The Guardian USA - 11 December 2023

Donald Trump tested the contours of his gag order in the federal criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, assailing his former attorney general and potential trial witness William Barr in remarks at a Saturday night New York gala event. “I make this commitment to you tonight: we will not have Bill Barr as our attorney general, is that OK?” Trump said as he discussed a potential second presidency. “He was a coward. He was afraid of being impeached.” The US court of appeals for the DC circuit notably ruled days before that Trump remains barred from attacking potential trial witnesses in the 2020 election interference case pending against him in Washington as long as his attacks do not involve their participation in the criminal investigation or trial proceedings. Under that standard, it was unclear whether Trump directly violated the conditions of the gag order, which he has vowed to appeal to the US supreme court. But it tested the restriction’s scope and cast into doubt his ability to stay clear of being held in contempt. The remark about Barr came during a speech heavy with resentment about Trump’s four criminal indictments and vows for revenge before an audience that included allies he is expected to tap for top justice department roles should he be re-elected next year to the White House. Trump compared himself again to the legendary mob boss Al Capone. But he appeared to press the point more in front of his most loyal allies, including Kash Patel – widely considered a candidate for FBI or CIA director – and Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official who has himself been indicted. Patel and Clark connected for a brief private conversation after Trump finished his remarks and left the New York Young Republican Club’s black-tie gala with his in-house counsel Boris Epshteyn, also seen as a candidate for a top White House legal role if there is a second Trump administration. The former president has been indicted four times: for retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club and obstructing justice, for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Washington, for trying to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, and for paying hush money to a porn star. Trump flashed a forced grin when he delivered the complaint that Capone, “the greatest gangster”, was indicted only once. But his voice betrayed a deeper sense of bitterness and what came across as a thinly-veiled message for his allies to exact retribution. The speech was delivered from the same stage at Cipriani Wall Street where Hillary Clinton referred to Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” before she lost the 2016 election to Trump. The theme of Trump’s remarks was revenge: how he had gotten the better of Washington elites before and how he would do so again. Trump repeatedly name-checked Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist with whom he forged a close bond during the 2016 campaign, as he retold the story of how Bannon had urged him not to drop out of the race over the objections of former Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus. The story about that moment and of his disdain for the criticism he received for bragging about touching women’s genitals in an infamous Access Hollywood tape underscored the recent return of his original allies to his orbit. Trump also called out to Epshteyn, a close confidant with long ties to Bannon who now oversees Trump’s legal teams, and Raheem Kassam, another longtime Bannon associate. Trump’s communications director Steve Cheung, a former Bannon adviser, was scheduled to attend but did not. Donald Trump speaks during the New York Young Republican Club's annual gala at Cipriani Wall Street, on Saturday. Photograph: Yuki Iwamura/AP Trump tests federal gag order with attack on Bill Barr: ‘He was a coward’ Hugo Lowell in New York Opinion She’s a megastar, but Taylor Swift just won’t shake off old feuds. Good for her Barbara Ellen page 20 Monday 11 December 2023 theguardian.com/us Published in New York, United States Environment ‘Magical’ tech innovations a distraction from real solutions, climate experts warn page 41

In 1991, a Kansas state legislator proposed paying women on welfare to get Norplant, a contraceptive that when inserted in the upper arm would prevent pregnancy for five years. His proposal followed a 1990 Philadelphia Inquirer editorial that linked two news events – the federal government’s approval of Norplant and a report that showed half the country’s Black children were living in poverty. The editorial suggested women on welfare – presumed to be Black – should receive Norplant for free: “Dare we mention them in the same breath? To do so might be considered deplorably insensitive, perhaps raising the specter of eugenics. But it would be worse to avoid drawing the logical conclusion that foolproof contraception could be invaluable in breaking the cycle of inner-city poverty.” The desire to control Black women’s fertility can be traced back to chattel slavery and was borne from a bevy of racist ideas – the most pervasive being that Black women can reproduce easily. It’s a belief that’s still commonly held today, and in addition to serving as the basis for reproductive discrimination, the trope has furthered the idea that infertility is only an issue for white people. “The stereotypes of Black women’s reproduction all lean towards hyperfertility – the welfare queens, not knowing when to stop having babies, not being able to afford their babies,” said Rosario Ceballo, the dean of Georgetown University College of Arts and Sciences and a co-author of the research paper Silent and Infertile. “For a long time our social narratives about infertility centered on white, upper socioeconomic-class couples. And it was very focused on high-tech, highly-expensive medical interventions like IVF [in vitro fertilization]. There’s a real dichotomy between perceptions of women of color who just have too many babies, and white women whose ability to have babies we need to assist and support.” The reality, though, is that while more than 13% of American women aged 15 to 49 have impaired fecundity, Black women are twice as likely as white women to suffer from infertility. (The most recent infertility data from the Centers for Disease Control is from 2013.) They are also half as likely as white women to seek help for infertility; one review of 80,390 assisted reproductive technology (ART) cycles (defined as any fertility treatments in which either eggs or embryos are handled) showed that white women were involved in 85.4% of them, whereas only 4.6% involved Black women. I interviewed several Black women who believed they would be able to have children whenever they decided it was time, mainly because they saw relatives getting pregnant with ease, but also because those prevalent social narratives permeated their households as well; the only information they often got about sex from their parents was the admonition notto get pregnant. Reniqua Allen-Lamphere, a 42-yearold journalist in New Jersey, started trying to get pregnant at 38, as soon as she and her husband returned from their honeymoon. Four months later, they decided to see a fertility specialist, who suggested they try timed intercourse, then two rounds of intrauterine insemination (IUI), in which sperm is placed directly into the uterus, and finally four rounds of IVF, in which embryos are placed directly into the uterus. “It was horrible. Devastating. It’s really lonely,” Allen-Lamphere said of the IVF process, during which she had to have daily injections to stimulate her ovaries to produce multiple eggs, and then undergo the surgical procedure to retrieve them. “You feel like your body is not doing the thing it was created to do. I grew up with people telling me that Black women get pregnant just looking at a penis. So why is this not happening for me?” American women overall are waiting later to become pregnant, which can contribute to infertility and necessitate the use of ART. But Black women in particular, contending with discriminatory reproductive care and saddled with the trope of hyper-fertility, face a more difficult issue: they need ART and other medical interventions at a much higher rate than they’re receiving them. A history of dominance over Black women’s bodies Black women’s fertility has historically been a very public, closely regulated matter. Enslaved women were raped and “bred” like livestock, expected to have as many children as possible to boost the labor force for plantation owners. But from emancipation on, after Black women’s bodies were no longer seen as vessels to supply free labor, the focus shifted to finding ways to dampen their assumed hyperfertility, to prevent them from having too many children that would be a drain on society. Starting in the early 1900s, 32 states passed eugenics laws that allowed the government to sterilize people with disabilities, people of color and others based on the belief that the human race could be improved by selective breeding, and by preventing “undesirable” people from having children. Eugenicists believed that white middle- and upper-class Americans should have large families, but that Black and other “unfit” people shouldn’t, in part to ensure that wealthy, white Protestants would not eventually be outnumbered. Black, Indigenous and Latina women were forcibly sterilized in government-funded programs – a practice that continued well into the 1970s in states like North Carolina and Alabama. The women were often given the false impression that the procedures were reversible. And those on welfare were sometimes told their benefits would be withheld if they did not go through with the sterilization. According to a report from the National Women’s Law Center, 31 states and the District of Columbia still have laws that allow people with disabilities to be forcibly sterilized. The government and organizations such as Planned Parenthood also encouraged the use of the pill and other contraceptives in Black communities – a positive in that it gave women more reproductive autonomy, but the practice sometimes had racist undertones, even when endorsed by Black leaders. In a 1932 article, Black Folk and Birth Control, WEB Du Bois advocated for increased use of contraceptives among Black people, writing: “The mass of ignorant Negroes still breed carelessly and disastrously, so that the increase among Negroes, even more than the increase among whites, is from that part of the population least intelligent and fit, and least able to rear their children properly.” Some contraceptives were given to Black women despite concerns about side effects. Though Depo-Provera, an injectable contraceptive, had been found to cause cancer in laboratory animals, from 1967 to 1978 it was tested on women at a clinic in Atlanta, about half of whom were low-income and Black. The women were not told about the risks, and in many cases the experiments were done without their informed consent. Ceballo found that several of the 50 Black women she interviewed for her paper were resistant to using ART, in part due to the mistreatment that Black women have historically faced from the medical establishment. “There is what I call a healthy skepticism of medical institutions among the Black community, given some of the past injustices that have occurred,” said Ceballo. “Some women felt, ‘[these doctors] are not going to understand my situation. I’m not sure they’re going to want to help me.’Some of the women were very religious and felt that they were going to place this in God’s hands.” The narrative has shifted slightly as several high-profile Black women have spoken publicly about their own journeys with ART. Michelle Obama wrote in her memoir, Becoming, that both Sasha and Malia were conceived using IVF. In her autobiography, Thicker Than Water, Kerry Washington revealed that she was conceived using a sperm donor in 1976 – something her parents didn’t tell her until 2018. “When Michelle Obama came out with her journey of fertility treatment and miscarriages, she opened the door to a conversation that was rarely discussed amongst Black women,” said Dr Temeka Zore, a reproductive endocrinologist and OB-GYN at Spring Fertility, a clinic with offices in San Francisco, New York and Portland. Though Zore cautioned that fertility care is still underused for women of color, “from a clinical perspective”, she said, “I do think more Black women are becoming aware of their options for fertility treatment.” ‘Some part of me just thought that if we keep trying, it’ll work’ Even if there is a growing awareness among Black women about the possibility of ART, they often don’t know when to seek help for infertility, or that they should even seek help in the first place. Black women are more likely to have medical conditions such as diabetes and endometriosis that might impact their ability to get pregnant or carry a baby to term, but doctors sometimes do not advise them of the possible barriers to conception. They also develop fibroids at a rate three times higher than white women. These benign uterine tumors are typically larger in Black women, and can cause miscarriages and infertility. Lauren Teverbaugh, a 41-year-old pediatrician and psychiatrist based in New Orleans, did not know she had fibroids until she was 31, when a new gynecologist told her as part of a routine exam. Still, Teverbaugh said, the doctor didn’t indicate the fibroids could be a reason for concern. It was relatively easy for Teverbaugh and her partner to get pregnant, just three months after they started trying, and a month after Teverbaugh started using an ovulation predictor kit. But when she went to the obstetrician for her first appointment, about five weeks later, there was no heartbeat. Teverbaugh’s doctor told her to wait a couple of months before trying again, but did not suggest that given Teverbaugh’s age – she was 37 at the time – they should see a fertility specialist. Some experts say that couples should see a fertility specialist if they have not conceived after having unprotected sex for 12 months if the woman is under 35, and six months if the woman is over 35. But Teverbaugh and her partner tried to conceive naturally from December 2020 until September 2021. “Some part of me just thought that if we keep trying, it’ll work,” said Teverbaugh. “In hindsight, I really wish that I had been referred to the reproductive endocrinologist earlier.” She finally met with a specialist in September 2021. It took a while to complete all the testing and bloodwork, and during the process she discovered she was pregnant again. When she went for another test, Teverbaugh discovered the pregnancy was not viable. She had her second miscarriage almost a year to the day after she’d had her first. In February 2022, Teverbaugh tried IUI and became pregnant. At five weeks, she was able to hear the baby’s heartbeat. It was reaching that milestone that made her third miscarriage so devastating. Teverbaugh and her partner are now trying IVF. In September 2022, after undergoing uterine testing, she found that she had a fibroid pressing down on the top of her uterus. She also discovered she had chronic endometritis, which causes infectious inflammation of the innermost uterine layer. She had surgery this past June to remove 16 fibroids and is waiting to do an embryo transfer. To date, even with insurance covering some of the costs, Teverbaugh estimates that they have spent $60,000 on infertility treatment. Thousands of dollars for a shot at Black women are more likely to experience infertility than white women. They’re less likely to get help, too Lisa Armstrong Black women are twice as likely as white women to suffer from infertility. They are also half as likely as white women to seek help for infertility. Illustration: Rachelle Baker/The Guardian The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 2 Headlines Continued on page 3

pregnancy The first child to be born through IVF, in 1978, was Louise Brown, a blonde, blue-eyed baby belonging to a white, heterosexual married couple. Brown’s birth drew worldwide media attention, and essentially came to symbolize who ART was made for. The idea that infertility only affects white, upper-class couples has helped create a significant financial barrier to ART, and the price of treatments is often a deterrent. “Access and affordability of care are two of the biggest factors impacting Black women,” said Zore. “Studies have shown Black women are less likely to have medical insurance and are more likely to make less than white women. Infertility treatment can be expensive with the average IVF cycle costing $15,000 to $20,000 depending on where someone lives.” More insurance companies are starting to cover some forms of fertility treatment, often because of state mandates. According to the National Infertility Association, “as of September 2023, 21 states plus DC have passed fertility insurance coverage laws, 15 of those laws include IVF coverage, and 17 cover fertility preservation for iatrogenic (medically-induced) infertility”. New York state also has an infertility reimbursement program, which provides grants to reimburse the costs of some infertility treatments for households making under $200,000 a year. And several organizations, including Fertility for Colored Girls and the Cade Foundation, offer grants to help cover ART costs. In October, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, a leading organization in reproductive health science, issued a new definition of “infertility” that specifies “the need for medical intervention, including, but not limited to, the use of donor gametes or donor embryos in order to achieve a successful pregnancy either as an individual or with a partner”. This expansion to include donor eggs and sperm could lead to better insurance coverage for LGBTQ + couples and single women (about 20% of women who use sperm banks are single mothers by choice). But even with potentially lower costs for ART procedures, those who are seeking Black sperm donors still have to contend with scarcity. The numbers fluctuate periodically, but a recent search for Black sperm donors listed in two of the largest cryobanks in the country showed there were nine Black donors out of 269 at California Cryobank and 17 Black donors out of 332 at Fairfax Cryobank. Where are the Black sperm donors? When Angela Stepancic and her wife decided to have a child in 2020, they found there were only 12 Black sperm donors available at the cryobank they chose. And from that bunch, the genetically compatible donors for the couple were even fewer. Frustrated, Stepancic, who is 41 and based in Washington DC, attended webinars to learn more about sperm donation and asked a cryobank executive why there weren’t more Black men in their donor pool. “The woman’s response was, ‘Well, we can’t find any,’” said Stepancic. “I was like, if Beyoncé can find an entire orchestra of Black women on strings, we can certainly find Black sperm donors.” Alyssa Newman, a senior research scholar at Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics, said that there hasn’t been enough research done to fully explain the lack of Black sperm donors, but part of the issue is the taxing application and evaluation process. Sperm donor applications include extensive questionnaires about health, personality and other traits. Newman, whose research focuses on assisted reproductive technology and racial health disparities, said applicants may also undergo psychological exams, and that some intake forms require applicants to submit pictures of all their tattoos and an explanation of why they got each one. “You’re subjecting yourself to really invasive levels of scrutiny under the guise of vetting you as a donor,” said Newman. “Some is relevant health information, but a lot of it is also this character and moral validation that subjects people to scrutiny that may be really off-putting, especially if you’re being evaluated by people who are not Black. “Other things, like having three generations of health history information, might not be as accessible to potential Black donors or might turn them away from trying,” said Newman of the standard requirement for most sperm banks. “The selection criteria might be systematically excluding Black donors. The educational requirements, the criminal background checks, [and] other things that reflect social inequalities and marginalize Black men are just being reproduced at the level of the screening criteria.” Stepancic saw an opportunity and is in the process of opening a cryobank, Reproductive Village, to help increase the number of Black sperm donors. Part of that means not disqualifying people based on what she said was essentially eugenics: “The idea that if your education isn’t high, then your child’s education won’t be either. The idea that if you committed a crime, then obviously your child will be a criminal.” Many sperm banks require donors to have a high school diploma, but Stepancic said Reproductive Village will also accept the equivalent, such as a GED. Donors’ heights and weights will be documented, but applicants won’t be disqualified based on those measurements, as they often are by facilities that require a certain body mass index. “While we have high standards for our sperm, the main standard for us is we want to make sure that it’s safe and that you’ll be able to actually create a child from that donor,” said Stepancic. “Everything else is tertiary, because if you’ve been trying to have a baby for years, does height matter?” Stepancic and her wife ultimately decided to use sperm from a white Venezuelan donor to have their daughter, who was conceived through IUI and is now 22 months old. Stepancic said the experience of searching for Black sperm for several months and other upsets along the way gave her a unique ability to support others in their quest to have a baby. “You have to be committed to a marathon,” she said. “Then also realize that if you thought it was just a marathon, it might actually be a triathlon, and you might actually be skiing instead of running.” ‘Fertility is a social justice issue’ However long the journey is, it can be especially painful because of the isolation many Black women feel while experiencing infertility or using ART. They are reluctant to share details about their struggles, according to Ceballo, because they often blame themselves for their infertility. “Internalizing the belief that Black women are always fertile means that when you can’t get pregnant, having lived all your life assuming that it’s a biological given, there’s tremendous shame,” said Ceballo. “To not be able to do something that you so desperately want … that kind of deep, psychological pain is difficult to share.” Many women also experience external criticism for believing they can be educated, build careers and also have children well into their late 30s and 40s. “Society blames you,” Allen-Lamphere said. “‘When you were focused on your career, you should have been more focused on a man.’ There are a million ways that women get blamed for not solely focusing and dedicating their whole life to the pursuit of marriage and children.” To deal with the feelings of guilt and isolation, she joined a therapy group, where she said she was the only Black woman. “It was hard,” said Allen-Lamphere. “But at least these were women who were going through what I had.” Tiffany Hailey, a 43-year-old brand marketer based in Atlanta, also couldn’t find a community of Black women going through IVF. So she started one of her own, a private Facebook group called Black Women TTC: Infertility, IVF, Egg freezing, etc. The group, which she founded in 2018, has some 7,500 members. “I wanted to make sure that we had a protected place to talk about our experiences – finding Black womanfriendly doctors, Black-friendly clinics, specific grants and programs for people where this is cost prohibitive,” she said. “I feel like with our demographic some of this is not as attainable because we don’t have those networks to help us.” A burgeoning number of Black infertility doulas are also offering support, many of whom started this work after their own personal experiences with infertility. “I cried in so many stairwells,” said Laura Kradas, a New York City-based infertility doula. “And I remember this particular day, I left work and I called my best friend who was a birth doula. She was like, ‘Today you’re going to cry, Laura, but tomorrow you’re going to fight.’ And I tell my clients that all the time.” Infertility doulas provide emotional, physical and educational support for those having difficulty conceiving. Kradas does everything from helping women make sense of medical jargon to being on FaceTime with them as they selfadminister hormone shots to prepare for egg freezing. “It’s all about creating strength and power during the journey. You can come out of an egg retrieval and feel like you have no control. But then you have somebody on the phone being like, ‘Here are the three wins that I’m hearing. Here are the three questions we’re going to ask our doctor to hit the ground running on the next cycle,” said Kradas. “When you’re in a space of despair, it’s nice to have somebody take all the facts and be like, ‘Here’s where we’re at.’” Both Hailey and Allen-Lamphere eventually conceived using IVF. Hailey’s son is three, and Allen-Lamphere, who has an 18-month-old son, is pregnant with her second child following an embryo transfer this past September. She is working on a book about Black women and infertility, a comprehensive guide she said will feel “like a friend and a mom and a doctor all rolled into one”. Her goal is to create the kind of resource she wishes she’d had as she navigated everything from considering egg freezing to IVF. But she was also motivated after the June 2022 US supreme court ruling that overturned Roe v Wade, ending the constitutional right to have an abortion. To Allen-Lamphere, access to infertility treatments is the other side of the reproductive justice coin, and should be a fundamental right for anyone who wants to have a child. “Fertility is just as much of a social justice issue as abortion rights are, because [infertility treatments] are not accessible to certain aspects of the population,” she said. “It’s not accessible if you don’t live in the right states or have the right insurance, and it’s excluding many people, particularly people of color, from having babies that they want.” A back-room meeting between local power brokers in Atlanta, including a top aide to the city’s mayor, led to the last-minute scuttling of an ordinance that could have helped people get to vote on whether to build a controversial police and fire department training center known as “Cop City”. Mounting a referendum campaign allowing voters to decide on Cop City is one of many strategies opponents to the center have adopted in a movement that has gained worldwide attention while taking on concerns ranging from police militarization to environmental racism and deforestation in an era of climate crisis. The center is planned for a 171-acre footprint in a forest southeast of Atlanta. A coalition of voting rights and prodemocracy law firms in the US drew up the ordinance to codify how the city would verify and count voter signatures on petitions to place questions on ballots in general, since the training center campaign is the first such local democracy effort in the capital of Georgia’s 176-year history – and no such process exists. But in a meeting behind closed doors during the city council meeting last week, where the city councilwoman Liliana Bakhtiari was planning to introduce the ordinance, a deputy chief of staff to the Democratic mayor, Andre Dickens, objected to wording that would have made the process for handling petitions effective immediately, thus covering the Cop City referendum effort, according to a person who was in the room and spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity. Bakhtiari returned to the meeting and never introduced the ordinance. Neither the mayor’s office nor Bakhtiari returned requests for comment. “There’s an anti-democratic tendency here,” said Rohit Malhotra, a member of the referendum coalition, in a public zoom call on Thursday night on the latest developments in the referendum. “They need to stop debating this behind closed doors.” Cop City Vote organizers spent months gathering 116,000 signatures in order to reach a required threshold of about half that number of verified, registered voters. Referendum efforts in other parts of the country often have about half of petition signers disqualified for technical reasons such as being registered to vote in a neighboring municipality. In the Cop City case, once the threshold of about 58,000 signatures is reached, the city is required to put the question about the training center’s future on a forthcoming ballot. Among other things, the ordinance as drafted prohibited the use of “signature matching” to verify voters, a method the Atlanta city clerk’s office said in August it would use to evaluate the petitions. This method, favored by Republican officials, relies on matching signatures on ballots or petitions to existing signatures in public records – and has been successfully litigated against many times due to its unconstitutional Closed-door meeting thwarts bid to let Atlanta residents vote on Cop City Timothy Pratt in Atlanta Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian Headlines 3 There’s a real dichotomy between perceptions of women of color who just have too many babies, and white women whose ability to have babies we need to assist and support Rosario Ceballo Continued from page 2 Continued on page 4

tendency to disproportionately affect marginalized populations, such as people with disabilities. The ordinance effort came as the referendum had been stalled for three months, with boxes of petitions sitting uncounted in city hall. Atlanta appealed a judge’s decision about who was eligible to collect those signatures and said in September it wouldn’t start counting and verifying them until after 14 December, when a federal appeals court hears oral arguments in the case. Experts have told the Guardian the whole process leading up to the effort to break the logjam via the ordinance has been anti-democratic and fraught with moves by the city that threaten referendums as a tool for expressing the wishes of voters, particularly in the south, where such campaigns are much less common historically than other parts of the US. This includes the issue at the heart of the case now with the 11th circuit court of appeals. Initially, the referendum campaign sued to allow residents of neighboring DeKalb county to help gather signatures on the petitions to put the Cop City question on the ballot, even though only Atlanta voters could sign. The rationale: the Atlanta-owned site for the training center is actually in DeKalb, surrounded by mostly Black neighborhoods, and residents should be able to participate in the canvassing effort. A federal judge agreed and in late July extended the deadline for organizers to turn in petitions. Then, in August, as the city announced its intention to use “signature matching”, it also appealed the judge’s decision. An 11th circuit judge ruled in the city’s favor, granting a temporary stay on the earlier decision – and throwing the whole process into limbo. Shortly afterward, in early September, the Cop City Vote coalition turned in the petitions with 116,000 signatures, and the city cited the court case as the basis for not evaluating them. This issue has come up elsewhere, and courts have favored expansive interpretations of who can gather signatures. “With signature gathering, trying to restrict people from outside the jurisdiction [of the referendum], many of the cases have been struck down by federal courts as restricting free speech,” said Ryan Byrne, managing editor for ballot measures at Ballotpedia, a non-profit organization that covers elections and politics. Sarah Walker, director of policy and legal advocacy at the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, said “who can gather signatures” was one of the issues increasingly used in the last decade to make it more difficult for civic and other groups to succeed in getting questions on ballots through referendums. At the same time, she added, the Cop City case “is the first time I’m seeing this sort of thing with Democratic municipalities”. Another stunning development took place several weeks after organizers turned the petitions in, when the city clerk posted them online – with no redactions. This meant anyone could see the addresses and phone numbers of 116,000 people who supported voting on Cop City. The move has been roundly criticized by experts. “They don’t have a legitimate reason to post at all,” said Walker. “It’s hard not to conclude this is an effort to undermine or create mistrust.” Activists against Cop City clash with police outside the Fulton county courthouse in August. Photograph: Erik S Lesser/EPA People protest against Cop City in March. Photograph: Cheney Orr/Reuters Donald Trump announced he would not take the witness stand for a second time at his fraud trial in New York on Monday, the former US president’s last chance to make his case as he combats a potential $250m fine that hangs over his family business. Trump had been expected to take the stand again as the hearings draw to a close. But on Sunday he announced on the Truth Social site that he would no longer be making an appearance. “I HAVE ALREADY TESTIFIED TO EVERYTHING & HAVE NOTHING MORE TO SAY OTHER THAN THAT THIS IS A COMPLETE & TOTAL ELECTION INTERFERENCE (BIDEN CAMPAIGN!) WITCH HUNT, THAT WILL DO NOTHING BUT KEEP BUSINESSES OUT OF NEW YORK, I WILL NOT BE TESTIFYING ON MONDAY. MAGA!” he wrote, signing off with the abbreviation for his Make America great again slogan. Trump first testified in court on 6 November, an appearance that was more political rally than attempt to persuade judge Arthur Engoron of his innocence. Engoron has already ruled that fraud took place and is using the trial to weigh what punishment he will mete out. The New York attorney general, Letitia James, has argued that Trump, his adult sons and other company executives inflated the value of their assets in order to obtain more favorable loans. Over the past few weeks, Trump’s team has argued through witness testimony that the former president had the right to value his properties however he pleased, and that it was up to lenders and accountants to make sure the numbers were right. In his Truth Social posts, Trump once again attacked James and Engoron and said they have massively undervalued his assets. “THEY CLAIMED THAT MAR-A-LAGO WAS WORTH ONLY $18,000,000, WHEN IT IS WORTH 50 TO 100 TIMES THAT AMOUNT, IN ORDER TO ILLEGALLY REDUCE MY VALUES & MAKE A FAKE CASE AGAINST ME,” he wrote. When Trump and his adult children took the witness stand, they denied recalling any specific discussion over the financial statements, despite multiple emails and notes that suggested otherwise. During his testimony in November, Trump repeatedly claimed his financial records contained a “worthless clause” and that lenders knew they should do their own due diligence, rather than relying on the documents. In his pre-trial ruling, Engoron had already ruled the argument “worthless”, but Trump continued to bring it up on the stand. Because Trump was already found guilty of fraud in a September pre-trial ruling, the trial has been over whether Trump and his family knew they were inaccurately representing the value of their assets on financial documents. If found guilty of doing that, Trump will have to pay a fine that could be at least $250m. Trump would also lose his New York business licenses – which would make it impossible for him to run his real estate business in the state – if an appeals court upholds the pre-trial judgment. Emotions have run high in the case. Trump was gagged from commenting on Engoron’s courtroom staff after a series of attacks led to the judge’s office being bombarded with death threats and abusive messages. Trump attended the trial last week as a defense witness argued that the case was without merit and there was “no evidence of fraud”. “I hope everyone is watching the Kangaroo Court Witch Hunt taking place against me, led by a totally corrupt and Racist A.G., and a highly partisan Judge who made his decision before the trial even started, and before he knew anything about the case,” he wrote on Truth Social. Trump says he won’t return to witness stand in $250m New York fraud trial Lauren Aratani and Dominic Rushe in New York Donald Trump arrives in court in Manhattan, in December 2023, with his attorney Alina Habba. Photograph: Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images Utah senator Mitt Romney declined to rule out voting for Joe Biden next year and said he hasn’t offered an endorsement in the Republican race because his backing would probably be a “kiss of death”. “If I endorsed them, it would be the kiss of death – I’m not going to do that,” Romney said during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press. The Republican joked that he should maybe endorse the candidate he likes the least, and he made it clear that he would not be supporting Donald Trump. Romney added that he thought former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley – rising in the polls but still significantly trailing Trump – is “the only one that has a shot at becoming the Mitt Romney says his endorsement in 2024 race would be ‘kiss of death’ Sam Levine The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 4 Headlines Continued from page 3 Continued on page 5

nominee” other than the former president. He also said New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who has aggressively taken on Trump during the campaign, has been “terrific”. That compliment is likely to intrigue many because Romney once called Christie “another bridge-and-tunnel loudmouth”, according to a biography released this year. Romney announced earlier this year he would not run for re-election in the Senate. The 2012 Republican presidential nominee has not shied away from criticizing Trump and twice voted to impeach him during the former president’s lone term. Trump has viciously attacked Romney in response. While Romney on Sunday said he would not rule out voting for Biden in 2024, he said there were other Democrats who would be a better nominee than the incumbent president. He said the candidate he would most like to support is the West Virginia Democratic senator Joe Manchin. Manchin is leaving the Senate and has toyed with a bid for the presidency. But Romney said he didn’t think Manchin would run in the end. “I wish he’d be the Democratic nominee,” Romney said. “I’m not going to describe who I’ll rule out other than president Trump,” he added. “By the way, in my view, bad policy we can overcome – as a country, we have in the past. Bad character is something which is very difficult to overcome.” A recent Wall Street Journal poll found Trump was leading Biden by four points – 47% to 43%. Trump faces 91 criminal charges for 2020 election subversion, illegal retention of government secrets and hushmoney payments to an adult film actor. He has also contended with assorted civil litigation. Meanwhile, the indictment of Biden’s son, Hunter, in California on nine criminal tax charges places obstacles in the president’s re-election efRepublican Senator of Utah Mitt Romney speaks to members of the news media, on 11 September. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA forts. Astronomers have detected the oldest black hole ever observed, dating back more than 13bn years to the dawn of the universe. The observations, by the James Webb space telescope (JWST), reveal it to be at the heart of a galaxy 440m years after the big bang. At around a million times the mass of the sun, it is surprisingly big for a baby black hole, raising the question of how it grew so big so quickly. Prof Roberto Maiolino, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge, who led the observations, said: “The surprise is in it being so very massive. That was the most unexpected thing.” The observations, published on the preprint website Arxiv, do not take a direct image, which is unseeable because no light can escape its grip. But astronomers detected telltale signatures of its accretion disk, the halo of gas and dust that swirls rapidly around the cosmic sinkhole. Astronomers believe the earliest black holes could help unlock a puzzle of how their gargantuan counterparts at the centre of galaxies such as the Milky Way grew to billions the times the mass of the sun. Until recently, they were assumed to have simply snowballed over nearly 14bn years, steadily growing through mergers and by gobbling up stars and other objects. But this snowball scenario cannot fully account for the epic proportions of present-day supermassive black holes. The latest observations, of the galaxy called GN-z11, push the origins of this mystery back to black holes’ infancy and suggest that they were either born big or ballooned extremely rapidly early on. “Understanding where the black holes came from in the first place has always been a puzzle, but now that puzzle seems to be deepening,” said Prof Andrew Pontzen, a cosmologist at University College London, who was not involved in the research. “These results, using the power of JWST to peer back through time, suggest that some black holes instead grew at a tremendous rate in the young universe, far faster than we expected.” One explanation, known as the heavy seeds scenario, is that an early generation of black holes was born from the direct collapse of vast clouds of gas, rather than from burnt-out stars that collapsed under their own gravity at the end of their life. Another possibility is that compact clusters of stars and black holes merged very rapidly in the early universe. A third, more speculative, hypothesis is the existence of so-called primordial black holes that came into existence during cosmic inflation, the period of faster-than-light expansion of the universe that occurred a fraction of a second after the big bang. This would flip on its head the presumed order of play, in which galaxies came first and then black holes start growing within them. Primordial black holes would be effectively woven into the fabric of the cosmos from the outset. “If that were true, it would have deep implications for the opening fraction of a second of our universe,” said Pontzen. “Either way, the story of how black holes and galaxies grew up together is a riveting one that we are only just starting to piece together.” The findings are the latest in a series of stunning discoveries by Nasa’s space observatory just two years after its launch. JWST is about 100 times more sensitive than previous telescopes, such as Hubble, at detecting infrared light, the part of the spectrum used to see the most distant objects. “It is essentially equivalent to upgrading Galileo’s telescope to modern telescope. It’s 400 years of discoveries potentially compressed in the time span of JWST operations,” said Maiolino. He said that before the telescope’s launch there had been a possibility that a new window would open up on to “a boring extension of what we know”. “That’s not what we’re seeing,” said Maiolino. “The universe has been quite generous. We’re really finding things that we were not expecting.” What is a black hole? Black holes are among the universe’s weirdest and most ominous objects. They have such intense gravity that neither matter nor light can escape their grip. A black hole’s threshold is traced out by its event horizon, the point of no return. Anything that strays across this boundary is gone for good. They are challenging to study because they are fundamentally unseeable, but applying the laws of physics offers some bizarre insights. On the approach to a black hole, the gravitational gradient can be so extreme that objects would be stretched out in a process known as spaghettification. At the event horizon, gravity is so fierce that light is bent in a perfect loop around the black hole, meaning that if you stood there you would be able to see the back of your own head. What lies beyond the event horizon is unknown. Einstein’s theory of general relativity suggests that at the centre of a black hole density would become infinite, creating a gravitational singularity. This rupture in space-time would have no “where” or “when” and would sit beyond the realm of the conventional laws of physics. But it is not clear whether such singularities actually exist. Black holes come in a range of sizes. Stellar black holes, formed from the remnants of massive stars, can be up to 20 times more massive than our sun. Supermassive black holes, like Sagittarius A* at the centre of the Milky Way, can have masses equivalent to millions or billions of suns and play a crucial role in galactic evolution. Astronomers have made significant advances in observations of black holes in the past decade, with the first image of one’s halo captured by the Event Horizon telescope in 2019, and observations of cataclysmic black hole mergers through the detection of gravitational waves sent rippling across space-time. The latest observations, and even more distant James Webb targets, will start to piece together the origins of these enigmatic objects. Revealed: the oldest black hole ever observed, dating to dawn of universe Hannah Devlin Science correspondent The new observations are unseeable because no light escapes the black hole, but astronomers detected telltale signatures of its accretion disk, the halo of gas and dust that swirls rapidly around it. Photograph: X-ray: Nasa/CXC/SAO/Ákos Bogdán; Infrared: NASA/ESA/ CSA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare & K. Arcand A Hubble space telescope image of galaxy GN-z11 (shown in the inset) as it was 13.4bn years in the past, 400m years after the big bang. Photograph: HST/Nasa Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian Headlines 5 Continued from page 4

A Catholic priest in a small Nebraska community died Sunday after being attacked in a church rectory, authorities said. Stephen Gutgsell was assaulted “during an invasion” of St John the Baptist Catholic church in Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, the archdiocese of Omaha said in a Sunday statement. Gutgsell was taken to an Omaha hospital, where he died from his injuries, church officials said. Fort Calhoun, with a population of about 1,000 people, is roughly 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Omaha. Police received a 911 call of an attempted break-in at the church just after 5am. When officers arrived, they found Gutgsell injured and an alleged attacker inside. Authorities took the suspect into custody, Washington county sheriff Mike Robinson said in a statement. “This is an ongoing investigation, and the name of the suspect or manner of death will not be released,” Robinson said. In 2007, Gutgsell pleaded guilty to theft by deception for embezzling $127,000 from an area church. He was sentenced to probation and ordered to pay restitution. He was later reassigned to another church. At the time, church leaders said Gutgsell learned his lesson, admitted wrongdoing and sought forgiveness. Earlier this year, his brother and fellow priest, Michael Gutgsell, also pled guilty to theft charges. He served as chancellor of the Omaha archdiocese from 1994 until 2003. Robinson told WOWT-TV that authorities did not believe Stephen Gutgsell’s death was related to his criminal history. Robinson did not respond Sunday to questions on the topic from the Associated Press. Archdiocese of Omaha spokesperson Riley Johnson declined to comment beyond confirming that Stephen and Michael Gutgsell were brothers. Catholic priest killed by attack in Nebraska church residence Associated Press Stephen Gutsgell was taken to an Omaha hospital, where he died from injuries, church officials said. Photograph: Jetta Productions Inc/ Getty Images The longest strike of adjuncts in US labor history is still ongoing, with academics at Columbia College in Chicago remaining in a fierce dispute over cuts to college courses and a host of complaints over poor working conditions. The fierce dispute began when Columbia College leadership suddenly announced plans to implement significant cuts to courses and course sections, and consolidating classes which have ballooned class sizes, citing a $20m budget shortfall. The strike has thrown a spotlight on how higher education in the US has increasingly relied on adjunct faculty, professors who often work with little to no job security and low pay. Diana Vallera, who has taught at the school for 15 years as an adjunct professor in photography and currently serves as president of the Columbia College faculty union, said the union immediately began pushing for more information while still trying to bargain over a new union contract for the school’s adjunct faculty. “You can’t make unilateral changes to mandatory subjects to bargaining. The employer just doesn’t care. They kept referring to management rights. They don’t want to work with the union, but there is one, and they don’t want to be accountable to anyone,” she said. Vallera said 53 course sections were cut from the fall 2023 semester and 317 for the spring 2024 semester. The union filed an unfair labor practice charge against Columbia College with the National Labor Relations Board, one of seven they have filed since August 2023, along with voting to start striking on 30 October as contract bargaining has seen little movement toward an agreement. The strike is now the longest by adjuncts in US history, according to the union. The union has criticized the cuts while executives at Columbia College continued to receive large bonuses to their salaries despite the school’s financial deficit woes as reasons behind the cuts. Dr Kwang Wu-Kim, president and CEO of Columbia College, received a bonus of $300,000 in 2022, on top of a salary of over $799,000, and over $600,000 in bonuses were given to 14 other executive positions. Kim said in a video message in November that “basically the college is financially sound”, when downplaying concerns about the college’s finances amid the cuts. “The administrators who are in that room making decisions, all their salaries were increasing over the pandemic, it was disgusting,” added Vallera. “The only people harmed by these eliminations to save money due to years of mismanagement and a $50m building, the only people harmed are the most on the margins. They have repeatedly said they can’t stand working with unions. This is union animus heightened. We’re in bargaining and they still felt they could do whatever they want.” Since August 2023, the union has filed seven unfair labor practice charges against Columbia College with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), all of which are still awaiting adjudication. The allegations against the college include refusal to furnish information required for bargaining, making unilateral changes to issues subject to collective bargaining, threatening to or transferring work out of the bargaining unit, soliciting workers to resign from the union and utilizing intellectual property of striking faculty. “If we took on the changes, twothirds of our membership would be gone, because they wouldn’t have classes any more if we accepted what they originally offered us,” said Tim McCain, an adjunct theatre professor and working professional at Columbia College, who saw one of his theater classes increase from 20 to 85 students. He said because of significant increases to the size of his classes, he had had to adapt the way he teaches because there are too many students to have a more personalized class with each student. “If this was about money, we’d still be teaching. They would just be negotiating a contract. But this is so much more,” added McCain. The strike has received support from several local elected officials and students who have refused to cross picket lines and even engaged in walkouts of their own as Columbia College has sought to have adjunct faculty courses filled in by other adjuncts crossing the picket line or by full-time faculty members. ‘If this was about money, we’d still be teaching’: inside the longest adjunct strike in US history Michael Sainato Adjunct professors and Columbia College faculty union members walk the picket line outside Columbia College Chicago. Photograph: Michael Jarecki via Columbia College Faculty Union The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 6 Headlines Continued on page 7

Many students have criticized Columbia College’s decision to cut courses and the impact it’s having on their education. “It’s always the people they swear to protect that end up getting the brunt of it. It’s an expensive college. A lot of people are struggling to afford to be here,” said Sarah Khairy Nevárez, a sophomore at Columbia College who said the cuts had impaired students’ abilities to fulfill their graduation requirements on time. Bria Hall, another sophomore at Columbia College, said the cuts were negatively affecting the ability for students to have one-on-one time and relationships with professionals, which was marketed to her in a mailer that ultimately led her to choose to attend Columbia. “They don’t see us as growing individuals or professionals, they see us as dollar signs. It’s heartbreaking and it’s not fair,” said Hall. “If you’re going to take our money, at least give us the education we deserve, it makes no sense to me.” Columbia College did not comment on the executive bonuses, but noted the union and administration have both agreed to federal mediation and characterized the cuts in classes and consolidations as an adjustment to enrollment and financial difficulties. “At the heart of the work stoppage is the fact that the college is asserting its management right to make decisions to address a financial shortfall. The union has refused to end the strike because it insists on a guarantee of employment for nearly all members of this contingent group of faculty and has sought veto power over class sizes and course offerings,” a spokesperson for Columbia College said in an email. They added: “The union’s demands would jeopardize the college’s longterm sustainability by dictating which measures the college can and cannot use to restore its fiscal health.” US House speaker Mike Johnson and his fellow Republicans who comprise a majority in the chamber cannot be trusted to protect the American constitution, former congresswoman Liz Cheney said Sunday. Cheney made the comments on ABC’s This Week as she continued to warn of the dangers that a second Donald Trump presidency would present following the release of her book Oath and Honor: A Warning and a Memoir. In the book, she is deeply critical of Johnson, who played a key role in Trump’s legal strategy to contest the election and organized an amicus brief signed by 126 US House members urging the supreme court to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden. “I’ve expressed very clearly my view that having Mike Johnson as the speaker, having this Republican majority in charge, you can’t count on them to defend the constitution at this moment,” Cheney said. The former Wyoming congresswoman, who once held the number three position in the House Republican conference, also declined to rule out a presidential bid in 2024. But she acknowledged that there were already third-party candidates who could fracture the vote. “Certainly I’m not gonna do something that has the impact of helping Donald Trump,” she said. She also spoke about the need to take Trump’s blunt and public proclamations about how he would bring authoritarianism if he won a second term after his re-election run failed against Biden. Trump’s allies have publicly said they would go after the media and prosecute political rivals if he returns to power. He has also described opponents as “vermin” in language that echoes Nazi rhetoric. Trump escalated concerns this week when he made the absurd comment that he would only be a dictator for the first day of his presidency, a remark he defended on Saturday evening. “I said I want to be a dictator for one day. You know why I wanted to be a dictator? Because I want a wall, and I want to drill, drill, drill,” he said at a gala in New York City. The remarks referred in part to Trump’s first-term promises to build a wall along the US-Mexico border and to humiliate Mexicans by making them pay for it. They also alluded to his support of the oil and gas industry. “I think we have to take everything that Donald Trump says literally and seriously,” Cheney said on ABC. Liz Cheney: Speaker Mike Johnson can’t be trusted to defend the constitution Sam Levine Former congresswoman Liz Cheney. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters The questions began swirling soon after police were notified that a €750,000 (£644,000) ring had gone missing from the Ritz hotel in Paris. Was it a meticulously planned and targeted robbery? An act of carelessness? Or simply a quick swipe, carried out when the opportunity presented itself ? Two days after a Malaysian guest at the hotel reported the missing diamond ring to police, the hotel proffered an answer, albeit less exciting than many of the theories that had circulated online: the hotel said security had found the ring in the bag of a vacuum cleaner. The newspaper Le Parisien hinted that the admission had not been enough to dispel all doubts about exactly what transpired, but the hotel said its client was delighted by the news. “We would like to thank the staff at the Ritz Paris who mobilised for this search and who work each day with integrity and professionalism,” it told Le Parisien. The client, described only as a Malaysian businesswoman, told police that she had left the ring on a table on Friday while she went window shopping in the city for a few hours. When she returned to the room, the ring was gone, she said. A day after she filed the complaint, the hotel said it was still exploring all leads. Police had arrived to investigate, and prosecutors stood ready to take the case on if suspicions pointed to a top-tier burglar. “We’re talking about a colossal loss,” a source with the city’s public prosecutor told Le Parisien. It would not have been the first time that the celebrated hotel in Place Vendôme had been hit. An unnamed member of the Saudi royal family reported the theft of jewellery worth about €800,000 from her suite in 2018, and months earlier five armed men made off with jewels worth more than €4m from display windows inside the hotel. The hotel did not reply to a request for comment from the Guardian. Paris Ritz finds missing €750,000 ring in vacuum cleaner bag Ashifa Kassam A police car outside the Ritz in Paris after there really was a jewellery theft in January 2018. Photograph: Michel Euler/AP Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian Headlines 7 Continued from page 6

