Innehållsförteckning för 14 February 2025 från Guardian Weekly

The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol212 | 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…

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Run, rabbit, run A giant papier-mache float entitled È tardi, è tardi, è tardi (“It’s late, it’s late, it’s late”), featuring three Lewis Caroll-esque White Rabbits to represent the frenetic nature of modern society, parades though Viareggio during the Tuscan city’s annual carnival last Sunday. The procession is famed for its giant floats, which are often politically satirical. This year’s event runs until 4 March, when a Mardi Gras parade and fireworks display will bring the celebrations to an end.…

The Yanomami villagers had trekked for days through some of Brazil’s most secluded jungles to reach the assembly, their traditional clothing announcing an existence deeply entwined with nature that stretched back thousands of years. As they filed into a thatched communal hut to share stories of their lives, the forest dwellers wore armlets fashioned from toucan and macaw plumes and monkey-tail headbands. “It’s a symbol of unity because these little monkeys never get separated: they always roam together,” said local leader Júnior Hekurari as the group gathered in Kori Yauopë, a Yanomami hamlet on a table mountain. “Today the Yanomami people are no longer crying because our children are no longer dying,” Hekurari told the meeting, recalling how his people had been pushed to the brink of destruction in recent…

As Russian tanks advanced into Ukraine in February 2022, Vladimir Putin was waging a parallel battle on the home front – one fought not with weapons but with ideology, reaching deep into the nation’s classrooms. In a high school in Karabash, a small industrial town in the Ural mountains, teacher Pavel Talankin knew he had to document it. Almost overnight, the school – and the tight-knit community where the free-spirited Talankin, known as Pasha to his students, had embraced his role as a nonconformist educator – was overtaken by militarisation and war propaganda. As the school’s longtime videographer, Talankin was instructed by his superiors to document the implementation of the Kremlin’s new directive: shaping a generation steeped in ultra-nationalist views and ready to join the ranks of the army…

As immigration officers moved in on Chicago following Donald Trump’s inauguration, carrying out the president’s plans for “mass deportations”, the city’s schools began to notice waves of absences. Parents were picking up kids early, or parking a few blocks away – fearful immigration raids would target the pickup rush. In a city that has received thousands of new immigrant students in recent years, teachers made house calls to check in on families that were terrified of leaving home. At after-school programmes for high-schoolers, educators passed out “know your rights” information for students to give to their undocumented parents. As the Trump administration moves forward with its immigration agenda, rescinding longstanding protections against immigration raids on school campuses and deploying federal agents into residential neighbourhoods, educators across the US are scrambling…

‘Woman, life, freedom’ BEING A WOMAN,” says the woman standing on the stage in front of me, “doesn’t mean I am just here to raise children. Being a woman means that I am here to write history. Women can speak. We can sing. Nobody will silence us.” There is a roar of approval around me. I’m in a huge conference hall in Hasakah, a city in north-east Syria. The woman on the stage, a singer called Mizgîn Tahir, has bobbed curly hair and wears boots and a skirt, while the women around me are dressed in varied styles – some in floor-length Kurdish dresses with sparkling embroidery, others with headscarves and plain coats, others sporting Yazidi headdresses with hanging beads. All are cheering. Tahir has finished her speech and is…

If you care about the world we are handing on to future generations, the news last Thursday morning was dramatic. This January was the warmest on record; temperatures in 18 of the past 19 months have exceeded pre-industrial averages by 1.5C. There can be no comfort that the epoch-changing climate crisis is 20 or even 10 years away. It is already upon us. Temperatures should have been moderated this winter by cooler air over the Pacific; it did not happen. Scientists are bewildered and scared. James Hansen, doyen of climate crisis research, believes that, unless this pace of deterioration is reversed, warm ocean waters flowing from the southern to the northern hemisphere will be trapped as vast sea currents cease. Sea levels will rise to impose a civilisational threat. It…

