Innholdsfortegnelse for 3rd December 2021 i Guardian Weekly

Festival of light Hundreds of people gathered in Berlin last Sunday to celebrate the start of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah by lighting a giant menorah in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal (centre) said it was a sign of Germany’s renewal after the horrors of the Holocaust. The menorah is believed to be the biggest in Europe. 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…

In early August, Gideon Schreiber and a team of virologists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel began playing around with the spike protein of the Sars-CoV-2 virus – the protein that allows the virus to enter our cells – to see if they could predict future mutations that could yield dangerous new variants of Covid-19. At the time, Schreiber noted with concern that there were a variety of ways in which the spike protein could evolve. If all of these mutations occurred at once, it could yield a variant that was both extremely transmissible and potentially capable of evading some of the body’s immune defences, blunting the efficacy of the vaccines. Schreiber published the findings, and thought little more of it. But three months later, his fears have…

There was a time when, if you googled the phrase “Dunkirk, small boats”, reports of one of Britain’s finest hours would stack up in the results. Not last week. The beaches near Dunkirk have now become synonymous not with the embarkation point of dramatic rescue but of despairing tragedy. Details of the 27 people, among them seven women and three children, who drowned in the Channel last Wednesday have been very slow to emerge, their anonymity itself an indication of their desperation. The first to be named was a Kurdish woman from northern Iraq, Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin, a newly engaged student, who was WhatsApp messaging her fiance, who lives in the UK, when the group’s dinghy started deflating. The 24-year-old had travelled through Germany and France to join Mohammed…

People search through rubbish alongside black vultures at a municipal dump on the outskirts of the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa. Last Sunday’s presidential election in the country – where more than half of the population of 10 million live in poverty – saw Xiomara Castro, below, heading for a landslide win, marking the left’s return to power 12 years after her husband was ousted in a coup. The election, giving Honduras its first female president, seemed to have run smoothly, a contrast to four years ago when a close outcome led to a contested result and deadly protests after allegations of irregularities. With half the ballots counted, Castro, the wife of the former president Manuel Zelaya, held a nearly 20-point lead over Nasry Asfura, the capital’s mayor and ruling National party…

Animals have been drafted in to combat a hazard in the skies above the runways of Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, the Netherlands’ aviation hub. A six-week pilot project is studying whether a small herd of pigs can deter flocks of geese and other birds attracted to discarded sugar beet on nearby farmland. The 19 pigs have been enjoying life on a two-hectare plot between two runways, turning a field of crop residue into a muddy haven and eating the food that attracts the birds, which can collide with planes and in the worst cases even get sucked into engines. Two years ago, a KLM Boeing 747 was hit by one such suspected “bird strike”, and had to return to the airport. This was also the cause of the famous US Airways…

They Shall Not Grow Old was the title Peter Jackson gave to the first documentary he made, and he could have named his latest exactly the same way. Instead it is called Get Back, and while the earlier film restored archive footage of the young British men who fought the first world war, this new one – nearly eight hours long and making its debut in three parts last weekend – does the same for the young British men who conquered the world by more peaceful means; four of them to be precise, known for ever as the Beatles. Obsessives across the globe have had their anoraks zipped up in readiness for a while, eager to study the differences between the ninth and 13th take of Don’t Let Me Down,…

Writing in Le Monde last week Julian Barnes, the novelist and chronicler of British-French relations, said both sides found it “easy to slip into the role of accuser or affronted victim”, often trading on decadesor even centuries-old stereotypes of each other. After 27 people died in the Channel, those stereotypes are in full view, and however much each side says it will rise above the blame game, it has been almost impossible to resist sniping. Emmanuel Macron, fighting to ensure a place in the presidential run off in April, simply can not afford to let the refugee crisis run away from him. Boris Johnson also has much at stake. Nigel Farage, his mysterious donors readying their cheques, is again threatening the Conservative party’s right flank. Johnson’s backbenchers are struggling to…

Germany is entering the post-Merkel era under a new government. Viewed from outside, the three parties that are likely to fill the government benches from the second week of this month make an odd match, even by the centrist standards of German coalition politics. While the Social Democratic party (SPD) of future chancellor Olaf Scholz has showcased its ideological flexibility by acting as junior partner to Merkel’s conservatives for three of her four terms, the two smaller parties enter government with agendas that seem diametrically opposed: Greens that vow to protect the environment from dirty industry, and the Free Democratic party (FDP) that wants to liberate industry from burdensome regulation. “The three parties clearly agree that they want to see more progress but they are not necessarily pointing in the…

