Innholdsfortegnelse for 19th March 2021 i Guardian Weekly

Marvin Hagler World champion boxer who dominated the middleweight division for much of the 1980s and legally changed his first name to ‘Marvelous’. He died on 13 March, aged 66. Wilhelmina Cole Holladay Influential networker and founder of Washington’s National Museum of Women in the Arts. She died on 6 March, aged 98. Hamed Bakayoko Ivory Coast prime minister, appointed to the position less than a year ago. He died on 10 March aged 56. Murray Walker High-pitched British sports commentator who was the UK’s voice of Formula One motor racing for two decades. He died on 13 March, aged 97. Lou Ottens Dutch engineer credited with inventing the audio cassette tape and playing a major role in the development of the first CD. He died on 6 March, aged…

Stories about people getting blood clots after having the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine have become a source of anxiety among European leaders. After a report on a death and three hospitalisations in Norway, which found serious blood clotting in some adults who had received the vaccine, several European countries including France, Germany and Italy temporarily suspended the jab. Some anxiety about a new vaccine is understandable, and suspected reactions should be investigated. But in the circumstances we need to think slow as well as fast, and resist drawing causal links between events where none may exist. As Ireland’s deputy chief medical officer, Ronan Glynn, stressed, there is no proof that this vaccine causes blood clots. It’s a common human tendency to attribute a causal effect between events. So when the European Medicines…

Ten years after a tsunami killed more than 18,000 people on the north-east coast of Japan, Noriyuki Suzuki returned to the spot where his daughter was swept to her death. Mai was 12 when she died in one of the most harrowing stories to emerge from the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and subsequent meltdown at Fukushima nuclear power plant. On the day of what became known as the triple disaster, Mai was at Okawa primary school. Instead of leading children up a nearby hill away from danger, teachers decided it was safe to stay. “She was small for her age, but even so she loved playing mini-basketball,” he said of Mai. “She always had a smile on her face and she was kind to her younger sister.” Suzuki was at…

The anger sparked by images of police pinning protesters to the floor at Clapham Common in London last Saturday is matched for many by sheer disbelief. How could the Met have got it so wrong? This was a peaceful vigil to mourn the death of Sarah Everard and highlight endemic violence against women. That the man charged with her abduction and murder is one of its officers made it even more necessary for the service to police sensitively and appropriately. Yet instead of working with organisers hoping to create a safe and socially distanced event, they threatened them with large fines. The vast majority of attendees were masked and acting responsibly. The Met compounded the anger with a statement blaming the participants, which both a government adviser and a Tory…

The turning point in Julie Felix’s career came in 1975. A student at Rambert ballet school in London, she was selected to dance in Rudolf Nureyev’s production of Sleeping Beauty with the London Festival Ballet (now the English National Ballet). Nureyev was the god of British ballet – and he lived up to his reputation on the first day of rehearsal, Felix recalls. “He was late, but everybody said he was always late. All of a sudden, the doors flew open and in he came. He was well renowned for these big boots he used to wear, and a big fur coat. He took the coat off like a matador and threw it so it slid across the dance studio floor. Everybody jumped up and stood to attention. He was…

It is no accident that during the pandemic – this extended, unstable period of losses – many books about grief are being published. Grief is a spur to a writer: a means of working through mourning and, in some cases, of continuing a person’s life on the page. There can be no prescription for grief, no “how to” wisdom, although psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross observed, in 1969, that it tends to evolve through five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. She was also, later, at pains to point out that grief is personal: “There is not a typical response to loss as there is no typical loss.” Now, three books on the subject of losing a partner coincide and they are fascinating partly because each is as individual as grief…

It begins with a photograph posted to the “Humans of Syria” Facebook account in 2015 – an image of two young men standing in a windowless room, surrounded by stacks of books. The caption reads: “The secret library of Daraya.” When she encounters it, Istanbul-based journalist Delphine Minoui is transfixed by the sight of this “fragile parenthesis in the midst of war”. Who were these young men? What is it that they were seeking? In 2012 Daraya, little more than 10km from Damascus, was besieged by Syrian government forces. Over the next four hellish years, 40 young Syrian revolutionaries embarked on a remarkable project, rescuing books from the bombed-out ruins of their town. There is something seductive about the idea of knowledge as a bulwark against brutal force, and it’s…

