Innholdsfortegnelse for 22nd October 2021 i Guardian Weekly

Harbourside commemoration The sails of the Sydney Opera House lit up with projections as part of a tribute to frontline workers and those who have been vaccinated. New South Wales was in a celebratory mood as the proportion of the state’s population who are double-jabbed reached 80 % and restrictions on social and cultural gatherings are being relaxed. The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 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…

UNITED STATES Why is Jeff Bezos losing the space race? Page 30 → As coronavirus tore through the Valley of Paradise, a farm-flanked backwater in the Brazilian Amazon, Lenilda dos Santos, a nurse technician, stood on the front line clutching hands most feared to touch. “She was a warrior during the pandemic,” said Lucineide Oliveira, a friend and colleague at the town’s small, understaffed hospital. “She’d say: ‘If we have to die, we’ll die. But we must fight.’” But one morning in early August, as the two women sat at the entrance to their Covid ward, Lenilda announced she was leaving but, she assured her friend: “I’ll be back.” Two days later Lenilda, 49, headed off. Five weeks later and more than 6,400km north, US border patrol agents found Lenilda’s body…

What measures are already in place to protect MPs? Security at Westminster is visibly tight, with armed police patrolling the parliamentary estate, and security passes required A knife-wielding attacker nevertheless managed to get into the grounds at Westminster in March 2017 and fatally stab PC Keith Palmer before being shot dead. When MPs are back in their constituencies, security is – perhaps inevitably – more lax. A plan called Operation Bridger, involving the police and parliamentary authorities, was put into place in December 2015 after the fraught parliamentary debate on bombing Syria was followed by an upsurge in concern about threats of violence. It allows for what ministers at the time called “advice and guidance regarding members’ security and a process to access funding for standardised security measures”. MPs have…

The US Environmental Protection Agency has identified more than 120,000 locations where people may be exposed to a class of toxic “forever chemicals” associated with various cancers and other health problems. The tally is four times larger than any previously reported, according to data obtained by the Guardian. The EPA’s list makes it clear that virtually no where appears free from the potential risk of air and water contamination with perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Colorado tops the list with an estimated 21,400 facilities, followed by California’s 13,000 sites and Oklahoma with just under 12,000. The facilities on the list represent dozens of industrial sectors, including oil and gas work, mining, chemical manufacturing, plastics, waste management and landfill operations. Airports, fire training facilities and some military-related sites are also included.…

So many things have broken the wrong way since the Paris climate accords were agreed in mid-December of 2015. Within eight weeks. Donald Trump had won his first presidential primary, an insane comet streaking across the sky, trailed by outliers like Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro. The world has endured distractions such as Brexit, and the paraly sing emergency of the coronavirus pandemic. And yet here we are, staggering and stumbling towards the real follow-up to Paris, starting 31 October in Glasgow. The international order, such as it is, is held together with baling wire and duct tape: China (its housing market cratering) and the US (between rebellions) are spitting at each other, India half-lost in its ugly experiments with repression, Europe Merkelless. The global south is ever more rightly angered by…

Halloween is approaching and cinemas are back to full capacity. This can only mean one thing: more horror movies. Horror is everywhere on our screens these days, and if there’s one person to blame, it might well be Jason Blum The 52-year-old producer seems to have cracked the code when it comes to low-budget, high-profit, endlessly sequelisable horror. His 2007 breakthrough, the camcorder freakout Paranormal Activity, set the tone. Made on a $15,000 budget, it took nearly $ 200m worldwide. Blum has churned out a steady stream of hits ever since: The Purge, Insidious, Sinister, Happy Death Day, Split, Get Out and Us to name a few. His company, Blumhouse, is also custodian of vintage properties such as the Halloween franchise (2018’s revamp took more than $ 250m worldwide), and…

Incuriosity is not one of David Sedaris’s flaws and, in this second tranche of his diaries, his appetite for observing the absurdities and idiosyncrasies of his fellow humans is deliciously rampant. Take the drivers who ferry him from airport to hotel to performance venue and finally back home – one confides in him that he had an affair with Whitney Houston in Nevada when riding with the Hells Angels, while another describes an uncle whose baby son had his arms chewed off by pigs (“Oh, how I hated getting out of that car”). There is nothing too macabre, too gross or, indeed, too mundane to capture his attention. There is no sense that he is becoming jaded. To read these entries is to become complicit in a high-wire act: appreciating…