Later this month, the most ambitious, costly robot probe ever built, the $10 bn James Webb space telescope, is due to be blasted into space on top of a European Ariane 5 rocket. The launch of the observatory – which has been plagued by decades of delays and massive cost overruns – promises to be the most nervously watched lift off in the history of unmanned space exploration. The observatory – built by Nasa with European and Canadian space agency collaboration – has been designed to revolutionise our study of the early universe and to pinpoint possible life-supporting planets inside our galaxy. However, its planning and construction have taken more than 30 years, with the project suffering cancellation threats, political controversies and further tribulations. In the process, several other scientific…

It is not often that Narendra Modi gives a televised address to the nation and it is met with relief, not disarray. The Indian prime minister’s previous frightening acts of decisiveness have included announcing a complete lockdown with just four hours’ notice last year, and withdrawing 85% of the country’s currency overnight in 2016. This most recent on-screen address went another way entirely. When Modi announced his government’s intention to withdraw three controversial farm laws after one of the most prolonged periods of protest ever recorded in India, in which hundreds died in the face of state violence, it was met with mass jubilation. The laws – originally passed during a chaotic voice vote in parliament last year, when the television broadcast was muted so viewers could not hear the…

You’ve never seen so much red velvet. Crimson drapes across the ceiling of London’s Piccadilly theatre, past the crystal chandeliers, the lit-up windmill, the blue jewelled elephant and the neon sign that reads: Moulin Rouge. On stage, there are fishnets, ruffled skirts, sequin ed bustiers and extravagant feather headdresses. All to make you feel as if you’ve been transported to Paris’s seedy Pigalle circa 1899. Rest assured, if you loved Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 film, the one with Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman singing Elton John in a collision of belle époque and 20th-century pop, you will get what you’re looking for here. Moulin Rouge! The Musical does not drastically reinvent its source material. “We’ve all been to that adaptation where you’re like: ‘What did you do to ET? Why is…

Britain loves toast for breakfast but, arguably, lacks a sense of adventure about how to top it, sticking to marmalade, lemon curd and fruit jams, neglecting what, if you look around the world, are the endlessly varied, spreadable ways in which you can titivate toast. Ricotta and honey Italian food lovers go into raptures about eating fresh sheep ricotta in Italy. Gip Dammone, co-owner of Salvo’s in Leeds, remembers family trips home to Sicily where a farmer would go door to door, cheese “dripping from conical baskets on a yoke round his neck. Everyone came out to buy some for breakfast, eaten on bread or toast, sprinkled with sugar or sometimes coffee grounds.” Cow’s ricotta is more common outside of Italy. Spread on sourdough toast (approximately 300g for four slices),…

1 UNITED STATES Ghislaine Maxwell sex-trafficking trial begins Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking trial began in federal court in Manhattan on Monday with opening statements about the eagerly awaited case. Maxwell “preyed on vulnerable young girls, manipulated them and served them up to be sexually abused” by Jeffrey Epstein, said prosecutor Lara Pomerantz. “The defendant was trafficking kids for sex. Maxwell was Epstein’s best friend and right hand.” The late financier Epstein was arrested in July 2019 in relation to sexually abusing teenage girls. “She was involved in every detail of Epstein’s life. They were partners in crime,” said Pomerantz. The first arguments set the stage for a six-week trial in which the British socialite’s alleged involvement in Epstein’s crimes will be aired in gruelling detail. Maxwell, 59 (pictured below in 2013),…

MIGRATION EU border agency plane to monitor French coast The European Union’s border agency will provide a plane to monitor France’s northern coastline in an attempt to stop people making the dangerous Channel crossing, as the French government insisted it would “not be held hostage” by British domestic politics on the issue. Speaking after an emergency meeting of EU ministers in Calais last Sunday that excluded the UK, the French interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said France was ready for a serious discussion with Britain on illegal migration, but would not be held hostage by London’s domestic politics. Darmanin said the EU border and coast guard agency Frontex would provide a plane from 1 December to monitor France’s northern coastline. Ministers also discussed using drones and Frontex border guards, as part…