Last Saturday evening in the UK, thousands of women gathered to mourn the life of Sarah Everard, who was taken from the street and killed while walking home at about 9pm on the evening of 3 March. Everard’s abduction and the confirmation of her death prompted a wave of grief in Britain. Despair for the 33-year-old, combined with fury that violent men still make the streets a dangerous place to be a woman. It also prompted thousands on social media to share the heartbreaking truth that male harassment of women is a daily occurrence. Will this moment – and the anger felt by women – prompt men to change their behaviour? We look back at the fallout from the case in the UK as well as at protests around the world:…

ENTOMOLOGY Giant red cricket named in honour of Jacinda Ardern A new species of wētā – a giant flightless cricket that is endemic to New Zealand – has been named Hemiandrus jacinda in honour of Jacinda Ardern for being Labour-party red in colour and “long-limbed”. Steven Trewick, a professor in evolutionary ecology at Massey University in New Zealand and the scientist who named and formally described the insect, said it had struck him for “reflecting traits of the prime minister”. The prime minister’s office said Ardern was “very honoured”. A spokesperson added: “A beetle and a lichen, along with an ant in Saudi Arabia, have also been named after her.” The newly discovered species is bigger and more brightly coloured than the 17 ground wētā already recorded in native forests…

Events this week have been a touch paper igniting women’s anger about men’s violence against women and girls and our frustration at the state’s failure to take this issue seriously. Stranger killing accounts for 8%, or one in 12, of all killings of women by men in the UK. Between 2009 and 2018, 119 women were killed by men who were not known to them. Yes, a woman is more likely to be killed by someone she knows – every three days in the UK by a man and every four days by a partner or ex-partner – but following the killing of Sarah Everard, we are being fed a narrative by Metropolitan police chief Cressida Dick that it is “incredibly rare for a woman to be abducted from our…

A terrible scream of pain contorts a little girl’s face and tells the story of the army’s brutal crackdown in Myanmar. Shwe Yote Hlwar, five, is standing beside an open coffin containing the body of her father, Ko Zwe Htet Soe, shot dead by security forces. Her face is a picture of searing, bottomless grief. Women try to help. But there is no comforting her. Who can explain her dad’s needless killing? Shwe’s agonised scream is that of an entire nation. It echoes around the world. Some hear it, many do not. At the UN security council last week, China, backed by Russia, India and Vietnam, blocked outright condemnation again of last month’s military coup and stymied a move towards punitive sanctions. China has invested billions in Myanmar as part…

The outgoing prime minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, was expected to register a comprehensive victory and fourth successive term in office as the Dutch went to the polls in national elections this week, with voting spread over three days due to coronavirus restrictions. Polls in the run-up to the election predicted Rutte, who has headed three coalition governments since 2010, and his centre-right People’s party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) would win twice as many parliamentary seats as his nearest rival. The VVD has ruled out working with the second-largest party, the anti-Islam Freedom party of Geert Wilders, who was expected to win 12-14% of the vote and about the same number of seats as in 2017. Polls suggested Rutte may again need three coalition partners, as he did…

By day, the field of leeks looks like any other. But, as the sun sets, blue and red light, mixed with invisible ultra-violet (UV) radiation, transforms the scene into a multicoloured landscape. This LED light show is not just for effect. For a couple of hours every evening the lights shine across the 20,000 sq metre field, in Lelystad in the Netherlands, in a bid to make the leeks grow better. In a light installation that brings art and science together, four solar-powered units emit a tailor-made spectrum across the leafy vegetables. The product of two years’ collaboration between Dutch artist and designer Daan Roosegaarde and plant biologists, Grow showcases a “light recipe” that helps crops grow better by effectively lengthening sunlight hours. “Light is all about communication, and plants…

