Innehållsförteckning för 16 August 2024 från Guardian Weekly

The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol211 | Issue№ 7 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…

Carolina Proaño has her head to the ground on her family farm on Santa Cruz, one of the four inhabited islands in Galápagos. The biologist, who is checking nests for signs of new eggs or recent visits, has long been trying to save the Galápagos petrel, a critically endangered black and white seabird known for returning to its ground-based nests during mating season. A few months ago, Proaño visited the site and found two adult petrels dead in front of their nests. They had been attacked by stray dogs, species introduced to the islands by humans and a growing menace to the local biodiversity. “I nearly died [of shock],” said Proaño. Ecuador’s Galápagos archipelago is known for its wide variety of unique and endemic species, such as large tortoises and…

Early last Saturday morning, Louay Nasser decided to perform the dawn prayer in the classroom he and his family are living in at Tabeen school in Gaza City, rather than go across the courtyard to the mosque. That decision may have saved his life. As soon as he stood up to start praying, there was what he described as a “bright red light” and the sound of a strong explosion. The 30-year-old ran outside to see what had happened and froze in shock at the scene before him. “There were pieces of men, women and children lying in front of me … heads separated from bodies,” Nasser said. “It was very difficult, but the worst was the man who was on fire, running and screaming. We ran over to him…

Last Tuesday, Oksana and her family could not escape fast enough. Though they did not know it, Ukrainian regular forces had entered Russia for the first time, and Moscow’s military wasted little time in hitting back, bombing their village around 11km from the border. “It was 9am and the first glide bomb hit the village,” she said, and its ferocity – “very scary, much bigger” than ordinary shelling – was such that they immediately knew they had to escape. “Our neighbour drove his children first and then came back and picked up me and my sister and family,” the mother of two explained. Like hundreds of others from the Ukrainian borderlands where last week’s surprise attack was launched, Oksana and her family made their way south to Sumy, normally a…

It was the opening days of 2022, in the aftermath of a huge volcanic eruption, when Tonga went dark. The underwater eruption – 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima – sent tsunami waves across Tonga’s nearby archipelago and blanketed the island’s white coral sands in ash. The strength of the eruption severed internet connectivity with Tonga causing a communication blackout. When the undersea cable that provides the country’s internet was restored weeks later, the scale of the disruption was clear. The lack of connectivity had hampered recovery efforts while devastating businesses and local finances, many of which depend on remittances from abroad. The disaster exposed the extreme vulnerabilities of the infrastructure that underpins the workings of the internet. Contemporary life is inseparable from an…

Of course, it’s good that so many of those responsible for a week of far-right violence are facing a swift and severe form of justice – but there’s one extremely rich and powerful suspect who should join them in the dock. If the UK authorities truly want to hold accountable all those who unleashed riots and pogroms in Britain, they need to go after Elon Musk. To be sure, direct guilt belongs to the culprits on the ground, those currently being fast-tracked in their hundreds through a usually glacial court system – moving from arrest to charges, trial, conviction and (heavy) sentencing in a matter of days. Guilt belongs to those who surrounded hotels housing migrants and refugees, attempting to set them on fire and threatening to kill those inside.…

Summertime, and the reading is easy. Or at least, it’s supposed to be. Holidays were made for sinking blissfully into a pile of books: for long, hot afternoons swinging in hammocks or basting on the sand, gleefully inhaling trashy beach reads or the Booker prize longlist. Finally, we have time to read, plus the urgent need to justify what is essentially two weeks of lying down. Yet, by the pool this year, I saw a striking number of people scrolling on their phones instead, some with an unopened paperback lying forlornly by the sun lounger. Instagram reels contain just enough of a miniature plot to satisfy the human need for narrative twists, even if they are only a few seconds long. But grazing on these bite-size stories is like snacking…