Deb Cox has been elections director of Lowndes county in southern Georgia for more than a decade – and has never before received so many timeconsuming demands for public information. Like many elections officials across the country, Cox has been inundated with Freedom of Information Act and open records requests from rightwing activists who believe the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. That’s forced her and other local officials to spend an unusual amount of time and money providing polling documents to partisan groups – an additional burden as they scramble to prepare for the fraught 2024 presidential election. Cox, a military veteran with prior law enforcement experience and an unflappable approach to her work, is in charge of preparing and managing all processes regarding voting and elections in the mid-sized county that hugs Georgia’s border with Florida and includes the small city of Valdosta. Responding to open records requests used to be a small part of her job – but it’s continued to grow. Before the 2020 election cycle, Cox says her office would receive about three to five FOIA requests a month. Now, she says, they’re receiving that amount each week – and she expects that number to keep rising as the election nears. “Some [open records requests] take 20 minutes. Some take hours and hours, and multiple staff people,” Cox told the Guardian. Across the country, election-denying rightwing activists have demanded reams of information from local election officials to try to substantiate the former president’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him – and attempt to make sure future elections don’t go the same way. That adds more stress and more work for these workers, who often have limited resources and are putting in extra hours to respond. Counties in swing states like Georgia have taken the brunt of these requests. “In the 2020 presidential election we saw a very high-profile, longlasting campaign of unsubstantiated allegations about election fraud and misconduct on the part of poll workers and election administrators coming from President Trump and his allies,” Zachary Peskowitz, a professor at Emory University who focuses on elections, says. “Georgia was a particular focus of claims.” In the past, Cox said most of the open records requests she received were straightforward solicitations from groups seeking to find out the status of provisional ballots. But recent requests from rightwing groups are much more expansive and time-consuming to respond to. Those groups want to be able to essentially recreate the vote-count in an effort based on conspiracy theories to make sure no one’s rigging the election. To try to head off some of those requests, Lowndes county publishes a PDF file online with all of its ballots. “We try and pre-empt all that by saying, ‘Here, take what you want. If there’s something else, contact us,’” Cox said says. “That’s the stance across the state. The best practice is to go ahead and post those before they ask for them.” Cox currently spends about an hour each morning working on pulling documents and responding to the open records requests. The county’s annual budget for elections is just over $1m. Cox says roughly $2,000 of that budget is typically allocated to retaining a county attorney. This year that budget line has increased to $15,000. “That’s almost exclusively [to help with] information requests,” Cox says. The money to retain the lawyer is worth it since Georgia’s secretary of state office doesn’t offer any statewide guidance on responding to open records requests. The US Election Assistance Commission suggests elections directors develop a clear public records policy to help address the increase in public records requests that have been reported by elections officials since 2020. The independent agency also encourages the officials to proactively provide the public with a place to access regularly requested documents, just as Lowndes county does with their ballots following an election. Cox says she funnels all of the open records requests she receives through the county attorney to ensure she’s complying with the law but also to cut down on any potential conflicts. “The only time it gets difficult is when you have someone who is deliberately confrontational,” she says. “Their goal is not to get the information. Their goal is to either disrupt your operation or create stress and conflict.” These agitators, she says, might argue with an inexperienced elections director from a small county, but they’ll rarely do so with a county attorney. “Other counties don’t always have that luxury,” she says. “Some counties don’t have the money to pay a county attorney on retainer. The director is left with whatever education level and experience they have, however comfortable they may or may not be dealing with confrontation.” Local elections officials inundated with records requests by rightwing activists Jewel Wicker in Atlanta A voter casts his ballot for midterm elections at a polling station in Marietta, Georgia, on 8 November 2022. Photograph: Bob Strong/Reuters Deb Cox, elections supervisor for Lowndes county in Georgia. Photograph: WALB Former US House speaker Kevin McCarthy has endorsed Donald Trump in the 2024 race for the Oval Office while also expressing interest in joining his administration should he win, even though loyalists of the ex-president drove the congressman into an early exit. While serving as a House leader, McCarthy did not formally endorse Trump’s campaign for a second presidency, though the California representative was generally supportive of his fellow Republican. But, four days after announcing in an opinion column in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal that he was leaving Congress at the end of December, McCarthy appeared on CBS News Sunday Morning and made clear that he backed Trump’s attempts to return to power. “I will support the president,” McCarthy told the show’s anchor Robert Costa on Sunday while discussing his post-congressional plans. “I will support president Trump.” After he confirmed those remarks were an endorsement of the former president, who is grappling with a multitude of pending criminal charges, McCarthy was asked by Costa if he would be “willing to serve in a Trump cabinet”. McCarthy replied, “In the right position. Look, if I’m the best person for the job – yes.” He went on to say that he worked together with Trump for the Republicans to seize what is now a four-seat majority in the House after a showing in the 2022 midterms that was widely considered to be underwhelming for their party. “Look, I worked with president Trump on a lot of policies,” McCarthy said. “But we also have a relationship where we’re very honest with each other.” McCarthy lost his hold on the House speaker’s gavel in October after he relied on Democratic support to keep the federal government funded and open. As retaliation, the far-right, pro-Trump faction in the House that helped make him speaker after enduring 15 votes for the role last year ensured he became the first ever ejected from the role by his own party. It was a bitter twist for McCarthy, who had taken the far-right position 146 other congressional Republicans did when they voted to object to Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 election. McCarthy and his GOP colleagues maintained that position after a mob of Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol and breached its walls on 6 January 2021. Trump even received a visit at his Mar-a-Lago home from McCarthy shortly after the failure of the Capitol attack plunged the defeated president into an apparent depression, according to the Liz Cheney book Oath and Honor. McCarthy’s support at one point prompted Trump to affectionately refer to him as “My Kevin” at one point. After his ouster, McCarthy pledged that he would not resign from Congress, saying he had “a lot more work to do”. But months of behind-the-scenes tension, including an alleged physical attack on Tennessee Republican House member Tim Burchett, appeared to change his mind and convince him to McCarthy endorses Trump for president: ‘We’re very honest with each other’ Ramon Antonio Vargas Former speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. Photograph: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 8 News Some [open records requests] take 20 minutes. Some take hours and hours, and multiple staff people Deb Cox Continued on page 10

step away in the coming weeks instead of when his term expires in early 2025. McCarthy on Sunday said “Trump needs to stop” campaigning on promises of exacting revenge against his political enemies if returned to the Oval Office. “America doesn’t want to see the idea of the retribution,” McCarthy said. “If it’s rebuild, restore and renew, then I think you’ll see that.” Despite Trump’s gloomy message, McCarthy predicted Trump would clinch the White House, help Republicans expand their numerical advantage in the House and retake a majority in the Senate if the Democrats nominate Biden for re-election. Much of McCarthy’s congressional agenda was blunted by Democratic control of the White House and the Senate, where the party has a 51-49 edge. Trump faces 91 criminal charges accusing him of election subversion, illegal retention of government secrets and hush-money payments to an adult film actor. He has also contended with civil litigation over his business affairs and a rape allegation deemed “substantially true” by a judge. Nonetheless, Trump has emerged as the clear frontrunner to be the Republicans’ 2024 presidential nominee, and a Wall Street Journal poll published Saturday showed Trump leading Biden 47% to 43%. “If Biden stays as the nominee for the Democrats, I believe Donald Trump will win,” McCarthy said. “I believe the Republicans will gain more seats in the House and the Republicans will win the Senate.” The social media platform X will reinstate the account of the US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones after a poll of the site’s users backed his return, its owner, Elon Musk, has said. “The people have spoken and so it shall be,” Musk posted in reply to a poll on Saturday on whether to reinstate the Jones account. Close to 2m votes were cast by the time the poll closed, with about 70% voting in favour of Jones’s return. Reuters could not immediately verify whether the account was restored early on Sunday. Since Musk’s takeover of X, it has reinstated previously suspended accounts, including that of the former US president Donald Trump. The platform formerly known as Twitter banned Jones and his website Infowars in 2018, saying that the accounts had violated its behaviour policies. The ban came weeks after Apple, Alphabet’s YouTube, and Facebook took down podcasts and channels from Jones, citing community standards. Jones, who has promoted conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook school shooting, was ordered last year to pay nearly $1.5bn in damages to relatives of the victims for falsely claiming they were actors who staged the shooting as part of a government plot to seize Americans’ guns. Elon Musk says X will reinstate Alex Jones’s account after poll of users Reuters Rudy Giuliani, the politician who was once lauded as “America’s mayor” but descended into the rabbit hole of Donald Trump’s election denial lies, will face a Washington DC jury on Monday in a landmark case which could see him saddled with millions of dollars in damages. For the first time at trial, Giuliani will be confronted in a federal district court with the consequences of the conspiracy theories he disseminated as Trump’s 2020 election lawyer. He will come eye-to-eye with the mother and daughter poll workers from Georgia who claim that he destroyed their lives and caused them ongoing emotional distress by maliciously accusing them of election fraud. The stakes of the civil trial are exceptionally high. The plaintiffs are asking the jury to set damages of up to $43m as punishment for Giuliani’s “outrageous conduct”. Legal experts and democracy advocates will also be watching closely to see whether a rarely used complaint of defamation can act as a deterrent on anyone contemplating another round of election denial in next year’s presidential election and beyond. There could also be ramifications for the Rico organised crime prosecution that Giuliani is facing in Fulton county, Georgia, that also relates to his actions in the 2020 election. After jury selection and opening statements on Monday, there will be three days of testimony in the DC trial. Headlining the witness list are the poll workers themselves, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss. “While nothing will fully repair all of the damages that Giuliani and his allies wreaked on our clients’ lives, livelihoods and security, they are eager and ready for their day in court to continue their fight for accountability,” said the women’s legal representatives at Protect Democracy, a non-partisan advocacy group. Freeman and Moss became household names after they gave a moving televised account to the House investigation into the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol. They recounted how their lives had been turned upside down by Giuliani’s relentless attacks. “Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920,” Moss, who is African American, told the hearing, invoking the history of lynching in the deep south. Giuliani has already been found liable by the judge presiding in the case, Beryl Howell, for smearing the poll workers, intentionally inflicting emotional distress on them, and engaging in a conspiracy with at least two others to defame them. It now falls to the jury to decide the scale of damages. Giuliani defamed the poll workers by accusing them falsely of criminal misdeeds during the critical count of presidential election votes in the State Farm Arena in Atlanta. As one of the key swing states in the 2020 race, Georgia’s 16 electoral college votes had the potential to determine whether Trump or Joe Biden would be the next occupant of the White House. As part of the Trump team’s extensive efforts to undermine the election count and thereby foil Biden’s victory, Giuliani bore down on Freeman and Moss. He helped circulate a misleadingly edited tape of security footage from the arena which he inaccurately claimed showed them stealing votes for Biden. He propagated the “Suitcase Gate” conspiracy theory – a video that falsely claimed to show the poll workers removing phoney ballots from suitcases stored under their table, then counting them “three, four, five, six, seven times …” The court will be shown a sample of the ginger mint that Freeman passed to Moss during the counting process – Giuliani claimed it was a USB drive used to change the vote count on electronic tabulation devices. His wild claims were fully debunked by Georgia officials at the time he was making them. In June a full investigation by the state’s election board cleared Freeman and Moss of any wrongdoing and dismissed Giuliani’s fraud claims as “unsubstantiated”. Despite the official pushback, Giuliani continued to attack the pair. In several hours of scheduled testimony, mother and daughter are expected to describe to the jury the storm of death threats and harassment they and their families suffered – and continue to suffer – in the wake of the smear campaign. In the fallout, they were forced to flee their homes, go into hiding and change their appearance. Moss quit her job as a poll worker. Giuliani’s lawyers have indicated that he may testify in person at the trial. If he does so he will not be allowed to repeat any of the defamatory slurs about the plaintiffs, as he has already accepted that he defamed them. His lawyers have indicated that he will, though, attempt to show that his actions had minimal connection to the blizzard of violent threats and harassment that the women have endured. That way he will hope to minimize the damages awarded by the jury. Several other former members of the legal team in Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign are also likely to be called upon during the trial, with their testimony drawn from depositions. They include the former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, Jenna Ellis, who has been charged alongside Giuliani in the Fulton county Rico case, and Christina Bobb. Court documents show that Ellis refused to answer questions from Freeman and Moss’s lawyers during her deposition. She pleaded the fifth amendment right to remain silent 448 times. What price will Rudy Giuliani pay for smearing Georgia election workers? Ed Pilkington The former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani speaks to reporters in New York on 23 August 2023. Photograph: Seth Wenig/AP The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 10 News Continued from page 8

Navajo Nation environmentalists are opposing a “self-described jet setter” and French millionaire’s plans for a massive hydropower project they claim will adversely affect the land, water, wildlife, plants and cultural resources of the largest land area held by Indigenous American peoples in the US. The hydropower project in Black Mesa, Arizona, is awaiting approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Ferc) for preliminary permits and has incited fears over water use in an area already struggling with water accessibility issues. “It’s really down to water, water, water. Water is the big thing,” said Adrian Herder of Tó Nizhóní Ání, a non-profit on the Navajo Reservation in north-east Arizona. “In their application, they mentioned Black Mesa groundwater and so that was already a concern for us, given that we already are struggling with water availability in our communities.” The Navajo Nation sent a letter to Ferc opposing the application by Nature and People First in December 2022, though there has not yet been any approval or legislation to discuss it within the Navajo Nation Council. Nature and People First is run and founded by Denis Payre, a French venture capitalist and entrepreneur. In 2006, the Washington Post reported Payre was one of several millionaires fleeing France to avoid its wealth tax, calling Payre a “self-described French jet-setter”. The organization has secured support from one Navajo Nation chapter for the project, with Herder claiming the developer has used community meetings to portray its critics as opponents to progress and pit Navajos against one another. Herder said the campaign in opposition to the Black Mesa Pumped Storage Project, #NoBMPSP, started in response to concerns over how many resources the project would use and the lack of consultation with local communities before the preliminary permit filings. He cited the large amount of water the proposed project would use, especially given the impact coal mining has already had on the area’s water resources. According to the campaign, the hydropower project would require 126tn gallons of water, three times the water withdrawals from 50 years of coal mining, would industrialize 30 to 40 miles of land with reservoirs, pump stations, electric lines and generators and destroy the wildlife habitats of the endangered Mexican spotted owls, Navajo Sedge and Colorado pikeminnows. The preliminary permits include building three pumped hydro storage dams along the northeastern edge of Black Mesa, producing electricity for nearby cities outside Navajo Nation, including Phoenix and Tucson. In July 2023, Tó Nizhóní Ání, Diné Citizens Against Ruining our Environment and the Center for Biological Diversity submitted resolutions from several Navajo Nation chapters to the Ferc opposing the three preliminary permit applications filed by Nature and People First on Navajo Nation land in the Black Mesa area. Nineteen Navajo Nation chapters have filed resolutions opposing the project, according to Herder. “They are pretty intent on pushing this project through somehow, someway, even though they don’t have a good background knowledge on the resources they are trying to secure,” said Nicole Horseherder, co-founder of Tó Nizhóní Ání. “The underlying message and intent is: ‘You oppose me, but I’m going to find a way to get you on my side because we are still going to push this project through’”, she added. “That’s not anybody that wants to really work to see if some project is going to be feasible and viable, a person that is intent on pushing some project through one way or another, no matter who opposes him. That’s not the kind of person that we want to work with. So that’s what we’re dealing with right now.” Horseherder said the campaign against the proposal is focused on researching and educating the communities that will be impacted by the project and that they are currently seeking to get the Ferc to amend their preliminary permit application process to require community consulting and engagement prior to submitting an application. The proposed major energy project is one of several that have been made on or impacting Navajo land in recent years by energy speculators. Delores Wilson-Aguirre, co-founder of the Navajo led grassroots group Save the Confluence, has led petition efforts against a project proposed by Pumped Hydro Storage LLC to build a dam on Navajo Nation land on a tributary of the Little Colorado River. She has served as a community organizer in the campaign against the Black Mesa Storage Project. Opposition to the project is based on similar concerns that the project would require massive amounts of water resources on Navajo land for outside use and interests, and that developers have shirked consulting and engaging with community members. Two other proposed dam project proposals on the Little Colorado River were withdrawn in response to opposition urging Ferc to deny preliminary permit applications. “We’ve dealt with developers before and it’s the same scheme they use. Mainly jobs because we dealt with the project in our area, the Little Colorado River. They didn’t listen to the people,” Wilson-Aguirre told the Guardian. “It’s just a scam all around. We’ve dealt with it firsthand and there is another company trying to come onto our side of the canyon, and they’re just kind of eyeing what’s going on with the Black Mesa Project.” Payre, the CEO of Nature and People First, claimed critics of the project are mischaracterizing the scope of the proposal and that he doesn’t understand the opposition to it. “We’re completely in compliance with their mission statement for which they’re raising money, for which they are even giving IRS benefits to the people who give them this money and in spite of that, they still disagree with us. So frankly we do not understand what else we need to do at this point in time,” said Payre. “I think people are realizing that they’re not reasonable and that they’re essentially opposing a very reasonable clean energy project.” He said if the Ferc approves the surveying permits, it will take several years and a $60m investment to qualify the project for the next approval process steps and claimed the project will be economically beneficial to the Navajo Nation, producing 1,000 jobs during construction and 100 jobs permanently. “This water infrastructure will be made available to our nation and to the local chapters to help them with grazing, to help them with agriculture. So that would be very significant positive benefits for local communities, to help them essentially get out of poverty,” added Payre. ‘A scam all around’: Navajo Nation groups oppose hydropower projects Michael Sainato The Little Colorado River, fed by monsoon rains that occur many miles away, flows through a barren landscape. Photograph: Donovan Quintero/The Guardian Kayenta coal mine on the Black Mesa, Navajo reservation, Arizona. Photograph: Aurora Photos/Alamy Early in 2022, Dr Yan Li, a Yale graduate with a biostatistics doctorate, found herself suffering from the effects of bipolar disorder and unable to pay the homeowner’s association fees for her San Diego apartment. Instead of being met with support and resources, Li was fatally shot by law enforcement officials while being evicted from her home. “It was an unnecessary escalation when conducting a very simple eviction notice, a simple procedure,” said Chenyang “Sunny” Rickard of the Alliance of Chinese Americans San Diego. “This death, in our opinion, could have been avoided.” Li’s case stands out while being unremarkable: though there is rare video evidence substantiating how she died, her death itself reflects the violent reality faced by many involved in the eviction process. On 3 March of last year, officers came to her home to serve her with an eviction notice and remove her from the apartment. Their tense exchange escalated, at which point Li charged at one of the officers with a knife and stabbed him. She was subsequently shot several times. Li’s ex-husband said that law enforcement did not recognize that she was in the midst of a mental health crisis and failed to appropriately diffuse the situation. Although there is no national data tracking violent or fatal outcomes of the eviction process, Princeton University’s Eviction Lab has been monitoring news reports of such cases in the US since July 2021. Within that time frame, there have been more than 80 deaths related to evictions, with more than 30 fatal cases happening in 2023 so far. Other forms of violence happen several times a month, including physical altercations between tenants and landlords, incidents of violence involving law enforcement and cases of arson. Though this research has stopped short of investigating the circumstances of each incident, in aggregate these events tell a systemic story about the physical, emotional and economic violence of eviction. These cases exemplify one of the many ways the US employs Evictions can kill: how US communities are trying to break the cycle of violence Juan Pablo Garnham and Deanna Pantín Parrish A family is evicted in Maricopa county, Arizona, by a constable on 30 September 2020. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images Housing rights activists march in New York City in 2022 to demand an extension to an eviction moratorium. Photograph: Karla Ann Cote/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian News 11 They are pretty intent on pushing this project through somehow, someway ... Nicole Horseherder Continued on page 12

punitive measures to manage social crises. Incarceration and eviction have become parallel processes that trap people into cycles of poverty and instability. The violence of the eviction process is more than symbolic: eviction can and does lead to physical violence, incarceration and even death for tenants, their families, landlords and law enforcement officials. Similar incidents happen year-round across the country, though solutions are well within grasp if only these cases were investigated thoroughly, and resources allotted preemptively. Earlier this year, Philadelphia saw three eviction-related shooting incidents in just four months, leading the city to temporarily halt its eviction proceedings. Near Cincinnati, a mother fatally shot three members of her family and then died by suicide just before deputies attempted to remove her from her home. And in Pittsburgh, an eviction evolved into a fatal fourand-a-half-hour-long standoff between a tenant and the police. “We believe the suspect was neutralized during the gunfight,” the Pittsburgh police chief, Larry Scirotto, told local media. Violence in the eviction process also endangers law enforcement officials. A deputy in a suburb outside Portland, Oregon was wounded but survived a July shooting, in which the tenant died. In August 2022, a Pima county constable suffered a less fortunate fate in Tucson, Arizona: a tenant who was being removed from their home opened fire against her and an apartment complex employee, and later against a neighbor. All four people involved in the incident died. No two evictions look the same. Since the process of legal eviction is governed by state law and is driven by the rules of individual courts, the process of removing someone from their home can look very different across the US. Despite this, generally speaking, a landlord must first provide a tenant with a formal written warning that they are in violation of the lease. Some states require landlords to provide tenants with a few days’ notice before filing, while still others require no notice at all. After this warning, the tenant has a specific number of days to either pay the rent due or move out voluntarily; this can range from three days to two weeks, depending on the state. If a tenant moves without paying their rent first, the landlord can still sue for the amount of rent owed. After that period, a landlord may file an eviction in court, at which time a judge will review the case and either refer the case to mediation or issue a ruling. The final step is the removal of the tenant and their belongings from the property by local law enforcement, usually no more than 10 days after the judge’s ruling. In states with few or no notice requirements, a landlord can forcibly remove a tenant from a unit in as quickly as a few weeks. In a typical year, American landlords file 3.6m eviction cases. In 2016, seven evictions were filed every minute. The process has been criticized by legal scholars Deborah Eisenberg and Noam Ebner as an “expedited, state sanctioned collection process for landlords”. Notably, eviction disproportionately affects Black and Latino households, with Black women and Latinas facing higher rates of eviction than men in these groups. Systemic injustices require systemic solutions. Tenant advocates and alternative dispute resolution professionals alike have long imagined many interventions – known as eviction diversion programs – that could help diminish the possibility and stress of losing a home, reduce violent outcomes, and increase overall housing stability. Eviction diversion programs seek to intervene in eviction cases, offer tenants resources, and divert cases away from trial or a forcible moveout. According to a report by the American Bar Association and Harvard Law School’s Dispute Systems Design Clinic, the best way to avoid eviction is to connect tenants with a holistic set of services, a combination of rental or cash assistance, access to legal representation, quality mediation and self-help resources for those without legal representation. Many of these services can be delivered by justice workers, non-lawyers who are skilled in navigating the legal system and can connect litigants with targeted resources and support. Eviction diversion programs are generally most successful when they intervene before a landlord takes legal action against a tenant. Such programs often result in a payment plan for back rent, a tenant-landlord agreement to continue their relationship or a voluntary move-out plan that connects the tenant to alternate housing – all without the involvement of law enforcement. A community in Sarasota county, Florida, took several recent incidents of eviction-related violence as a call to employ some of these practices. After a deadly shooting, the sheriff’s department partnered with the local United Way chapter to build a program that connects tenants with the potentially life-saving support of case managers, mediators and legal aid attorneys. If the program cannot negotiate an outcome for the tenant with these resources, the United Way helps them move to a temporary housing solution, while working toward a permanent plan. Interventions such as these slow down the otherwise near-automatic process of removing a tenant and supports them in ways that can help them avoid homelessness, prolonged poverty and even death. Unfortunately, initiatives such as these are few and far between. Rather than receiving support, tenants often face heavily armed officers at the moment of being removed from their homes. The violence eviction inflicts is not just economic or symbolic: when tenants are removed from their homes, people are harmed, and some die. Their tragic stories are under-reported; with investment in eviction prevention, they need not be inevitable. Severe storms and tornadoes in Tennessee killed at least six people on Saturday and caused what local emergency services described as extensive damage with tens of thousands of residents without power. Nashville police said in a statement Sunday that a two-year-old boy and his mother were among three people killed there. The boy’s name was Anthony Elmer Mendez. His mother was Floridema Gabriel Perez, 31, police said. A third person killed was 37-yearold Joseph Dalton. Perez’s seven-yearold son and Dalton’s 10-year-old son were among the injured, authorities said. Meanwhile, two adults and a child were among the dead in the separate Tennessee town of Clarksville, authorities said. Officials with Montgomery county, which includes Clarksville, said 23 people had been treated at a hospital there after the storms. County mayor Wes Golden said: “This is a sad day for our community. We are praying for those who are injured, lost loved ones, and lost their homes.” More than 80,000 people in Tennessee were left without power Saturday evening, according to a outage tracking website. The Montgomery county Sheriff’s Office said there was damage to several homes in the city of Clarksville. Multiple trees, power lines and houses were also hit by storms in the rural town of Dresden, emergency services said. Montgomery county has a population of more than 220,000. Officials also urged people to stay off the roads as emergency services were responding to the situation in different areas. “We are still in the search and rescue phase of this disaster,” the Montgomery County said in its Facebook statement. A local school and church were set up to shelter those displaced or in need of assistance, the statement added. The National Weather Service had issued a tornado emergency alert earlier on Saturday afternoon for several Nashville suburbs. “This is a day that nobody wanted or expected,” Clarksville mayor Joe Pitts said. “We know there’s extensive damage throughout the community.” Tennessee storms: tornadoes kill at least six and cut power to tens of thousands Reuters A car is buried under rubble on Main Street after a tornado hit Hendersonville, Tennessee, on Saturday night. Photograph: Andrew Nelles/ USA TODAY NETWORK/Reuters On 15 February 1798, a fight erupted on the floor of Congress. The previous month, Matthew Lyon of Vermont spat in the face of a fellow congressman, Roger Griswold of Connecticut. Now they came to blows. Griswold wielded a hickory walking stick. Lyon used fireplace tongs. The melee devolved into a wrestling match. Griswold won, but it was just the start of Lyon’s downfall. Defending his seat that fall, he fell foul of a law against sedition by campaigning against an undeclared war with France and was sentenced to four months in jail. Improbably, Lyon had the last laugh. While incarcerated, he won re-election. When an electoral college tie sent the 1800 presidential election into the House, Lyon was among those who voted for the winner, Thomas Jefferson. “The Spitting Lyon” is one of 14 controversial members of the founding generation profiled in a new book, A Republic of Scoundrels: the Schemers, Intriguers & Adventurers Who Created a New American Nation, edited by David Head of the University of Central Florida and Timothy C Hemmis of Texas A&M University – Central Texas. A Republic of Scoundrels: America’s original white men behaving badly Rich Tenorio The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 12 News / Politics Continued from page 11 Continued on page 13

“One of the things the whole project does is cast a look at the founding generation – not just the founding fathers,” Hemmis says. “The founding fathers were American saints, so to speak. This is kind of a more complicated picture of that founding generation. These men did not hold up the ideals … we’ve been taught about or told about.” Two names are infamous: Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton dramatized Burr’s killing of Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804. Head and Hemmis explore a less familiar development. “What the musical does not do,” Hemmis says, “is talk about Burr’s activities after he shot Hamilton. He goes out west and is starting to recruit these frontiersmen as audiences for entirely different plans and schemes, like carving out an empire in the west on a separate basis from the US, or going to invade Spanish Mexico.” Captured in Alabama in 1807, brought to trial for treason, Burr won acquittal and survived subsequent hearings. Arnold actually committed treason, defecting to the British in the revolutionary war. Yet the chapter on Arnold adds nuance, James Kirby Martin of the University of Houston noting how Arnold felt under-appreciated as a patriot and plagued by rivals despite his considerable achievements on the battlefield. Other subjects may be less familiar, including James Wilkinson, a highranking general who spied for Spain. “[Wilkinson] was just an amazing general in the US army – and a paid agent of a foreign power,” Head says. “No one discovered this definitively until after he died. There were rumors and suspicions, but he managed to hide it.” Each protagonist receives a chapter by a separate author. Shira Lurie of Saint Mary’s University notes in her chapter on Lyon that he really was called a scoundrel by Griswold before the Connecticut congressman assaulted him. Some subjects appear in other chapters: Wilkinson gets star treatment in the chapter by Samuel Watson, of the United States Military Academy at West Point, then plays a supporting role in Hemmis’s chapter on Burr. Improbably, the spy for Spain did the US government a favor by alerting it to Burr’s alleged plot. As to why Wilkinson did so, the explanations are predictably murky. “Was he blowing the whistle on treason or telling on Burr to save himself ?” Head asks. “Who was doing what to whom? One of the options was to say one guy was less good than the other, but the reality is, they were both bad.” Defining the term “scoundrel”, the book cites Samuel Johnson’s dictionary definition, including a “low petty villain”. “It’s not exactly helpful,” Head says, “but it gives you an idea of someone known for deceit, known for cunning, preying on people’s vulnerabilities … It’s the kind of thing people duel over, impugning their reputation for honor.” Hemmis says: “It’s also the idea that there’s a lot of unethical commercial interests and schemes going on that don’t fit nicely into the American narrative.” If we are to fully understand the founding generation and the early American republic, the authors argue, we need to understand such scoundrels and their impact. As they explain, the new nation was no longer under a monarchy and the Articles of Confederation weakened the central government at the expense of the states. Powerful rivals controlled the borders: England, Spain and Indigenous American peoples. In such an atmosphere, Americans could pursue self-interest. Consider William Blount, who swindled revolutionary war veterans out of land earned through service. Blount enlisted his brother in the scheme and wound up with millions of acres on the western frontier. He became one of the first senators from Tennessee – and the first senator to be impeached. As Head and Hemmis illustrate, self-interest could lead men to ally with another country, encourage secession from the US, or both. There was Burr’s bid for a breakaway section in the west and there was Wilkinson’s work with the Spanish, during which he criticized superiors such as the only general who outranked him, Anthony Wayne, and George Washington himself. Wilkinson’s chapter does note that the intelligence he passed on was essentially open-source material and that when it counted, he supported American interests over those of Spain. The editors remind readers of the many differences between that era and ours. Spain loomed uncomfortably close, sharing a boundary for 40 years. The biggest sectional rivalry was not north v south but east v west, with the frontier in Kentucky. Foreign agents interfered in American politics. William Bowles, a would-be British agent, became a trusted voice among some Indigenous peoples in Florida and tried to set up an independent state, Muskogee. Don Diego de Gardoqui, a Spanish diplomat, supported the patriot cause with arms from Spain but later worked for his government in an unsuccessful attempt to weaken American power. *** Do these scoundrels offer lessons to learn today, amid the rise of Donald Trump and deepening social divides? Discussing Lyon, the congressman who brawled on the House floor then was reelected from prison, Head recalls an exchange with a friend. “He texted me back: ‘Are we still a republic of scoundrels?’ I said, ‘Yes, but remember, it’s a republic.’ It’s an important point. Whatever it is, the country is still a republic. It’s an important thing to think about in modern times … It’s still unusual, precious, [something] to be proud of. “Our constitution works. The political system works. We’ve been through a civil war, slavery, violence … In the 1790s, we didn’t know whether it could work.” Lurie, author of the chapter on Lyon, has her own reflections for today, focused on his rivals’ inability to oust him. “The attempt to weaken one’s distasteful political opponents through ridicule, mockery and expressions of outrage did not work then, and it does not work now,” she writes. “Too often, such tactics just enhance these individuals’ popularity. Instead of looking down on them and their supporters, we might do better to seriously and humbly contemplate the nature of their appeal. And so, confront the real America, scoundrels and all.” A Republic of Scoundrels is published in the US by Pegasus Books An illustration of the duel in which Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton, in Weehawken, New Jersey in 1804. Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive Benedict Arnold persuades Major Andre to conceal papers, to be sent to the British to enable them to capture West Point, in his boot. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images Allies of Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán will hold a closed-door meeting with Republicans in Washington to push for an end to US military support for Ukraine, the Guardian has learned. Members of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs and staff from the Hungarian embassy in Washington will on Monday begin a two-day event hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation thinktank. The first day includes panel speeches about the Ukraine war as well as topics such as Transatlantic Culture Wars. It is expected to feature guests including Magor Ernyei, the international director of the Centre for Fundamental Rights, the institute that organized CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) Hungary. Kelley Currie, a former ambassador under then president Donald Trump, said she was invited “but declined”. According to a Republican source, some of the attendees, including Republican members of Congress, have been invited to join closed-door talks the next day. The meeting will take place against a backdrop of tense debate in Washington over Ukraine’s future. Last week the White House warned that, without congressional action, money to buy more weapons and equipment for Kyiv will run out by the end of the year. On Wednesday Senate Republicans blocked an emergency spending bill to fund the war in Ukraine. A diplomatic source close to the Hungarian embassy said: “Orbán is confident that the Ukraine aid will not pass in Congress. That is why he is trying to block assistance from the EU as well.” Orbán is a frequent critic of aid to help Ukraine against the Russian invasion. Seen as Vladimir Putin’s closest ally inside the EU for the past few years, he was photographed smiling and shaking hands with the Russian president two months ago in Beijing. Orbán recently demanded that Ukraine’s European Union (EU) membership be taken off the European Council’s agenda in December. The Hungarian leader posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “It is clear that the proposal of the European Commission on Ukraine’s EU accession is unfounded and poorly prepared.” The Heritage Foundation is leading Project 2025, a coalition preparing for the next conservative presidential administration, and has in recent months hosted speeches by leading British Conservative party members Liz Truss and Iain Duncan Smith. The thinktank has also been a vocal opponent of US assistance to Ukraine. Last year Jessica Anderson, the executive director of its lobbying operation, released a statement under the headline: “Ukraine Aid Package Puts America Last.” In August, Victoria Coates, Heritage’s vice-president, posted on social media: “It’s time to end the blank, undated checks for Ukraine.” When Heritage celebrated its 50th anniversary last April, Orbán’s political director, Balázs Orbán (no relation), was invited as a speaker for the event. Heritage’s president, Kevin Roberts, repeatedly praised the Hungarian leader on X: “One thing is clear from visiting Hungary and from being involved in current Republicans to meet allies of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán on ending Ukraine aid Flora Garamvolgyi and David Smith Viktor Orbán at the Chancellery in Berlin before a meeting with EU leaders, on 13 November 2023. Photograph: Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty Images Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian Politics / World News 13 Continued from page 12 Continued on page 14

policy and cultural debates in America: the world needs a movement that fights for Truth, for tradition, for families, and for the average person.” In recent years Orbán has championed a transatlantic far-right alliance with a hardline stance against immigration and “gender ideology”, staunch Christian nationalism and scorn for those who warn of a slide into authoritarianism. Hungary has been portrayed by conservative media as an anti-“woke” paradise and model for the United States. Some far-right Republicans, such as Kari Lake and Paul Gosar, said they would like to see the “Hungarian model” transplanted to the US, especially when it comes to immigration and family policies. CPAC went to Hungary for the second time this year, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson shot multiple episodes in Hungary touting Orbán policies. Orbán has returned the favour by lavishing praise on Trump. During this year’s CPAC, where Roberts was also featured as a speaker, he claimed that if Trump were president, “there would be no war in Ukraine and Europe”. The Hungarian prime minister has criticised the multiple federal indictments against the former US president and called the judicial procedure a “very communist methodology” in a recent interview with Carlson. Dalibor Rohac, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute thinktank in Washington, said: “The Hungarian embassy in DC has been very active lately, trying to repair ties with the Republicans and strengthen them where it’s appropriate. “It is also not surprising that Heritage is the venue of these talks because they are different from other thinktanks in DC; they are more partisan, and their funding model heavily overlaps with the Trump base.” But, Rohac said, despite his good relations with some Republicans it was “unlikely” that Orbán would have any leverage over US funding for Ukraine. Supporters of Ukraine have also been making their case to Republicans in Congress. This week David Cameron, the British foreign secretary, held meetings on Capitol Hill. He told a press conference: “I am sure that goodwill will prevail and the money will be voted through, and it will have a huge effect not just on morale in Ukraine but also making sure that European countries keep asking themselves what more can they do.” Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, has vowed to lead his country out of decades of “decadence and decline” but said its punishing economic crisis would intensify over the coming months, as a “who’s who” of the global far right assembled in Buenos Aires to celebrate the radical libertarian’s inauguration. Addressing tens of thousands of supporters outside Argentina’s turquoise-domed neoclassical congress, Milei – a mercurial former TV celebrity known as El Loco or the Madman – compared his shock election with the start of the Soviet Union’s collapse. “Just as the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of a tragic era for the world, these elections represent a tipping point in our history,” he declared, promising to “fight tooth and nail” to drag his country into “a new era of peace and prosperity”. He warned, however, that Argentina – where annual inflation is expected to hit 200% this year and 40% of citizens live in poverty – faced an “emergency” situation. “The challenge before us is titanic … I’d rather tell you an uncomfortable truth than a comfortable lie,” he said. Milei’s speech had strong echoes of Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration speech in which the American tycoon vowed to end an age of “American carnage”, crime and poverty and return power to “the people”. “Argentina has become a bloodbath,” Milei said, vowing to fight the drug traffickers who had “hijacked” the streets of its biggest cities. He had been formally sworn in as Argentina’s next leader moments before in the presence of far-right associates including Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro; Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, the leader of Chile’s Republican party, José Antonio Kast, and the leader of Spain’s Vox party, Santiago Abascal. “The right is rising not only in Europe but all around the world!” Orbán tweeted as he arrived in Argentina’s capital. The inauguration guest list also included Chile’s president, Gabriel Boric, Spain’s King Felipe VI, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Milei has called Putin a dangerous leader and appears to be positioning Argentina as Ukraine’s biggest Latin American ally. Writing on X, Zelenskiy said: “This is a new beginning for Argentina and I wish President Milei and the entire Argentinian people to surprise the world with their successes.” Prominent leftwing leaders, including the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, stayed away. The authoritarian presidents of Venezuela and Nicaragua, Nicolás Maduro and Daniel Ortega, were not invited. Milei supporters flocked to Buenos Aires from across Argentina to witness what they hoped would prove a historic turning point. “We need absolute, total change,” said Carmen Quiñez, a 50-year-old grandmother who had driven 12 hours from the northern province of Salta to see her new president. Francisco Labriola, a 35-year-old criminal lawyer from the town of Benito Juárez, said: “This is a day of freedom. We are celebrating our freedom.” Labriola, who attend the festivities wearing a red Make America Great Again cap, compared Milei to a trio of regional rightwing populists: Trump, Bolsonaro and El Salvador’s hardline president, Nayib Bukele, who has jailed tens of thousands of people as part of a crackdown on gangs. “This is for all America, not just the United States,” Labriola said, pointing to his Maga hat. Brazilian conservatives – some wearing pro-gun or Bolsonaro T-shirts – had also flown in to witness what they called a major triumph for Latin America’s new right. “This is a gunshot to the left,” said Vinicius Rothsahl, a Bolsonarista from the city of Florianópolis, unfurling a red and blue banner that read: “Trump 2024: Save America Again.” As Milei set off towards the presidential palace in a convertible Mercedes, doubts continued to swirl about what kind of government the notoriously erratic economist might lead and what measures he would announce in the coming days. Milei, whose first taste of politics was becoming a congressman in 2021, won power promising radical change to voters weary of the economic mismanagement and corruption that has wrecked Argentina’s economy. During the campaign he vowed to obliterate the corrupt political “caste” and “exterminate the cancer of inflation” by shutting down ministries and implementing a harsh austerity program. The magazine Noticias announced Milei’s inauguration with the front page headline: “A new country begins: For better or for worse nothing will be the same.” On Saturday night, Milei supporters held a symbolic wake outside the central bank, which their leader has vowed to close. “We are writing a new page in the history of Argentina,” said Carlos D’Alessandro, a newly elected congressman from Milei’s party Libertad Avanza, or Freedom Advances. “What we intend to do is eliminate corruption, eliminate inflation and lay the foundations of a healthy economy.” There have been some hints since Milei’s November election that he may be ditching some of his most extreme proposals, despite his embrace of rightwing radicals such as Bolsonaro and Orbán. Argentina’s new leader has sought to repair ties with Brazil, China and the Vatican after hitting out against them during the campaign. Some of his most hardline allies, including his vice-presidential running mate, Victoria Villarruel, appear to have been partially sidelined. The chainsaw he brandished on the campaign trail to symbolise his desire for cuts has disappeared, and plans to replace the peso with the dollar appear to have been put on ice. D’Alessandro said Milei still planned to dollarise but “much further down the line”. D’Alessandro voiced confidence that Milei had a bold plan to help Argentina fulfil its economic potential. “Milei is an economic specialist … [he] knows what he needs to do and how to do it.” But he admitted Argentina faced a period of turbulence as Milei introduced “shock measures” designed to fix an economy in a “calamitous state”. The first anti-government protests are already being planned. Juan Cruz Díaz, the managing director of the Buenos Aires-based consulting company Cefeidas Group, said the jury was out about the direction Milei would lead his country in over the next four years. “We are entering unknown territory … We know him as a disruptive candidate and a disruptive TV economist … We don’t know Javier Milei as president,” he said. Emiliano Garrido, a 44-year-old Milei supporter, admitted he did not know how much prices might rise or the peso’s value might fall in the coming days as his president’s dramatic measures came into effect. But he insisted there had been no alternative. “We either turn around completely or we are going to sink like the Titanic,” he said. “We will have to sacrifice ourselves … if we are to see light at the end of the tunnel.” Javier Milei sworn in as president in ‘tipping point’ for Argentina Tom Phillips and Facundo Iglesia in Buenos Aires Viktor Orbán and Jair Bolsonaro attend the inauguration. Photograph: Agustín Marcarian/Reuters Javier Milei supporters celebrate his inauguration. Photograph: Marcelo Endelli/ Getty Images Iran has accused a Swedish EU diplomat held in a Tehran prison for more than 600 days of spying for Israel and “corruption on Earth”, a crime that carries the death penalty. “Johan Floderus is accused of extensive measures against the security of the country, extensive intelligence cooperation with the Zionist regime and corruption on Earth,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online news agency said on Sunday. Floderus, 33, was arrested on 17 April 2022 at Tehran airport as he was returning to Iran from a trip with friends. The Swede, who works for the EU’s diplomatic service, is being held in Tehran’s Evin prison. His arrest came while an Iranian national, Hamid Noury, was being tried in Sweden over the mass execution of dissidents in Tehran in 1988. He ultimately received a life sentence in July 2022. Noury has contested his sentence, and Sweden’s court of appeal is expected to announce its verdict on 19 December. In a recent interview with the Guardian, Floderus’s father, Matts, said the Iran accuses Swedish EU diplomat of crime that carries the death penalty Agence France-Presse in Tehran The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 14 World News Continued from page 13 Continued on page 15

