Table of contents for 6 March 2026 in Guardian Weekly

The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol214 | Issue№ 10 Guardian Weekly is an edited selection of some of the best journalism found in the Guardian’s digital editions in the UK, US and Australia, and the Guardian newspaper in the UK. The weekly magazine has an international focus and four editions: global, Europe, Australia and North America. The Guardian was founded in 1821, and Guardian Weekly in 1919. We exist to hold power to account in the name of the public interest, to uphold liberal and progressive values, to fight for the common good, and to build hope. Our values, as laid out by editor CP Scott in 1921, are honesty, integrity, courage, fairness, and a sense of duty to the reader and the community. The…

Gulf states, encouraged by Donald Trump, were this week on the verge of ending their neutrality in the war against Iran in reprisal for Tehran’s “reckless and indiscriminate attacks” on their territory and infrastructure. The calls, led by the United Arab Emirates from inside the six-country Gulf Cooperation Council, are for the Arab states to act in self-defence against Iran, but it would be a huge step for Gulf leaders in effect to side with Israel in a war that will determine the future of the Middle East, probably to Israel’s advantage. Iran had expended huge diplomatic efforts in the past two years trying to convince the Gulf states that Israel, not Iran, is the chief destabilising force in the region, but much of that work appears to have fallen…

For millions of younger Americans, the sudden explosion of Iran on to the national political stage may seem like a bolt from the blue. Yet for older generations, Donald Trump’s strikes against a distant foe are more like the outcome of a collision long foretold. The military operation’s code name, Epic Fury, provides a clue. The mutual resentments between the US and Iran are epic and had simmered dangerously for nearly 50 years before boiling over into open warfare. Iran has occupied a place deep in the American national psyche since the Islamic revolution of 1979, one of the most momentous events of the 20th century. It toppled the pro-western monarchy of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last reigning shah, and inspired the spread of radical political Islamism with which later…

It’s mid-morning on a rare calm day in Newlyn, Cornwall. Will Roberts is back at the quayside with a catch of mackerel to unload, having set off from the harbour before dawn. At 22, he is something of a rarity here, one of a handful of young fishers running their own small commercial boat from the port. “It’s a magical feeling when you set out in the dark, with no one else around, and see the Milky Way in the sky above you,” he said. “I couldn’t imagine working in an office or somewhere indoors, and not be surrounded by all of this.” Watching Roberts land his catch is a group of potential new young recruits keen to learn more about career opportunities at sea. They are here as part…

Aloud cheer and sounds of clapping reverberated around Bansilalpet, a neighbourhood in Hyderabad, when the first trickle of clean water dribbled out of the ground. After an 18-month effort to clear out 3,000 tonnes of rubbish and restore the stone walls and adjacent area, the 17th-century Bansilalpet stepwell had become a source of clean drinking water for the first time in four decades. “It was such a joyous moment to see water collecting into the stepwell after clearing 40 years of garbage,” said Hajira Adeeb, a 45-year-old resident of Bansilalpet, who grew up seeing the well become transformed from the community’s water source to a dumping ground. “I visit almost every day. The area is clean and lit up in the evenings. I enjoy sitting there.” India is famed for…

Savannah Guthrie is moving back to New York to resume anchoring NBC’s Today show and acknowledges that her 84-year-old mother, Nancy, may not be found a month after she disappeared from her Tucson, Arizona, home in the middle of the night. “We still believe in a miracle,” Guthrie said in a video announcing a $1m reward for her mother’s return in an enduring mystery that has gripped the US for more than a month. “We also know that she may be lost. She may already be gone.” Soon after, the FBI said it was relocating its command focused on the missing grandmother from Tucson to Phoenix and her home was being released back to the Guthrie family. DNA samples recovered from the home have only produced hits from people who…

