Innholdsfortegnelse for 19 September 2025 i Guardian Weekly

The killing of Charlie Kirk has left the US and those who care about it on edge. The fear is that the country is about to descend into a new era of political violence, becoming a place where differences are settled not with words and argument but by guns and blood. After all, the US was born in violence, fought a civil war less than a century after its founding and in living memory seemed to be on the brink of another one – with a spate of assassinations in the 1960s. That should provide some consolation, the knowledge that the country has been through this before and survived. And yet the comfort is scant, because these are different times. For one thing, there are more than 850m firearms in…

Boris Johnson started the day with a jog. He had the kind of schedule that would be familiar to any occupant of Downing Street. From 8.44am, he talked with aides, chaired cabinet, prepped for prime minister’s questions, took a briefing on security threats, and prepared for an interview with one of Rupert Murdoch’s reporters. The entry for 5.48pm in the official log for Tuesday 26 April 2022 contains one of several privileged interactions that he would later seek to exploit for financial gain. Johnson was in his office, “alone texting MBS”. Within two years, Johnson, by then out of office, would be trying to use the relationship he nurtured with Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, widely known by his initials, as part of an intercontinental campaign of self-enrichment. Those widespread…

It’s about midnight. It’s raining. A small group is huddled around a roadside cafe near the border between Poland and Ukraine, getting wet in the drizzle, sharing cartons of chips and bottles of beer. One of the bedraggled men wonders out loud why on earth the cafe owner would choose to close now, when this must have been the busiest it has ever been, stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, with a captive and hungry audience. Everyone laughs. It turns out, Prince Harry can be quite funny. It helps to keep things jolly as the security detail work out how to ferry everyone from here to the train that will take them on a secretly planned trip to Kyiv. The aim of the visit is to promote the…

Four years have passed since Jair Bolsonaro laid out three possible denouements for his extraordinary political career. “Going to jail, being killed or victory,” predicted Brazil’s then president as he grappled with a deluge of political crises in August 2021. Bolsonaro was right. A majority of Brazil’s supreme court judges found the 70-year-old guilty last Thursday of masterminding a failed military coup designed to stop the leftwing winner of the 2022 election, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, taking office. “Nowhere in the world … has complete immunity against the virus of authoritarianism that creeps in insidiously, distilling its poison to contaminate freedoms and human rights,” Justice Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha told a courtroom in the capital, Brasília, as she cast the deciding vote. Bolsonaro was sentenced to more than 27…

It is too easy to blame Donald Trump for everything that goes wrong in the world. The ability of any US president to fundamentally change or control the behaviour of other major powers is frequently overestimated. Yet by posing as a sort of uncrowned global monarch and grand arbiter of war and peace, Trump perpetuates fantasies of US hegemony, omnipotence and divine right. Intoxicated by such delusions, he pledged before taking office to swiftly end the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts. Perhaps, in his vanity and hubris, he truly believed he could. Eight months on, the exact opposite is happening. Both crises are expanding and escalating. The bubble has burst, his bluff has been called, the emperor has no clothes – and there is no denying that Trump, by alternately appeasing,…

Meditation and spiritual connection may be OK in small doses, but after three floors and 30,000 sq metres of darkened rooms, theatrical installations, altars and votive sculpture, more sound work than I’ve ever encountered in a single show, and a general encouragement to be moved, mesmerised and in touch with my spiritual side, my ears are ringing and I feel quite on edge. The São Paulo biennale, the second oldest art exhibition of its type in the world, takes the title Not All Travellers Walk Roads for its 36th edition, a line that, with some irony, is from Of Calm and Silence, a poem by the Brazilian writer Conceição Evaristo. In Cameroonian curator Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung’s show of 120 artists, this translates as imagining alternative forms of consciousness, invariably…

