Innholdsfortegnelse for 20th August 2021 i Guardian Weekly

Una Stubbs Sparkling actor whose long, eclectic career ranged from Shakespeare and Summer Holiday to Till Death Us Do Part and Sherlock. She died on 12 August, aged 84. Nanci Griffith American folk-country singer and songwriter best known for Love at the Five and Dime and her album Other Voices, Other Rooms, for which she won a Grammy award in 1994. She died on 13 August, aged 68. Gerd Muller Celebrated footballer who scored 68 goals in 62 appearances for West Germany, including the winning goal in the 1974 World Cup final against Holland. He died on 15 August, aged 75. Maki Kaji Japanese publisher who popularised the numbers puzzle sudoku played by millions around the world. He died on 10 August, aged 69.…

What will it take for Joe Biden to admit he was disastrously wrong about Afghanistan? The US leader struck a defiant pose last week. Sounding like a slightly desperate Olympics coach, he told Afghans it was their country. If they want it, they have to fight for it. In American politics-speak, this is called tough love. Without the love. Biden has more hands-on foreign policy experience than any president since George HW Bush. That doesn’t mean he knows what he’s doing. Opinion polls suggest his abrupt Afghan withdrawal has majority public support. That doesn’t mean Americans will remain in different as the carnage and misery mount. Grim comparisons with the 1975 fall of Saigon abound. Hundreds of thousands are on the move amid a developing refugee crisis. All the signs…

Analysts and experts are warning of many years of instability across Africa, possibly leading to wars and political upheavals, as the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic deepens across the continent. Though many of the likely consequences are yet to become evident, recent unrest in southern Africa, increased extremist violence in the Sahel and growing instability in parts of west Africa can all be attributed in part to the outbreak, observers say. However, the re have also been displays of strong leadership and effective action by large organisations, providing hope that the worst effects of the pandemic may be avoided. “It is a story in two parts,” said Dr Comfort Ero, the Africa programme director at the International Crisis Group. “In the first chapter, the continent appeared more resilient in…

When Cyclone Pam devastated Vanuatu and concrete buildings collapsed, their iron roofing blown away, there was no loss of life in the traditionally built structures known as saeklon haos (cyclone house). Though they normally sleep six, during the 2015 storm up to 30 people were able to squeeze in together, physically supporting the house posts from the inside if needed. Cyclone Pam was the most destructive storm the country has seen, displacing an estimated 65,000 people and damaging or destroying approximately 17,000 buildings. Jean Pascal Wahe, head of the local cultural centre in Tafea province, recalls that after Pam, the saeklon haos in his village on Tanna still stood, having kept him and other villagers safe, even as others were killed by iron roofing. “The saeklon haos is enough for…

Covid-19 cases in the US could soon return to 200,000 a day, the level during the pandemic’s worst days in January and February, the director of the National Institutes of Health warned last Sunday. The daily average of new infections is about 130,000 – a 700% increase since the beginning of July – but Francis Collins said on Fox News that number could increase substantially by September. “I will be surprised if we don’t cross 200,000 cases a day in the next couple of weeks, and that’s heartbreaking,” Collins said. He pleaded anew for the 90 million people who were still unvaccinated to get their shots, calling them “sitting ducks” for a Delta variant that is ravaging the country and showing little sign of letting up. Federal health officials have…

What needs to happen after the IPCC report The IPCC report makes clear that we need to face societal changes on a scale not seen since the second world war (Spotlight, 13 August). To make sure everyone does their bit, we should introduce carbon rationing. Every person should have the same annual carbon allowance and every time they make a carbon transaction (booking a flight, buying a steak or filling a petrol tank and so on), the carbon cost is deducted from their ration. Those with leaner lifestyles can sell their excess ration to others via an official trading site. Each year the ration is reduced, taking us all on a pathway to net zero. Ian Cairns Seaford, England, UK • It is too easy to castigate China as perhaps…

‘Where do you go after you witness death?” Michelle Zauner asks herself in Crying in H Mart, her first book, which opens with the viral New Yorker essay of the same name. Following the loss of her mother Chongmi to cancer, as well as the deaths of her grandmother and aunt, Zauner found herself going regularly to H Mart, the Asian supermarket chain redolent with as many flavours of nostalgia as there are types of instant noodles. Emotionally layered, these pilgrimages are suffused with the grief, anger and anxiety that underpin “the first chapter of the story I want to tell about my mother”. This story is also Zauner’s, showing where she went next, where she comes from and who she is. For the Korean-American writer, musician and founder of…

