Innholdsfortegnelse for 11 February 2022 i Guardian Weekly

Fight or flight Siberian white cranes come to blows at a wildlife sanctuary in Jiangxi province. The endangered birds make 16,000-km migrations, mostly between north-eastern Siberia and winters spent on the Yangtze River. White cranes are the inspiration for Fujian White Crane, a Chinese martial art in which fighters imitate flapping wings. 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 power to account in the name of the public interest, to uphold liberal and progressive…

She is fiercely loyal to Donald Trump. But when the ex-president came to her home city and praised Covid vaccines, Flora Moore did what she never thought possible. She booed him. “He said, ‘Take the vaccine.’ But we all booed and said, ‘No,’” she recalled of Trump’s event with broadcaster Bill O’Reilly in Orlando, Florida. “He heard us loud and clear. We let him know ‘no’, and a couple of us even hollered out, ‘It’s killing people!’” There is no scientific basis to the claim that Covid vaccines are killing people. In fact, they have demonstrably saved thousands of lives. But Moore is part of an extreme anti - vaccine sentiment consuming the base of the Republican party – a monster that Trump can no longer control. The US is…

Germany’s new chancellor Olaf Scholz is waving goodbye to the honeymoon period of his tenure, as his “inaudible” stance over the brewing crisis on the Ukrainian border is failing to impress not only Russia-hawks abroad but also more ambivalent voters at home. Scholz, whose liberal-left “traffic light” coalition was sworn in less than two months ago, has been criticised by Kyiv and other east-central European capitals for sticking to his country’s restrictive stance on weapons export and slow to spell out potential sanctions that could be triggered by a Russian invasion of Ukraine. On German television last week, Scholz was asked: “How does it feel when allies are classifying Germany’s attitude as unreliable?” Scholz seemed “to want to surpass [Angela Merkel] in the art of disappearance”, wrote the weekly Der…

Boris Johnson’s desperate efforts to save his premiership were undermined last weekend as one of his most loyal backbench supporters said it was now “inevitable” that Tory MPs would remove him from office over the “party gate” scandal. Sir Charles Walker, a former vice-chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservative MPs, implored the prime minister to go of his own accord in the national interest, and likened events in the Tory party to a Greek tragedy. “It is an inevitable tragedy,” Walker said. “He is a student of Greek and Roman tragedy. It is going to end in him going, so I just want him to have some agency in that.” Walker said the succession of parties in Downing Street during national lockdowns had focused the anger of a…

Deaths More than 1,350 civilians have been killed in Myanmar since February 2021 Source: Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Data correct as of 17 January, chart does not include a further 104 deaths recorded by AAPP Displacement The conflict has displaced people throughout Myanmar Guardian graphic. Source: OCHA. Note: number of people displaced since Feb 2021 that remain displaced as of 17 Jan 2022 400k The number of people displaced across the country in the aftermath of the military coup 19k The amount of people who have crossed into neighbouring countries since the crisis began 11k The total number arrested by the military junta, of whom more than 8,700 remain in detention 46% An estimate of people who could now be living below the poverty line as a result of Covid and the coup Quiet resolve…

Last year was a breakthrough time for UFOs, as a landmark government report prompted the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors to finally be taken seriously by everyone from senators, to a former president, to the Pentagon. But 2022 could be even more profound, experts say, as the clamour for UFO disclosure and discovery continues to grow, and as new scientific projects bring us closer to – potentially – discovering non-Earth life. In June 2021, the Pentagon released a highly anticipated report on unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP), the now preferred nomenclature by some in the extraterrestrial community, which found more than 140 instances of UAPs that could not be explained. The report came after leaked military footage documented seemingly otherworldly happenings in the sky, and after testimony from navy pilots helped to…

