Table of contents for 8 August 2025 in Guardian Weekly

Net gains ‘This is my youngest son, Beau, 15, fishing near St Davids in west Wales last month. We were on holiday for a few days. Beau doesn’t always get on too well at school – he’s been diagnosed with autism and ADHD – but he loves to fish. He caught a pollack and a sea bass.’ Do you have a recently taken picture you’d like to share with Guardian Weekly? Scan the QR code or visit theguardian.com/pictures-guardian-weekly and we’ll print your best submissions…

The UN expert who first warned that Israel was orchestrating a campaign of deliberate mass starvation in Gaza more than 500 days ago has said governments and corporations cannot claim to be surprised at the horror unfolding. “Israel has built the most efficient starvation machine you can imagine. So while it’s always shocking to see people being starved, no one should act surprised. All the information has been out in the open since early 2024,” Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, said. “Israel is starving Gaza. It’s genocide. It’s a crime against humanity. It’s a war crime. I have been repeating it and repeating it and repeating it, I feel like Cassandra,” said Fakhri, referring to the Greek mythological figure whose predictions were ignored. On…

On 5 August 2024, Sheikh Hasina resigned as prime minister of Bangladesh and fled the country, the culmination of a student uprising that saw the most widespread participation of women in street protests in Bangladesh’s history. In the wake of the political shift, many women still feel they are not being heard. In May, thousands joined the Women’s March for Solidarity demanding the government take action to ensure women’s rights and safety. Here, Bangladeshi women share their experiences of the past year, and what changes they want to be made. Umama Fatema, student activist When Umama Fatema persuaded a group of fellow female students at Dhaka University to leave their dormitories to join one of the protests last year, she had no idea how far things would go. “Everything happened…

The wild drover Guardian Australia’s picture editor, Carly Earl, has won top prize in the 2025 Australian Life photography competition with this portrait of young drovers. Sydney-based Earl, who photographed Riley Swanson, 19, while covering a team in central Queensland, said: “Drovers in rural Australia spend months on horseback moving cattle, far from modern distractions. Many quit early, but a few, like Riley Swanson, endure the harsh, romanticised life on remote, decades-old stock routes.”…

It was described as “the best job in the natural world”: an expedition botanist for Cambridge University Botanic Garden who would follow in the footsteps of Charles Darwin and go on plant-collecting adventures around the world. Within days of the job advertisement going viral, six people had sent it to Matthew Jeffery and suggested he apply. “I was already working as a tree seed collector for the Millennium Seed Bank at Kew Gardens, collecting native trees from across the UK, and I’d done a lot of European plant exploring – particularly of alpine plants – on holidays with friends,” said Jeffery, 31, who has degrees in biology and plant taxonomy and had worked in horti-culture at Chelsea Physic Garden and Kew. After realising he had the right skills for the…

Hundreds of skulls are neatly and closely placed, cheekbone to cheekbone, in tall, mahogany-framed glass cabinets. Most carry faded, peeling labels, some bear painted catalogue numbers; one has gold teeth; and the occasional one still carries its skin tissue. This is the University of Edinburgh’s “skull room”. Many were voluntarily donated to the university; others came from executed Scottish murderers; some Indigenous people’s skulls were brought to Scotland by military officers on expeditions or conquest missions. Several hundred were collected by supporters of the racist science of phrenology – the discredited belief that skull shape denoted intelligence and character. Among them are the skulls of two brothers who died while studying at Edinburgh. Their names are not recorded in the skull room catalogue, but cross-referencing of matriculation and death records…

Last month, the Lionesses clinched a historic victory in the Euros final against Spain, becoming the first England team to win a major international tournament abroad. As a clinical psychologist who works with professional athletes and sports teams, I know that discipline and aggression will have played an important role in their victory – but that habits and hobbies off the pitch might have been just as vital. In the training camp, away from the spotlight and competition of the tournament, the Lionesses would come together in the evenings to engage in wholesome activities including building Lego, doing jigsaws and playing Monopoly Deal. Forward Michelle Agyemang played a piano in her room. Defender Lotte Wubben-Moy brought a sourdough starter from home for the team chef to feed. They were also…