family were on tenterhooks as they waited to learn of the charges. “We have reason to believe the trial will come soon, that it will be in December,” he said. “He told us he didn’t care what the verdict would be because it would mean the same thing whatever they decided to charge him with. It is just theatre, just make-believe. “We are deeply worried and say this over and over again. He has been arbitrarily detained. He has done nothing wrong and should be freed and allowed to leave the country.” Mizan published photos of a handcuffed Floderus appearing before judges in a pale blue prison uniform as the charges were read. Corruption on Earth is one of Iran’s most serious offences and carries a maximum penalty of death. The prosecution claimed Floderus had gathered information on Iran’s nuclear and enrichment programmes, carried out “subversive projects” for the benefit of Israel and established a network of “agents of the Swedish intelligence service”. It further claimed he was involved in “intelligence cooperation and communication with the European Union” and the exiled People’s Mujahedin (MEK) opposition group, according to Mizan. The date of the trial was not yet known. The EU’s foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, called for his immediate release, saying: “There are absolutely no grounds for keeping Johan Floderus in detention.” Sweden’s foreign minister, Tobias Billström said: “There is no basis whatsoever for keeping Johan Floderus in detention, let alone bringing him to trial.” Johan Floderus (centre) attends a court session in Tehran to hear the accusations against him. Photograph: Wana News Agency/Reuters King Charles’s appointment of a prohomeopathy head of the royal medical household has been described as worrying and inappropriate by academics and campaigners. Dr Michael Dixon, who has championed faith healing and herbalism in his work as a GP, has quietly held the senior position for the last year, the Sunday Times reported. While Dixon, 71, is head of the royal medical household, for the first time the role is not combined with being the monarch’s physician. Duties include having overall responsibility for the health of the king and the wider royal family – and even representing them in talks with government. Dixon, who has a penchant for bow ties and a long association with the king, worked in the NHS for almost half a century and is an outspoken advocate of complementary medicine. He once invited a Christian healer to his surgery to treat chronically ill patients and experimented with prescribing an African shrub called devil’s claw for shoulder pain, as well as horny goat weed for impotence, the Sunday Times reported. Edzard Ernst, emeritus professor at the University of Exeter, whose work has debunked alternative medicine, said: “Anyone who promotes homeopathy is undermining evidence-based medicine and rational thinking. The former weakens the NHS, the latter will cause harm to society. “We and others have shown that homeopathy is not an effective therapy, which has today become the accepted consensus. To me, this means its only legitimate place is in the history books of medicine.” Ernst said “the king can appoint who he wants”, but pointed out that his book on the king’s interest in alternative medicine found that “in the realm of health care, he often seemed to favour people who promote dubious therapies”. Homeopathic remedies have not been available on prescription since 2017 when NHS England found “no clear or robust evidence to support [their use]”. Buckingham Palace defended Dixon’s appointment on Sunday, saying “his position is that complementary therapies can sit alongside conventional treatments, provided they are safe, appropriate and evidence based”. The Good Thinking Society, which promotes scientific scepticism, told the Guardian it was concerned by Dixon’s appointment. Michael Marshall, project director at the society, said: “It isn’t appropriate. I think the role of the monarchy, if it has one in current society, isn’t to be advocating for their own personal projects and their own personal beliefs or using the power and influence they have to further causes that run directly counter to the evidence that we have. “It’s absolutely unequivocal that homeopathic remedies do not work and just because you happen to be in a position of extreme power and privilege, that doesn’t change that.” Marshall said the appointment was also worrying because it suggested the king might still be supporting complementary medicine behind the scenes. He added: “Before Charles became king, he was the patron of homeopathic organisations, he was an outspoken advocate in favour of homeopathy and pushing back the bounds of science towards pseudoscience. “And the argument was that he would stop doing that once he became king. This appears to be a sign that he isn’t going to do that, that he isn’t going to stop. “What’s worrying is, as we’ve seen from the black spider memos, Charles is someone who also wields his power and influence quietly behind the scenes as well as publicly, so if this is the kind of step he’s willing to make in public, it raises questions about whether he’s willing to make even more steps in private.” Graham Smith, chief executive of the campaign group Republic, said: “I think what he’s doing here is risky for the royal family because it throws the spotlight on this aspect of his beliefs that a lot of people wouldn’t be aware of. I think it’s pretty appalling to put someone like that in such a senior high status role … I think we ought to be seeing people put there who are representing real experts in health.” Smith added: “The whole promotion of alternative medicine undermines the trust in real medicine and I think that putting him in that place is really irresponsible and raises questions about his judgment.” A Palace spokesperson said: “Dr Dixon is a practising GP; a Fellow of the Royal College of GPs; a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians; former chair of NHS Alliance; former co-chair of the National Social Prescribing Network; former NHS England national clinical champion for social prescribing and the chair of the College of Medicine. He also has an OBE for services to primary care. “Dr Dixon does not believe homeopathy can cure cancer. His position is that complementary therapies can sit alongside conventional treatments, provided they are safe, appropriate and evidence based. “As Prince of Wales, the king’s position on complementary therapies, integrated health and patient choice was well documented. In his own words: ‘Nor is it about rejecting conventional medicines in favour of other treatments: the term ‘complementary’ medicine means precisely what it says’.” Dixon has been approached for comment. King Charles criticised for appointing prohomeopathy doctor Emily Dugan Buckingham Palace defended the appointment, saying King Charles’s position on complementary therapies are well documented. Photograph: Oliver Dixon/Shutterstock Homes and cars in an Irish village have been seriously damaged after a possible tornado hit the area. Emergency services were called to Leitrim village on Sunday afternoon after high winds flattened trees, ripped a roof off a building and left debris scattered on a street. Met Éireann meteorologist Liz Walsh said reports of a tornado in the area were “possibly correct” or “certainly some very high winds associated with the thunderstorm”. She said the forecaster was relying on social media reports and videos to say for certain if it was a tornado. She added: “In a thundercloud, the wind speed and direction can change as it goes up in the cloud, which causes rotation and if the funnel cloud is able to stretch all the way down to the ground that causes a tornado. “It could also have been a straight line gust, it’s most likely one or the other, but people say they saw rotation. They’re not a very forecastable thing, it would only be there for a couple of minutes.” A witness to the possible tornado said his Jeep was pelted with debris as he drove through the storm. Councillor Paddy Farrell said he was almost caught in the middle of the “tornado” while driving through Leitrim village. “I was actually driving through the village myself. If I was a second slower I’d have been in the brunt of it,” he said. “I was driving my Jeep. It sounded as if there was a crowd pegging stones at my Jeep as I was driving through, with all the debris that was flying around. It just happened all of a sudden.” Farrell, who lives near the village, added: “There was a roof taken off a building, and there were several buildings damaged. Even on fairly new apartments there was damage, I think the window blew in on one of them. “There’s a lot of cars damaged, there could be 10 to 20 cars damaged.” He said emergency services were called and businesses near the scene had closed. “No one was badly injured, but I think there were two minor injuries,” Village in Ireland hit by ‘possible tornado’ as high winds damage cars and homes PA Media Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian World News 15 Continued from page 14 Continued on page 16

he said, adding: “I was actually shook when I came home to the house, because it was frightening – I kept going to get home as quick as I could.” It comes after a yellow thunderstorm warning was issued for Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, Longford, Offaly, and Westmeath from midday until 6pm, meaning thunderstorms and lightning are likely. Meanwhile, high winds and potential coastal flooding are expected on the west coast of Ireland later on Sunday as Storm Fergus sweeps across the island, Met Éireann has said. Orange warnings for wind are in place for counties Clare, Galway and Mayo, indicating very strong onshore winds coupled with high waves and high tides. Storm Fergus, the second named storm of the weekend, has also brought yellow warnings for wind in counties Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary, Cavan, Dublin, Kildare, Laois, Longford, Louth, Meath, Offaly, Westmeath, Wicklow, Leitrim, Roscommon and Sligo. Those counties can expect difficult travelling conditions caused by debris or displaced loose objects. Met Éireann meteorologist Michelle Dillon said: “Strong to gale force southwest winds veering westerly will be developing through Sunday afternoon, evening and early Sunday night as Storm Fergus tracks eastwards across the country. “Storm surge will lead to high seas and along with the stormy conditions there’s the possibility of coastal flooding along parts of the west coast, particularly at high tide.” The UK Met Office has also put in place some yellow weather warnings in parts of Scotland and northern England, but no warnings for Northern Ireland have been issued. Met Office chief meteorologist Andy Page said Storm Fergus will conclude what has been an “unsettled weekend of weather for the UK”. “Fergus will bring some strong winds and heavy rain for a time late on Sunday and into the early hours of Monday morning,” he said. “While the strongest gusts are expected in the Republic of Ireland, Storm Fergus will bring some windy conditions to western areas, including Irish Sea coasts, while also bringing some potentially impactful rain.” Gardai at Leitrim Village in Ireland after a possible tornado hit the area. Photograph: Claudia Savage/PA Human rights groups are investigating a death at a Del Monte pineapple farm in Kenya after a man’s body was found in a dam there last month. The body of Peter Mutuku Mutisya, 25, was discovered floating in the dam on Del Monte’s plantation near Thika on 17 November, four days after friends said he had gone there to steal pineapples. The developments have been uncovered in a joint investigation by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ). They follow allegations published in June of brutal assaults and killings by security guards at the farm, which is the single largest exporter of Kenyan produce to the world. After the revelations in June, Del Monte committed “to constant improvements” to the way it operates “to adhere to the highest international human rights standards”. A postmortem commissioned by the police gave Mutisya’s cause of death as drowning and identified “no obvious external injury”. It was also attended by a doctor paid for by Del Monte who wrote his own report. The Guardian shared both reports and a photograph of the body with a leading British forensic pathologist. He said he believed the body had marks that could be signs of injury, including to the head and arm, and that missing details in the postmortem write-ups rang “lots of alarm bells”. A spokesperson for Del Monte, which is the world’s biggest pineapple supplier, said it had “fully cooperated with Kenyan authorities throughout its investigation last month” and offered its “heartfelt condolences to the family”. They added: “According to the postmortem report that was approved by the directorate of criminal investigations officer and four different doctors – all of whom were present during the postmortem – the individual died by drowning, and there were no indications of foul play.” The case is being investigated by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) and the nongovernmental organisation the Kenya Human Rights Commission. Dr Bernard Mogesa, the chief executive of the KNCHR, said: “The case is still under active investigation by our complaints and investigation division and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights continues to work diligently to uncover the truth, holding those responsible accountable for any unlawful actions.” The commission, which was established by an act of parliament in Kenya, announced a broader investigation into allegations of violence and killings at Del Monte in June after the publication of articles in the Guardian and TBIJ. It has yet to publish any findings. Brian Olang K’Olang, a programme officer investigating the case for the Kenya Human Rights Commission, viewed the body in the morgue and interviewed witnesses on the day he was found. He described seeing trauma to the back of Mutisya’s head and other injuries. In his view, they were obvious. “I believe there was foul play.” He fears the pathologist may have “deliberately ignored” the signs of injury. Martin Chege Mutuku, 27, claims to the Guardian that he and another friend went with Mutisya on 13 November to steal ripe pineapples. Mutuku said that they were leaving the pineapple field and Mutisya had gone on ahead when three guards appeared. He claimed he was caught, beaten and tied up on the ground. Court records show Mutuku was charged the next day with theft from the farm that night. A third man said he successfully ran away unharmed. Mutuku said that while he was on the ground, the guards heard Mutisya returning with sacks and two chased after him. “I heard a scream and then silence a few minutes after,” he claimed. Mutisya’s father, Samuel Katendie, saw his son’s body and said there were signs of bleeding from the back of the head and marks on the neck that looked like he had been strangled. Bodies can be damaged after death but all marks should be recorded in a postmortem. Mutisya’s father said his son knew how to swim well and that he could not understand how he would drown. “I lost hope for justice after the doctor said there was no injury,” he said of the postmortem conclusion on 22 November. A private consultant pathologist said he charged Del Monte to attend the postmortem for them. His report was emphatic saying: “No evidence of involvement of person (third party) into the death of this person since there were no injuries seen during postmortem examination.” A leading forensic pathologist working in Britain who did not want his name published said this was something no pathologist should say. He said omissions in both postmortem reports raised questions about whether they had been written to support the idea Mutisya had drowned. He and another British pathologist who analysed the reports noted that only the official postmortem report recorded petechial haemorrhages, pinprick bleeding around the eyes. This can be indicative of strangulation, though can have other causes, including drowning. They said that, at the least, this should have prompted a written note on an internal and external examination of the neck but this was not provided in either report. The Kenyan pathologist commissioned by Del Monte insisted he had drawn the right conclusions. “Yes, my report is very emphatic. This is the standard practice in forensic postmortem.” He questioned whether any pathologist could “make any meaningful comment” from a photograph of a decomposed body. A spokesperson for Del Monte said: “We believe in the Kenyan judicial system … Fresh Del Monte remains fully committed and supportive of the community in which it operates in Kenya, and we remain dedicated to our employees, our community, and our 135-year-old commitment to human rights. We have actively supported the community over the years and take our social responsibility very seriously there, as we do everywhere else where we operate.” The spokesperson said the Kenyan authorities were taking the lead on the investigation but nobody in the police responded to requests for comment. Human rights groups investigate death at Kenyan Del Monte pineapple farm Emily Dugan , Edwin Okoth and Grace Murray Samuel Mutisya Katendie and his wife, Hannah Wanjiru Nyambura, at their home in Murang'a county, Kenya. Photograph: Brian Otieno/storitellah/The Guardian An old family photo of Peter Mutuku Mutisya. Photograph: Brian Otieno/storitellah/ The Guardian The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 16 World News Continued from page 15

A Philippine mission to bring Santa Claus to the South China Sea to spread holiday cheer to fisherfolk, troops and coastguard officials was cut short after their convey was shadowed by several Chinese vessels which organisers said carried out “dangerous manoeuvres”. The flotilla of 40 fishing boats loaded with Christmas donations, Father Christmas figurines and nativity displays set sail from El Nido in Palawan province at 1am local time on Sunday (1700 GMT Saturday), on its way to disputed areas that Beijing claims, without legal grounds, as its own. The trip, organised by the coalition Atin Ito, meaning “It’s ours”, involved dozens of volunteers, including youth leaders, faith leaders and fishers, and planned to deliver supplies donated by the public. “We want to send a strong message that a small country like us, the Philippines, will not be silenced or bullied by China,” said Rafaela David, the president of the Akbayan party, which is a co-convener of Atin Ito. The coalition said in a later statement, however, that it was “erring on the side of caution” after consultations with the Philippine coastguard and planned to return, after “the constant shadowing of four Chinese vessels, comprised of two Chinese navy ships, one Chinese coastguard vessel and one Chinese cargo ship”. Chinese vessels began shadowing the convoy’s primary vessel at 3:40pm, south of Southern Bank, in the disputed Spratly Islands, Atin Ito said. “A Chinese navy warship travelling in the opposite direction and another shadowing closely heightened concerns,” the coalition said, adding that one of the most dangerous moments occurred when a “fast-moving Chinese Coast Guard ship reportedly intersected” with a Philippine Coast Guard vessel that was escorting the convoy. The Philippines also accused China of “unprovoked acts of coercion and dangerous manoeuvres” in the region after its vessels and equipment were damaged in two separate incidents. Officials accused the coastguard on Sunday of firing water cannon and ramming one of its re-supply vessels, causing “serious engine damage” to one vessel. The incident happened in the vicinity of Second Thomas Shoal, where a small contingent of troops lives onboard a rusting warship that was deliberately run aground in 1999 to protect Manila’s claims. China said Philippine vessels had “illegally entered” the waters adjacent to the shoal “without the approval of the Chinese government”. It also said the Philippine vessel had intentionally rammed its ship. China has frequently blocked Philippine re-supply missions from reaching troops stationed at the shoal, which is within Manila’s exclusive economic zone. The maritime confrontations over the weekend provoked condemnation from several embassies in the Philippines. The EU ambassador, Luc Véron, described the events as troubling, and his Australian counterpart, HK Yu, said China’s “dangerous actions” against Philippine vessels “risk lives and livelihoods”. New Zealand and Japan also expressed concern. A day earlier, the Philippines had accused Chinese vessels of firing water cannon at a civilian government boat near Scarborough Shoal, and of using what it understood to be a long-range acoustic device that caused “severe temporary discomfort and incapacitation to some Filipino crew”. The South China Sea, one of the world’s most strategically and economically important bodies of water, is fiercely contested. It is claimed almost entirely by China, but the Philippines and neighbouring countries have competing claims. An international tribunal in The Hague ruled against China’s claims in 2016, but Beijing has ignored the ruling. Tensions between China and the Philippines have intensified over the past year, with the Philippines frequently accusing Beijing of dangerous and aggressive behaviour. Analysts have said such incidents, which have become more frequent, risk putting China in direct confrontation with the US, which counts the Philippines as its oldest treaty ally in Asia. The US ambassador to the Philippines, MaryKay L Carlson, said on Sunday that Washington “stands with the Philippines and partners in vehemently condemning” China’s “repeated illegal and dangerous actions against Philippine vessels”. The Christmas mission had intended to give donations to troops and fishing communities of packages including pasta, ham and cheese, and decorations depicting nativity scenes, traditional lanterns, toys for children and basic necessities such as solar-powered lights. Fishing communities have for years complained that their catches are shrinking, blaming overfishing and other activities by China, including harassment by Chinese vessels. The amount of donations given by the public reflected “a sense of solidarity that Filipinos feel especially when they see our fishermen or our coastguard being harassed by China,” said David. “We cannot help but feel a sense of indignation for what China is doing to our fellow Filipinos.” The donations will now be handed over to the Philippine coastguard so that it can distribute items. After the cancellation of the mission, David said in a statement: “As Filipinos, we are united in the fight for what is rightfully ours. Let’s not lose sight of the true threat within our territory. As China intensifies its aggression within our territory, we should also scale up our unity.” Philippine festive flotilla turns back after Chinese interception Rebecca Ratcliffe South-east Asia correspondent Father Robert Reyes boards the Christmas convoy vessel bearing the Pilgrim Mission Cross. He was part of the group voyaging to the West Philippine Sea to areas that are disputed territory with China. Photograph: Atin Ito coalition A still taken from video footage released by the Philippine coastguard on Saturday shows a Chinese coastguard ship using a water cannon on a Philippine fisheries vessel near Scarborough Shoal in the disputed South China Sea. Photograph: Philippine Coast Guard/AFP/Getty Images For Egyptians, the only signs that an election is imminent are the posters of President Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi’s face plastered on every available wall and billboard across the country. The repetitive images of Sisi – always gazing into the distance with a stiff, forced smile – are so ubiquitous that people have turned to the only venue for free expression they have left and have begun making memes of them to share online. One picture that circulated features Jack and Rose from the film Titanic sitting on the deck of the ship surrounded by Sisi’s campaign posters. In another, people joke that a pregnant woman passed so many pictures of Sisi on her way to work that her newborn baby resembled the incumbent president. After seizing power in a military coup in 2013, Sisi has won two presidential elections with 97% of the vote, the last of which was against a candidate who openly supported his rule. In a now familiar scene, the sole potential candidate who represented real opposition was also prevented from running this time around. “It doesn’t feel like there are any elections happening. Everyone’s minds are really on what’s happening in Gaza,” said Mohamed Lotfy of the human rights group Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF). “There’s no hope these elections will bring anything new except a third mandate for Sisi, so there’s a kind of acceptance. The other candidates aren’t running to win – everyone understands they are running because they hope to get political favours in the future.” “The election was over a long time ago!” laughed Mohamed Anwar alSadat, the nephew of Egypt’s former president and longtime political grandee whose career includes expulsion from parliament, a short-lived election campaign in 2018 and being a negotiator helping to free some of the tens of thousands of prisoners in Egypt’s jails. “Now it’s all about the level of turnout, meaning what Sisi will get: this is the election. Otherwise it’s over, in my opinion. Sure, there are three other candidates, but they’re just there to make the overall picture look nice. They’re not real competition.” Sisi has long claimed that opposition rule would cause the downfall of the country, while promising that his many glittering mega projects, including expanding the Suez canal and a shiny new capital on the outskirts of Cairo, would bring prosperity. Reality has proven harsh, and an estimated third of the population is poor, according to the state’s own estimates, while this year inflation has almost surpassed 40%, with food inflation even higher. “Don’t you dare say you would rather eat than build and progress,” Sisi said in a speech in October. “If the price of the nation’s progress and prosperity is to go hungry and thirsty, then let us not eat or drink.” Sisi’s rule has combined biting austerity measures for the public with lavish spending within a regime where only the president and a few of his closest confidants wield power, particularly his notorious spy chief Abbas Kamel, who has spearheaded hostage negotiations with Palestinian militants in the Gaza strip, and his son Mahmoud elSisi, who is also a high-ranking security official. Outside the halls of power, Sisi has used the past 10 years to purge society of anyone or any institution that could present even the most minor oppoSisi poised to win power again, but Egyptians’ minds are on Gaza Ruth Michaelson Supporters of Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi at a rally in Giza, Egypt, in October to back him for president in this month’s election. Photograph: Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters Sisi won twice, with 97% of the vote, since seizing power in 2013. Photograph: Amr Nabil/AP Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian World News 17 Continued on page 19

sition, jailing political opponents, civil society members, journalists and ordinary citizens while overseeing the rebirth of a gargantuan police state. “When we look at where Egypt is at now, after 10 years under Sisi’s rule, it’s difficult to understand why anyone, including him, would think Egypt would be better off if he was to continue to rule for another six years,” said Egypt political economy expert Timothy E Kaldas of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. “More Egyptians are in poverty than when he took office, external debt has nearly quadrupled and the interest payments on this debt alone consume nearly all the tax revenue of the country. If that’s the damage he can do in 10 years, how much more does he plan to do in the coming six?” The expectation, said Kaldas, is that the state will conduct a vast votebuying campaign in a repeat of previous years, when buses of workingclass Egyptians were paid in bags of food to drive up turnout. “Part of the reason votes can be bought so cheaply is because of how desperate so much of the population is,” he said. “You give people a couple of dollars for a carton of food and they will vote, or an employer with ties to the regime coerces people into voting. That’s basically the bulk of the turnout.” With little prospect of a free and fair election, most Egyptians are more concerned with Israel’s assault on Gaza, just over a border in the Sinai that has long remained closed, amid unprecedented warm relations with Israel, including Sisi meeting openly prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Even so, Sisi skirted a longstanding ban on public protest and designated a single day and specific areas for the public to demonstrate over Gaza in a bid to manage public anger. This plan backfired when crowds of demonstrators marched to Cairo’s Tahrir square, the site of the 2011 uprising to demand the overthrow of autocrat Hosni Mubarak. ECRF tracked arrests following the demonstrations and found that 115 people were held in Cairo and Alexandria. Today 67 remain on trial on charges ranging from breaking a law banning protest to terrorism. “They don’t want this situation to happen again, which is partly why the security agencies refused to give a green light to an international convoy of activists who hoped to travel to the Rafah crossing,” said ECRF’s Lotfy. Despite Egypt’s role in hostage negotiations providing some international clout, Sisi’s inability to wield power on Gaza risks exposing the fragility of his rule at home. “There is a double-edged sword for the government: it wants to de-escalate the situation because it means tension at home, and frustration that the state is unable to do more than what it’s doing already,” said Lotfy. “The more images of bombings, the angrier the public gets, including at the government for being so powerless in terms of being unwilling to force Israel to open the borders and let in more aid. They need to show they have a role in terms of forcing a ceasefire and refusing the displacement of Palestinians into Sinai. If they fail, the question becomes: how are they both failing and not letting us vent this anger through protests?” Iran has banned Mahsa Amini’s family from travelling to France to receive the EU’s top human rights prize on her behalf, as the family of the imprisoned Nobel peace prize winner Narges Mohammadi said she had begun a new hunger strike before Sunday’s award ceremony in Oslo. In Mohammadi’s absence, her 17- year-old twin children, Ali and Kiana, instead collected the award on her behalf, reading out a speech their mother smuggled out of her cell. The two high-profile award ceremonies, taking place days apart in Norway and France, have recast a spotlight on the deep costs borne by those who battle for women’s rights in Iran. Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman whose death in 2022 in police custody set off months of protests that rocked Iran, was awarded the Sakharov prize for freedom of thought in October. Before Tuesday’s ceremony, members of her family, including her father and brother, were stopped on Saturday as they attempted to board a flight to France, the family’s lawyer in France, Chirinne Ardakani, told AFP. Their passports were confiscated despite them having a valid visa to travel, she added. The months-long protests in Iran were met with a heavy-handed crackdown by authorities, resulting in the deaths of more than 500 people and the arrests of nearly 20,000, according to human rights groups in the country. The protests have since been largely suppressed. Ardakani said authorities in the country “have never been so mobilised to prevent the families of the victims from speaking to the international community”. Reports said only the family’s lawyer, Saleh Nikbakht, would be able to travel to receive the award – described by the EU as its highest tribute to human rights work. Among those who called for Amini’s family to be allowed to travel to the ceremony, which will honour Amini as well as the Woman, Life, Freedom movement set off by her death, was the European parliament president, Roberta Metsola. “Their place next Tuesday is at the European parliament in Strasbourg to receive the Sakharov prize, with the brave women of Iran,” she wrote on social media. “The truth cannot be silenced.” Metsola’s call came as the family of Mohammadi, one of the women spearheading the Women, Life, Freedom uprising, said the Nobel peace prize winner would be on a hunger strike as the Nobel ceremony got under way on Sunday. On an Instagram page maintained by her friends, a post noted that the strike would protest against the violations of human rights in Iran and be carried out in solidarity with members of the Bahá’í faith, a religious minority that faces persecution and discrimination under Iran’s conservative Islamic theocracy. Her family confirmed the news as they arrived in Oslo. “She is not here with us today,” her younger brother, Hamidreza Mohammadi, told reporters. “She is in prison and she will be on a hunger strike in solidarity with a religious minority but we feel her presence here.” Her husband, Taghi Rahmani, explained that the protest was being carried out in solidarity with two leading figures of the community who were also on a hunger strike. “She said that ‘I will start my hunger strike on the day that I am being granted this prize, perhaps then the world will hear more about it’,” Rahmani said. On Sunday, an empty chair and a large photograph of Mohammadi sat centre stage at Oslo’s city hall as the ceremony got under way. Her children, Ali and Kiana, collected the award on her behalf, delivering a speech she had managed to smuggle out of her prison cell. “I am an Iranian woman, a proud and honourable contributor to civilisation, who is currently under the oppression of a despotic religious government,” she said. “The Iranian people will dismantle obstruction and despotism through their persistence,” Mohammadi added. “Have no doubt – this is certain.” Her son, Ali Rahmani, noted that his mother’s “body is behind bars but her pen and thoughts have burst through the walls and reached us.” He continued: “She and the Iranian people have never been more oppressed than now. But never has their voice resonated so strongly in the world. Let us continue to spread the reverberation so that Narges Mohammadi and the Iranian people will one day be able to break their chains.” Mohammadi has been held in Tehran’s Evin prison since 2021. Last month, she went on another hunger strike to obtain the right to obtain medical care without covering her head. She was awarded the Nobel prize in October “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran”. Arrested 13 times, sentenced five times to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes, the prominent activist has spent much of the past two decades in and out of jail and has not seen her children, now based in France, for more than eight years. The Associated Press and AgenceFrance Presse contributed to this report Iran stops Mahsa Amini’s family from travelling to receive human rights prize Ashifa Kassam and agencies A protester holds a portrait of Mahsa Amini during a demonstration in September 2022 in Istanbul. Photograph: Ozan Köse/AFP/Getty Images Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian World News 19 Continued from page 17

t a time of multiple conflicts, deep geopolitical divisions and rising numbers of people forced to flee their homes, to proclaim that an international conference can find solutions for the world’s refugees might seem to be stretching the definition of optimism. According to our latest estimates, there are 36.4 million refugees worldwide, out of a total displaced population (including the internally displaced) of a staggering 114 million. This global refugee population has doubled within the past seven years, a reflection of the violence and human rights abuses that seem to be afflicting more and more countries. At the same time, many states are cutting humanitarian aid and development budgets. And rather than efforts to address the root causes of displacement, we hear tough talk – mainly from wealthy and well resourced states – about turning outsiders away, making it harder to seek the right to asylum and offloading responsibility on to others. Thus it might seem an inauspicious moment to be holding the second Global Refugee Forum, which will take place in Geneva this week. But I beg to differ. The forum is a much-needed moment of global unity, where those who are determined to keep searching for solutions will come together to meet the huge challenge of forced displacement. An array of participants – states, the private sector and charitable foundations, international financial institutions, UN agencies, humanitarian and development organisations of all sizes, cities and local authorities, NGOs, refugee-led organisations, faith groups and others – will make concrete and transformational pledges and contributions, and take stock of the progress made since the first forum in 2019. Sharing responsibility is crucial. Today, almost 75% of refugees are in countries neighbouring their own, mainly low- and middle-income states. Those countries do what they can, often with limited resources, but they deserve much greater international support to sustain this generosity. This support could take many forms: financial, material or technical assistance; places for resettlement and other paths to admission to third countries, enabling better-resourced countries to share the responsibility for refugees; measures to prevent conflict and build peace; and other moves such as policies and practices to promote refugee inclusion and protection, or improved monitoring and research. We will strive, as ever, to create the conditions for refugees to return to their homes in safety and dignity – including meeting longstanding challenges such as those faced by Afghans, Rohingya, Central Americans, Somalis, South Sudanese, central Africans, Syrians and many others, seeking innovative and responsive ways to support and protect them in often difficult and imperfect circumstances. We are doing this so that all refugee children can go to school; so that refugees can use their skills and knowledge to contribute to new societies; and so that refugees, a symptom of violence and upheaval, can be agents of peace. But we are also doing it because refugees are at constant risk of being forgotten, and we refuse to let that happen. Earlier this year, when rival forces began fighting in Sudan, the violence was front-page news. By the time I visited neighbouring South Sudan in the summer – watching as the provision of healthcare, sanitation and shelter was stretched to breaking point by the sheer numbers of people forced to flee – international attention was already waning. Now, in the aftermath of the terrible violence in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the world is silent on Sudan – just as it has fallen silent on conflict in Ethiopia, Syria, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Sahel and many other places. Even the war in Ukraine, which has forced millions to flee their homes, is slipping down the news agenda. Yet this fresh round of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict has given us horrifying evidence of what happens when the essential elements for a just and lasting peace are neglected. Spasms of violence followed by temporary lulls had become a “strategy”. How grave a miscalculation that was, and how I wish it was not being repeated elsewhere. Other challenges and crises abound, each new one pushing the rest into the background. Shipwrecks and drownings of refugees and migrants pass almost without comment. Persecution, human rights abuses and violations of international law become the norm, not the exception. Even with the impetus of Cop28, too little is done to address the drought, famine, floods, fires and other environmental calamities afflicting regions that host thousands, perhaps millions of refugees alongside local populations. To rise to these myriad challenges requires a change of mindset, from one where an individual nation’s borders, territory and assets are almost the only thing that matters, to one where we see the mutual benefits and public good of collective action and sharing responsibility. Cooperation does not equal capitulation and compassion is not weakness. Every refugee is a symptom of our collective failure to ensure peace and security. Refugee situations don’t have to turn into crises if we work together to address and manage them. Everyone can play their part, and I call upon everyone to do so. Filippo Grandi is the UN high commissioner for refugees Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at [email protected] Refugees are a symptom of collective failure – only working together will tackle the root causes Filippo Grandi A Refugees from the fighting in Sudan in Renk, South Sudan, May 2023. ‘Healthcare, sanitation and shelter was stretched to breaking point by the sheer numbers forced to flee.’ Photograph: Jok Solomun/Reuters s Taylor Swift pop music’s last great troublemaker? Or has it always been the done thing for the Time magazine person of the year to use their illustrious anointing to air old beef ? For the magazine has indeed chosen Swift as the 2023 Time person of the year. The global music phenomenon joins the roll call of presidents, popes, peacemakers and 2022’s pick, the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Swift is the first to feature for contribution to the arts, and the first woman to be honoured twice (she was part of a group of #MeToo “silence breakers” in 2017). You start reading the interview, expecting the standard hyper-controlled mega-celeb PR puffery. Then, suddenly, in the vast glossy acreage of words, Swift starts slating Kanye West (now Ye) and his then wife Kim Kardashian for a complicated situation that dates back 14 years (when West gatecrashed Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards, saying her award should have gone to Beyoncé). For the benefit of the oblivious, years later, Ye released the song Famous, containing lyrics about how he and Swift might end up having sex (“I made that bitch famous”). Swift denied approving (all) the lyrics. Kardashian released a recording indicating she had consented. It later transpired the recording was (allegedly) edited, but not before Swift was denounced as a snake (cue a global infestation of snake emojis on social media). Now, with no names mentioned, Swift talks in the Time interview of “career death”, “hiding away”, “getting cancelled within an inch of my life and sanity”, “having my life’s work taken away by someone who hates me”. While the situation sounds appalling, I’m puzzled: why is Swift serving years-old shade to Ye and Kardashian? And, in all of the inappropriate places, her Time person of the year interview? In contrast to the heightened eminence of the occasion, you could be in a nightclub toilet eavesdropping on someone having a bitch. What 21st-century pop culture icon does this? Her talent aside, is Swift changing what a megastar should be, how they should behave in a public space? And, considering the times, isn’t it rather refreshing? I’d be terribly old and very late to join the “Swifties” (Swift’s uber-loyal fans, who turn every slight against their self-actualising queen into online Armageddon). Just Swift’s recent triumphs make the head spin. The megaselling albums. The ongoing Eras tour, for which demand crashed the Ticketmaster site, and which boosted local economies, and is reported to be the first to cross the billion-dollar mark. She has just been announced 2023’s most streamed artist. The list sprawls on. The upshot is a life spent under constant surveillance. Her relationships (she’s now with American football player, Kansas City Chiefs’ Travis Kelce) don’t so much play out under the glare of media scrutiny, as fry, scorch and carbonise there. Every utterance is monitored, tagged and sent back out into the wild to multiply. Swift knows this, but she still refuses to keep her trap shut. Indeed, this isn’t Swift’s first gobby defiant rodeo. She has taken many stands, including when music manager Scooter Braun acquired the rights to her early material (another complicated situation). Ignoring those of us She’s a megastar, but Taylor Swift just won’t shake off old feuds. Good for her Barbara Ellen I The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 20 Opinion Even the war in Ukraine, which has forced millions to flee their homes, is slipping down the news agenda Continued on page 21

who shrugged, sighed and patronised (this is how the music industry works, suck it up, sweetie!), Swift rerecorded the lot to wrest back control. Moreover, creatively, an entire wing of Swift’s oeuvre is devoted to barely veiled allusions to her exes: the art of songwriting deployed as a form of witchy sage-burning, post-relationship cleansing ritual – and why not? In some ways, this goes beyond Swift, and becomes about the wider machinations of modern artist-engagement. The escalating PR interference (“Move on!”; “Next question!”). The nogo areas. The roadblocks put in place to ensure nothing interesting is ever said or (God forbid) printed. In this stifled era of celebrity as a gated community, Swift’s Time interview is equivalent to her throwing a grenade, then walking away whistling. This time, the PR gatekeepers might have had a point. Considering Ye’s public disgrace (after he made antisemitic and other remarks, companies withdrew collaborations and endorsements), it isn’t the time to blow the dust off an ancient spat, and thus re-entwine your brands. One might also question the optics of weaving a story of great personal suffering as you become Time person of the year and continue your billion-dollar tour. In fact, some might view Swift’s behaviour as brattish, petty, a hurling of toys out of the pram, a sign that, in some ways, she has (gasp!) morphed into a bit of a monster. To which the only logical response is: even if she has, in a weird way, it’s kind of great, isn’t it? Beyond journalism, it does a soul good to see this streak in someone so famous. The unstoppable mouth, the mob-level demand for vengeance. The refusal to drop the beef. Even if you did feel inclined to frame Swift as some sort of Catherine de Medici of pop (the female revenge fantasy made flesh, that can’t be placated), in this climate of cringing, self-censoring, mealy mouthed celebrity bland-outs, it feels like a radical, revolutionary act. Then there is the age factor. Most pop-hotheads/motormouths grow out of it. At 33, Swift should have “learned”. She should be at her self-censoring, brand-protective zenith. Instead, recent events suggest her outbursts were not the excesses of youth. For good, ill, and everything in-between, this is how La Swift rolls; it’s who she is. All of which makes Taylor a lot more interesting for this newly minted Swiftie. Even more than a mega-successful performer, pop-culture comet, and Time person of the year 2023, she’s been her authentic self all along. Isn’t this all we ask of artists? • Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist Taylor Swift performs in Buenos Aires during her Eras tour concert. Photograph: Natacha Pisarenko/AP he notion of becoming invisible as an ageing woman has become an accepted trope. My friends and I, from our late 50s onwards, were first gobsmacked then increasingly enraged at being talked over, not served, not replied to, brushed aside and not taken seriously. Small accretions of casual insult that eroded our hard-earned sense of self and agency. Instead of simmering in a stew of rage and resentment I began to wonder if that conferred invisibility could be harnessed. If I reframed it as a cloak of invisibility I could do all sorts of things “inappropriate” for my age. I refrained from robbing a bank (though fairly sure I could have got away with the loot), instead turning my attention to street art. My first guerrilla paste-up a decade or so ago was in a lane in Ballarat, Victoria. I was quite nervous and slightly fearful of being at least fined so I donned a hi-vis vest and put out semiofficial public work signs and had a friend spotting for me. I needn’t have bothered – people went past me and simply did not see me. Yes! My cloak worked! This meant I could merrily take my artwork into the public domain and put up (mainly) drawings of old ladies dancing in tutus – just a small rupture in the expected representation of older women. Sometimes I’d get permission to use a wall but I preferred the more transgressive act of just wandering into a public space and slapping up the posters whenever and wherever I felt like. Then there was the terrific initiative of the artist Dans Bain to gather women artists together to reclaim what was then a fairly blokey space – Melbourne’s Hosier Lane. It was such a hoot; generous, inclusive and has now continued for five years to become a welcome addition to the Hosier Lane community. I love to take every opportunity to spread the idea of how visibility, agency and joy is possible and erasure not inevitable. Something that happens time and time again when I am pasting up my ladies is the wonderful conversations I have with other older female passersby who always say how welcome it is to see figures they can relate to and identify with. This year I pasted up two distinctly different images: my dancers and also two large faces of a screaming older woman. The dancers are deliberately a lighthearted rebuttal of the usual stereotypes – the screaming woman less so. Let’s be clear: invisibility for my cohort is no joke. It’s actually dangerous. It leads to exclusion from the workforce, financial precariousness, growing homelessness, bad health outcomes, elder abuse and silence and inaction in social policy. When I put up the screaming heads in Hosier Lane I asked women going past what would they like to yell about. I then wrote out their words and pasted them coming out of the screaming mouth. Here are some of their words: Enough! Make Good Trouble! Be Difficult! I Matter! More Respect! Hear Me, See Me! Older Women Count! Be Outrageous! I Am Not Invisible! Rage! Joy and rage are both necessary tools to counter the effects of ageism twinned with sexism. Let’s not accept the tired old stereotypes. Perhaps by wryly donning the invisibility cloak on our own terms we can be disrupters and activists who change expectations around ageing. We won’t manage to completely overturn this last obstacle thrown at us by a tired, dated yet stubbornly persistent patriarchy but we can have some fun along the way dancing out on the streets. • Dr Deborah Wood is a New Zealand born visual artist who has exhibited in Melbourne and regionally for 40 years. She holds a PhD on women artists and self- portraiture. She employs drawing and street art paste ups to create works that explore both autobiographical and contemporary social themes Society ‘disappears’ ageing women. So I harnessed that cloak of invisibility to do all sorts of ‘inappropriate’ things Deborah Wood T Street artist Deborah Wood pasted an image of screaming older women in Hosier Lane in Melbourne and asked women going past what would they like to yell about. Those words were then pasted coming out of the mouths. Photograph: Deborah Wood ‘I love to take every opportunity to spread the idea of how visibility, agency and joy is possible and erasure not inevitable,’ says street artist Deborah Wood. Photograph: Catherine Barrett Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian Opinion 21 While the situation sounds appalling, I’m puzzled: why is Swift serving years-old shade to Ye and Kardashian? Continued from page 20

t’s hard not to feel personally attacked by some research (does that make me a raging narcissist? Probably). With crisps and now sitting down recently ruled empirically bad, it seems science is coming for everything I hold dear. Now, my one true love is being targeted: staring at my phone. A new study, discussed in the excellent Techno Sapiens newsletter, explored how using your phone to avoid stranger awkwardness makes you feel “worse than if you didn’t”. For the research, 395 strangers were split into groups and asked to wait together for a (pretend) test. Half had phones, half not, and participants assessed how they felt at five-minute intervals. The researchers’ theory was that non-phone people would enjoy their time more, but that the digital comfort blanket would feel better in the short term. That was wrong. “Phones failed to confer any detectable benefits.” Even in the first five minutes, non-phone users were happier. “People may be acting against their own best interest when they use phones in social situations,” the study concluded. I do this constantly: waiting in shop queues, for buses or for choir to start. Rather than experience momentary awkwardness, I assume my best “I must deal with this” face and poke my phone with an air of importance. There’s a particular kind of shame in these moments because absolutely nothing I do is important. Nothing bad will happen if I delay answering the handful of work emails I get each day; I’m not running a power plant or a stroke ward. I’m mainly reading messages from the tireless Dutch Royal Mint flogging commemorative coins and companies trying to sell me perimenopause-appropriate athleisure; maybe a vegan protein powder company speculating what the royal family eats at Christmas. If you see me typing urgently, I’m commenting on a video of my best friend’s cat. But technology gave us the option of staring at something instead of interacting – and we’ve seized it gratefully. A 2015 survey from the Pew Research Centre found that 73% of Americans have used their phones “for no particular reason, just for something to do”, while a 2018 survey found that 45% of teens have pretended to text (I reckon 100% of adults). I’m not anti-phone; I worship my black rectangle of delight. I also think there’s a distinction between situations with reasonable scope for interaction, and those without: standing on a train station platform not looking at your phone feels genuinely suspect; when I’m out of battery, I worry I’ll be rounded up by the British Transport Police in a See it. Say it. Sorted operation. But if you could be talking to someone who might be receptive, surely it’s ruder not to try? A sad if unsurprising finding from a 2021 study from the University of Pisa was that phone use appears to be contagious: when one person started, others followed. By caving in to our desire to avoid awkwardness, we might be undermining not just our own wellbeing, but other people’s. So I left my phone in my coat at pilates last week. The first minutes, when other people in the room were already in conversation, felt arduous. What if a distant acquaintance had posted a picture of a bird? Maybe someone on NextDoor needed me to weigh in on an inconsiderately parked car? What if – and that’s the crux of it, of course – no one wanted to talk to me? It was fine. A woman said she had trained her cat not to scratch things and I couldn’t resist asking her how (she shouted at it until it stopped). By the time we had cleared that up, the class was starting. The next day, engaging my seatmate on a packed bus in conversation (complaining about the packed bus, obviously), barely felt transgressive at all. Did I feel good? I felt less pathetic, that’s for sure. So I’m keeping it up, and if it I get shunned, it’s OK. I’ve decided that the true power move is not looking importantly at your phone anyway; it’s looking beatifically happy with your own thoughts, as if the internet can’t possibly compete with the richness therein. I’ll only be thinking about Dutch commemorative gold ducats or a stranger’s pet, but no one need ever know. • Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist I stopped looking at my phone every time I was waiting for something – this is what I learned Emma Beddington I ‘I do this constantly: waiting in shop queues, for buses or for choir to start.’ Photograph: Alex Potemkin/Getty Images mean, I’ll just come out and say it: it’s pretty tempting to laugh out loud at the tourists who fell off their gondola into the canal in Venice last week because they just wouldn’t stop taking selfies. Their gondolier had apparently asked them to sit down and quit all that dangerous posing, but they didn’t listen and toppled right in, overturning the boat and throwing him into the tentacles of the lagoon, too. The poor man then had to try to get his very upset customers out of the big sink – there’s a video of this online – and, well, let’s just say he’s a nobler man than I am, still trying to help them by this soaking point. So it’s tempting indeed to laugh but, oh, I can’t, because my secret hobby is taking ridiculous selfies, too. Only I do it when nobody is looking, so they can’t judge me. Don’t you? Don’t you find a nice moment of sexy lighting in, er, a public lavatory, or a restaurant loo, or a lift, or a shop, or in the park with the dog, or in your friend’s kitchen when she has left the room – I mean, I could go on. The reason I take so many is because none of them ever turn out the way I think they will, or because someone else has had the audacity to get into the lift and ruin my private moment with my phone. Having not practised enough in public, like the Venice tourists, I still haven’t worked out how to pose. The triangle thing that models talk about (one hand on a hip so your body has three points to it)? I tried, but the I’m a little teapot vibe was overwhelming. And I definitely haven’t mastered the one where you stretch your face into a big smile with eyes super wide open and then stop smiling but keep your eyes wide. Which apparently leaves some people with a great photo face, and me with the expression of a woman with a burning badger up her rectum. My problem is not low self-esteem or any kind of body dysmorphia; my problem is that I always think a photo of me is going to look like an off-duty Cindy Crawford and am then startled when it comes out like an on-duty vicar of Dibley. So then I have to take 20 more. Just to check. We Brits, we hide our selfie-ing, some of us, because we were raised in the stiff upper vernacular. To take a photograph of oneself is to manifest a need to be seen, a desire: perhaps a desire for oneself. It is a boast as well as a vulnerability and there is still that sense that we are supposed to wait to be photographed. Which is why I love it when my 12-year-old asks if she can take a picture of me with my phone. Me? The subject of your photoshoot! Darling, of course! She stands and aims the camera, takes several I’d never fall into a Venice canal taking selfies – all mine are done in secret Sophie Heawood I Some of the tourists who ended up in a Venice canal last week. Photograph: ANSA The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 22 Opinion Continued on page 23

