Innholdsfortegnelse for 21 November 2025 i Guardian Weekly

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’s digital editions in the UK, US and Australia, and the Guardian newspaper in the UK. The weekly magazine has an international focus and four editions: global, Europe, 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 values, to fight for the common good, and to build hope. Our values, as laid out by editor CP Scott in 1921, are honesty, integrity, courage, fairness, and a sense of duty to the reader and the community. The Guardian is wholly owned…

The release of a series of emails last week was arguably the most significant development to date in the saga tying the US president, Donald Trump, to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The president spent much of this year batting away questions about his relationship with Epstein, who was once a close friend. The story that has hovered over Trump is largely one of conservatives’ own making. Rightwing commentators and media figures spent years pushing conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death, apparently without realising Trump might be implicated in any release. This is how we got here. Epstein charged 6 July 2019 Epstein is charged with federal sex-trafficking crimes in a Manhattan court. Prosecutors allege that he “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls” from 2002 to 2005 at…

Water, and its absence, has become Iran’s national obsession. In the mosques of northern Tehran, the imams have been praying for rain and forecasts of “rain-producing clouds” are front-page news. More than 50 days have passed since the start of Iran’s rainy season and more than 20 provinces have not yet had a drop. The number of dams that have less than 5% of their reservoir capacity had increased from eight to 32, and the crisis has spread from the central plains right across the country. Last Sunday, authorities attempted to take matters into their own hands, launching cloud seeding operations to try to induce rainfall. Cloud seeding involves spraying particles such as silver iodide and salt into clouds from aircraft to trigger rain. On Monday, the intervention appeared to…

Keir Starmer was facing another major challenge to his authority as angry Labour MPs vowed to force changes to new hardline migration measures that would bring an escalation in the deportations of children and families. The policies – which include the possibility of confiscating assets from asylum seekers to contribute to costs – have caused significant divisions inside the party, with some MPs accusing their colleagues of not taking seriously public anger about illegal migration and asylum. The Conservatives have said they could support the government to pass the tough new laws in the event of a major Labour rebellion. The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, this week outlined a number of radical measures, including how the government will attempt to change the way the European convention on human rights (ECHR)…

Justin Goss was in the shower when he first heard the piercing wail of a nearby tsunami earlywarning siren. Still dripping wet, he threw on clothes, grabbed his dog and rushed to the truck. The pair made it 3 metres and no further. “The whole parking lot across the street was jammed up. It was gridlock within three minutes,” he said. “I thought, ‘Oh shit, this is not good.’” In downtown Tofino, a town on Vancouver Island, there are no sirens. But word quickly spread that people were fleeing the beaches. Panicked parents rushed to pick up their children from day camps. Restaurants in the Canadian holiday haven emptied. “We told everyone to get out fast,” said Brenna MacPherson. “We didn’t know how bad it was going to be.” Some…

CRAIG WAS A RUNAWAY WHEN I FIRST MET HIM. Missing from a local children’s home, he spent his days hanging out in Nottingham city centre. He had just turned 13 and he was tall for his age, easily recognisable with his blond hair, but he seemed invisible to the authorities. No one was looking for him or the other dozen children who congregated on the market square. Most of them had absconded from care, some were dodging school. A few, like Craig’s mate Mikey, just didn’t bother going home. The youngest runaway, Mark, claimed he’d been missing from foster care for months and had spent his 12th birthday on the run. They were glad to have found each other and for a week or so they slept together in an…

Paris is the fashion capital of the world. The city’s very name connotes luxury and glamour. But on 5 November, a Shein outlet opened on the sixth floor of the BHV Marais, the historic department store. It’s the Singapore-based ultra-fast-fashion store’s first permanent bricks and mortar retail space, and the first of several Shein plans to open in France. Many Parisians aren’t happy about it. Shein – launched as SheInside in 2011 in Nanjing, China – is the reprehensible paragon of the ultra-fast fashion industry. The company sells clothing (and home goods, toys, stationery, cookware, blankets, pet supplies and more) at an unfathomable scale. Nearly everything on the site is made of plastic, designed for single-use disposability, and it’s all shockingly, disturbingly cheap. Shein is an economic affront to France’s…

