Innehållsförteckning för 1 August 2025 från Guardian Weekly

“It’s really slow and frustrating, but there will be no doubting the court’s conclusion While Palestinians in Gaza die from starvation each day and a growing number of legal scholars, aid officials and politicians have begun describing Israel’s actions as genocide, a definitive ruling on the question by the world’s top court will be a long time coming. Experts on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said a judgment on whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is unlikely before the end of 2027 at the earliest, amid warnings that the international community should not use this as an excuse to put off action. Israel was due to present its rebuttal to the genocide charge brought by South Africa on Monday, but the court has granted its lawyers a six-month…

Last Thursday morning, Komsan Prachan’s two children would normally have been in school. Instead, their village in north-eastern Thailand had been put on high alert. Fighting had broken out on the country’s disputed border with Cambodia. Local officials cancelled classes and sent messages over loudspeakers telling residents to prepare to evacuate. Komsan and his wife, Rungrat, went to fetch eight-year-old Pongsapak and 14-year-old Taksatorn from school. They were heading home to collect the children’s grandparents when they stopped briefly at a petrol station in Sisaket province. Rungrat nipped into the shop with the children to get some snacks, while Komsan waited in the car. It was then that a rocket hit. Rungrat, Taksatorn and Pongsapak were among eight people killed. “My wife is like the other half of my life,”…

Mayá is about 60 years old, has three children and more grandchildren than she can count. As the matriarch of the Korubo community in the Javari valley, Brazil, she led her people’s first contact with the outside world in 1996, when they connected with the federal National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (Funai). She still lives in the Amazon, but on 12 June she travelled to nearby Tabatinga, in Amazonas state, to seek medical assistance. The town is a common destination for members of her community, who are still vulnerable to “white” diseases – illnesses introduced by outsiders – that continue to kill children nearly 30 years after contact. Uncertain whether she would return, she left behind a mysterious electronic device, which she uses to listen to messages in Portuguese or…

ON THE MORNING OF FRIDAY 13 JUNE, a few hours after Israel launched a volley of missiles towards Tehran, one of Donald Trump’s first calls was to the emir of Qatar. Trump hoped that Sheikh Tamim could persuade the president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, to engage in a negotiated solution. Pezeshkian refused. Iran would be willing to talk, but would not negotiate under fire. Over the next few days, the Qataris spoke regularly to President Trump and the Iranian leadership. “We were busy,” a senior Qatari diplomat told me, with some understatement. The risks to the region were high, but to Qatar they were “existential”, he said. Qatar is a tiny country. Most of its immense wealth comes from the undersea gasfield that it shares with nearby Iran, and the…

Sitting looking over a sparkling river, my 92-year-old mother and I were chatting about little things. The lovely day, the need for a dry-cleaning drop and kookaburras. Then she pointed at a blond beach bend and said: “Scatter me there when I’m dead.” I responded: “It’s a beautiful spot, Mum – do you want some cake?” I was not being glib in this confronting conversation. It was afternoon teatime and this is how my family do chats; we go from cake to carking it. We combine the big, the small and the space beyond. Besides, I already knew that’s where she wanted to end up. We’ve always been a family who goes there. Including on the two big topics of life – sex and death. There was no big “sex…

✱ All solutions published next week Across 7 So, Tutu’s Q&A challenged how things are (6,3) 8 Writing ‘Happy Birthday’ or something else that’s sweet (5) 10 Having disrobed, Bea Arthur lit wee pipe (7) 11 Start to consume last of fine Rioja (Spanish red) (3,4) 12 Confers great honour upon what foreign actor does (4) 13 Lie about where the booze is stored: that’ll get the message across (5-5) 15 Quiche Eaters Society included Amol Rajan etc? (7) 16 A little diaphanous top, gaping: that’ll do now (7) 18 Protective material later found to be explosive? (6,4) 21 Lead character in Zorba? (4) 23 ‘Aviatrix’, very cancelled, needing replacement – but what’s she piloting? (3,4) 24 Regular characters in Jamaican On Ice (7) 25 Italian madam said something like…