I often find green cabbage boring. How can I make it more interesting? The cabbage family is vast and its members differ hugely in shape and size. What the green members all have in common, however, is their receptiveness to multiple situations, from braising to layering into lasagne. “Cabbages are much more versatile than people give them credit for,” says Merlin Labron-Johnson, chef/owner of Osip and The Old Pharmacy, both in Bruton, England, “but you do need to apply a bit of imagination.” That might mean blanching the leaves, stuffing them with sausagemeat, then rolling and braising. He suggests serving these cabbage parcels with some pumpkin puree. Alternatively, put hispi in a pot roast: halve the cabbage and lay it cut side down in a hot pan with lots of…

1 UNITED STATES Trump hostages deadline puts ceasefire under threat Donald Trump has warned that if all the Israeli hostages held in Gaza are not returned by Saturday at noon he would propose cancelling the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, letting “all hell break loose”. Speaking on Monday, the US president also said he might withhold aid to Jordan and Egypt if those countries do not take Palestinian refugees being relocated from the territory. Trump’s comments came after Hamas said it was delaying the release of hostages indefinitely over “violations” of the ceasefire deal, prompting Israel’s defence minister to put the country’s military on alert. Trump said he would “let that be Israel’s decision” on what should ultimately happen to the ceasefire. The ultimatum could end a three-week-old ceasefire that dictates a strict schedule…

It’s one of the humiliations of our historical moment that the constitutional order has been destroyed by such stupid and unserious people. On the trail with Donald Trump, the billionaire Elon Musk, who financed Trump’s campaign to the tune of about $250m, pledged to cut $2tn from the federal budget, a project that promised to wreck the economy, destroy the nation’s credit, eliminate programmes and institutions that structure people’s lives and create an international economic and leadership vacuum into which America’s rivals – namely, China – could step. This would have been ominous enough on its own. But because Musk is a narcissist and a nerd – because he insists on discarding solemnity and being ostentatiously irreverent and carefree as he destroys people’s lives – he named his new project…

World governments rushed to defend the international criminal court (ICC) after Donald Trump launched sanctions against the global body, which is seen as a vital last resort in prosecuting powerful individuals accused of atrocities including war crimes and genocide. Set up more than two decades ago to serve as an impartial and incorruptible body that had the heft to take on criminals – from militant warlords to heads of state – the ICC has found itself under attack from Washington at a time when it is investigating shocking violence in Gaza. The US president signed an executive order last Thursday authorising aggressive economic sanctions against the ICC and travel bans on its staff, accusing the court of “illegitimate and baseless actions” targeting the US and its ally Israel. Trump’s order…

On a foggy, frigid morning in Saxony, far-right MP René Bochmann could not believe his party’s luck in the final days of the German election campaign, with all eyes on Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Since conservative frontrunner Friedrich Merz signalled a taboo-breaking openness to AfD support for his hardline course on border policy, voters visiting Bochmann’s information stands in small towns such as Schkeuditz have had one issue at the front of their minds: immigration. Merz attempted to wrest back control of the highly charged migration debate by passing a non-binding resolution on border security in parliament with votes from the far right – violating an unwritten rule of the post-Nazi period. The far right cheered its newfound acceptability while an uproar ensued among mainstream MPs; 48 hours later, Merz…

As far as the eye can see is a hotchpotch of trees, vegetable plots and water tanks. Up close it may look like a gigantic allotment, but this unusual project actually stretches for 2,000 hectares, a green belt that now completely rings the city of Ouagadougou. The green belt began life back in the 1970s, with the aim of building a protective wall against the encroaching desert that lies beyond the greenery, just a few steps away. In Burkina Faso, one-third of the territory – about 9 million hectares of productive land – is degraded, with an estimated average degradation rate of 360,000 hectares per year, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. “Burkina Faso is not a climatically favoured country, but the drought of the 1980s exacerbated the…

