Innehållsförteckning för 5 July 2024 från Guardian Weekly

The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol211 | Issue№ 1 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…

What was the worst moment? Perhaps when one especially rambling sentence of Joe Biden’s ended in a mumbled, confused declaration that “We finally beat Medicare”, as if he were the enemy of the very public service Democrats cherish and defend. Maybe it was when the president was not talking, but the camera showed him staring vacantly into space? Or was it when he was talking, and out came a reedy whisper of a voice, one that could not command the viewer’s attention, even when the words themselves made sense? For anyone who cares about the future of the United States and therefore the future of the world, it was agonising to watch. You found yourself glancing ever more frequently at the clock, desperate for it to end, if only on…

For months, it was rumoured that Hungary planned to use a reworked version of Donald Trump’s slogan for its upcoming EU presidency: Make Europe Great Again. That idea “sounded so lame and ridiculous that we refrained from reporting it”, Szabolcs Panyi, one of Hungary’s leading investigative journalists, wrote on X last month. “We were wrong.” On Monday, under that Trumpian banner, Hungary took on the six-month rotating presidency of the EU council of ministers. As well as a spell in the diplomatic limelight, Viktor Orbán’s government will be setting the EU agenda for the rest of the year. EU diplomats are downbeat, but resigned to Hungary’s six months in charge. Since Orbán returned to power in 2010, going on to win four consecutive terms, democratic values, the rule of law…

Blood pact Young Kenyans queue to donate blood in Nairobi in memory of at least 23 people killed during protests last week against a contentious tax bill, amid scenes that shocked the nation. The country’s youthdriven, leaderless protest movement found itself at a crossroads, even as it mourned those killed in the violence, following President William Ruto’s surprise decision to abandon planned tax rises. The movement that brought thousands of people on to the streets in recent weeks – against the backdrop of a cost of living crisis that has left many young people feeling hopeless – has little precedence in Kenya where protests are traditionally elite-led. Frustrations have been simmering for years in a country where economic growth has failed to keep up with population growth. Elected in 2022…

Zuka Berdzenishvili’s face was a canvas of rainbow colours, his piercing blue eyes partly bloodstained above a pronounced purple bruise. Berdzenishvili, a prominent activist and co-founder of the Georgian pro-democracy movement Shame, was ambushed and beaten outside his house last month by a group of unknown assailants. “I got lucky. I had just arrived home on my scooter and was still wearing a helmet when they started beating me. Without it, my brain would have turned to soup,’ he said, speaking outside the Georgian parliament in central Tbilisi, where a month earlier the ruling Georgian Dream party passed a controversial “foreign agents” law that brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets in protest. The law has also derailed Georgia’s long-held EU aspirations in favour of closer ties with…

Last month, the governor of Zamfara, one of Nigeria’s poorest states, held a ceremony to mark the start of construction on an international airport in the state capital Gusau. “The economic benefits and multiplier effects … are quite enormous,” Dauda Lawal said. “The airport will have a tremendous impact on the ease of doing business and other social interactions [here].” Barely a month before, Alex Otti, the governor of Abia state, had thanked federal officials for approving an airstrip project and said he would be lobbying for an upgrade to a full airport. “A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step,” Otti said. Airports have been springing up around the country in recent years; for the most part absent are any concerns about the environmental impact of air…

As Julian Assange enjoyed his first weekend of freedom in years, there appeared to be no question in the mind of his wife, Stella, about what the family’s priorities were. The WikiLeaks co-founder would need time to recover, she told reporters after they were reunited in his native Australia, after a deal with US authorities that allowed him to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified defence documents. What comes after that is an intriguing question for anyone familiar with how the site he founded in 2006 utterly changed the nature of whistleblowing. Will it return to its original mission? While it remains online – and would be whistleblowers can theoretically use it to pass on secrets – the organisation around it has…

If the polls were right, the UK is about to return to normal politics. After 14 years of Tory corruption and misrule, a Labour government would put this country back on track. Justice and decency will resume, public services will be rebuilt, our global standing will be restored, we will revert to a familiar state. Or so the story goes. What is the “normal” envisaged by pundits and politicians of the left and centre? It is the most anomalous politics in the history of the world. Consciously or otherwise, they hark back to a remarkable period, roughly 1945 to 1975, in which, in certain rich nations, wealth and power were distributed, almost everyone could aspire to decent housing, wages and conditions, public services were ambitious and well-funded and a robust…