In recent years the reimagining of Greek myth has become almost a genre in itself: from classicists such as Madeline Miller and Natalie Haynes to Margaret Atwood and Colm Tóibín, modern writers have found fresh ways to spin these ancient stories. Many seek to foreground the experiences of women overlooked in the originals; only a few come close to matching the sharp perspicacity and profound humanity of Pat Barker. The Voyage Home, the third volume in her masterful reimagining of Homer’s Iliad, takes up the tale exactly where The Women of Troy left off. After 10 grisly years of fighting, Agamemnon and his men are sailing for home. Their ships are laden with the spoils of war, including many hundreds of Trojan women, who have been shared out among the…

Across 1 Thrill – boot (4) 3 Hiker’s bag (8)  8 Catch sight of (4)  9 He’s an astronaut (8) 11 Cutting tools with folding blades (10)  14 Rejoinder (6) 15 Burning (6) 17 Chatting, perhaps with a view to gaining personal advantage (10)  20 Food fish (8) 21 Equitable (4) 22 Crack shot (8) 23 Simple – pond (4) Down 1 Unthinking, of a reaction (4-4) 2 The amount something can contain (8) 4 Serviette (6) 5 Small pad of paper for note-taking (10) 6 Pinnacle (4) 7 Sharp bend – minor difficulty (4) 10 Shoots up (10) 12 Self-destructively reckless (8) 13 Dish of curried rice, eggs and fish (8) 16 Unicellular organism (6) 18 Muslim leader (4) 19 Mark from a wound (4) Solution No 16,921…

1 US/MIDDLE EAST US deploys submarine as tensions mount in region Iran insisted on its right to an “appropriate and deterrent response” against Israel as the White House said it had prepared for what could be significant attacks by Iran or its proxies. The comments came as the US said it had ordered the deployment of the USS Georgia, a nuclear-powered guided-missile submarine, to the region, amid concern over the determination by Iran and its proxies to retaliate for Israel’s assassination of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. Iran’s acting foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani (below), made the comments to his Chinese counterpart on Monday, according to state media. John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, said the US and its allies were preparing for a “significant set of…

Last month, protesters took to the streets of Palma, Mallorca, carrying placards daubed with slogans like “ No to mass tourism” and “ Tourism, but not like this”. Although he did not attend, Mallorcan Jaume Fuster, 27, agreed with the protesters’ message. “They should be a wakeup call to our politicians to legislate against the overcrowding and bring in laws that improve the quality of life of us residents,” the hotel worker said. The island’s housing crisis is out of control, said Fuster, who, like many of his friends, lives with his parents. “It is impossible to live independently on our salaries,” said Fuster, who is employed only for eight months of the year. He recognises the benefits of attracting visitors to the island where he has grown up. “But…

When Kamala Harris and the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, stepped onstage together for the first time last Tuesday, Philadelphia’s Liacouras Center glittered red, white and blue as Beyoncé’s Freedom blared and the crowd pulsed. Walz, plucked from relative obscurity when he accepted the vicepresident’s offer to join the Democratic presidential ticket, placed his hand over his heart. He waved. He bowed. He pointed to the crowd, and back to Harris. He grinned and laughed and bowed again. When it was his turn to speak, Walz turned to Harris: “Thank you, Madam Vice-President, for the trust you put in me but, maybe more so, thank you for bringing back the joy.” It was a remarkable moment in a remarkable election cycle that would have been unimaginable a few weeks ago. But…

On the morning of 7 October last year, reserve Maj Gen Yair Golan decided he could not stay at home in the central town of Rosh Ha’ayin. The scale of Hamas’ attack was still unclear, but he put on his uniform and drove to the home front command headquarters. “I went to the war room and I was shocked. On the big screens we could see Toyota cars moving inside Ofakim, Sderot, shooting everywhere, and I understood something terrible was happening,” said the 61-year-old. Picking up a rifle from the base, he continued south to the battlefields, alone, relying on almost 40 years of combat experience to dodge Hamas on back roads through the fields to rescue people fleeing from the Nova festival. A total of 364 partygoers were massacred…