shots while I pretend to be awkward but in fact adore the attention, lost in my little poses. This old thing! Then she hands it over and it turns out I have fallen for it once again, as the gallery is now full of pictures of her face, not mine. She has sneakily turned the camera to face the other way and screams with laughter afterwards. Meaning I might as well have taken a picture of my bloody self. With family like mine you’re better off falling in the canal. • Sophie Heawood is the author of The Hungover Games nt and Dec, the hosts of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, have some frustrating news for demagogues. Dec (the shorter one): “I think we do a year without any politicians.” Ant: “Agreed, agreed, agreed.” Unluckily for British politics, this comes too late to prevent their programme’s de-fanging of Nigel Farage. Regardless of today’s final, its most expensive-ever participant has essentially won. Farage, thanks to the casting, his supporters and output of interminable tedium, has at least temporarily buried his reputation as, to put it at its most generous, a mean-spirited, sexist xenophobe whose troublemaking has blighted British political, cultural and economic life for generations. As a bonus, in a reversal of normal refurb arrangements, it was ITV that paid Farage, a presenter on a rival channel, for his services: £1.5m. His employer, GB News, has been his extrajungle partner, reporting every compliment and drumming up votes: “Nigel’s chances to win increase”; “Farage ‘comes across well’”. That some viewers may struggle to reconcile the ITV “Nige”, seen fussing harmlessly about camp hygiene, with the person described by the New York Times, post-Brexit, as “one of the most effective and dangerous demagogues Britain has ever seen”, may be, to be fair, something ITV had not fully anticipated. Even though it should have. Maybe, although sustained interrogation was unlikely from this series’ younger C-listers, producers expected some folk memory of, for instance, Farage’s campaigning for Trump: “The single most resilient and brave person I have ever met.” Or his choice of Putin as the leader he most admired, after the annexation of Crimea: “If you poke the Russian bear with a stick he will respond.” Or his campaign against the RNLI, a “migrant taxi service”. Or his dislike of “ostentatious” breastfeeding. And if no one recalled how, in 2010, the MEP Farage was fined for directly abusing the EU president – “you have all the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk” – maybe, over the three weeks, he’d betray himself with some similarly ugly phrasing. “He is a gifted communicator,” the damning New York Times report had conceded, “verbally dexterous, with a sense of humor”. If some of that had emerged, it would have made the ITV laundering facility at least entertaining. But it turns out that the charisma of a damp rag and appearance of a lowgrade bank clerk is an almost spookily accurate description of Farage’s jungle persona. In his IAC iteration, Farage’s fabled fluency and ditto invective is replaced, with scarcely a lapse, with the manner of a trusted – if long ago frisky – Rotarian whose occasional testiness amid the young people’s mess can seem worryingly relatable. Towards Nella Rose, a stern young influencer, Farage acted something close to conciliatory, reminding her, after they differed, that ideas about offence had changed. His (ridiculous, given the outcry) example, that Prince Harry once dressed in Nazi uniform, reflected Farage’s confidence that no camp mates would recall the wellknown accusation about his schoolboy years: that as well as an Enoch Powell fan he was a fascist sympathiser. He denies the latter. In its innocence, the emptying camp even became protective, like a nest of unsuspecting warblers harbouring a gigantic cuckoo. A tip there for fellow demagogues: act vulnerable. “Aw, we love ya, want to make sure you’re all right,” said Danielle Harrold of EastEnders, prior to being evicted before Farage. Last year, Matt Hancock had to deal with the unimpressed Boy George and Charlene White. This year’s team, featuring no one capable of unsettling Farage, might as well have been selected by GB News or his girlfriend. The presenters got no further than twitting him, after he quit a challenge, with liking, geddit, “the leave option”. Admittedly anything more pointed would have enraged the Faragists, who have been jealously counting his minutes, complaining of bias, plastering his face across social media. If everything about camp, from the uniform to the prevailing incuriosity and aversion to conflict, already conspired to liberate Farage from his past, it was genius on his part to shower (against camp rules) naked. Nigel’s arse was not just a precious talking point in a programme whose presenters are, with so little else to discuss, captivated by bums, farting and toilets. Here was unaccommodated Farage as a poor, bare forked animal, practically, when divested of his respectable nutter outfits (tweeds, velvet-collared coat, mustard cords), one of us. Not all IAC stars have prospered but, when Nige van Winkle emerges from his news blackout into a political landscape changed by Rishi Sunak’s accelerated collapse, the makeover massively improves his chances. Whether he leads the Reform party into the election, or responds to invitations to destroy the centre right from within, he will forever be indebted to Ant and Dec for making either outcome appear briefly less insane. I’m a Celebrity has been Nige’s useful idiot. For the presenters, a reluctance to collaborate in future jungle-washing, supposing that explains their feelings about more politicians, is understandable. On the other hand, without this talent pool what does the programme have left? Diminishing returns from its hilarious opening proposal, that no humiliation is too gross for desperate celebrities, led to the revelation, also no longer astonishing, that the same applies to some politicians if they are paid enough. But with Farage’s restraint and few camp mates of interest, this season has exposed its reliance, beyond some innovations in tormenting participants, on drab chat (“sleep well?”), mawkish bonding (“group hug”) and on its eternally cheeky presenters, face-pulling and sauce (“they’ll be ‘critting’ themselves!”). It might look less desperate if they were not now five years older than the prime minister. Oooh lalalalalala! as Dec, or it might have been Ant, said last week. After its years humiliating celebrities, there’s a sort of justice, I suppose, in seeing I’m a Celebrity terminally humiliated by one overpaid recruit. That’s if the damage stops there. • Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at [email protected] Nigel Farage has been careful to bare nothing but his arse in I’m a Celebrity Catherine Bennett A ‘Charisma of a damp rag’: Nigel Farage taking part in an I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! challenge. Photograph: James Gourley/ITV/ Shutterstock That fame can come with a price is a truism most associated with stars of film and screen or other arts. But the inhabitants of one small town in rural Alabama, deep in the American south, have discovered the truth of that notion via one of the most popular mediums of the internet age: the podcast. Woodstock, a speck on the map halfway between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, was the subject of the hit 2017 podcast S-Town, which followed the often bizarre goings-on, and even more complex relationships, in a small American community where nothing was ever quite as it seemed. Some are questioning just what the price of that fame was as – for the second time – an untimely death has struck one of the central characters, shocking not only Woodstock but fans around the world. Last Sunday Tyler Goodson was fatally shot by police in what law enforcement described as a standoff, saying Goodson, 32, had “brandished a gun” at the officers. His death – he was declared “brain dead” on Tuesday - came eight years after the suicide of his friend and antiquarian horologist John B McLe- ‘It’s hell being famous’: second violent death of Serial podcast character raises ethics questions Edward Helmore Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian Opinion / Features 23 Continued from page 22 Here was unaccommodated Farage as a poor, bare forked animal, practically one of us Continued on page 24

more. Both men were known to millions of S-Town fans. As Alabama’s state bureau of investigation began an investigation into Goodson’s death, the Woodstock mayor, Jeff Dodson, said: “Tyler was well-known and loved by myself, his family and this community. That love extends far beyond due to the S-Town podcast.” While the circumstances of Goodson’s confrontation with police are yet to be fully understood, a second death in the orbit of the seven-episode podcast has renewed questions about the hit show, and accusations of media voyeurism. Goodson told the Associated Press soon after S-Town launched – it was downloaded or streamed more than 80m times – that it had brought a deluge of attention on him and the town, but had not done him any favors. “It’s a sad story, especially if you’re part of it,” Goodson, who had worked as a tattoo artist and plant worker, told the news agency. A year later, after STown had won a Peabody award, Goodson was questioning whether or not participating had been worth it. “It’s hell being famous without the rich part,” he told Esquire in 2018. “If money came along with it, I wouldn’t feel near as bad about it.” Last weekend, police spent three hours trying to talk Goodson out of a house before they shot him. Moments before Goodson was killed, at 1.39am, he posted a message to Facebook saying: “Police bout to shoot me down in my own yard.” Six years ago, the six-and-a-halfhour podcast was released by the makers of Serial, which launched as a spinoff of This American Life and became a 2014 phenomenon when Sarah Koenig, a formerBaltimore Sun reporter, spent more than a year reinvestigating the 1999 murder of an 18- year-old high school student, Hae Min Lee. That was followed by the story of Bowe Bergdahl, the US soldier who left his post in Afghanistan in 2009, then was captured and held by the Taliban for five years and later charged as a deserter. The third installment of the series, S-Town, hit harder. It followed the story of McLemore, who had written to This American Life in 2012 asking them to look into an alleged murder in Woodstock, which he referred to as Shit Town. The story went from true crime to McLemore’s life, the lives of his family members and his close friend, Goodson, and their not-quite father-and-son relationship, which included hanging out at Goodson’s tattoo shop, Black Sheep Ink, and building a maze in McLemore’s backyard. It was in the brutal third episode that McLemore’s family, and Goodson, deal with his suicide in June 2015, aged 49. Goodson got a commemorative tattoo of his friend and told Esquire that “John B was my employer and just about the closest friend I’ve had. He acted like a father figure, because he knew my sperm donor wasn’t worth a damn. Hell, I learned a lot from him … He was probably the best teacher I’ve ever had.” Two years later, S-Town dropped, and that private tragedy became a public one. “I was just clusterfucked,” Goodson recalled to the magazine. He said he cried throughout. It was the first time he learned McLemore had had intimate relationships with men. Goodson said he did not care to judge. “I had my thoughts, but it wasn’t none of my business on his sexuality and all that,” he said. “I don’t have nothing against homosexuals, but it was too much for me. I felt like they took that a little far.” Reviewers had begun to voice concern that the makers of the show had intruded too far. Writing in the Guardian, Gay Alcorn wrote that “McLemore’s agonies are laid out for our entertainment, with scant reflection by the podcast’s reporter as to the ethics of what he’s doing. Journalism requires a purpose beyond telling a ‘good’ story.” The New Yorker’s Sarah Larson said that S-Town had helped advance the art of audio storytelling “but it also edges us closer to a discomfiting realm of well-intentioned voyeurism on a scale we haven’t quite experienced before”. By then, S-Town had gripped the public’s imagination. Fans of the podcast, Goodson said, dropped by the property he shared with his wife, four daughters, son, grandmother and uncle. Goodson tried to cash in on his fame, selling T-shirts with “Black Sheep of S-Town” on the back via Facebook. Reality TV opportunities came up, but he turned them down partly because he was in a court case over personal belongings, including two buses and an 18-wheeler trailer, on McLemore’s property that he had been prevented from accessing by his heirs. His life began to unravel. Goodson pleaded guilty to third-degree burglary, third-degree theft of property and third-degree criminal trespassing. He received a suspended 10-year sentence with five years of probation. McLemore’s estate filed a claim in Alabama circuit court claiming that the podcast’s producers exploited McLemore by airing salacious details about his sexual orientation, depression and other mental health issues without consent. “None of these ‘mysteries’ are matters of legitimate public concern, nor were these matters that McLemore contacted Reed to investigate or write about,” the lawsuit, which was filed under Alabama’s right of publicity laws, said. “Instead, they generally involved the most private matters of McLemore’s life.” In 2019, a judge called the claim that the producers had used McLemore’s identity for commercial purposes “plausible”. A year later, in 2020, it was settled out of court. A lawyer for the McLemore estate said he was satisfied the creators of the podcast acted responsibly and appropriately in their reporting. That had little bearing on Goodson. Two years earlier he had described Woodstock as “the same old Shit Town”. Last week the Woodstock mayor’s office said they were not able to discuss what had happened until investigators delivered a report. Separately, the county coroner said Goodson had been declared “brain dead” on Tuesday night at a hospital and his organs were being prepared for donation. Tyler Goodson at the grave of his friend John B McLemore, in Green Pond, Alabama, on 3 May 2017. Goodson was killed by police on 3 December 2023. Photograph: Jay Reeves/AP From left to right, Julie Snyder, Serial cocreator and S-Town executive producer; Ira Glass, This American Life creator and host; Brian Reed, S-Town host; and Sarah Koenig, Serial host. Photograph: Sandy Honig This week’s Saturday Night Live opens with congressional testimony from three college university presidents on the subject of antisemitism on campus. Representative Elise Stefanik (Chloe Troast) immediately starts screeching at them about whether calls for genocide is considered acceptable speech or not, even as she declares “Hate speech has no place on college campuses. Hate speech belongs in Congress, on Elon Musk’s Twitter, in private dinners with my donors, and in public speeches from my work husband, Donald Trump.” The academics end up dancing around an answer, thereby hanging themselves while handing the reprehensible Stefanik a rare public win. While not a particularly sharp statement on the current global firestorm of antisemitism and Islamophobia, credit is due to SNL for recognizing Stefanik and her ilk’s hypocritical, manipulative, and bad-faith grandstanding for what it is. Troast – who the show seems to be pushing as a possible breakout star – is appropriately annoying and detestable in the role. Adam Driver returns to host for the fourth time. The Ferrari star talks about his love for Christmas and a “very deep and personal relationship with Santa”. Displaying some impressive piano skills, he relays his Christmas list to Old Saint Nick, which includes new chinos, a gingerbread house, one of the new Tesla trucks to pair with his “teeny, tiny micro-penis”, and for people to stop coming up to him on the street reminding him that he killed Han Solo (“I didn’t kill Han Solo – wokeness killed Han Solo!”). Silly, sexy and smart, the monologue is a great distillation of Driver’s eccentric and singular charm. An adults-only ski trip between friends takes a confusing turn when Driver and Bowen Yang’s gay couple announce that they’re trying to have a baby. The others assume they mean adoption or a surrogate, but nope – they’re just having lots of sex and hoping a kid will come out of one of their asses. It’s all a bit scattershot, but Driver’s catty performance is good for some yuks. Then, Mikey Day and Driver play childhood best friends attempting to reconnect for holiday drinks. Via their text conversation, it’s revealed that Driver’s character is a notorious pervert (with an entire Netflix documentary about him) and conspiracy theorist gun nut. It’s overlong but wraps up with a clever joke about how Facebook has become a de facto registry for crazy people. Things get tense at a Christmas party when Driver and Andrew Dismukes’s mustachioed suburbanites refuse to yield to each other’s “Beepbeeps” while setting the dinner table. They end up in a potentially fatal standoff, Driver relies on his intimidating frame and natural intensity, while Dismukes goes extra bro-y (a character type he’s good at). The sassy, southern hosts (Day, Heidi Gardner) of a home shopping show welcome Driver’s chocolatier to pitch his chocolate Santa Clause treat. Everything is going fine until he unwraps the decorative foil to reveal an extremely phallic-looking confection. The expected suggestive fondling and double entendres follow suit, but things never get as risqué as you hope. Following musical guest Olivia Rodrigo’s first performance, Weekend Update host Colin Jost welcomes Marcello Hernandez to talk about epidemic Saturday Night Live: Adam Driver returns to host a solid episode Zach Vasquez Adam Driver on Saturday Night Live. Photograph: YouTube The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 24 Features Continued from page 23 Continued on page 25

of depression among young men. The young cast member speaks about his experience growing up as the only male in a house full of women, and how he had to live a double life as macho jock at school and “a proud, Latina woman” at home. Hernandez always makes the most of his standup routines on Update. Given how popular he is with the live audience, it’s a wonder they don’t bring him to the desk more often. Later, the hosts are joined by Chloe Fineman, who stands in front of the desk in order to perform Julia Stiles’s so-bad-it’s-good “street-ballet” dance routine from the millennial favorite Save the Last Dance. She shows off some undeniably impressive dance skills of her own before being joined onstage by the real Stiles, who very gamely joins in on the joke. Next, Driver plays an 11-month baby on his first plane flight. His giant head poking out from his tiny body (the effect reminiscent of the surreal ‘90s Nickelodeon program Weinerville) makes for a great visual gag, one supplemented by Driver’s intense and neurotic performance. Honestly, this one could have gone a little longer. Rodrigo returns for a gung-ho performance of her song All-American Bitch, in which she makes a mess of a fancy tea party set. Then, we get a PSA from seniors who are tired of falling victim to TikTok pranks. Usually, when an SNL takes on viral content and trends, it just ends up copy and pasting the real thing, so kudos to the writers for coming up with an original scenario this time. The result isn’t anything special, but Driver’s aged veteran yelling about how he “blocked doors with Governor Wallace” is probably the best line of the night. For the final sketch of the night, the show goes back to the home shopping show well with a program peddling “Tiny Ass Bag”, which can hold individual items – one air pod, half-smoked cigarette, a reasonable amount of cocaine, the kids from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids – “and that’s it!” Rodrigo plays associate Georgia (“I don’t have a last name. Georgina – and that’s it!”). Following a short tribute to the late, great Norman Lear, Driver, Rodrigo and Stiles stand center stage and take their bows. All in all, this was a solid episode, elevated by Driver’s expectedly excellent hosting and a memorable performance from Rodrigo. That said, considering the host/musician combo, it lacked the big show feel it might well have had. We can probably expect next week’s episode – the last before SNL goes on holiday hiatus – to take up that mantle. ‘How often do you brush, Ralph?” a dentist asks Chief Wiggum’s son in Last Exit to Springfield, frequently cited as one of The Simpsons’ best ever episodes. “Three times a day, sir!” chirps the hapless Ralph, only to have the cold glare of the dental lamp shone in his face along with his orthodontist’s ire: “Why must you turn my office into a house of lies?” If this scene seems familiar, it’s probably because you have been interrogated once too often about how often you floss. Invented almost 200 years ago, flossing has never caught on in quite the same way as a twice-daily brush – and a few years ago, a decentsized study put the dental profession on the defensive by claiming that it might not actually be all that worthwhile. But the NHS didn’t change its recommendations on interdental care, and oral health specialists are as persistent as ever. So what should you be doing? First, what about that study? Well, in 2016 the Associated Press published a piece based on freedom of information requests to the US departments of health and human services and agriculture for evidence in favour of flossing and concluded that the evidence for flossing was “weak, very unreliable” and carried “a moderate to large potential for bias”. Stories at the time pointed to another review of studies from 2015, claiming that it showed “very inconsistent/weak evidence” for flossing. Before you toss the floss, though, there are a couple of problems with all this. First, that frequently quoted 2015 study looked specifically at periodontitis, a severe form of gum disease that is among the leading causes of tooth loss in adults, not the effectiveness of flossing more broadly (gingivitis, also considered in the study, is less serious, but can escalate). More generally, it is very difficult to conduct good long-term studies on flossing because many people will lie about their health-based behaviour – whether that is how much they drink, how often they exercise or how they take care of their teeth. Over the long term, it is also difficult to ensure test subjects are flossing for long enough, or using the correct technique, even if they think they are doing everything right. And in a study published this year, researchers found that people who learned and consistently used proper flossing technique showed a significant reduction in gum bleeding compared with people who just carried on with whatever strategy they were using. As bleeding gums can be an early indicator of gum disease, that is a pretty significant finding. “If you never floss your teeth, you’re missing out on a crucial part of oral hygiene,” says Dr Thomas Servos, of the University of Texas Health school of dentistry in Houston. “Flossing helps to remove plaque and food particles from between your teeth and areas that your toothbrush might not reach effectively.” This means that flossing can help to manage or prevent halitosis, as well as managing the buildup of plaque that can otherwise only be removed by a professional when it turns into tartar. There is also (limited) evidence that flossing might improve your oral microbiome, so your mouth is healthier overall. “There are a number of options for what we call interdental care, including tape, picks, and brushes, and your choice of floss can impact on effectiveness, comfort and ease of use, so finding the right type for your teeth is important,” says Servos. “Using proper technique ensures that you effectively remove debris without causing harm to your gums,” he adds. “Use a gentle back-and-forth motion and avoid snapping the floss into place, which can harm your gums. Make sure to clean both sides of each tooth – and don’t force it. If you haven’t flossed regularly, your gums might bleed initially due to inflammation or gingivitis. However, consistent flossing should improve gum health and reduce bleeding.” Ideally, you should floss at least once a day – consistency matters more than frequency, so consider pairing it up with another regular daily activity, such as your morning shower or evening audiobook. And yes, dentists really can tell whether you do it or not. Don’t turn your dental surgery into a house of lies. Should I worry about flossing? Joel Snape Just two centuries to go until the invention of flossing … The Tooth Puller, by Gerard van Honthorst, 1628. Photograph: Universal Images Group North America LLC/Alamy December can often feel like a neverending ordeal, as we try to find the perfect gifts for our nearest and dearest. No matter how well we know someone, we struggle to discern their hidden wishes and desires. Each decision can feel like a test of our relationship. This is a natural consequence of the brain’s workings. Humans may be unique in our advanced ability to consider others’ viewpoints, but perspective-taking is enormously taxing for our little grey cells. “It takes a lot of mental energy,” says Prof Julian Givi at West Virginia University. As a result, our choices of gifts are extremely prone to error. Researchers such as Givi have now identified a host of cognitive biases that lead our judgments astray, so that we waste our money and miss opportunities for greater social connection. Fortunately, the art and science of gift-giving can be learned. By recognising the most common errors, we can instantly improve our choices to ensure that we bring maximum satisfaction to the people we love. Think beyond the moment Many of our mistakes arise from a kind of myopia. The person giving the gift is fixated on the single moment of the exchange – they want a gift that will elicit the biggest immediate reaction, even if the pleasure is short-lived. Receivers, however, tend to feel greater gratitude for presents that bring longerterm enjoyment. “There is a natural perspective gap,” says Prof Adelle Yang at the National University of Singapore. She calls this the “smile-seeking hypothesis” and has found strong evidence for the idea with a series of surveys. Consider Valentine’s Day gifts. She has found that givers will prefer to buy a bouquet of blooming flowers, for example, which might look stunning at the time of exchange but will soon lose their petals, whereas receivers prefer a house plant they can tend for weeks after. If you are worried that you are falling for this bias, you could ask yourself whether you would make the same choice if you were to send the gift by post. Yang has found that people tend to make the better decision when they know that they will not be physically present at the opening, and so will not be able to witness the immediate reaction of the person receiving the gift. Our focus on the moment of exchange can be responsible for many other howlers. People tend to prefer to go off-piste rather than buy a present that is already on someone’s wishlist, for instance. Givers want to see the surprise as they open the gift, but receivers The art and science of gift-giving David Robson Receivers tend to feel more gratitude for presents that bring longer-term enjoyment. Photograph: Kseniya Ovchinnikova/Getty Images Cost has little link to how much a gift is welcomed. Photograph: Dulin/Getty Images/ RooM RF Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian Features 25 Continued from page 24 Continued on page 26

prefer getting the presents they had actually requested. “Surprising presents are doubly problematic,” says Prof Jeffrey Galak, who studies the psychology of giftgiving at Carnegie Mellon University. “Not only do you get the wrong thing, but if you’re close friends or romantic partners, you can’t do anything about it.” It would seem incredibly ungrateful to ask for a refund, after all. As our cluttered homes testify, the unwanted gifts of Christmas past can haunt us for many months or years after the event. Consider experiences over tangible goods The smile-seeking hypothesis can also explain why we prefer to buy material gifts: a fancy new watch or necklace compared with concert tickets or a cooking lesson, for example. The giver is excited to have something large and shiny to hand over, but the new and exciting experiences tend to bring greater overall happiness, and memories of the event will linger long after the material gifts have lost their lustre. “If you are optimising your choices for the exchange, you want to give the sparkliest thing that you can deliver,” says Galak. “But that’s doing the receiver a disservice.” Forget the price tag For many people, gift-giving is all about the price tag. We pay as much as we can afford in the belief that the cost reflects our esteem for the person. The psychological research, however, suggests that we vastly overestimate the importance of monetary value. “All the evidence points to the fact that cost has little relationship with how well a gift is received,” says Galak. Additionally, we are more likely to flash the cash with people who are already wealthy than poorer people who may be in greater need of a little luxury. The potential for social comparison only increases our preoccupation with price. We worry that someone else’s showy largesse will cast a shadow over our efforts; Galak and Givi’s research suggests that some people will opt out of the gift-giving altogether if they believe that they cannot keep up with the “competition”. In reality, the relative value of people’s presents makes very little difference to the way that they are perceived; each present tends to be considered on its own merits. “[Our fears] don’t play out on the recipient’s side,” says Galak. “They’re just happy to get a gift.” Override your egotism In some situations, we may even be influenced by feelings of envy towards the recipients themselves. Imagine that your sister has asked for some new sunglasses for Christmas. You find a stylish pair that you know she will love, but they will make your own shades look unfashionable by comparison. In such situations, people will frequently choose to pick a lower-quality gift: they would rather risk disappointing the recipient than trigger jealous feelings in themselves. Our desire to feel unique can also be a barrier. You may know that your friend hankers after a piece of Beatles memorabilia that you own, for instance, when you happen to find the same item in an online marketplace. It would make the perfect present, but you want to remain the only person you know who owns this coveted object. If you buy it for the other person, you will no longer feel so special. As a result, you choose a completely different present – one that would not generate nearly so much gratitude. “We think of gift-giving as an act of altruism, but these self-serving motivations can come into play,” says Givi. And by overriding that egotism, we can make much better choices. Overcome your fear of sentimentality If you feel sufficiently close to someone, you may opt for something of sentimental value, such as a photo or scrapbook celebrating your relationship. This can feel a little exposing. When considering sentimental gifts, people often worry that their friend or partner would prefer to receive something with a higher price tag and greater practical use. But Givi and Galak’s research shows that those assumptions are wrong; people would rather receive the item with greater emotional resonance. If you feel nervous about making this choice yourself, be reassured that Givi practises what he preaches. “Pretty much every time you give a sentimental gift, it ends up being a home run,” he says. “It really, really makes people happy.” • David Robson is the author of TheExpectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life, published by Canongate (£10.99).To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply Oddly enough, it was an overwhelming amount of hate that set me off on a cross-country road trip across America. I wasn’t taking a sabbatical to go into nature or working remotely in mountain-top forests. Instead, I spent 12 months living out of my retrofitted Prius, showering at Planet Fitness and meeting people who seemed different to me. Venturing out of the liberal stronghold of San Francisco, my journey on the road took me to places like a Trump rally in Minnesota and a convent with Catholic nuns and millennials. I’m a progressive, queer, AsianAmerican guy who often dresses flamboyantly – my favourite outfit is a colourful floral jumpsuit. So you can imagine that when some of my friends heard about my plans, they said they were concerned for my safety. They asked me if I was going to bring a knife or pepper spray for protection. I’d be meeting people they deemed as the “enemy”, after all. Honestly, I shared some of their fears. I held stereotypical views about people on “the other side”. Aren’t Trump voters people who are uneducated and hate-fuelled, and hostile towards people like me? Would Catholic nuns think I was unholy because I’m gay? On the other hand, I knew deeply what it meant to be reduced to assumptions based on who I love or what I look like. My Asianness meant I had a Tiger mom, excelled at maths and was soft-spoken. People have hollered “ching chong” to me and asked where I really came from. When people held these caricatures of me, I felt deeply unseen and unvalued. They knew very little of the story of who I really am. This othering, fuelled by what I call an “era of incuriosity” where we refuse to turn towards one another to foster understanding and relationships, is driving one of the most urgent issues of our time: division and disconnection. This is something I’ve been exploring and writing about as the Bridging Differences Fellow at the University of California Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. And, unfortunately, this issue is global in its reach. The rupture between families and communities due to politics or social identities has found its way to the UK, fuelled by the aftermath of Brexit – and research shows that animosity between groups is getting worse. For us in America, our Brexit-rupture moment was the 2016 presidential elections. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that one in six people ended a relationship of some kind because of irreconcilable differences caused by the elections. If it’s not politics fracturing us then it’s vaccines, a geopolitical crisis abroad, age divides or gender rights. Through my research, I learned that there’s a potent tool that can help us to bridge these differences and forge more meaningful connections with one another. It’s something that we’re thankfully all born with, but might not practise in an intentional way: curiosity. Defined as the search for understanding, curiosity is often viewed as just an intellectual pursuit, a way for us to extract information. It fuels our midnight Wikipedia rabbit holes about Taylor Swift or puts us on a fact-finding mission to identify every tree in our neighbourhood. But curiosity is also heart-centred, one that stirs our soul, used to explore our inner world such as how we’ve been hurt or what truly matters to us in life. Therapists encourage clients to reflect on their emotions and relationships. We use curiosity to better understand our loved ones and even strangers at the grocery checkout line. Questions like “What’s the story of your name?” or “Could you tell me about your grandparents?” unlock the kinds of stories filled with rich insights that help us to really see and value the person we’re getting in conversation with. What I found is that when you turn toward people with curiosity – even those with very different political views or religious beliefs to yours – you are less likely to put them on the defensive. By getting to know who they are as an individual, independent of their group identities or affiliations, you begin to humanise them in ways that counter the stereotypes you once held. That’s exactly what happened to me at the Trump rally. A man voting for Trump, who was an optometrist and did mission trips, told me LGBTQ + people deserve equality, too – even though I cringed at his use of “the gays” to describe our community. I met another man who said his girlfriend was a Democrat, and although he loved her, he felt ostracised by her friends. “I’ll be hanging out with them, and I just know they think that I’m stupid,” he said. Although he didn’t say it directly, I could tell he felt hurt by their judgment. I could see his humanity shining through. This man hurt and felt othered, just like I did. Throughout the day and evening, I met dozens of Trump voters who nuanced my understanding of who “they” were. I realised that they aren’t just a single monolithic group. Some of them believed in climate change. Others were parents. Many valued the same things I did: family, service and belonging. By conversing, they became less scary to me. Each time, it became a less anxiety-inducing endeavour. The same was true when I travelled I drove across the US to meet people I disagree with – and learned how to look beyond labels Scott Shigeoka ‘I knew deeply what it meant to be reduced to assumptions based on who I love or what I look like’: Scott Shigeoka. Photograph: Winni Wintermeyer/The Observer The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 26 Features Continued from page 25 Continued on page 28

to a convent where a group of Catholic sisters was living with five millennials as part of a six-month residency called Nuns and Nones. The term “nones” was coined to describe a growing number of people who are seeking spiritual meaning in their lives, but aren’t affiliated with a religion in the traditional sense. One of those nones, Sarah, says there is something powerful about evading neat categories and staying on the edge, the borderlands, between traditions. The average age of a Catholic sister in the United States is close to 80, and fewer than 1% are under 40. Side by side, the nones and the sisters looked worlds apart. Buzz cuts, velvet shirts and tattoos on one side; greying hair, purple floral tops and aged hands on the other. One of the pivotal moments at the Nuns and Nones residency between them was a conversational salon on the vow of chastity. The salons involved sitting in a circle together for hours and sharing thoughts, personal experiences, and questions. Sarah expressed her initial resistance to the word chastity. She said the term carried a negative connotation and history – a tool to exert power over women, controlling their bodies and suppressing their sexuality. The sisters nodded their heads, indicating they understood where she was coming from. As the sisters elaborated on the vow from their perspective, Sarah took in their stories, learning about their relationship to femininity and the divine. Sarah’s preconceived ideas about chastity began to loosen – just as my assumptions had at the Trump rally – and she started to see the vow of chastity in a more expansive way. Making a lifelong vow meant that the sisters’ love (and time and energy) could stretch beyond a single romantic partner or their immediate family and go towards being in service of the underserved or marginalised – or even a group of millennials who’d arrived on their doorsteps in a Subaru. I didn’t just utilise curiosity on the road across obvious divides like politics and religion. There were also many dinners with people much younger or older than me – equally illuminating as we become much more generationally segregated with young people at school, adults at work, and elders in nursing homes or retirement communities. By the end of my road trip across the country, I had clocked thousands of miles in my Prius and the big takeaway from my experiences was that at the heart of the division and disconnection so rampant all around the world is a lack of curiosity. When we turn away from one another, we operate from assumptions and biases. We’re more likely to dehumanise a group, which makes it easier for us to fear or hate those people. If we instead choose to turn toward each other with curiosity, it becomes a potent force for understanding and connection. And fortunately for everyone, you don’t have to hop into a decades-old Prius to practise this skill with others. You can deepen your practice with curiosity in a conversation with your neighbour who has opposing political views from you, your colleague who you’re in conflict with at work, or your child who is going through a struggle you’ve never experienced before. You can challenge your assumptions, ask them questions like “tell me more,” and be willing to be transformed by what you learn. Society will continue to grapple with crisis after crisis and while we can’t control these things, we can harness the superpower of deep curiosity to better navigate them. Not only does it have the power to transform our lives – it really can change the world. The next time the rug is pulled from under you, don’t hide. Instead, I ask you to seek. Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World by Scott Shigeoka is published by Bluebird at £16.99. Buy it at guardianbookshop.com for £14.95 Nothing in Manuel Rocha’s decorous demeanour suggested treachery. Erudite if somewhat outspokenly conservative in his public political stances, he was respected among fellow diplomats as a thoughtful peer who gained added credibility by running an email list server circulating thoughtprovoking articles about his specialist field of Latin America and other regions. Beneath the surface, however, deep-seated feelings of resentment coalesced with a carefully concealed sympathy for the underdog to allegedly drive Rocha to spy for communist Cuba for more than four decades. More than half-a-lifetime of betrayal caught up with 73-year-old Rocha this week when US prosecutors filed a complaint with a federal court in Miami charging him with multiple counts of being a secret agent for Cuban intelligence. “We allege that for over 40 years, Victor Manuel Rocha served as an agent of the Cuban government and sought out and obtained positions within the United States government that would provide him with access to non-public information and the ability to affect US foreign policy,” said the US attorney general, Merrick Garland. US authorities assert that Rocha, who was born in Colombia before his family emigrated to New York when he was a child – was a Cuban agent from or before the time he joined the state department in 1981 and continued his clandestine activities after leaving the diplomatic service in 2002. Rocha has not yet entered a plea. The allegations have stunned the US intelligence community, which has instigated an urgent damage assessment to discover what secrets might have been passed by a man who held a series of sensitive posts. These included ambassador to Bolivia, charge d’affaires to Buenos Aires and – embarrassingly – deputy head of the US interest section in Havana, Washington’s de facto embassy in Cuba. “It’s huge,” said Jim Popkin, author of a book on Ana Montes, a former Defence Intelligence Agency analyst who spent 20 years in jail after being unmasked as a Cuban spy, before being freed this year. “It’s unprecedented to have an ambassador accused of espionage. “He served in the White House national security council, where part of his portfolio involved Cuba – and that’s a major problem. But to have served in the US interests section in Havana when it’s acknowledged that he was working for the other side is a nightmare scenario. “He would have had access to and known the status and names of operatives working in Havana on behalf of the US. That’s a very dangerous proposition.” Rocha’s 1995-1997 Havana posting coincided with a period when Cuba’s then-leader, the late Fidel Castro and his brother Raul, were believed to fear the prospect of a US invasion or assassination plot during Bill Clinton’s presidency. This followed tensions caused by Cuba’s shooting down of two small civilian planes by a Cuban-American group, Brothers to the Rescue, in 1996. Charges were brought against Rocha after a series of cloak and daggertype meetings with an undercover FBI officer posing as an agent for the Cuban general intelligence directorate (DGI). A 20-page criminal complaint lodged with the court describes Rocha engaging in surveillance-detecting techniques typical of Cuban espionage tradecraft en route to an initial meeting with the undercover officer in November 2022. The meeting had been arranged on a WhatsApp message after the FBI learned that Rocha was a secret agent, according to the complaint, which gives no details on how the bureau obtained the information. During the meeting, Rocha talked openly of his work as a DGI agent and described how he “created the legend of a rightwing person”, based on training he received in how to fashion an artificial persona to conceal his covert activities. In a subsequent encounter, last February, he referred to the US as “the enemy” and expressed satisfaction in his work on behalf of the “revolution” and in beating its enemies. “For me, what has been done has strengthened the revolution. It has strengthened it immensely,” he told the undercover officer. “They underestimated what we could do to them. We did more than they thought. What we have done … it’s enormous … More than a grand slam.” In one extraordinary passage, Rocha – belying his genteel image among fellow diplomats – espoused raw macho pride in his achievements after his accomplice said the DGI wanted to know if he was still a “compañero” (comrade). “I am angry. I’m pissed off,” he said. “It’s like questioning my manhood … It’s like you want me to drop them … and show you if I still have testicles. I have them. I have them.” Fulton Armstrong, senior fellow of the Latin American programme at American University in Washington and a former CIA analyst, said the disclosures had created shock waves among those who knew Rocha. “It’s always very shocking to be on the receiving end of a betrayal,” said Armstrong, like Rocha, a former staff member of the US interests section in Havana, who knew him and Montes. “A big part of the shock is how well he concealed it for 40 years. Then there’s the personal side, where you say, shit, what might I have told him that he could have passed to the Cubans that I didn’t want the Cubans to know. “At the national security council, in Cuba, when he was in Argentina, and then ambassador in Bolivia, he had access to very sensitive intelligence information, including signals intelligence information.” The accusations would enable rightwingers to question current US policy in Latin America, Armstrong warned, particularly towards Cuba, with which President Barack Obama’s administration restored long-severed diplomatic ties in 2015. “They can say, ‘look these policies are influenced by the Cubans because they have recruited our ambassadors’,” he said. Beyond that, the affair represents an undoubted coup for Cuba’s intelligence services, which observers say remain highly motivated to spy on the US even though the cold war context for hostilities ended decades ago. “What a triumph for them to place someone in the US state department, see them rise in rank and eventually become a US ambassador,” said Popkin. “If you look at Rocha’s career, pretty much every post was in a location that would have been helpful for Cuba. They must have been tickled pink watching how successful he was.” Armstrong said Cuban tradecraft was so sophisticated that Rocha and Montes knew and worked with each other professionally as US officials in Washington without knowing the other was covertly spying for Cuba. “Imagine that you are the handler for these two very well-placed sources of information and they don’t know each of them is working clandestinely for the same boss. That’s pretty cool … The covert communications with Manuel were brilliant.” While acknowledging Cuban technique, however, Armstrong insisted the key factor was the motivation of Rocha – which he defined as “ego, grudge and resentment”. “They didn’t recruit him, I think he volunteered,” said Armstrong, who suggested that Rocha – who grew up in Harlem before studying at prep school in Connecticut and then Yale – may never have felt accepted among the US establishment elite. “He’s a really, really bright guy, goes on to the state department but never felt he was fairly treated – then you look at US Latin America policy and there are a lot of elements that parallel those same things.” ‘Ego and resentment’: what led former US diplomat to spy for Cuba? Robert Tait in Washington Manuel Rocha as US ambassador to Bolivia, talks to the press on 11 July 2001. He had access to very sensitive intelligence information in his diplomatic posts for over four decades. Photograph: Gonzalo Espinoza/AFP via Getty Images Court papers alleged that Rocha engaged in ‘clandestine activity’ on Cuba’s behalf for decades, including by meeting with Cuban intelligence operatives. Photograph: Department of Justice/AP The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 28 Features When my friends heard my plans, they were worried for my safety Continued from page 26

According to the latest estimates, Covid-19 may be responsible for more than 18 million deaths worldwide. While infectious diseases like this have devastated humanity, it may be wrong to assume they are always antithetical to our survival and flourishing as a species. Otherwise, why would ancient pathogens such as malaria (of the falciparumtype), cholera, typhoid, measles and influenza A persist as human-only diseases – and why have we not evolved immunity to them? That is a question professors Ajit and Nissi Varki (a husband and wife team) and colleagues at their lab at the University of California, San Diego, have been asking for several decades. The answer, they believe, lies in the complex array of sugar chains called glycans that decorate the surfaces of cells, and the sugar molecules known as sialic acids that cap most of these chains. Theseterminal sugar chains are involved in everything from the regulation of immune responses to adaptations that may have played a key role in human evolution, such as the ability of our early hominin ancestors to run for longer without becoming fatigued – an advantage when pursuing prey. Ajit Varki first became interested in sialic acids and glycobiology in the early 1980s, when he was treating a patient who had suffered an adverse immune response to a therapeutic horse serum used to treat a type of anaemia. Rather than the immune response being directed against the presence of foreign proteins – then the standard explanation in biology textbooks – Varki discovered it was because of the sialic acids on the horse proteins, which was surprising as every vertebrate, including humans, can make sialic acids. His fascination with sialic acids deepened when, with colleague Prof Pascal Gagneux, he discovered that our ancient ancestors had lost one kind of sialic acid with an added oxygen atom, known as Neu5Gc, from their genomes around 3m years ago, before the emergence of the ancient human Homo erectus. This left descendants of Homo erectus, including our own species, Homo sapiens, with the inability to produce Neu5Gc and an excess of another type of sialic acid, known as Neu5Ac, from which most mammals can derive Neu5Gc. First published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2009, Gagneux and Varki’s report initially sparked interest among specialists working at the interface of animal and human medicine. However, in the wake of the Covid pandemic it has taken on new significance as several studies have found that these sugar caps may be involved in Covid-19’s disease effects. They suggest that Neu5Ac may be associated with the more efficient binding of the Sars-CoV-2 spike protein to animal cells, suggesting it may play an important role in the pathology and severity of the disease in susceptible animals, such as ferrets, minks and humans. Our inability to produce Neu5Gc, combined with an increase in production of Neu5Ac, also seems to play a role in susceptibility to other diseases thought to be unique to humans, such as typhoid and cholera, as well as sexually transmitted diseases such as chlamydia, syphilis and gonorrhoea. “In the case of these diseases, it appears that the pathogen has learned to coat itself in the human kind of sialic acid, turning it into a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” says Varki. What makes Varki and Gagneux’s research even more intriguing is that the Neu5Gc-eliminating mutation was the first reported biochemical difference between humans and chimps, whose DNA differs from ours by about 5%. The fact that it occurred long before the emergence of Homo erectus, the first species with a large brain that used tools, suggests that it may have played a role in the evolutionary history of our own species, Homo sapiens. Another implication oftheir study is that our ancestors enjoyed a malariafree existence right up until the neolithic transition 10,000 years ago when, coincident with the shift from nomadic to agrarian lifestyles, Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite responsible for the deadliest form of human malaria, mutated to target Neu5Ac so abundantly present on human cells. It is thought that our more agricultural lifestyle made humans more vulnerable to the malaria-carrying mosquitoes that bred in stagnant pools near settlements. “What makes the study of sialic acids so exciting is that they are a missing part of the puzzle of how parasites became adapted to humans,” says Dr Robert de Vries, a virologist at the University of Utrecht who is investigating the role of sialic acids in mediating our susceptibility to influenza A. “Ajit’s work is seminal. He’s one of the godfathers of sialic acid biology.” In 2008, Varki’s insights led him to set up an informal thinktank, the Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (Carta), to investigate other human traits that distinguish us from our nearest ape ancestors (anthropogeny is the study of the origin and development of human societies and cultures). Every year, Carta hosts three meetings to bring together primatologists, anthropologists, palaeontologists, linguists and molecular and evolutionary biologists to share their research. Previoustalks have addressed subjects such as the sequencing of the chimpanzee genome, the origins of bipedalism and the human penchant for storytelling. “We are the paradoxical ape: bipedal, naked, large-brained, long the master of tools, fire and language but still trying to understand ourselves,” says Gagneux, an evolutionary biologist and anthropologist. Infectious disease is just one strand of Varki and Gagneux’s research. They believe that the binding of these sugars on the surface of our cells by receptors on immune and other cells may also be involved in several biological processes that have undergone uniquely human evolution, including cancers linked to the consumption of red meat. Beef, pork and lamb contain large amounts of Neu5Gc, and when humans consume this non-human sugar molecule it gets incorporated into our tissues. While our enzymatic machinery can readily use this foreign sugar and incorporate it, our immune system recognises the molecule as foreign and attacks tissues containing it, leading to inflammation and a higher lifetime risk of cancer. That is not to say that carcinogens produced by grilling red meat do not also play a role in bowel cancer. But what makes the Neu5Gc process unique is that the sialic acid becomes part ofour own cells. “This is the first example we know of something that’s foreign but which gets totally incorporated into you despite the fact that your immune system recognises it,” says Varki. Equally fascinating is the possibility that the buildup of Neu5Gc because of the overconsumption of meat and dairy products may be linked to cases of human infertility. However, Varki and Gagneux do not believe that everything can be reduced to biology. One of the key insights drawn from their study of human origins is that we are shaped as much by our cultural inheritance as by genes and biology. “Sialic acids give us a new appreciation of how we have been directly shaped by infectious diseases,” says Gagneux. “However, these tiny sugar molecules may also have repercussions for [cultural] processes that have nothing to do with disease.” Gonorrhoea and the ‘grandmother effect’ Biologists have long been perplexed by the menopause. If natural selection favours genes that produce more descendants, then women ought to remain fertile throughout their lives. But women usually live for decades beyond their reproductive limit. Curiously, this phenomenon is almost unique to humans: to date, only toothed whales such as orcas and chimpanzees indigenous to a remote region of Uganda have been found to exhibit similar post-menopausal lifespans. To explain the menopause, biologists posit something called “the grandmother effect” – the notion that grandmothers contribute to the survival of the species by caring for related women’s children. However, grandmothers would not be very effective carers if they were at risk of losing children because of conditions that affect memory, such as Alzheimer’s. This is where sialic acids come in. In a 2022 paper, Ajit Varki and Pascal Gagneux found that humans possess a modified version of a sugar-binding gene receptor known as CD33, which is found on immune cells– and the version we possess is protective against Alzheimer’s. Standard CD33 receptors interact with many cells in the body, including brain immune cells called microglia. Microglia help control neuroinflammation and play an important role in clearing away damaged brain cells and the amyloid plaques associated with Alzheimer’s. However, by binding to the sialic acids on these cells and plaques, regular CD33 receptors suppress this important microglial function and increase the risk of dementia. Fortunately, somewhere along the evolutionary line, humans have picked up a mutated form of CD33 that is missing this sugar-binding site. The mutated receptor no longer reacts to sialic acids on damaged cells and plaques, allowing the microglia to break them down. Indeed, higher levels of this CD33 variant are protective against late-onset Alzheimer’s. This mutated form of CD33 is not only missing in chimps, but also absent from the genomes of Neanderthals or Denisovans, our closest evolutionary relatives. “This suggests that the wisdom and care of healthy grandparents may have been an important evolutionary advantage that we had over other ancient hominin species,” says Varki. “Grandmothers are so important, we even evolved genes to protect their minds.” Intriguingly, the protective form of CD33 may have emerged in response to gonorrhoea. This is because gonorrhoea bacteria coat themselves in the same sugars that CD33 receptors bind to, thereby tricking human immune cells into not seeing them as foreign invaders. Varki and Gagneux suggest the mutated version of CD33 emerged as a human adaptation against such “molecular mimicry” by gonorrhoea and that later, the gene variant was co-opted by the brain for its benefits against dementia. “It is possible that CD33 is one of many genes selected for their survival advantages against infectious pathogens early in life, but that are then secondarily selected for their protective effects against dementia and other ageing-related diseases,” says Gagneux. Sickly sweet: how our sugar-coated cells helped humanity turn illness into evolution Mark Honigsbaum Illustration: Observer design; Redmond Durrell/Alamy; molekuul.be/Alamy Profs Ajit and Nissi Varki. Photograph: Corey Levitan/La Jolla Light Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian Features 29 The pathogen has learned to coat itself in the human kind of sialic acid, turning it into a wolf in sheep’s clothing Prof Ajit Varki

