Innehållsförteckning för 21 March 2025 från Guardian Weekly

Shadow play People view the full moon as a section moves into shadow during a lunar eclipse, before dawn, at Stonehenge stone circle in Wiltshire, England, last Friday. The eclipse in much of the world was only partial, but observers in North and South America were treated to a total lunar eclipse. Do you have a recently taken picture you’d like to share with Guardian Weekly? Scan the QR code or visit theguardian.com/pictures-guardian-weekly and we’ll print your best submissions…

Keir Starmer accused Vladimir Putin of dragging his feet over agreeing to a ceasefire with Ukraine last Saturday as international pressure grew on the Russian president to enter talks. The UK prime minister said there was a limit to the length of time Putin could prevaricate, after he convened a virtual summit with 29 other international leaders who agreed to take plans for a peacekeeping force to an “operational phase”. Starmer said military chiefs would meet in London on Thursday to “put strong and robust plans in place to swing in behind a peace deal and guarantee Ukraine’s future security”. Those who took part in the virtual summit included the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Afterwards, Starmer said “new commitments” had been made on both…

MUSTAFA WAS 16 WHEN HE WAS DETAINED AND BEATEN BY THE POLICE FOR THE FIRST TIME. It was early 2011, and the first stirrings of the Arab spring had grown into anti-government demonstrations across the Middle East. In Syria, a sense of anxious anticipation hung in the air, and the government was responding with propaganda films and TV shows designed to fire up nationalist sentiment. A friend of Mustafa’s hired him to play an extra in one of these shows. The job didn’t pay much, but it was more fun than the long hours Mustafa spent working in a restaurant kitchen. Tall and handsome, with dark eyes and long eyelashes, Mustafa dreamed that maybe one day he could join the long list of Syrians who starred in Arab TV dramas.…

Has it ever struck you as interesting the amount of dinosaur products that are marketed to boys and unicorn products to girls? I recently visited the wonderful Horniman Museum in London, only to discover that it had been taken over by something called Dinosaur rEvolution. Hertfordshire zoo offers a World of Dinosaurs, there is the “ roarsome” theatre show Dinosaur World: Live, a dinosaur-themed park in Norfolk called ROARR!, Dinosaur World in Torquay, Dinosaur Park near Swansea, Dino Park in Dumfries – the list is as long as the neck of a brontosaurus. Parents will have noticed that unicorns are equally ubiquitous, and marketed exclusively and equally extensively to little girls, usually swathed in pink. There is no evidence that unicorns ever existed – at least not those creatures of…

It is late afternoon, March 1945, when a German schoolboy cycling home through the dusk sees a number of women under armed guard at the verge. The boy has grown used to the regular transport of workers to the munitions plant beyond town and instinctively senses that this group is different; out of place and suspicious. But by now the war is in its death throes and abnormality has become a given. Allied forces are pouring in, foreign labour is bleeding out. Everyone on Lüneburg Heath, south of Hamburg, seems depleted and confused, no longer sure who belongs and who doesn’t. Hitler’s war machine was propped up by millions of workers, predominantly brought in from Poland and Ukraine and forcibly deployed to canneries, factories and farms. Once the Deed Is…

I am on the last stretch of my walk and I stop to take a breather beside a dry-stone wall. A robin, feathers arrayed like armour against the cold wind, sings from a small branch. In the trees, the song seems unreasonably loud when compared with the size of the bird, a piercing call to help establish a breeding territory. The lane climbs higher, through a notch in the ridge where a wall of rock shows the steeply dipping strata. Then the view to the south opens out to a panorama of the harbour town of Porthmadog. Separating land and sea is a narrow causeway, the Cob, which carries a road and the Ffestiniog narrow-gauge railway. Built in about 1810 by the landowner William Madocks, the bank was originally intended…

Across 1 eg Dad’s mum and Mum’s dad (12) 9 Semiquavers and minims (5) 10 Lesser in stature (7) 11 In pain (4) 12 One kept in Zenda or Azkaban? (8)  14 Without warning (6) 15 eg 1ac (6) 18 Systematized (8)  20 Astonish (4) 22 Adding ten per cent, perhaps (7) 23 Bone in your bonce (5) 24 Paid attention – like tomato purée (12) Down 2 Called it a day – stopped working (7) 3 Olfactory organ (4) 4 Choux or shortcrust (6) 5 Location by the byway? (8) 6 Material for tights (5) 7 In an unexpected manner (12) 8 Authentic sis (anag) – rah-rah (12) 13 Interim (8) 16 Leaves for lunch? (7) 17 Elevation – stature (6)  19 Become red, or become green? (5)  21…

1 US/RUSSIA Trump to talk with Putin on Ukraine ceasef ire plan Donald Trump was set to speak to Vladimir Putin on Tuesday – with the two expected to discuss territory and control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant – after the Russian president last week pushed back on a US-brokered plan for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine with a series of sweeping conditions he said would need to be met. The US president said on Monday that many elements of a final deal on Ukraine had been agreed but much remained, ahead of the call with his Russian counterpart. “I look very much forward to the call with President Putin,” he wrote on Truth Social. The Kremlin confirmed on Monday that the two leaders were due to speak by phone.…