1 The reciprocal of one digit plus the reciprocal of another digit equals the reciprocal of yet another digit. Which ones? That is: find digits p, q and r such that 1/p + 1/q = 1/r. 2 Wordpool JEREPIGO a) eastern dockerb) crane for unloading ship’s cargoc) protective paint for hullsd) port substitute ORDONNANCE a) test adherence of tiles by tappingb) unit of builder’s noisec) arrangement of partsd) wild boar 3 E pluribus unum Rearrange the letters of CURIOUS SPIEL to make a single word. 4 Dropouts In each case replace each asterisk with a letter to make a word: *R*E*A*D 5 Same Difference Replace each asterisk with a letter to make a word: ******** (cannon) ***I***** (law) 6 Cryptic Diehard, oddly, lifeless (4) 7 Missing Links Find a word…

As the weekend began, few would have predicted it would end on the Sunday evening with the Taliban back in charge of Kabul while US forces scrambled to evacuate personnel. The speed of the advance as the Afghan army seemed to melt away shocked the world and starkly revealed a miscalculation by Joe Biden. The desperate plight of ordinary Afghans, particularly women, who fear what life under Taliban strictures will bring, and the chaos at the capital’s airport are, despite Biden’s defence of his policy and objectives, likely to remain indelible stains on his presidency. The big story Page 10 → The pandemic remains stubbornly with us but slowly we can begin to examine how it may affect societies in the long term. This week we look at the economic fallout from…

ARCHAEOLOGY Ancient grave yields clues to status of non-binary people Analysis of a 1,000-year-old grave in Finland challenges long-held beliefs about gender roles in ancient societies, and may suggest non-binary people were accepted and respected members of their communities According to a study in the European Journal of Archaeology, DNA analysis of remains in a late iron age grave at Suontaka Vesitorninmäki in Hattula, Finland, may have belonged to a high-status non-binary person. Discovered in 1968, the grave contained oval brooches and fragments of woollen clothing suggesting the dead person was dressed in “a typical feminine costume of the era” Unusually, the grave also held a hiltless sword placed on the person’s left side, and another sword buried above the original grave – accoutrements more often associated with masculinity. MEDICAL…

Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban leader freed from a Pakistani jail on the request of the US less than three years ago, has emerged as an undisputed victor of the 20-year war. While Haibatullah Akhundzada is the Taliban’s overall leader, Baradar is its political chief and most public face. He was said to be on his way from his office in Doha to Kabul on Sunday evening. In a televised statement on the fall of Kabul, he said the Taliban’s real test was only just beginning and that they had to serve the nation. Baradar’s return to power embodies Afghanistan’s inability to escape the bloody shackles of its past. Born in Uruzgan province in 1968, he fought in the mujahideen against the Soviets in the 1980 s. After the Russians…

Hours after a court in China sentenced Michael Spavor, a Canadian, to 11 years in prison for espionage, Meng Wanzhou appeared in a Vancouver courtroom, as final arguments began in her fight against extradition to the United States The two cases, while not officially linked, are at the heart of a geopolitical feud between the US and China that has left Canada suffering collateral damage. Michael Spavor and a second Canadian, Michael Kovrig, were arrested by Chinese officials in December 2018, days after Canada arrested the Huawei executive on a US extradition request. China has repeatedly demanded she be released, even though Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, has said his government cannot interfere in the judicial process. But after Spavor’s sentencing on 11 August, Ottawa must grapple with the reality…

TECHNOLOGY Enthusiasm wanes for a virtual future Page 47 → The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report has driven home just how dangerous the climate crisis is. Faced with this unprecedented and unique challenge, the central question is: can we change course rapidly enough to contain the damage and preserve a halfway liveable planet? If the stark findings of the IPCC were not alarming enough, they are all the more so given the mounting evidence that the impetus for large-scale climate action may be ebbing. It had seemed early in the year that the balance of political and economic forces might be swinging in favour of rapid decarbonisation. China, Japan and South Korea had all made net-zero pledges. Donald Trump, the climate-denier-in-chief, had lost the White House. The Biden…