On 26 February, the Faroe Islands became officially free of Covid-19. Since July 2020, our archipelago has experienced three waves of the virus, and each time the number of cases has declined quickly. In the beginning this looked like luck. Now, it seems more like the result of a successful strategy. How did we manage it? In some ways, our response to Covid-19 followed the same map as other countries: testing, contact tracing, lockdowns, public health campaigns and a reorganisation of our health sector. But, in other respects, our approach was unique. Unlike most other governments, we decided early on that we wanted to influence the behaviour of our citizens by issuing recommendations – not by making laws. Trust breeds trust – or at least that has been true in…

Neither happy nor glorious after Oprah ‘chat’ My heart goes out to Harry and Meghan (Big story, 12 March). It was clearly painful for them to express the honest answers they gave to Oprah. Far from advocating removing the monarchy, I would suggest that the monarchy needs to be “gentle” with themselves and enter 2021 with more honesty, frankness and dare to be vulnerable. It is the “institution” that needs to be dissolved and reformed with professionals who will protect and serve with forthrightness, loyalty and compassion. Nicola ButlerRingwood, Hampshire, England, UK • The Meghan interview (Big story, 12 March) raises some serious questions and some that aren’t. It does seem strange that someone who is no stranger to the limelight should react so badly to negative publicity. This was…

★★★★☆ It’s not just the sheer number of people (my guess is it’s around 1,000) that shocks me, it’s that everyone’s standing. You can dance too and, if you want, hold a drink at the same time. It’s hard not to feel a little uneasy in the venue’s soupy humidity. But in a city where they’ve barely had to worry about the coronavirus for the past 10 months, it’s an incredible privilege to be standing here. We’ve all gathered for something called the SNACK Weekender, which features a line-up of mainly DJs but, really, most of us are here to see Tame Impala Sound System. It’s only the second time this iteration of WA’s psych-rock icons have played live to a crowd – the first was the night before. Developed…

Anyone who grew up in Scotland in the 70s and early 80s can tell you about the lighthouse keepers of the remote Flannan Isles in the Outer Hebrides in the early 20th century. The story of the three men who settled down to eat only to seemingly vanish into thin air haunted my childhood – and it would appear that of Emma Stonex too. The author’s first novel under her own name transports the location to the Cornish coast and updates the action, plausibly, to 1972 – an era when mobile phones don’t exist – before flashing forward to 1992 when an investigative journalist believes he has uncovered the truth but needs the men’s very different widows and girlfriends to prove it. These tweaks apart, events remain unnervingly similar: the…

When is an album not an album? Why, when it’s a “non-fungible token”, a new form of digital swag, related to cryptocurrency, being sold by artists and musicians such as Kings of Leon and Grimes, left. They are called NFTs for short, but why? The Latin verb fungi means to discharge some office or perform some task, and so fungibilis means “useful”, and English “fungible” describes useful things that are interchangeable. The OED says the word was first used in English in 1649, though the citation it gives is from a 1676 treatise on maritime law, De Jure Maritimo et Navali, by Charles Molloy and Robert White. Of money, they write: “Take away this fungible Instrument from the service of our necessities, and how shall we exercise our Charity?” Money…

NOTES & QUERIES Don’t get in a flap about the present and the future Are our lives controlled by random events? If you throw dice a million times, the numbers will be random. If you throw 10 times, you may get a pattern but each throw is still random. If pigeons poop on your head three times in one day, that is still random. Stay away from pigeons. Reiner JaaksonOakville, Ontario, Canada • Ask your father and mother. Philip WelsbyEdinburgh, Scotland, UK • If they are, how can one know? Edward WolfersCorrimal, NSW, Australia • What is necessary to understand is not that the future is arbitrarily formed by any separate acts of the present, but that the whole of the future is in unbroken continuity with the present, as…

A third wave of the pandemic is advancing swiftly across much of Europe. As a result, many nations – bogged down by sluggish vaccination campaigns – are witnessing sharp rises in infection rates and numbers of cases. The rate in the EU is at its highest level since the beginning of February, with the spread of new variants of the virus being blamed for much of the increase. Several countries are now set to impose strict new lockdown measures – in contrast to the UK, which is beginning to emerge slowly from its current bout of shop and school closures and sports bans. In Italy, authorities recorded more than 27,000 new cases and 380 deaths last Friday. “More than a year after the start of the health emergency, we are…