What do you buy the richest man in the world? The answer, obviously, is the one thing that usually can’t be had for love nor money, and that’s pimping out the presidential office for advertising purposes. Posing with Elon Musk beside a scarlet Tesla parked on the White House driveway, Donald Trump announced that he was buying one of his friend’s cars, despite not being allowed to drive for security reasons, because: “ I just want people to know that you can’t be penalised for being a patriot.” The billionaire currently chainsawing his way through so many ordinary federal workers’ jobs had, he said indignantly, been unfairly treated by people who inexplicably now seem to have turned against his cars. Unedifying as all this was, what’s interesting is that it…

Atosha winced as she recalled the 15 minutes she spent in the fast-flowing Rusizi River, which separates the Democratic Republic of the Congo from Burundi, on a night in late February. “I was terrified,” the 23-year-old said of her journey of about 130 metres, spent clinging to a makeshift float alongside a young man whom she had paid to take her to the Burundian side. “It was my first time crossing that river and I had no option.” Her relief on reaching the riverbank quickly turned to anguish, however, when she learned that her younger sisters, aged 10 and 14, had been swept away by the current. “I stood there and started crying,” said Atosha, one of tens of thousands of Congolese refugees sheltering in a stadium in Cibitoke province,…

Hamouda al-Dahda stands in the ruins of Pasha Palace in Gaza City, where before the war, the golden limestone walls of the 800-year-old building towered above him and the cool vaulted halls held hundreds of historical artefacts. “The palace was like a small paradise on Earth. Now, there is no life here at all and anyone who comes is sad. They can remember what it once was,” the 40-year-old museum director said. There is little left of the palace – a mansion and fortress during Mamluk and Ottoman rule over Gaza and where Napoleon Bonaparte once spent several nights. Israeli bombardment and fighting in Gaza City during late 2023 and early 2024 left just a few sections of wall and an arch standing. Almost nothing remains of the museum. For…

The Unknown Maroon faces west towards a wasteland of bullet-pocked buildings and litter-strewn streets. To the statue’s left, armoured cash transit vans race towards Portau-Prince’s waterfront as the sound of gunfire rings out. To its right sits a deserted school, whose principal was not long ago kidnapped, and a dilapidated concrete panel that once held a plaque honouring the rebel slave celebrated by the bronze sculpture. “In his deeds he was like a lion … and his memory will be blessed forever,” that tribute used to read. Nearly 60 years after its unveiling, the statue of the Unknown Maroon – or the Nèg Mawon as Haitians call it in Kreyòl – stands almost entirely alone on the frontline of a forgotten conflict. He has become one of the most powerful…

The US deported more than 250 mainly Venezuelan alleged gang members to El Salvador despite a US judge’s ruling to halt the flights last Saturday after Donald Trump controversially invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law meant only to be used in wartime. El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, said 238 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and 23 members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13 had arrived and were in custody as part of a deal under which the US will pay the Central American country to hold them in its 40,000-person capacity “terrorism confinement centre”. The confirmation came hours after a US federal judge expanded his ruling temporarily blocking the Trump administration from invoking the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime authority that allows the president broad leeway…

I hate to sound like a prepper, but I feel bound to confess that I’ve been stockpiling food. I think, if you can, you should do the same. I’ve put aside 25kg of rice, 15kg of dried chickpeas, 15kg of bread flour, 7kg of chapati flour, 5kg of oats, 6 litres of vegetable oil, a slab of tinned tomatoes, some nuts and dried fruit. This, with the vegetables we grow, represents about two months’ supply for our family. I hope the chances of having to use our stockpile are small. But I see this hoarding as pro-social. Building a reserve while food is abundant reduces demand in a crisis. Community stockpiling and resilience planning would be better still. But I’m not waiting. Researching my book Regenesis, I learned about the…

What can I do with leftover egg whites? And don’t say meringues! Billowy meringues may be the most high-profile pal of surplus egg whites, but their circle is far wider and more encompassing than those delicate shells. “My immediate thought is chocolate mousse,” says Oliver Costello, co-owner of Toad Bakery in south London. “ White chocolate is quite good here, because the egg whites take its richness down.” It couldn’t be simpler to make, either: “Melt white chocolate in a bain-marie or in bursts in the microwave, and whip some cream to stiff peaks. Fold the melted chocolate into the cream, then whisk egg whites to stiff peaks and fold those in, too.” Chill for three hours, then dig in, perhaps accompanied by a little poached or baked rhubarb. Rosie…

DISABILITY Starmer poised to drive through welfare cuts Keir Starmer was due to unveil drastic cuts to disability benefits on Tuesday, despite deep opposition from Labour MPs and poverty campaigners, and warnings from economists against making kneejerk savings to hit fiscal targets. In the government’s most controversial move yet, it was set to announce a package of changes expected to affect some of the UK’s most severely disabled people. The measures could deny benefits for people who need some help washing themselves, preparing food or remembering to go to the toilet, as ministers attempt to overhaul the welfare system and balance the books. However, Downing Street has denied the plans to cut between £5bn ($6.5bn) and £6bn from the welfare bill were purely the result of the UK’s difficult fiscal…