As I head over the top of the pass from Corris, the great mass of Cadair Idris emerges against a leaden sky. The steep crags that stand above the thickly wooded slopes are coloured a deep purple by the flowering heather, but the usual vibrancy is subdued by the flat, almost sullen, light. Getting off the bus at Minffordd, I wander up the avenue of chestnut trees that form such an impressive welcome to the mountain. I pause at the foot of the gorge, listening to the gentle – too gentle – sound of water burbling over the rocks. This stream drains from Llyn Cau, a corrie lake, far above and my target for the day’s walk. The steep Minffordd Path stays near the water for much of the route,…

Across 1 Trade in unauthorised goods (6) 4 Sloping, of typeface (6) 8 Jewish teacher (5) 9 Messaging platform, now X (7) 10 1 or 2, say (7) 11 Mess tin (5) 12 Overweight (9) 17 Astor (anag) (5) 19 Brutal (7) 21 Floral perfume (7) 22 From Aberystwyth, say (5) 23 Sewing pin (6) 24 Mix (6) Down 1 Licence (6) 2 Jerky? (7) 3 Stick (5) 5 Twist (thumbs?) (7) 6 Milky sap (5) 7 Eye part (6) 9 Greenish-blue (9) 13 Second hearing (7) 14 Type of glass (7) 15 Diligent worker (6) 16 Without footwear (6) 18 Side passage (5) 20 Cowboy’s greeting? (5) Solution No 17,262…

1 UNITED STATES Vance vows crackdown on ‘far left’ after Kirk shooting JD Vance assailed what he called the “far left” and its increased tolerance for violence while guest-hosting Charlie Kirk’s podcast on Monday, saying the administration would work to dismantle groups that celebrate Kirk’s death and political violence against their opponents. Vance said the administration would “work to dismantle the institutions that promote violence and terrorism in our own country”. The political leanings of the shooter who killed Kirk were not initially clear. Bullet casings found with the shooter’s gun were inscribed with references to video games and online culture. There is no evidence of a network supporting the shooter. In a separate move, Donald Trump filed a $15bn defamation lawsuit against the New York Times and four of its…

What a swell party it was. Guests feasted on halfshell oysters and champagne at Washington’s luxury Salamander Hotel. Donald Trump Jr danced to YMCA while JD Vance quipped: “They don’t tell you when you run for vice-president that you get brought on stage with the Village People.” Guests at the $15,000-a-head Turning Point Inaugural Eve Ball in January included future FBI director Kash Patel, Jeanine Pirro and the Irish mixed martial artist Conor McGregor. But towering above them all, literally and figuratively, was Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and key enabler of the rise of Donald Trump. Kirk, a 31-year-old rightwing activist, podcaster and provocateur, was killed on 10 September by a single gunshot as he gave a talk at a university in Utah. For the Trumps, it…

If it started anywhere it was among the suburban streets off a large roundabout in Weoley Castle, known by local people in this part of south-west Birmingham’s urban sprawl as “the square”. From Falkirk to Folkestone, the national colours of England and the United Kingdom, and Scotland and Wales to a lesser extent, have been on show across the country in recent weeks. Explanations abound as to the genesis of the flag-hoisting and street furniture painting. Some associate the outbreak with its most extreme cheerleaders, of whom Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, may be the best-known. It was certainly an initiative Robinson had been keen to exploit before his rally in London last Saturday, to which an estimated 110,000 people were drawn and where 26 police officers were…

The ninth of September was my sister Enas’s birthday, so we were happy that morning, drinking coffee as a family and telling jokes, until we saw the leaflets dropping down telling us to evacuate. So, instead of preparing biscuits and cakes to celebrate, we were packing for another displacement. The Israeli army’s plan to occupy Gaza City sent me back to memories of the early days of the war: the tension, the terror and the psychological pressure. I am afraid the cycle of displacement will repeat itself again. We have stayed in 10 places since we left our home in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, at the start of the war. A single phrase keeps echoing in my thoughts: “I don’t want to.” I don’t want to live through that again.…

Since the 19th century, Atlantic salmon in the Miramichi have lured politicians, celebrities and wealthy anglers to fishing camps along the river’s banks, its undammed branches once producing more of the fish than almost any other river on the continent. In 2010, the fishery was valued at C$16m ($11.5m) and provided hundreds of jobs. Rip Cunningham has been travelling from the US state of Massachusetts to the Canadian province of New Brunswick to fish since the 1970s. When he first started, he would sit on the deck at the Black Brook Salmon Club, on one of the Miramachi’s tributaries, watching the water boil with the leaps and rolls of salmon. “It was an amazing experience, just because you saw the amount of life that there was in the river,” he…

