Innehållsförteckning för 24 January 2025 från Guardian Weekly

The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol 212 | Issue № 4 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.…

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The hours-long delay in implementing the Gaza ceasefire agreement last Sunday was not a good omen for a deal that many fear could be doomed to failure as it moves through its challenging three phases. While it is a truism that all negotiations to end conflicts rely on cautious trust-building and are highly vulnerable to spoilers, the deal to end 15 months of fighting in Gaza that followed Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023 is more fraught than most. Analysts and observers have pointed out that the design of the agreement, constructed over three phases that require new negotiations to take place as the ceasefire goes forward, appears structured to invite multiple crises as it edges towards ever more difficult terrain. Trust on both sides has been negligible at best.…

The news was sensational. It travelled quickly among Ukrainian soldiers fighting in Russia’s Kursk region. “I heard from a friend of a friend,” one officer, Vitalii Ovcharenko, recalled. “This was half an hour after it happened. My friend said: ‘We’ve got a North Korean prisoner! He’s in shock but OK.’ ” Ovcharenko added: “Everyone wanted a selfie. They wrapped him in a blanket and gave him tea.” This month’s capture of two North Korean servicemen was an extraordinary moment in Russia’s bloody war against Ukraine. The Kremlin has taken elaborate steps to conceal the presence of 12,000 elite troops sent in autumn by Pyongyang to Russia. At camps in the far east they were given Russian equipment: uniforms, rifles and fake military documents. The foreign soldiers received phoney Russian names.…

 Dr Edith de Guzman watched the flames of the Palisades fire rolling through the Santa Monica mountains out of the windows of her University of California, Los Angeles, classroom earlier this month. First, on Tuesday 7 January, flames surged toward the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood, the affluent community overlooking the ocean from the canyons in west LA. Then overnight, they tore through parts of Altadena, a diverse town in the city’s east that had served as a refuge for Black Angelenos. By Wednesday evening, fires were burning in the Hollywood Hills and the San Fernando valley. Twenty-five people would lose their lives. Thousands had lost their homes. LA, and much of the US, was asking how wildfires could rage out of control in one of the world’s richest cities – a…

Efforts to restrict the production of plastic “forever chemicals” that could threaten public health have been met with a large-scale coordinated attack by the multibillion-dollar industries that make and use them. Industry-funded research and exaggerated claims litter the arguments made by the fluoropolymer industry against stricter regulation, a year-long investigation by the Forever Lobbying Project, a cross-border investigation involving 46 journalists and 18 experts across 16 countries can reveal. Fluoropolymers are high performance plastics and a type of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – a group of more than 10,000 human-made chemicals that will not break down in the environment for tens of thousands of years, if ever, earning them the nickname “forever chemicals”. The substances are durable nonstick coatings used in an enormous range of industrial processes and consumer…

THE BRITISH MUSEUM IS EVERYBODY’S IDEA OF A MUSEUM, but at the same time, it is hardly like a museum at all. It is more like a little state. The rooms you visit on a day out are the least of it: the museum is not the contents of its display cases. It is an embassy, a university, a police station, a science lab, a customs house, a base for archaeological excavations, a place of asylum, a retail business, a publisher, a morgue, a detective agency. “ We’re not a warehouse, [or] a mausoleum,” its chair, the UK’s former chancellor George Osborne, told guests at the museum’s annual trustees’ dinner in November. On the contrary, it is both these things, and others beside. It is a sprawling, chaotic reflection of…

The ceasefire news came suddenly, with an agreement we had heard before, surrounded by bureaucracy, hope and death. People all around me in Gaza – on buses, on donkey carts, in cars, on the street and in the markets – are describing it as a “war after the war”. The ceasefire is not the end of suffering. It is the beginning of everything else. It is an opportunity for people in northern Gaza, Rafah and elsewhere to mourn their loved ones who were killed and their destroyed homes. It is an opportunity to cry for those who have held back their tears for more than 15 months. We were told we could return to our homes, but those homes now lie in rubble. Most of them were levelled to the…