One of the positive experiences during the gloom of the pandemic has been the speed of scientific progress in understanding and treating Covid. Many effective vaccines were launched in less than a year and rapid large-scale trials found a cheap and effective drug, dexamethasone, that saved thousands of lives. The global scientific community has also carried out “genomic surveillance” – sequencing the genome of the virus to track how it evolves and spreads. The great value of that genomic surveillance has been seen in the past few days as we’ve learned of the Covid variant Omicron. The surveillance requires a remarkable amount of cooperation between scientists to build compatible laboratory protocols, software systems and databases. Many of these scientists are not directly paid for this work and do it in…

On Monday night, Barbados declared itself a republic, becoming the first nation to remove Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state in nearly three decades. As the clock struck 12 midnight, the Royal Standard flag was lowered over a crowded Heroes Square in Bridgetown and Carol Roberts-Reifer, chief executive officer of the National Cultural Foundation, made the declaration of Barbados’ transition to its new constitutional status. Dame Sandra Mason was sworn in as president by the chief justice and took the oath of allegiance to her country. Hundreds of people lining Chamberlain Bridge in the capital cheered and a 21-gun salute fired as the national anthem was played. Barbadian singer Rihanna also attended the ceremony and was declared a national hero. The transition, flagged last year in the thick…

It was a summer day in 2017 when Sylwia Gregorczyk-Abram, a 34-year-old lawyer, heard a crazy idea. Micha? Wawrykiewicz, a legal acquaintance who, like her, was worried about changes Poland’s nationalist government was making to the judicial system, wondered how to convince people that an independent judiciary was not an abstract nicety but the firm ground underpinning democracy. “He had this crazy idea,” she recalled. “How to convince people, citizens, why independence of the judiciary is so important. Ask famous people, celebrities, actors to do it for us.” Gregorczyk-Abram was the right person for the job. Working at the Warsaw office of an international law firm since 2006, she had co-founded Constitution Week, an initiative where lawyers give talks in schools about law. She called her friend Maria Ejchart-Dubois, a…

For many observers, the high-profile case of the three white men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was out jogging, revealed the racist ways the American legal system has been designed to treat Black people differently. Arbery was killed in February 2020 in the coastal town of Satilla Shores, Georgia. None of the men involved were charged until eyewitness footage was made public months later, prompting widespread protests. Three white men – Gregory McMichael, 67, his 35-year-old son, Travis, and their neighbour William “Roddie” Bryan, 52 – pursued Arbery, claiming they suspected his involvement in a series of burglaries in the neighbourhood. The McMichaels, both carrying firearms, attempted to corner Arbery in a roadway using their truck before the younger McMichael fired three times with a…

Today’s widely accepted narrative is that we live in historically divided times. Voters are routinely described as “polarised”, while analysts compete to identify the essential schism of the age, whether this is metropolitan versus traditionalist, people versus democracy or anywheres versus somewheres For a third year running, however, the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project supports a different interpretation: that extreme views are given greater visibility by social media, which in turn creates an especially dynamic climate of opinion – in that, for example, it can change quickly – but one whose underlying forces are defined more by cohesion than division. Released annually by the Guardian, the Globalism Project is the largest of its kind on the public relationship with globalisation. It turns out, for instance, that there is no deep divide between…

This is the kind of novel that mocks the give-it-10-pages, I-need-to-begrabbed-because-life-is-too-short school of reading. I confess: I was confused, bewildered, lost. The shape of the narrative only really began to declare itself around page 90. But then … oh, what an engaging education Harsh Times turned out to be, and how I came to look forward to my time in its company. I should not have doubted a master. Now 85, Mario Vargas Llosa has won numerous literary prizes, from the Nobel down. He ran for president of Peru in 1990 and has a serious claim to be the pre-eminent Latin American writer of his generation. In many ways, he is the embodiment of what a great novelist should be: unafraid to write panoptic political novels about the fate of…

Failure is merely offering you the opportunity to try again – and Guardian critics have all the redemptive film, theatre, art and more to help you deal with it Film Inside Llewyn Davis Pinching together the lapels of his inadequate jacket against a freezing New York February, folk singer Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) trudges back from a failed audition in Chicago, to fail a second time: his gig at the Gaslight Cafe becomes just a footnote to Bob Dylan’s appearance that same night. Joel and Ethan Coen’s film kept faith with its themes by underperforming at the box office but its tragicomic portrait of defeat retains a lovely, sad-eyed warmth. Jessica Kiang Stage Everything Not Saved Memory repeatedly fails us. In a tricksy performance by the brilliant Irish theatre company…

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