I’ve just been looking at my photos from a recent trip to the Grand Canyon and I’m thoroughly unimpressed. Why do photographs of beautiful scenery never do it justice? Alex Robinson, Suffolk S e n d n e w q u e s t i o n s [email protected]. Readers reply You can take a great landscape photograph if you know how to compose the image. Most people just point the camera at what they are gazing at and press the button. Painters don’t just paint what is in front if them; they compose a picture. The answer is composition. Toomuchrose It’s most likely the camera you are capturing the scene with. I recommend you try using a Grand Canon. Photofitter Beautiful scenery gives me (and maybe you) a tremendous sense of light, space, colour and freedom, a feeling that life is worth living, that I’m on top of the world (specially if I’m on a hilltop), of harmony and wellbeing and balance, if only for a moment. And I have a sense of movement and being in nature, too. That’s a lot to ask of a photograph, especially if it only manages a limited range of colour and brightness, is taken near midday, with none of the golden tones of sunrise or sunset, and has a limited depth of focus. A photo compresses space and depth and panorama into a flat rectangle. What’s remarkable is that photos can impress and be beautiful, given all the constraints. But they can, just like paintings. LetsJustLookAtThis Photography really struggles to capture the sheer scale of geographical features such as the Grand Canyon. Possessing the skill to take breathtaking photographs is the reason professional photographers still exist, especially when everyone on the planet owns a phone with a camera and believes they’re a photographer! Even with a wide-angle lens on a DSLR, or the widest view on a phone camera, you can’t begin to fit the entire scene into the frame, so you have to decide which small section to photograph. Some photographers use extreme ultra-wideangle lenses or join together multiple photos, physically or digitally, to create a panorama of the entire scene, but unless the final prints are huge, the effect is generally disappointing. Choosing a viewpoint well in advance and a time of day with dramatic light can make a huge difference. Go for early mornings or evenings, when the shadows are longer and colours glow; avoid harsh, direct midday sun. Take a look at how the great photographers such as Ansel Adams or artists such as David Hockney approached the Grand Canyon for a bit of inspiration and food for thought. James1000 Ansel Adams certainly did justice to landscape photography, mainly by using cameras with large- or mediumformat sensors (film or plate negatives) and lenses with long focal lengths, often tiltable to correct for foreshortening of tall, distant objects. All these features are minimised in modern cameras, although correction to a degree by in-camera AI is possible. Of course, he also printed in black and white. Modern professional landscape photographers either use versions of the older technology, or have learned to use processing tools such as Photoshop to modify their images. You have to decide what your image is for, and whether adapting your kit or technique is going to be worth it … daibeaver Neither photographs nor paintings do a scene justice. The smells, the sounds, the breezes, the changing of the light and the effect of the viewer’s movements are all included in the appreciation of the scene. That said, a good landscape picture can evoke memories of a visit and with it recall the emotional effect on the viewer. It can also be an artistic expression in its own right, conveying the visual components in a manner that invokes an emotional response entirely without context. RollyW Photography is a skill and an art form. Most of us are not skilled artists, as is evident from our holiday snaps. We wouldn’t expect to match the artistry of a Michelin chef or an old master portrait painter, who have built on their talent with years of study. Why do we all expect to be able to take fantastic photographs? Randomusername222 I’ve done a fair amount of photography in the south-west of the US and the Grand Canyon is notoriously challenging because it is so vast. Your eye manages – or think it manages – a sense of perspective and therefore awe (although once in a while you’ll see a plane flying down in the canyon and suddenly realise that your own perspective is bewildered by the size, too). The three tips for taking pictures in the GC are: go for golden hour – all my best pictures of it are taken at sunset or sunrise; there are some phenomenal light effects; make sure you get some images of specific features or lines of sight, rather than the canyon as the whole (which almost never captures what you’re seeing); and, if you can, get something in it that gives a sense of perspective. This is also really hard with the Grand Canyon, because people on the other rim will be completely invisible. I also always buy some postcards as a backup. Use what photos you did take to remind you of the feeling, and enjoy having seen a wonder, like Everest, that can’t be captured on film. You’ve been there! “Dimension means nothing to the senses, and all we are left with is a troubled sense of immensity.” (Clarence Dutton on seeing the Grand Canyon.) Thomas1178 A camera, however expensive or sophisticated, is an incredibly simple device compared with the human brain. Our eyes can take in an incredible amount of information in 3D; that allows the brain to build up a complex picture that a camera with a shutter operating at, for example, 1/200th of a second can’t possible do. It’s impossible to capture in a single picture what our eyes are seeing over a period of time. ChrisGC A good view is rarely a good photograph. I think a photographer’s best art lies in finding and isolating something that others miss. PascalsFire Because all the best viewpoints are blocked by hordes of narcissists taking selfies. ShrinkProof Readers reply: why do photographs of beautiful scenery never do it justice? Taking it all in … Horseshoe Bend, Arizona. Photograph: Jordan Siemens/Getty Images The view from the Quiraing on Skye, as shot in December. Photograph: Matt Anderson Photography/Getty Images If this year has been all about interest rates, next year is all about the consumer. Rising interest rates were a shock for small businesses in 2023, climbing from 3.25% in early 2022 to 8.5% – a 20-year high. As a result, many of my small business clients – who usually pay a few points above prime if they can get the financing at all – found themselves unable to afford the capital they needed to grow while many others faced a credit tightening. This coming year will be much of the same, but the interest rate problem will probably abate, as the Fed responds to a slowing economy. But that will present a new problem for small business. Why will the economy slow? Because of a pullback in consumer spending. There’s a lot of data to follow when trying to predict an economy, but everyone knows this truth: ultimately an economy rides on the shoulders of the consumer. Whether a business manufacturers corrugated containers or gaskets, or sells pizza and gyros, or cleans offices or paints drywall – in the end all products ultimately get bought by the consumer. In 2023, and despite high interest rates, sticky inflation, wars, political uncertainty and volatile energy prices, the American consumer kept spending. Retail sales throughout the year grew to an all-time high. The US economy in the fourth quarter grew at a smoking hot 5.2%. Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday sales hit records. Big businesses logged higherthan-ever profits and many small businesses still find themselves desperately looking for more workers to help fulfill demand. Economically, it’s been a pretty darn good year. But the consumer can’t keep spending forever. And unfortunately, there are ominous signs that the attitudes are already shifting. Retail sales and consumer spending slowed in October. Consumer confidence – according to the University of Michigan’s closely watched indicator – dropped for the fourth month in a row. Small business confidence remains in the cellar. Retailers are getting nervous. “Consumers are bringing up pressures like higher interest rates, increased credit card debt, and reduced savings rates [that] have left them with All about the consumer: next year will see the end of the spending party Gene Marks People shop during Black Friday in New York City on 24 November 2023. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 30 Features / Finance Continued on page 31

less discretionary income, forcing them to make tradeoffs,” reported Brian Cornell, Target’s CEO. “Similar to the second quarter, we saw continued customer engagement with smaller projects, and experienced pressure in certain big-ticket, discretionary categories,” said Home Depot’s CEO, Ted Decker. More concerning, credit card delinquencies are up and so are late payments for auto loans. Household debt is at a historical high. Record high housing unaffordability is taking its toll in the form of 30-year lows in home sales. Markets are up, but saving rates are down. The Conference Board’s closely watched leading indicators are also trending down, led by softening consumer confidence and a deterioration in new orders. Bankers are retreating both on business loans and credit card financings. Economists predicted a slowdown in 2023. It never happened. Perhaps it was another unexpected level of spending due to a post-pandemic splurge. Fomo? Yolo? No one really knows for sure. But you don’t have to be in the hardest hit industries – like real estate – to know that your entire business rests on the whim of the American consumer. And at any time – and for a multitude of reasons ranging from lower than needed pay raises, to higher than maintainable credit card balances, to a spike in gas prices caused by any number of factors – the American consumer can pull back on their spending just as quickly as they’ve been spending this year. My most experienced clients and friends who run businesses know this. They’re certainly grateful for this past strong year. But they are preparing for an end to the spending party in 2024. They’re conserving cash, re-evaluating their overhead and doubling down on their sales efforts to keep their pipeline full for as long as possible. They know that the end of the consumer spending party will come sometime in 2024. And they’re making sure they’re ready. Keep a close eye on the consumer this year. Your business depends on them. The western world’s largest central banks are poised to keep interest rates on hold this week amid concerns over stubbornly high inflation, despite growing expectations for sharp cuts in borrowing costs next year. In a crunch week for the global economy, the US Federal Reserve, Bank of England (BoE) and European Central Bank are expected to keep interest rates at their current restrictively high levels to ensure inflation continues to fall back from the highest levels in decades. However, financial markets are expecting interest rates to be cut next year amid cooling inflation and as high borrowing costs weigh on economic growth, raising the prospect of recessions on both sides of the Atlantic before key elections. “Their core message is likely to be similar. Good progress has been made towards reducing inflation, but they cannot afford to be complacent,” said Raphaël Olszyna-Marzys, an international economist at J Safra Sarasin Sustainable Asset Management. Trading in financial markets reflects the probability of up to 1.4 percentage points of cuts by the Fed and the ECB by the end of 2024, according to the investment bank Nomura, while expectations have intensified for the BoE to cut rates by nearly one percentage point. Policymakers at Threadneedle Street have indicated UK interest rates will need to be kept at the current level of 5.25% for an extended period in response to persistently high inflation in the UK, talking down the prospect of rate cuts anticipated by financial markets. Andrew Bailey, the Bank’s governor, said last month it was “far too early to be thinking about rate cuts”, while warning there was “no room for complacency” on inflation despite a fall in the consumer price index from 6.7% in September to 4.6% in October. Jerome Powell, the US Fed chair, also warned earlier this month it would be “premature to conclude with confidence” that the world’s most powerful central bank had achieved a sufficiently restrictive stance to tame inflation. “We are prepared to tighten policy further if it becomes appropriate to do so,” he said. Figures from the US labour market on Friday showed the world’s largest economy added 199,000 jobs in November, up from 150,000 the previous month. Central bank bosses have been closely watching jobs market data for signs that wage growth is cooling to levels consistent with their 2% inflation targets. Figures from the UK jobs market on Tuesday are expected to show annual growth in average weekly earnings slowed in the three months to October to 7.7%, down from 7.9% in the three months to September. Jagjit Chadha, the director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, said central banks were using a “wait and see” approach to guard against inflationary pressures becoming entrenched. “We’ve basically done the heavy lifting. Now it’s a question of seeing how the economy responds to that as inflation pans out,” he said. However, surveys indicate economic growth is slowing across advanced nations as households and businesses feel the pinch from a sustained increase in living costs and higher interest rates weighing on their spending power. City economists predict official figures due on Wednesday will show Britain’s economy sank into reverse in October, with a fall in gross domestic product of 0.1% expected, down from growth of 0.2% in September. Inflation in the eurozone has fallen back to within striking distance of the ECB’s 2% target, dropping to 2.4% in November, while Germany’s economy is heading for a recession amid a wider regional slowdown. “September, when it was still all about hikes, seems years ago,” said Ruben Segura-Cayuela, Europe economist at Bank of America. “Central banks seem happy enough with disinflation progress. But from there to cuts, the path is still long.” Bank of England, Fed and ECB poised to leave interest rates on hold Richard Partington Economics correspondent Bank of England policymakers have indicated UK interest rates will need to be kept at the current level of 5.25% for an extended period. Photograph: Jordan Pettitt/PA Saudi Arabia could take effective majority control of London Heathrow, the UK’s major airport, with other investors considering selling their stakes, according to reports. The oil-rich state’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) allied with private equity investor Ardian to announce the purchase of a 25% stake in the airport last month from Ferrovial, the Spanish infrastructure giant that had been the primary owner of Heathrow for 17 years. According to a report in the Sunday Times, at least one other shareholder is close to selling their stake, while other investment funds could follow. Under the terms of the airport’s shareholder agreement, other investors – including international pension funds with total holdings approaching 35% – are entitled to sell at the same price, which values Heathrow at about £9.5bn, seen as a generous valuation. An unnamed head of one investor told the Sunday Times: “At that price, we are a seller.” Representatives from the Saudi PIF and Ardian declined to comment. Heathrow also declined to comment. The Saudi PIF and Ardian will hold their stakes separately, but the Saudis are limited partner investors in Ardian’s infrastructure funds. The other investors in Heathrow’s parent company are led by the Qatar Investment Authority, which has a 20% stake, and is understood to be reluctant to sell to the Saudis. Five other shareholders own between 10 and 12.6%, including China and Singapore’s sovereign wealth funds, who are also regarded as unlikely sellers. The other three investors are pension funds from Canada, Australia and the UK: the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Quebec, the Australian Retirement Trust, China Investment Corporation and the UK’s Universities Superannuation Scheme, who all did not comment. Moves towards Saudi control of Heathrow could prove controversial, although the UK has been far more relaxed about Middle Eastern power over ports than, for example, the US previously had been. Dubai-based DP World owns UK maritime ports and has been selected to run freeports in the UK. The oil-rich PIF is one of the world’s most active sovereign wealth funds, Saudi Arabia could take ‘effective majority control’ of London Heathrow Gwyn Topham Transport correspondent At least one other shareholder is close to selling their stake, while other investment funds could follow, the report says. Photograph: Alishia Abodunde/Reuters Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian Finance 31 The consumer can’t keep spending forever. And unfortunately, there are ominous signs that the attitudes are already shifting Continued from page 30 Continued on page 32

with more than $700bn (£551bn) in assets. Its most notable investments have been in sport, including buying Newcastle United football club, and taking over professional golf. PIF is controlled by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, whose government has been accused of numerous human rights violations. Heathrow’s passenger numbers trebled in 2022 as international travel rebounded from Covid. It made an adjusted loss of £684m last year, compared with a loss of about £1.3bn in 2021. The airport has been locked in ongoing difficulties in pushing through its proposed expansion, with legal battles against its planned third runway and the immediate imperative lessened with traffic still below 2019 levels. The airport has also claimed that the level of landing charges set by the UK’s aviation regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority, cut by a fifth next year, will disincentivise investment, although airlines still claim that they are too high. Under Heathrow’s funding model, as Britain’s main hub and an effective monopoly, charges are agreed and set by the CAA largely in line with the airport’s regulatory asset base, or RAB. That means spending on infrastructure is largely repaid by charges, making the airport an attractive long-term investment for wealth funds. Heathrow did not pay a dividend in 2023 but the CAA forecast that it would pay out up to £1.5bn in the years to 2027 as business returns to normal after the pandemic. Chief executive Thomas Woldbye, who took over in October, is expected to oversee upgrades to facilities over the next three years including to airport security programme and a new baggage system for Terminal 2. Politicians know they can’t win an argument without making it. Yet unfortunately that is what Sir Keir Starmer seems to believe. In 2021, the party earmarked £28bn a year for a green industrial strategy to rid the economy of its carbon addiction and create a wave of “clean jobs”. This summer, however, the spending was postponed to the second half of the next parliament. Then it was reported that it would take a full term to ultimately redeem the pledge. Last week, because of self-imposed fiscal rules, Sir Keir suggested it might not happen. This was unsettling, especially as Labour is miles ahead in the polls. Yet more disappointment is in store. On Tuesday, according to reports, the Labour leader will extol the virtues of small technocratic policies rather than big transformative ones. Sir Keir is mistaken if he thinks he can avoid a fight by not turning up. British governments are unusually free to overhaul the country’s economy, but electoral support is the crucial precondition for such changes. Green policies won’t happen by themselves. This week, Cop28 will reach a climax, spotlighting the climate emergency. Inaction is not an option: relying on volatile gas prices would cost Britain double that of achieving 2050 net zero targets. Sir Keir knows that Labour spending will be caricatured as a “tax bombshell” by the Tories. Ministers hope to overwhelm facts with emotional force. But Labour should take heart that Rishi Sunak’s U-turn on climate targets in September, coupled with a conspiracyladen assault on the opposition, fell flat with voters. In a cost of living crisis, Sir Keir is right to worry that a majority of Britons think getting to net zero means higher prices. But who pays for green plans can be answered by Labour saying Britain can borrow to invest. Labour has vote-winning policies: strengthening energy security, generating employment and creating new industries. The cost of new technologies, such as heat pumps, will fall as they are more widely adopted. Sir Keir could also sell his green prosperity plan as a way of helping households by promising cheaper energy bills. Properly taxing oil and gas windfall profits would mean less borrowing. The polls show only 9% of people are aware of Labour’s plans. The risk is that if Tory scaremongering is all the public hears, then Sir Keir may lose support. However, if voters heard “a confident, united Labour case first, the opposite is true”, wrote the pollster Steve Akehurst last week. When he ran focus groups that pitted Tory attacks over fiscal profligacy against Labour’s positive messaging, Sir Keir’s party gained support. Labour’s rebuttal, if grounded in economics, defused Conservative attacks. Mr Akehurst is right that public attitudes to the idea of borrowing to invest are more permissive “in a country that is falling apart at the seams”. Reaching net zero will be costly and disruptive. Long-term targets are needed to drive transitions in energy, transport and homes. But voters want to know that Labour has a wellthought-out plan to share the cost equitably between government and private sectors. In cutting energy-efficiency measures in homes and slowing down the transition from carbonpowered cars and boilers, Mr Sunak left voters more exposed to the high costs of imported fossil fuels. The government’s climate advisers warn that there aren’t the policies in place to meet net zero. By contrast, Labour’s plans are electoral assets, not liabilities. It has popular green arguments. Sir Keir should sell them. The Guardian view on Labour and the climate crisis: the £28bn question deserves an answer Editorial ‘Sir Keir Starmer could sell his green prosperity plan as a way of helping households by promising cheaper energy billls.’ Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images “The trendlines for conflict-related sexual violence are worsening,” the United Nations special representative on the issue, Pramila Patten, warned this summer, highlighting “new waves of war’s oldest, most silenced and least condemned crime”. Greater awareness has not translated into more than very rare and limited accountability for a weapon unleashed primarily against women and girls, though also against men and boys. Wartime sexual violence is neither ubiquitous nor inevitable. Commanders can and do prohibit and prevent it. Yet it remains widely used by warring parties and repressive regimes. Last week, Amnesty International reported that Iranian security forces used rape and sexual violence against women, men and children as young as 12 during nationwide protests last year. Two days before, the UN heard graphic accounts of rape and other sexual violence, including the mutilation of women’s genitals, in the 7 October attacks by Hamas in southern Israel, with testimony from first responders and recorded evidence from a survivor of the festival massacre. UN experts have cited widespread reports of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces systematically using rape and sexual violence “as tools to punish and terrorise communities” in the war in Sudan. A recent estimate suggested that as many as 100,000 women were raped or assaulted during the two-year civil war centred on Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, with the vast majority from the Tigrayan community. And last year, a UN report on sexual violence in Ukraine described Russian soldiers targeting victims aged from four to 80. Ms Patten said they were using rape as a “military strategy”. The misconception that sexual violence is about “the spoils of war” has long been refuted. It is used to terrify, humiliate and reinforce the power of the perpetrator – as in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib. It frequently targets not only individuals but their communities. Survivors suffer afterwards not only from trauma and physical injury but from rejection by their partners and ostracisation. Even when Yazidis created new ways to overturn centuries of tradition and allow survivors of Islamic State attacks to rejoin their communities, they did not accept the children born of rape. Prosecutions for rape have fallen far short of what is needed; the international criminal court has just overhauled its policy on gender-based crimes. Almost a decade ago, Britain’s then foreign secretary William Hague The Guardian view on sexual violence in conflict: an unending crime that can be tackled Editorial Pramila Patten, the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict. Photograph: Lev Radin/Pacific Press/Zuma/ Rex/Shutterstock The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 32 Finance / The Guardian View Continued from page 31 Continued on page 33

made ending sexual violence in conflict a priority. But since he left office, the initiative has lacked leadership and its funding has fallen, though the Independent Commission for Aid Impact has seen some improvements. Any serious attempt to redress these crimes must also ensure that survivors and those working on their behalf are properly supported. In 2019, the UN watered down a resolution on rape in combat, excluding references to sexual and reproductive health due to opposition by the Trump administration. UN experts warned recently of a significant regression in rights for women and children in and after conflict, including gender-sensitive asylum and protection procedures. The UK’s failure when it comes to survivors seeking refuge is grim. Sexual violence in conflict is not inevitable and nor is impunity for such crimes. But tackling it requires real and sustained international commitment to action, with survivors and their needs at its heart. In an obscure dispute between Venezuela and Guyana, its much smaller neighbour, that is provoking irresponsible talk of war, some things are clear. One is that Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s far-left, authoritarian president, has deliberately reignited tensions over the issue for personal political purposes. Unpopular Maduro, who succeeded his charismatic mentor, the late revolutionary socialist Hugo Chávez, in 2013, faces an election next year that, if it is free and fair, he will likely lose. The cynical whipping up of nationalist, patriotic sentiment is a familiar refuge of rogues lacking better ways to win votes. It also seems clear that the dispute, which centres on control of the Essequibo region in western Guyana, a sparsely populated area the size of Greece that constitutes about twothirds of Guyanese territory, is mostly about oil. In 2015, the US oil giant, ExxonMobil, discovered a big field off Guyana’s coast, largely within its exclusive economic zone. The discovery has swollen Guyana’s estimated oil reserves to about 11bn barrels. Venezuela has huge oil reserves, too, but mismanagement, sanctions, underinvestment and corruption have slashed production. Maduro plainly has his eyes on the lucrative ExxonMobil operation. Nor may it be argued, despite what Maduro claims, that the legal position regarding Essequibo is unclear. The region was awarded to Guyana in 1899 after international arbitration conducted by the US, Russia and Britain, at a time when British Guiana was a colony. Venezuela has always disputed this decision, claiming to be the victim of an imperial stitch-up. But it is bound by a 1966 treaty that any disagreement must be settled in a “practical, peaceful and satisfactory” way. In 2018, at Guyana’s behest, the UN referred the dispute to the international court of justice, which is reviewing it. The lever used by Maduro to resurrect the issue as a popular cause célèbre was a referendum. Citizens were asked to unilaterally reject the ICJ process, declare Essequibo an integral part of Venezuela, and extend mandatory citizenship to its English-speaking inhabitants. The government claims the vote was overwhelmingly in favour but, as is usual in Maduro’s Venezuela, the figures were almost certainly manipulated. Armed with this bogus mandate, reminiscent of Russian tactics in eastern Ukraine, Maduro has mobilised troops and taken other threatening steps as a possible prelude to invasion and annexation. Guyana’s president, Irfaan Ali, has appealed for help to the US, the UN and regional neighbours. In response, the Biden administration has pledged unwavering support, and US military air patrols have increased, Brazil has placed border forces on alert, and Britain, a mere spectator despite its former colonial responsibilities, declared Maduro’s provocations were “unjustified”. It may be that this reaction is exactly what Maduro, fake champion of the masses, hoped to provoke, in order to boost his domestic standing and anti-imperialist credentials. As Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, says, the last thing the world, and South America, needs right now is another war. Regional experts suggest the confrontation is unlikely to lead to allout conflict, given that would probably hurt Maduro’s shaky regime. But the underlying problem remains. This problem is not Essequibo, colonial hangovers or greed for oil. The basic problem is Maduro, whose 10-year rule lacked democratic legitimacy from the outset. He has begun ordering the arrest of opposition figures, including campaign aides to next year’s probable main election challenger, María Corina Machado, allegedly for treacherously conspiring against the Essequibo referendum. While Maduro remains in power, peace and prosperity for Venezuelans and their neighbours will remain elusive. The Observer view: Maduro’s land grab in Guyana is a cynical ploy to hang on to power in Venezuela Observer editorial Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro speaks in Caracas in support of his government's position on the territorial dispute with Guyana. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images Jonathan Glazer grew up in Hadley Wood, close toBarnet on the northern outskirts of London, where his family were part of a thriving Jewish community. “There were all these fantastic characters, who were in and out of my house when I was a little boy,” he says. “Many of them were East End Jews who had moved to the suburbs for a better quality of life, not super-intellectual people, but incredible entertainers – vaudeville musicians, writers and the like. As a child, I loved and absorbed the richness of that culture.” The Holocaust, he says, was never openly talked about in his home, but “it was always present”. When his late father found out years ago that he was making a film about Rudolf Höss, the Nazi commandant of Auschwitz, his reaction was anger mixed with dismay. “He said: ‘I don’t know what you’re doing this for,’” recalls Glazer, “‘Why are you digging it up? Let it rot.’ Those were the three words he used. His feeling was very much that it was gone, that it was in the past. I remember saying to him: ‘I really wish I could let it rot, but, no, Dad, it’s not in the past.’” It took Glazer almost 10 years to make The Zone of Interest (the characteristically neutral term used by the Nazis to describe the immediate area around the concentration camp), which will be released in UK cinemas in early February and which won the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes film festival. During that time, there must have been moments when his father’s words echoed in his head, when the subject seemed so daunting that giving up and letting it rot may have seemed like the best option. “I had a very strange relationship with the project right from the off,” he says, as we chat over coffee in a London hotel. “This was the road I was going down and I couldn’t stop myself going down it, but at the same time I was ready to pull back from it at any moment. I almost wanted to hit a brick wall so I could turn around and say: ‘You know what? I tried and I can’t do it.’ I was almost willing that to happen.” The end result is an audacious film, formally experimental and with an almost clinically detached point of view. Mainly shot on hidden cameras, it concentrates on the domestic life of the Höss family (Rudolf, his wife, Hedwig, and their five children), whose house stood just outside the perimeter of the concentration camp, the horror within suggested in glimpses of smoking chimneys but, more disturbingly, through an almost constant ambient soundscape of industrial noise and human shouts and cries. It is an unsettling film: a study in extreme cognitive dissonance. It stayed with me for weeks after I watched it, so much so that I attended another screening to try to decipher its uneasy merging of almost clinical observation and moments of abrupt and jarring experimentalism – Jonathan Glazer on his holocaust film The Zone of Interest: ‘This is not about the past, it’s about now’ Sean O’Hagan Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian The Guardian View / Arts 33 Continued from page 32 As Brazil’s president, Lula, says, the last thing the world, and South America, needs right now is another war Continued on page 34

the screen turns blood red at one point. On both occasions, it fulfilled Glazer’s aim “to make it a narrative that you, the viewer, complete, that you are involved in and ask questions of”. It was shot on location at Auschwitz, where, having gained permission from the trustees of the site’s museum, Glazer’s team took over a vacant house just outside the perimeter of the camp and, using archive photographs and survivors’ testimonies, meticulously recreated the villa that the Höss family lived in for almost four years. Unlike other films about the Holocaust, it focuses on the perpetrators rather than the victims, the camera never straying beyond the wall that separates the commandant’s garden from the camp itself. Instead, under Glazer’s dispassionate directorial gaze, we witness the myriad ways that the couple’s domestic life adhered to a kind of ordered normality in the literal shadow of Auschwitz’s smoking chimneys. While he oversees the clinical business of mass extermination, she entertains friends, tends to her garden and is waited on by local women who carry out domestic chores at her bidding. In the evenings, he reads bedtime stories to his children and, before he retires to bed himself, makes sure all the house lights are turned off and the doors locked. Together they celebrate birthdays, hold picnics by the garden pool and, across separate beds, reminisce about their past and plan for their future. “To acknowledge the couple as human beings,” says Glazer, shaking his head, “was a big part of the awfulness of this entire journey of the film, but I kept thinking that, if we could do so, we would maybe see ourselves in them. For me, this is not a film about the past. It’s trying to be about now, and about us and our similarity to the perpetrators, not our similarity to the victims.” He says it is not so much about examining Nazi ideology as something deeper within humanity. “You have to get to a point where you understand [the ideology] to some extent in order to be able to write it, but I was really interested in making a film that went underneath that to the primordial bottom of it all, which I felt was the thing in us that drives it all, the capacity for violence that we all have.” * * * Since the release of his debut feature, the stylishly edgy British crime thriller Sexy Beast in 2000, Glazer has gained a reputation as the most formally ambitious and obsessively singleminded British director of his generation. He has cited Stanley Kubrick as an influence and said that he feels closer to the Russian and Italian cinema traditions than to the British one.Having studied theatre design at college, his route into film-making came through directing a series of acclaimed advertising campaigns in the 1990s, including the famous Guinness surfer ad in which white horses emerge out of rolling waves, as well as ambitious pop promo videos for the likes of Radiohead and Massive Attack. In the 23 years since Sexy Beast, he has made just three films (including this new one), each one more ambitious in terms of its subject matter, more formally complex, and more painfully protracted in its journey from idea to fruition. His second feature, Birth (2004), which starred Nicole Kidman as a grieving wife in thrall to a young boy who convinces her he is the reincarnation of her dead husband, took four years to make. Another nine passed before the release of Under the Skin(2013), a noirish sci-fi story based on a Michel Faber novel and starring Scarlett Johansson as a beautiful alien who stalks Scotland in search of impressionable men whom she seduces and then submerges in an amniotic netherworld. For that film, Glazer hired nonactors for the supporting roles and used hidden cameras to shoot several scenes in which Johansson’s character approaches young men on the street. Its unsettling atmosphere was heightened by disorienting sound design by Johnnie Burn, and an insistently ominous score by the young experimental musician Mica Levi, both of whom have worked closely with Glazer on The Zone of Interest. When I ask Burn about the level of sustained commitment it takes to work on a Jonathan Glazer movie, he says: “Under the Skin almost killed me. I was so sick from overwork by the end of filming from intense 10-hour shifts and lack of sleep. Once you start working with Jonathan, you begin thinking about the film the way that he does. It’s all-consuming.” * * * In person, Glazer, who, lives in Camden, north London, with his wife and three children, comes across as both affable and quietly intense. When I ask him if, like Kubrick, he is utterly obsessive in his approach to filmmaking, he answers without hesitation: “Yes, I am.” He first started thinking about The Zone of Interest when he read Martin Amis’s novel of the same name not long after its publication in 2014. Having secured the rights with his producer, Jim Wilson, the pair began what would become several years of intense and meticulous pre-production preparation. “Our reading actually took us away from the book and deep into Amis’s primary sources,” he says, “The more fragments of information we uncovered about Rudolf and Hedwig Höss in the Auschwitz archives, the more I realised that they were working-class people who were upwardly mobile. They aspired to become a bourgeois family in the way that many of us do today. That was what was so grotesque and striking about them – how familiar they were to us.” Played by German actors Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller, the couple are the embodiment of the Jewish writer Primo Levi’s insistence that it is ordinary people, rather than monsters, who are capable of committing atrocity. “Monsters exist,” wrote Levi, a Holocaust survivor, “but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” The couple’s ordinariness is conveyed in a series of scenes that were sometimes scripted, sometimes improvised and filmed on small, static cameras concealed throughout the house and garden. The actors were not aware of exactly where the cameras were positioned. Glazer and his crew remained off-set throughout, watching the results on a bank of screens in a separate building. The result is a cinema of ultra-naturalistic candid surveillance that Glazer jokingly describes as “like Big Brother in the Nazi house”. His aim, he says, was to make the film appear “un-authored”. Given that he is the director and it is his vision that we are watching, I ask him if it is possible to achieve a detached point of view. “Well, no. You can’t retreat to that point, although I wish you could. But the ambition is there. The reason that I was not on set was because I wanted to stand back from the characters and look at them anthropologically. I wasn’t interested in their dramas. I just wanted to watch them in as unimpeded a way as possible to see how they behaved and acted, to see who they were.” As Glazer acknowledges, the decision to take on the lead roles was a huge one for the two actors, given the subject matter and the fact that that it was shot, as he puts it, “on the soil of Auschwitz”, and required them “to portray people who could have been their grandparents”. Friedel, who played the schoolteacher in Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, a complex allegory about the roots of Nazi ideology, portrays Rudolf Höss as an essentially unknowable individual given to ruminative silences and long stares off into the distance, during which you wonder what exactly he is thinking about. Hüller, who is receiving rave reviews for her role in Justine Triet’s complex courtroom drama, Anatomy of a Fall, inhabits the role of Hedwig so completely that it was disorienting to see her take the stage a few weeks ago after a New York film festival screening looking glamorous in a geometric designer suit. There, she spoke frankly about her initial revulsion on discovering the film’s subject. “I have to say, it made me feel sick. To me, it was a shock. I never planned to be involved in this kind of narrative or to portray someone like Hedwig Höss.” It took Hüller, whose background is in leftwing German theatre, a full year to commit to the film, but she is the most compelling presence in it: a ruthlessly narcissistic individual entirely untroubled by conscience and so lacking in empathy or self-awareness that she poses before her bedroom mirror in a fur coat and lipstick taken from a Jewish prisoner and boasts laughingly to her mother: “Rudi calls me the Queen of Auschwitz.” When she receives the news that he is to be transferred to oversee a death factory elsewhere, she becomes frantic with anger at the thought of leaving, shouting: “You can’t do this to me! We’re living as we dreamed we would.” Hedwig is constantly busy, whether ordering her minions about or fretting about her husband’s status in the ever-shifting loyalties of the Reich’s inner circle. When writing the part, Glazer says, he was constantly thinking of the philosopher Hannah Arendt’s description of the Nazis as essentially nonthinking. “There was the sense that nothing should stop and no one should stop,” he says. “Everyone had to be occupied with activity all the time, because if you stop, you think. And, if you think, you reflect. With Hedwig, there is no reflection, no consideration at all for anything or anyone except herself. She is constantly, relentlessly busy in order not to think.” The horror that exists beyond her garden wall is suggested though myriad small but telling visual details: a Polish worker washes Rudolf Höss’s leather boots under a tap and the water runs red; a garden labourer spreads ashes from the camp over the soil of Hedwig Höss’s lovingly tended flower beds; the couple’s daughter sleepwalks. At one point, their eldest son bullies his younger brother, locking him in the greenhouse and mimicking the hiss of gas. Even the family dog seems on high alert at all times, racing through the garden and sniffing at the earth beneath the wall. When he first visited Auschwitz, Glazer went to the Hösses’ house and, to his surprise, found it inhabited by a Polish family who had lived there since the end of the war. “I saw the remnants of the garden, and its proximity to the camp, and the wall, and it was chilling,” he says quietly. “Afterwards I entered the camp and looked at the wall from the other side, trying to imagine what the prisoners must have heard. There is no doubt that they would have heard happiness and gaiety as the Höss children laughed and splashed around in the pool. The film became about the proximity of the horror and the happiness, how one person’s paradise is another’s hell.” In a film haunted by absences, the suffering of the victims is powerfully evoked by Burn’s soundscape: the constant hum of machinery, the barked orders of SS guards and the cries and screams of prisoners herded towards the gas chambers. “There are, in effect, two films,” elaborates Glazer. “The one you see, and the one you hear, and the second is just as important as the first, arguably more so. We already know the imagery of the camps from actual archive footage. There is no need to attempt to recreate it, but I felt that if we could hear it, we could somehow see it in our heads.” To this end, Burn spent a year researching and amassing a vast sound archive. “It was essentially a document of every single sound that would have emanated from the camp,” which, he says “was a place of heavy industry as well as human suffering.” The task was “incredibly difficult”. “I remember saying to my wife after just a few weeks that it was starting to get to me. And, even though you don’t ever see the horror, it is by far the most violent film I have ever worked on.” The Zone of Interest begins disorientingly with two minutes of darkness as Levi’s ascending electronic overture fills the cinema then retreats slowly to the screen, where the sound of wild songbirds accompanies a long shot of the Höss family picnicking in bright sunshine by the shores of a Polish lake. “The music, like the dark screen, is a way of preparing you for what follows as you enter another reality,” Levi tells me. “It slowly descends in pitch as it takes you down into the story. All through the film, the music is taking you to a place below or beyond what you are seeing, almost a nowhere place beyond logical comprehension.” The film’s release was foreshadowed by horror. The New York screening I attended was held just days after the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October in which 1,200 people were killed and 240 hostages taken. One could sense a feeling of uncertain anticipation as the film began and a palpable nervousness emanating from the stage in the short Q&A hosted by the film festival curator that followed the screening. I spoke to Glazer a week later when the Israeli assault on Gaza that, as I write, has claimed 15,000 lives, was in its early stages. It is, I suggest, a heightened moment in which to release the film. He nods. “Yes, and it’s weighing on all of us. The sickening thing about this film is it’s timely and it’s always going to be timely until we can somehow evolve out of this cycle of violence that we perpetuate as human beings. And when will that happen? Not in our lifetime. Right now, it seems to be reversing and I’m mindful of that, too, in terms of the film and its complexity.” I ask Glazer if he is prepared for a degree of negative criticism centring on the ethics of holocaust representation? “I am prepared, yes, but I’m also interested to hear what the arguments are. I believe you absolutely should tackle the subject, but the essential question is not should you do it, but how? Personally, I think the story has to be told and retold and, to do so, you have to find new paradigms to retell it, to restate it generation after generation particularly as the survivors diminish in numbers and it shifts from living memory and becomes history.” The Zone of Interest’s single moments of hope occur at night and were shot on a thermal imaging camera of the kind used by the conceptual photographer Richard Mosse for his ambitious refugee film, Incoming. A young woman, rendered almost ghostlike by the camera, clandestinely moves through a construction site beneath a railway that runs into the camp. She places apples in the earth for the starving prisoners on work duty to find the following day. While doing so, she finds a scroll of music notation in a tin buried in the earth. The scene came about as a result of Glazer meeting a 90-year-old woman called Alexandria, who had worked for the Polish resistance when she was just 12. She recounted how she had cycled to the camp to leave apples, and how she had found the mysterious piece of written music, which, it turned out, had been composed by an Auschwitz prisoner called Thomas Wolf, who survived the war. “She lived in the house we shot in,” says Glazer. “It was her bike we used, and the dress the actor wears was her dress. Sadly, she died a few weeks after we spoke.” He pauses for a long moment. “That Jonathan Glazer: ‘I had a very strange relationship with this project right from the off.’ Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer A Höss family garden party in The Zone of Interest. Photograph: A24 Films The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 34 Arts Continued from page 33 Continued on page 35

small act of resistance, the simple, almost holy act of leaving food, is crucial because it is the one point of light. I really thought I couldn’t make the film at that point. I kept ringing my producer, Jim, and saying: ‘I’m getting out. I can’t do this. It’s just too dark.’ It felt impossible to just show the utter darkness, so I was looking for the light somewhere and I found it in her. She is the force for good.” I ask Glazer what made him persevere with the project each time he felt the urge to give up and walk away. “I don’t know for sure. My heritage, maybe. Inter-generational trauma. Fear. Anger. All of that stuff. Most Jewish families have a history with the event because it was so enormous. Just looking through the archives of Auschwitz and going though my family names, I discovered there are a lot of them. So, I think it’s just in you.” He pauses again. “The reason I made this film is to try to restate our close proximity to this terrible event that we think of as in the past. For me, it is not ever in the past, and right now, I think something in me is aware – and fearful – that these things are on the rise again with the growth of rightwing populism everywhere. The road that so many people took is a few steps away. It is always just a few steps away.” The Zone of Interest will be released in the US on 15 December and in the UK on 2 February 2024 In 1968 the books pages of the French newspaper Le Monde excitedly praised an uncompromising new novel, Bound to Violence, going on to salute its author as one of “the rare intellectuals of international stature presented to the world by Black Africa”. The newspaper’s words, written in tribute to the young Malian writer Yambo Ouologuem, sound condescending today. Back then, however, the intended compliment was genuine and many European critics soon agreed: the publication of Ouologuem’s strange novel really did mark the arrival of a major new talent. But the literary world can be brutal, and particularly so for a young African novelist living in Paris who was attempting a fresh twist on conventional storytelling. Fellow African writers began to express shock at Ouologuem’s harsh parody of his own culture. Three years later damaging accusations of plagiarism had also emerged, including a public skirmish with Graham Greene, which ended Ouologuem’s short career. He retreated into the life of a recluse, returned to Mali and died in 2017, having never published again. Now, 50 years after this scandal, Penguin Classics is to bring out a new English edition of Bound to Violence in a bid to rehabilitate the gifted author and introduce him to new readers. “I was so exhilarated when I read this book,” said Penguin editor Ka Bradley. “It’s the history of an imaginary African empire called Nakem and whole centuries are dealt with in just a paragraph or two. It’s dizzying.” When Ouologuem’s satire first came out in French, as Le Devoir du Violence, it won the prestigious Prix Renaudot award and earned him worldwide interest, with translation rights swiftly snapped up in Britain, West Germany, Italy and the US. The problems began when an anonymous article in the Times Literary Supplement alerted Greene to a few similarities with his own 1934 novel, It’s a Battlefield. One offending passage in Bound to Violence described a short love scene inside the home of an English Communist that also features in Greene’s story. The dialogue and the setting, with a pink bedroom door and silk bedspreads “like rose petals”, are alike, especially in the 1971 English translation by Ralph Manheim. A further resemblance to sections of André Schwarz-Bart’s book The Last of the Just, including the opening sentences of both novels, were also identified. When Greene complained to the book’s French publisher, Editions de Seuil, it asked Ouologuem for rewrites to certain pages. Schwarz-Bart, in contrast, was not so bothered, and in fact regarded the use of quotations from his book as “quite thrilling”, according to Bradley. Ouologuem did not comply with his publisher’s request for changes. “It seems to me this book created such strong feelings because of its very satirical and even sarcastic style. It spares no one and people don’t like that,” said Bradley. “It’s pugnacious, although funny with it, and that kind of humour can really alarm people, creating a backlash. The book was quite a modernist text, with quotations from the Bible and the Qur’an, as well as sections that drew on African oral traditions. Graham Greene was the only one who really objected.” Bradley suspects that Ouologuem’s youth and ethnicity were held against him: “He was 28 when he won the prize, and there was a sense that some Europeans were wondering just how a young black man could have written this. Some more kindly felt that Ouologuem couldn’t have been expected to know you weren’t supposed to plagiarise like that, whereas I believe it was deliberate. He was writing a kind of pushback against the western literary canon.” Ouologuem’s style could be likened to Kurt Vonnegut’s work, Bradley suggests: “You know you’re in a wildly ambitious fictional world. There is almost a feeling of collage in the later sections of the book, where the narrative is much more focused on a set of individuals and on the lead character, the Paris-educated Raymond Spartacus Kassoumi.” Penguin’s decision to republish the work follows an American edition brought out recently by Other Press. It also comes in the wake of its successful publication of an acclaimed novel that draws on the story of Ouologuem’s ruined reputation. Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s French book, The Most Secret Memory of Men, which won the Prix Goncourt in 2021, mirrors Ouologuem’s story, telling of an African writer in Paris who is damaged by literary misunderstandings and allegations of plagiarism. The Penguin Classics reissue of Bound to Violence, published in Britain in March, comes, like the American edition, with a new introduction by the Malian scholar Chérif Keïta, which looks at the novel in a wider context. Manheim’s original translation has been preserved with limited tweaks to outdated language. “There are bits of this book that are really unnerving, but then you don’t read a book not to be occasionally unsettled,” said Bradley. “I don’t expect all my political views to be reflected either, but it is a major artistic achievement.” African writer ruined by row with Graham Greene finally gets chance to shine Vanessa Thorpe Arts and media correspondent Malian writer Yambo Ouologuem in France in November 1968. Photograph: Yves Le Roux/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images Graham Greene was alerted to passages of Ouologuem’s book that held similarities with his own work. Photograph: Louis Monier/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images When Matt and Ross Duffer, the affable identical twins behind the TV phenomenon Stranger Things, wrote the pilot script for that show, they did not expect it to ever become a West End play. But then that was one of quite a few things that they didn’t foresee almost a decade ago. For starters, the Duffer Brothers, as they are known and credited, did not expect Stranger Things to exist beyond one season. They envisaged the story as being a “long-form movie” about a child who is mysteriously kidnapped in 1983 and his friends and family who try to get him back. “What would a Stephen King book look like if it were directed by Steven Spielberg,” was the pitch, says Matt now. The giant, spider-like Mind Flayer, Vecna, and even the parallel universe they call the Upside Down, so familiar now to fans after four seasons of the show on Netflix: none of these had yetbeen imagined. Mostly, though, what the 39-yearold Duffers didn’t anticipate was the show’s popularity. Stranger Things, mainly through word of mouth, has become the most watched English-language series in Netflix history. When season four was released in late May 2022, it racked up 1.35bn viewed hours in 28 days. In the process, the show sent the Kate Bush song Running Up That Hill – a recurring motif of the season – to the top of the charts, 37 years after it was first released, and inspired a tidal wave of 1980s nostalgia, from rugby shirts to pudding-bowl haircuts. The show has also created legions of breakout stars: new faces such as Millie Bobby Brown (who plays Eleven), Finn Wolfhard (Mike) and Maya Hawke (Robin), and revivifying familiar ones, such as Winona Ryder and Matthew Modine, who plays the chilling Dr Martin Brenner. Stranger Things has become of almost existential importance to Netflix: inthe first quarter of 2022, the streamer lost 200,000 subscribers and $50bn in market value. The Duffers’ hit, returning after a three-year hiatus, wasNetflix’sbig play to win them back. No, the brothers did not see any of that coming back in 2016, when the original season aired. “Our career wasn’t really rocketing at that point,” admits Matt Duffer, on a video call from AtThe Duffer Brothers: ‘The last series of Stranger Things is the biggest it’s ever been’ Tim Lewis Matt, left, and Ross Duffer. Photograph: Jabari Jacobs/Netflix The first series of Stranger Things, from left: Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas, Finn Wolfhard as Mike, Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven and Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin. Photograph: Netflix Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian Arts 35 Continued from page 34 Continued on page 37