Twenty-year-old Keshaan Te Waaka stood – for the first time – on the narrow bridge connecting New Zealand’s far north coastal town Paihia to the Waitangi treaty grounds, where 185 years ago, Māori chiefs and the British Crown forged a nation state. Above her, the red, black and white flags of Māori independence flapped in the breeze. Hundreds of people ambled towards the grounds. It had taken Te Waaka 10 hours of driving to attend her first Waitangi Day event but there was no sign of fatigue. “It’s amazing here, I love it, I’m just so happy,” she said, adding that the widespread symbols of Māori independence and self-determination was something to behold. “Look how many [young Māori people] are here holding their flags – that’s something my mum’s generation…

Five hours after being shot in the belly, a Haitian accountant sat in a Port-au-Prince emergency room pondering how his homeland might be saved. “I follow the news,” said the 60-year-old, who had been hit by a stray bullet early that morning, the latest victim of seemingly interminable gang conflict that has claimed thousands of lives in the last year alone. “And I watch the young president of El Salvador who has the same problem as us,” the man said of the Central American country’s 43-year-old leader, Nayib Bukele. “He made efforts and built special prisons for them. There were people who supported gang members there – he arrested them too. There is no favouritism. That’s why the people gave him a second term.” All across the Americas, similar sentiments…

The shock and awe continues and it only gets more shocking and more awful. These past few days, Americans have watched an unelected tech billionaire destroy large chunks of the federal government – Elon Musk bragged that he was feeding the life-saving USAid international development agency “into the wood chipper” – and yet that was not even the most outrageous event of last week. That honour went instead to Donald Trump and his proposal to “just clean out” the Gaza Strip, by removing its people, bulldozing it and then redeveloping it as “the Riviera of the Middle East” under US ownership. Initial reaction inside the US confirms how the US political classes, and what passes for the opposition, have been left numbed by the speed of events since 20 January…

There are books in a writer’s life that gather all their previous themes and explorations in a great act of creative culmination, which both surpasses what had gone before and makes it more clear. We Do Not Part is one of those books. Published last year in Swedish translation, it helped to secure Korean writer Han Kang the 2024 Nobel prize in literature. Those who know Han’s work will recognise previous themes and methods here. Like the eponymous character in The Vegetarian, the narrator of We Do Not Part, Kyungha, is fragile and resilient. She finds it hard to sleep or eat, suffers from summer heat and winter cold, and endures terrible physical suffering for reasons that can be hard to understand. Both stories feature video artists, sisterly bonds, and…

Across 1 Sloped access (4)  3 Fast and furious (8) 8 Say it when you’ve had enough? (4) 9 Woolf or Wade (8)  11 Mollify (10) 14 One and only (6)  15 (On) tick (6) 17 Grim (10) 20 Judge (8) 21 Uneaten bits of apple (4) 22 Place in society (8) 23 Windsor, for example (4) Down 1 Screwholder (8) 2 Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, say (8)  4 Rum accompaniment? (6) 5 What to wear in retirement? (10) 6 Manner of speaking (or writing) (4) 7 Government policy adviser (4)  10 Pinkerton or Columbo (10) 12 Extra feature (8) 13 Background to the drama (5,3) 16 Wall painting (6) 18 Door fastening (4) 19 Creative work (4) Solution No 17,076…

REFORM UK Labour losing out to Farage party’s immigration stance Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, is neck and neck with Labour largely because its stance on immigration is proving attractive to floating voters, according to an Opinium poll for the Observer last weekend. The rise of the populist rightwing party is causing increasing concern for Labour and among its MPs who hold seats where Reform came a close second at last summer’s general election. The poll shows Labour on 27%, Reform UK on 26% and the Tories on 22%. The Liberal Democrats are on 11% and the Greens 8%. Reform has risen from about 20% in Opinium’s polling shortly after the general election, while the other two main parties have fallen back. Among those who are backing Reform, the…

APITILESS CRACKDOWN ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. A hardline approach to law and order. A purge of “gender ideology” and “wokeness” from the nation’s schools. Erosions of academic freedom, judicial independence and the free press. An alliance with Christian nationalism. An assault on democratic institutions. The “electoral autocracy” that is Viktor Orbán’s Hungary has long been revered by Donald Trump and his “Make America Great Again” (Maga) movement. In the early weeks of Trump’s second term as US president, analysts say, there are alarming signs that the Orbánisation of America has begun. With the tech billionaire Elon Musk at his side, Trump has moved with astonishing velocity to fire critics, punish media, reward allies, gut the federal government, exploit presidential immunity and test the limits of his authority. Many of their actions…