Guardian critics explore art that captures a mood or moment. This week, how to contemplate extreme wealth – from Rihanna to Belshazzar’s Feast Music Bitch Better Have My Money Hell hath no fury like a pop icon scorned, and nobody does indignant financial rage better than Rihanna on the impeccable Bitch Better Have My Money. Hummed under the breath of many a freelancer drafting their 14th polite chase for payment, its playful trap beat laces a tale of dodgy accountant exploitation together with a shot of chest-puffing braggadocio: “ Don’t act like you forgot, I call the shots.” Whether you are negotiating a pay rise or cajoling yourself into another day’s hard grind, it’s all the encouragement you need to walk into that office and demand what is yours. Jenessa…

When Reynold Joseph was deported from the US to Haiti after five years in South America, he was unprepared for just how bad things had become in his homeland. Outside a ramshackle guesthouse close to the centre of Port-au-Prince, where he and a dozen other deportees are staying, some goats were grazing on burning piles of rubbish, while drivers honked and cursed in a queue for petrol that snaked round the block. Each night, Joseph’s three-year-old son stirs in the sweltering heat, and gunfire rings out in the distance. “It’s no secret that Haiti is poor and unsafe,” said Joseph, who along with thousands of his countrymen was detained in southern Texas last month before being shackled and flown to Port-au-Prince. “But I didn’t know it had gotten this bad.”…

When Xi Jinping promised the world’s movers and shakers in January 2017 that China would champion globalisation, it looked as if the baton of global economic leadership was being picked up seamlessly by Beijing as Donald Trump prepared to usher in an era of American isolationism. Almost five years later a new world order has emerged, but it is not the one those gathered in Davos that day seemed to have in mind. Instead of a continuation of the post-cold war era of growth underpinned by free trade, the world faces a fractured economic system where the post-pandemic supply shock and mistrust bred by the virus pushes countries towards an autarkist impulse for self-sufficiency. Autarky is a Greek word meaning “self-reliance” and was popularised as shorthand for economic nationalism in…

A global pandemic. Rising inflation. The threat posed by climate change. Global policymakers have enough to keep them occupied without a developing country debt crisis adding to their list of problems. Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund used their annual meetings to stress the pressure poorer countries were under and the need for urgent, collective action. They are right to be worried because debt is at record levels, defences against a crisis are inadequate and the clock is ticking. Problems have only gradually surfaced. In the first phase, developing countries borrowed money, some of it from multilateral institutions, some from individual countries and some of it from the private sector. At the time, this seemed relatively safe because the world economy was growing and demand for the…

Recipe Club What’s so great about this podcast is that the recipes are, by and large, sourced the way most of us decide what to cook: by Googling. The hosts, Momofuku founder and chef David Chang and Lucky Peach magazine’s former editor, Chris Ying, invite chefs to pick a recipe on a theme, usually something standard – mashed potato, tinned tuna, instant ramen. They cook and dissect, with edgy banter. A bit millennial, a bit punk, very entertaining. Honey and Co: The Food Talks Over eight seasons, Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer ’s guests from across the (mostly British) foodie spectrum have brought stories to the table that firmly lodge flavours in your mind. Ira qi-American sculptor Michael Rakowitz tells a great tale about a New York art commission involving…

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1 UNITED STATES Biden leads tributes to his ‘dear friend’ Colin Powell Joe Biden hailed “a dear friend and patriot of unmatched honour and dignity” as he led tributes to former Republican secretary of state Colin Powell, who died on Monday from complications from Covid-19, aged 84. The US president said: “As a Senator, I worked closely with him when he served as national security advisor, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and as secretary of state. Over our many years working together – even in disagreement – Colin was always someone who gave you his best and treated you with respect.” The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the world had lost an “extraordinary leader and a great man” in the retired four-star general Powell was chairman…