It’s a calm, clear evening at last after two days of relentless wind and rain. When my son phones to tell me to look outside, I’m hoping that I’ll see the northern lights. Piling on layers of warm clothes, I step out into the noisy dark; when the river is in spate it is even louder at night. Over to the east, the three stars of Orion’s belt hang in a line over the lights of Allendale. The huge ash and its neighbour, the sycamore, are combined in a single silhouette of black tracery, like the work of a paper-cut artist. The full glitter of the Milky Way spangles in a band way above our house. And shape-shifting, green and red, are the lights of the aurora borealis. I stand…

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1 UNITED STATES Trump begins second term with executive orders blitz Donald Trump launched his second presidential term with a barrage of executive orders reaching into broad swathes of American life, from pardoning supporters who attacked Congress on January 6 to rolling back LGBTQ+ rights and environmental rules while declaring an immigration emergency on the southern border. The first round of orders were signed at an arena in downtown Washington, where the inaugural parade was moved to avoid freezing temperatures. Many more orders were signed in the Oval Office. Among measures signed on stage to cheers from a raucous crowd was an order to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, a step Trump took in his first term before Joe Biden recommitted the US to the treaty in an attempt to…

Western allies of the US are braced for the return of Donald Trump, still hoping for the best, but largely unprepared for what may prove to be a chaotic and disorientating worst. The run-up to his inauguration sent out a catherine wheel of signals as Trump turned up the volume on tariffs against Canada, China and Mexico, vowed to buy – and if not, invade – Greenland and the Panama Canal, and pressed Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a Gaza ceasefire. At the same time his pick as secretary of state, Marco Rubio, gave four and a half hours of evidence at the Senate foreign affairs committee, which in the breadth of his knowledge and views resembled less Steve Bannon and more James Baker III in his heyday. Whether Rubio and…

Israel began bombing Gaza on 7 October 2023 after Hamas crossed the border, killed about 1,200 people and took 251 others hostage to Gaza. When ground operations began a week later, most observers expected the fighting to last weeks. Instead, it extended for 15 months, until last weekend’s introduction of a ceasefire, to become Israel’s longest war since the 1948 conflict that led to the country’s creation. The majority of those killed by militants on 7 October were civilians, and the scale and ferocity of the attack was unprecedented. So was the scale and ferocity of Israel’s response. After one brief ceasefire and hostage release deal in November 2023, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed to keep fighting, promising “total victory” over Hamas. The impact of the campaign on…

A Donald Trump-shaped shadow is looming over the campaign for Germany’s snap elections next month, with unprecedented US interference on behalf of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland and a startling degree of attention from the incoming US administration scrambling the political landscape. Trump’s second term is forcing all parties to revamp fundamental stances, with responses ranging from opportunistic fealty to still wan-looking resistance. The stakes for Berlin could hardly be higher. “Trump’s rise and the turn towards authoritarianism and illiberalism in the US is a psychological challenge for a German elite that has always seen it as a democratic ally and model,” said historian Ned Richardson-Little of the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam. Veteran political observer Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador to Washington, has long compared US ties…

In a dimly lit corridor of a mud-walled house nestled among coconut trees, Sharifa Hussein stripped red and black cables, a screwdriver voltage tester balanced between her lips and rolls of cable lying by her feet. Then, with the help of three other women, she attached the two wires to an electronic device nailed on the wall. The women, all wearing colourful hijabs, were installing solar power to a house in Muyuni B village in Unguja, the main island in the semi–autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar, which lies off the coast of Tanzania in eastern Africa. They are part of a larger group – known as Solar Mamas – who assemble, install, repair and maintain solar power kits in villages across the archipelago. They receive training from community-based organisation Barefoot College…

