Jail terms of up to five years for ‘promoting homosexuality’ in Burkina Faso is latest in push for ‘family values’ sweeping the continent
“For my own safety I’ve become much more distrustful, I’ve shut myself off and try not to talk to certain people,” says Paul*, a young Burkinabé. “How will we go to health centres? Will doctors and nurses protect us? Or will they report us?”
On 1 September, Burkina Faso’s minister of justice and human rights, Edasso Rodrigue Bayala, announced an amendment to the Code of Persons and Family (CPF) which came into force in 1990, establishing for the first time a prison sentence of between two and five years and a fine for those who “promote homosexuality”.
These wildfires tend to burn in more remote areas and grow larger faster, posing a higher risk to public safety and health
The climate crisis will continue making lightning-sparked wildfires more frequent for decades to come, which could produce cascading effects and worsen public safety and public health, experts and new research suggest.
Lightning-caused fires tend to burn in more remote areas and therefore usually grow into larger fires than human-caused fires. That means a trend toward more lightning-caused fires is also probably making wildfires more deadly by producing more wildfire smoke and helping to drive a surge in air quality issues from coast to coast, especially over the past several years.
Essays from Zadie Smith; Wiki founder Jimmy Wales on how to save the internet; a future-set novel by Ian McEwan; a new case for the Slow Horses - plus memoirs from Kamala Harris and Paul McCartney… all among this season’s highlights
Helm by Sarah Hall Faber, out now
Hall is best known for her glittering short stories: this is the novel she’s been working on for two decades. Set in Cumbria’s Eden valley, it tells the story of the Helm – the only wind in the UK to be given a name – from its creation at the dawn of time up to the current degradation of the climate. It’s a huge, millennia-spanning achievement, spotlighting characters from neolithic shamans to Victorian meteorologists to present-day pilots.
The American Turkish woman, 26, was shot in the head on 6 September 2024 by an Israeli sniper in the West Bank
Özden Bennett’s first reaction after learning of her younger sister’s killing was disbelief. Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi had traveled to the occupied West Bank just three days earlier to volunteer with Palestinian communities facing violence at the hands of Israeli soldiers and settlers.
But the shock and grief quickly gave way to dread – “that nothing would come of it, that she would have just died under that olive tree and that was it”, Bennett said this week, before the anniversary of Eygi’s death.
Nick Hamman wants to help the local economy by enticing people to seek out township barbecues and family-run sandwich shops
Solly’s Corner, a fast food restaurant in downtown Johannesburg, was bustling. Slabs of hake and golden chips sizzled, green chillies were being chopped and homemade sauces distributed liberally into packed sandwiches.
Food influencer and radio DJ Nick Hamman stepped behind the counter and was greeted as an old friend by Yoonas and Mohammed Akhalwaya, the father-son duo behind the family business in Fordsburg, a historical south Asian and Middle Eastern area.
Painting was spotted online by Dutch journalists when the daughter of a former Nazi official put her house up for sale in Mar del Plata
There was nothing very remarkable about the middle-aged couple who lived in the low, stone-clad villa on calle Padre Cardiel, a quiet residential street in the leafy Parque Luro district of Argentina’s best-known seaside town, Mar del Plata.
Patricia Kadgien, 58, was born in Buenos Aires, five hours to the north. Her social media described her as a yoga teacher and practitioner of biodecoding, an obscure alternative therapy that claims to cure illness by resolving past traumas.
Keir Starmer’s government is not in chaos, the prime minister’s new chief secretary, Darren Jones, has said following an emergency reshuffle triggered by Angela Rayner’s resignation as deputy prime minister.
The cabinet reshuffle, which had been planned for later in the autumn, was brought forward by Starmer in an attempt to assert control after Rayner was forced to step down from all three of her roles, having been found to have breached the ministerial code over her tax arrangements.
Luis Enrique broke his collarbone in a cycling accident on Friday and the Paris Saint-Germain coach was to undergo surgery, the French champions said.
The 55-year-old Spaniard, a cycling enthusiast, led PSG to their first Champions League triumph last season, and the team have won three straight games to open their Ligue 1 title defence.
From a diplomat who embraced the exiled Albert Einstein to a schoolteacher who helped ‘non-Aryan’ students flee, these remarkable individuals refused to bend the knee to Hitler – only to be dramatically betrayed. What made them risk it all?