There were teenagers and pensioners. Some with a string of convictions and others with none. There were hardened criminals and baby-faced schoolboys, some with the support of parents and others without. “He’s a pain in the arse,” said one defendant’s longsuffering dad. The father of another told reporters his teenage son was “a moron”. The Guardian reported from courts across the north of England every day last week as more than 302 people – aged 14 to 69 – nationwide faced a legal reckoning that was as severe as it was swift. Hundreds more were expected to be sent to custody this week and beyond as the number of those arrested reached 741 last Friday evening, with suspected offences including violent disorder, assault of emergency workers and inciting racial hatred.…

At Beijing Jiaotong University’s affiliated elementary school, a boy of six or seven holds a replica handgun. Other students grasp fake assault rifles. They wear imitation flak jackets over their tracksuits, and their heads swim inside artillery helmets. In the post that includes the photos, published online in April, the school said it has worked hard in recent years to conscientiously “promote the main theme of patriotism, and make it an important part of the school’s ideological and political education and moral education”. “We will create a strong atmosphere of national defence education, carry out rich and colourful activities, cultivate students’ patriotism, love for the army, and organisational discipline, and cultivate their ambitions to build and defend the motherland,” it said. The elementary school is among the thousands designated as…

Venezuela’s main opposition leader, María Corina Machado, has accused its strongman president, Nicolás Maduro, of unleashing a horrific “campaign of terror” in an attempt to cling on to power. More than two weeks after Maduro’s widely questioned claim to have won the 28 July election, human rights activists say he has launched a ferocious clampdown designed to silence those convinced that his rival, Edmundo González, was the winner. More than 1,300 people have been detained, including 116 teenagers, according to the rights group Foro Penal. At least 24 people have reportedly been killed. Speaking from an undisclosed location where she has been in hiding, Machado – a charismatic conservative and key González backer – urged the international community to oppose Maduro’s intensifying crackdown. “ Innocent people are being detained or…

MY OLDEST FRIEND has the same name as me: Rachel. But I call her Kitty, a variation on her surname. We have been close for more than 40 years. She and I will, I believe, know each other now until one of us finds ourself at the other’s funeral, where she will, perhaps, be required to tell funny stories to a crowd of unfamiliar people. Kitty, if you’re reading this, please don’t bring up that school trip to Normandy during which I famously disgraced myself. We were 14 when we met at our Sheffield comprehensive; I wonder now how we found each other, because the school was unimaginably vast. But then I remember that it was the 1980s. Our teachers were often on strike: lessons began with a long wait…

As one of those “ childless cat ladies” Donald Trump’s vice-presidential candidate JD Vance quips about, I can’t say that I haven’t wondered – were I to die at home – how long it would take mine to start eating me. I adore my pair of cornish rexes, Vlada and Myshka – but I’m well aware the feeling is only intermittently reciprocated. They are most enthusiastic about my presence when I am opening a tin of cat food. If I were to be prevented by death from carrying out my duty towards them, I’ve never been certain that my extremities wouldn’t go the same way as their beloved meat-stick treats. But I’ve been cheered by new research, suggesting they might actually register my absence. A study found that cats displayed…

Nothing is more interesting to poker players and less interesting to everyone else than a breathless recounting of who bet how much with a jack and six of clubs in some game years ago. There’s an awful lot of that kind of thing in this book, which celebrates poker players as paradigmatic citizens of a global intellectual community it calls “the River”, which also counts among its inhabitants venture capitalists, crypto traders, fashionable philosophers and mild-mannered statisticians. One such statistician, Nate Silver himself, came to public prominence as an analyst of political polls at his website FiveThirtyEight, which predicted the results of US elections in 2008 and 2012 with seemingly uncanny accuracy. Before that he was a poker player, making money especially in the nascent internet-casino business, until Congress banned…