lanta, where the brothers are preparing to shoot Stranger Things season five. “We had made one movie for Warner Bros, which Warner Bros didn’t end up liking, and they just dumped it. Ross and I had dreams of being film-makers; we wanted to direct more films, but every meeting we kept going to, no one was interested in any of our movie ideas.” That’s not false modesty on their part. The movie Matt’s talking about is Hidden, a claustrophobic, postapocalyptic thriller starring Alexander Skarsgård and Andrea Riseborough, which was shot in 2012 but buried by the studiofor three years. (For what it’s worth, Hidden is very decent: tight, smart and unsettling in all the good ways.) So the brothers were not exactly bullish about Stranger Things making any kind of mark. “Because, in reality, our only prior experience in Hollywood ended in utter failure,” says Matt. “So we did not envision what’s occurred, which is five seasons in...” There have been a few unlikely developments in those intervening years: for one, King and Spielberg are now admirers and collaborators. But the theatre thing – that’s the most “surreal” in Ross Duffer’s mind. The impetus came from another Stephen, this time Daldry, the British director whose screen work includes Billy Elliot and The Crown, and whose theatre output has earned him multiple Olivier and Tony awards. Daldry loved Stranger Things and approached Cindy Holland, at that time the head of original content at Netflix – which also makes The Crown – about turning it into a stage show. “When we first heard about it, we assumed it must be: ‘Oh, they want to do a musical out of season one’ or something like that,” says Matt. “That was the lame idea that immediately popped into my head. Like, I thought that’s what you would do.” But that wasn’t what Daldry had in mind at all: he wanted an original story, set in the Stranger Things universe, and he wanted British playwright and screenwriterJack Thorne, who has had a golden touch since writing the 2016 stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, to develop it. Sonia Friedman, one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2018, who was also behind the success and global rollout of Cursed Child, would be the producer. The Duffers were thrilled with this idea, but pretty much as soon as it was presented to them, it was snatched away. Netflix wanted Daldry to prioritise The Crown,for which he is an executive producer,and Thorne was in demand to write other projects. “When Stephen got sucked back into The Crown, it kind of vanished for a second,” says Ross. “And Matt and I just assumed it was one of those dreams that would never be.” Matt adds: “And we were like: ‘Why even... Please don’t tell me this! Why are you dangling something that’s not even possible?’” The delay, though, turned out to be “the best thing ever”, says Matt. The brothers started writing season four and developed a new character called Henry Creel. In the TV show, told through brief flashbacks of him as a child in the 1950s, Creel moves to Hawkins, Indiana, the fictional setting for Stranger Things. He has disturbing, supernatural powers with a psychotic twist and ultimately transforms into the monstrous Vecna, who torments the town three decades later. The Duffers, Daldry and Thorne agreed that Creel’s backstory, largely untouched upon in the series, would be fertile territory for the new play. “Exploring what, if any, humanity Henry had before he went full-blown, you know, Darth Vader,” says Matt, smiling. “The idea for the play itself actually came really quickly: I think within a day,” Matt continues. “The fact that it came that easily, it felt like, ‘OK, there’s a reason for this to exist.’ The play itself took a lot of effort, four years-plus, but I always find if you’re straining too hard to come up with an idea, it’s never a good sign.” Stranger Things:The First Shadow, still directed by Daldry, though written not by Thorne but by one of the Duffers’ in-house TV writers, Kate Trefry, opened for previews at the Phoenix theatre in London last month. When we speak, the brothers are still in near daily communication with the London team, tinkering with details before the world premiere on 14 December. It is a wildly ambitious undertaking, packed with stunts and light effects: “The goal always was for it to just feel like a megaepisode of the show, but live on stage,” says Matt. Ross, meanwhile, seems in a state of mild disbelief that the stage show is actually going ahead. “It’s one of those things that until it happens, you never believe it,” he says. The official line on TheFirst Shadowis that it “enriches” the Stranger Things television experience: you do not need to have watched the show to enjoy the play, they say; however, if you are a superfan, TheFirst Shadow will give depth and drop hints that bridge seasons four and five. There are legions of Stranger Things obsessives out there, so shifting seats for the stage show should not be a problem. However, the play does represent a gamble for the Duffers. They have already made clear that season five will be the finale of the show and have also long talked of wanting to expand the world of Stranger Things with spin-offs. TheFirst Shadow, in this way, could be proof of concept. It is also Netflix’s first venture into live stage production: if it works, who knows what other shows could be adapted? The brothers, who have seen TheFirst Shadow twice in London, appear confident. “Watching this play as an audience member fresh… to me it seemed flawless,” says Matt. Then he pauses, smiles. “Like I can hear Stephen [Daldry] laughing in my ear, but to me it seemed flawless.” * * * Matt and Ross, unhelpfully, appear on separate video screens at the same exact moment with the same ID: “the Duffer Brothers”. Helpfully, though, the twins are easier to tell apart than you may fear. Matt has longer, bouncier hair, with a streak of grey, and is the more animated talker; Ross is slightly shaggier, with a warm smile and selfdeprecating modesty. “Even though we are twins, we each have our own strengths and weaknesses,” says Ross. “What weaknesses?” interrupts Matt, playfully, who stops every so often to eat a mouthful of cereal. “If we get into it, I feel like we might start an argument.” On Stranger Things, the Duffers take every decision together. When they are drafting a script, they often sit opposite each other on separate computers, working on a shared Google Doc. The director M Night Shyamalan, who hired them as writers for his 2015 TV drama Wayward Pines, fondly called them a “two-headed creative monster” in the New York Times. However, the brothers do gravitate towards different comfort zones. “I’m a little more introverted,” says Ross. “There’s safety for me in the writers’ room with a smaller group of people. And Matt thrives on set more with the larger group. So that would be the most obvious difference between us. So he’ll lean on me in those moments and I’ll lean on him in the other moments. And we’ve never done this apart, and I’m sure we could if need be, but I don’t see why we would, because there’s a safety there with one another.” One recent change is that Matt has a one-year-old child (Winona Ryder is the godmother). “Matt has a family now and our lives have continued to change as the show has grown,” says Ross. “So I would say that’s adjusted our working relationship more than anything.” The brothers were born in Durham, North Carolina, in 1984, the year after Stranger Things begins, to parents Ann and movie-obsessed Allen. The brothers’ first film collaboration happened when they were nine or 10: after seeing Tim Burton’s 1989 moody riff on Batman, they started making their own home videos on a camcorder with a neighbour. They continued making shorts through school, with better cameras, before studying film at Chapman University in California. Looking back on their childhood films, the Duffers note they were typically violent, often with a streak of horror or incorporating fantasy elements: in short, not a million miles from Stranger Things. And the emotion that making them evokes hasn’t changed much, either. “Yeah, it feels the same now as when we were creatively excited and happy all the way back in middle school and high school,” says Matt. “The feeling itself doesn’t change… there’s just a lot more noise around us now.” The Duffers think too much is made of the 1980s setting of Stranger Things, specifically the charge that the show owes much of its popularity with viewersto nostalgia (in part because perhaps their biggest demographic – teenagers and young adults – have zero actual memories from that era). “It’s more about a tone,” insists Ross. “It’s more about this juxtaposition between ordinary and extraordinary. These friendships of various generations of people coming together to fight something extraordinary, and the awe and the fear that comes with that. It’s not about the 1980s.” Still, it is a test for TheFirst Shadow to see if audiences will buy into a Stranger Things story not set in the 1980s. “I equate the 1950s to… it’s 1980s-like,” says Matt. “People our age have some nostalgia for the 80s. When you were our age in the 80s, you had nostalgia for the 1950s. That’s when our dad grew up. That’s the music we grew up listening to. There’s no secret that the show is heavily inspired by Stephen King’s It, which was set in the 50s. Diner, one of our favourite movies, is set in the 50s. StandBy Me. We’ve always been drawn to that era.” TheFirst Shadow features many characters familiar from the TV series: not the original kids (Will, Mike, Lucas, Dustin and Eleven) of course (because they weren’t even born in the 1950s), but fresh-faced incarnations of Joyce Byers (played by Ryder in the TV show), Jim Hopper (David Harbour) and Bob Newby (Sean Astin) as their younger selves. At the heart of the play are Creel and a new character, Patty Newby, played on stage by West End newcomers Louis McCartney and Ella Karuna Williams. The introduction of Patty – “a love story of types between Patty and Henry”, explains Matt – was the suggestion of Thorne, as a way to bring a dash of humanity to Henry. “Yeah,” agrees Ross. “And usually in a Stranger Things season, we introduce someone new to the world and for us it’s helpful in that it’s like a new pair of eyes for the audience to experience this world through. So Patty is following in those footsteps. The goal is that you have a much better understanding of Henry when seeing this and see a little bit more of how he got to where he is. And then there’s a bit in the play that is starting to hint at where we’re headed with the final season of the show. That was always the balancing act.” The Duffers are open, and enjoy teasing a storyline, but they would rather not reveal too much of the specifics of TheFirst Shadow. Partly, this coyness is practical: if the play does well, it will transfer presumably to Broadway and then to other cities before Stranger Things season five drops on Netflix in 2025. But most of their reticence, they insist, comes from a deep dislike of spoilers. It infuriates the Duffers that films such as Shyamalan’s 1999 thriller The Sixth Sense would be stripped of their shock power in the internet age. And they have still not forgiven a friend in middle school who ruined the ending of Seven. “Of course you don’t even have to have seen the play,” says Matt. “Just go on to Reddit and there’s a list of all the spoilers if you want them. Which I would encourage people not to do because reading a list of spoilers is never the best way to experience something. That’s just my, you know, view. I had friends who would read the last page of a book first. I don’t know what that is. I hate that. I love being surprised.” The Duffers may have handed over day-to-day running of TheFirst Shadowto Daldry, Friedman and Trefry, but they are well aware that their reputation could ride on the outcome. Or at least the viability of telling more stories with the Stranger Things characters, which they clearly are desperate to do. A teaser clip from the fifth and final series of Stranger Things “The play is coming from a very genuine place and a passionate place,” says Matt. “Neither us nor Netflix said: ‘Hey, let’s do a Stranger Things play!’ That didn’t come from us or Netflix. That came from Stephen Daldry himself, who we didn’t know. It wasn’t like we shopped this around, and we met with a ton of people and we happened to land on Stephen Daldry. It was like, no, one of the greatest living theatre directors came to us and Netflix and said: ‘I want to do this.’ “Meaning it’s the opposite of a cash grab, right?” Matt goes on. “There’s nothing forced about it. And I think that’s why it’s good. When franchises are just driven by: ‘Hey, we just need more quote-unquote content in this universe.’ And you have a ton of people pitching ideas, and no one’s particularly passionate about it, that’s how you end up with something bad.” * * * The fifth and final season of Stranger Things, which ground to a halt during this year’s Writers Guild of America strike, is now written; shooting startsin January. In preparation, the Duffers have been rewatching other touchstone, long-running TV shows from the past 30 years to see what tips they can pick upabout, in Ross’s words: “How to land the plane safely.” What did they learn? In short: that it’s devilishly hard not leave a lot of viewers unsatisfied and often apoplectic. Matt uses an analogy from American football to explain the near impossible situation they find themselves in. “The nine hours that precede the ending can be amazing,” he says, with a wistful shake of the head. “But if you stumble at that one-yard line, people will never forgive you for that. And they’ll forget the previous nine hours of awesomeness! So it’s amazing what they will forgive if you score a touchdown at the end. “Endings of shows arelike opening a restaurant in terms of the success-failure rate – there’s an 80% failure rate, I’d say,” he continues. “But I think one very particular way to fail is to attempt to appease everybody. We have a huge variety of fans that span a huge age range and I’m sure they have all their own ideas of how they want the show to end. But we’re not consulting social media on this. Then you just hope and pray that it resonates. But it was funny: once we got there, it just felt right and we’re going to go for it!” When the TV show’s over, the Duffers predict that they will go through the five stages of grief: mainly, they say, they’ll be sad to never again spend time with the characters they have created. They have other projects lined up – they are set to be producers on The Talisman, which, full circle, is a King novel (co-written with Peter Straub) that Spielberg owns the rights to direct – but mainly they want Stranger Things to go out with a bang. “This season – it’s like season one on steroids,” says Matt. “It’s the biggest it’s ever been in terms of scale, but it has been really fun, because everyone’s back together in Hawkins: the boys and Eleven interacting more in line with how it was in season one. And, yes, there may be spin-offs, but the story of Eleven and Dustin and Lucas and Hopper, their stories are done here. That’s it… “Outside of the play,” he teases. “So if you want to see more of some of them, go see the play.” • Stranger Things:The First Shadowis at the Phoenix theatre, London, until 25 August 2024 Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian Arts 37 I always find if you’re straining too hard to come up with an idea, it’s never a good sign Matt Duffer Continued from page 35

Donald Trump stands ready to knife US democracy. A year ago, he called for terminating the constitution. He has since announced that if re-elected, he wants to weaponize federal law enforcement against his political enemies. He has suggested that Gen Mark Milley, former chairman of the joint chiefs, be executed for fulfilling his duty. This is a man who reportedly kept a bound copy of Hitler’s speeches at his bedside, very nearly managed to overturn an election, and certainly basked in the mayhem of the January 6 insurrection. He said Mike Pence, his vicepresident who ultimately stood against him, “deserved” to be hanged for so doing. This week, Trump said he would be a dictator “on day one” of a second term. All bets are off. Take him literally and seriously. The New York Times and the Atlantic report that Trump aims to make the executive branch his fiefdom, loyalty the primary if not only test. If he returns to power, the independence of the justice department and FBI will be things of the past. He is the “most dangerous man ever to inhabit the Oval Office”, Liz Cheney writes in her memoir. “This is the story of when American democracy began to unravel,” the former congresswoman adds. “It is the story of the men and women who fought to save it, and of the enablers and collaborators whose actions ensured the threat would grow and metastasize.” Cheney, formerly the No 3 House Republican, was vice-chair of the House January 6 committee. She has witnessed power wielded – not always wisely. Dick Cheney, her father, was George W Bush’s vice-president and pushed the Iraq war. Before that he was secretary of defense to Bush’s father and, like his daughter, represented Wyoming in the House. Liz Cheney delivers a frightening narrative. Her recollections are firsthand, her prose dry, terse and informed. On January 6, she witnessed Trump’s minions invade the Capitol first-hand. Subtitled “A Memoir and a Warning Oath”, her book is well-timed. The presidential primaries draw near. The Iowa caucus is next month. Trump laps the Republican pack. No one comes close. Ron DeSantis is in retrograde, his campaign encased in a dunghill of its own making. Nikki Haley has momentum of a sort but remains a long way behind. Cheney’s book will discomfit many. Mike Johnson, the new House speaker, is shown as a needy and servile fraud. Kevin McCarthy, his predecessor, is a bottomless pit of self-abasement. Jim Jordan, the hard-right judiciary chair from Ohio, is ham-handed and insincere. Johnson misled colleagues about the authorship of a legal brief filed in support of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, as well as its contents and his own credentials. He played a game of “bait and switch”, Cheney says. Johnson, she writes, was neither the author of the brief nor a “constitutional law expert”, despite advising colleagues that he was. In reality, Johnson was dean of Judge Paul Pressler School of Law, a small Baptist institution that never opened its doors. Constitutional scholar? Nope. Pro-Trump lawyers wrote the pro-Trump brief, not Johnson, Cheney says. At a recent gathering of Christian legislators, Johnson referred to himself as a modern-day Moses. McCarthy, meanwhile, is vividly portrayed in all his gutless glory. First taking a pass on Johnson’s amicus brief, he then predictably caved. Anything to sit at the cool kids’ table. His tenure as speaker, which followed, will be remembered for its brevity and desperation. His trip to see Trump in Florida, shortly after the election, left Cheney incredulous. “Mar-a-Lago? What the hell, Kevin?” “They’re really worried,” McCarthy said. “Trump’s not eating, so they asked me to come see him.” Trump not eating. Let that claim sink in. This year, at his arraignment in Fulton county, Georgia, on charges relating to election subversion there, the former president self-reported as 6ft 3in and 215lb – almost 30lb lighter than at his last White House physical. OK. Turning to Jordan, Cheney recalls his performance on January 6. She rightly feared for her safety and remains unamused. “Jim Jordan approached me,” she recalls. “‘We need to get the ladies off the aisle,’ he said, and put out his hand. ‘Let me help you.’” “I swatted his hand away. ‘Get away from me. You fucking did this.’” Jordan’s spokesperson denies the incident. Cheney writes: “Most Republicans currently in Congress will do what Donald Trump asks, no matter what it is. I am very sad to say that America can no longer count on a body of elected Republicans to protect our republic.” Mitt Romney has announced his retirement as a senator from Utah. Patrick McHenry, the former acting House speaker from North Carolina, has also decided to quit. Both men voted to certify Joe Biden’s win in 2020. In a Trumpcentric Republican party, that is a big problem. In plain English, Congress is a hellscape. The cold civil war grows hot. Cheney briefly mentions Kash Patel, a former staffer to Devin Nunes, a congressman now in charge of Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform. In the waning days of the Trump administration, Patel was chief of staff at the Pentagon. In a recent interview with Steve Bannon, Patel made clear that in a second Trump term, bureaucrats and the press will be targets. “We will find the conspirators in government … and the media,” Patel said. “Yes, we are going to come after the people in the media … we are putting you all on notice.” Trump is a would-be Commodus, a debauched emperor, enamored with power, grievance and his own reflection. Gladiator, Ridley Scott’s Oscarwinning epic, remains a movie for our times. “As a nation, we can endure damaging policies for a four-year term,” Cheney writes. “But we cannot survive a president willing to terminate our constitution.” Promoting her book, she added that the US is “sleepwalking into dictatorship”. Trump leads Biden in the polls. Oath and Honor is published in the USby Hachette Oath and Honor review: Liz Cheney spells out the threat from Trump Lloyd Green Liz Cheney attends the final meeting of the House January 6 committee, in December last year. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters A Trump supporter holds up a flag at Trump Tower in New York. Photograph: David Dee Delgado/Reuters A trip to the cinema followed by a bite to eat is a staple treat of the school holidays. But the plot of one of this season’s big family films may mean the traditional stop-off afterwards suddenly seems less appetising. In Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, in cinemas on Friday, thousands of hens must be rescued from a nugget factory where they are kept in a state of stupefied joy by remote control lobotomising collars. This, a scientist explains, is because when a bird is frightened, “its muscles tense and the connective tissue forms knots”, resulting in “tough, dry and flavourless meat”. Reprogramming a chicken’s response to the horror of being “processed” should radically improve flavour and sales. Children attending a preview screening in London on Sunday appeared to enjoy the new Aardman film. None were heard leaving the cinema expressing eagerness for a bucket of nuggets. “It’s really pushing the needle,” says Matthew Glover, founder of Veganuary and meat-alternative range Chick’n. “I’ve never seen a cartoon like this.” “I’m a big fan of the approach,” says Richard McIlwain, CEO of the UK Vegetarian Society. “Whether or not they’ve set out to make a vegan morality tale, the reality is that this is what happens in poultry farms. They’re not making it up.” The film-makers have rejected claims that they are “here to preach”, and said that any dietary reassessment would be just a happy accident. “We want the film to be engaging and entertaining and a great ride, mostly,” the film’s director, Sam Fell, has said. “But yes, if you come away and you think a little bit more like a chicken by the end of it, then that’s not a bad thing.” Some of the film’s key cast members – including Thandiwe Newton and Bella Ramsay – are passionate spokespeople for veganism, and Fell himself became a vegetarian during production. This echoes the experience of the actor James Cromwell, who turned vegan while shooting 1995 film Babe, about a pig who thinks its a sheepdog. That film is credited for the biggest spike in vegetarianism in living memory. “It’s aged really well,” says Richard Makin, author of Anything You Can Cook, I Can Cook Vegan. “And is responsible for a lot more compassion than we give it credit for.” Babe stood alone in its influence on young people until 2017’s Okja, another Netflix film, about a girl who befriends a porcine monster, which caused Quorn sales to spike. “It certainly did have an impact,” says Jon Ronson, who co-scripted the film with director Bong Joon-ho, who also converted to vegetarianism during production. “I remember loads of people tweeting that they were never eating meat again.” The new Chicken Run is, Ronson thinks, likely to do the same: “This will have an impact. It sounds quite upsetting and traumatising but I trust Aardman to do it in a fun way. “All over the world you’ve got these A vegan morality tale? Chicken Run sequel puts factory farming in spotlight Catherine Shoard Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget is set in a poultry farm that makes chicken nuggets. Photograph: Aardman/Netflix Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget director Sam Fell. Photograph: Ash Knotek/Shutterstock The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 38 Arts Continued on page 39

vast numbers of animals confined indoors. Art is supposed to reflect a dark reality. So all power to them.” The reach of Chicken Run 2 is hard to overestimate. The first film remains the most successful stop-motion movie ever made. It took £180m ($225m) at the box office in 2000; more than £400m when adjusted for inflation. Its sequel is also out on Netflix at the same time as in cinemas. Netflix, says McIlwain, is becoming an “arbiter of change” in the field. Over the past few years, he says, the Vegetarian Society’s membership has been significantly swelled by people affected by two Netflix documentaries: Cowspiracy, about the environmental footprint of the meat industry, and Game Changers, about the health benefits of veganism. “And just this week you had David Attenborough extolling the virtues of a plant-based diet on Planet Earth 3. So we’re at the cusp of a wave. This messaging is becoming more mainstream.” Children’s movies from studios such as Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks have tended to avoid the issue, perhaps with an eye on fast-food outlet tie-in deals, which form a key pillar of such films’ merchandising and promotional push. Even figurines from the gently pescatarian Finding Nemo were given away with McDonald’s Happy Meals – Filet-OFish included. Aardman’s independence allows it more editorial scope. And, Wallace’s Wensleydale habit aside, its films have long advocated for more symbiotic relationships between humans and animals. It’s also worth remembering that the first Chicken Run equated an egg farm with a prisoner-of-war camp. The new film is set a few years later, in the early 1950s, at the birth of fast food. The chicken nugget factory is a vast, Dr Strangelove-meetsBond-villain concrete complex, with the chickens helter-skeltered into a Day-Glo faux-funfair. Their only escape is a pink and blue escalator, complete with lights and music, which transports the beatific chosen ones to the nuggetmaker. While other films have expressed scepticism about eating meat more widely, Chicken Run 2 ups the ante by putting a specific foodstuff in the crosshairs. About 2.3bn servings of chicken nuggets are consumed in the US each year, and the product is a key offering of chains including McDonald’s, KFC and Burger King – only the last of which offers a vegan nugget alternative. A 2013 study in the American Journal of Medicine found at least half the content of the chicken nuggets sold by two fast-food chains in the US was fat, with muscle second, followed by tissue and bone. A survey conducted last month in the UK found that almost a fifth of 2,000 adults “couldn’t live without” nuggets, while 13% would choose them as a final meal. Commissioned by plant-based manufacturer Impossible Foods, the survey also suggested 16% of people preferred vegan nuggets. Reis Esiroglu, the founder of the UK’s first nuggets-only restaurant, Nugs, in Romford, east London, would dispute such findings. He reports that the chicken variety accounts for 95% of his sales. A shift towards vegan alternatives would be welcome as profit margins on cauliflower nuggets are considerably higher, “but I don’t really see demand going down for chicken nuggets in our company.” “I do hope McDonald’s have a dropoff though,” he said. “I hate to think how they make them. Ours are high-end top quality.” All the major fast food outlets contacted by the Guardian, including McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC and Nando’s, declined to comment, as did the National Farmers’ Union and a range of nugget retailers and producers, including Findus, Birds Eye and Iceland. Veganuary’s Glover says that public inertia over demanding higher welfare standards –around 95% of the chickens eaten in the UK are factory-farmed – is down to the meat industry’s monopoly on lobbying and skill at sugarcoating. “People want to know where their food is coming from but they also don’t want to know. People would prefer to trust what is told to them rather than delve deeper.” Concerns over climate change have further fuelled chicken consumption as people anxious about the emissions involved in beef and lamb production switch to poultry. “So the number of animals affected in the system increases substantially. A chicken has two legs and two breasts. A cow would feed a lot of people.” For Makin, the Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget comes at a crucial time. “There’s definitely been a deceleration in excitement about veganism,” he says. Turkey Twizzlers – the much-decried Bernard Matthews meat spirals – began manufacture again in 2020, 13 years after Jamie Oliver spearheaded a successful campaign to get them off the shelves. Makin hopes a new generation will seize the ethical baton – and that their parents may this time run with it. “We do a lot of disassociating from our feelings about food in general. We can’t all cope with the emotions that come with knowing about the human or animal suffering involved in an industrialised food system.”Sticking to our first instincts could be the answer. “We all do a lot of blinkering and unlearning. Perhaps we should look to children more as I think how they feel when they first learn where meat comes from is probably what a lot of us feel deep down.” The sinister factory at the centre of Chicken Run 2 bears the enigmatic slogan, “Where chickens find their happy endings.” Many hope the film may hasten just that. From The Hours and Still Alice to The Hunger Games and Boogie Nights, Julianne Moore’s career has spanned blockbusters and romantic comedies, period dramas, low-budget horror and indie cult classics. She inhabits each role with empathy and meticulous attention to detail, and her latest, Gracie in Todd Haynes’s seductive, slippery May December, is no exception. In her 30s, Gracie scandalised America by having a sexual relationship with Joe, a 13-year-old boy. She’s served her time in jail, married Joe and raised three children when Natalie Portman as Elizabeth, a Hollywood celebrity, arrives to rake up the past in preparation to play Gracie in a movie. What drew you to the role of Gracie?Generally, when you find two women opposite each other in a script, they’re either in a love affair or it’s a familial relationship – very rarely do you see something where they’re equally matched, in a struggle for narrative dominance. Gracie has the story that she’s telling and she has the reality of having committed this enormous transgression, and in between there’s this unbelievable fragility and emotional volatility and shame. It was shot in just 23 days, yet you have this intense on-screen dynamic with Natalie Portman. Did you already know each other? I knew her a little bit socially from Hollywood events and saw her once at a Stevie Wonder concert, but I think we work very similarly. We both do a great deal of preparation, and we’re serious about our work and maybe not so serious about ourselves. The research Elizabeth does for her role takes a darkly immersive turn. Did any aspect of her process resonate with you?Even for this, Gracie is a home baker, so I went to visit a woman who’s a home baker, and I visited a florist who showed me how to arrange flowers and gave me specific language. You’re hopefully not like Elizabeth, who is vampiric, but you’re there to learn, otherwise there’s going to be someone in the audience who’s like, ‘That’s not how you do it!’ People see that stuff and it takes them out of the movie. Tell me about your decision to give Gracie a lisp.The narrative Gracie is promoting is that she was a princess who was rescued by her prince, but of course that prince was 13 years old, so to keep the story afloat, she has to elevate that boy to a man, and she remains forever a child. I thought about what I could have, in terms of signifiers, for Gracie to tell her story, and the lisp was something concrete for Natalie to be able to copy, because she was basing her character on mine. This is your fifth film with director Todd Haynes. Has he ever come to you with a project you’ve said no to?No. I never imagined when I auditioned for Safe 30 years ago that it would be a collaboration that would last this long, but he’s a phenomenal artist and he’s so interested in stories about identity and performance and culture and gender – all of the things that really thrill me. I feel less excited by action in a movie, but if you give me a dramatic relationship between two people, I’m riveted. We have really similar tastes in that sense. You’ve played some really complex, compelling characters. Are you at all haunted by any of them? Do they stick with you?You’re always looking forward in film. My job is to be as prepared as possible, to really know my lines, to know how I feel and do all my research, so that the scene can happen at that moment on camera. There’s something electric about it, but then you’re like, “Next!” It’s almost like eating candy. You don’t think, “Oh, that was great”, you just want more. How do you find what’s needed to play some of the messier, wilder roles you’ve tackled?You play a facsimile of these people. You do all the work, then you use your imagination to get as close as possible to the story. When you read a great book, you almost feel you’re inhabiting it, and to me that’s what it feels like when I’m acting. The great thing is that film-making is such a collaborative medium; I’m not in that book by myself, we’re all in there. It’s this wonderful experience of play, and of pretend, but also a desire to understand behaviour. Are you a big reader? What are your books of the year?I’ve always loved to read. This year I loved Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner and Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, Elliot Page’s book, Pageboy, and the Mike Nichols biography by Mark Harris. Also Michael Cunningham’s Day. For which you’ve just recorded the audiobook, right? What is it that you love about his writing in particular? He’s famous for these long and complicated and emotionally evocative sentences. Trying to say them fluently, giving them the right emphasis and all of that – I’m like, “Wow, this is loaded prose.” I bow down to him, he’s an exquisite writer. The Sag-Aftra strike recently ended after 118 days. What was it like having so much free time?I’d been having a really crazy year, so I thought it would feel relaxing. Of course, it didn’t. It was agonising because so many people were out of work and there was a tremendous amount of collateral damage. It’s not just actors, it’s everybody in the industry, even people who do catering and security. We were all very anxious to get back to work. What do you do when you’re not working?Like every other woman in the world, I do ceramics. I want to see my friends, but I get tired of having lunch – this is a way for us to do something together and talk. Do you ever give your pottery as gifts?I do, I give most of it away but not for Christmas, because really, who wants that for Christmas? Have you got any exciting festive plans?My kids are now 21 and 26 and we still have Christmas at home. We do stockings and Christmas crackers, and a big Christmas dinner and go for a walk. We’re going to the theatre, too – I got tickets for Merrily We Roll Along and we’re going to see Sweeney Todd because I love a musical and I love Stephen Sondheim, so I’m very excited about that. May December is available on Sky Cinema now Julianne Moore: ‘Like every other woman in the world, I do ceramics’ Hephzibah Anderson Julianne Moore: ‘If you give me a dramatic relationship between two people, I’m riveted.’ Photograph: Charlotte Hadden/Together Associates Moore in Todd Haynes’s Far from Heaven, 2002. May December is her fifth collaboration with the director. Photograph: Focus Features/Allstar Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian Arts 39 Continued from page 38 My job is almost like eating candy. You don’t think, ‘Oh, that was great’, you just want more

The director Paul King, the magician behind the two Paddington movies and now Wonka, has a formula. Sweet-natured, sweet-toothed dreamers arrive in a strange land where they are forced to overcome adversity by employing, among other things, their passion and skill for creating sugar-based foodstuffs. King’s trademark box-of-delights storytelling approach combines showy, gymnastically agile editing and a disarmingly handmade, artisanal quality to the production design. At times, his films can venture a little too far towards a quirky, Etsy shop aesthetic, but for the most part, the alchemic King’s approach continues to create gold. Wonka is an effervescent pleasure – an endlessly, intricately charming treasure trove of a movie. And overall, Timothée Chalamet’s fresh-faced take on the central character – bringing a puckish innocence and spry, lightfooted energy to one of the most famously jaded misanthropes in children’s literature – works rather well. An origin story that traces the formative period in the early life of confectioner extraordinaire Willy Wonka, the film dances its way through some unexpectedly dark themes. Foremost of these is the fact that the illiterate Willy, so preoccupied with chocolate that he neglected to learn to read, fails to comprehend some crucial small print and finds himself trafficked into forced labour in a laundry, run by the leering Mrs Scrubbit (Olivia Colman) and her henchman Bleacher (Tom Davis). But there he meets a band of allies, all in hock to the treacherous Scrubbit, and forms a firm friendship with resourceful orphan Noodle (Calah Lane). Willy has ambitions that extend far beyond the sweating walls of the laundry, however, and with his suitcase-sized chocolate laboratory, he is able to continue his candy-crafting endeavours even while imprisoned in a garret. He soon devises an ingenious escape and causes quite a stir with a direct marketing exercise involving levitating candies. Willy’s moment of triumph backfires, though, and he incurs the wrath of the chocolate cartel (Paterson Joseph, Matt Lucas and Mathew Baynton). The three bonbon dons meet Willy’s chocolate-making genius with a spot of equally creative corporate malfeasance. There’s one final problem. A small orange man who describes himself as an OompaLoompa (Hugh Grant, great fun) keeps turning up and stealing Willy’s stash of chocolate-making ingredients. While King added claws and genuine peril to the bumbling cuddliness of Paddington (2014) – Nicole Kidman’s scalpel-wielding, fetish gearclad vivisectionist remains one of the most authentically terrifying characters ever to sneak into a PG movie – here he takes the opposite approach, softening the savagery and toning down the bracing malice of Wonka as a character. The Chalamet version of the chocolatier showman has plenty of Paddington-esque positivity, but lacks the quixotic cruelty of Gene Wilder’s foppish cynic (1971). And fortunately, he also has very little in common with Johnny Depp’s take on the character, in Tim Burton’s 2005 film, which reimagined Wonka as a putty-faced sociopath who looks like his chocolate tastes of hand sanitiser. In contrast, Chalamet’s half-formed boy-man is an adorably perky optimist who is only ever a heel click away from a full song and dance number (more of which later). This shift certainly makes Wonka more relatable, but distances him from the spite and spikiness of Roald Dahl’s writing. Take the cruelty out of one element of a Dahl story, however, and it’s apt to pop up elsewhere, whac-a-mole style. I’m no great fan of fat jokes, but if nothing else, a rather mean running gag about the ever-increasing girth of a chocolate-addicted corrupt cop (Keegan-Michael Key) certainly felt true to the spirit of Dahl. It’s worth confirming at this point that Wonka is very much a musical, a fact that the trailer goes to great lengths to conceal. And on the strength of a single viewing, the music – original songs by Neil Hannon (the singer-songwriter of the Divine Comedy), score by Joby Talbot – holds up reasonably well. There are no immediate eargrabbing bangers, but no precisionmoulded, wipe-clean, production-line pap either. But where the film excels is in the wildly inventive musical set pieces. A central sequence in which Wonka launches a guerrilla sweetdistribution operation is a giddily ingenious sugar rush that uses every last square inch of the densely detailed set. And a rooftop aerial helium balloon dance sends our spirits soaring skywards, along with the cast members. Wonka review – Timothée Chalamet delights in fizzing Chocolate Factory prequel Wendy Ide ‘Only ever a heel click away from a full song and dance number’: Timothée Chalamet in Wonka. Alamy Over the past decade, the hard-blowing sound of Shabaka Hutchings’s saxophone has been a constant of the British jazz scene. Working through short, percussive phrases in the double-drummer group Sons of Kemet, laying out long, looping lines in the psychedelic jazz trio Comet Is Coming, or screeching in the punk-influenced Melt Yourself Down, throughout myriad formations the power of Hutchings’s playing remains immediate. The intensity of that musicianship has taken its toll, since Hutchings recently announced that from 2024 he will be taking a break from the saxophone to focus on the gentle sonics of other woodwinds instead. Tonight’s performance is his last on the sax and the program is apt: an interpretation of pioneering saxophonist John Coltrane’s 1965 spiritual jazz masterpiece, A Love Supreme. A half-hour suite that riffs on the syllabic rhythm of the record’s title, A Love Supreme requires communal unity to ground its repeated melodies, as much as it does individual virtuosity to soar. Across his 90-minute set, Hutchings strikes this balance perfectly. Accompanied by an all-star band of contemporaries, featuring four drummers and two bassists, Hutchings launches into a full-throated blast of the record’s theme on his tenor sax, alternating between crisp lines and frenetic, finger-twisting runs. On Part Two of the suite, Resolution, he cuts free from form entirely, pushed by his quadruple drums to sing higher and higher until his sax is squealing between his hands. There is power aplenty but Hutchings also excels as a bandleader. At one point leading all four percussionists in a polyrhythmic drum break, Hutchings pierces with blasts of a piccolo flute to bring them to Part Three: Pursuance. His Sons of Kemet drummers Eddie Hick and Tom Skinner provide competing waves of pounding grooves but Hutchings is nimble, dancing over the changes and closing on an unaccompanied sax solo that descends from a circular breathing stream of arpeggios into the gentle rustle of only his breath. Here Hutchings displays both the force and tenderness of his instrument through moments of dynamic control and unfettered freedom. He might be sacrificing his sax, but Hutchings has already cemented himself as one of its great practitioners, promising only greater heights for his next instrumental pursuit. Shabaka Hutchings review – soaring to unfettered heights Ammar Kalia Intense … Shabaka Hutchings at Hackney Church. Photograph: Mariana dos Santos Pires The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 40 Arts Take the cruelty out of one element of a Dahl story, and it’s apt to pop up elsewhere, whac-amole style

The goth glam trend, inspired by the Addams family, was all over AW23’s runways. The word “trend” makes me shudder, but I get the need to modernise a look. Just don’t be too literal. For a festive iteration, think: what would happen if Wednesday Addams met Studio 54 and a bit of restraint? So if you go for the goth eyes try a sheer finish. If black’s too much, try dark bronze. And if dark lipstick strikes fear, go nude. Morticia would be mortified, but at least you’ll look like you. 1.Vieve Eye Wand in Raven £23, vieve.co.uk2.RMS Beauty Legendary Serum Lipstick £33, spacenk.com3.Ruby Hammer Precision Liquid Eyeliner £19, rubyhammer.co.uk4.Chanel Le Vernis Long Wear Nail Colour in Sequins £29, chanel.com5.Victoria Beckham Lid Lustre in Mink £33, victoriabeckhambeauty.com I can’t do without… A moisturising mask that actually does live up to the hype As a beauty journalist, I pride myself on not recommending a beauty brand or product simply because it is big on social media. That said, when you consistently hear about a product going viral across the digital landscape, it becomes impossible for your ears not to prick up. Bubble Skincare is one such brand. In the past six months, it has gained 1.4m followers on TikTok, its fun, bouncy content has garnered more than 1bn views and its packaging is cute, compact and colourful. It is oh so easy to dismiss the hype around it to the youthful over exuberance of its community. But I’ve tried the products. The hype is justified; it is also the fastest-growing skincare brand in the US – and you don’t have to be of the TikTok generation for it to work for you. I am particularly taken with the Hydrating Sleep Mask. The texture is very creamy, but not heavy, so no fear of greasiness. Ingredients include Maple Sap – protects the skin barrier – and mandelic and kojic acids (wonderful for skin brightening). It hydrates dry skin, balances oiliness and stands up to extreme situations – I tested it out on a 12-hour flight and I couldn’t believe how rested I looked when I got off the plane. As with all Bubble’s skincare products, this mask falls under the £20 mark. Considering all the benefits, it is an easy win. Bubble Overnight Hydrating Sleep Mask, £19, beautybay.com On my radar… star products for a smoother face and soft hands Surface tension Relevant, the skincare line by beauty veteran Nyakio Grieco, has launched in the UK. This resurfacing toner, which refines skin texture and combats discoloration, is excellent. Relevant Sol Tone Resurface & Glow Solution, £56, sephora.co.uk While you sleep With liquorice and narcissus to even skin tone, bakuchiol (a plant alternative to retinol) to improve skin elasticity and hyaluronic acid to plump skin, this is the ultimate night serum. Votary Night Star Serum, £105, votary.co.uk Hand in hand If you can bear to give it away, this luxe handcream – a blend of bergamot, blackcurrant, shea butter, rosehip and almond oils – would make a great gift. Dries van Noten Soie Malaquais, £48, driesvannoten.com Follow Funmi on X @FunmiFetto Unleash your inner gothic glam Funmi Fetto Dark arts: gothic makeup done well can be breathtaking. Photograph: Armando Grillo/Spotlight Machines to magic carbon out of the air, artificial intelligence, indoor vertical farms to grow food for our escape to Mars, and even solar-powered “responsible” yachts: the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai has been festooned with the promise of technological fixes for worsening global heating and ecological breakdown. The UN climate talks have drawn a record number of delegates to a sprawling, freshly built metropolis, which has as its centrepiece an enormous dome that emits sounds and lights up in different colours at night. The two-week programme is laden with talks, events and demonstrations of the need for humanity to innovate its way out of the climate crisis. Given the ponderous action by governments to cut planet-heating emissions – the world is still hurtling towards disastrous climate breakdown – the tech focus is helpful, said Bill Gates, the multi-billionaire Microsoft co-founder, as he ventured into the Dubai sunshine. “I’m most optimistic about the incredible innovation,” he said. “People’s willingness to pay for climate is limited … We need to really innovate. You have to create the new before you shut down the old.” AI has been touted at Cop28 as a way to track emissions and has been used by young climate activists to send “compelling messages from the future” by artificially ageing them to represent themselves in the year 2050. An exhibition has featured people pitching climate innovations via hologram, while a company has promoted the idea of making aviation fuel out of the fruit of macaúba palm trees in Brazil. Some of the innovations feel particularly apt for the United Arab Emirates, a petrostate and coastal playground of the super-rich, such as an event to promote “responsible yachting”, held on Tuesday. The enormous emissions from yachts are “scary”, a spokesman for Sunreef Yachts, which positions itself as an eco-yacht company, conceded. But they added: “The yachting environment is very diverse. We are here to discuss the alternatives.” But this fixation has alarmed some scientists and climate activists, who warn that technologies are being used to distract from the primary task of stopping fossil fuels being burned. Cop28’s president, Sultan Al Jaber, also the head of the UAE’s national oil company, has questioned the feasibility of a fossil fuel phase-out. A record number of fossil fuel lobbyists are at this Cop, including Darren Woods, chief executive of Exxon, who has said he wants an “emphasis put on a problem statement of eliminating emissions, versus a problem statement focused on the oil and gas industry per se.” “It’s frightening because they see this as a new business opportunity, a new way to make money and continue as before,” said Pierre Friedlingstein, a climate researcher at the University of Exeter, of the hopes being ladled upon carbon removal technologies. Total current technology-based CO2 removal, excluding nature-based means such as planting new forests, removes just 0.01m tonnes of CO2, according to recent research led by Friedlingstein, which is more than a million times smaller than current fossil fuel CO2 emissions. Despite its small scale, voluminous carbon removal techniques are relied upon in many climate models and plans by countries and companies to avoid breaching a 1.5C rise in global temperatures since pre-industrial times and unleashing catastrophic heatwaves, droughts, floods and other impacts. “They will scale this up, and if they do it by a factor of 100 in the next 10 to 20 years, that would be amazing, but they won’t scale up by a factor of 1 million,” said Friedlingstein. “There is no alternative to reducing emissions massively. These technologies are a distraction, a way to pretend we are dealing with the issue, but we aren’t. “We have housing insulation, we have electric vehicles, we have renewables, we have batteries. Scaling them up is not trivial, but we don’t need a magical new technology for the first 90% of this problem.” Greater efforts will be needed on “carbon management” – which includes directly removing carbon as well as capturing emissions at their source from industrial facilities and somehow storing them – if climate goals are to be met, negotiators from countries including the US, UK, Brazil and Kenya agreed at Cop28 on Wednesday. Keeping to 1.5C is “simply not possible” without the use of carbon capture and storage (CCS), said John Kerry, the US climate envoy, at the meeting. “This is not a US position, it’s a matter of science,” he said. “If we don’t have carbon capture, we can’t get to net zero.” Kerry acknowledged the yawning gap to the amount of emission reduction needed, but added: “We’ve got to try.” Capturing carbon is no substitute for cutting emissions and ramping up clean energy, agreed Majid Al Suwaidi, the UAE’s lead climate negotiator, but “the reality is, we need to deal with the energy systems we have while we build the energy systems we want”. ‘Magical’ tech innovations a distraction from real solutions, climate experts warn Oliver Milman in Dubai The Al Wasl Plaza Dome at Expo City in Dubai, where the climate summit has drawn record numbers of delegates. Photograph: Kamran Jebreili/AP Bill Gates speaking at Cop28. Photograph: COP 28/Getty Images Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian Fashion / Environment 41 Continued on page 42