Like those of all political upstarts, Nigel Farage’s career is marked by generous helpings of luck. His story is full of tan-talising what ifs, and in this definitive biography Michael Crick makes the most of them. Farage has survived three near-death experiences: twice in his early 20s, when he suffered a life-threatening car crash and then, months later, a misdiagnosed case of testicular cancer; and once in 2010, when on election day the plane in which he was flying for a publicity stunt crashed in a field. He also benefit ed hugely from one death that did happen. In the 1997 general election James Goldsmith’s Referendum party outpolled the nascent Ukip by 8:1 and looked set to swallow its smaller, chaotic rival. But Goldsmith suddenly announced he was pulling back…

Towards the end of last month, a convoy of Canadian truckers and their supporters set off from Vancouver to Ottawa, in protest against rules requiring any lorry drivers arriving from the US to be fully vaccinated against coronavirus. Having since ground Canada’s capital to a halt, the truckers have quickly become a symbol for a hotchpotch of far-right views and conspiracy theorists, and a cause célèbre for populists internationally. Our big story this week asks whether this could be a defining moment for Canada’s right. Then David Smith considers how the US anti-vaccine movement – linked with funding for the Canadian protest – is taking over the Trump-supporting Republican base. The big story Page 12 → In the UK, a scandal-ridden Boris Johnson somehow continued to cling to power. Rowena Mason profiles…

The unexpected triumph of António Costa’s Socialist party in Portugal’s elections last week continues a cautious comeback by Europe’s centre-left – and, analysts say, may hold lessons in what remains a mixed picture for the continent’s social democrats. After wins last autumn by Germany’s SPD and Norway’s Labour party, the Portuguese prime minister’s unexpected victory – with 41.7% of the vote, five points up on 2019 – was further good news for a movement that five years ago looked in terminal decline. In some countries, it still does. The French Socialist party was all but obliterated in the 2017 elections and polls predict its candidate in this year’s presidential race, Anne Hidalgo, the Paris mayor, will do well to capture more than 3% in the first round. It’s barely imaginable…

Twenty-eight months after it began in a clandestine shipyard deep in the Brazilian Amazon, one of the more unlikely criminal voyages of all time came to an end last week with the seven sentences handed down by a court in north-west Spain. Agustín Álvarez, a 31-year-old former Spanish amateur boxing champion, was jailed for 11 years for piloting a semi-submersible “narco-submarine” carrying 3,068kg of cocaine worth an estimated $140m across the Atlantic. His two crewmates, Ecuadorian cousins Luis Tomás Benítez Manzaba and Pedro Roberto Delgado Manzaba received the same sentence, while four Spaniards who conspired to help guide the sub ashore were jailed for between seven and nine years. Not surprisingly, the case, a wildly improbable but true saga involving the Colombian Gulf Clan cartel, a bespoke 21.5-metre-long fibreglass boat…

In 2016 researchers led by microbiologist Kohei Oda of the Kyoto Institute of Technology in Japan reported a surprise discovery. Oda’s team visited a recycling site that focused on items made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a clear plastic that is used to make clothing fibres and drinks bottles. Like all plastics, PET is made up of long string-like molecules. These are assembled from smaller molecules strung together into chains. The chemical bonds in PET chains are strong, so it is long-lasting – exactly what you do not want in a single-use plastic. Oda’s team took samples of sediment and wastewater that were contaminated with PET, and screened them for micro-organisms that could grow on the plastic. It found a new strain of bacterium, Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6, which could grow on…

AT THE HEIGHT OF THE TENSE SECOND PHASE OF THE COLD WAR, a group of Stasi majors, propaganda officers and border guards convened at a heavily fortified compound in socialist east Berlin. From spring 1982 until winter 1989, they gathered once every four weeks, from 4pm until 6pm, at the House of Culture inside the premises of the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment (the Stasi’s paramilitary wing), in Berlin’s Adlershof district. They met in a first-floor room adorned with portraits of East German leader Erich Honecker and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin that was closed with a security seal overnight. But the Stasi men did not gather to gameplan nuclear war scenarios, work up disinformation campaigns or fine-tune infiltration techniques. They set out to learn about iambic pentameter, cross-rhyming schemes and Petrarchan sonnets.…

