Table of contents for 29 August 2025 in Guardian Weekly

The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol213 | Issue№ 9 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…

The declaration last Friday of widespread famine in Gaza by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) should mark a turning point in the war. The IPC, which represents a fastidious survey of available data, is regarded as the international gold standard in nutritional crises. The IPC’s declaration of Level 5 – “catastrophic” hunger – in Gaza is a significant moment. Famine, under the IPC’s exacting criteria, requires three critical thresholds to be passed: extreme food deprivation, acute malnutrition, and starvation-related deaths, all of which are visible. A quarter of all Palestinians in Gaza are starving – more than 500,000 people – with that number expected to rise to more than 640,000 within six weeks. Despite the very strong suspicion that famine conditions exist in the far north of Gaza,…

Standing outside Germany’s parliament in June, Ahmad Shikh Ali fought back tears as he held up a blurry photo of his three-year-old son. Since fleeing Aleppo more than two years ago, Shikh Ali had done all he could to secure his son a safe future: moving to Hanover, getting full-time employment and wading through endless paperwork so that his wife and son could join him. He was close to reuniting with his family, with just two cases in front of his in the queue. That was, until Germany’s lower house of parliament passed a bill in June to suspend family reunifications for migrants like him for at least two years. “Since I learned of this decision I can’t sleep, I can’t get on with my life,” Shikh Ali told reporters…

Holy roller After eight years of planning, an estimated cost of 500m kronor ($52m) and an early morning blessing, a church in northern Sweden undertook a slow-motion 5km journey to make way for the expansion of Europe’s biggest underground mine. The 672-tonne Kiruna Kyrka, a Swedish Lutheran church inaugurated in 1912, was slowly rolled to its new home over two days at a pace of 0.5km/h. In a huge multi-decade operation, the whole of the Arctic town of Kiruna is being moved as an iron ore mine operated by the state-owned company LKAB weakens the ground, threatening to swallow it.…

It started with the killing of 25-year-old Ingrid Escamilla, who was murdered and mutilated by her boyfriend in February 2020. The brutality of the murder – and the leaking of explicit images of her body to tabloid newspapers – sparked a national furore. Escamilla’s murder struck artist María Antonieta De la Rosa with both horror and disgust. Even in a country where more than 10 women on average were being killed every day, it felt especially cruel. “You realise how permeating this violence is,” she said. “It’s normali sed in every direction.” With its mixture of cultural machismo and generalised cartel-fuelled violence, Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries for women in the region. Between January and June this year, 1,420 women were killed across the country, according to…

‘Enslaved grandparent syndrome” – sounds extreme, doesn’t it? But that’s what some psychologists in Spain are calling the childcare burden faced by older people in that country, where 35% of those over the age of 65 take care of their grandchildren several days a week. The latest Europe-wide survey, in 2016, found the proportion of over-65s undertaking childcare at least several days a week in southern European countries – Spain especially, but also in Italy and Greece – is much higher than in France (13%) and Germany (15%) or the UK (18%). This is the result of historical cultural norms of shared care between generations, but now some Spanish grandparents are fighting back. After working all their lives, and years spent raising their own children, they hadn’t bargained for spending…

I love XO sauce and use it on rice, noodles and steamed fish. But I often struggle to finish a jar, so any advice on other ways of using it? Chris, via email “I’m stunned that Chris has any problem finishing a jar of XO sauce,” says Fuchsia Dunlop, author of Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food. “You can eat the stuff by the spoonful straight from the jar, although that would feel quite extravagant.” This is because the umami condiment, said to have been invented in Hong Kong’s Spring Moon restaurant at the Peninsula hotel in the mid-1980s, is something of a luxury. As Jenny Lau, author of An A-Z of Chinese Food, explains, XO sauce “must contain three core ingredients: dried shrimp, dried scallop and preserved…