I’m a lifelong vegetarian, but my boyfriend is a dedicated carnivore. How can I cook to please us both? Victoria, by email “I have three words for you, Victoria,” says Anna Ansari, author of Silk Roads, who grew up in a predominantly vegetarian household, “Di si xian.” Typical of northern China, this stir-fry of aubergine, potato and peppers (otherwise known as the “three treasures”) is laced with soy, Shoaxing wine, white pepper, sugar, cornflour and, in Ansari’s case, doubanjiang. She also adds tofu for “a rounded, one-pot/wok dinner” to eat with steamed rice. “It reminds me of being a teenager in Beijing, far from home and in need of warmth and comfort,” she says. “It’s also cheap as proverbial chips, not to mention quick to make, and it will knock…

1 UNITED STATES President dismisses Greene’s fears for her safety Donald Trump doubled down on his attacks against Republican lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene, despite his reversal on resisting the release of the Epstein files. He dismissed her claim that his criticism was endangering her. Greene said earlier that Trump’s online criticism had unleashed a surge of threats directed at her. Greene, a US House of Representatives member from Georgia who was long known as a Trump loyalist, has recently taken positions at odds with the president. She said she had been contacted by private security firms warning about her safety and that attacks against her have previously led to death threats. The public fallout came as Trump urged his fellow Republicans in Congress to vote for the release of files related…

Spanning from 2009 to 2019, his short, choppy emails do little to implicate his contacts HE GOT BY WITH A LITTLE HELP from his friends. From British royalty to White House alumni, from a Silicon Valley investor to a leftwing academic, connections and influence were the ultimate currency for Jeffrey Epstein. Yet none appeared to challenge him over his crimes. If silence is complicity, the casual disdain of the elite circles he moved in spoke volumes. Emails released last week by the House of Representatives’ oversight committee revealed how Epstein maintained contact with business executives, reporters, academics and political players despite his 2008 guilty plea for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl. More may yet come after the US president, Donald Trump, urged Republicans in Congress to vote this week…

For two years, the world has seen temperatures exceed the 1.5C heating limit laid out in the Paris climate agreement. This overshooting will have “devastating consequences”, the UN secretary-general António Guterres warned. The biggest worry for scientists is that further heating could trigger irreversible tipping points, such as the widespread drying out and dying off of the Amazon, or the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, beyond which climate breakdown could spiral out of control. For the UN, and the world, minimising and, if possible, reversing that “overshoot” must now be the priority. But shifting the world’s energy systems to burn less fossil fuel is taking decades, time we no longer have to spare. Some scientists believe the answer lies elsewhere: with the powerful greenhouse gas methane. “Cutting methane is…

On a recent afternoon, 67-year-old Saif Islam made his way into the courtyard of a library in Chinguetti, a tiny desert settlement nestled in the Sahara in Mauritania. “It’s these books that gave it this history, this importance,” he said, pointing to a 10th-century Qur’an, brown with age. “Without these old books, Chinguetti would have been forgotten like any other abandoned town.” Chinguetti rose to prominence in the 13th century as a type of fortified settlement called a ksar that served as a stopping-off point for caravans plying trans-Saharan trade routes. It then became a gathering place for Maghreb pilgrims on the way to Mecca, and, over time, a centre for Islamic and scientific scholarship, referred to as the city of libraries, the Sorbonne of the desert, and the seventh…

The shocking public groping of Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has prompted rapid political action to tackle sexual abuse, as well as public debate on how best to address the problem, which is widespread across the country. Citlalli Hernández, Mexico’s secretary for women, presented a presidential plan including actions such as ensuring prison sentences for sexual abuse, encouraging women to report incidents, and training prosecutors and other officials on how to handle the matter. The plan would also include a public awareness campaign in public spaces, workplaces, schools and on public transport to prevent violence against women. “We want to tell all Mexican women … that you are not alone, that when you experience any type of violence, it is important to report it,” said Hernández. “Know that today there is…

