Innehållsförteckning för 9 August 2024 från Guardian Weekly

The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol211 | Issue№ 6 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…

Bebe, Elsie and Alice were just six, seven and nine. The three little girls’ dance class became the nightmare beyond any parent’s most fearful imagining. Yet we were not allowed to focus on mourning the victims, as those who gathered at Southport’s large, peaceful vigil last Tuesday sought to do. Instead, the incomprehensible act of slaughter that claimed three young lives has triggered senseless reactions. First, riots and disorder targeted at a mosque in Southport. And, last weekend, there was a concerted effort to spread ugly prejudices against migrants, Muslims and minorities around Britain. “If this is true, then all hell is going to break loose” was how false rumours about the perpetrator were introduced by one social media account that helped to send toxic and inflammatory misinformation viral: a…

I have dreamed for almost 500 days of writing this piece. Last Thursday, after 16 months in jail, my close friend Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was freed, along with 15 other American, German and Russian prisoners, in a historic and complex prisoner exchange with Moscow, which received eight prisoners, including spies, arms smugglers and a killer in return. We first began to quietly whisper that Evan, who was sentenced to 16 years in a Russian jail on bogus espionage charges, might soon be freed when, on 29 July, Russian political prisoners began disappearing from jails, one by one. This sparked hope that they were being moved to a prison in Moscow, possibly in preparation for a large-scale prisoner swap with the west. But we had…

As leaders across Europe fume over Viktor Orbán’s unsanctioned foreign policy adventures, the far-right Hungarian leader has intensified his campaign against independent voices at home, increasing pressure on media outlets and civil society groups that do not toe the government line. The prime minister’s meetings in recent weeks with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, China’s leader Xi Jinping and the US presidential candidate Donald Trump have stoked controversy in diplomatic circles, at a time when Hungary is formally holding the Council of the European Union’s rotating presidency. Getting far less attention abroad, however, has been a flurry of activity inside Hungary targeting independent journalism and watchdog groups. At the centre is the country’s controversial new sovereignty protection office. Led by a figure with close links to the ruling Fidesz party…

In the back yard of the federal police headquarters in Roraima, the northernmost state of Brazil, giant sacks lie strewn and over-flowing with a jet-black, gravel-like mineral: cassiterite. Although less high-profile than other items seized during a crack-down on illegal mining in this Amazon state – including a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter painted in the colours of the Brazilian flag – cassiterite has become so sought-after that it is nick-named “black gold”. Cassiterite is the chief ore of tin, a less heralded but critical mineral for the energy transition. It is used in coatings for solar panels, lithium-ion batteries and solder for electronics. According to the International Energy Agency, the demand for critical energy minerals is due to almost triple by 2030. In a world market heated by demand from multinational…

When was the last time you called someone on their landline? Probably not recently according to new data that shows that, for the first time ever, most households in the UK no longer have a home phone. The number of households with landlines dipped below half to 47% this year, according to Ofcom’s annual technology tracker. Four-fifths of the 65-plus age group still use landlines. But only 16% of under-25s own one. This is an inevitability, and maybe not such a terrible one. But anyone who remembers life before both mobiles and the internet knows that we have lost something strangely precious. At its most basic, the death of the landline is about the assertion of the control of the individual and about our tyrannical, casual expectation of full personalisation…

Poet Ralf Webb begins his compact study of same-sex desire in four 20th-century American authors with Tennessee Williams, who said he couldn’t write a play without a character he lusted after. In A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), he wrote one everyone else fell for, too, in the shape of antihero Stanley Kowalski – for the writer Gore Vidal, a sharp turn from the traditional dashing male lead to a “sexed” one, at least as embodied by a capsleeved Marlon Brando. A month after its first performance, Alfred Kinsey published Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male: 800 pages of incendiary testimony to the commonplace nature of gay desire at a time when the US army stigmatised it as a perversion. A growing contemporary interest in Freud, together with panic about communist…