✱ All solutions published next week Across 1 Frightfully rich rhapsodist and musician (14) 8 Espionage and assassination in Japan partly his job (5) 9 Line that could have solved the issue in 1 down (8) 11 They say Philistine puts on glasses or contact lenses (3,4) 12 As a localised disease regularly seen by trained medic (7) 13 Deport next spy cell, essentially (5) 15 Fertiliser covered by offensive will (9) 17 Difficult age is following obsessive medicine (9) 20 Badger inconsiderately (5) 21 Not at home, predator returns for discharge (7) 23 Listener gets advert for wax, perhaps (7) 25 Function with therapy in a cushy job (8) 26 Bond type sarcastic? That’s not right (5) 27 What covers the 1st and 2nd of 10 as judgment day?…

1 US/RUSSIA/UKRAINE Russia says Europe’s leaders don’t want peace in Ukraine Russia accused western European leaders of not wanting peace in Ukraine, as Moscow’s most senior diplomat praised efforts by Donald Trump to end the war, while Vice-President JD Vance said the US would “keep on trying” to broker talks in the absence of a deal. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, made the comments during a sometimes contentious interview on NBC last Sunday, during which he denied his country had bombed civilian targets in Ukraine. Trump, he said, had set himself above European leaders who accompanied Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for talks at the White House last week, after the summit between the US president and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, on 15 August. The Alaska talks…

Figures from a classified Israeli military intelligence database indicate that five out of six Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza have been civilians, an extreme rate of slaughter rarely matched in recent decades of warfare. As of May, 19 months into the war, Israeli intelligence officials listed 8,900 named fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) as dead or “probably dead”, a joint investigation by the Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call has found. At that time 53,000 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli attacks, according to health authorities in Gaza, a toll that included combatants and civilians. Fighters named in the Israeli military intelligence database accounted for just 17% of the total, which indicates that 83% of the dead were civilians.…

The Bell hotel in Epping has seen a lot since it was built in the 16th century as a coaching inn, serving travellers passing through the historic Essex market town and on to London, 25km to the south-west. This has long been a place that bustled with outsiders, though they have not always been welcome – the common opposite was once named after a beacon that local stories say was built to warn of invasion. Though now wrapped in ugly 1960s extensions that have stripped it of anything approaching charm, the building is an unlikely place to spark a potential political crisis. That is what the government may be facing, however, after the high court ruled last week that the Home Office’s use of the Bell hotel to house asylum…

Standing on top of a small mountain, Kim Seung-ho gazes out over an expanse of paddy fields glowing in their autumn gold, the ripening grains swaying gently in the wind. In the distance, North Korea stretches beyond the horizon. “It’s so peaceful,” said the director of the DMZ Ecology Research Institute. “Over there, it used to be an artillery range, but since they stopped firing, the nature has become so beautiful.” The land before him is the demilitarised zone, or DMZ, a strip of land that runs across the Korean peninsula, dividing North and South Korea roughly along the 38th parallel north. This heavily fortified border was created after the devastating Korean war, which lasted from 1950 to 1953. The conflict ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty,…

Two old family photos show the same group: a shorthaired woman, a girl in a striped dress, and a man in uniform. But there is one difference between these well-preserved sepia pictures: in one, the man wears a Wehrmacht uniform; in the other his military dress has been altered to conceal his wartime service. Donated to the Museum of Gdańsk by the son of the girl in the striped dress, these images feature in a new exhibition about the mass forced conscriptions of Pomeranians into the German army. Consisting of photo albums, family heirlooms and oral testimonies from Poles who served in the Wehrmacht, the show asks whether someone can be both a victim of, and a soldier for, an aggressor, and suggests that confronting these complexities is vital to…

In the opening weeks of Donald Trump’s second term, Gavin Newsom wagered that peace-making was best: a tarmac greeting for Air Force One, an Oval Office visit and a podcast slot for Maga’s biggest names. But then Trump came for California, and its governor dropped the niceties. With a flood of all-caps social media posts, a counterpunching redistricting proposal and a string of lawsuits challenging the new administration, Newsom is not just taking on Trump, he’s stealing his tactics: fight, fight, fight. “We’ve got to wake up, disabuse ourselves as Democrats,” Newsom said on a podcast last week. “I’m sick of being weak. I’m sick of being effete. I’m sick of being non-consequential. It’s not good enough to say it – it’s time to do.” Newsom has charged on…