In total, over two and a half years, Elizabeth gave £100,000 ($130,000) to “Sam”, the “man” she met online, who she thought she loved and loved her back. She emptied her savings account, pawned her late mother’s jewellery and took out bank loans. She became so overdrawn that she could barely afford food and lived mainly on soup. She had sent this money, for all sorts of reasons, to a man she’d never met. The first was a $500 Amazon voucher because Sam, a consultant, was out on an oil rig and needed to buy a manual. Later, the rig required a new part; then the tanker transporting the oil ran into problems, too. She gave money to Sam’s daughter who was trapped in an abusive marriage. Finally, when Sam…

If the home secretary’s twin aims in making her immigration reform announcements this week were to receive a ringing endorsement from the far right and to make migrants quake in their boots, she has succeeded – possibly even exceeded – her own expectations. The endorsement came last Saturday, courtesy of Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. In response to a post on X which predicted that Shabana Mahmood would announce that refugees will be granted only a temporary stay in the UK and deported if their home countries are later deemed safe, he posted: “Well done patriots.” Meanwhile, asylum seekers and refugees I have spoken to are panicked at the prospect of having to be uprooted once again after feeling safe in the UK, often after experiencing years of risk…

When we meet the morning after the announcement of this year’s Booker prize, David Szalay, the winner, seems too genial and gentle an author to have created one of the most morally ambiguous characters in recent contemporary fiction. His sixth novel, Flesh, about the rise and fall of a Hungarian immigrant to the UK, is unlike anything you have read before. Szalay is often described as “Hungarian-British”, but his mother was Canadian and he was born in Canada, where his Hungarian father had moved a few years earlier. “I’m arguably more Canadian than Hungarian.” Now 51, he grew up in England, graduated from Oxford University, and lived in Hungary for 15 years. To make things more confusing, he is over from Vienna, where he now lives with his wife and…

An early cull of the favourites at the Chess World Cup in Goa resulted in 15 of the top 20 seeds heading for home early. Several of the top 20 were eliminated in the first three rounds of the $2m tournament, among them India’s 19-year-old world champion Gukesh Dommaraju, the double world title finalist Ian Nepomniachtchi and the controversial US star Hans Niemann. The effect on the eight-man Candidates tournament, to be played in Cyprus in March-April 2026, is that at least one of its three qualifiers from the World Cup will be an unfamiliar name. The field is taking shape for the $1m Candidates, which will take place alongside the women’s tournament. Hikaru Nakamura, the world No 2 from the US, has qualified for the ratings spot, so joins…

ECONOMY Chancellor makes dramatic U-turn on income tax rise Rachel Reeves is set to abandon a plan to raise income tax in the budget on 26 November, with the chancellor reportedly “ripping up” the main measures in the wake of turmoil in the party. A source told the Guardian that plans to break the manifesto pledge on income tax had been ditched by the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the chancellor. Downing Street did not deny the reports but said it would not comment on budget matters. The U-turn came after a week of extraordinary briefing wars in the party as allies of the prime minister suggested he would fight any leadership challenge, with some pointing to the health secretary, Wes Streeting, as a potential challenger, which he publicly denied.…

The streets of Belém echoed with indigenous chants, classical Brazilian songs and calls for environmental justice last Saturday as tens of thousands of people marched to demand urgent action on the climate and nature crisis. Activists from around the world converged on the Amazonian host city of Cop30, urging negotiators to ramp up ambition. The joyous demonstration was the first major protest outside the annual climate talks since Cop26 four years ago in Glasgow, as the last three gatherings were held in locations with little tolerance for demonstrations – Egypt, Dubai and Azerbaijan. The “Great People’s March” came at the halfway point of contentious negotiations and followed two protests last week that were led by indigenous activists from the Tapajós region. Early in the day, below a huge inflatable globe,…

