Innholdsfortegnelse for 10 January 2025 i Guardian Weekly

Social order in Gaza is likely to collapse further if Israel goes ahead with its threat this month to end all cooperation with the UN refugee agency for Palestinians (Unrwa), Louise Wateridge, its senior emergency officer, has warned. Wateridge, who has just returned from Gaza, described the territory as increasingly fractured and said the two Knesset bills due to come into force at the end of the month blocking co operation with the agency would make it impossible for U nrwa to operate or to distribute aid in a war zone. “If we’re no longer able to communicate to the Israeli authorities, we no longer have a deconfliction process in place, so none of our buildings will be protected any more, and we simply won’t be able to be there,”…

‘Do you want a shot?” ask ed Katy Sherrington from Durham, offering a tiny glass of a pink liquid. Nobody was going anywhere at this point, so it would be rude not to accept. Last Saturday night at the Tan Hill Inn, Britain’s highest pub, the snow was falling and the crowd of about 30 people inside knew they were probably stuck here for a couple of days. Throughout the place, at the northern edge of North Yorkshire, drinks were flowing and friends were being made. Weather warnings for snow were in place across much of the UK this week, and the Met Office advised the public to only make necessary journeys, with road closures, train and flight cancellations, and rural communities becoming cut off. That is something the staff…

Donna Barkley was weeks into walking New Zealand’s longest hiking trail when her strength started to falter. Starting at the northern tip of the country in mid-October, the American hiker had trudged south along vast empty coastlines, over farmland and through dense forests thick with mud. By the time she reached Bombay, just south of Auckland city, the 64-year-old solo hiker was worn out and questioning her ability to go on. I realised that some parts of the trail might be too tough for me,” she sa id. But then, a so-called “trail angel” came to the rescue. “[She] welcomed me into her house, and asked me how I was doing. I started crying and telling her about my challenges.” Barkley’s host asked her to jot down the things she…

When the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, was asked in an interview about the barrage of insults being directed at him and other German leaders by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, his reply was: “Don’t feed the troll.” Speaking to the German weekly Stern, Scholz said he would make no efforts to engage with Musk, who has endorsed the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in next month’s federal elections and will host a live discussion on his social media platform X with its candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel. “I don’t believe in courting Mr Musk’s favour,” he said. “The rule is: don’t feed the troll.” France’s president Emmanuel Macron on Monday joined Scholz, along with the Norwegian and British prime ministers, in responding to the barrage of hostile posts by…

Lie face down on the floor During a chaotic workday, what usually helps me is to lie face down on a hard floor. I focus on the sensations of the floor: the pressure, the temperature. After a couple of minutes, I’ll get up and be able to start triaging my to-do list, or sometimes I’ll start this mentally while I’m lying down, but only once I’ve calmed down properly and can think without spiralling. A glass of water and stretching (after getting up or while still on the floor) can also be nice for a somatic reset. Callie Leone, graduate student, Chicago, US Set time aside for ‘constructive worrying’ Overwhelm can come from worries going round in our heads like a washing machine, which can deplete our energy. A helpful…

What does it mean to have a middle-class, white-collar professional job? It used to feel like a promise, a guarantee of a life that might not always run smoothly but would at least be stable, verging sometimes even on smug. It probably meant a mortgage, the kind of job title that made people trust you, and a sense – especially for those who were not born into a middle-class life – of having reached safe harbour. You wouldn’t be rich, but you’d be comfortable. Perhaps just as important, you would know exactly where you stood: never top of the pile, but at least a reassuringly long way off the bottom. But what happens when those layers start collapsing into each other? Last week, the Resolution Foundation thinktank released a technical…

It’s hard to deny the allure of a big ol’ pile of hot, fat, crisp, salty chips, but now is the time to ring the changes. And if that means swapping your spuds for another veg, so be it. For a good chip alternative, “any fibrous root vegetable that can hold its shape will fry up a treat”, says Alice Zaslavsky, author of Salad for Days, but you don’t necessarily have to fry them: “You can roast them, or you can cook them in an air fryer. As long as there’s enough oil and a high enough temperature, you’re good to go.” Sweet potatoes are the obvious alternative, but they have a higher moisture and sugar content, and have form for burning or turning soggy. “If you want to get…