Over the past year, more than two dozen countries have proposed bans on social media use for vast swathes of their public. These laws, often under the guise of “child safety”, are ushering in an era of mass surveillance and widespread censorship, contributing to what scholars have called a “global free speech recession”. Last year, Australia became the first country to ban anyone under the age of 16 from accessing social media. The move emboldened other countries to quickly follow suit. Germany’s ruling party announced it was backing a social media ban. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, called for a ban on social media for under-15s. In the UK, Keir Starmer has sought to enact sweeping social media bans. Greece, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Japan have also pursued…

A new South African video game lets players take back African artefacts held in western museums in a series of heists, amid a growing campaign to repatriate treasures looted by colonial armies. Players of Relooted become South African sports scientist and parkour expert Nomali, as she leaps and dives through museums to retrieve 70 real objects. They include an Asante gold mask that was taken by the British army when it destroyed the Asante empire’s capital, Kumasi, and is now in the Wallace Collection in London. Another object is the skull of the Tanzanian king Mangi Meli, which was taken to Germany after its colonial regime executed him in 1900. Hundreds of thousands of culturally and spiritually significant items were looted from Africa during the 19th and 20th centuries, when European…

Do you recoil at oversharers on social media, or joke among your friends about “TMI”? I know I do. But while mocking public confession comes easy, it’s harder to appreciate the risks of normalising silence: withheld anxieties, unspoken family histories, and the little omissions that make workplaces and relationships brittle. The instinct to pour scorn on “attention seekers” may be masking a deeper public-health problem: chronic concealment. That mismatch sent me back to the evidence. When I looked at the broader patterns from research – not just on privacy but on disclosure, trust and health – I saw something surprising. The consistent signal wasn’t that humans are inveterate oversharers; it was that we are under-exposing the things that matter. We were treating silence as a default virtue. But that had…

Iran’s parents had just dropped their children off at school last Saturday morning when they found themselves racing back, as bombs began to fall across the country in a joint US-Israel attack. At one elementary school, according to Iran’s state-controlled media, they arrived to find devastation. At least 165 children had been killed in the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, southern Iran, the Mizan news agency reported. Video and photographs from the aftermath of the strike, which have been verified as authentic and geolocated to the site, show hundreds of people gathered around the partially collapsed, smoking building, with rubble strewn across the street and men digging through it for victims. Screams can be heard in the background. In some of the images, schoolbags and textbooks are…

The assassination of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was the culmination of decades of painstaking intelligence gathering by Israeli secret services, with crucial technological resources and manpower provided over the past six months by the CIA and other US intelligence services, which culminated in a single concentrated burst of lethal violence to decapitate the Iranian regime, according to experts, veteran spies and officials in Israel and the US. Khamenei was killed along with seven “members of the top Iranian security leadership who had gathered at several locations in Tehran” and about a dozen members of his family and close entourage in near-simultaneous strikes within 60 seconds, military officials in Israel said. Forty other senior Iranian leaders also died in the attack. The killing of Khamenei, 86, opened the air…

Two days before one of the world’s most powerful drug lords was killed while trying to flee a chalet in the hills outside Mexico’s second biggest city, the Tapalpa Country Club posted an advert on Instagram inviting lovers to visit a place where they could “inhale peace [and] exhale stress”. “Date idea: Escape to Tapalpa,” read the message, advertising romantic private cabins, picnics with spectacular lake views and a golf course “to have fun together”. The Mexican cartel boss known as “El Mencho ” – who local people say was a regular visitor to this picturesque tourist hub of pine forests and cobbled streets in Jalisco state – appears to have liked the idea. For it was here that the drug lord’s reign came to a dramatic end last month…

Twenty kilometres from the heart of Rome, Dr Javier Ábalos pauses his walk, lifts his sunglasses and points. To his right, perched on a rocky wall, sits a beautiful lizard. Its body is coated in charcoal-black tones speckled with striking yellow across a green dorsum, and its head, with a prominent jaw, is splashed with fluorescent blue spots. The reptile basks in the sun, unconcerned by our presence. About 130 km farther along the road that connects the capital with the small village of Poggio di Roio, the researcher from the University of Valencia has barely stepped out of the car when he spots another lizard. This one is smaller, with a brownish body and a narrower head crisscrossed by a network of dark stripes. Even after more than a…