Friday morning at Glastonbury underlines that the old cliche about the festival having something for everybody is only a cliche because it’s true. Your options range from the dependable – a sharp-suited Squeeze on the Pyramid stage, offering up one of the late 70s’ most beloved run of hits – to a largely unknown quantity. Now almost 80, Asha Puthli last performed in Britain in 1974: her oeuvre takes in everything from collaborations with Ornette Coleman to Bollywood soundtracks to new wave. The Pyramid stage plays host to the first-ever Glastonbury appearance by a K-pop band, the almost unreasonably pretty Seventeen. The crowd they draw isn’t vast but some of it is very vociferous indeed. At the other extreme, LCD Soundsystem offer a kinetic, party-starting burst of hits – All…

What does your reminiscence bump look like? If this sounds like a blow to the head with a touch of amnesia, it isn’t – but it might be just as painful. No, as Lucy Foulkes explains in her eye-opening guide to the psychology of adolescence, it’s the period of life during which people report the greatest number of important autobiographical memories. For most of us, it starts at about 10 and peaks at 20, taking in a plethora of firsts: first kiss, first love, first time drinking alcohol or taking drugs, first time away from home. Not to mention exams, bullying, breakups and bereavement. Thinking about it, maybe a concussion would be preferable. But then, as Foulkes shows, it’s these enduringly vivid years that define the adults we become. Foulkes,…

1 UNITED STATES Trump applauds ‘big win’ on presidential immunity Republicans applauded the supreme court’s decision to grant Donald Trump immunity for official acts undertaken as president, as Democratic leaders expressed outrage over a ruling that legal experts warn could undermine the foundations of US democracy. The court’s six conservative justices ruled that presidents have “absolute immunity” for official acts but no immunity from unofficial acts. The distinction could hamper the federal case against Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and makes it even less likely that the case will go to trial before election day in November. Trump celebrated a “big win for our constitution and democracy”. Democrats condemned the decision as a disgrace, describing it as an attack on the separation of…

A mid a howling chorus of derision over Joe Biden’s substandard debate performance against Donald Trump last week, one voice seemed to resonate more powerfully than others. At 6.15pm last Friday – roughly 19 hours after the two presidential candidates left the stage in Atlanta the previous evening – the verdict of the New York Times’s editorial board dropped online to the newspaper’s subscribers. The judgment was devastating. The US president, the board force-fully argued, had presented such an alarming spectacle of aged frailty that the best thing he could now do for the country he had served for more than half a century was to withdraw from the race and allow his Democratic party to choose another candidate. The newspaper long venerated as “the old Grey Lady” of American…

When Emmanuel Macron strolled through the seaside resort of Le Touquet last Sunday afternoon, near his holiday home, dressed in a leather jacket with his collar up and aviator shades, smiling and asking passersby how they were doing, he seemed a world away from the fact that his gamble of a snap election was about to dramatically backfire. Macron had said he needed “clarity” almost a month ago, when he shocked even his own government ministers by calling a high-risk sudden parliament election after his centrists were trounced by the far-right National Rally (RN) in the European parliament vote. By Monday lunchtime, when the French president gathered his advisers and ministers at the Elysée for crisis talks, he did have some form of clarity, but not the type he had…

Israel’s offensive in Gaza has become the deadliest conflict for journalists in recent history, but its military has repeatedly said it is not targeting the media. However, an investigation by the Guardian suggests that some in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) appear to have viewed journalists working in Gaza for outlets controlled by or affiliated with Hamas to be legitimate military targets. The investigation is part of the Gaza project, a collaboration led by the Paris-based non-profit Forbidden Stories, which has analysed the deaths of journalists in Gaza since Israel began its offensive. The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) records at least 103 Palestinian journalists and media workers killed in the war in Gaza. Other lists suggest the number is higher. Since foreign media are blocked by Israel from…

On 24 November 1974, the US anthropologist Donald Johanson was scrabbling through a ravine at Hadar in the Afar region of Ethiopia with his research student, Tom Gray. The pair were looking for fossilised animal bones in the surrounding silt and ash when Johanson spotted a tiny fragment of arm bone – and realised it belonged to a human-like creature. “We looked up the slope,” Johanson later recalled. “There, incredibly, lay a multitude of bone fragments – a nearly complete lower jaw, a thighbone, ribs, vertebrae, and more! Tom and I yelled, hugged each other, and danced, mad as any Englishman in the midday sun!” Johanson and Gray drove back to their camp in jubilation. Beer was cooled in the Awash River and barbecued goat was served to celebrate their…