Across 1 Idiot (9) 8 Perch (5) 9 Delicacy and skill (7) 10 Police vehicle (5,3) 11 Rabbit tail (4) 13 ‘Born is the king of ___’ (6) 14 Hot stuff (6) 16 Went (anag) (4) 17 Leftover (8) 19 Decamp (7) 20 Greek character (5) 21 Former name of St Petersburg (9) Down 1 Online network for authorised users (8) 2 Over my dead body! (2,4) 3 Weak piglet (4) 4 Children’s party game (7,5) 5 Dianthus (5,7) 6 Comic-strip-style book (7,5) 7 Female from a rural place (12) 12 Southeast Asian land (8) 15 Thin decorative covering (6) 18 Blown instrument (4) Solution No 17,047…

1 CANADA Trudeau to quit as PM and Liberal party leader Justin Trudeau said he will step down as prime minister after his party has found a new leader, a decision that in effect brings an end to nearly a decade in power. “Canadians deserve a clear choice in the next election,” Trudeau said on Monday, adding party infighting had made it impossible for him to face off against his rivals. Trudeau said he would stay on as prime minister until a new leader of the ruling Liberal party was chosen. His resignation throws open the doors to a fierce political battle, with polls showing the Liberals losing to the official opposition Conservatives in an election that must be held by late October. Trudeau, who used his address to recount…

UNITED STATES ON NEW YEAR’S EVE, a federal prosecutor revealed to a court in Virginia an astonishing discovery. She disclosed in a legal document that last month FBI agents acting on an informant’s tip-off searched a property in Isle of Wight, a county named after the island in the English Channel often described as rustic and quaint. What they found on the eighthectare farm was anything but pleas ant. The agents stumbled upon what the prose cutor said was probably “the largest seizure by number of finished explosive devices in FBI history”. Scattered between the owner Brad Spafford’s house and a detached garage was a stockpile of more than 150 improvised pipe bombs, some marked “lethal”. The garage stored an array of tools, homemade fuses and PVC piping, the prosecutor…

After nearly a decade in power, Justin Trudeau has said he intends to step down as prime minister. The 53-year-old politician, who rose to power on the promise of hope and revitalisation, has been under pressure to quit for months. Why was he under pressure? Once the rising star of global progressive politics, Trudeau saw his approval ratings drop to a new low of only 33% late last year. The same poll revealed widespread frustration with economic malaise. Trudeau suffered under record inflation and high food prices. A housing crisis, which saw prices in some areas jump by 30-40% in recent years, deepened resentment. Political scandals have not helped either. Trudeau was reprimanded in 2017 for accepting gifts including holidays and private helicopter flights. Skipping out on the country’s first…

The feminist activist Ghalia Rahhal recalls with wry laughter her visit to the “blue building” in Idlib three years ago, an office where the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) monitored civil society organisations such as hers. Her colleague at a women’s rights organisation was once called there to hear a list of issues they were banned from working on: child marriage, divorce, and anything related to gender equality. Rahhal had already survived an assassination attempt in her home town of Kafranbel as well as the murder of her son in Aleppo, leaving her unfazed by pointed questions levelled at her by an official: we heard you were training women in the refugee camps about politics, about equality, he told her with suspicion. Rahhal instead saw an opportunity for dialogue, wondering…

In Moby-Dick, Herman Melville’s epic novel of 1851, the author asks if whales would survive the remorseless human hunt. Yes, he says, as he foresees a future flooded world in which the whale would outlive us and “spout his frothed defiance to the skies”. Moby Dick was a grizzled old sperm whale that had miraculously escaped the harpoons. But a new scientific paper is set to prove what oceanic peoples – such as the Inuit, Maōri and Haida – have long believed: that whales can live for a very long time. The paper, published in the journal Science Advances, suggests that the industrial hunting of great whales such as sperm, blue, fin and right whales “masked” the ability of these underwater giants to live to great ages. It has been…

L ai Shan Sze bounds quickly up the dimly lit stairwell of the unit block in Hong Kong’s Mong Kok district. The social worker knocks on a door and announces her arrival, moves into a tiny entranceway and past the kitchenette from where an elderly woman waves, and into a skinny hall lined with what look like plywood cupboards. They are, in fact, individual units, Hong Kong’s infamous “coffin homes”, housing dozens in spaces not much larger than a single bed, stacked two high to the ceiling. Sze, the deputy director of civil rights group the Society for Community Organization, taps on a couple of the doors, a pile of paper topped with a hastily sketched map of residents scrunched in her other hand. A few faces emerge, and she…