I attended the Bafta awards in London last month. And I arrived early enough to hear the Tourette syndrome (TS) campaigner John Davidson be introduced. He stood up to wave and take in the applause, and we were told that due to his TS, we might expect to hear involuntary vocal outbursts, known as tics, and that we should understand that the Baftas are an inclusive space in which all people are welcome. Perhaps half the people were listening to the announcement. But the tics were instantly audible. When the host, Alan Cumming, was on stage we heard “boring” and there was laughter. We heard “shut the fuck up” and there was a mix of knowing silence and confusion. But, as you all now know, it was when the Sinners…

The vast tidal flats are empty save for the hunched figures of three black-backed gulls considering a decomposed dogfish, and four humans (one rather small) trudging through the endless silt. A light mist obscures the coast with its string of motley houses. There is the piquancy of seclusion and its attendant danger here, perhaps the closest thing Kent has to wilderness. I’m relishing the long walk, but my children are less enthusiastic about our annual pilgrimage to the cockle beds, a typically cold affair. We’re travelling well armed, brandishing handmade rakes with formidable tines, while the youngest carries a white bucket. About 1km offshore, our labour begins. Within moments, there are calls of “I can feel something”; then, as the rakes are worked deeper, the exquisite forms of plump common…

Across 1 Sample of material (6) 4 Bleach (6) 8 Be worthy of (5) 9 Wait here for public transport (3,4) 10 Place with very warm climate – patch on a star (7) 11 Subject matter (5) 12 Social-media app – go-between (9) 17 Wales (5) 19 Shoo cat (anag) – in such, secret plans are made (7) 21 Root vegetable (7) 22 Ancient city in Jordan – first Blue Peter dog (5) 23 Mountain range – Ford (6) 24 Cross (6) Down 1 Small triangular spicy pastry (6) 2 e.g. CAPTCHA or SCUBA (7) 3 Deeply distressed – snip into pieces (3,2) 5 Symbol – label on weed? (7) 6 Tax, tenth part (5) 7 Small child – crab? (6) 9 Yellow meadow flower (9)  13 Knocked out by…

IMMIGRATION Home secretary unveils shake-up of asylum rules Shabana Mahmood has ripped up the government’s asylum rules so that from now every refugee will be told their status is temporary and will last just 30 months. The home secretary said claimants whose countries are deemed to be safe by the UK government will from now on be expected to return. The announcement came despite pleas from some Labour MPs, peers and affiliated unions last weekend for Keir Starmer’s government to shift towards progressive policies after the party came third in last Thursday’s Gorton and Denton byelection. The changes include plans to double to 10 years the length of time some foreign nationals must wait before they can settle in the UK. In an interview with the Guardian, Mahmood called for…

When he appeared in public for the first time in five years in October 2024, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had an uncompromising message: Israel “won’t last long”, he told tens of thousands of supporters at a mosque in Tehran in a Friday sermon. Seventeen months later, Khamenei faced his final confrontation after decades of bitter struggle against multiple enemies. Back in October 2024, he already appeared to have his back to a wall. Israel’s assassination days before of Hassan Nasrallah, the veteran secretary general of Hezbollah, was a blow to Khamenei. The Israeli air offensive against Iran last June was another such blow, revealing the weakness of Iran’s air defences. That brief conflict revealed Khamenei had few good options left – a situation this careful, pragmatic, conservative and…

Donald Trump had come to Fayetteville, near Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina, with a promise. “We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with,” the then US president-elect said in December 2016. Trump has pushed his isolationist message in the decade since, assuring his “America first” base again and again that there would be no repeat of the forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the president’s decision to strike Iran with massive force last Saturday – killing its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – quickly became an acid test for his core support, triggering criticism among some high-profile Maga movement figures. Among the early dissenters was Marjorie Taylor Greene, formerly one of Trump’s fiercest loyalists who broke…