Under constant attack from drones attached to fibre optic cables, the soldiers scrambled in groups of two or three along hidden tracks or through fields, often walking several kilometres to reach Ukrainian territory. The Ukrainian retreat from the Kursk region, carried out in stages beginning at the start of March, appears to mark the end of one of the most audacious operations of the conflict, and strips Ukraine of one of its few solid bargaining chips in possible peace negotiations with Russia. For seven months, Ukraine held on to a chunk of Russian territory, including the town of Sudzha, which had a prewar population of about 5,000. It was the first time a foreign army had occupied Russian land since the second world war. Russia, with the help of North…

Even on a freezing, rainy day with no match scheduled, the area around Old Trafford in Manchester was abuzz with football fans from far and wide. Just a day after Manchester United revealed their plans for a new 100,000-capacity stadium, there was a sense of excitement at the proposals: the plans promise 92,000 jobs and a large-scale “regeneration” of the area, including 17,000 new homes. “I struggle to find negative things to think about it,” said a 35-year-old architect and local resident, Curtis Martyn. He and his neighbour Sandra Aguilera, 46, who works at Manchester city council, live close to the stadium on Railway Road. They are both enthusiastic about the regeneration plans for the area. “I’m excited about the new quarter; I love the idea of investing in the…

If Robert K Merton, the founding father of American sociology, were alive today, he’d be fascinated by the Donald Trump phenomenon. Scarcely more than 50 days into his second presidential term, hapless Trump provides daily proofs of Merton’s universal “law of unintended consequences”. Rooted in ignorance, error, wilful blindness and self-defeating prediction, Trump’s rash actions produce contradictory, harmful and often opposite results to those he says he wants. The ensuing chaos characterises what may become the briefest honeymoon in White House history. Boomeranging US tariffs – which are to American prosperity what the Titanic was to ocean travel – are the tip of the unintended consequences iceberg. Defiant foreign retaliation has brought stock market crashes and inflation fears – the exact opposite of what Trump promised voters. After Trump’s threats…

Tennis has Break Point. Rugby union has Six Nations: Full Contact. Nascar has Full Speed. Golf has Full Swing. Basketball has Starting 5. Cycling has Tour de France: Unchained. American football has both Quarterback and Receiver. Athletics has Sprint. What do all these documentaries have in common? They have all sprung up in the past five years or so, and are basically all the same show: if they are not full clones of Formula 1: Drive to Survive, they are heavily inspired by it. Drive to Survive (DTS) thus has a claim to be one of the most influential TV documentaries of the past decade, having pioneered a simple but effective format. Every 12 months since 2019, it has delivered a new season – this month it released the seventh…

We swim in oceans of quackery. The media is flooded with misinformation about health and pseudo-diagnoses based on vibes rather than evidence. Books awash with error and supposition swamp our charts, penned by people uniquely unqualified to write them. Our ears are filled with popular podcasts claiming health benefits but really just peddling unregulated dietary supplements. And Robert Kennedy Jr, a man who has spent a lifetime spewing antivaccine jibber-jabber, is now the US secretary of health. Vaccination is arguably the most successful health intervention in history (with the possible exception of sanitation), and we should be basking in the fact that a global pandemic was brought to a close by safe and effective vaccines. But here’s the conundrum: medical diagnoses are on the rise across the board, and this…

Aravindh Chithambaram’s first prize in Prague this month further strengthened India’s growing status as the No 1 chess nation ahead of the United States. The 25-year-old is a late developer with a lower profile than his younger colleagues Gukesh Dommaraju, Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu and Arjun Erigaisi, let alone the former world champion Vishy Anand, but he has joined the quartet near the pinnacle of the rankings, jumping to world No 14 with a 2741 rating. After his win in Prague, where his 6/9 was the only unbeaten score, Aravindh said that he aims for a 2800 rating within two years. That would be world No 3, and India’s top trainer, Ramachandran Ramesh, has called Aravindh “ the most talented Indian after Anand. Self-doubt was his stumbling block, but now he is…

✱ All solutions published next week Across 1 Pain initially going, massage heavenly figure (6) 5 Couple in Costa repeatedly like hot drinks (6) 8 One with needles or fine tip for cotton reels (7) 9 Caught a cheat having a fling? (7) 11 Point of view that’s raised in comment put online (11,4) 12 Make love then get married – terrible fate (4) 13 Noted movie complex for capital (10) 17 Frank with musician’s backing playing twice with feeling (2-8) 18 Despondent: tending to vote Democrat (4) 20 Doctor then signs letter that deals with stress (7,8) 23 Withdraw soldiers to front territory (7) 24 One preparing table, perhaps after opening of Bollinger: it’s bubbly (7)  25 Musician in film on piano (6)  26 Most in pain, group swallowing…