on the forthcoming Eid al-Adha holiday. This part of central Gaza had emptied at the start of the year when Israeli troops first moved through, but filled up again from May as more than a million people fled north to escape another operation in Rafah. “The Nuseirat market is always crowded, but now more than usual because of the many displaced people,” said Haroun, 29. She was looking at outfits for the girls when the first Israeli airstrikes hit, and raced out of the door to go to them. Outside,…

Alessandra Sampaio fell to her knees and wept as she clambered on to the boat’s deck and came face to face with the remote riverside clearing where her husband’s life was extinguished and hers turned upside down. The sound of Sampaio’s lament mixed with birdsong and the voice of an Indigenous shaman echoed through the jungle where the British journalist Dom Phillips and his Brazilian comrade Bruno Pereira were shot dead in June 2022. “Dom and Bruno are here! Save them! Their spirits are lost here! We can’t see them but they are here!” the 85-year-old medicine man, César Marubo, cried out, imploring his people’s God and creator, Kana Voã, to guide their souls towards paradise. “Take them by the hand and lift them up into heaven!” he pleaded. On…

In a suburb of Catania on Sicily’s east coast, smoke billows from street stands selling grilled horse meat, and youngsters gather around kiosks selling the region’s unique handmade drink, seltz limonee sale (seltzer with lemon and sea salt). It is here that a family of charismatic ex-fishers have opened a seafood restaurant that bravely challenges long-held regional conventions. The Salamone family sell all the usual local specialities in their slick new business La Fish, such as Sicily’s famous swordfish, sardines and tuna. However, the feature of tonight’s tasting menu is a relative newcomer to these shores and to Sicilian tables: the Atlantic blue crab. Inside the restaurant, about half a dozen blue crabs are displayed on a large fish counter alongside an array of other seafood. These crabs, with their…

Every year, waves of people from around the world make their way to southern California to start a new life and find safe harbour. Along remote, isolated sections of the border between California and Mexico, many asylum seekers cross illegally, often fleeing violence or persecution in their home countries, and then surrender to border agents; apprehensions among those crossing in the San Diego region recently reached their highest level in decades. The San Ysidro border checkpoint, connecting Tijuana and San Diego, represents the busiest land crossing in the western hemisphere. Asylum seekers and tens of thousands of citizens or visa holders pass northbound through the official port of entry every day. Now, in the wake of Joe Biden’s executive order on immigration, which temporarily blocks the entry of most people…

Everything hangs on them but little changes. For weeks or months, elections dominate national life. Media reports and public conversations are monopolised by furious jostling and frantic speculation. All else – policymaking, problem-solving, reason itself – grinds to a halt. Unsurprisingly, when the frenzy is over, we discover we have solved almost none of our problems. An election is a device for maximising conflict and minimising democracy. Parties gain ground by sowing division and anger, often around trivial issues. At the same time, as the big players seek to appease commercial lobbies and the billionaire press, they converge disastrously on far more important issues, such as austerity, privatised public services, massive inequality of wealth and the unfolding genocide in Gaza. Many of those who seek election manipulate, distract and lie.…

✱ All solutions published next week Across 9 Don’t eat after this Tuesday – be perverse! (3-2,4) 10 Unfashionable party cap (5) 11 Grizzly, being initially bankrupt? (5) 12 Rescue tank one installed in exhibition room (9) 13 Start getting ill after toxic element (4,3) 14 High road at last gets uneven (7) 17 See 19 19/17 On director’s debut, Titanic offers possible star role (3,5) 20/6 Great month to get a brilliant body transformation (9) 21 It’s wrong to bind hands, causing distress (7) 22/8 Classic film – when Jack is dropped (1,4,2,4) 24 Shock absorber from wagon that is circling trail (9) 26 Latin ‘h’ (not ‘i’) equals ‘lock’ (5) 28/27 Book shortage predicament: there’s no escaping it (5,4) 29 Key European city: it’s about to get US…

ELECTION 2024 PM vows to keep fighting despite dismal poll showing A defiant Rishi Sunak vowed to fight on until the last day of the election campaign after a torrid week in which the prime minister was criticised for missing part of the D-day commemorations. On Monday, the prime minister said he could still win back voters in the 4 July election and he did not accept that the result was a foregone conclusion. Sunak said he was still fighting despite polls showing the Conservatives are 20 points behind Labour. “There’s lots of people who want to write me off … I’m not going to stop going. I’m not going to stop fighting for the future of our country. I believe in what we are doing.” Both the prime minister…

Maddalena Chiarenza never knows what state the children will be in when they arrive at her door. She has seen black eyes, missing teeth, a broken jaw. “They suffer such regular violence,” said Chiarenza, whose Brussels-based NGO, SOS Jeune, cares for unaccompanied Moroccan and Algerian children. A short walk from the NGO’s office near the Eurostar train terminal, groups of north African children are a common sight. Some walk the streets like zombies, after being fed sedatives. Some children the NGO has cared for have since died; through sickness, murder or suicide; Chiarenza says at least five in the past three years. Another 23 children it has had contact with are in prison, some on drug offences. On the surface, the plight of these unaccompanied child migrants, and hundreds of…