As a priest it’s easy to overdose on flat screens, emails and the bureaucracy of parish work. I have a good excuse to get outside though, as it is pilgrimage season. Furthermore, this part of Herefordshire – once the ancient kingdom of Ergyng – was one of the crucibles of Celtic Christianity. A common part of pilgrimage season, for me, is to sleep outdoors for the night with just a sleeping bag. And so, late that evening, I walk out across the five parishes I work in across the Golden Valley – Vowchurch, Turnastone, Peterchurch, Tyberton and, ultimately, Madley, where St Dyfrig was born. The sun has long gone down. I come across a hedgehog in the tall meadow grass. I take this as a good, if prickly, omen, since…

1 US/RUSSIA Questions raised about prisoners left out of swap As many as 20 US citizens were left out of last week’s complex, multi-country prisoner swap with western American allies and Russia, leading those excluded from the deal and their families to express deep disappointment. Among those left behind are Marc Fogel (below) a US high school teacher from Pennsylvania convicted of smuggling 17 grams of marijuana and sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2022. Fogel’s name had been included in prisoner swap discussions but his family did not know if he was included by US state department officials. A call from Fogel himself informed them he was not a part of the deal. Being excluded, he told his family, was “soul crushing”, according to the Wall Street Journal. Pennsylvania…

If Iran’s newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, was hoping for a honeymoon period after his inauguration late last month, he must be sadly disappointed. Less than 12 hours after he was sworn in, an explosion, reportedly caused by a remotely controlled bomb, shook an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) compound in central Tehran. The target: Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, an honoured guest at the inauguration, and one of the Middle East’s most wanted. The bomb killed Haniyeh instantly. Honeymoon over. Pezeshkian was the surprise winner of last month’s presidential election. Edging out a conservative hardliner favoured by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, he promised to repair tattered ties with the US and Europe. Many hoped his victory would herald a more open, more progressive era and defuse social…

After 15 years in power, Bangladesh’s prime minister has suddenly resigned and fled the country. Sheikh Hasina’s departure came after weeks of student-led protests were met with deadly force, and has been greeted with jubilation on the streets of the capital, Dhaka. What led to this? Students protested for fairer access to government jobs and were met with violence, including the killing of nearly 300 people. The students had originally demanded the removal of a quota system that reserved 30% of government jobs for the families of people who fought for independence from Pakistan in 1971. But the government’s harsh response to the protests meant they continued even after the supreme court largely met their demands on quotas two weeks ago. The internet was entirely cut off during the worst…

It is 9am in a suburb of Kabul when two women in powder-pink burqas ring the doorbell of a drab building. The exterior is a silent reminder of the gloomy atmosphere that prevails in the capital. “Can you let us in?” they whisper. A woman called Sonia* opens the door. Before the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, this 56-year-old hairstylist and beauty salon owner never imagined that one day she would have to work in secret. After letting her clients in, Sonia unpacks her beauty paraphernalia: makeup palettes, hairdryers, flat irons, waxes, mascara, nail polish, false nails, kohl and brushes. Running the secret salon could cost her a fine, several months in prison or worse. But Sonia cannot afford to let fear overwhelm her. If she does not concentrate,…

Of all the lessons Kamala Harris’s campaign will have learned from Hillary Clinton’s botched run for president eight years ago, among the most important is that it’s better to talk about jobs than guns in the three rust belt states that hold the key to the White House. The peculiarities of the electoral college will almost certainly see November’s presidential election decided by voters in just seven states. Four – Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia – lie in the southern sun belt. But it is the three to the north – the rust belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – that Democratic strategists are focused on. They are, in many ways, the real battleground within the battleground. Shortly before Joe Biden dropped out the presidential race last month,…

REMOVING RUBBISH BAGS FROM THE office in Finsbury Circus – a towering ring of neoclassical buildings that sits at the heart of London’s financial district – formed a key part of Gabriela Rodriguez’s daily duties. So did wiping surfaces, scrubbing dishes in the kitchen, restocking basic supplies and all the other quietly essential activities that enable a busy workplace to function. “I’m proud of my job … and I take it very seriously,” she says. Which is why, when the call from her manager flashed up unexpectedly on her mobile last November, nothing about it seemed to make any sense. “He ordered me to come back inside and hand over my security pass immediately,” she says. Rodriguez was at a loss, until the words “theft of property” were mentioned –…