LEO VARADKAR SUGGESTS WE DO THE INTERVIEW AT HIS HOUSE IN DUBLIN. It’s unusual for politicians to invite you into their home, but Ireland is famous for its hospitality. The house looks impressively humble – a tiny terrace. A woman answers. “Hi,” I say. “Does the taoiseach live here? “No,” she says. I start to panic. Our interview is due to start in two minutes. “Can you tell me the postcode here?” “No.” She shuts the door. Now I’m in full panic mode. The taxi driver must have taken me to the wrong place. As I walk away, I see another cab. Phew. I hail it. Thankfully two people are getting out, and the driver says he’s free. Then I notice one of the passengers is Leo Varadkar and he’s…

It shouldn’t really be a surprise that South Park has become “the most important TV show of the Trump 2.0 era”. Trey Parker and Matt Stone have spent decades taking any potshot they like at whoever they choose, from Saddam Hussein to Guitar Hero to – thanks to their inexplicable 2001 live-action sitcom That’s My Bush! – other sitting presidents. But by using every episode in its latest series to focus their fury solely at the current US administration, hitting Trump with a combination of policy rebuttals and dick jokes (and daring him to sue them in the process), this is the strongest sense yet that Parker and Stone are out for nothing less than full regime change. South Park isn’t the first cartoon to attempt this. For almost a…

I have a lot of jam made with all kinds of berries – are there any bakes that would use some of it up? Anne-Lies, Gouda, the Netherlands “Jam is at the heart of many great puddings and cakes, so there are never too many jars in my house!” says Emily Cuddeford, co-founder of Edinburgh’s Twelve Triangles bakery. Her first thought, though, would be to tip a jar into a buttered ceramic baking dish and top it with sponge: “Make a classic, equal-parts mix by creaming, say, 180g butter and 180g sugar, slowly beating in an egg and a dash of vanilla or lemon zest, and finishing with 180g selfraising flour.” Spoon that on top of the jam and bake at 190C (170C fan)/gas 5 until the sponge “bounces back” and…

POLITICS Starmer facing party pressure as Trump flies in The US president Donald Trump arrived in the UK for a state visit amid a deepening crisis for the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, after the resignation of a third senior ally in two weeks raised further questions about the stability of his government. Paul Ovenden quit as the prime minister’s director of political strategy after the publication in a book of old messages in which Ovenden relayed lewd jokes about the Labour MP Diane Abbott. His resignation came after a bruising two weeks which saw the departures of deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, and US ambassador, Peter Mandelson. Starmer’s internal critics also accused him of failing to condemn a huge far-right protest in London last weekend, as well as the…

At 12.23pm last Wednesday, as the rightwing influencer and provocateur Charlie Kirk was addressing a crowd at Utah Valley University, a single shot rang out. He was struck fatally by a bullet in the neck, sending thousands of students scattering in all directions and propelling the country into a new crisis. Exactly one minute later, at 12.24pm, about 725km to the east in Colorado, a 911 call came in to first responders in the mountain town of Evergreen. A 16-year-old student had opened fire with a revolver on high school grounds, critically injuring two fellow students before turning the gun on himself. The confluence of two incidents just a minute apart – the first taking the life of a key figure in Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement,…

If there is a cause that could be said to unite almost all Labour MPs and members from left to right, it would be equality and anti-racism. Over the summer, MPs have agonised about their political futures and that of progressive politics. Missteps on the economy, welfare, Gaza and relations with the parliamentary party have been part of that. But what has crystallised the sense of crisis for many has been the rapid rise in far-right rhetoric and violence, as well as Nigel Farage’s perma-presence in the media and his plans for mass deportations. “It is a progressive emergency,” one MP said. “We are at a moment in history where our kids might ask us: ‘What did you do?’” Yet, No 10 and cabinet ministers had not seemed quite able…