Single people are often seen as living half a life. We’re just incomplete puzzles, desperately searching for the missing piece to make us whole. But what if the risk is not what we’ll miss out on if we don’t centre our lives around a romantic partner, but what we’ll miss out on if we do? For millions of people, being single is the key to living their best life. They are what Dr Bella DePaulo calls the “single at heart”, and when I first heard that term, I knew she was talking about me. After poring over survey data from more than 20,000 people across 100 countries, DePaulo found that – contrary to cultural assumptions that the unpartnered will die miserable and alone, surrounded by cats – those who embrace…

The front row of a comedy club is a scary place to be. Those courageous enough to brave that spot do so knowing that, at any moment, a microphone could be thrust into their face by a comedian. Such unscripted back-and-forths – or “crowd work” – has always been a part of standup, often seen to separate the good writers or performers from those with truly funny bones. It’s these moments, when tension fizzes and audience members squirm, that the crowd regale to their friends with the phrase: “You had to be there.” But thanks to the internet, you don’t have to be in the room to see crowd work. TikTok and Instagram are flooded with footage of standup comics showing off their off-the-cuff interactions with audience members. These clips…

The cricket field has been freshly mown and marked, but there are no cricketers out there now – just birds, turning over the cuttings in search of breakfast. Starlings at midwicket, crows at slip. A magpie on the long-leg boundary. A song thrush works for a worm on the cut strip. Across the lane from the cricket field there’s a community nature reserve, Hirst Wood, and a shallow pond fringed with short reeds. The mood here is sullen. Adolescent tadpoles, each a heavy-bodied Cooper Black comma, sulk on the silt bed. The pond skaters move stiffly among the lily pads. A newt treads water in a lily shadow – and then there’s a sudden surge of motion, and a freshwater leech comes swimming across a shaft of daylight. It’s khaki…

Across 1 Fop – deer – Nebraska note? (4) 3 Very great – as God (8) 8 Roman poet (4) 9 White wine and soda (8) 11 Gumshoe (7,3) 14 Padded footstool (6) 15 Top (6) 17 Push off – (as might string?) (3,7) 20 Southern Rockies state (8) 21 ‘Doing’ word (4) 22 Boffin (8) 23 Dormant (4) Down 1 Deliverer of poisoned dart? (8) 2 Review (8) 4 Pedals (anag.) (6) 5 That really is true! (1,3,3,3) 6 State of confusion or blurriness (4) 7 Shaggy dog story – (woollen) thread (4) 10 Breakfast maker? (6,4) 12 Join metal sheets using heat and pressure (4-4) 13 Persuasive (8) 16 Snowmobile (6) 18 Strike-breaker (derog.) (4) 19 Leaf (anag.) (4) Solution No 16,885…

ELECTION 2024 Starmer vows ‘deeds, not words’ ahead of vote Keir Starmer said a new Labour government would have to stave off a rise of the populist right by urgently restoring faith in British politics through “deeds, not words” and making a material difference to people’s lives. As the election campaign entered its final days this week ahead of the 4 July vote – after the Weekly went to press – the Labour leader said that while “hope has been kicked out” of people, his plans for economic growth across the country, the NHS and the transition to renewables could help bring it back. He vowed to bring an end to “divisive and toxic” culture wars if he made it to No 10 and hold his ministers to high standards.…

Joe Biden won the Democratic primaries earlier this year but does not officially become the party’s candidate for president until endorsed at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which takes place from 19-22 August. There is no formal mechanism to replace him as the presumptive nominee; such a move would be the first time a US political party has attempted to do so in modern times. The only option would be for Biden to agree to step aside and allow the delegates he won in the primaries – who vote to nominate a candidate at the Chicago convention – to choose someone else. There is no legal requirement for delegates to vote for the person who won in the primaries, but they are asked to vote in a way…

France’s left and centrist parties are scrambling to cobble together a united front. Rival parties were engaged in frantic bargaining and tactical voting plans on Monday in an attempt to stop the rise of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally’s (RN). In the past, the traditional right and leftwing parties have struck agreements to stand down candidates from the runoffs to avoid splitting the vote against the RN. But the tactical voting strategy known as the “republican front” is less certain than ever. Leaders of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance and the New Popular Front alliance (NFP) indicated they would withdraw their own candidates in districts where another candidate was better placed to beat the RN. In a written statement, Macron called on voters to rally behind candidates who are “clearly…