Just over a year ago, Laurence des Cars, the intellectually brilliant (if famously prickly) former head of the most-visited museum in the world, wrote a somewhat alarming note to her boss, France’s culture minister. Des Cars, who last month resigned as president of the Louvre, lamented the advanced state of disrepair of the museum’s buildings and galleries. The Louvre was overcrowded, she said. Facilities were substandard, technologies outdated. Water was coming through the ceilings. Violent temperature swings were damaging artworks. The museum had reached a “worrying level of obsolescence”. But she had the answer. A week later, the first woman to run France’s most prized cultural institution stood beside Emmanuel Macron in front of its biggest draw, the Mona Lisa, as the French president proudly unveiled Louvre: New Renaissance, their…

It has been described as Nigeria’s wedding of the year – and it took place only weeks into the new year. In February, five sons and five daughters of the junior defence minister Bello Matawalle married their spouses in an opulent six-day celebration in Abuja. The sheer scale of the extravaganza in the capital prompted one of the comperes to exclaim on Instagram: “First of its kind … @guinnessworldrecords check this out.” The guest list read like a roll-call of the political and business elite. At the wedding fatiha on 6 February, the flowing robes of the presidents of Nigeria and nearby São Tomé and Príncipe competed for space with those of Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, alongside more than a dozen serving and former governors and ministers. After blessing…

Days after the Taliban swept to power in 2021, Pakistan’s then spymaster appeared in Kabul on what looked like a victory lap. From the lobby of the Afghan capital’s fanciest hotel, Lt Gen Faiz Hameed told reporters: “Don’t worry, everything will be OK.” Last week it became clear Pakistan had badly miscalculated how it could rely on the Taliban, as Islamabad unleashed airstrikes in Afghanistan and troops from both countries fought on the border. Pakistan’s defence minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, said patience had run out after repeated calls for the Taliban to stop Pakistani militants from using Afghan territory from which to attack. Pakistan’s predicament is the mirror opposite of accusations the US-led coalition in Afghanistan made against it before 2021: that the Taliban were being allowed to use Pakistan…

In the wake of Labour’s third-place showing at last Thursday’s Gorton and Denton byelection, Keir Starmer could have responded with a mixture of magnanimity, grit and a clear appreciation of what had just happened. He might have congratulated the Green party’s new MP, Hannah Spencer, and insisted that the themes of inequality and everyday struggle she had so loudly emphasised throughout the campaign were at the top of his government’s priorities. He could also have combined that message with a show of determination to learn from the defeat and win back the voters his party lost, and an acknowledgment that Labour’s recent calamities and internal bickering had sent those people completely the wrong signals. Unfortunately, in a display of the awful political instincts that will surely lead to his eventual…

Why do some potatoes turn black on cooking, and how do I stop this happening? I usually leave them to cool in the cooking water, but should I plunge them in cold water instead? Jean, Hampshire, England, UK “We’ve all been there,” sympathises spud queen Poppy O’Toole. “It’s a harmless chemical reaction,” the author of The Potato Book continues. According to the food science guru Harold McGee, in On Food and Cooking, the darkening “is caused by the combination of iron ions, a phenolic substance [chlorogenic acid] and oxygen, which react to form a pigmented complex”. The solution? Make the water’s pH “distinctly acidic”, which McGee does by adding cream of tartar or lemon juice “after the potatoes are half-cooked”. Another possible suspect for Jean’s blackening tubers is her cookware,…

✱ All solutions published next week Across 1 Aussie native won, overthrowing leader in fight (6) 4 Very happy due to change in plan (4,2) 9 Individuals in population estimates (4) 10 Greatest part played in his role as one coming out (5,5) 11 Humiliated and embarrassed after husband leaves (6) 12 Moon’s gravity may need to be adjusted (8) 13 Engineer and master mechanic? (9) 15 Poke with end of sharp stick (4) 16 Just over 50 in US city (4) 17 Baby bird ran away at last clutching fish (9)  21 Cheated Harry involved in submitted lawsuit (8) 22 Hide from source of loud beastly sound that is piercing (3,3) 24 Aloof second-in-command departs, relaxing aboard marine glider (6,4) 25 It’s below the knee – a little lower…