I grew up in a house where nothing German was allowed. No Siemens dishwasher or Krups coffee machine in the kitchen, no Volkswagen, Audi or Mercedes in the driveway. The edict came from my mother. She was not a Holocaust survivor, though she had felt the breath of the Shoah on her neck. She was just eight years old on 27 March 1945, when her own mother was killed by the last German V-2 rocket of the war to fall on London, a bomb that flattened a corner of the East End, killing 134 people, almost all of them Jews. One way or another, the blast radius of that explosion would encompass the rest of my mother’s life and much of mine.
Of course, she knew that the bomb that fell on Hughes Mansions had not picked out that particular building deliberately. But given that the Nazis were bent on eliminating the Jews of Europe, she also knew how delighted they would have been by the target that fate, or luck, had chosen for that last V-2, how pleased that at 21 minutes past seven on that March morning it had added 120 more to the tally of dead Jews that would, in the end, number 6 million. And so came the rule. No trace of Germany would be allowed to touch our family: no visits, no holidays, no contact. The Germans were a guilty nation, every last one of them implicated in the wickedest crime of the 20th century.
Democracy means a society and system in which everyone’s rights matter. Rapists count on this being untrue – and Trump is proving them right
Rape is a crime against democracy in the most immediate sense of equality between individuals and the premise that we’re all endowed with certain inalienable rights. Most rapists operate on the premise that they can not only overpower the victim physically, but can do so socially and legally. They count on a system that discounts the voices of victims and only too often cooperates in silencing them, through shame, intimidation, threats, discrediting, the obscene legal instrument known as a nondisclosure agreement and a system too often run by men for men at the expense of women and children. That is to say, rapists count on getting away with it because of a system that hands them power and steals it from their victims. They count on a silencing system. On profound inequality.
Which is what makes rape such a peculiar crime: it is the ritual enactment of the perpetrator’s power and the victim’s powerlessness, buttressed by the circumstances that puts and keeps each of them in those roles. It’s driven by the desire to use sexuality to cause physical and psychic injury, to dominate, to celebrate the rapist’s power and the victim’s powerlessness, to treat another human being as a person without rights, including the right to set boundaries, to say no and to speak up afterward. A society that perpetuates and protects this desire and arrangement is rape culture, and it’s been our culture throughout most of its existence.
Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility
Speculation that swirled on social media offered an insight into conspiracy theories online, liberal fantasies and the attention economy
The death of Joseph Stalin took days to become public and remains fodder for conspiracy theories. The death of Donald Trump has spawned countless tweets, TikToks and memes long before it even happens.
“How did you find out over the weekend that you were dead?” asked Fox News’s Peter Doocy with tongue in cheek. “Did you see that?”
“No,” Trump responded flatly on Tuesday as senators and administration officials gathered around him in the Oval Office shifted their weight and smiled.
Canadian First Nations actor who brought an effortless integrity and dry wit to his starring role in the hit film Dances With Wolves
The notion that Kevin Costner’s Oscar-winning directorial debut Dances With Wolves (1990), set during the US civil war, was somehow radical or revisionist in its take on the western, tended to come from people who hadn’t seen many westerns.
It did depart from precedent in one respect, however, by using Native American and First Nations actors to play its Sioux and Pawnee characters, with much of the dialogue delivered in the Lakota language with English subtitles. The most impressive of these performers was Graham Greene, who has died aged 73.
Michele Bourda’s husband says police and coastguard were ‘criminally slow’ in responding to her disappearance in August
A body found on a barren Greek island has been identified as that of Michele Bourda, the British tourist who vanished from a beach more than a month ago.
Greece’s coastguard confirmed that the 59-year-old, whose disappearance sparked a big rescue operation, had been discovered by a passing yacht on the islet of Fidonisi.
The 24-year-old endured humiliation at Wimbledon but has pulled off a rapid and remarkable comeback
Amanda Anisimova was struggling to maintain her composure in the days leading up to the final grand slam tournament of the year. As the American braced herself for her first round match, her high expectations became a source of significant stress. In hindsight, this was nothing out of the ordinary. “I think most players are putting a lot of pressure on themselves and those few days before the tournament are pretty stressful, just the anticipation of it,” she said after reaching round three. “I feel it was natural for me to feel that way.”
However, the circumstances surrounding Anisimova on the eve of the US Open made her situation unique. The last time she appeared at a grand slam, Anisimova was beaten 6-0, 6-0 in the Wimbledon final by Iga Swiatek. Wimbledon had represented a long-awaited breakthrough after years of unfulfilled promise and under most circumstances it would have only signified a positive step forward in her career, but by the end of her excruciating day on Centre Court it was hard not to wonder if such a humiliating moment might completely derail her progress.
All Blacks bounce back from shock defeat to Argentina with 24-17 win
New Zealand’s unbeaten run in Auckland extends to 51 matches
New Zealand stayed firm at their Eden Park fortress to claim an attritional 24-17 win over South Africa in a heavyweight clash between the world’s top two rugby sides.