It was widely described as the week India’s beleaguered democracy was pulled back from the brink. As the election results rolled in last Tuesday, all predictions and polls were defied as Narendra Modi lost his outright majority for the first time in a decade, while the opposition re-emerged as a legitimate political force. Last Sunday Modi was sworn in as prime minister but many believe his power and mandate are diminished. For one opposition politician in particular, the humbling of the prime minister was a moment to savour. Late last year, Mahua Moitra, one of the most outspoken critics of Modi and his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), was expelled from parliament and kicked out of her home after what she described as a “political witch-hunt”. The murky circumstances of Moitra’s…

Partly in preparation for the worst, but also as a way of finding hope for the longer term, a book that has previously attracted little attention in the UK has suddenly become popular bedtime reading among British Conservative politicians. Full Circle: Death and Resurrection in Canadian Conservative Politics by Bob Plamondon charts the fortunes of Canada’s centre-right Progressive Conservative party at the 1993 general election, when it crashed from holding a Commons majority to losing all but two seats. Many dark years in the wilderness followed, before a merger and name change allowed it to claw itself back and eventually regain power in 2006, in one of the more remarkable political renaissances of recent times. Even before Rishi Sunak’s disastrous blunder last Thursday, when he flew home early from the…

With one last heave, Mayumi Okada launches a sopping-wet rope into the Pacific Ocean. As a fresh afternoon wind forms frothy crests on the waves, her husband, Kuniaki, leaves his cabin, peers over the edge of their boat and confirms the batch of oyster “spat” larvae is in position, ready to mature into the plump, highly prized bivalves associated with this region of north-east Japan. The couple abandoned regular careers three years ago to build a new life in Tomari, a village of 2,200 people, 500km north of Tokyo. Kuniaki, 54, had always dreamed of earning a living going out to sea. “He had always wanted to be a fisherman, so we looked at a lot of places in the region, and Ōfunato was the most welcoming,” Mayumi, 49, said.…

Twenty-two British D-day veterans, the youngest nearly 100, crossed the Channel last Tuesday to mark the 80th anniversary of the landings in Normandy, representing a thinning thread to the heroics of two or three generations ago when about 150,000 allied soldiers began a seaborne invasion of western Europe that helped end the second world war. Ron Hayward, a tank trooper who lost his legs fighting in France three weeks after D-day, told crowds assembled in Portsmouth last Wednesday why he and other soldiers were there: “I represent the men and women who put their lives on hold to go and fight for democracy and this country. I am here to honour their memory and their legacy, and to ensure that their story is never forgotten.” There will not be many…

A Europe that just celebrated on the beaches of Normandy the 80-year-old D-day beginning of its liberation from war, nationalism and fascism now again faces fascism, nationalism and war. Please don’t be reassured by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s complacent statement that “the centre held” on what we might call E-day – 9 June 2024, when the results of 27 different national elections to the European parliament were announced. That’s true in the aggregate distribution of seats between the main party groups in the European parliament, with her own centre-right European People’s party group coming out on top. But the EU is run by national governments even more than by its directly elected parliament, and E-Day produced hard-right successes in core member states that range from the significant…

Even before he co-founded Blondie – who swiftly transcended their roots in the New York punk scene to become one of the biggest bands in the world, selling around 40m records in the process – Chris Stein had lived quite a life. His father died of a stroke in Stein’s first year of high school: thereafter, as his bandmate and former partner Debbie Harry notes in Under a Rock’s introduction, his adolescence was spent “on a very long leash” in late 60s New York. By 14, he had gravitated to the bohemia of the West Village and MacDougal Street. He became a hippy, acquired a set of friends with names like Mortician George and Action, formed a band who supported the Velvet Underground, holidayed in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury and took…

It’s been a week of clear skies and luminous evenings – a stretch of calm, still weather that has been felt as a physical release, even an act of mercy, after a seemingly unending winter. Now the days have stretched and warped into their long summer shape, the seabirds have been returning to the cliffs, and the uplands are gilded by a low sun long after I head to my bed. As the days have been lengthening, our short-eared owls have been increasingly active. This is the time of year when they must hustle to feed their young; here, their diet largely consists of Orkney voles, a plump, hamsterish subtype endemic to the archipelago. I often see these owls out hunting while driving, cruising the fencelines, or moon-faced and watchful…

Across 1 Salacious (4) 3 Intimidate (5,3) 8 List of options (4) 9 Cheap (3-5) 11 Extremely close (of a race) (3,3,4) 14 Expel (6) 15 Fascinate (6) 17 Miner’s daughter in a US folk ballad (10) 20 Farewell (2,6) 21 Prejudice (4) 22 Surreptitious (8) 23 Overly studious student (4) Down 1 Fruit-based drink (8) 2 Trachea (8) 4 Dekko – if thus (anag) (6) 5 Where Barry Manilow’s Lola worked (10) 6 Roman poet (4) 7 Archaic object pronoun (4) 10 Suitable for beginners (5-5) 12 Dwelling (8) 13 Preoccupied (8) 16 Mischievous (6) 18 Its capital is Vientiane (4) 19 Gratis (4) Solution No 16,867…