There is no embargo on Cuba.” This bold claim – made by Florida senator Marco Rubio on the floor of the US Senate last July – has hardened into conventional wisdom across aisles of US Congress and among Rubio’s base of support in the Cuban diaspora. The US blockade is a myth, a bogeyman for the Communist party of Cuba. “Cuba is not isolated,” Rubio said. Those who say otherwise either “don’t know what they’re talking about … or they’re liars”. Here in Havana, though, the isolating effects of the US embargo are impossible to ignore. The docks are half-empty: the US has banned all cruise ships, cultural exchange and educational delegations that once drove the largest industry on the island. Western Union branches are shuttered: the US has banned…

I have a relationship problem and I feel stuck. I met my partner two years ago via online dating. Since then he has rebuffed all my attempts to meet any of his friends or family members. One time, we ran into a family friend and he instructed me to hide behind something so I would not be seen with him. I’ve also had to leave his house on more than one occasion because one of his family members was in the neighbourhood. He is unimaginably cruel to me about my appearance, but I can’t bring myself to leave. I do not know how this relationship serves me, but I’m getting older and I’m too scared of what will happen. Recently, I found out that he’s been going on dates with…

1 RUSSIA Macron and Putin talks on Ukraine hit a deadlock Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin did not appear to reach a breakthrough in marathon talks at the Kremlin on Monday aimed at fending off a Russian attack on Ukraine. Macron was also due to hold talks with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, this week, but it was not clear how Macron’s shuttle diplomacy could satisfy Russia’s demands that Ukraine membership in Nato be ruled out while maintaining that the alliance’s open door policy is “existential for Europe”, as he said in opening remarks on Monday. There were some signs of progress. Putin did not go into specifics, although he said it was possible to consider “a number of [Macron’s] proposals and ideas … in order to lay a foundation for…

DUP halts border checks as first minister quits post Two days of political drama were triggered in Belfast after the Democratic Unionist party’s agriculture minister, Edwin Poots, ordered a halt to Brexit checks on food and farm products at ports and airports setting Stormont on a collision course with Westminster and Brussels. The DUP also carried out its threat to quit the executive, announcing last Thursday that the first minister, Paul Givan, was resigning. Rival parties have rounded on the move, which paralyses decision-making until after local elections in May. One matter on hold is the approval of a three-year budget that would have enabled critical changes in the health service, which has one of the worst waiting lists in Europe. Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, said he had no…

Since late last month, Canada’s capital city has been paralysed by protesters who have blockaded the downtown area with trucks and cars. Police have described the protest as a “siege” and last Sunday the mayor of Ottawa declared a state of emergency. How did this begin? In early January, a relatively unknown group called Canada Unity announced a “freedom convoy” to protest against vaccine passports and mandates by various levels of government in Canada. Frustration with a new requirement that all truckers crossing the US-Canada border must be vaccinated against Covid-19 added momentum to the cause. While the vast majority of Canadian truckers are vaccinated, there were fears that forcing any number of truckers off the job could worsen pressure on the supply chain. Some trucks travelled more than 5,000km…

China’s Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin of Russia have signed a joint statement calling on the west to “abandon the ideologised approaches of the cold war”, as the two leaders showcased their warming relationship in Beijing at the start of the Winter Olympics. The politicians also said the bonds between the two countries had “no limits”. “[T]here are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation’,” they declared. In the joint statement released by the Kremlin, Putin and Xi called on Nato to rule out expansion in eastern Europe, denounced the formation of security blocs in the Asia Pacific region, and criticised the Aukus trilateral security pact between the US, UK and Australia. The two leaders met for the 38th time since 2013. The two countries also pledged to step up cooperation to…