When it was first announced in 2013, the thought of Fargo being reimagined as a TV miniseries felt sacrilegious. The 1996 neo-noir was a singular film that had won two Oscars. Surely its distinctive Coen brothers vibe would get shredded in a TV adaptation? Back then, Noah Hawley, the screenwriter who took on the job, would have agreed. “It seemed such a terrible idea,” he says via video call from a Long Island holiday bolthole. “Which is sort of why I liked it. The risk/reward was really high.” His approach was a more mindful reimagining than direct adaptation that perfectly captured the Coens’ essence and has continued for five seasons, with showrunner Hawley finding an intriguing new angle each time. If taking on Fargo was a big swing, Hawley’s latest…

It’s been a summer of surprising urban nature encounters here. Peregrine falcons over Primark, a family of goldcrests in the yew tree of the town graveyard, and now this? A hummingbird by the Co-op? My common sense catches up with my eyes soon after. This is a hummingbird hawk moth. My first sighting, and here it is feeding on the underwatered petunias of the supermarket plant trolley, near the main road. Its small, pale-grey face is strangely owl-like. It hovers in a peach blur of 80 wing beats per second, unrolling its long, long proboscis like a fishing line to dip into the centre of each flower. I am enchanted, grateful for its lingering, until, with a turn, it’s off and away. Strong flyers and skilled at making use of…

Across 1 Traditional – in simple artistic style (6) 4 Drink with crushed ice (6) 8 Keeper (5) 9 Camp (7) 10 Judicious (7) 11 Upper layer? (5) 12 Chicken beater? (9) 17 Turn engine over before moving off (3,2) 19 African river (7) 21 Sat. and Sun. (7) 22 Easily fearful (5) 23 Penchant (6) 24 Mice, rats etc. (6) Down 1 Drooping (6) 2 Unhurried (7) 3 Shopping binge? (5) 5 Pasta type (7) 6 Dwarf planet (5) 7 Avoid (6) 9 Perfect for a nibble (4-5) 13 Many (7) 14 Don’t spill the beans (4,3) 15 Small digger (6) 16 Clandestine (6) 18 Sweater type (1-4) 20 Measure of length (5) Solution No 17,226…

1 US/RUSSIA Trump envoy visits Moscow as Ukraine deadline looms Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, was expected in Moscow on Wednesday, two days before the US president’s deadline for Russia to make progress on ending the war in Ukraine or face increased US sanctions. When asked what Vladimir Putin could do to avoid new sanctions, the US president answered: “Yeah, get a deal where people stop getting killed.” Last week Trump said he had deployed nuclear-capable submarines in response to a threatening tweet by Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev. Some security analysts called Trump’s move a rhetorical escalation with Moscow but not necessarily a military one. Putin said last Friday that he wanted a “lasting and stable peace” but gave no indication that he is willing to make any concessions…

The idea that if you really, really believe something you can make it happen seems to be the best explanation for Britain and France’s recent statements that they will recognise a Palestinian state. No matter how fervent Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are, their fervour will not make an impossible thing happen. There is no Palestinian state, and there certainly won’t be one by September. For mostly domestic political reasons, they have decided to set aside that fact. Recognition is an understandable gesture, but it will do nothing to solve the current famine, and is doomed in the short term because there is no real state to recognise. But there’s also a clear reason why some sort of action – even if it’s symbolic – is needed. The situation in…

As a Cambodian living in Thailand, 31-year-old Da has kept her children home from school last week in fear they might face abuse. “One of my friends went to the market yesterday to buy durian and the seller told her that she hated Cambodians,” she said, of rising tensions between the neighbouring countries. Days after Thailand and Cambodia announced a ceasefire after a deadly five-day conflict, relations remain dangerously frayed, and peace is tenuous. Since the truce, both sides have accused each other of violating it, while online, public distrust is being fuelled by a bitter confluence of disinformation, threats and nationalism. Dowsawan Vanthong, 50, who is volunteering at a temple in Surin, north-eastern Thailand, that is hosting evacuated people, worries that even if calm prevails and the disputed border…