Global emissions must be cut nearly in half this decade and then to net zero by 2050, and about 10% of this will probably have to come from carbon management techniques, said Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency. Birol said that the sweeping expectations placed upon such technologies have largely fallen flat so far: “When I look at the last 15 years or so, the story of CCS is, to say the least, a disappointing one.” Countries are negotiating whether to include a phase-out of fossil fuels in the Cop28 agreement and a final deal may include language around “unabated” emissions. This would place fresh onus upon carbon removal and CCS – but also come at a cost. An extra 86bn tonnes of greenhouse gases could be released by 2050 if CCS is relied upon but underperforms, a new report by Climate Analytics has warned, while a major buildout and use of this technology will cost the world an extra $1tn a year, a separate study by Oxford University has found. But the lack of urgency in cutting emissions – 2023 is about to set new records in both heat and carbon pollution – means that no options should be discounted, according to Steve Smith, executive director of Oxford Net Zero. “You can’t take anything off the table if you want to meet our climate goals,” he said. “There’s not much scope for either/or. It’s both/and. This technology isn’t a false solution – there’s no one solution.” For countries in the teeth of the climate crisis, though, nothing but the end of the fossil fuel era will be enough. Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, which is at severe risk from rising sea levels and other hazards stemming from global heating, said she welcomed a commitment to ramp up renewable energy and other technologies, but said coal, oil and gas still needed to abandoned. “We can’t afford to not address the root cause of this problem,” she said. “We also cannot afford to pretend there are other pathways to retrieving 1.5C when so many lives are at stake.” The Australian climate change minister, Chris Bowen, has told nearly 200 countries at the Cop28 summit that the use of fossil fuels in energy systems must end. This came as the president of the Cop, Sultan Al Jaber, convened a majlis – a meeting in the traditional form of an elders’ conference in the United Arab Emirates – between all countries late on Sunday in an attempt to reach consensus on points of deadlock, including whether fossil fuels should be phased out or phased down. The two-week conference has just a day and a half of official negotiating time left before it is scheduled to end on Tuesday morning. Bowen told the majlis that a global stocktake for the summit had found the world was not on track to stay within 1.5C of heating, and the response “must be anchored in keeping 1.5 alive”. He said global emissions must peak by 2025 and be cut by 43% by 2030 and 60% by 2035 compared with 2019 levels, and that renewable energy should be tripled by 2030. “I think that should be reflected in the outcome,” he said. “We also must face this fact head on: if we are to keep 1.5C alive, fossil fuels have no ongoing role to play in our energy systems – and I speak as the climate and energy minister of one of the world’s largest fossil fuel exporters. And we embrace that fact and acknowledge it because we also live in the Pacific, and we are not going to see our brothers and sisters inundated and their countries swallowed by the seas.” Bowen said there were “many ways” the language adopted at the talks could reflect that fossil fuels did not have a future, and told the president: “We’ll be flexible with you to find the pathway to give you the chance you need to write that into history.” He signalled that could include attaching the word “unabated” to any decision about phasing out fossil fuels. Unabated is a controversial and undefined term at climate talks that is usually taken to mean fossil fuels can continue if their emissions are being reduced through the use of carbon capture and storage, a technology that has not proven commercially viable. Bowen said talking about abatement of fossil fuels in a deal should not be seen as a justification for countries to just keep using them. “We don’t need to phase out fossil fuel emissions, we need to end the use of fossil fuels in our energy systems, with abatement as a backstop and goalkeeper, not as an excuse for delay or inaction,” he said. His intervention came in an often impassioned session in which Al Jaber asked countries to speak without notes or a prepared speech. Diego Pacheco, chief spokesperson for the Like Minded Group of Developing Countries that includes China, India and Saudi Arabia, had earlier accused the US, Norway, Australia and Canada of hypocrisy for supporting an agreement to phase out fossil fuels while planning to expand their own production. Saudi Arabia has been accused of holding the talks hostage by opposing strong language to phase out fossil fuels, and instead wanting a reference to fossil fuel emissions. There are also differences between wealthy nations and more recently emerging economies such as China over relative responsibility for cutting emissions and funding for vulnerable countries. Vanuatu’s climate change minister, Ralph Regenvanu, told the Guardian he backed a call by Pacific and small island states for a deal to completely phaseout fossil fuels and fossil fuel subsidies, and an immediate halt to fossil fuel expansion. “There’s a big push back on having unabated in there,” he said. “If it is in there it would have to be ring-fenced and time bound.” Regenvanu said while he did not agree with Bowen on “unabated” his country was “really happy with what Australia has been saying at this Cop”. “It’s a real change,” he said. He said the major problem with Australia’s stance remained its huge coal and gas exports. He called on countries to back a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty as it would require countries to act on the coal, gas and oil they exported and not just what they used at home. Bowen’s position on abated fossil fuels drew sharp criticism from climate campaigners. Greenpeace’s Pacific adviser, Shiva Gounden, said the minister had the opportunity to “speak from a place of empathy” during the majlis but instead had been disrespectful. “He spoke like Australia was the moral authority on climate justice now, while the country still expands new fossil fuel projects,” he said. The director of Climate Solutions for Australia, Barry Traill, said much of Bowen’s speech was a “clear and blunt explanation” of how fossil fuels must be removed but it was frustrating that he had supported a word that could be used by “frankly bullshit projects stating that they will remove pollution after it’s been put into the atmosphere”. Beyond the future of fossil fuels, another major sticking point at the talks is developing countries’ anger over a lack of support from the wealthy to help them adapt to the effects of the climate crisis. The president was expected to draw up a draft agreement text overnight Sunday UAE time before negotiations resume on Monday. Chris Bowen tells Cop28 to ‘end the use of fossil fuels’ in energy systems as talks try to break deadlock Adam Morton in Dubai Chris Bowen, Australia’s climate change and energy minister, speaks at the Cop28 climate summitin Dubai. Photograph: Kamran Jebreili/ AP Reforming the world’s food systems will be a key step in limiting global temperature rises, the UN has said, as it set out the first instalment of a roadmap for providing food and farming while staying within 1.5C. Food production is highly vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis, with research suggesting that as much as a third of global food could be at risk from global heating. Agriculture and livestock farming are also major sources of greenhouse gas emissions, contributing roughly a 10th of global carbon output directly, and more than double that if the conversion of natural habitat to farming is included. Until now, however, the UN has held back from setting out in detail how the world can both meet the nutritional needs of a growing population, which is forecast to reach 10 billion by 2050, and reduce global greenhouse gases to net zero by the same date. The latter is required to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Maximo Torero, the chief economist for the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), told the Guardian: “We need to act to reduce hunger, and to stay within 1.5C. This is about rebalancing global food systems.” For instance, he said, in some parts of the world there was over-conUN sets out roadmap to combat global hunger amid climate crisis Fiona Harvey in Dubai The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 42 Environment Continued from page 41 Continued on page 43

sumption of protein, but in other regions people did not get enough protein. Some regions could benefit from using less chemical fertiliser, but other areas were not using enough. In some regions, livestock rearing should be intensified, but in others the focus should be on restoring degraded pasture land. The roadmap will be laid out over the next two to three years, starting with a document published at Cop28 in Dubai that contains 20 key targets to be met between 2025 and 2050, but little detail on how they can be met. Further detail on how the aspirations can be achieved will be set out in future instalments at the next two Cop summits. The targets include: reducing methane emissions from livestock by 25% by 2030; ensuring all the world’s fisheries are sustainably managed by 2030; safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030; halving food waste by 2030; eliminating the use of traditional biomass for cooking by 2030. Torero said the plan would not include calls for a meat tax, which some experts have advocated, but would examine measures to tax sugar, salt and super-processed foods, and better food labelling. More climate finance should be devoted to agriculture, he added, which accounts for only about 4% of climate finance today. He also called for much more efficient use of agricultural land and resources. Emile Frison, an expert at IPESFood (the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems), said: “The FAO should be applauded for this first step in laying out a plan to eliminate extreme hunger and the third of greenhouse gases that come from food systems, and particularly for its emphasis on a just transition – it is not easy.” But he said the plan did not go far enough. “This current draft puts a huge emphasis on incremental changes to the current industrial food system. But this is a flawed system that is wrecking nature, polluting the environment, and starving millions of people,” he said. “These efficiency-first proposals are unlikely to be enough to get us off the high-pollution, high-fossil-fuel, high-hunger track we are on.” He called for more radical proposals in the coming instalments. “The next rounds of this process will need to go much further in proposing a real transformation of the status quo, by putting much more emphasis on diversification, shorter supply chains and agroecology, and on tackling the massive power inequalities imposed by a handful of companies that define what we grow and eat.” Ruth Davis, a fellow at the European Climate Foundation, and senior associate at Oxford’s Smith School, said: “The world desperately needs a roadmap which points us to a fairer, more resilient and sustainable future for food systems. The FAO has made a useful start but it doesn’t take us all the way to the destination we need.” She called for a much stronger focus on nature, which she said would be crucial to ensuring food security. “Goals and targets for protecting and restoring nature, agreed by 188 governments last year in a historic global deal [to protect 30% of the planet for nature by 2030] must guide the next iteration of the FAO roadmap, or we all risk being on the road to nowhere.” Claire McConnell, of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, said the FAO must also be more inclusive. “Looking to future iterations of the roadmap, broader engagement with stakeholders – in particular smallholder farmers, women and Indigenous peoples – will be key to both capturing the invaluable knowledge these communities hold and for ensuring acceptance, uptake and implementation of the roadmap,” she said. Cows at the Floating Farm in the Netherlands. The farm’s owners say its approach is a way to feed cities as the climate crisis spurs extreme weather and flooding. Photograph: Patrick Post/AP Ministers and negotiators must come to the vital final meetings of Cop28 without prepared statements, without rigid red lines, and be prepared to compromise, the president of the UN climate summit has said. Sultan Al Jaber, whose position is now pivotal to the talks as they enter their final days, on Sunday convened a majlis of all countries, a meeting in the traditional form of an elders’ conference in the United Arab Emirates. The climate talks have reached an impasse over whether to phase out or phase down fossil fuels, with just a day and a half of official negotiating time left before the fortnight-long summit is scheduled to conclude on Tuesday morning. “I want everyone to come prepared with solutions,” said Al Jaber, who has faced criticism over his other role as head of the UAE national oil company, Adnoc. “I want everyone to come ready to be flexible and to accept compromise. I told everyone not to come with any prepared statements, and no prescribed positions. I really want everyone to rise above self-interests and to start thinking of the common good.” But there is some optimism coming from the discussions. Catherine Abreu, the executive director of Destination Zero, said: “In eight years of attending climate talks, I have never felt more that we were talking about what really matters. Hearing ministers from all around the world talk straight about the realities of phasing out fossil fuels is something I could not have imagined happening in this process even two years ago. “What’s clear after this Majlis dialogue at Cop28 is that there is overwhelming consensus that phasing out fossil fuels and scaling up renewable energy is absolutely necessary to hold to the promise of the Paris Agreement and keep the hope of 1.5 alive. It is also clear that the task ahead is enormous, and will require courage and conviction. Rich countries need to provide the financial and technological support to make it happen, and equity demands that those with greater responsibility move first.” The question of the future of fossil fuels is the main sticking point, but not the only one. Developing countries are also angry that their calls for help with adapting to the effects of the climate crisis have not been answered by rich countries at the talks. Adaptation finance refers to the funds needed to improve the infrastructure of poor countries, for instance to set up early warning systems of storms or other extreme weather events, or stronger bridges that do not wash away in floods, or help to grow mangrove swamps to protect coastlines. Any “balanced package” coming out of the talks will need to contain far greater reassurances on adaptation funding – poor countries have long sought a doubling of the finance available – than has currently been tabled. Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at the Climate Action Network, a coalition of almost 2,000 climate groups, expressed concerns at the draft text on adaptation, arguing that although “the finance gap is highlighted, and developed countries are urged to double finance from 2019 levels by 2025 … the text doesn’t reflect the urgency or mention the latest UN adaptation gap report which said finance for adaptation needed to reach $194-366bn (£155-290bn) a year”. He said he was also worried there could be more delay to setting specific measurable targets for global adaptation, which is key if the summit is to be meaningful. Al Jaber reassured developing countries that their voices were being heard. “We will not neglect any issue, we will not neglect or undermine or underestimate any of the views or the national circumstances of any region or any country,” he said. The Guardian understands that Al Jaber held meetings on Sunday with all the major groups of developing countries, including the Alliance of Small Island States, who are pushing hard for an unequivocal phase-out of fossil fuels, the Basic countries, the least developed countries and others. On fossil fuels, the possibility of agreeing a full phase-out of fossil fuels is still on the table, but is under fierce attack from Saudi Arabia and some other oil-producing countries. However, China appears to have shifted position from blocking such a commitment to seeking a compromise. Before the talks began, Al Jaber said he was cooperating closely with Saudi Arabia, a neighbour and close regional ally of UAE, to try to get a deal. He reported then that the country was engaging “constructively, with positivity”. In the final days, countries are relying on Al Jaber to broker a “balanced package” that addresses fossil fuels, keeps the vital goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels within reach, and meets the financial needs of the developing world. He called on all countries to step up. “We have a unique opportunity, it is our opportunity to deliver an outcome that is based on the science lead by the science and equipped by the science that keeps 1.5C within reach. And that will help transform econ- ‘Come with solutions’: Cop28 president calls for compromise in final meetings Fiona Harvey, Nina Lakhani and Patrick Greenfield in Dubai Sultan Al Jaber: ‘I told everyone not to come with any prepared statements, and no prescribed positions.’ Photograph: Martin Divíšek/EPA Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian Environment 43 Continued from page 42 Continued on page 44

omies for generations to come,” he said. He added: “Failure, or lack of progress, or watering down my ambition is not an option. What we’re after is the common good.” Diego Pacheco, chief spokesperson for the Like-Minded Group of Developing Countries that includes China and India alongside oil producers such as Saudi Arabia, Bolivia and Syria, said that for any agreement to be reached on a fossil fuel phase-out or phasedown, developed countries would need to take the lead in providing financial assistance to the poor. Mary Robinson, chair of campaign group The Elders and former president of Ireland, asked for all countries to show true leadership, as Cop28 reached its critical final days. “Those at the negotiating table at Cop28 are steering the course of our shared future [but] the science tells us we are in grave danger of bequeathing our children a completely unliveable world,” said Robinson. “The nations thwarting progress are those with the greatest stakes in fossil fuels but also the most plentiful resources to act. Saudi Arabia and allies are holding talks hostage. However it is not the only country hindering progress: the USA, China, the EU and India have been happy to hide in the shadows cast.” Scientists are preparing plans to restore the fortunes of Scotland’s threatened Highland wildcats – by identifying and removing DNA they have acquired from domestic cats. Researchers have warned that the Highland tiger, as the wildcat is also known, is critically endangered because it has bred so much with domestic moggies. All animals now bear evidence of interbreeding, and many have little “wild” left in them. But by using modern genomics, scientists hope to reverse this process. Precise DNA maps of individual animals would be created to pinpoint those with high levels of wildcat genes. These will be bred with similarly endowed felines to create a new population, unaffected by domestic cat hybridisation, that can then be returned to the Scottish countryside. “The process is known as de-introgression and it is the scientific equivalent of trying to unscramble an egg,” said Dan Lawson of Bristol University, who is the genomics leader for the project. “We have animals with a mix of two sets of genes. Now we want to separate those sets and recreate Scotland’s original wildcat population. “It won’t be easy but the benefits will be considerable, not just for wildcats but for other endangered species that are being swamped, genetically, by similar animals.” British moggies are derived from the African wildcat Felix lybicaand tend to be smaller – and friendlier - than Felis silvestris,the European wildcat, from which the Scottish version is descended. Domestic cats moved into Europe as agriculture spread to the continent from the Middle East, and by Roman times they were established in Britain. The two species kept apart with little interbreeding for centuries, research has indicated. Wildcats have an aversion to humans while domestic cats find us moderately tolerable and occasionally useful. But that separation was eroded as the effects of loss of habitat, road accidents and spreading domestic cat populations accumulated, leading to a slump in wildcat numbers in the 20th century. “There were few places for the wildcat to hide, and survivors began to interbreed with domestic cats that had gone feral, producing hybrid offspring,” said Jo Howard-McCombe, a conservation geneticist at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland in Edinburgh. “However, that interbreeding only happened in earnest in the 1960s, after we’d established captive populations of wildcats in Scotland. So animals that had been taken to zoos and sanctuaries were not too badly affected by hybridisation. Conservationists got there just in time.” Using the descendants of these animals, a wildcat restoration programme, Saving Wildcats, was set up and this summer arranged for the release of 19 animals into a 600 sq km section of the Cairngorms national park known as Cairngorms Connect. Fitted with GPS collars, each animal is tracked to study how it copes with life in the wild, and the onset of winter in Scotland. A further 40 animals are set to be released over the next three years. “Wildcats survive on rabbits, mice, voles and occasional birds and hares. So far, our cats are doing well, though one has died from an abdominal infection,” said Helena Parsons, a manager for Saving Wildcats. Wildcats breed in December and January, with litters born in spring or early summer. “We are not expecting our cats to have kittens next year – they need time to get used to life in the wild. On the other hand, it would be fantastic if we did get a litter or two,” said Parsons. “GPS data shows some of the cats have met up over the past few months.” A critical feature of Saving Wildcats is to keep feral and domestic cats away from their release area, said Parsons. “We have over 100 camera traps out there, and every time we spot a cat we try to find out if it is a domestic one. If it is, we try to trace its owner and ask if it has been neutered. If it’s feral, we try to find it and get it sterilised.” The animals used for the Saving Wildcats programme were bred at a special centre, at the Highland Wildlife Park near Kingussie, using wildcats from zoos and wildlife parks across Britain. Stud book records and genetic tests suggest these have high levels of wildcat genes. Nevertheless, all are affected to some degree by hybridisation with domestic cats. It is the goal of the de-introgression programme – for increasing wildcat gene levels – to add an extra boost by exploiting the power of modern genomics. However, the project will not be a quick or an easy one, said programme scientist Prof Mark Beaumont of Bristol University. “The idea would be to have funds to monitor what is happening in the kittens as you progress, and that costs money. A whole genome of an individual cat sets you back about $200.” This point was backed by Lawson. “It will take 10 to 20 generations of careful breeding and genetic analysis to recover the complete wildcat genome,” he told the Observer. “That poses all sorts of problems, not least financial. But we’re applying for money to start. We should be clear: the breeding programme is our last chance to save the Scottish wildcat.” ‘Like unscrambling an egg’: scientists alter DNA to save Scottish wildcats Robin McKie A new generation of Highland wildcats is being bred to save the critically endangered species. Photograph: PB Images/Alamy A wildcat kitten at the Saving Wildcats restoration programme in the Cairngorms. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian His boots deep in winter mud, Greenwich Park community archaeologist Andrew Mayfield runs through the finds from the latest of the park’s volunteer digs. “We’ve found a swallow brooch, loads of clay pipes and coins, the lens of a sextant and, strangely, a Sony mobile that was buried pretty deep,” he says. Mayfield gestures at the volunteers, who range in age from 20s to 70-something, up to their waists in earthen trenches and armed with trowels and brushes. “We’re having a final push to uncover Charles II’s steps today,” Mayfield continues. “Steve and Karen over there are brushing up a good-looking vertical [step] for the photos.” The dig is part of a boom in community archaeology that is seeing everyone from children to retirees joining groups up and down the country excavating Britain’s history. Hundreds of volunteers, including primary school children, last month unearthed a 1,400-year-old “possible temple” near Sutton Hoo in Suffolk as part of an project which began three years ago. In Cardiff, schoolchildren were also involved in the excavation of bronze age Caerau hillfort in 2022, while further north, Newcastle University’s citizen science project, WallCap, is excavating and preserving Hadrian’s Wall with the help of locals. The Operation Nightingale scheme, in association with Wessex Archaeology, offers ex-servicemen injured in conflict the chance to take part in excavations on Salisbury Plain, while recent years have seen the emergence of have-a-go archaeologists digging up their own gardens with trowels bought online. Chloë Duckworth is the lead archaeologist on More4’s The Great British Dig: History in Your Back Garden and author of the accompanying book. She says that Britain’s historically densely populated lands make for rich pickings for amateurs, with back-garden archaeologists having turned up such treasures as Roman finds beneath children’s garden tramWild beasts and Charles II: amateur army digs for history in British parks and gardens Sally Howard Greenwich Park in London is one community archaeology location. Photograph: escapetheofficejob/Alamy Volunteers excavating in Suffolk in August this year. Photograph: Suffolk County Council/PA The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 44 Environment / Science Continued from page 43 Continued on page 45

polines. “Community archaeology, in particular, is great for wellbeing,” she said. “You’re doing something mindful, in the outdoors, with a team.” The dig on the summit of the hill on which stands the Royal Observatory in Greenwich Park is part of a threeyear, £12m lottery-funded park renovation that seeks to unearth the remains of a baroque water garden laid down by Charles II, dating from the 17th century, when the park was royal palace grounds. It follows the community excavation of a second world war air-raid shelter to the east of the park, and 2021 and 2022 digs of a Saxon burial mound and the remains of Pond’s Magnetic Observatory, an enclosure built in 1817 to analyse Earth’s magnetic field. The latest dig has uncovered trinkets that date from the park’s heyday as the setting for the bi-annual Greenwich fair. For more than a century from 1730 to 1857, 250,000 Londoners descended on the park at May Day and Whitsun to enjoy sweet wine and stout, don papier-mache comic noses and indulge in games such as “Kiss in the Ring” (in which a player can kiss any player he catches) and “tumbling”, which involved young women taken to the top and then dragged down Observatory hill and One Tree hill (then nicknamed “holiday hill”) in states of disarray. The latter is recounted by Charles Dickens in his 1836 Sketches by Boz: “The principal amusement is to drag young ladies up the steep hill which leads to the Observatory, and then drag them down again, at the very top of their speed, greatly to the derangement of their curls and bonnetcaps, and much to the edification of lookers-on from below,” Dickens writes, in a passage that delineates fair sights and sounds including, “oysters as large as cheese-plates”, the “bellowings of speaking-trumpets” and “occasional roars from the wild beast shows”. Greenwich historian Horatio Blood points out that pensioners from the Napoleonic wars made a brisk living renting out their telescopes at the fairs, in part for the purpose of peeping up tumbling women’s skirts. Greenwich fair was banned in 1857, in part, Blood points out, because of the number of broken bones and head injuries sustained by the tumbling revellers. Park regular and local Sarah Costley, 47, likes the fact that the dig has shed new light on Victorian Londoners. “In this day and age it seems a crazy thing to do to go out to the park and effectively flash people,” she says. “Were young ladies tumbling out of wild abandonment of propriety, or were they being pressured? Were they reckless, or were they led astray by their male peers? It’s eye-opening.” At the top of the dig, volunteer James Wisher, 22, a recent archaeology graduate, says he found remnants of a drinking jug, bone stems from smoking pipes and Victorian coins lower down, though finds at the top layer were minimal thanks to the clay layers that were dumped by later Victorians onto Charles II’s subsiding parterres. “I like to work out when the coins date from, from the changing faces of the monarchs,” he says. Finds such as these also help to date the layers the volunteers dig through, from the top layers of shingle to the compacted ochre and terracotta clays of earlier periods. The swallow brooch, an early find, was a forget-me-not traditionally gifted by Victorian naval men to their sweethearts. The growth in community digs such as this, which in Greenwich’s case has attracted overseas tourist volunteers as well as locals, coincides with the arrival of archaeology tours including the Vindolanda Charitable Trust’s digs of Roman Britain – its Hadrian’s Wall digs are fully booked for 2024 – and commercial outfit DigVentures, which leads group digs at sites including Lindisfarne in Northumberland, Weoley castle in the West Midlands and Sudeley castle in Gloucestershire. However, the rise in community digs has led to warnings from bodies including Historic England that storage space will soon run out, as finds increase at the same time as financially strained museums are closing their archives. The assumption of traditional archaeology is that “only white men are agents, economically and otherwise”, says feminist archaeologist Lucia Nixon, discussing the growing diversity in the archaeology corps that’s also seeing the emergence of advocacy groups such as Women in Archaeology and the Society of Black Archaeologists. “It makes sense,” she adds, “that digs populated by young people, women and people of colour will see finds through fresh eyes.” PPE was on average 80% more expensive when the government bought it from firms referred through a special “VIP lane” by Conservative ministers, MPs and officials, new information has revealed. The Good Law Project, which has long been investigating PPE deals during the Covid pandemic, said internal government documents showed that the unit price paid for items under VIP lane contracts was up to four times higher than average. The organisation highlighted one example as being the cost of PPE delivered by Meller Designs, a fashion company at the time co-owned by the Tory donor David Meller, which was referred through the VIP lane by Michael Gove’s office. Meller Designs was awarded six PPE supply contracts worth £164m during the coronavirus pandemic. In three of these contracts with Meller Designs, the government paid between 1.2 and 2.2 times the average unit price. The average price for medical gowns was £5.87 but the gowns bought from Meller Designs cost £12.64. About £8.46m worth of the equipment supplied by Meller Designs was later found to be not used in an NHS setting. A spokesperson for Meller Designs said: “Meller Designs approached the government in March 2020 and offered to supply PPE for the NHS and other essential public services. “We are extremely proud of the role we played at the height of the Covid-19 crisis and managed to secure more than 100m items of PPE – including masks, sanitiser, coveralls and gloves direct from the manufacturers – at a time when they were most needed. This PPE was used in hospitals and by emergency services throughout the country. “In responding to the national emergency, we were able to rely on our many years’ experience of sourcing, testing and quality control of a wide range of products. “As a company Meller Designs has been in business for more than 100 years but we can honestly say this was one of the most difficult and important contracts we have ever been asked to respond to and we would like to thank all our colleagues who worked so hard to make it happen.” Responding to the PPE figures, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, said: “The British public are sick of being ripped off under the Conservatives. Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money have been squandered … when it could have been spent in our schools, hospitals and police. “That is why Labour will appoint a [commissioner] to go through pandemic contracts line by line and whenever they have failed to deliver, we will clawback every pound we can for the public.” A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said its priority throughout the pandemic “was to save lives and we acted swiftly to procure PPE at the height of the pandemic, competing in an overheated global market where demand massively outstripped supply”. “Due diligence was carried out on all companies and every company was subjected to the same checks,” the spokesperson said. Separately, the Conservative peer Michelle Mone said she was wrong to publicly deny involvement in a PPE firm now under investigation by the National Crime Agency (NCA). Lady Mone released a YouTube documentary in which she and her husband, Douglas Barrowman, launched a fightback “because we have done nothing wrong”. Mone had lobbied ministers, including the communities secretary, Michael Gove, and officials for PPE Medpro to win contracts and it went on to obtain £200m in deals to supply masks and medical gowns. Her lawyers subsequently denied to the Guardian repeatedly that she was involved in the firm. The DHSC is suing PPE Medpro for the full return of the £122m it paid for the surgical gowns but never used, claiming they were unsafe for use in the NHS. The company is defending the claim. The NCA has been conducting an investigation into PPE Medpro since May 2021, which is continuing. Gove said he could not comment on matters under NCA investigation but insisted it was wrong for anyone to suggest that ministers were doing favours for their contacts. He told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday: “Ministers did not take individual decisions about who should receive contracts … teams of civil servants assessed the worthiness of any contracts put forward. “The suggestion that somehow ministers were seeking to deliberately do favours for or line the pockets of other individuals is totally unjustified because the decisions were only taken after a proper coherent and fair procurement process.” PPE bought via ‘VIP lane’ was on average 80% more expensive, documents reveal Rowena Mason Whitehall editor Millions of pounds worth of PPE was supplied by companies referred through a special ‘VIP lane’ by ministers during the pandemic. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian Science 45 Continued from page 44

Using fatty foods to comfort eat during times of stress can impair the body’s recovery from the pressure, research suggests. Many people turn to unhealthy foods such as chocolate or crisps when they are feeling the strain, but researchers have found that this can reduce blood flow to the brain and cause poorer vascular function – which in turn can have a negative effect on mental health and cognitive function, and increase the risk of heart disease. The researchers suggest people resist the lure of convenient treats by nibbling on fruits and vegetables instead. Prof Jet Veldhuijzen van Zanten said: “We looked at healthy 18 to 30- year-olds for this study, and to see such a significant difference in how their bodies recover from stress when they eat fatty foods is staggering. “For people who already have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, the impacts could be even more serious. We all deal with stress all the time, but especially for those of us in high-stress jobs and at risk of cardiovascular disease, these findings should be taken seriously. This research can help us make decisions that reduce risks rather than make them worse.” The study involved a group of healthy young adults who were given two butter croissants for breakfast. The participants were then asked to do mental maths, increasing in speed for eight minutes, and were alerted when they got an answer wrong. They could also see themselves on a screen. The researchers found that consuming fatty foods when mentally stressed reduced vascular function by 1.74%. Previous studies have shown that a 1% reduction in vascular function leads to a 13% increase in cardiovascular disease risk. “The experiment was designed to simulate everyday stress that we might have to deal with at work or at home. When we get stressed, different things happen in the body, our heart rate and blood pressure go up, our blood vessels dilate and blood flow to the brain increases. We also know that the elasticity of our blood vessels – which is a measure of vascular function – declines following mental stress,” said the study’s first author, Rosalind Baynham of the University of Birmingham. The research, published in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition and Nutrients, also showed that consuming healthier foods, particularly those rich in polyphenols, such as cocoa, berries, grapes, apples and other fruits and vegetables, can prevent the impairment in vascular function. Comfort eating can impair body’s recovery from stress, study shows Rachel Hall The researchers found that consuming fatty foods when mentally stressed reduced vascular function by 1.74%. Photograph: Claudia Totir/ Getty Images Ian Hitchcock’s first encounter with cancer was as a schoolboy in Bedford. He played rugby there and became good friends with a team-mate. “He was a lovely guy. Smart, pleasant and a talented sports person. He really was one of the most popular kids in the year,” says Hitchcock, who recently oversaw the creation of York University’s new centre for blood research. Then one summer, Hitchcock – who is now a professor of experimental haematology at York – heard that his friend had been diagnosed with cancer. “This was a time before social media so it was just a rumour – that he had found a lump and it had to be removed. He couldn’t have been much more than 16 years old.” Later that year, he learned that the treatment had failed and that his friend had died. “I was shocked as was the whole school. He was young and fit and healthy like me and I kept thinking: what is going on here?” Hitchcock took the news personally and battling cancer became a special mission for him, as he turned his studies in biology into a crusade. “It became driven by what happened. Indeed, I am still driven by his death,” he said. The result of those efforts is the Centre for Blood Research at York, which opened earlier this year. “Our main task is straightforward: we are primed to fight blood cancers – leukaemia, lymphoma, myeloma and other related conditions,” said Hitchcock. Blood cancers, like solid tumours, remain a major health issue in the UK. In an ageing population, people become increasingly vulnerable to cancers that become more common as individuals get older. Better diagnosis also means that more cases are being reported. “There has been progress, without doubt, but blood cancers, as a class, are the fifth most common form of cancer in this country. More importantly, they are one of the most common cancers in children.” Risk factors are also unusual, he added. “If you look at most solid tumours, there are agents such as cigarette smoke and diet that increase someone’s chances of succumbing. But there aren’t really any lifestyle factors that increase the chances of developing blood cancers, with the only definite risk factor being old age and, for reasons currently unclear, being male. It really stands out. “If we can find out the reason that males are more susceptible that would open up the possibility of developing new diagnoses and treatments for blood cancers.” And this will be a key approach for the new centre which combines three areas of expertise: clinicians who treat blood cancers; epidemiologists who study variations in cancer prevalence; and experimental haematologists who understand the molecular changes in blood cells. Combining these approaches should shine new light on many blood cancers, said Hitchcock. “We will be studying exactly why treatments for some blood cancers are now so successful – with the specific aim of using those lessons to create new drugs and therapies for other, more recalcitrant conditions.” An example is provided by acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in children. “Survival rates in children and young adults are now fantastic – around 97%,” said Hitchcock. “However, those survival rates decline as patients get older even though we are dealing with the same disease. And that is another puzzle for medicine. How can we make therapies more effective and kinder for older patients? That will be another prime target for research at our centre. Certainly, there is still a lot for us to do in the coming years.” ‘He found a lump’: how school tragedy drove UK scientist’s mission to fight blood cancers Robin McKie, Science Editor Prof Ian Hitchcock at the new Centre for Blood Research at York. Photograph: Alex Holland ‘Blood cancers are the fifth most common form of cancer in this country’ … Ian Hitchcock. Photograph: Alex Holland The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 46 Science

The recently-departed watchdog in charge of monitoring facial recognition technology has joined the private firm he controversially approved, paving the way for the mass roll-out of biometric surveillance cameras in high streets across the country. In a move critics have dubbed an “outrageous conflict of interest”, Professor Fraser Sampson, former biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner, has joined Facewatch as a nonexecutive director. Sampson left his watchdog role on 31 October, with Companies House records showing he was registered as a company director at Facewatch the following day, 1 November. Campaigners claim this might mean he was negotiating his Facewatch contract while in post, and have urged the advisory committee on business appointments to investigate if it may have “compromised his work in public office”. It is understood that the committee is currently considering the issue. Facewatch uses biometric cameras to check faces against a watch list and, despite widespread concern over the technology, has received backing from the Home Office, and has already been introduced in hundreds of high-street shops and supermarkets. Mark Johnson, advocacy manager at Big Brother Watch, said the hiring of Sampson painted a “murky picture.” He added: “It cannot be acceptable for those in taxpayer-paid oversight roles to negotiate contracts with the very companies they scrutinise while still in post.” “There is no specific law regulating the use of facial recognition surveillance in the UK. Given that this Orwellian technology is already operating in a legal vacuum, we cannot have a revolving door between those tasked with scrutinising the use of facial recognition surveillance and those selling it. When the independence of public officials is compromised by private interests, it undermines public trust in our institutions.” However, Sampson said that after the government proposed abolishing his post, he wrote publicly to the home secretary on 1 August, giving three months’ notice, after which he received a formal approach to join Facewatch. “I notified the Home Office and put in place specific measures to ensure the avoidance of any potential conflict of interest, however limited that potential might be. I am satisfied that no such conflict arose,” said Sampson. He added: “I also wrote to chief scientific adviser professor Jennifer Rubin, advising of my intention to take up the appointment in November. Having complied fully with my terms of appointment, and having received no conditions or restrictions from the Home Office, I was free to take up the position on 1 November.” Sampson’s move may bring scrutiny of decisions made during his tenure, a period during which Facewatch became the first facial recognition business to receive the watchdog’s backing. In March this year, Sampson awarded Facewatch its certification mark for meeting all requirements of the surveillance camera code of practice specifically for the use of live facial recognition. Big Brother Watch pointed out that Sampson’s decision to certify Facewatch came during an investigation by the Information Commissioner’s Office which had “identified various areas of concern” over the use of people’s personal data. It also came at a time of rising privacy and human rights concern over facial recognition technology, with the EU seeking to ban the technology in public spaces through legislation. Opponents of the technology claim it is inaccurate and biased, particularly against darker-skinned people. In a statement, Sampson added: “Joining Facewatch was an easy decision to take. They have invited challenge, reviewed practice and policy and responded promptly to ensure their operations are lawful and ethical.” Nick Fisher, chairman of Facewatch, said: “Facewatch sought to recruit Professor Sampson to act as a critical friend. His appointment further strengthens our commitment to responsible and lawful facial recognition to prevent crime and people becoming victims of crime.” Ex-commissioner for facial recognition tech joins Facewatch firm he approved Mark Townsend Facial recognition technology can be controversial. Photograph: metamorworks/Getty Images/iStockphoto Fraser Sampson has joined Facewatch. Photograph: Linkedin Bronny James made his college debut for Southern California on Sunday, coming off the bench against Long Beach State nearly five months after he suffered cardiac arrest. James played six minutes in the first half as the Trojans went into the break with a 45-30 lead. In his second three-minute stint, James made a huge block on Jadon Jones, who was streaking to the basket. The Galen Center crowd cheered loudly, with James’s dad, LeBron, watching courtside. James finished with four points, three rebounds and two assists in 16 minutes as USC lost 84-79 in overtime. James assisted on a dunk by Vincent Iwuchukwu, who also suffered cardiac arrest as a freshman. Iwuchukwu returned to play 14 games last season. James entered the game about seven minutes into the first half, with some in the crowd standing and cheering. He missed his first shot, a threepoint attempt. Moments before, he tipped the ball away from an opponent, but the visitors got it back. The possession ended in a shot-clock violation for Long Beach. James also snagged a rebound. LeBron James arrived seconds before the national anthem, holding hands with his daughter, Zhuri, and tapped his son’s rear as he passed the Trojans who were lined up across the court for the anthem. The NBA was well-represented in the game. One of James’ teammates is DJ Rodman, the son of Dennis Rodman. The Beach’s roster includes Chayce Polynice, the son of 15-year NBA veteran Olden Polynice. James joined his teammates for on-court warmups 90 minutes before tipoff. Wearing a white USC shirt and red sweatpants, he took a variety of shots under the watchful lenses of a baseline full of photographers. Students lined up around one side of Galen Center and down an adjacent street waiting to get inside. Although there were pockets of empty seats in the 10,258-seat arena, James’ debut helped the Trojans draw their largest crowd yet this season. James suffered cardiac arrest on 20 July during a workout at Galen Center. He was found to have a congenital heart defect that was treatable. James was recently cleared by his doctors and USC’s medical staff to participate in full-contact practice. Previously, he had been limited to working out on his own doing weights, cardio and shooting. Bronny James makes huge block on USC debut five months after cardiac arrest Associated Press Bronny James was found to have a treatable heart defect earlier this year. Photograph: Mark J Terrill/AP Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian Technology / Sport 47

Josh Allen threw for 233 yards with touchdowns running and throwing, the Bills kicked a go-ahead field goal with 1:54 to go and, thanks to a crucial penalty on Chiefs wide receiver Kadarius Toney, Buffalo held on to beat Kansas City 20-17 on Sunday. The game was tied 17-17 when the Bills (7-6) took over with about seven minutes left. They converted on three third downs, one courtesy of a penalty on Chiefs cornerback Jaylen Watson, before Tyler Bass kicked his 39-yarder for the lead. But two pass plays that Buffalo called just before the two-minute warning – both incomplete – left time for the Chiefs (8-5) to work. And moments later, they thought they’d taken the lead when Patrick Mahomes hit Travis Kelce over the middle, and the tight end, who played quarterback in high school, threw far across the field to Toney, who ran the rest of the 49 yards for a touchdown. Only one problem: Toney had lined up offside. The penalty wiped out the play. The Chiefs still had 1:12 left to get within range of big-legged kicker Harrison Butker, but Mahomes threw incomplete on his next two passes, and his fourth-and-15 throw across the middle of the field found nothing but grass. Philadelphia Eagles 13–33 Dallas Cowboys The Dallas Cowboys notched their seventh win in eight games as they got the better of their NFC East rivals to move to 10-3 alongside the Philadelphia Eagles at the top of the division. Dak Prescott was excellent again and Brandon Aubrey made three field goals of more than 50 yards: he has made all 30 of his field goals this year in his rookie season. Los Angeles Rams 31–37 Baltimore Ravens Tylan Wallace returned a punt 76 yards for a touchdown in overtime to lift the Baltimore Ravens to a 37-31 victory over Los Angeles, snapping the Rams’ three-game winning streak. Wallace, who committed a crucial penalty on special teams earlier in the game that led to points for Los Angeles (6-7), eluded a couple of tackles after fielding the punt and stayed on his feet when Shaun Jolly made a diving attempt at him along the left sideline. The Ravens (10-3) remained atop the AFC standings, a half-game ahead of Miami. The Dolphins host Tennessee on Monday night. Wallace was returning that punt after the Ravens lost Devin Duvernay, their main return man, earlier in the game with back issues. Wallace punctuated the winning touchdown with a leap into the end zone before the Ravens mobbed him in the corner. Lamar Jackson and Matthew Stafford threw three touchdown passes apiece, overcoming wet conditions and dropped passes in a game that was high scoring yet sloppy. Each offense went three-and-out in overtime before the final Los Angeles punt. It was a crushing way to lose for the Rams, who worked their way into the thick of the NFC playoff race with their recent winning streak. Seattle Seahawks 16–28 San Francisco 49ers Deebo Samuel scored on a catch and a run and the San Francisco 49ers won their 11th straight division game, beating the Seattle Seahawks. Samuel had his second straight game with multiple touchdowns to lead San Francisco to the brink of winning back-to-back NFC West titles for the first time since 2011-12. The Niners lead the Seahawks and Rams by four games with four to play and hold the tiebreaker over Seattle. Seattle have lost four straight games for the first time in 14 seasons under Pete Carroll and have lost five in a row to the 49ers for the first time. Jacksonville Jaguars 27–31 Cleveland Browns Joe Flacco threw for 311 yards and three touchdowns in his home debut for Cleveland, and the Browns survived a late rally by Trevor Lawrence and Jacksonville for a 31-27 win. The 38- year-old Flacco delivered the kind of performance he had almost annually as a visitor with Baltimore. Flacco went 26 of 45 and improved to 10-2 as a starter in Cleveland. Lawrence played despite spraining his right ankle Monday night. He threw three interceptions before rallying the Jaguars in the fourth quarter. His third TD pass – to Evan Engram with 1:33 left – pulled the Jaguars within four. Cleveland’s Myles Garrett sacked Lawrence on the two-point conversion, and the Browns recovered an onside kick. Houston Texans 6–30 New York Jets Zach Wilson threw a pair of secondhalf touchdown passes in his return from a two-game benching, New York shut down CJ Stroud before Houston’s star rookie quarterback left late with a concussion and the Jets (5-8) ended a five-game losing streak. Wilson was excellent as he went 27 of 36 for 301 yards. Breece Hall and Randall Cobb caught touchdown passes and Xavier Gipson ran for a score for the Jets. Stroud left with 6:30 remaining when he was hit by Quinnen Williams, fell backward and his head appeared to bounce off the turf. The Texans (7-6) announced Stroud was out and Davis Mills replaced him. Indianapolis Colts 14–34 Cincinnati Bengals Jake Browning threw two touchdown passes and ran for another in his second straight outstanding performance for the Cincinnati Bengals, who pounded the Indianapolis Colts. With Joe Burrow out for the season because of a wrist injury, Browning has kept the Bengals in playoff contention. He followed up a 354-yard outing in a win at Jacksonville last Monday night by completing 18 of 24 passes for 275 yards with an interception against the Colts. The Bengals improved to 7-6 and the Colts now have the same record. Indianapolis were shut out after halftime as their four-game winning streak ended. Detroit Lions 13–28 Chicago Bears Justin Fields threw for a touchdown and ran for another, and the Chicago Bears played their most impressive game of the season, beating the NFC North-leading Detroit Lions (9-4). Receiver DJ Moore had his first career rushing touchdown and caught a scoring pass to help Chicago (5-8) win for the third time in four games. The Bears scored 15 points in a span of about seven minutes to break open a game that was tied at 13 late in the third quarter. Detroit’s Jared Goff threw two interceptions, lost a fumbled snap and was sacked four times. The Lions have lost two of three. Denver Broncos 24-7 Los Angeles Chargers Russell Wilson threw two touchdowns and the Denver Broncos beat the Chargers after Los Angeles lost quarterback Justin Herbert due to a fractured finger in the first half. Wilson completed 21 of 33 for 224 yards, including a 46-yard touchdown to Courtland Sutton in the third quarter for Denver, who have won six of their last seven. It was the Broncos’ first road victory against an AFC West foe since beating the Chargers in October 2019. Herbert was 9 of 17 for 96 yards with an interception before being injured. Tampa Bay Buccaneers 29–25 Atlanta Falcons Baker Mayfield threw an 11-yard touchdown pass to Cade Otton with 31 seconds remaining, capping a wild fourth quarter that pushed the Tampa Bay Buccaneers into a tie for first place in the NFC South with a 29-25 victory over the Atlanta Falcons. The 6-7 Falcons rallied for a 25-22 lead with a pair of TDs in the final period, including Desmond Ridder’s six-yard scoring run with 3:23 remaining. But Mayfield guided a 12-play, 75-yard scoring drive that gave the 6-7 Buccaneers a win they had to have with four weeks left in the regular season. Atlanta got one last chance at winning it from the Tampa Bay 31, but Drake London was stopped three yards shy of the end zone. Carolina Panthers 6–28 New Orleans Saints Derek Carr returned from injury to throw touchdown passes to Chris Olave and Jimmy Graham, and the New Orleans Saints defeated the hapless Carolina Panthers. Alvin Kamara ran nine yards for a touchdown as New Orleans snapped a three-game skid and pulled into a tie with Atlanta and Tampa Bay — all at 6-7 — for first place in the feeble NFC South. The Saints also scored on a Panthers punt attempt that was smothered by Nephi Sewell and returned by D’Marco Jackson. Carolina have lost six straight for the second time this season. Rookie Bryce Young finished 13 of 36 for 137 yards and lost a fumble. He was sacked four times. Minnesota Vikings 3-0 Las Vegas Raiders Minnesota and Las Vegas played the lowest-scoring NFL game in 16 years, with Greg Joseph’s 36-year-old field goal with 1:57 left giving the Vikings victory over the Raiders. It was the first 3-0 game since Pittsburgh beat Miami on 26 November 2007, the third in the past 40 years and the seventh in the Super Bowl era. Joseph’s kick ensured the game wouldn’t end regulation scoreless for the first time since the New York Giants played the host Detroit Lions to a 0-0 tie in 1943. The Vikings had 230 total yards, and the Raiders were limited to 201 yards and nine first downs. NFL roundup: Travis Kelce trick play ruled out as Bills beat Chiefs Associated Press Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes greet each other after Sunday’s game. Photograph: Ed Zurga/AP Former Houston Oilers and Tennessee Titans tight end Frank Wycheck has died at the age of 52. Wycheck fell outside his family home in Chattanooga on Saturday morning, according to a statement released by his family. He was found unresponsive that afternoon. “The Wycheck family appreciates the love and support they’ve received, but asks the public to please respect their privacy during this difficult time,” the family said in the statement. Wycheck is a member of the Titans’ Ring of Honor. He was voted to three Pro Bowls in 1998, 1999 and 2000. He finished his Titans career with 27 touchdowns, 4,958 yards and 283 catches, ranking third in receptions in franchise history. During one stretch, he held a franchise-record with 99 consecutive games with at least one reception. Initially picked by Washington in the sixth round of the 1993 draft, the Oilers claimed Wycheck off waivers after he was released in 1995. He played 11 seasons in the league, catching 505 passes for 5,126 yards and 28 touchdowns. At the time of his retirement, he ranked fourth all-time among tight Frank Wycheck, co-star of NFL’s Music City Miracle, dies at 52 after fall Guardian sport and agencies The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 48 Sport Continued on page 49