The Irish peat extraction agency Bord na Móna once explained to me: “We are a development agency, not a conservation organisation.” I had bemoaned the destruction of bogland ecosystems across the country through the use of huge extraction machinery and the indiscriminate removal of woodlands and ground cover. Much of the degraded peat was used for gardens and peat briquettes. Forestry, intensified agriculture and reclamation had further reduced the area of bog, while latterly, scientists are warning that climate change could further deplete these vast carbon sinks. I have also long espoused the notion that bogs could never be restored in my lifetime, and so on visiting the Abbeyleix Bog Project in County Laois, I was delighted to be proved wrong. The site has been managed by local people since…

UK NEWS Archbishop condemns far right as ‘unchristian’ The archbishop of Canterbury has warned Christians that they should not be part of any far-right groups, criticising the use of Christian imagery in the recent riots “an offence to our faith”. Writing in the Guardian, Justin Welby condemned the violent unrest, which he described as “racist”, “anti-Muslim, anti-refugee and anti-asylum seeker”. His intervention followed a week of disorder that began after a mass stabbing of children at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport last month. The unrest, during which rioters attacked mosques, police officers and a hotel housing asylum seekers, was whipped up by far-right activists online who falsely claimed a Muslim immigrant was behind the attack. Keir Starmer cancelled a planned holiday to lead the response to the unrest.…

On his first visit to Venice, Alejandro is unimpressed with the city’s latest bid to control tourism by limiting group sizes and banning loudspeakers. The tour guide’s group, just shy of the new maximum limit of 25, is trudging over a bridge towards St Mark’s Square, seemingly more interested in taking selfies than the history lesson being delivered through their audio devices. “I don’t think it was a very smart move. I have 24 people with me, the other 25 are over there,” he said, pointing to a group just ahead. “It would be nicer to all be together – instead, the first guide is doing the talking and I’m just making sure we don’t lose each other.” The new restrictions, which took effect on 1 August, are aimed at…

His name was spelled out in bright lights reminiscent of a Broadway show. Donald Trump thanked God for sparing him from an assassin’s bullet. To thousands of devoted fans, the carefully stage-managed Republican national convention felt like the coronation of a man poised for victory over an ageing, ailing incumbent. But Trump’s grievance-filled address that night hinted at trouble to come. His US presidential election campaign had been praised as tighter, smoother and more professional this time around. Then, when Democrats upended the race by replacing Joe Biden with Kamala Harris as their nominee, the wheels came off. Recent weeks have seen the former president lashing out, pushing lies, hurling insults, trialling nicknames, trafficking in racism and trotting out nonsense as he struggles to regain the narrative from Vice-President Harris.…

The relief was palpable in Dhaka. “It feels good that finally we have educated people running our government,” said Zahin Ferdous, a 19-year-old university student, referring to the new interim government led by the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus. Ferdous was directing traffic in Bangladesh’s capital, one of the volunteers trying to restore normality to the city after a tumultuous week that has transformed the country. The resignation of prime minister Sheikh Hasina on 5 August initially caused a city-wide street party, but it was followed by looting and reprisal attacks against her supporters and the police. Things calmed after last Thursday, when Yunus was sworn in. But in a city of 20 million people, that calm is uncertain. Some areas have established nightwatches, reports of suspicious activity are being swapped…

Last Sunday, two police officers were seen examining a police box in London that had been made to look like a tank of piranhas, before taking pictures of it. The previous day, a big cat had appeared briefly, stretching in the morning sun, on a bare advertising hoarding in the north-west of the city. These were the sixth and seventh in a series of works by the anonymous artist known as Banksy. An eighth appeared on Monday, this time a rhinoceros, in south-east London. For more than a week, the streets of the UK’s capital have been populated by a string of unusual animal sightings courtesy of Banksy, including pelicans, a goat and a trio of monkeys. The artist’s vision is simple: to cheer up the public during a period…