Ghulam Nabi Butt may be 90 years old, but he has never George Harrison stayed on his houseboat in October 1966. It was on one of Butt’s first historic Clermont houseboats – moored on the northern bank of Dal Lake in Srinagar, Ravi Shankar and was taught to play the sitar, marking the beginning of a musical collaboration that would last decades. Harrison’s guestbook message still hangs on the wall: “To Mr Butt, with thanks for a very peaceful stay.” Yet Butt’s Clermont fleet, like the hundreds of houseboats stationed in Srinagar, face an existential threat. In an attempt to save the ecology of Kashmir’s waterbodies such as Dal Lake, which is shrinking owing to pollution and climate change, authorities have begun to enforce a decade-old ban on the reconstruction…

US president Joe Biden did the world a favour last week when he signed a bill handing $1.9tn of rescue funds to state and federal agencies, millions of students and workers and the US vaccination programme. Over the rest of the year, the funds are expected to lift US national income by between 3% and 4%, and put the economy back on the trajectory it would have been on had the pandemic never happened. More than that, the effect on trade from rising US imports and exports will power the global economy ahead by an extra percentage point, adding almost another quarter to its 2021 growth rate, according to the latest forecast from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The Paris-based thinktank estimates that the world economy will expand…

Amy Locane is struggling to make sense of it all. The actor and mother of two children knows she committed a crime with devastating consequences, so she accepted it when she pretty much lost everything as a result – doing her time in jail uncomplainingly. The one thing she can’t accept is that, after being released and living in the community for five years as a model citizen, she is back in prison for the same crime. It is a situation that one legal expert described as “unheard of”. In September 2020, Locane was re-sentenced to eight years in jail. “I’m not really sure what’s going on,” she tells me from the Edna Mahan correctional facility for women. “I walk around in a daze. It’s really messing with my mind. I…

The cover of St Vincent’s 2011 album, Strange Mercy, depicts an open mouth and teeth shrink-wrapped in white latex. It provoked much fascination. Was it Annie Clark’s mouth? One song involved a pearl-handled whip, wielded for pain over pleasure. Perhaps it was a BDSM thing? The startled questions showed the overnight evolution of Clark’s image from the “asexual Pollyanna” (her words) of her first two records. Over the following decade, she restyled herself as a white-haired “near-future cult leader” and then a “dominatrix at the mental institution”. She transcended her indie-rock origins to work with David Byrne, Taylor Swift and Dua Lipa, date the model Cara Delevingne and front Tiffany campaigns. Confounding such a journey into celebrity, her pyrotechnic pop got stranger and stronger. As her publicist counted column inches, Clark…

1 The explorer Wystan “Gin” Rummy excavated the tip of this number ziggurat in the steamy jungles of the cloud forest. It’s easy to see what the next number is in this number ziggurat: 1210*212003211000421010005210010006210001000 But what is the missing number, marked by *, effaced by careless excavation? And why could its constructor have added numbers (up to a point, so to speak) at the base but not at the top? 2 Wordpool PALYNOLOGY a) study of exit strategiesb) study of marshesc) study of pollend) study of fossils 3 E pluribus unum Rearrange the letters of DATE SUGAR to make a single word. 4 Missing Links Find a word that follows the first word in the clue and precedes the second, in each case making a fresh word or phrase.…

Prep 40 min Cook 1 hr 35 min Chill 2 hr+ Serves 10 For the base 175g digestive biscuits60g desiccated coconut100g unsalted butter, melted For the filling 600g cream cheese, at room temperature150g caster sugarZest of 1 pink, gratedgrapefruit30g cornflour3 eggs1½ tsp vanilla extract160ml full-fatcoconut milk For the topping 1 pink grapefruit1½ tbsp castersugar60ml orange juice200ml double cream½ tbsp icing sugar1 handful flakedcoconut, toasted Over the years, I’ve come to love and appreciate the refreshing tartness of grapefruit. While it has firmly cemented its position as one of my breakfast staples, its sharpness brings some much needed balance to rich and creamy desserts, too. Method Heat the oven to 180C (160C fan)/gas 4. Grease a 20cm springform tin and line the base with baking paper. Crush the biscuits in a food…