Huw Edwards was a man whose on-screen actions were so keenly watched that when he changed his tie, Britain held its breath, waiting for his trusted voice to announce Queen Elizabeth’s death. Less than two years later, the former BBC news presenter has admitted to a secret life off camera in which he accessed the most horrific, indecent images of children. The fallout from his crimes affects not just Edwards and his family but the abused children and young people who are his real victims. It also raises questions for the BBC, threatening to further erode trust and respect in a national broadcaster, like a sudden landslide beneath an endangered coastline. Much attention has so far focused on what the corporation knew and when, and why it allowed Edwards to…

Jackson Boxer, chef/patron of Brunswick House and Henri, both in London, takes a minimalist approach to snacks. “There are so many simple, delicious things that you don’t have to do anything to,” he says. “Good potato chips fried in olive oil are unimpeachable; good anchovies are unimpeachable; good olives are unimpeachable; shavings of good cheese – unimpeachable.” Melissa Hemsley, author of Real Healthy, couldn’t agree more, although she goes one step further by threading anchovies, olives and cubes of manchego on to cocktail sticks: “Yum – and so easy.” The most important part of any TV snack game, though, is to get ahead. Billy Stock, head chef at Sète in Margate, would slow-roast a duck: “Whack that on the table with spring onions, cucumber, hoisin or plum sauce, and Chinese-style…

✱ All solutions published next week Across 7 German golfer breaks clubs with mistakes (8) 9 Draw and shuffle 10 diamonds (6) 10 Dance show (4) 11 Station filling with trains initially working (10) 12 European 9 stealing £1,000 motor (6) 14 Shaking hands, I will make a pile (8) 15 Wears small garments over and over, right (6) 17 It’s laid-back to have worked inside farm (6) 20 Unfortunately, Amy lands a seducer of women (5,3) 22 Mr Scrooge welcomes ghost at the end (6) 23 Relative first takes day in Paris, no good staying (10) 24 Labour MP is a fighter (4) 25 ‘100 + 1 + 100 + 0? Not unknown’ – Roman senator (6) 26 English government invades space station, worried to move abroad (8) Down…

UK NEWS ‘Prison place waiting’ for rioters, says minister Individuals causing disorder and rioting will have a “prison place waiting for them” the justice minister said, as far-right violence continued in England and Northern Ireland early this week. Police officers were attacked and injured in Plymouth, Belfast and Darlington on Monday, with several hundred arrests made since the Southport stabbings on 29 July, after which the riots began. “We will make sure that anyone that is given a custodial sentence as a result of the riots and disorder, there will be a prison place waiting for them,” the justice minister, Heidi Alexander, told the BBC. In response to the disorder, the government had introduced 567 additional prison places that were due to come forward at the end of the month,…

Riots spread across numerous cities and towns in England, and in Belfast in Northern Ireland, after the murder of three young girls in Southport in north-west England last Monday. Hundreds of people have been arrested since anti-immigrant and far-right unrest erupted in the worst outbreak of civil disorder in Britain for 13 years. What sparked the violence? Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine, were killed in a multiple stabbing at a dance class in Southport on 29 July. Eight other children sustained knife wounds with five left in a critical condition. Two adults were also critically hurt. Axel Rudakubana, 17, who was born in Cardiff and had been living in Banks, a Lancashire village near Southport, has been charged with three counts of murder…

Gold rush A multiple exposure view of the Olympic men’s 100m final, which was won by Noah Lyles of the United States (pictured in lane 7) in a personal best time of 9.79sec, just five-thousandths of a second ahead of Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson (lane 4), at the Stade de France in Paris. Getty Images photographer Hector Vivas has created a series of astonishing images called Layers of the Games, which aim to show in one image the multiple moments that happen in a game or a day of competition in Paris, as viewed from a fixed camera position.…