Young protesters in Kenya successfully demanded the withdrawal of a bill that would have raised taxes on everything from bread to vegetable oil and sanitary towels. Inspired by their neighbours, Ugandans marched against corruption; Nigerians rallied against “bad governance” and the soaring cost of living. Since the Covid pandemic, people have also taken to the streets in several other African countries including Ghana, Angola, Malawi and Senegal. While each protest has had unique drivers, they have some things in common – booming young populations struggling with high inflation, a lack of good jobs and a political class that they don’t trust. “Here in Kenya, if you look at these protests, actually, they were led by educated people. But most of them [were] jobless,” said Anthony Kamande, an inequality researcher at…

The arrival of August in the Arctic typically hints that autumn, with its dwindling daylight and cold weather, will soon return. But on a recent afternoon, Sandy Gordon and her four children plunged into the silty waters of Canada’s Mackenzie River, to escape a searing heat-wave that has descended on the town of Inuvik. “We absolutely love it when it’s hot,” she said. “It’s so nice to be able to enjoy a true summer.” Seasonal change in the north is rapid and, for locals, summer marks a brief reprieve from months of bitter cold. But a heatwave that is now hovering over the community 209km north of the Arctic Circle threatens to shatter its heat record. And, while the warmth has brought joy, it comes with worries, including the threat…

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, 1847 Jane meets Helen Burns at Lowood, a school for Jane meets Helen Burns poor and orphaned girls. I can’t read the scene in which Helen dies from consumption as Jane lies beside her without crying. Sula by Toni Morrison, 1973 Nel and Sula, who grew up together in racist Ohio, come to share a terrible secret. Morrison writes so well about their solidarity, another weep with laughter. and their ability to make one The Spare Room by Helen Garner, 2008 The pain and complexity of friendship has rarely been more piercingly observed than in this brilliant novel in which Nicola, who is dying of cancer, comes to stay with her friend Helen. Lace by Shirley Conran, 1982 If Lace is still the ultimate bonkbuster,…

Something unusual happened to the French far right during the Olympic Games: it went silent. Jordan Bardella, the poster boy of the National Rally (RN) who shared his life between public rallies and TV studios before the Olympic torch rose and lit up the Paris night three weeks ago, has all but vanished. When he is still talked about, it is to wonder where he could have gone. The south of France, perhaps, unless it is the Amalfi coast, or both. Marine Le Pen is apparently cuddling her five-month-old grandson in Brittany when she’s not tending her cats at her home in the Yvelines, according to the RN-friendly Le Journal du Dimanche, which reassured its readers that nothing was amiss: it is well known that the leaders of the French…

We struggle to find a chicken big enough to feed all the family. If I want to roast two birds in the same oven, does this affect the cooking time? Mary, UK If your oven is large enough to hold two chickens in a big roasting tray, you can absolutely roast them at the same time. But I wouldn’t recommend roasting them in different pans on different shelves, because there won’t be enough air to circulate. To ensure complete control, however, invest in a meat thermometer, and buy birds of a similar size, so they cook in the same time. Put the birds side by side in the tray, then roast in a really hot oven – 240C (220C fan) /gas 9 – for 20-30 minutes; if the chickens are…

✱ All solutions published next week Across 1 Children out of university: son after 1000 smackers? (6) 5 Split school term for Christmas after one month (6) 8 Stain bad: finally going for cleaning solution (7) 9 Currently getting on with no women (2,2,3) 11 Order for partner to leave? Go, as real ale pint is spilled (5,10) 12 Wrong answer witty (4) 13 Kinky striptease, revealing art in suspense (10) 17 Man losing energy for a darling, we hear: is he in a rut? (6,4) 18 Argue with sister about dad … (4) 20 … maybe dad in favour of sister taking over that? (8,7) 23 Someone that’s taken heroin with hole in front of leg (7) 24 Mocking person? Golf clubs broken by the first tee (7) 25…