Few items of clothing have come to exemplify American far-right nationalism in the 21st century as much as the red “Make America Great Again” hats worn and sold by Donald Trump. But last week, the beloved – and reviled – headwear appeared to have met its match. Before a high-stakes meeting with Canadian leaders in preparation for American tariffs, the Ontario premier, Doug Ford, strode into the summit wearing a hat emblazoned with a defiant message: “CANADA IS NOT FOR SALE”. Canadian leaders are still scrambling to come up with a response to the threat of a trade war with the country’s closest ally if Trump makes good on his promise to inflict punishing tariffs on all Canadian goods and services. And in the depths of a national crisis, the…

Seldom in recent history has class war been waged so blatantly. Generally, billionaires and hectomillionaires employ concierges to attack the poor on their behalf. But now, freed from shame and embarrassment, they no longer hide their involvement. In the US, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, will lead the federal assault on the middle and working classes: seeking to slash public spending and the public protections defending people from predatory capital. He was due to share responsibility for the Department of Government Efficiency with another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy (although reports this week suggested Ramaswamy’s future at the department was unclear). They have been recruiting further billionaires to oversee cuts across government. These plutocrats will not be paid. They will wage their class war pro bono. Musk, with a fortune of…

A MONTH BEFORE SEVERANCE FIRST AIRED in February 2022, billboards emblazoned with huge images of Adam Scott wearing a thousand-yard stare began to spring up around Los Angeles. “You always think it’s going to be this joyful moment when you see something like that,” says Scott, the show’s star and one of its producers. He appeared on the posters alongside the tagline “ We’re all different people at work”, a wink to the premise of the series, a twisty, darkly comic thriller about office workers who have an experimental chip implanted into their brains in order to forget their work lives outside the office, and vice versa. Scott had, he adds, “been waiting a long time for that moment – but I had this immediate adverse reaction. I got nauseous and…

I love cheese sauce, but I’m now plant-based. Are there any easy alternatives? I don’t want to use too many processed foods. Mike Davies, chef/owner of The Camberwell Arms in London, says he discovered “the dark arts” of plant-based “cheese” sauce from his wife, Bonita, who is vegan and a chef. The simple answer, he says, is to make a vegan bechamel, which can be achieved in one of two ways. The first comes courtesy of Bonita: “She makes a roux with plant-based gear, then flavours it with nutritional yeast to get those cheesy, umami vibes.” You can adulterate this further with mustard powder, nutmeg or a pinch of cayenne. A roux is also Katy Beskow’s preferred route, especially when it’s a lasagne or cauliflower cheese. “Take 50g vegan butter…

SOCIETY Government accedes to review of grooming gangs The home secretary announced an urgent national review of the scale of grooming gangs amid a raft of new measures to tackle them. Yvette Cooper’s announcement does not create the full national inquiry the Conservatives have demanded. Ministers were pushed into moving further and faster on the long-running scandal after the issue was taken up by Elon Musk. It added to a difficult spell last week for Keir Starmer, coming soon after he accepted the resignation of the Treasury minister Tulip Siddiq, after she was embroiled in allegations of corruption connected to her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, the ousted prime minister of Bangladesh. Addressing the Commons, the home secretary said Louise Casey, who produced a report into sexual abuse in Rotherham, would lead…

From a ridge on the western edge of Sderot, the ruins of Gaza loom. Less than a kilometre separates the Israeli town and the outskirts of the Palestinian territory, but after 471 days of war, the other side of the fence from Sderot’s shrubby green dunes resembles a dystopian parallel universe. A few minutes before a long-awaited ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict was supposed to begin at 8.30am local time last Sunday, the morning quiet was shattered by an Israeli airstrike on Beit Hanoun, the Gaza town visible from the ridge. The Guardian last visited Beit Hanoun three days before the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. The area’s orchards were full of guava and the last of the season’s pomegranates. In the fields, though, something unusual was…