Earlier this year, a bipartisan panel appointed by the US Congress advised against the “precipitous withdrawal” of American troops from Afghanistan. The panel warned of grave consequences if Joe Biden allowed himself to be driven by dates and a strict timeline, rather than a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground. Mr Biden, who had inherited a 1 May exit deadline from Donald Trump, ignored this advice, naming instead a new date. All US forces would be gone by 11 September, exactly two decades after the invasion prompted by the al-Qaida attack on the World Trade Center. A timetable bound up with domestic political symbolism has handed over Afghanistan to the Taliban and millions of Afghans to a frightening and unstable future. In the spring, a Biden administration official said:…

MUSIC Jimmy Cliff, the godfather of reggae Page 55 → Sex Education is back with a bang. Several, in fact. The Netflix hit’s third series starts with an epic sex montage. There’s sex in a car; in a living room; in a variety of teenage bedrooms. There are casual encounters, committed relationships, sex together, alone, virtually, playing the drums and with a sci-fitheme. It is a symphony of shags, an opera of orgasms, all set to the thumping beat of the Rubinoos ’ I Think We’re Alone Now. As the old saying goes, there’s nowt so queer as folk, and Sex Education is determined to prove it. The Netflix comedy-drama only began in 2019, but thanks to its cross-generational, multinational appeal, it already seems like part of the cultural landscape.…

‘The feeling of being ‘in between things’ is good for [writers],” said Elif Shafak in a 2014 interview. This delight in liminal spaces forms the bedrock of her 1 2th novel, which charts the moving story of Kostas and Defne Kazantzakis, young lovers in a painfully divided postcolonial Cyprus – one Greek and Christian, the other Turkish and Muslim – and the emotional price they continue to pay after moving to England. Early on, Shafak hits us with a perfect juxtaposition of beauty and violence, imagining the day when two corpses, lost in a well, “swim toward the chink of sky overhead, shimmering in the refracted sunlight”. In a London scene, anthropologist Defne and her colleague interview an elderly Cypriot for his war memories but are chased away by the…

Prep 20 min Cook 50 min Serves 10 • VEGAN Ingredients For the bhajis 450g potatoes, peeled and coarsely gratedFine sea salt1 lime, squeezed, to get 2 tbsp juice600g brown onions (ie, about 3), peeled and thinly sliced5-5½ tbsp (20g) fresh coriander, finely chopped2cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated¾ tsp ground turmeric2 green finger chillies, finely chopped (pith and seeds removed if you prefer less heat)1½ tsp ground cumin250g chickpea flour Rapeseed oil, to fry To serve 200g vegan yoghurt20g mint, leaves picked and finely chopped (15g net)100g mango chutney10 burger buns, cut in half2 little gem lettuces, washed and leaves separated For the hardworking onion, it’s tricky to get a big break and play the star of the show. Here I’ve pushed the onion bhaji to centre-stage after…

District control: Taliban Contested Afghan government Major cities captured by Taliban May 2021 Nato begins a final withdrawal of its mission, involving 9,600 soldiers – 2,500 American. Intense fighting breaks out between the Taliban and government forces in Helmand. 8 May A bomb blast outside a girls’ school in Kabul kills 85, mostly pupils. The attack is blamed on the Taliban, though they do not claim it. Mid-May US forces withdraw from one of the largest airbases, in Kandahar. Insurgents then seize districts in Wardak province near Kabul, and Ghazni 11 May Source: FDD’s Long War Journal. District control on dates shown June Taliban forces have, by mid-June, captured several districts in northern provinces 22 June Taliban take control of the main Shir Khan Bandar border crossing with Tajikistan 2 July Officials announce the departure of all US and…

Storm adds to woes on quake-hit island The arrival of Storm Grace in Haiti on Monday night was a setback for earthquake rescue efforts under way since Saturday. Drenching rains hit the Caribbean island where the number of people killed in the magnitude 7.2 earthquake climbed to at least 1,419, with more than 6,000 injured, according to Haiti’s office of civil protection. The quake was centred on the south-western reaches of the island, almost razing some towns, including Jérémie and Les Cayes, and triggering landslides The rain brought by the tropical storm on the heels of the earthquake is a further blow to Haitians grappling with the coronavirus pandemic, the assassination of their president and a wave of gang violence. The prime minister, Ariel Henry, declared a one-month state of…