1 US/UK Trump tells Israel to let in ‘every ounce of food’ to Gaza Donald Trump told Israel to allow “every ounce of food” into Gaza as he acknowledged there is “real starvation” in the territory. During a visit to Britain, the US president contradicted Benjamin Netanyahu after the Israeli prime minister claimed it was a “bold-faced lie” to say Israel was causing hunger in Gaza. In meetings with Keir Starmer – including a rambling 70-minute press conference at Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland – the president also said he was losing patience with Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine and vowed to impose sanctions on Russia’s trading partners within 10-12 days if there was no ceasefire. He heaped praise on Starmer, but in a domestic intervention that will…

PALESTINIANS REACTED WITH wariness after Israel began a limited, daily pause in fighting in three populated areas of Gaza last Sunday to allow what Benjamin Netanyahu described as a “minimal” amount of aid into the territory. Scores of Palestinians have died of starvation in recent weeks in a crisis attributed by humanitarian organisations and the UN to Israel’s blockade of almost all aid into the territory. The World Food Programme (WFP) said 90,000 women and children were in urgent need of treatment for malnutrition and that one in three people were going without food for days. The Israeli military said it had begun a “tactical pause” in the densely populated areas of Gaza City, Deir al-Balah and Muwasi to “increase the scale of humanitarian aid” into the territory. The pause…

It was last year that Valentyn Velykyi noticed Russia’s war with Ukraine was getting closer. In early summer it arrived on his doorstep. “You could hear explosions day and night. Recently missiles started flying over my house. There’s a rumbling sound. You can see a trail in the sky,” the 72-year-old recalled. Velykyi’s home is in the small village of Maliyivka. It is located on the administrative border between Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk provinces in central-eastern Ukraine. Once Russian troops were far away. Recently they have crept nearer, besieging the city of Pokrovsk and capturing one grassy meadow after another. Europe’s biggest war since 1945 continues to rage. Battles are fought across a frontline almost 1,000km long. In recent months, the Kremlin has stepped up its bombardment of Ukraine’s cities and…

The emergence of a rightwing populist party in Japan’s upper house election on 20 July running on a Trump-style “Japanese First” slogan has raised concerns of a backlash against the growing foreign presence in the country. The party, Sanseito, has successfully tapped into unease around an expanding immigrant population and a huge influx of tourists after the pandemic. But many see the underlying cause as economic insecurity among a population that both understands the need for overseas labour and visitors, and feels anxiety at the changes they bring and symbolise. Sanseito’s new contingent of 14 upper house lawmakers, up from a single seat in the previous election, is undoubtedly a breakthrough, but still leaves it a minor force in the 248-seat chamber. Its success comes against the backdrop of a…

Every Monday and Tuesday morning, Bosede Oluwaokere, 48, wakes up at home in Ilorin city in west Nigeria, gets dressed and walks to a nearby stream. She sits beneath a tree and pulls her skirt up around her thighs. For the next six hours she stays in the same spot waiting for a specific type of fly to land on her, so she can catch it using a small plastic tube. Oluwaokere is a human flycatcher – or human landing catch, as the World Health Organization (WHO) terms it – which is considered the “gold standard” for collecting black flies. Black flies, which breed near rivers, are blood-sucking insects that spread the debilitating neglected tropical disease onchocerciasis, or river blindness. When someone is bitten by an infected black fly, the…

It has united luminaries of the far right, from media personality Tucker Carlson to activist Laura Loomer, from tech billionaire Elon Musk to congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Typically unwavering in support of Donald Trump, all have criticised his administration’s handling of files about the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But across the US, a more complicated picture emerges, serving as a reminder that – like any other political constituency – Trump voters are not a monolith. Some of the president’s supporters are undoubtedly animated by the Epstein issue and urging Congress to push for greater transparency. But others remain fiercely loyal to a president they believe is delivering low inflation, strong border security and sweeping reversals of progressive policies. They are willing to take White House advice to “trust in…