South Korean anticorruption officials attempting to arrest the country’s suspended president, Yoon Suk Yeol, must know by now what he meant by his repeated vows to “fight to the end”. Since his calamitous declaration of martial law, Yoon, along with most of his party, his legal team and, crucially, his security detail, have resisted every attempt to hold him politically and legally accountable. Last Friday, after a tense standoff between anti-corruption officials and security staff assigned to Yoon, South Korea’s gravest political crisis in decades rumbled on, the day closing with another cliffhanger worthy of one of the country’s wildly popular TV dramas. No one who has followed the turmoil in recent weeks could have guessed how the visit by 100 officials and police officers would play out. Almost six…

How will we look back on 2025? Or, if that seems too absurd a question to ponder just a few days into the new year, how might we view the first quarter of the 21st century? As it happens, the answer to both questions is the same and it was confirmed by an event that came as the old year faded and the new one began. I’m referring to the death of Jimmy Carter. The assessments of the former US president’s life and legacy have illustrated an uncomfortable truth, but also offer some unexpected hope. Here’s what I mean. For years, Carter was a byword for political failure. He was the one-term loser who tried and failed to rescue Americans held hostage in Tehran; whose most famous address, the so-called…

The 11-year religious dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq profoundly shaped the art of Pakistan. After the general’s successful coup in 1977, his regime ushered in martial law, trampled on women’s rights, enforced strict censorship and placed draconian restrictions on artistic expression. Ascent of Man, an abstract painting by Quddus Mirza, is inspired by the controversial trial and hanging of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the democratically elected prime minister overthrown by the coup. The painting, part of a groundbreaking exhibition of Pakistan’s art and architecture, depicts a man sitting in a chair while a headless body floats in the sky. It blends elements of magic realism with an allusion to the seventh-century martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad, whose death was a major episode in Islam’s history that…

There is a scene in the 1999 British romcom Notting Hill that nicely illustrates the point of Gobsmacked!, a jolly account of “the British invasion of American English”. In it, Hugh Grant, a fully fledged adult, tries to scale a fence to impress Julia Roberts, and slipping, he exclaims: “Whoops-a-daisy!” As Britons know, “whoops-a-daisy” is a perfectly reasonable locution for an adult man to use, but it causes Roberts, an American, to bend double laughing. As it happens, “whoops-a-daisy” isn’t included in Gobsmacked!, but its collation of so many other ludicrous British terms – “kerfuffle,” “pear-shaped”, “boffin” – that have made inroads into the US will make the average Briton proud. Ben Yagoda’s lexicon is a spin-off from his popular blog Not One-Off Britishisms, a fun experiment in which the…

POLITICS Starmer condemns ‘lies’ as he hits back at Elon Musk Keir Starmer condemned Elon Musk’s increasingly erratic attacks on the government, suggesting his “lies and misinformation” on grooming gangs were amplifying the “poison” of the far right. The prime minister angrily criticised Conservative politicians for “jumping on the bandwagon” by calling for a national inquiry into the scandal when they failed to implement any of the recommendations of a major report while in power. Ministers promised on Monday to introduce a key demand of Prof Alexis Jay’s 2022 child sexual abuse inquiry so professionals who work with children would face sanction if they failed to report claims of sexual abuse, under a law to be introduced this year. Starmer, the target of wild criticism from Musk on his social…

The Islamic State (IS) threat on the US homeland has caused renewed concern as more details emerged about the man allegedly behind what the FBI is calling an “act of terrorism” in New Orleans on New Year’s Day that killed 14 and injured scores more. US citizen and army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, was killed in the attack after driving into partygoers on Bourbon Street and engaging police in a gunfight. Found inside his rental truck was the black flag of IS; it was later revealed he had pledged allegiance to the group in a series of videos posted to Facebook mere hours beforehand. Though public perceptions of IS suggest it has now suddenly reappeared in the pantheon of terrorist organisations active in the US, top officials and analysts have…

Amid the echo of gunfire and explosions, 23-year-old Mariam picked her way through puddles on the unpaved streets of the refugee camp adjacent to the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, determined to get to a university class. A sniper believed to be part of the Palestinian Authority (PA) forces shot and killed her friend, 22-year-old journalism student Shatha al-Sabbagh, last month. Mariam said she was always afraid to leave the house, but an unprecedented PA operation on armed militant groups in the camp has entered its second month. Her family has decided to try to preserve as much of their normal routine as they can. “My mum is a teacher, and my sister studies with me. It’s not possible to go out every day. When we do, we risk…