Boris Johnson’s inner circle has imploded so spectacularly that only one close political confidante from the early days of No 10 remains: his wife, Carrie Johnson. The most powerful prime ministerial spouse in recent memory, the 33-year-old Johnson has a job of her own, for a wildlife charity, but sources from Downing Street past and present say her influence on the prime minister’s operation is undeniable. Those who know her say she is determined to keep Johnson in Downing Street, despite the scandals over No 10 parties – some of which she attended – and the funding of the No 11 flat refurbishment, which was her project with the designer Lulu Lytle. The flat refurb, involving gold wallpaper and a £112,000 ($150,000) price tag, prompted critics to brand her “Carrie…

When hundreds of thousands of workers across the country walked out of their jobs in protest at the military’s seizure of power in Myanmar on 1 February 2021, Grace* was among the first to join. The schoolteacher from Chin state was determined to resist the military by refusing to work under its administration. Joining her was her husband, also a government employee. What they didn’t then know was that nearly a year later, their hands, once accustomed to holding chalk and pens, would instead be holding hoes and shovels, calloused and blistered from farming under the scorching sun. Nor did they ever imagine that they would be living in hiding, on the run from soldiers and police. “My husband and I decided to strike soon after the coup was staged.…

In Mission, Texas, on the border between the US and Mexico, sits the National Butterfly Center. The 40 hectare nature preserve, dedicated to the conservation of plants and wildlife, has become a focal point of divisions over immigration policy. It has been forced to close its doors indefinitely amid threats from far-right conspiracists and QAnon followers who falsely claim it is a haven for human-trafficking and illegal migration. “They’re not conspiracies, they’re just outright lies,” Marianna Treviño-Wright, the executive director, said. “I think that’s a very important point that needs to be made. As long as they’re called ‘conspiracies ’, then it seems like there’s some plausibility.” The North American Butterfly Association (Naba) decided to close the centre last week as a precautionary measure, after being warned to “be armed…

That sound you can hear is the whirr of 650 adding machines. At Westminster, MPs are totting up the costs, tallying the benefits and working out the balance of their own interests. On the Tory benches, they know a moment of decision is coming. Does the resignation in disgust by one of Boris Johnson’s most loyal lieutenants signal end times, or was Munira Mirza a backroom aide no voter had ever heard of? What if both things are true? Inboxes bulge with constituents’ fury, but MPs hesitate before casting aside the winner of their biggest election victory for more than 30 years. Some long for the dilemma to be resolved for them – police action, a damning photograph or what one ex-minister calls “tawdry detail” in an unexpurgated Sue Gray…

It happened on the first Wednesday in our new house: an unexpected gift on my doorstep. A brown paper bag containing a pumpkin salad, tiramisu and a soft drink. It wasn’t something I’d ordered, but I accepted it on the grounds that it was for “Sam”, my partner’s name. Sam wasn’t home, but there was a chance he’d surprised me. I carried my serendipitous meal inside. I was reaching for a fork when there was a hard knock at the door. It was Sam. Not my partner Sam. “Did you just take my food?” they asked, unpleasantly. “Oh, hi! Sorry!” I was already bustling down the hallway with the unopened bag. “It’s just that … my partner’s name is Sam!” “Sure,” Sam said, snatching the bag and storming the 12.5…

The old Lammas meadows are bustling with life, the brambles along the chalk stream rowdy with communal chit-chat. Somewhere in the scrub, a parcel of linnets is unfolding. Earlier in the afternoon they rose from the alders, perhaps a couple of hundred birds, and danced as one over the sedges. Now, the little finches are settling down to roost, filling the bushes with their non-stop twittering. I sludge through the boggy top meadow. Up ahead, the flame-licked willow tops resound with the noisy tidings of magpies. Most afternoons they congregate here in a pre-roost assembly, up to 30 birds jostling and trading places A sudden eruption from one of the shallow pools catches my attention. A wisp of snipe rises up. I can just make out four birds zigzagging away,…