The measure of a political party’s failure lies not in how many agnostics and opponents it fails to convert, but in how many loyalists it fails to preserve. The endorsement of new, unnatural voters – Latinos in the US for Donald Trump, or Tories voting for Labour for the first time – might deliver big electoral swings but is ultimately not sticky. And these votes are only meaningful if the bedrock is solid. That bedrock is the people who consistently show up, no matter what, from generation to generation, for a party. And the Democrats are losing them. In extensive research published last week tracking voter registration, the New York Times identified an alarming pattern. The Democratic party has been “haemorrhaging” voters since way before election day. In the states…

I can’t explain it. He is a sweetheart. A beautiful boy inside and out, and so brilliant.” This was how a session with N, a longtime patient of mine, began some years ago. Her son, A, was a young teenager, and in spite of coming from a warm, loving family with attentive parents, he had started having social difficulties. He wasn’t being bullied or left out at school. He wasn’t depressed, moody or anxious. In fact, he was popular, well liked and constantly being invited to parties, to basketball games, and to hang out with groups of young people. The problem was, he turned all these invitations down, and N couldn’t understand why. Three weeks later, I sat with A in my office. I asked him to describe his experience…

Germany’s Vincent Keymer, 20, has laid down a marker for the 2026 world candidates and title match by routing some of India’s best grandmasters at the Quantbox GM tournament in Chennai, the heartland of the Olympiad champions and the home of the world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju. Keymer’s score was an unbeaten 7/9, while his winning margin was a full two points. In contrast, India’s Arjun Erigaisi finished third on tie-break and dropped from No 4 to No 6 in the Fide live ratings, while Vidit Gujrathi, a 2024 world title candidate, had a minus score. Gukesh, who has struggled this year on the St Louis-based Grand Chess Tour, started badly last week in the Tour’s main event, the $350,000 Sinquefield Cup. 3986 Boci (Albania) v Balint (Austria), world under-14 championship,…

IMMIGRATION Home Office plans ‘surge’ of asylum hotel closures The Home Office has promised a “big surge” of asylum hotel closures in the new year, with five more to shut in the coming months, as ministers face mounting pressure over immigration policy. Speaking following a weekend of protests and counter-protests at hotels used to house asylum seekers, Home Office minister Angela Eagle said the government had inherited a “border security system in tatters” and accused opposition parties of offering “fag packet plans without the substance on delivery”. Nigel Farage was this week expected to outline proposals for a sweeping deportation programme, including the mass removal of asylum seekers arriving in small boats, the detention of new arrivals at military bases, and the rapid expansion of flights to Rwanda and other…

Two hilly, wooded parcels of land in Llanafan Fawr in mid-Wales have been bought by the Woodlander Initiative (TWI), a land-buying scheme led by Simon Birkett, a far-right figure with links to Patriotic Alternative, the UK’s largest fascist group. Critics say Birkett’s aim is to create a racially exclusive settlement; he has cited Orania, a whites-only town in South Africa, as an inspiration for the project. TWI bought the plots from a local farmer last year, after attempts in the English counties of Cumbria and East Sussex fell through. Since launching in 2023, the group has raised £165,000 ($223,000) of a goal of £1m – money Birkett plans to use to buy land or property in every county in Britain. “We need to start building that alternative, our own businesses,…

A mid the skyline of the high-altitude Bolivian city of El Alto, tall structures painted in garish colours and mirrored glass stand out, topped with giant statues of pop culture figures such as Batman and Iron Man. The extravagant structures are known as “cholets”, a blend of chalet and cholo, the term used for Indigenous people who moved to urban areas while retaining their cultural traits. These buildings once symbolised the rise of a new Aymara bourgeoisie that emerged during the commodities boom in the early years of Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, Evo Morales. Now, they have become a symbol of how the leftist Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas) lost support among its base – and has gone from hegemony to the brink of obliteration. After nearly 20 years of Mas…

