Guardian Weekly 10th December 2021

📷 Rivers of dust Trucks lie submerged beneath volcanic ash in the village of Sumberwuluh, east Java, after last Saturday’s devastating eruption of Mount Semeru. At least 15 people were killed, with dozens more missing, after the volcano spewed thick columns of ash and hot gas as high as 12,000 metres in a sudden eruption triggered by heavy rain s. The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol 205 | Issue № 25 Guardian Weekly is an edited selection of some of the best journalism found in the Guardian and Observer newspapers in the UK and the Guardian’s digital editions in the UK, US and Australia. The weekly magazine has an international focus and three editions: global, Australia and North America. The Guardian was founded in 1821, and Guardian Weekly in 1919. We exist…

Last week the US supreme court heard an abortion rights case considered the most important of its kind in nearly five decades. While the verdict will not be heard until June 2022, the conservative-dominated court’s justices seem willing to allow restrictions on abortion at 15 weeks and perhaps earlier in a pregnancy. Many suspect that the court’s real agenda is ultimately to reverse the 48-year-old Roe v Wade ruling and effectively ban abortion in the US. Jessica Glenza sets out how the argument came to this and the societal shockwaves such an outcome could cause. And Ed Pilkington considers how the politicisation of the supreme court is threatening to destroy its legitimacy. The big story Page 10 → Sweden is renowned for its liberal, tolerant values, but lately it has also gained a…

1 CORONAVIRUS Omicron variant soon ‘likely to outcompete Delta’ A leading infectious diseases specialist who monitors variants for a research collaboration led by Harvard Medical School believes the world is seeing “what appears to be a signal of exponential increase of Omicron over Delta”. “It’s still early days, but increasingly, data is starting to trickle in, suggesting that Omicron is likely to outcompete Delta in many, if not all, places,” Dr Jacob Lemieux said in an interview with the Associated Press on Tuesday. Omicron, the variant first identified in South Africa last month, has been detected in at least 38 countries but no deaths had been reported as of earlier this week. The World Health Organization has said it could take weeks to determine how infectious Omicron is, if it causes more severe illness…

BOTANY Networks of underground fungi to be mapped Vast networks of underground fungi – the “circulatory system of the planet” – are to be mapped for the first time. Fungi use carbon to build networks in the soil, which connect to plant roots and act as nutrient “highways”, exchanging carbon from plant roots for nutrients. Trillions of kilometres of fungal networks are thought to exist around the world. They are vital to the biodiversity and fertility of soils, but little is known about them. Many are thought to be under threat from agriculture, urbanisation, pollution, water scarcity and changes to the climate. The new project, from the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, will involve the collection of 10,000 samples from hotspots identified through artificial intelligence technology. ENVIRONMENT Pollution and poverty linked to skewed sex…

In the early 1970s, law enforcement leaders in Chicago decided the practice of illegal abortion was intolerable in their city and undertook a campaign to root out those who performed the procedure in secret. On a tip, police turned their attention to “Call Jane”, a feminist collective of young women who, since 1965, had provided safe but illegal abortions to roughly 3,000 Chicagoans per year. A Chicago homicide detective traced “Jane” to the South Shore neighbourhood. Police raided an apartment and arrested nearly 50 people for questioning. Seven women were charged with 11 counts of performing an abortion and conspiracy to commit abortion. But the Call Jane members protected people they served. Then, in 1973, the “Abortion Seven” had a reprieve. Prosecutors abandoned the case when supreme court justices issued a landmark…

Public opinion on abortion in the US has changed little since 1973, when the supreme court in effect legalised the procedure nationally in its ruling on the case Roe v Wade. According to Gallup, which has the longest-running poll on the issue, about four in five Americans believe abortion should be legal, at least in some circumstances. Yet the politics of abortion have opened deep divisions in the last five decades. In 2021, state legislators have passed dozens of restrictions to abortion access, making it the most hostile year to abortion rights on record The religious right in the US has been laying the foundations of this decisive challenge to abortion rights for years. According to historians and researchers, it has taken decades of political machinations for the campaign to reach this…