Israel on Tuesday launched a ground offensive in Gaza City, officials have said, after weeks of intense bombardments across the territory’s largest urban centre saw entire apartment blocks reduced to rubble and forced many Palestinian people to flee despite there being nowhere safe to go. Hundreds of thousands of residents remained in Gaza City, however, where a famine – caused by Israeli restrictions on aid – has already been declared. Israel is justifying its assault by saying Gaza City is one of the last remaining Hamas strongholds. On Monday the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, put the Trump administration’s full support behind Benjamin Netanyahu in a visit to Jerusalem, saying Washington’s priorities were the liberation of Israeli hostages and the destruction of Hamas. In remarks standing alongside Netanyahu, Rubio…

Five years ago, the land now home to KK Park – a vast, heavily guarded complex stretching for 210 hectares along the churning Moei River that forms Myanmar’s border with Thailand – was little more than empty fields. Set against rugged mountains south of the town of Myawaddy, KK Park, with its on-site hospital, restaurants, bank and neat lines of villas with manicured lawns, looks more like the campus of a Silicon Valley tech company than what it really is: the frontline of a multibillion-dollar criminal fraud industry fuelled by human trafficking and brutal violence. Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos have in recent years become havens for transnational crime syndicates running scam centres such as KK Park, which use enslaved workers to run complex online fraud and scamming schemes that generate…

As a keen rock climber, Lachlan Murdoch knows a thing or two about the importance of clinging on to perilous terrain. After the toughest ascent of his life – rising to the top of his father’s empire – his place at its summit is finally assured. The deal Rupert Murdoch’s eldest son has struck with his oldest siblings, Prudence, Elisabeth and James, will mean they give up their shares in the family business, handing Lachlan the long-term control he and his father craved. Arriving at such a deal, which will pay his siblings an estimated $1.1bn each for their portions of the businesses, may seem like an anticlimactic finale for a poisonous family saga that has fascinated the world and inspired a smash hit television show. Yet in reality, it…

BRITTANY ANDREWS, A CHEERFUL AMERICAN PORN STAR, cuts to the chase in her workshop on how to succeed in the adult industry. “Do you think about how much money you’re going to make before you make a clip? Do you know what stuff sells the best? Or do you just follow your creative spark?” she asks. She points to a young Ukrainian model in a gold sequined bra and denim shorts. “I’m starting with you, girlfriend!” “We’re all here to earn money. That’s normal,” the model replies. Her main advice, she adds, is to be super organised about uploading content regularly, to prevent subscribers drifting away. “What matters is consistency. There are so many beautiful, amazing models … if you for a moment stop posting, people will forget you pretty…

Once is unfortunate. Twice is clearly careless. But there are few words available for a family newspaper to describe hiring Peter Mandelson thrice, only for him to become mired in yet another scandal of career-ending proportions. Rarely has the Labour party been so united as it is now in rage. Once again, the Prince of Darkness is dragging everyone through the mud, due to his attraction to wealth and power. Once again, awkward questions are being asked about his integrity, or what he disclosed and when. The only surprise is that it unravelled so fast: seven months from resurrection to disgrace. Though there is no good time to lose our ambassador to Washington over his friendship with a convicted paedophile, this one was biblically bad: days after losing Angela Rayner,…

The $625,000 Grand Swiss in Samarkand, on the ancient Silk Road, will be remembered for two teenage achievements. Abhimanyu Mishra – who is a world record holder as the youngest ever grandmaster, at 12 years four months – set another landmark last Thursday at the age of 16 years seven months. The US teen defeated Gukesh Dommaraju in the tournament in Uzbekistan to become the youngest player ever to beat a reigning world champion. He broke the record set 33 years earlier by Gata Kamsky of the US, then 17 years 10 months, against Garry Kasparov at Dortmund 1992. The second historic game was in round four, when Turkey’s Yağiz Kaan Erdoğmuş overwhelmed India’s Mittal Aditya by a barrage of brilliancies. The “Turkish immortal” allowed two white queens on the…