The crowd is sweltering under an awning, but Granny Wang has them rapt. Packed in front of the 62-year-old’s small stage, and spilling out on to the bleachers above, hundreds have gathered to hear Granny Wang – real name Zhao Mei – play matchmaker to young men and women at a daily show in a theme park in Kaifeng, an ancient city in central China’s Henan province. Zhao has played the character of Granny Wang for eight years and introduced the matchmaking element in 2023 – which brought viral fame. Last year, she went from having a few hundred thousand followers on Douyin, a Chinese social media app similar to TikTok, to more than 7 million. Most in the audience are families looking to entertain their children-during the holidays. But…

It was a prediction nobody wanted to hear. On the main stage of the world’s biggest tourism fair, Stefan Gössling, a leading researcher in sustainable transport, had just calmly announced the looming death of the holiday industry. “We have already entered the beginning of the age of non-tourism,” said Gössling, to an uneasy audience of travel agencies, car rental companies, cruise operators and hoteliers. That prophecy may sound fanciful to holidaymakers in Europe and North America who have been jetting off this summer – as well as to industry executives delighted to see international tourism return to pre-pandemic highs last year – but Gössling argues that as carbon pollution stokes heatwaves, fuels wildfires and ruins harvests, the cost of foreign travel will soar, and fewer people will be able to…

Sometimes you just need to pull on the thread. That’s how it started for two Guardian reporters in the spring of 2021, when they began to investigate claims about the behaviour of Noel Clarke, the prominent British actor and film-maker. Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne spoke to many sources, including more than 20 women who shared their stories about working with Clarke. Their accusations covered all manner of misconduct: sexual harassment, unwanted touching and groping, sexually inappropriate behaviour, taking and sharing sexually explicit pictures and videos without consent, and bullying. The allegations spanned from 2004 to 2019 and were the basis of a powerful series of Guardian articles and a podcast, which led to Clarke suing the Guardian. The six-week trial took place in the high court in March and…

It is a sunny October afternoon and I am sitting in a long wood-panelled hallway in an old converted townhouse in London waiting to be called into the office of Paul McCartney. I am dressed in my best clothes and trying not to let nerves get the better of me. I am here to ask him about an aspect of his career that is rarely discussed but which, I believe, helped cement his reputation as a world-conquering compositional force and which made the Beatles the most interesting and influential band of all time. In the mid-1960s, as well as topping the charts, turning a generation of teenage girls hysterical and finding themselves the focus of obsessive media attention, the Beatles were also engaged with, and educating themselves about, the work…

Two red admiral butterflies chase and spiral above the buddleia, flashing red and black wings against blue sky. Small tortoiseshells forage among the yellow radiating petals of Inula hookeri. Speckled wood and comma land beside them, two sharing a flower. A peacock flicks its large wings, each time revealing false eyes and sleek hairy body. It’s a relief to see so many butterflies. This time last year was very different. Then I wrote in my Country Diary about their absence – the effect of a cold, wet winter and spring. When the results came in from the Big Butterfly Count (BBC), Butterfly Conservation declared a butterfly emergency. This year, the initial results of the BBC have confirmed we are seeing butterflies more frequently and in greater numbers this summer than…

Across 1 Wild West rider (6) 4 Malmo’s country (6) 8 Dole out (5) 9 Leading (7) 10 Where workers aren’t allowed in (7) 11 Mild curry (5) 12 Restaurant (9) 17 Prank (5) 19 My good man (3,4) 21 Antipathy (7) 22 Pic (5) 23 Human ‘tail’ (6) 24 Sequence – smear (6) Down 1 Origin – bed (6) 2 Lynx, e.g. (7) 3 Cap (5) 5 Saboteur (7) 6 Rider (anag.) (5) 7 Stock – well-adjusted (6) 9 Tiny cake or biscuit (5,4) 13 Pizza fish (7) 14 Amazeballs! (7) 15 Textile (6) 16 Open (plonk) (6) 18 Splash with gin? (5) 20 Opted (anag.) (5) Solution No 17,244…