STUDENT LIFE IS HARD. Making new friends is hard. Writing essays is hard. Admin is hard. Budgeting is hard. Finding out what trousers exist in the world other than black ones is also, apparently, hard. Fortunately, for an AI-enabled generation of students, help with the complexities of campus life is just a prompt away. If you are really stuck on an essay or can’t decide between management consulting or a legal career, or need suggestions on what you can cook with tomatoes, mushrooms, beetroot, mozzarella, olive oil and rice, then ChatGPT is there. It will to listen to you, analyse your inputs, and offer up a perfectly structured paper, a convincing cover letter, or a workable recipe for tomato and mushroom risotto with roasted beetroot and mozzarella. I know this…

It felt like deja vu when Chloe Kelly smashed the ball into the back of the net, winning the game for the Lionesses and signalling the end of the Women’s Euro 2025 final. England beat Spain after a tense penalty shootout. The word of the tournament was “resilience”, declared TV presenter Gabby Logan after the game. It is hard to argue with that. It was as though the team had written a list of milestones they were ticking off as the tournament progressed. They are the first English senior team to defend their title, and the first to win a major tournament on foreign soil. Their coach, Sarina Wiegman, simply said: “A team is what we really are. We can win by any means.” And that positivity was infectious. They…

“What I love about the Opry is there’s still room to grow – they’re trying to change IT’S THE ONLY AMERICAN RADIO SHOW THAT’S BEEN ON THE AIR FOR 100 YEARS, an institution that launched the country music industry as we know it and a stage production that made country fans flock to Nashville in the first place – and keeps them coming for a singular experience today. “I somehow understood the weight of what I was stepping into,” says Marty Stuart of the Grand Ole Opry, specifically the first night he played in 1972 as a mandolin-playing prodigy sitting in with bluegrass star Lester Flatt’s band. Stuart went on to become a country star, and Opry member himself, and has now embraced the role of elder on the show:…

I am limited to one pan and a burner when I camp. What shall I make? Maxwell, by email Whatever your set-up, a considered mobile store-cupboard of spices, stock cubes, oil, grains, pasta, tins of coconut milk and the like will really come into its own. Got tinned tomatoes? Make shakshuka for a campside breakfast. “We always take a lightly spiced onion relish and add that to tinned tomatoes for the base,” says Ryan Cole, executive chef and co-owner of Salsify at The Roundhouse in Camps Bay, South Africa. Otherwise, he’ll use long-life or nut milk to whip up breakfast pancakes: “That’s super-simple.” Mitch Tonks, founder and CEO of Rockfish, is no stranger to confined cooking arrangements: “I live on a boat, so I’m used to limited space. That’s why…

Across 1 Bog (4) 3 Rugby position (5-3) 8 I’ve made a little mistake! (4) 9 Spittoon – so rid cup (anag.) (8) 11 Selfless spelling? (5,5) 14 Gorgeous (6) 15 Remorseless (6) 17 Temperature measurer? (10) 20 Euphoria (8) 21 Gumbo (4) 22 Composer’s eerier choice? (5,3) 23 Long walk (4) Down 1 Lunar steps – dance move (8) 2 Punishment postponement (8) 4 Colourful tropical bird (6) 5 Serviette holder (6,4) 6 Chance (4) 7 Castle (4) 10 Rowdy type (4-6) 12 Naked show-off! (8) 13 Arriving unbuilt (as in furniture) (4-4) 16 Toiler (6) 18 College dance (4) 19 Outbuilding (4) Solution No 17,220…

NHS Row over patient safety during doctors’ strike NHS bosses and the British Medical Association accused each other of endangering patients during the five-day resident doctors’ strike, which began last Friday. Their war of words centres on “derogations”, local agreements under which doctors who have joined the strike can cross picket lines to provide clinical care in a hospital. Thousands of resident – formerly called junior – doctors in England joined the stoppage, part of their campaign for a 29% pay rise, which was due to end at 7am on Wednesday. The turnout on picket lines was thought to be lower than during last year’s mass strike and there was hope within government that the impact might be mitigated. The public were urged to keep coming forward for NHS care…

