This nebulous study of Luigi Mangione veers close to romanticising him as a latter-day Robin Hood
On 5 December 2024, the New York Times ran the headline “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The newspaper then noted that Brian Thompson was “shot in the back in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then walked coolly away”. The murder in broad daylight was indeed both cold and shocking. But many Americans had a different response: for those who had been denied health insurance or faced exorbitant healthcase costs, the news felt cathartic. Social media blew up. One post read: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who deserves to live or die. That’s the job of the AI algorithm the insurance company designed to maximize profits on your health.”
Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a master’s in computer science, was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He awaits trial on federal and state charges of murder, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. So who is Mangione? And what might have motivated the alleged crime? These are the questions John H Richardson attempts to answer in an investigation that explores broader themes, too.
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© Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
© Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
© Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Hamad thinks his method enhances the flavour. Lucia says he’s breaking all the sacred rules. Who needs to wake up and smell the coffee?
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror
Hamad’s method isn’t the way it’s supposed to be done. I’m Italian – I know all about good coffee
Pressing down the grounds improves the flavour. Lucia is just being a coffee snob
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© Illustration: Igor Bastidas/The Guardian
© Illustration: Igor Bastidas/The Guardian
© Illustration: Igor Bastidas/The Guardian
An enraged behemoth breaks free from a government black site bent on revenge, but there is not much here aside from some monster action
‘We’re going to need more wallpaper” turns out to be the Nordic answer to “We’re going to need a bigger boat”, after a 50-metre troll has just swept a leg through someone’s soon-to-be-renovated house. When the quips revolve around interior design, you know Norwegian big-budget film-making is taking a softer path than its raucous American inspirations.
This is a Netflix sequel to Norwegian horror comedy Troll with the original director Roar Uthaug returning, and home is clearly a theme dear to the franchise’s heart. The first film’s Scandi-kaiju was returning to its roots, on a mission to trash Oslo. But the new “megatroll” – looking like Danny McBride in the throes of a full-body fungal infection – is headed for Trondheim, bent on revenging itself on the nation’s founding father and chief troll-scourge, King Olaf. Trollogist Nora (Ine Marie Wilmann) and ministerial adviser Andreas (Kim Falck) return, again trying to hold the authorities back from simply lighting up the enraged behemoth after it escapes from a government black site.
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© Photograph: Netflix/PA
© Photograph: Netflix/PA
© Photograph: Netflix/PA
This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world
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© Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA
© Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA
© Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA
US group Dekleptocracy identifies chemicals used for military vehicles’ lubricants and tyres as potential vulnerabilities
A US group has identified several obscure but potentially key sanctions it says could seriously disrupt Russia’s war effort in Ukraine after last month’s targeting of the Kremlin’s biggest oil firms.
Previous rounds of sanctions have been applied to Russian energy companies, banks, military suppliers and the “shadow fleet” of ships carrying Russian oil.
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© Photograph: Artem Priakhin/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Artem Priakhin/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Artem Priakhin/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock
Anastasia Samoylova took a photographic journey up the US east coast – and found herself in America’s unreconciled past just as much as its fragmented present
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© Photograph: Anastasia Samoylova/Anastasia Samoyova
© Photograph: Anastasia Samoylova/Anastasia Samoyova
© Photograph: Anastasia Samoylova/Anastasia Samoyova
A series of walking festivals and cultural programmes aim to lure visitors to the Algarve’s woodland interiors and pretty villages to help boost tourism year round
‘I never mind doing the same walk over and over again,” said our guide, Joana Almeida, crouching beside a cluster of flowers. “Each time, there are new things – these weren’t here yesterday.” Standing on stems at least two centimetres tall and starring the dirt with white petals, the fact these star of Bethlehem flowers sprung up overnight was a beautiful testament to how quickly things can grow and regenerate in this hilly, inland section of the Algarve, the national forest of Barão de São João. It was also reassuring to learn that in an area swept by forest fires in September, species such as strawberry trees (which are fire-resistant thanks to their low resin content) were beginning to bounce back – alongside highly flammable eucalyptus, which hinders other fire-retardant trees such as oak. Volunteers were being recruited to help with rewilding.
Visitor numbers to the Algarve are growing, with 2024 showing an increase of 2.6% on the previous year – but most arrivals head straight for the beach, despite there being so much more to explore. The shoreline is certainly wild and dramatic but the region is also keen to highlight the appeal of its inland areas. With the development of year-round hiking and cycling trails, plus the introduction of nature festivals, attention is being drawn to these equally compelling landscapes, featuring mountains and dense woodlands. The Algarve Walking Season (AWS) runs a series of five walking festivals with loose themes such as “water” and “archaeology” between November and April. It’s hoped they will inspire visitors year round, boosting the local economy and helping stem the tide of younger generations leaving in search of work.
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© Photograph: Jacek Sopotnicki/Alamy
© Photograph: Jacek Sopotnicki/Alamy
© Photograph: Jacek Sopotnicki/Alamy
Number of women incarcerated around the world rising at nearly three times the rate of men, with female prisoners often subjected to sexual violence and forced labour
Up to a million women worldwide are facing sexual violence and forced labour in prisons, where they are overlooked and forgotten, in what is being called a growing global crisis.
The number of incarcerated women is rising much faster than men and is expected to surpass one million on current trends. While on average women account for between 2% and 9% of national prison populations, since 2000 the number imprisoned has grown by 57%, compared with a 22% increase in the men’s prison population.
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© Photograph: Friedrich Stark/Alamy
© Photograph: Friedrich Stark/Alamy
© Photograph: Friedrich Stark/Alamy
The reader grapples with fascism and complicity through the eyes of a mute autistic girl being treated during the second world war
As I started reading Alice Jolly’s new novel, whose narrator is a mute autistic girl in wartime Vienna, I realised that I was resisting its very premise. I am generally sceptical about books that use child narrators to add poignancy to dark plots, or novels that use nazism as a means of introducing moral jeopardy to their characters’ journeys. And yet by the end Jolly had won me over. This is a book that walks a tightrope between sentimentality and honesty, between realism and imagination, and creates something spirited and memorable as it does so.
We meet our fierce narrator, Adelheid Brunner, when she is brought into a children’s hospital by her grandmother, who cannot cope with the little girl’s fixations. Adelheid is obsessed with the matchboxes of the title, which she is constantly studying, ordering and occasionally discarding. In the hospital, she finds that she and her fellow child inmates are the object of obsessive study in turn by their doctors – sometimes understood, sometimes valued, and then, tragically, sometimes discarded.
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© Photograph: Ernst Haas/Getty Images
© Photograph: Ernst Haas/Getty Images
© Photograph: Ernst Haas/Getty Images
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