A new year in Ukraine began in much the same way as the old one finished: with deadly Russian drone attacks across the country. It is Ukraine’s third new year since Russia’s invasion. If 2023 began with hopes high that Ukrainian battlefield gains would push Russia back and lead to victory, by the start of 2024 there were few illusions about a quick victory. Now 2025 has begun with morale at perhaps its lowest point – and with Donald Trump’s presidency on the horizon. Trump has said ending the war is a top international priority, and has appointed retired US general Keith Kellogg as his envoy charged with the task. Kellogg is expected in Kyiv imminently and is a more welcome choice for Ukraine than other figures in Trump’s orbit,…

Rising sea levels driven by the climate crisis will overwhelm many of the world’s biggest oil ports, analysis indicates. Scientists said the threat was ironic as fossil fuel burning causes global heating. They said reducing emissions by moving to renewable energy would halt global heating and deliver more reliable energy. Thirteen of the ports with the highest supertanker traffic will be seriously damaged by just 1 metre of sea level rise, the analysis found. The researchers said two low-lying ports in Saudi Arabia – Ras Tanura and Yanbu – were particularly vulnerable. Both are operated by Aramco, the Saudi state oil firm, and 98% of the country’s oil exports leave via these ports. The oil ports of Houston and Galveston in the US, the world’s biggest oil producer, are also…

Each day, bowls are set down on the ground in a line outside the community kitchen in Sururab, 40km north of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, for the 350 families who eat there. Community kitchens like these have been crucial to staving off famine in Sudan over a year and a half of a war that has displaced 11.5 million people, and is part of a system of ground-level mutual aid that has provided key relief where foreign aid has been scarce. While community kitchens feed, other necessities and support are provided by organisations called Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs), which are often neighbourhood-based. The Sudanese diaspora has also helped, by fundraising for these grassroots efforts or providing remote medical advice through telemedicine services. Mazin Alrasheed helped set up the community kitchen in…

When Prof Archibald Low predicted “a day in the life of a man of the future” a century ago, his prophe cies were sometimes dismissed as “ruthlessly imaginative”. They included, reported the London Daily News in 1925, communications “by personal radio set” and breakfasting “with loudspeaker news and television glimpses of events”. Some forecasts in Low’s book The Future were spot on. Others, including his prophe cy that everyone would be wearing synthetic felt one-piece suits, less so. Researchers from the online genealogy service Findmypast have included Low’s predictions in a collection on its website of forecasts made for 2025 by people a century ago. Low, born in 1888, was an engineer, research physicist, inventor and author. In 1925, he predicted how home loudspeakers and “a television machine” would replace…

Last August, I took the train from Trieste to Ljubljana, following a route once used by the Orient Express. Along the way, I admired the Adriatic coast, discovered that Prosecco is a now abandoned railway station dating from 1857, and felt the shift in geography as the train climbed towards Villa Opicina on the Italian-Slovenian border. Crossing into Slovenia now means little more than a change of crew. I had with me Alma, a novel by Federica Manzon set in Trieste and the former Yugoslavia that explores the region’s strong and complicated connections, frozen by the cold war and rattled by the Balkan wars. The trip to Slovenia cost about €12 ($12.50) and took just over two and a half hours. It was not high-speed rail, but a small Austrian…

‘Will the last one out please turn off all the lights?” This was the joke that spread across the West Indies in the 1950s and 60s as young adults succumbed to “England Fever” in their determination to migrate to Britain. Having saved enough for his ticket from Saint Kitts, Victor Johnson, the protagonist of Another Man in the Street, has his finger on the light switch at the start of Caryl Phillips’s elegiac novel. From his debut, 1985’s The Final Passage, Phillips has steadfastly focused on the precarious lives of migrants in novels such as In the Falling Snow and in his hybrid work Foreigners: Three English Lives. His books have stood out against other accounts of the Windrush generation’s stoicism, exploring the emotional cost of leaving home and being…

LANGSTONE Hampshire, England, UK Aflock of geese winging across an estuary in V-formation is one of the most iconic spectacles of the season, but a rare sight in Langstone and Chichester harbours. In flight, our wintering dark-bellied brents lack the military precision displayed by other species, most notably pink-footed and barnacle geese. Instead, they ribbon across the steely sky in undulating lines or stretch out laterally in a broad front. As I walk along the shore, 200 or so brents take flight, flushed from the coastal grazing by an off-lead dog. They momentarily jink and morph as one entity, reminiscent of a starling murmuration; then, as they wheel around, heading for the mudflats, the flock starts to splinter. At first glance, there’s no semblance of order, but I realise that…