There have been times in the past few weeks, watching Rishi Sunak, with his hands flailing for the steering wheel, when just for a second or two the ghosts of the Conservative party’s last 14 years have seemed to play across his features, and we all have been forced to endure the unspooling catastrophe once again: the Truss budget and Partygate and proroguing parliament and Theresa May croaking her way to her P45 and No Deal is Better than a Bad Deal and Eat out to Help Out and, God help us, Get Brexit Done. It all began with David Cameron on a conference stage in 2009 smoothly articulating his ideas for “compassionate Conservatism”, making the case for a Big Society. Rewatching that speech now is a lesson in political…

Just a stone’s throw from North Korea, farmer Park Se-un tends to his crops under the watchful eye of the South Korean military. In the distance, past bushes and fields strewn with landmines, he can see North Korean soldiers on patrol. Park’s village of Daeseong-dong is the only inhabited area in the south of Korea’s demilitarised zone (DMZ), at one point just 365 metres from North Korea. Born and raised inside this zone, Park is used to political tensions. Described as “the scariest place on Earth” by Bill Clinton when he visited as president in 1993, the DMZ has served as a buffer between the two Koreas since their three-year conflict ended in 1953 with an armistice but not a peace treaty – meaning that the neighbours are still technically…

The US supreme court’s decision that Donald Trump has some immunity from criminal prosecution marked a win for the ex-president. While Trump is not off the hook in his federal election subversion case, he is even less likely to face trial in these proceedings before the election. The justices’ 6-3 decision, which fell squarely along ideological lines, will wind up delaying this trial, playing into Trump’s legal strategy of near-perpetual postponements. This decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, guts one of the allegations and challenges the legal viability of the others, raising the stakes still more. The court remanded the case back to the presiding US district judge Tanya Chutkan to apply a three-part test to decide which actions were protected – but Roberts preemptively made clear that some…

IT’S SUMMER 2025. A large athletics stadium somewhere in Europe buzzes with crowds of people. Down on the track, eight men line up for the 100m final. Eight men pumped full of performance-enhancing drugs. Up in the control room, director Ridley Scott is asking for closeups on their faces. One of these men is about to obliterate Usain Bolt’s 100m world record, which has stood for more than 15 years. Perhaps they all are. It’s certainly possible: just the day before, a host of men ran the marathon in under two hours. The world record for the mile, which has stood for more than a quarter of a century, has just been beaten by a guy with bionic implants in his legs. Out in the centre field, a javelin thrower…

The two most consequential Australians in history are surely Rupert Murdoch and Julian Assange. Unsurprisingly, they have both have gained their notoriety through journalism and the media. More surprising – but significant – is the fact both Murdoch and Assange could be described as libertarians. Assange emerged from the free software, cypherpunk movement of the 1990s. When he founded WikiLeaks, he argued it would pressure “unaccountable and secretive institutions … to act ethically”. He embraced the idea the state – at least the surveillance state – could not survive mass-scale “principled leaking”. He was an anarchist. Murdoch, on the other hand, began as a “zealous Laborite” according to his father, Keith. He soon dropped his socialist ideas but remained antiestablishment. In 1999, he told journalist William Shawcross that he identified…

I love your recipes, but I often can’t get the likes of membrillo, creme fraiche, preserved lemon, pomegranate molasses and harissa. What alternatives would you suggest? Joyce, St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada Wherever possible, you want to stay within the same flavour profile and texture, so if, for example, a recipe calls for creme fraiche, particularly as an accompaniment to a dish, soured cream or thick Greek yoghurt make fine substitutes. If it’s for baking, however, I’d use soured cream, because it has a similar tanginess to creme fraiche. Pomegranate molasses-wise, date molasses would work as a replacement, though you might want to add a little lemon juice to mimic the sweet-sour note of pomegranate molasses; honey or maple syrup mixed with lemon juice will also provide the requisite…

✱ All solutions published next week Across 7 HS2, missing both ends, has party members instigating plots (7) 8 Company will sound decisive (7) 9 Transport protest (4) 10 Largely in order? Enlarge (2,7) 12 Transport to go too fast, not quietly: take time instead (5) 13 Shockingly, bold ULEZ militants say they’ll do this to enforcement cameras (8) 15 Broken transport systems’ core (4) 16 Surface of cycle path … (5) 17 … where vehicle hits edge of pothole: complain! (4) 18 Boatman abandons rail service: outside, small change, with no parking for transport (8) 20 Intelligent to go back to public transport (5) 21 Writer not exactly sincere about very right-wing origin (9) 22 Return transport (4) 24 Transport charge much involved in type of road rage (7)…