Under pressure after conceding a first-ever defeat on Argentine soil against the Pumas two weeks ago, the All Blacks responded with a performance of grit and discipline to stretch their unbeaten run at their Auckland stronghold to 51 matches.
Hollywood actor helps out at the Swan at Enford in Wiltshire as he and his neighbours fight to save their local
It was a pleasant surprise when a visitor to the Swan at Enford, a thatched pub tucked away in the folds of the Wiltshire countryside, found themselves being served a pint by one of the UK’s most famous actors.
“They had come in off the main road and asked if it was my pub,” said Rupert Everett, the star of films such as Another Country, My Best Friend’s Wedding and The Madness of King George.
From Falkirk to Aberdeen, the Scottish flag has become a contested emblem in protests around migration
After Friday prayers last week, Mahmooda Syedain and her husband went shopping for flags, specifically the national flag of Scotland, the blue and white cross of St Andrew.
The community activist lives in Falkirk, a former iron and steel town midway between Glasgow and Edinburgh where unemployment is rising, and where an anonymous two-floor building tucked behind the local Lidl store has become the focus of the largest asylum hotel protests in Scotland.
The Alien: Earth star on the joys of kissing, disliking his forehead, and the time he tried (and failed) to get arrested
Born in Hampshire, Alex Lawther, 30, made his West End debut in David Hare’s South Downs at 16. In 2014 he played the young Alan Turing in the film The Imitation Game, earning him a London Critics’ Circle award. In 2016, he starred in the Black Mirror episode Shut Up and Dance, and from 2017 he played the lead in Channel 4’s The End of the F***ing World. He appears in the series Alien: Earth, a prequel to the 1979 Alien film, which is streaming on Hulu. He lives in London with his partner.
When were you happiest?
Last year, during four days in January, when I directed Rhoda, my second short film, in a tiny house in Camberwell with Juliet Stevenson and Emma D’Arcy.
As the hit thriller returns to our screens, its creator talks about false starts, surprise inspirations – and why he never looks inside Jackson Lamb’s head
It is hard to imagine anyone less like the slovenly, has-been MI5 agent Jackson Lamb than his creator, Mick Herron. “He must come deep out of my subconscious,” the 62-year-old thriller writer jokes, sipping mineral water at a rooftop bar in his home city of Oxford, a world away from London’s Aldersgate where his bestselling Slough House series is set. In a “blue shirt, white tee” (fans will get the reference), he is softly spoken with a hint of a Geordie accent. Herron is often described as the heir to John le Carré and “the best spy novelist of his generation”, according to the New Yorker. Unlike le Carré, he’s not, and never has been, a spy. Mysteriously, though, Wikipedia has given him “an entirely fictitious” birthday. “I got cards. I got a cake,” he says.
For the uninitiated, the novels and award-winning TV series follow a bunch of misfit spooks exiled to Slough House from MI5 for various mishaps and misdemeanours, so far away from the shiny HQ in Regent’s Park that it may as well be in Slough. The joke is that these hapless underdogs (nicknamed “slow horses”), under the grubby reins of Lamb, always triumph over the slicker agents and “the Dogs” at the Park.
I never cared about football. Then my Buffalonian boyfriend’s family brought me into the fold – and I discovered how failure, fandom and community intertwine
On 14 October 2024, having never supported a team before, or, to be honest, especially liked sports at all, I became a Buffalo Bills fan. I’d been going out with my Buffalonian boyfriend for more than a year, which I think in his parents’ eyes meant my introduction to the team that animates their entire hometown was overdue. They drove down to New York City, kitted me out in a Bills baseball cap, hoodie and blanket (and plastic Bills bag to hold it all in) – and took me to a game.
I thought I’d seen enough Super Bowls to know I didn’t care about football, but wrapped in that staticky blanket, one of the few spots of Buffalo blue in a snake-green sea of Jets supporters at MetLife Stadium, I realized what I’d been missing: a team. Or more specifically: this team.
Media sites are taking action on several fronts as traffic referrals dry up and AI companies plunder their content
When the chief executive of the Financial Times suggested at a media conference this summer that rival publishers might consider a “Nato for news” alliance to strengthen negotiations with artificial intelligence companies there was a ripple of chuckles from attendees.
Yet Jon Slade’s revelation that his website had seen a “pretty sudden and sustained” decline of 25% to 30% in traffic to its articles from readers arriving via internet search engines quickly made clear the serious nature of the threat the AI revolution poses.
Connexion