If you’re sitting in a safe and comfortable position, close your eyes and try to feel your heart beating. Can you, without taking your pulse, count its rhythm? Or do you struggle to detect anything at all? This simple test is one way to assess your “interoception” – your brain’s perception of your state, transmitted from receptors on all your internal organs. Interoception may be less well known than the “outward facing” senses such as sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell, but it has enormous consequences for wellbeing. Scientists have shown that our sensitivity to interoceptive signals can determine our capacity to regulate our emotions, and our subsequent susceptibility to mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. It is one of the fastest-moving areas in neuroscience and psychology, with…

In 2000, the race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust published a report about the “future of multi-ethnic Britain”. Launched by the Labour home secretary Jack Straw, it proposed ways to counter racial discrimination and rethink British identity. The report was nuanced and scholarly, the result of two years’ deliberation. It was honest about Britain’s racial inequalities and the legacy of empire, but also offered hope. It made the case for formally declaring the UK a multicultural society. The newspapers tore it to pieces. The Daily Telegraph ran a front-page article: “Straw wants to rewrite our history: ‘British’ is a racist word, says report.” The Sun and the Daily Mail joined in. The line was clear – a clique of leftwing academics, in cahoots with the government, wanted to make ordinary…

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Even on his parents’ Jamaican farm, Jimmy Cliff dreamed big. “When I was a very small boy, my cousins and me would look after my family’s cows and goats, and I would talk about towns and countries I wanted to go to. Although they would laugh at me, I always had that kind of thinking.” Cliff’s new single, Human Touch, released on Jamaican Independence Day, on 6 August, mark ed more than 60 years in music from a man who has always looked to a much larger stage. Cliff-penned songs such as Wonderful World, Beautiful People and You Can Get It If You Really Want are some of Jamaica’s most enduring pop tunes, and he is one of a few surviving musicians – after the deaths of stars such as…

Contrary to its title’s implication, there are three significant figures shaping the course of Daisy Lafarge’s debut novel. Besides Paul, a charismatic, self-taught anthropologist who runs a chaotic farm/commune in the Pyrenean valleys, there is Frances, the first-person narrator, and A B, Frances’s former university supervisor. Though absent, the impression he leaves on Frances is siz able Lafarge introduces the concept of geomagnetic reversal – a sudden switch in the planet’s magnetic field that takes place “every half million years or so”, which Paul’s neighbour predicts will occur imminently. The novel sets up a similar magnetic trans ferral. Within hours of arriving at Noa Noa farm, Frances’s affections have swung from A B to her host – from one dominant older man to another. The plot is light and fast-moving.…

Of the many things that might still go wrong with Covid, the UK government scientific advisory group Sage has warned, is a possible combination of “antigenic drift” and “antigenic sin”. An “antigen” (first recorded in English in 1908) is any foreign substance that, when introduced to the body, stimulates the production of an antibody. An antigen can be a pathogen (from the Greek “generates suffering”), such as the Sars-CoV-2 virus, or a vaccine. So what is antigenic is good for you, unless it kills you first. “Antigenic drift” is random genetic variation, which could result in a virus strain against which vaccines are ineffective. And “antigenic sin” is the human body’s regrettable tendency to fall back on its immune memory of previous antigens when presented with a new variant of…

NOTES & QUERIES Food holds the key to keeping dogs distracted How can you prevent dogs jumping at children? How should I respond? Appeal to their greedy nature and scatter food on the ground. Claire Kirby Shrewsbury, England, UK • Since dogs are normally on a leash and children are not, then show some restraint, cheerfully. Richard Orlando Westmount, Quebec, Canada • Teach the child to stand still, turn his back and fold his arms whenever a dog approaches. This communicates dominance and a lack of interest Julia Foren via theguardian.com The handset lottery What would you like your phone to do that it doesn’t already do? I’d like it to identify unsolicited nonsense, and refuse to repeatedly prompt me to acknowledge and respond Gary Laidlaw Norwich, England, UK •…