The US is planning for the longterm division of Gaza into a “green zone” under Israeli and international military control, where reconstruction would start, and a “red zone” to be left in ruins. Foreign forces will initially deploy alongside Israeli soldiers in the east of Gaza, leaving the devastated strip divided by the current Israeli-controlled “yellow line”, according to US military planning documents seen by the Guardian and sources briefed on American plans. “Ideally you would want to make it all whole, right? But that’s aspirational,” said a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s going to take some time. It’s not going to be easy.” The US military plans raise questions about Washington’s commitment to turning the ceasefire announced last month into an enduring political settlement with Palestinian…

As divorce rates rise and the cost of living bites, single mothers in China are searching for a new kind of partner: each other. Across social media are posts from harried mothers seeking like-minded parents to share a home and childrearing responsibilities. “I’m hoping to find another single mum to share an apartment with, so we can take care of each other,” said a popular post on Xiaohongshu, a platform known overseas as Rednote. “If our children are around the same age, that would be even better. Those raising kids alone know how tough it is; sometimes you’re so busy you barely have time to eat.” There is no specific data on the trend, but scholars say they have observed the informal support network visibly grow online, with housemate-seeking posts…

It is an intelligence relationship that predates even the Five Eyes: the UKUSA alliance that began, naturally enough, in secret in 1946. But last week the strain of trying to be the closest security ally to a freewheeling White House seemed to be showing. Britain was reported to have suspended intelligence cooperation with the US in the Caribbean because London does not consider the deadly US military campaign against ships accused of drug trafficking to be in line with international law. Britain’s foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, downplayed the reports this week, while the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, described them as “a fake story”. Initially, however, the UK had simply chosen to neither confirm nor deny the report and it was widely covered. Because Britain has a handful of…

To confront Donald Trump is to engage in asymmetric warfare. It is to enter a battlefield that is not level, where he enjoys an advantage over those who would oppose him or merely hold him to account. That fact has cost Democrats over the past decade but it has now upended an institution central to Britain’s national life: namely, the BBC. The key asymmetry can be spelled out simply. Trump pays little or no regard to the conventional bounds of truth or honesty. His documented tally of false or misleading statements runs into the tens of thousands: the Washington Post registered 30, 573 during Trump’s first term in the White House, an average of 21 a day. In a single interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes earlier this month, Trump spoke…

As I reach the top of the cliff, a lone raven soughs south on an errand, flying at head height. In the bronze and iron ages, headlands like Castell Bach and Ynys Lochtyn in Ceredigion were used as summer camps for festivals and coastal foraging. This holiday season is drawing to a close as I scramble off the Wales Coast Path on to Banc Pen y Parc to visit a favourite tree. This huge ash hasn’t lost its ambition. I pace out its dimensions: 16 metres for the trunk, 21 metres for the crown. Most remarkable about my sortie, though, is the fungi: on the tree itself, a yellow dryad’s saddle, a bracket fungus; in the field, large parasol mushrooms with their dark nipples; and dog vomit slime mould, like…

Across 1 Inveigle (6) 4 Slender (6) 8 Legal (5) 9 Critical and causal (7) 10 Innumerable (7) 11 Indian garment (5) 12 Plonk? (5,4) 17 Port city in Andalusia (5) 19 Film clip with a mistake, often funny (7) 21 Derived from element symbol N (7) 22 Merging (5) 23 Wine-serving vessel with flared lip (6) 24 Oofta! (2,4) Down 1 Hardened pad of skin (6) 2 Top lotto prize (7) 3 Agile (5) 5 Composer known as the ‘Red Priest’ (7) 6 Language, originally a dialect in old Lazio (5) 7 Long cake (6) 9 Graceless and heavy (9) 13 Sling your hook! (4,3) 14 Ambiguous, as avoidance tactics (7) 15 Charming (as landscapes?) (6) 16 Sterling note (6) 18 Treed (anag) (5) 20 Feel (5) Solution No…