When North Korea fired multiple ballistic missiles from its eastern coast in May, South Korea’s response was swift. Within hours, Seoul joined Washington and Tokyo in condemning the launch as a “serious threat” to regional peace. But just weeks earlier, when a North Korean KN-23 missile – designed to strike South Korean targets – hit a residential building in Kyiv, killing 12 civilians, Seoul said nothing. That silence fits a broader pattern. There was no response when Russia reportedly deployed a surface-to-air missile system to protect Pyongyang, nor when Ukrainian intelligence revealed Russian instructors were training North Korean drone pilots on home soil, even as Kim Jong-un voiced “ unconditional support ” for Moscow. Relations between the North and South remain tense and the muted response has raised questions from…

Queens of England England’s triumphant women’s football team were honoured with a reception at 10 Downing Street on Monday evening in celebration of the successful defence of their European title. The Lionesses became the first senior England football team to win a major trophy on foreign soil and the first to win back-to-back titles when they defeated Spain on penalties in Basel last Sunday. The team returned to their hotel base in Zurich on Sunday night to celebrate with their families and friends. Their reception at No 10 was hosted by the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, and the sports minister, Stephanie Peacock, with players, coaches and representatives from the Football Association invited. The prime minister, Keir Starmer, said: “The Lionesses have once again captured the hearts of the nation.…

The Anthropocene is a new term used by scientists to describe our age. While scientific experts argue about the start date, many point to about 200 years ago, when the accelerated effects of human activity on the ecosphere were turbocharged by the Industrial Revolution. Our planet is said to have crossed into a new epoch: from the Holocene to the Anthropocene, the age of the human. The strata of rock being created under our feet today will reveal the impact of human activity long after we are gone. Future geologists will find radioactive isotopes from nuclear-bomb tests, huge concentrations of plastics, the fallout from the burning of fossil fuels and vast deposits of cement used to build our cities. Mean-while, a report by the World Wide Fund for Nature and…

Venezuelans who the Trump administration expelled to El Salvador’s most notorious mega-prison endured “state-sanctioned torture”, lawyers for some of the men have said, as more stories emerge about the horrors they faced during captivity. When José Manuel Ramos Bastidas – one of 252 Venezuelan men the US sent to El Salvador’s most notorious mega-prison – made it back to El Tocuyo last Tuesday, the first thing he did was put his arms around his family. His wife, son and mother were wearing the bright blue shirts they had printed with a photo of him. It was the first time they had hugged him since he left Venezuela last year. And it was the first time they could be sure he was alive and well since he disappeared into the Centro…

Donald Trump’s victory in last November’s US presidential election presented Keir Starmer, Britain’s Labour prime minister, with a choice – and an opportunity. Either cosy up to a man whose obnoxious, hard-right, ultranationalist policies are inimical to UK security and foreign policy interests, economic prosperity and democratic values; or risk a rupture with the US, a longstanding but overbearing ally, and seize the moment to redefine Britain’s place in the world, primarily through reintegration in Europe. Starmer made the wrong call – and Britain has paid a heavy price ever since. The cost to national dignity and the public purse was on painful show last weekend as Trump, pursued by the Epstein scandal and angry protesters, made an expensively policed, ostensibly private visit to his golf courses in Scotland. On…

Many nations already enshrine a right not to be defrauded or deceived. If a company sells you a new medicine, falsely claiming that it prevents cancer, it can be punished. If a firm convinces you to buy a new smartphone, saying that it has state-of-the-art features when it doesn’t, it will have violated the law. But in the current era, many companies are taking our time and money not by defrauding or deceiving us, but by practising the dark art of manipulation. They hide crucial terms in fine print. They make it easy for you to subscribe to a service, but extremely hard for you to cancel. They use “drip pricing ”, by which they quote you an initial number, getting you to commit to the purchase, only to add…