From Jeremy Hunt and Alan Johnson to Andy Burnham and Ken Clarke, politics is littered with ambitious former health secretaries who did not make it into No 10. The aspirational current health secretary, Wes Streeting, is believed to have his sights on bucking that trend, and one day replacing Keir Starmer in Downing Street. However, the resident doctors’ strike represents a moment of danger for the health secretary, with the medics pitched against the government – demanding a return to the real-terms pay levels of 2008. It would be a 25% salary increase on top of a 29% rise over the past three years, with the government refusing to open pay discussions and restricting talks to negotiating on other benefits such as pensions. Streeting has taken a robust approach to…

When Mariama Kamara enters the Statiegeld return shop on Amsterdam’s Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, she is on a mission. She has been tasked by her aunt, who runs a nearby restaurant, with depositing three giant blue bags of bottles and cans. In about seven minutes she feeds a machine about 350 cans, bringing in more than €50 ($58) which will go back into her aunt’s business. “It’s a really cool idea, and so convenient,” she said. In the Netherlands, whenever consumers buy goods in cans, glass or plastic bottles, they pay a fee ranging from 15 cents to 25 cents depending on the type of container. This can be reclaimed when you return the container to a “reverse vending machine”. But the machines sometimes don’t work, or are too small. Stores will…

Two months after first going to hospital, a 65-year-old woman was dead – and her doctors are blaming the cosmetic creams she used on her face and body for decades. The anonymous patient, from Togo, is one of a string of cases reported in medical journals of cancers in black African women linked to skin-lightening creams and lotions, prompting dermatologists to call for better regulation. The melanin in darker skin typically offers some protection against the sun damage that can cause cancers. “Patients with black skin have a natural SPF of about 15, just by having pigmented skin,” said Prof Ncoza Dlova, head of dermatology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. “If they remove that melanin [with skin lightening creams], they’re actually removing the natural protection.” Estimates of skin…

When The Salt Path came out in 2018, it was a publishing phenomenon, going on to sell more than 2m copies globally. As even those who haven’t read it are likely to know by now, the book charted Raynor Winn and her husband Moth’s emotionally and physically transformative long-distance walk along the South West Coast Path in the wake of utter disaster: a financial collapse that cost them their home, and Moth’s diagnosis with an incurable neurological disorder. Winn followed it with two further books in a similar vein, The Wild Silence and Landlines, also bestsellers. Earlier this year came a film of The Salt Path, starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. That original book by a first-time writer had become what writers, editors and booksellers all dream of: a…

On 2 July, a New York jury delivered a guilty verdict on some of the charges against the music mogul Sean Combs, accused of horrific sexual abuse of women with the help of his extensive staff and deep pockets. He’s also accused in many civil suits of sexual abuse of adults and minors. It seems like everyone promptly forgot about Combs when the facts about the financier Jeffrey Epstein’s decades of horrific sexual abuse of at least a 100 girls and women, with the help of his extensive staff, deep pockets, banks and elite connections became the next front-page ruckus. In June, the movie producer Harvey Weinstein was found guilty in a New York retrial for some of his decades of horrific sexual abuse of women, with the help of…

WITH MASS DEPORTATIONS OF MIGRANTS ACROSS AMERICA – not to mention reports of people being put in shackles or made to kneel and eat “like dogs” – Nora Guthrie is disappointed there hasn’t been more noise from musicians about the issue. “I’ve been out protesting every weekend,” says the 75-year-old daughter of singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie and founder of the Woody Guthrie Archive. “And I’ve found myself asking, ‘Where are the songs for us to sing about this?’” In need of a track that meets the moment, she turned to Deportee, a song her father wrote in 1948 in response to a plane crash in California that killed four Americans and 28 Mexican migrant workers, who were being deported. “A few days later, only the Americans were named and the rest…

I have just got a pizza oven, but what else can I cook in it ? Sure, Neapolitan pizza and negroni nights are great, but start thinking of your pizza oven as a high-temperature oven and there will be even more reason to stay outdoors. “I’d lean towards food that you eat charred,” says Kit Delamain of Circus Pizza at Panzer’s Deli in London. That might mean aubergines to blitz into baba ganoush, finishing meat (think lamb) that’s been cooked low and slow or to bake pitta: “They puff up ever so nicely, which is hard to achieve in a normal oven.” The same goes for pillowy naan. Pizza ovens come in different shapes and styles but they can be “really controllable”, says Rachel Jones, founder of Ace Pizza in…