‘Once upon a time this river was filled with fish; now, nothing swims in it any more,” said Wat Chak Daeng temple’s abbot, Phra Mahapranom Dhammalangkaro, as he looked out over Bangkok’s Chao Praya River. As a novice monk in the 1980s, he remembers seeing children playing in the river and people scooping up handfuls of water to drink. But when he became abbot of Wat Chak Daeng more than 25 years later, those bucolic images were a thing of the past. Instead, when he arrived at the 240-year-old temple, he was saddened by the sight of the dirty river and the rubbish-strewn grounds around it. Dhammalangkaro knew that if nothing was done, the situation would only get worse. He built a recycling centre in the temple grounds, which evolved…

Donald Trump’s message to US voters has been consistent as he seeks to win a second term in the White House: the economy under Joe Biden has been a disaster. Until recently the hard data has not supported Trump’s argument. The US has been comfortably the fastest-growing of the G7 leading industrial nations since the Covid pandemic. Unemployment has been low by historic standards. America’s self-sufficiency in energy meant it suffered a less severe inflation shock than Europe after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet the former US president now has some evidence to back up his case. The latest set of US jobs figures, released last week, showed the labour market cooling fast. Payroll growth in July slowed to 114,000 – about half the average of 215,000 in the previous…

Weird? As contemporary insults go, it feels fairly survivable. In fact, when compared with boomer, karen, gammon and hag – key concepts in much civic discourse – weird is practically, in ascribing individuality to the targeted person, a compliment. But vagueness about the exact offensiveness of weird is probably one reason this demi-slur is currently considered, by senior Democrats and a host of US commentators, to be the perfect, supremely effective response to the much cruder attacks on Kamala Harris now emanating from Donald Trump and his deputy. For years, Trump’s opponents considered restraint the dignified response to his ugliest invective. Today, when Trump/JD Vance go low, experimenting with the impact of, for instance, “she’s a bum”, “Crazy Kamala”, it is Democratic strategy smoothly to respond with, “just plain weird”,…

Godot keeps on coming. A play that on its London debut in 1955 was greeted with bafflement and derision (“another of those plays that tries to lift superficiality to significance through obscurity,” wrote Milton Shulman in the Evening Standard) is now big box office. The latest iteration of Samuel Beckett’s groundbreaker comes in September when Lucian Msamati and Ben Whishaw appear in James Macdonald’s production at that temple of luxurious elegance, the Theatre Royal Hay-market. So what has changed in close on 70 years to make Beckett’s play popular? The short answer would be that both the theatre and the culture at large are very different now from what they were in 1955. One thing Beckett taught us was that plays need neither spacious plots, sumptuous sets nor multiple characters…

When Narendra Modiled the Bharatiya Janata party to victory in 2014, many in India pinned their hopes on him. He had promised to usher in development, citing his performance in Gujarat, where he had been chief minister for just over a decade. Even sceptics, appalled by his handling in 2002 of communal violence that left more than a thousand dead, the vast majority of them Muslims, were willing to hold their noses. They were swayed by his development rhetoric and jaded after 10 years of coalition rule led by India’s grand old party, Congress. But within days of his election, a Muslim engineer was murdered by goons, and other similar incidents began to occur. Modi stayed largely silent, making only feeble statements in response to truly grotesque attacks. His singular…

Across 1 Conventional response to ‘thank you’ (5,7) 9 Overturn (5) 10 Covetous (7) 11 Club – legendary warrior (4) 12 Plot outline (8) 14 Nocturnal, spotted wildcat (6) 15 Desert to the other side (6) 18 Suddenly collapse (4,4) 20 Woodwind instrument (4) 22 It’s neither sharp nor flat (7) 23 Off-white colour (5) 24 Have a tantrum (5,1,6) Down 2 Impress in an inhibiting fashion (7) 3 Uncouth (4) 4 Yank – painful parting (6) 5 Pale purple (8) 6 Scent (5) 7 Attractive (4,2,3,3) 8 Stop talking! (3,1,4,2,2) 13 It never comes (8) 16 Entangle or involve (7) 17 Laid-back (6) 19 Kind of apple (5) 21 Branch (4) Solution No 16,915…