Saaed Salem’s eyes filled with tears as he surveyed the remains of his north Gaza neighbourhood on a freezing February morning. He was resting in a chair that had somehow survived the war, surrounded by grandchildren and rubble, his hope for the future and the ruins of his past. His family had lost one home in 1948, when they fled Hirbiya village, now the site of Zikim kibbutz inside Israel, to escape shelling and reports of atrocities by Israeli forces. “We locked our house, took the key and walked towards Gaza, believing we’d return in a few days,” said Salem, who was then five. Waiting at the end of an exhausting trek was a new reality of refugee camps and permanent exile in the north of the Gaza strip. “When…

Last weekend, the presidents of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda – Félix Tshisekedi and Paul Kagame – were among those who took part in a regional summit aimed at ending the resurgent violence in eastern DRC. The summit ended with a call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. But while there was a lull in the fighting last Sunday, many fear an escalation to a wider regional war. With the horrifying news that hundreds of female inmates at Goma’s prison were raped and burned alive, the humanitarian consequences of this violence are profound. Rape used as a weapon of war is rife, children are often forced to fight and millions have been displaced during the conflict – which has killed about 6 million people. What is…

For the estimated 2,000 residents of Refuge Island, life sometimes feels like that of a refugee. A dozen communities live on the island, which lies in a lagoon on the eastern fringes of Lagos and takes its name from the arrival of enslaved people fleeing the hinterland of western Nigeria in the 19th century. The island has never had electricity, and there are no tarred roads. For power, its residents, mostly fishers or farmers, use generators running on fuel that has become costly since a subsidy was scrapped two years ago. Water, which comes from the Lekki Lagoon – a site for open defecation as there are no toilet facilities – and wells, is poured on to improvised filters consisting of old cloths spread on basins. The island has never…

No dogs barking. No lawnmowers. No sirens or car alarms. No planes. No construction work. No delivery lorries. Just pure, blissful silence. My ears could barely believe what they weren’t hearing when I opened the door, stepped into the garden and listened. It was autumn last year and I had just moved from south-east England to Abernethy Forest in the Scottish Highlands. Occasionally, the wind shushed through the tree tops. Then it was quiet again. I lay in bed that night, letting my ears explore the faint thrum of silence, and for the first time in ages I didn’t reach for my earplugs. In the ensuing months, my ears let go, by degrees, of a tension that I hadn’t been aware I was holding. A 2006 study from the University…

So King Charles is working on a feature-length documentary for Amazon Prime Video, which will apparently detail his philosophy on how to “transform people, places and ultimately the planet”. Times have changed. Before, you waited years for a royal TV project – now they all come along at once. The royal documentary of old was a rare event, eagerly looked forward to, cherished and lovingly analysed – by royalists at least – for years to come: think of the BBC and ITV’s Royal Family in 1969. Now they’re ubiquitous, what with Harry and Meghan’s Netflix programmes – including how to lay a dining table in someone else’s house in California by Meghan. There now seem to be almost as many Windsors as Kardashians on screen, with shows ranging from the…

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Gone are the times when you used to just create for your own indulgence,” says Carlos Acosta. Now, when it comes to running a major ballet company, and keeping it afloat, “You have to learn from your audience.” Acosta has always been a crowd-pleaser, ever since he took the top prize at the Prix de Lausanne competition in 1990, the auditorium erupting in cheers at the then 16-year-old Cuban’s Don Quixote solo. He went on to fire up adoring audiences around the world, settling at London’s Royal Ballet for 17 years, but making global guest appearances as one of the few genuine ballet superstars. He’s talking to me from an unstarry grey office in Birmingham. But even the unflattering rectangle of a video call can’t dampen his crinkle-eyed smile, and…

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