✱ All solutions published next week Across 7 Had fun too, weirdly without much forethought (3,2,4) 8 Good downpour for wheat or corn (5) 9 Averse to being shot? (6-3) 10 Present in box that lacks plastic at the back (5) 12 Behold the stew! (6) 13 Favoured treatment manoeuvred me in post (8) 14 Trip, start to stagger, then fall (7) 17 Family member runs into trouble (7) 20 Respectable, extremely tiny buildings (8) 22 The other 22 mostly guarding central part of Belgian border (6) 24 Throws out various items (5) 25 Adjust behind scope (9) 26 Some routes to Potters Bar (5) 27 Over-the-top, and badly organised (9) Down 1 Church assistant’s uniform placed in packing case (6) 2 Instant sign of hesitation provides the impetus to…

PROTEST Support for Palestine Action will lead to arrest Police are planning to arrest anyone demonstrating in support of Palestine Action this weekend. The group has been banned under terrorism laws and a large event protesting against its proscription has been organised by the group Defend Our Juries. A source with knowledge of the police’s early planning for the event, due to take place in London on Saturday, said: “If they think that by turning up with significant numbers that we can’t arrest them for breaking terrorism laws, they need to think again. ” London’s Metropolitan police force is sceptical of claims that thousands could turn up, believing that a total in the low hundreds is more likely. Defend Our Juries is asking those taking part to hold up signs…

The people of Gaza did not need last week’s official confirmation from UN-backed hunger experts that the “worst-case scenario of famine” was unfolding there. For months they have watched as their children waste away. “All my children have lost nearly half of their body weight,” said Jamil Mughari, a 38-year-old from Maghazi in central Gaza. “My daughter, who is five years old, now weighs only 11kg. My son Mohammad has become just skin and bones. All my children are like this. “I myself used to weigh 85kg, and now I’m down to 55. ” He was struggling to sustain the strength required to find food for his family. “Sometimes, I feel dizzy and that I’m about to collapse, but I force myself to stay upright. I also sometimes experience shivering,”…

Rakib Hossain was just 11 years old when standing innocently on the streets of Dhaka in July last year, he was killed by a bullet to the head – fired allegedly by the police. Hossain was one of more than 1,400 men, women and children killed in Bangladesh’s so-called July revolution, when hundreds of thousands rose up in protest against the country’s leader, Sheikh Hasina. Her attempts to crush the mass movement included deploying heavily armed police, who – with shoot to kill orders – fired live ammunition at civilians on the streets. Ultimately, the crackdown was unsuccessful and Hasina was forced to flee Bangladesh in a helicopter on 5 August last year, as angry protesters marched towards her residence and the military refused to forcefully stop them. Just over…

Once a decade, Ukraine has a moment in which street protests redefine the country’s political direction. The Orange revolution of 2004; the Maidan revolution of 2014; and now, over the past few weeks, the first major wave of protest since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. A series of unexpectedly boisterous and well-attended demonstrations forced Volodymyr Zelenskyy to execute a swift U-turn on his decision to scrap the independence of two anticorruption bodies. Last Thursday, MPs reversed the contentious changes they had adopted a week previously. Outside the parliament building, crowds whooped and cheered as the result of the vote was announced. The size, scope and demands of this latest protest movement have been much more modest than those of its revolutionary predecessors, but the spectacle has been no less…

The UK’s Online Safety Act has been highly anticipated. Amid mounting concerns about the ease of accessing harmful content online, rules were drawn up to force social platforms to protect children from posts and videos that incite hatred or encourage suicide, self-harm or eating disorders – and finally came into force last month. But within days the new approach to keeping children safe online had become a rallying point for the right in both Britain and the US. Last week, Nigel Farage, leader of Reform, was embroiled in a furious row with a Labour government minister after vowing to repeal the legislation. Meanwhile, concerned Republicans held face-to-face meetings with politicians and the UK communications regulator, Ofcom. And in Australia, which is preparing to ban under-16s from social media, the impact…