They arrived intent on causing mayhem. The political figurehead they supported had, they said, been the victim of a grave injustice at the hands of the establishment. The ringleaders had soon broken through security cordons, armed with fire extinguishers, steel pipes and police shields, smashing windows and gaining entry to a government building, leaving destruction worth an estimated $500,000 in their wake. The scene was not the US Capitol building on 6 January 2021, and the mobs attempting to overturn the rule of law had swapped animal skins and bald eagle masks for hooded down jackets and face masks. But the similarities between Maga ideologues’ attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, and the far-right protesters who stormed the Seoul western district court building last weekend in…

As he wandered around a corner of his land, Luilly Murillo González stopped and leaned down to examine a twisting green vine. He spotted four budding flowers, early indications that he will soon harvest his prized product: vanilla. “What joy! What damn joy!” he said, a smile spreading across his face. “Growing vanilla requires a lot of love. You have to be enamoured of the crop, passionate about it.” Murillo González has 300 vanilla plants and is clearing more land to expand his plantation, which began with just 50 plants in 2019. His small vanilla farm is located in El Valle, Colombia, hidden amid the dense greenery of the Chocó province, which covers much of the country’s lush Pacific coast. Chocó is Colombia’s most impoverished region and has long suffered…

When news of the ceasefire and hostage-release deal between Israel and Hamas first broke last Wednesday, a friend offered the kind hope that now, at last, there could be a sense of joy. I wanted to feel that way but, at that moment, I could not – and here’s why. For one thing, a mere announcement did not seem enough. When it comes to the Middle East, “ believe it when you see it” tends to be a good operating principle. Sure enough, there followed 48 hours of hitches and last-minute delays and it seems like tempting fate to assume everything will run smoothly. But even when the first hostages were freed on Sunday, the anxiety had still not gone. For this is a phased deal, which means it could…

Devika Rege’s debut is not a definitive state-of-the-nation novel. Nor can it be characterised as the next “ great Indian novel”, although it holds greatness within its pages. This chorus of the collective contains a multitude of ideologies and perspectives. It is 2014, and the Bharat party – a thinly veiled version of the Hindu nationalist party, the BJP – is newly in power. It was a choice between “the weak governance” of the preceding ruling party, synonymous with decades of corruption, “and fascism”, and India has voted in favour of the rightwing party promising to clean the Ganga River, holy to the Hindu majority. The novel opens with the homecoming of Naren Agashe, who has found that, after years as a Wall Street consultant, his “existence in America is…

* All solutions published next week Across 8 Hit it off with American poet and Irish mathematician (8) 9 The end of time, a brief moment recalled (5)  10 Initially acceptable, telling inappropriate jokes finally grows old (4) 11 Locals digest a bishop’s stories (10)  12 Marks, Jos and Russells? (6) 14 PM once lost face with 9th pregnancy and little ones here? (8)  16 Recipe for making unique lunch with asparagus tips (7) 18 Meadow’s fine mature greenery (7) 21 Cyclist’s lady exchanging ring for stiletto? (8)  23 Trade item again, instrument not about to be put in tin (4,2) 24 Bill confused with A-minus being hidden (10) 26 Chase knight into building (4) 27 Knocks doors electioneering – Nigel trails, Starmer leads (5)  28 Coincides with cryptic solver…

Across 1 Attitudinise (4) 3 Someone who drifts around in search of pleasure (8)  8 Sudden attack (4) 9 Australian state (8)  11 Presumptuousness (10)  14 Car-free city (6) 15 Greek consonant (6) 17 Preliminary preparation (10)  20 Manly behaviour (8) 21 Expert (4) 22 Guarantee (8)  23 Fondled – fabric (4) Down 1 Notice (8)  2 Top-hole! (8)  4 Fly (6)  5 Subsequently (10)  6 Edible pods (4) 7 Hard wood (4) 10 Squeeze box (10) 12 Unqualified (8) 13 Belly up (8) 16 Peak (6) 18 Diving duck (4) 19 Cake decorator (4) Solution No 17,058…