ENERGY Lukewarm reception for government heating plan Ministers unveiled plans for £5,000 ($6,900) grants to allow people to install home heat pumps and other low-carbon boiler replacements as part of a wider heat and buildings strategy. Labour condemned the plans for not having sufficient substance. Details for the scheme include £450m towards grants to replace boilers, with a pledge that the fund will mean heat pumps should cost no more than gas boilers to install or run. The wider strategy also contains a commitment to funding totalling £3.9bn to decarbonise buildings and how they are heated, with a 2035 target for all new heating systems in UK homes to be energy-efficient. The business and energy secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, said recent gas price rises “have highlighted the need to double down…

Thwarted by power outages, supply bottlenecks and Covid outbreaks, and dogged by concerns about the struggling property sector, China’s economy grew more slowly than expected in the third quarter Although the central bank governor said China was “doing well”, independent economists are predicting that the mounting array of headwinds buffeting the economy suggested a “deeper downturn” was likely and would lead to weakest growth recorded for more than a decade next year. The world’s second-largest economy has staged an impressive rebound from the pandemic but the recovery is losing steam. Problems including faltering factory activity, power cuts in the crucial northern industrial heartland, and a slowing property sector – which accounts for up to 25% of GDP – have fanned speculation that policymakers may announce more stimulus measures in coming…

Shortly after 9am last Saturday, Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer bent to lay wreaths at the Essex church where Conservative MP Sir David Amess had been killed less than 24 hours earlier. Accompanied by the rumble of helicopters, the political leaders soon left Leigh-on-Sea and a community searching for answers. On Monday, Boris Johnson led tributes to Amess, 69, in Westminster while the MP’s widow, Julia, read messages on floral tributes left outside the church where he had been killed. Johnson, who described Amess as “a patriot who believed passionately in this country, in its people and in its future”, announced that the Queen had agreed Southend will be granted city status, something for which Amess had long campaigned. The man arrested on suspicion of killing the MP is Ali…

After midnight, when the crowds of revellers have gone, Choi Young-soo* crouches in a shabby alleyway in Seoul’s wealthy Gangnam district. This is the only time that the 35-year-old, a part-time food delivery rider, dare leave his tiny room at a cheap hostel he shares with about 30 other people. In a fictional world, Choi would not be out of place among the contestants on Squid Game, the wildly popular South Korean dystopian drama that pits the heavily indebted against each other in a macabre, blood-spattered race for an unimaginably large cash prize. But Choi’s desperate situation is real – he is one of a growing number of ordinary South Koreans who find themselves choked by debt, in a country where taking out a loan is as easy as buying…

The US has urged Britain to follow its example and try to repair its relations with Paris in the wake of the row over France’s loss of its submarine contract with Australia. Australia pulled out of the $66bn contract for 12 diesel electric-powered submarines, signed in 2016, to opt instead for nuclear-powered submarines to be developed with America and the UK. The secretive and sudden cancellation of the contract has created a crisis of trust between Paris on the one hand and London, Canberra and Washington on the other. But senior US diplomats including the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, spent two days in France and Brussels trying to repair relations after French leaders made clear they felt that the trio of nations had gone behind their back to…

A fostered-off schoolboy going nowhere fast, turned apprentice welder on the Clyde. A welder turned regionally popular musician. A musician turned nationally popular comic. A comic turned Hollywood actor and an actor turned New York artist, then a retiree who’s recently been muttering his memoirs into a recording device in the Florida Keys … Billy Connolly has already been through one or two big transitions in his life. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the 78-year-old, who has been ill with Parkinson’s for some time, can face up to the next transition (the last one) with such a playful disposition. If he ever finds himself brooding on death, Connolly confesses, when we chat one autumn morning, he will shake along his wrist a little bracelet made out of small, plastic skulls.…

What must it be like to be in the inner circles of this government, watching the economy bounce from crisis to crisis? Shortages mount, while livestock that suddenly cannot be put into the food chain is slaughtered and sent to rendering plants. Ships are diverted from UK ports because no drivers can be found to transport their cargo once it is offloaded. In response to ministers’ threats to suspend the trading arrangements for Northern Ireland there is reportedly pressure within the EU to begin preparations for a trade war. The prime minister goes off to Marbella; the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, is said to be pinning his hopes for an easing of the energy crisis on a “ wet, windy and mild ” winter. Yet the Conservative party is still…