Trolleys piled high with decapitated silicon monster heads, tattooed dealers lurking in alleyways, bin bags of contraband hidden behind shop counters: welcome to the world of Lafufus. Fake Labubus, also known as Lafufus, are flooding the hidden market. As demand for the collectable furry keyrings soars, entrepreneurs in the southern trading hub of Shenzhen are wasting no time sourcing imitation versions to sell to eager Labubu hunters. But the Chinese authorities, keen to protect a rare soft-power success story, are cracking down on the counterfeits. “Labubus have become very sensitive,” said one unofficial vendor, in her small, unmarked, fake designer goods shop hidden on the 17th floor of a bland office building in Shenzhen’s Huaqiangbei district, an area known for cheap electronics. “We don’t dare to talk about it,” her…

Cloudbreak, near the island of Tavarua in western Fiji, is one of the best waves in the world. For decades, the long, hollow left-hand reef break has drawn surfers from around the globe; later this year, the men’s and women’s World Surf League (WSL) champions will be crowned at Cloudbreak. But until 2010, local surfers were forbidden from surfing the wave due to an exclusivity deal with a nearby resort. That year, Fiji’s cabinet made the decision “to liberalise access to any surfing area”. Cloudbreak was exclusive no more. A decade and a half later, in no small part thanks to that cabinet decision, Fiji has its first professional surfer. “I’m so lucky,” said James Kusitino, who recently signed a team rider deal with surfwear brand Former. “It opened in…

Over the past six months, Donald Trump has been accused of rapidly dragging the largest democracy in the Americas towards authoritarianism. Now, the US president seems bent on undermining the region’s second largest democracy too. Since early July, Trump has launched an extraordinary attack on Brazil’s institutions, slapping 50% tariffs on imports from the South American country and sanctions on a supreme court judge – partly in retribution for what he called the political persecution of his ally, Jair Bolsonaro, who is on trial for his alleged leading role in a failed coup. “ I feel for the Brazilians,” said Steven Levitsky, the Harvard University political scientist who co-author of How Democracies Die. “ It’s painful to see the [US] government do damage to other countries’ democratic institutions as well.”…

A new party has launched in the UK, and it didn’t take long for it to become the subject of frantic speculation. Will it split the left? Will it create more of an opening for Reform UK? Should it forge an alliance with the Greens? The stunning speed with which Jeremy Corbyn’s new party amassed supporters, gaining 600,000 in the first week, reasonably makes it feel like a real and viable thing. And the next logical step is to assess its chances in meaningfully challenging the mainstream. But the bigger question is, can the mainstream be meaningfully challenged, or is the future one of increasing fragmentation, with a persistent but tense monopoly on power by the political establishment? The signs that the centre is fraying at the margins became clear…

The world could face as hortage of 13 million nurses by the end of this decade. For her new film, Swiss director Petra Volpe imagined the consequences of a single missed shift on a busy night in a hospital – and found herself making a disaster movie. With Late Shift, Volpe aimed to shine a light on the frontlines of the looming healthcare catastrophe through the eyes of the dedicated, exhausted Floria. Played by German actor Leonie Benesch, the young nurse shows an initially acrobatic grace in her workday, the first half of which resembles a hectic episode of the restaurant-kitchen series The Bear, but with life-and-death stakes. Arriving for her shift cheery and energetic, Floria soon hears another nurse has called in sick. The workload grows exponentially, compounding the…

This year’s Booker judges had a crowded field to pick from, with scores of eligible books from previously nominated writers and five new novels from winners alone (John Banville, Kiran Desai, Alan Hollinghurst, Ian McEwan and Ben Okri). Of these, Hollinghurst is one eyebrow-raising exclusion, for his elegiac and beautifully composed panorama of gay life in Britain over the past seven decades, Our Evenings. But it’s no surprise that the list is headed by Desai’s epic The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, a novel in the works since her Booker win two decades ago and due out next month. This is a love story about two people pulled between India and the US, family inheritance and personal ambition, intimacy and solitude. Immersive and gently funny, her vast canvas painted with…