ends in career receptions. Wycheck was known for his role in the ‘Music City Miracle’, one of the greatest plays in NFL history. Trailing 16-15 against the Buffalo Bills with 15 seconds left, Tennessee returned a short kick-off for a game-winning touchdown. The kick was fielded by fullback Lorenzo Neal, who handed the ball to Wycheck. Wycheck threw a lat- eral across the field to kick-returner Kevin Dyson, who ran 75 yards for the infamous score. The play – called the ‘Home Run Throwback’ – was devised specifically for Wycheck by special teams coordinator Alan Lowry after discovering the tight end’s throwing ability during practice. The lateral for the Music City Miracle wasn’t his only throw. Wycheck was 5 of 6 for 148 yards and two TDs in his career, posting a perfect passer rating of 158.3. Titans controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk said the organization was devastated to hear of Wycheck’s death. “Frank’s name was synonymous with Titans football,” Strunk said in a statement. “He was such a huge part of our team’s success both on and off the field. He embraced this community and fan base immediately, and everyone loved him right back.” After his playing career, Wycheck was a popular local broadcaster for the Titans. From 2005 to 2017, he worked as the color commentator on the Titans Radio Network, before stepping down due to ongoing head issues. The family, per Wycheck’s wishes, plans to work with experts for research into the effects of brain trauma on football players. Wycheck made three Pro Bowls during his NFL career. Photograph: Andy Lyons/ Getty Images Culturally, it’s the biggest free agency splash in North American sports since LeBron James left Cleveland for Miami in “The Decision” in 2010. Monetarily, it’s much bigger than that. And competitively, it’s a potential trump card in baseball’s perpetual arms race between the league’s highest-spending clubs. The Los Angeles Dodgers and unprecedented pitcher-designated hitter combination Shohei Ohtani have an agreement for a reported 10 years and $700m. When completed, the deal will be the largest by total and annual value in American sports history. The 29-year-old announced his decision to join the Dodgers, leaving the crosstown Los Angeles Angels, on Saturday. The club had not yet acknowledged the pact on Sunday – most likely waiting for the result of a physical exam, which is relevant because of a torn ulnar collateral ligament that will prevent Ohtani from pitching until at least the 2025 season. But the deal will settle eventually, Ohtani will move from Anaheim to Chavez Ravine. When he completes his move, one of the league’s best teams will add its best and most marketable star. Ohtani’s vintage of brilliant play has no precedent. He is the best combination of hitting and pitching that baseball has ever seen, even better than the legendary Babe Ruth, who pitched well for a few years but quickly gave it up to focus on his bat full-time. Ohtani’s UCL injury means the Dodgers will have to wait to realize his production as one of the game’s best hurlers. But when he takes the mound, he should be an anchor in the heart of the team’s pitching staff: Over the past three years, he’s posted a 2.84 earned-run average (ninth-best among qualified players) and struck out better than 11 hitters per nine innings. Ohtani boasts a vicious 97mph fastball and slow, sweeping curveball. Hitters have struggled to conquer either. The Japanese star will get to work as a hitter straight away, however. When Ohtani won American League MVP honors for the second time in 2023, he shined mostly brightly at the plate. Ohtani hit 44 home runs and would have likely cleared 50 if an injury hadn’t ended his season at the start of September. (He left the yard on 31.2% of his flyballs; no one else reached even 28%.) Ohtani destroys the ball, and unlike many sluggers, he does so to all fields and without racking up huge strikeout numbers in the process. He will immediately give the Dodgers the finest designated hitter in the game. In that capacity (if not as a pitcher), Ohtani will enjoy playing half his games in Dodger Stadium, which is the second-friendliest ballpark in baseball for home run-mashers like him. The payoff on the field for the Dodgers is obvious, but they will see a substantial business return from signing Ohtani as well. MLB clubs guard their books voraciously, but they are not in the business of spending money without the expectation of making it back. The Dodgers have determined that $70m a year for Ohtani is not too rich, likely, because they expect an enormous uptick in everything from ticket sales to merchandise to television ratings. (Ohtani’s status as an international star undoubtedly supports their theory.) The Dodgers understand that extraordinary baseball players are not an expense but an investment, and as Ohtani racks up games in their uniform, the club will reap an immense return. That return will be particularly lucrative in Japan, where he is the country’s most famous athlete, if not the most famous person, period. On Sunday, fans in his homeland lined up to buy special editions of newspapers announcing the move. The population of Japan is close eto 125 million – that’s a lot of potential Dodgers jersey sales. Ohtani’s move will pay off for baseball lovers outside Japan: they’ll finally get to watch a brilliant player in meaningful late-season games. The great baseball tragedy – or travesty, really – of the past six years is that the Angels did not make a single postseason appearance while they had both Ohtani and future first-ballot Hall of Fame center fielder Mike Trout. Those failures clearly left an impression on Ohtani, who agreed to significant salary deferrals to allow the Dodgers to spend on a competitive team around him while accruing lower penalties under MLB’s revenue-sharing protocols. The Dodgers are annual playoff participants – they’ve won the National League West 10 times in 11 years – and, even before adding Ohtani, showed no sign of missing out any time soon. They’ll slot him into a lineup that already includes megastars in outfielder Mookie Betts and first baseman Freddie Freeman. At a conservative estimate, the Dodgers now have three of the best 10 hitters in the world. Though they won the World Series in a pandemic-addled 2020 season, the Dodgers have otherwise made a tradition of spectacularly flaming out of the postseason. There are no guarantees that things will work out in October, even with Ohtani joining Freeman and Betts to form one of the most terrifying lineup cores in baseball history. But adding Ohtani is an announcement to the rest of the sport that the Dodgers intend to keep hammering away until they more frequently convert their 100-win regular seasons into playoff successes. When they finally do, Ohtani’s presence means everyone will be watching. The Dodgers see $700m Shohei Ohtani as an investment rather than an expense Alex Kirshner Shohei Ohtani’s move has generated excitement in California and Japan. Photograph: Carlos Osorio/AP Japanese fans flocked to buy special editions announcing the news of Shohei Ohtani’s record MLS deal. Photograph: JIJI Press/AFP/Getty Images Devin Haney beat Regis Prograis by unanimous decision in his division debut to win the WBC super welterweight title in his hometown on Saturday night. Haney (31-0) remained unbeaten with a slow but dominant victory over Prograis in front of a sellout crowd at Chase Center in San Francisco, home of the Golden State Warriors. All three judges scored the bout 120-107 in Haney’s favor. Prograis (29-2) lost for the first time since October 2019. It was Haney’s first fight as a super welterweight after vacating his undis- puted lightweight crown. Haney made the decision to move up after having trouble making weight at lightweight. The San Francisco native was cheered wildly while repeatedly landing a stiff left hand and several hard right hooks that kept Prograis from finding a rhythm. He dropped Prograis in the third round with a stinging straight right hand. Prograis couldn’t avoid Haney’s crisp right hand to the head that repeatedly landed and opened a small cut on his nose in the sixth round. Prograis, who was criticized following a lackluster win over Danielito Zorrilla in June, picked up the pace in the latter rounds but it wasn’t enough. Haney continued to pepper Prograis and staggered the former champ with three consecutive hard right hooks in the ninth. The win opens the door for Haney to take part in big money fights now. Among those being rumored for his next fight are Gervonta Davis and Ryan Garcia. In the co-main event, Liam Paro beat Montana Love by TKO in the sixth round to win the WBO Intercontinental super lightweight championship. Paro dropped Love twice earlier in the round with a left uppercut and a left to the head before the referee stopped the fight. Also on the undercard, Japan’s Miyo Yoshida won the women’s IBF Devin Haney becomes two-weight champion with hometown shutout of Regis Prograis Agencies Devin Haney, left, lands a punch to Regis Prograis' head on Saturday during their WBC super lightweight title fight in San Francisco. Photograph: Jeff Chiu/AP Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian Sport 49 Continued from page 48 Continued on page 50

bantamweight title by unanimous decision over defending champion Ebanie Bridges. Former Olympic champion Andy Cruz, in his second professional fight, defeated Jovanni Straffon by TKO in the third round to win the IBF and vacant WBA Continental Latin-American lightweight titles. LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels overcame being outside the playoff race with a prolific season that Heisman Trophy voters could not ignore. Daniels won the Heisman Trophy on Saturday night, becoming the first player since 2016 to win college football’s most prestigious player of the year award as part of a team that did not play for a conference championship. The fifth-year player, who transferred from Arizona State to LSU in 2022, received 503 first-place votes and 2,029 points. “This is a dream come true,” Daniels started his acceptance speech. Washington’s Michael Penix Jr was the the runner-up with 292 first-place votes and 1,701 points and Oregon’s Bo Nix was third (51, 885), putting transfer quarterbacks in each of the top three spots. Ohio State receiver Marvin Harrison Jr finished fourth (20, 352). Daniels, who turns 23 on 18 December, won AP Player of the Year earlier this week. Daniels is the fifth quarterback in the last seven seasons to win the Heisman after transferring, joining former LSU star Joe Burrow in 2019 and USC’s Caleb Williams last year. “I want to thank all my teammates, from Arizona State to LSU,” Daniels said. “You’re my brothers. You work so hard every day, inspiring me to be my best.” He is also LSU’s third Heisman winner overall, along with running back Billy Cannon in 1959. Burrow led LSU to a national championship and Cannon’s team came close, finishing No 3 in the country. Daniels’ Tigers (9-3) slipped out of that race with two losses in the first six weeks, but he certainly wasn’t to blame. “I really wish I could have brought you back another championship,” Daniels said as he thanked the LSU fans. Week after week he fueled the best offense in the country with his passing and running. Daniels finished the regular season with 3,812 yards passing and 1,134 yards rushing and 50 total touchdowns in 12 games. He leads the nation in total offense at 412 yards per game and is averaging an astounding 10.71 yards per play. No 13 LSU are set to face Wisconsin in the ReliaQuest Bowl on 1 January, though Daniels has not yet decided if he will play. Louisville’s Lamar Jackson was the last player to win the Heisman on a team that lost three games and didn’t play for a championship – and Daniels’ production surpassed his. LSU were eliminated from the Southeastern Conference race when it lost to Alabama in early November, despite 382 yards and three total touchdowns from Daniels. While Daniels slipped from the playoff picture, his performance continued to demand attention. Against Florida, he became the first major college football player with at least 350 yards passing and 200 rushing in a game, going for a total of 606 yards against the Gators. His teammates goaded him into flashing a Heisman pose during the game in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Daniels said it was after that performance he started to believe winning the Heisman could be a reality. Daniels’ evolution this season has been a revelation. He became just the second SEC player, joining 2012 Heisman winner Johnny Manziel, and eighth in major college football to pass for at least 3,500 and run for 1,000 in a season. He began his career at Arizona State as a four-star recruit from Southern California under then-coach Herman Edwards. Daniels started all three seasons for the Sun Devils, proving capable but inconsistent. With the Sun Devils facing an NCAA investigation, Daniels left for LSU to play for coach Brian Kelly. Daniels led the Tigers to an SEC West title last year and when he decided to return for a fifth season of college football it was clear he could be part of the Heisman discussion. He ended up dominating that conversation even though his team was out of the spotlight down the stretch of the season as LSU ran an aggressive campaign for its quarterback. Daniels and the Tigers finished their season against Texas A&M on rivalry weekend, with Nix, Penix and Harrison playing high-stakes games with playoff implications. Daniels was the leader in the clubhouse on championship weekend as Nix and Penix squared off in the Pac-12 title game. Both played well in a dramatic game that decided on playoff spot, but – much like opposing defenses – neither could chase down Daniels. LSU’s Jayden Daniels wins Heisman Trophy as college football’s best player Associated Press Heisman Trophy finalists, from left, LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels, Ohio State wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr, Oregon quarterback Bo Nix and Washington quarterback Michael Penix Jr pose with the trophy after attending a news conference ahead of the award ceremony on Saturday. Photograph: Eduardo Muñoz/AP Son Heung-min was the last player off the pitch at half-time at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, not because he was busy pumping the badge on his chest, working the crowd or berating the referee behind his hand, but because he was exhausted, forced to spend 30 seconds or so bent double in the Newcastle penalty area with his hands on his knees. Two minutes before half-time Son had picked up the ball 15 yards inside his own half and just flicked on the burners, feet pounding the turf like a boxer hitting the speed ball. It is genuinely rare to see a footballer streaking further and further away from his pursuers with the ball at his feet, dribbling faster than you can run. Lewis Miley is a good mover, but Son just surged on, taking the ball 40 yards and playing a sideways pass that ended with Richarlison narrowly failing to score. Spurs were 2-0 up at that point. Son had made both of them from a rejigged position wide on the left wing, from where he traumatised Kieran Trippier throughout that lung-burning first half. Fast forward to 83 minutes and Son could be seen skittering through the centre, recast in the role of hypermobile No 9. Martin Dubravka brought him down. Son spotted the ball and spanked the penalty kick into the corner to make it 4-0 in a game that would finish 4-1 to Spurs. It is worth dwelling on the numbers. Son is 31 now and in his ninth year at Spurs. The goal made it 10 plus four assists in the league this season. He’s closing in on 400 games, more than any other non-British outfield player in the club’s history, Chris Hughton aside. This is an era now. Son had been uncharacteristically blunt after the defeat by West Ham, singling out the failure of Spurs’ attack to drive the stake home. And there was an anger in his performance here, a relentlessness, a desire to just keep on coming, as Tottenham ended the game with 23 shots to Newcastle’s eight. There were mitigating factors for the visitors, most obviously the fact the entire team are out on their feet. But the use of Son as an orthodox leftwinger was also key, a shift of shape that helped to break the game open in that key period in the first half. This is one of the slightly lost aspects of modern systems-play. A winger can have his full-back on his heels but, where a more old-school approach would be to get the ball to that side as often as possible and gouge the weak spot open, teams will instead stick to their pre-drilled patterns. Twenty minutes can pass before another opportunity arrives to drive the advantage home. Full-backs are rarely roasted. But Trippier was roasted here, as Ange Postecoglou started Dejan Kulusevski as a central attacking midfielder, and clamped Son to the left touchline. The stadium was a lovely specSon Heung-min channels his inner AngeAnger to traumatise Trippier Barney Ronay at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium Son Heung-min gave Kieran Trippier a torrid afternoon. Photograph: Clive Howes/ProSports/Shutterstock Ange Postecoglou made a slight tactical change against Newcastle. Photograph: Matt Impey/Shutterstock The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 50 Sport Continued from page 49 Continued on page 51

tacle at kick-off, with an inky-black sky above the vast industrial lattice roof, the golden cock dramatically backlit, Batman style, above the home end. Spurs made all the early running and scored with 26 minutes gone, the goal made by Son veering in off the left touchline, chopping right then left, then nudging a perfect pass into the six-yard box where, naturally, Destiny Udogie, the world’s least full-back-ish full-back, was lurking to score his first Spurs goal. Son made the second goal too, taking a long diagonal pass that grazed Trippier’s head, jagging from side to side, waiting for Trippier to lose his balance, then surging inside and flicking the ball back for Richarlison to finish. Newcastle altered the flow after half-time. Miley and Trippier were a lot more aggressive in getting close to Son, blocking off the spaces he’d found in the first half. Still Spurs refused to take the air out of the game, breaking forward at speed whenever they recovered possession. At one point Jamaal Lascelles was booked for holding on to the back of Son’s shirt with one hand as he rumbled after him close to the centre circle, skating along behind like Marty McFly hitching a hoverboard ride. Moments later it was 3-0, the goal made by a fine lofted diagonal pass from Pedro Porro, and finished by Richarlison. Victory leaves Spurs in fifth, which feels about right. More to the point it puts a full stop on a dreadful run. There has already been a degree of Ange-Anger, a backlash against the love-in, the Spurs-as-Woodstock dynamic. Nobody really likes a likable guy, not in football anyway. Where does this bloke get off, exactly, not seeming tortured or angry? But to Postecoglou’s credit the performance here was also based around that slight tactical shift, a moment that reflects well on a coach who is, lest we forget, operating at a level beyond anything else in his career to date. The Premier League is a vertiginously high level of competition these days. Do you really just run towards that danger, Bazball it, refuse to back down, even when backing down might actually be quite a good idea? The most encouraging part of this win, like the point at the Etihad Stadium, will be that sense of flexibility. The terrible marks of battle covered the face of Regis Prograis, the fallen champion, as he came out first for the inquisition in the basement of the Chase Center in San Francisco. An hour earlier, soon after the final bell which confirmed that his ordeal was over and he had suffered a shutout defeat to the brilliant Devin Haney who became the new WBC junior-welterweight world champion, Prograis spoke with raw honesty in the ring. “That motherfucker’s good, he’s better than I thought he was,” Prograis said of Haney, who had knocked him down in the third round and hurt him again on numerous occasions during a long and painful beating. “I just couldn’t get to him. I thought he was a soft puncher, but he does have power. I was down and I was like: ‘What the fuck happened?’” At the post-fight press conference his face was bruised, cut and swollen while red blotches were smeared across his forehead, and beneath his left eye, like lipstick applied in a drunken daze. But his grace was clear as he praised Haney, who had won every round on all three scorecards and produced a masterclass which propels him towards the highest ranks of the pound-forpound stakes. Haney, the 25-year-old former undisputed world lightweight champion, looked so much bigger, stronger, faster and younger than Prograis in his first fight at junior-welter. Rejuvenated by not having to starve himself to make the 135lbs lightweight limit, Haney produced the finest performance of his career so far. Prograis told him as much in the immediate aftermath of his crushing loss in a sold-out venue: “I said, ‘Bro, you’re better than I thought you were.’” All his sneering words before the fight, which had mocked Haney’s apparent lack of power and fragile chin, were replaced by this new and sincere respect. “I was trying and trying and trying but I couldn’t get to him,” Prograis said, as he lauded Haney for his “quick and sneaky power” and dazzling footwork. “I trained my ass off and it just wasn’t good enough,” Prograis admitted. The 34-year-old cut a moving figure for, rather than hiding away in sorrow, he had come to face us. An American reporter spoke solemnly but compassionately as he urged Prograis to “hold your head up high, walk tall. You’re still a champion to the people and I wouldn’t give up if I was you.” Prograis nodded as the old fire in him blazed again. “Thank you for the words, but I’m definitely not giving up. Like I said, three-time world champion, that’s my goal right now. I told all my people in the dressing room, while they were crying: ‘Bro, pick your head up. It’s a fight. You’re gonna win or lose. I’m not gonna lie. For this fight I trained my ass off for four months, and it just wasn’t good enough. Sometimes that’s gonna happen in life.” Eddie Hearn, who promoted both men for this fight and had appeared to favour Haney all through a vociferous and sometimes bitter buildup, wrapped up the Prograis press conference by saying, “Well done, Devin.” Hearn quickly realised his slip of the tongue and corrected himself, a little sheepishly, by turning to the deposed champion and saying his correct name: “Regis.” Prograis glanced up at him, shook his head with a bleak laugh, and sighed: “Goddamn, Eddie.” While others waited for the regal arrival of Haney, I followed Prograis out of the interview room and down the corridor towards the cold night outside where the cars were waiting to take him and his team back to their hotel. He walked ahead of his trainers, friends and family. He would have been alone but for the fact that his seven-year-old daughter, Khalessi, held his left hand which had failed to do any damage to Haney. Prograis turned when I called his name. He smiled and walked over to extend his right hand which had also not hurt Haney. But none of this mattered much any longer. I told him how much I’d admired the way he had conducted himself amid the heartbreak. As Prograis murmured his thanks and we clenched hands I thought again of how much you really learn about the character of a man in defeat. Five minutes later, in the same room Progais had just departed, the new king of boxing swept in with his entourage. Wearing designer sunglasses and white gloves, Haney had also put back the diamond studs in his ear lobes and slipped on the watch which is rumoured to be worth $700,000. He and his father, Bill, who trains him, made their way to the top table. They were joined by a beaming Hearn who seems intent on extending their one-fight promotional deal which had brought big-time boxing back to San Francisco, where Haney had been born and lived the first seven years of his life, for the first time in over two decades. Unlike his vanquished opponent, Haney did not have a mark on his face as he spoke with a serene mix of nonchalance and conviction. It had been a performance of such virtuosity that Haney simply grinned when told that Prograis had set an unwanted record by breaking the CompuBox record for the fewest punches landed in a 12-round world championship bout. Prograis had connected with just 39 punches, compared to the 139 blows which had busted up his face, but Haney shrugged. He said it felt as if Prograis had landed even fewer and that not one punch had caused him any trouble. Haney compared it to a sparring session while also reminding us that Prograis had been considered, until Saturday night, as the most accomplished and hardest-hitting world champion at 140lbs. “I did everything that I said I was gonna do,” Haney crooned. “I went in there and I handicapped him. We knew that he was gonna come in with a big left hand but we capitalised on his habit of leaning in … and then I hit him with big shots.” Haney smiled, for he had grown tired of being chastised as a light-hitter who had not knocked out anyone for four years. “I knew that I was hurting him,” he said bluntly before explaining that the severe weight-cut he had been forced to make for so long in the lighter division had robbed him of all his power. Haney spoke of his regular shock that the hard-hitting authority he had in the gym disappeared as soon as he stepped through the ropes for a lightweight contest. “I was killing myself to make 135,” Haney said. “I would go into a fight and be depleted. I wouldn’t be my best self. Now I’m able to go in there and be the real Devin Haney.” He stressed his belief that he could beat every other fighter in the junior-welterweight division as well as all those who campaign at the welterweight limit of 147lbs. “Devin is remarkable,” his father said. “He’s truly special and he showed that tonight.” Haney Sr went as far as to suggest that his son would soon be ready to fight Terence Crawford, the exceptional and vicious No 1 pound-for-pound fighter on the planet for most boxing pundits and fans. Crawford, who dismantled Errol Spenceat welterweight in July in the performance of the year, will move up to 154lbs in 2024 – when he and Spence meet in a rematch. Haney Sr implied that he would like Crawford to come back down to welterweight after that bout, for this is the division where he feels his son will be at his best. But, in the meantime, there are plenty of enticing and lucrative bouts at junior welterweight. Ryan Garcia was the name mentioned most often after Prograis had been dispatched. Hearing that Garcia had called him out on social media Haney smiled again and said: “It’s good to hear that he finally wants to fight.” Haney was more dismissive of Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis and suggested that a bout against the formidable fighter from Baltimore, who knocked out Garcia in April, was currently unlikely. He blamed Davis for constantly talking down the prospect of their meeting in the ring and claimed that Garcia was a much more obvious opponent. His father, a relentless trash-talker, added: “Stop letting Tank and his team piss on your head and tell you it’s rain with these insignificant fights.” But the fact Haney is so good and so versatile that he can be bracketed with elite fighters at different weights, from Davis to Crawford, is the most vivid sign of his new star appeal. Haney was fortunate to have won his last fight, a desperately close decision on points against a certified great in Vasiliy Lomachenko in May, but that bout had been his last at lightweight. He looks transformed now and the way in which he hurt, dropped and utterly dominated a boxer as tough and strong as Prograis underlined the opportunities which now await him in fights where he will no longer be drained by savage weight-cuts. “It made a tremendous difference and you can see that in my performance,” Haney said. “I feel so much stronger and, in this camp, I was able to recover and relax more. I felt great. This means everything. Since I was a young kid, my dream was to come back to the Bay Area and put on a big event. What better time than now with 16,000 people coming out to support me?” Haney was also quick to say how much he wanted to box in Saudi Arabia, where the money is as obscene as the lack of human rights remain glaring. His diamonds sparkled and his gold teeth gleamed as he reflected just a little longer on how a masterful performance had elevated his often unfairly maligned reputation – despite having already been an undisputed world champion with a flawless 30-0 record. But stripping Prograis of his title with such brutal efficiency turned doubters into believers in the space of 12 sumptuous rounds. “I want the biggest fights which make the most money,” Haney said as he looked ahead to his glittering future, seemingly oblivious to the fact that, one night, boxing will get him too – just like it had done to Prograis who lost for the second time in 31 fights. As all the talk of money-spinning bouts continued it was hard not to think of his opponent travelling back through the darkened streets. But at least Regis Prograis was not alone. He still had his family and team around him as well as the briefly consoling knowledge that, in accepting a devastating loss with such class and composure, he had looked more like a champion of a man than ever before. Prograis shows how a fighter can lose their crown and keep their dignity Donald McRae in San Francisco Regis Prograis (left) talks to Devin Haney after their fight on Saturday night. Photograph: Ed Mulholland/Matchroom. Regis Prograis lands a rare blow on Devin Haney during their fight in San Francisco. Photograph: Jeff Chiu/AP Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian Sport 51 Continued from page 50

Sleep eludes Erin Matson. It’s been three weeks since the University of North Carolina’s most decorated field hockey player-turned-head coach shepherded her players to an NCAA championship victory in her debut season; the 23-year-old is believed to be the youngest ever college coach to win a national title. Still, the interview requests haven’t stopped rolling in, even as Matson’s other coaching duties beckon her attention. Matson isn’t complaining, though. “Field hockey doesn’t get this kind of coverage at all,” says Matson, who led the UNC team to four NCAA titles over five seasons as a student-athlete. US field hockey is having a moment, and far be it from Matson to hold it back. Much like the way she plowed through her opponents on the field, Matson only knows one direction and that’s forward. “She’s the best thing that’s happened to field hockey since we won the 1984 [Olympic] bronze medal,” said former UNC coach Karen Shelton, who handed the reins over to Matson at the end of her own storied 42-year career at the Chapel Hill school. More than anyone, Shelton has a keen understanding of the pressures and pitfalls of such a heavy endeavor at such a tender age; Shelton was only 24 when she took the helm at UNC and eventually built it into the premier collegiate program in the country and home to 11 NCAA titles. Hailing from Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, Matson was introduced to the sport when her mother, a former goaltender for Yale, took her uncommonly coordinated six-year-old to a local clinic. Erin cradled the stick like it had never left her hands before, taking to the motions quickly and confidently. She was a natural, though she also excelled at softball and basketball. Field hockey eventually won out, the crisp smack that came from wood connecting with hard plastic too enticing a sound to give up. Be it luck, destiny or a bit of both, the Matsons lived one hour from the WC Eagles facility, the top youth club in the nation. At age nine, Erin made the team, joining 14- and 15-year-olds without so much as the blink of an eye. Coach Shelton watched the nineyear-old Matson for the first time at the WC Eagles facility, punching above her weight. By age 13, Matson was introduced to international play, debuting at the junior Pan-American games. She became a member of the US national team at age 17. At age 15, Matson and her parents made an unofficial visit to UNC. Matson had always made it clear that she wanted to play there under Shelton, but wisely, the trio tried to keep her options open, making appointments with other schools. But it was always going to be UNC, that determination solidified by a solo run Matson took across campus to clear her thoughts. Matson flourished with Shelton and the Tar Heels, the top-scoring midfielder able to anticipate other’s reactions to create paths to the goal, fast and fluid like Lionel Messi. By the end of her tenure, the three-time team captain would accumulate five ACC championship wins, become a three-time recipient of the Honda Sport Award for field hockey and notch the all-time scoring records in both ACC history and NCAA tournament play. (She’s also competed on the international stage, winning her first international cap for the US shortly after her 17th birthday and helping the Americans reach the podium at the Pan-Am Games four years ago in Peru.) Upon graduation, Matson could’ve played professionally abroad. Her talent would’ve made it a lucrative endeavor. “I just didn’t want to leave Carolina,” Matson says. “And I knew I loved coaching. I knew I had a knack for it. And I knew I could help the sport, which has given me so many opportunities. I’d knew I helped the sport as a player, and I knew I could still help more.” Through a convergence of circumstances, Matson mapped a path to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Shelton would coach one more season, a fifth for Matson and others who’d been granted the extra eligibility in response to the Covid pandemic. Could Matson slide into the coveted job in that time? The man who’d need convincing was Bubba Cunningham, the university’s director of athletics for the last decade. Matson had interacted with Cunningham at games and on speaking panels, but she hardly had a coaching resume to hand him outside of teaching at kids’ camps and clinics. “Dare to be brilliant,” Shelton had advised Matson and her teammates throughout her UNC career. With that mantra echoing in her head, Erin entered Cunningham’s office and asked for the job. “It wasn’t like I was a stranger walking into his office asking for it, but it definitely caught him off guard,” said Matson. For starters, Matson was about to lead the team into her final season. Would she have the focus, let alone the time, to interview for the position? Matson entered the interview pool among other coaches with decades of experience, understanding that she’d be observed and scrutinized that much more in every phase of her final season. “[I hoped Cunningham would say,] ‘OK, she came to me in August, but she’s leading her team greatly and not allowing it to affect the locker room atmosphere,’” said Matson. “‘OK, she asked for the job, but she’s still taking care of business on the field.’ It was all just staying true to my word, and then he’d know I’m not too crazy.” The Tar Heels ended an undefeated season that November in Connecticut, challenging their Northwestern rivals who’d knocked them out of the first round of the NCAA tournament the previous year and snapped their threeyear championship streak. A frenetic battle between baby blue and dark purple ended in double overtime, with Peyton Worth hooking in a shot with her back to the goal to inch UNC’s victory. Athletic director Cunningham had seen enough. He offered Matson the head coaching position, graciously admitting that he hadn’t even thought to consider a 22-year-old candidate until she marched into his office and threw her hat in the ring. Shelton met with her star player after her December retirement, not surprised to hear that Matson had already been in motion, picking the brains of the other Carolina coaches, querying them on their individual journeys. “She’d set up meetings with different players on the team, just to let them know that she was going to do this and to see if she had their support, which she did,” says Shelton. “Erin was willing to do the dirty work, the recovery runs and support runs off the ball, where you’re sometimes unrewarded. That’s what leadership is about, and she did that since day one.” UNC announced Matson’s hiring last January. Twenty-three players returned for the 2023 season, many of them Matson’s friends that she’d spent time with away from the grass. She’d lived off-campus with a couple of them. Speculation over that transition evaporated as the season progressed, replaced by the type of enthusiasm only a sports college generates. But to win the NCAA title in her first year as a collegiate coach? That’s daring to be brilliant and accomplishing it. Matson’s adeptness at time management and organization – skills she thanks both her parents for teaching her along the way – is still in full effect three weeks after the season’s close. She’s fitting every opportunity to speak about the sport between her coaching duties, which move back into recruitment. Sleep will come soon. Matson can feel it. “It’s more just reminding myself, you know why I do this, why we all do this,” she says. “Like we just love this place. We love this sport. So, if it’s paying off for the sport and future Tar Heels and current players, then we’re doing something right.” Erin Matson: the 23-year-old coach making field hockey history at UNC Loretta Hunt in Chapel Hill, North Carolina North Carolina head coach Erin Matson is lifted up by her team after defeating the Northwestern Wildcats for the national championship at Karen Shelton Stadium last month in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Photograph: Jamie Schwaberow/NCAA Photos/Getty Images UNC field hockey coach Erin Matson celebrates after her team’s win over the Northwestern Wildcats for the national title last month in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Photograph: Jamie Schwaberow/NCAA Photos/ Getty Images Everything had been organised, even down to the church Endrick and his family would attend. In November 2022, Chelsea, under the new leadership of Todd Boehly, had invited the then 16-year-old Brazilian to visit Cobham and Stamford Bridge, and meet some of the players in an attempt to convince him that his first landing place in Europe should be west London. Endrick has for a long time been considered the best young talent in world football, so good in fact that he is expected to follow in the footsteps of his countrymen Pelé, Ronaldo and Romário and become a global star. And, as we meet at his house in São Paulo, the now 17-year-old Palmeiras forward says he nearly signed for the Premier League club. “I was very close. My parents really liked London and everyone speaks very highly of it.” His father, Douglas, picks up the story. “I have to admit I do not like the cold but my wife and Endrick do. Endrick really likes playing in the rain. So we received an invitation from Chelsea, from the owner, and we went there to see the club and the country. We watched Chelsea play Arsenal and we got to see the coach, the facilities, Jorginho, César Azpilicueta and Thiago Silva. “They explained everything to us. They introduced us to the person who would help us settle in. She showed us the house we would live in, the school Endrick would go to, the church we would attend. Everything was right with us and Chelsea. “I can’t say 100% because I hadn’t Endrick: ‘People say I have a heart of ice and I’m very cold with decisions’ Thiago Rabelo ‘Since we were little we know that racists are not punished, that nothing comes of it. So I stand with Vini, Rodrygo and everyone in football,’ says Endrick. Photograph: Leo Sguaçabia/ The Observer Endrick was called up for the internationals against Colombia and Argentina in November. Photograph: Daniel Ramalho/ AFP/Getty Images The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 52 Sport Continued on page 53

signed, but the deal was agreed. I had already got it into my head that I would live in London with all that cold weather. But then at night, my son’s manager phoned and said that the Chelsea owner had backed out of the deal because the price they would have to pay for Endrick would inflate the market. It was €60m [£51.4m] for a 16-year-old boy who would only arrive in the country almost two years later.” It wasn’t meant to be in the end but things have worked out for Endrick. A month later he signed for Real Madrid in a deal the Palmeiras president, Leila Pereira, described as “the biggest negotiation in the history of Brazilian football”. He will join the Spanish club in July 2024 having made his Brazil debut last month. Endrick’s new reality contrasts with his past. While today he is the most popular player in Brazilian football, with money and fame, his parents endured difficulties that never leave the young striker’s memory. “I never went hungry, but my parents did. They starved for me. That gave me a lot of strength because I didn’t want to see them do that again. I didn’t want to see them in need, give me food and have them go without,” he says. Endrick was born in Taguatinga, a city close to Brasília. Brazil’s federal capital boasts one of the best standards of living in the country but the surrounding area suffers from high levels of violence and poverty. It was in this environment that Endrick’s parents lived. “I had a very complicated, very difficult childhood,” Douglas says. “As soon as I arrived in Brasília, I lived in the orphanage for six months with my two sisters. My father abandoned my mother. My mother didn’t have a house, she didn’t have a job, so we had to live in the orphanage.” Douglas tried to forge a professional career in football. He played for various small clubs in Brazil, but nothing very promising. In the 1980s, well before his permanent move in 2010, he ventured to São Paulo, but without success. “I took the bus from Gama to Luziânia with a backpack, two bottles, one of juice and one of water, and I came hitchhiking,” he recalls. “I arrived in São Paulo during one of the coldest nights of the year. I slept on the street and woke up with a woman hitting me on the shoulder and inviting me to sleep in a hostel so I didn’t die from the cold.” Even though he hasn’t experienced the same problems as his parents, Endrick is sensitive about those who are excluded. That’s why, as well as learning new languages that will help him in his professional career, he has a different desire to communicate with deaf people. “I set a goal for myself that I need to learn five languages. One of them will be very different because it will be very important to me. I want to learn sign language. I want to connect with everyone. I want to speak to the mute or the people who don’t hear,” he says. Endrick has already made an impression on the game. The last of them was the most important. He was the best player in Palmeiras’ Brazilian title win, the second national league in a row in his career. With 11 goals he became the first player under 18 to reach double figures in the Brazilian league since Neymar, who managed 10, in 2009. Yet his reaction to such success is by his own admission somewhat muted. Endrick concedes he is outwardly a person of few emotions. “My mother and my sister say that I’m cold. People say I have a heart of ice and I’m very cold with the decisions I make and what I say,” he says. Perhaps this is his way of dealing with all the changes and pressures in his young life. A few months ago, harsh criticism of Endrick made him resolve to change his behaviour and answer those critics. “I was angry at one time because I wanted to show them who I was. I tried to counter the criticism and show who I am. But then I understood that I didn’t need to prove it, I didn’t need to show the opposite. I’m Endrick. If they want to insult me, I won’t see it. Yes, it’s difficult, but … it doesn’t matter to me any more. Criticism doesn’t hurt me any more.” Endrick insists that such criticism will not shake him, and he is especially uncomfortable about the negativity surrounding Neymar in Brazil. “Look what happens. In Portugal, Cristiano is an idol. All people like him. In Argentina, Messi is an idol. All people like him. In Poland, Lewandowski is an idol. And you see what they do with Neymar here in Brazil. It seems that Brazilians don’t like him. This leaves the player a little shaken, sad. But I try not to think about it so as not to get upset. I want to make Brazilians happy with the Brazilian team.” The Brazilian Ronaldo is one of Endrick’s touchstones in the game. Another is Cristiano Ronaldo, both idols of Real Madrid, his next club. With more than 7.5 million followers on social media, Endrick is starting to get used to being among the biggest stars. He has received messages of congratulations from Ronaldo and also from Vinícius Júnior, Jude Bellingham and Rodrygo. “They are spectacular players. They always send messages and comment on my photos on Instagram. And knowing that one day I will be with them is a very good thing. I’m very happy. But I need to live one day at a time. The future belongs to God.” In July next year, Endrick will play with Vinícius Júnior, like him Brazilian and black, and who has suffered from racism. Endrick experienced the same ugly insults when he was 10 and is frustrated by a lack of action against the perpetrators. “My aunt went to the police station to report it, but nothing came of it,” he says. “Since we were little we know that racists are not punished, that nothing comes of it. So I stand with Vini, Rodrygo and everyone in football.” “It was a wonderful experience. The national team is a place where I feel comfortable because I played there at the youth team. I already knew everything. Being able to return was an inexplicable, unique feeling for me. I remember the first time I wore the Brazilian shirt. I got goosebumps. My stomach got cold playing. It was against Mexico, in Montaigu. That time I put on my shirt and went to the mirror to see how I looked. Thank God that game was lucky for me. I scored a goal. After that game and the goal, I felt calmer. The shirt fits me very well. That day went very well. I was strong. With all the difficulties he and especially his parents have had in life, Endrick is aware of the responsibility he carries. “Today I can have fun on the field. I really have fun on the field. I have fun playing football. That’s what I want to do in my life. Because if I’m not happy, nothing will work out. My childhood was not the one that every child has, always playing and going to school. But it was for a good cause and I just have to thank God for all the life I have nowadays.” Ariarne Titmus has revealed she went public with her abdominal surgery because she was concerned someone else might leak the information. The Australian swimming champion has returned to competition for the first time since July ahead of the Paris Olympics, finishing second to Mollie O’Callaghan in Sunday night’s final of the 200m freestyle at the Queensland championships. The women’s 400m freestyle world record-holder broke the news in September she had benign tumours removed from an ovary. Titmus revealed on Sunday that she was in her surgical gown at the hospital when people asked her for photos – something she found “quite confronting”. She spoke of “freaking out” in her mind ahead of the operation. “A few nurses were asking for photos at the hospital,” Titmus said. “I’d rather just put it out there and use it as an opportunity to create the conversation for people who might be going through the same thing. “You never think when you go into hospital for an operation, and you’re in your surgical gown, that people are going to ask you for a photo. That’s what pushed me to say something, because I wanted to speak to it on my terms and not have it come out through someone else.” Titmus said the health scare had given her perspective and she was keen to spread the message about women’s health. “It’s so normal for women to go through this,” she said. “I’ve had so many women message me and say ‘I had the same thing, I lost my ovary and I still had babies.’” The tumours were picked up by chance, when Titmus had an MRI scan on a sore hip. “Timing is everything and I believe everything happens for a reason,” she said. “I’m so grateful we picked it up when we did. It was almost the perfect time to get it out. If I’d had the scan in February or March, it would have completely derailed my Olympics.” But Titmus said there was no time to waste as she prepared for Paris. “I’m really playing catch-up at the moment, trying to put in as much work as I can, so I’m pretty buggered racing here,” she said. “I know I’m on my way back and I can’t read too much into my swims here. I definitely have time, but I don’t have time to waste. I probably think I’m actually in a better position now than I thought I would be.” O’Callaghan won the final in one minutes 54.36 seconds, short of the 1:52.85 world record she set in July at the world championships. Titmus was second in 1:55.99 and Kaylee McKeown took third in 1:56.14. “I had no clue where I’d be. I’m pretty happy with that and it’s just fun to get the suit back on, get a week away from training,” Titmus said. “It’s nice to get the juices flowing again.” O’Callaghan overcame physical tiredness to win the 200m title, saying she had struggled after the morning’s heat swim. “Sometimes you just have to tough it out, suck it up and keep going,” she said Australian swimmer Ariarne Titmus reveals why she went public on surgery Australian Associated Press Ariarne Titmus returned to competition for the first time since surgery, finishing second to Mollie O’Callaghan in the 200m freestyle at the Queensland championships. Photograph: James Ross/AAP Monday 11 December 2023 The Guardian Sport 53 Continued from page 52

Harlequins clinched victory on French soil, pulling off a superb comeback to defeat the Top 14 leaders Racing 92 in Paris on Sunday. Nolann Le Garrec put Racing ahead with a converted try but Marcus Smith responded in kind and then converted again almost immediately after André Esterhuizen crossed. Smith added three further points with a drop goal from near halfway but the hosts reduced the deficit to 17-14 at half-time through a try from Antoine Gibert. Racing were straight over again at the start of the second half, Le Garrec scoring his second try, and they opened up a 28-17 lead when Ibrahim Diallo crossed. But Quins did not give up and tries from Alex Dombrandt and Jack Walker, both converted by Smith, gave them a 31-28 victory despite a late yellow card for Dino Lamb. Leinster took revenge on La Ro- chelle in a repeat of last year’s Champions Cup final. The sides have met in the past two finals, with the French team coming out on top both times, but Leinster headed home to Ireland with four points after a hard-fought 16-9 victory in their Pool Four opener. Ronan O’Gara, the La Rochelle director of rugby, had to watch from the stands after being given a oneweek touchline ban, and he saw his side take an early lead in soggy conditions through Antoine Hastoy’s penalty. It was Leinster who found the crucial try, though, after Jonathan Danty and Joe McCarthy had been sent to the sin-bin, with Jimmy O’Brien setting up Jordan Larmour. Levani Botia had a try ruled out after he was deemed to have crawled over the line and La Rochelle’s efforts to recover the deficit in the second half ultimately proved unsuccessful, with a brilliant long-range penalty from Ciarán Frawley calming Leinster nerves. Champions Cup roundup: Harlequins stun Racing as Leinster beat La Rochelle PA Media Alex Dombrandt of Harlequins scores their third try as they came from behind to beat Racing 92. Photograph: James Marsh/Shutterstock Emma Hayes admitted Chelsea were “bullied” by Arsenal and that the Women’s Super League champions were “as bad as I’ve seen us for a long time” in their 4-1 defeat at the Emirates Stadium in front of a WSL record crowd of 59,042. Arsenal moved level on points with Chelsea at the top of the table – second only on goal difference – after a brilliant display capped by goals from Beth Mead, Amanda Ilestedt and one in each half from Alessia Russo. Jonas Eidevall, their manager, described Arsenal’s display as their strongest of the season so far. Hayes, in contrast, was far from pleased with how her players had performed. “That’s as bad as I’ve seen us for a long time,” the Chelsea manager said. “The better team won by a country mile. They bullied us. They dominated in the duels; all phases of our play were poor. That’s not us at our best today, that’s probably us at our very worst.” Hayes reflected on the impact of this defeat on the title race. “You have to get beaten, you can’t go a whole season unbeaten, there’s lots of top teams. What you cannot do is give away three goals before half-time and then give a mindless fourth. You’re giving it up. “Teams lose football matches. We’ve lost a football match, it’s not the end of the world. We haven’t lost the title today. We’ve lost three points.” Hayes said she had not seen an incident when the Chelsea forward Lauren James appeared to stamp on the Arsenal midfielder Lia Wälti out of frustration after play had stopped. Eidevall said also declined to say much on the matter. “I saw it but I don’t think I can really comment on it,” he said. “We had six yellow cards, they had one, in a game where it’s very even from a foul perspective. It is what it is. “It’s our strongest performance so far this season. But, in football, if you want to win things you have to be consistent with the performance. It’s great that we have a high, that becomes our baseline, our standard. This is always the hard thing in football, now we have to recover and refresh mentally, physically. We need to be ready on Wednesday [for Tottenham in the League Cup]. “What is telling, for me, when you see the reaction – yes we’re happy – but at the end of the day it is our finishing position in the league that will matter. Nothing will be won or lost today. We need to stay focused, keep developing and be consistent in our performances. That can be very valuable. That’s only determined by future performances.” ‘Us at our very worst’: Emma Hayes tears into Chelsea after WSL thrashing Suzanne Wrack at the Emirates Stadium Alessia Russo scores Arsenal’s third goal against Chelsea. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian Pep Guardiola has played down any long-term fears over the fitness of Erling Haaland after the striker missed Manchester City’s 2-1 win at Luton with a foot injury. Guardiola hopes the prolific Norwegian will be fit for City’s first game at the Club World Cup in Saudi Arabia, on 19 December. Guardiola relayed Haaland’s problem as a “bone stress reaction” but insisted nothing was broken. “He was not ready today, I don’t think so for Crystal Palace [on Saturday] but hopefully he can be ready in Saudi Arabia,” Guardiola said. “Week by week will dictate how he feels.” City’s manager explained the problem was incurred in the midweek defeat at Aston Villa. “The day after he almost could not walk properly. Yesterday I spoke with him and he said he was feeling much, much better, that he could walk without pain. The doctor says we have to see week by week, day Pep Guardiola plays down long-term fears over Erling Haaland’s fitness Ewan Murray at Kenilworth Road The Guardian Monday 11 December 2023 54 Sport / Soccer Continued on page 55