politicnewsbusterinsiderpostreview: The Guardian

Friday 21 January 2022

The Guardian

Russia and US to meet in Geneva as Ukraine war fears grow
Mitch McConnell’s comments on Black voters spark outrage | First Thing
Taliban delegation travel to Norway for human rights talks
Pioneering study finds generational link between smoking and body fat
Nanoplastic pollution found at both of Earth’s poles for first time
USC is resuming frat parties after abuse claims - with guards at the door
New York City’s mayor is getting paid in cryptocurrency. These are the bills he can (and can’t) pay
Memories of office life: on 9/11, we walked through a wormhole separating before from after
Sharleen Spiteri: ‘I blew my drink at Paris Hilton. We ended up nose to nose’
The smell of money: why locals think Peru’s billion-dollar fishmeal sector stinks
Abba settle lawsuit with ‘parasitic’ tribute band Abba Mania
If the Democrats don’t shape up, Biden’s presidency will lead to a Trumpian sequel | Astra Taylor
Twelve years to sort six boxes. To bin, or not to bin - that is the question | Emma Brockes
No way back! Why the superhero multiverse is a totally bonkers idea
My Bloody Valentine criticise Spotify for showing ‘fake’ lyrics to their songs
Meat Loaf was a spellbinding performer who fused sincerity with showmanship
The Guide #18: livestreamed gigs have changed music – for the better
‘Women like to be afraid’: why Romola Garai swapped costume dramas for gory horror
Can you ever use lube as a facial primer?
Hundreds stripped of British citizenship in last 15 years, study finds
Vulnerable Malians could ‘pay the price’ of heavy sanctions, warn aid groups
‘My customers like zero waste’: the blacksmith recycling canisters into cult kitchen knives
The week in wildlife – in pictures

Russia and US to meet in Geneva as Ukraine war fears grow

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 02:11 AM PST

Moscow calls for Nato forces to exit Romania and Bulgaria as Blinken plays down chances of quick fix

Diplomats from Russia and the US are to hold crucial talks as a weeks-long standoff over Ukraine teeters on the cusp of a pivotal and potentially violent phase, with rising concerns that Europe may again be beset by war.

Intelligence services in Ukraine claimed to have evidence that Russia was secretly moving weapons and oil into eastern Ukraine.

Mitch McConnell’s comments on Black voters spark outrage | First Thing

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 03:31 AM PST

Senate minority leader suggests African Americans and Americans are two distinct groups. Plus, Sonny Rollins on his years playing on the Williamsburg Bridge

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Good morning.

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has provoked anger after he appeared to imply that African Americans were not Americans in remarks about Black voters.

What would the bill have done? Banned partisan gerrymandering, protected election officials from partisan interference, required early voting and same-day registration, and restored the pre-clearance provision central to the Voting Rights Act.

It comes amid unprecedented concern over the future of US democracy, with one in three Americans believing Joe Biden was not legitimately elected.

What has Joe Biden said? The president said: "If any assembled Russian units move across the Ukrainian border, that is an invasion. Let there be no doubt if Putin makes this choice, Russia will pay a heavy price."

What sanctions would be imposed? There is disagreement within Nato, with Germany refusing to send arms to Ukraine. There is also dispute in Europe about whether Russia can be cut off from Swift, the international payments system.

Taliban delegation travel to Norway for human rights talks

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 02:42 AM PST

Oslo meeting with Afghan rulers will include allies and 'not represent legitimisation or recognition'

A Taliban delegation is to hold talks with Norwegian officials and Afghan civil society representatives in Oslo next week, the Norwegian foreign ministry has said.

The visit is scheduled from Sunday to Tuesday, and "the Taliban will meet representatives of the Norwegian authorities and officials from a number of allied countries", for talks on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan and human rights, the ministry said.

Pioneering study finds generational link between smoking and body fat

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 02:08 AM PST

Females whose grandfathers began smoking at early age tend to have more body fat, Children of the 90s study suggests

Women and girls whose grandfathers or great-grandfathers began smoking at an early age tend to have more body fat, research that taps into the extraordinary 30-year-old Children of the 90s study has found.

In an earlier piece of work it was discovered that if a father started smoking regularly before reaching puberty, then his sons, but not daughters, had more body fat than expected.

Nanoplastic pollution found at both of Earth’s poles for first time

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 04:00 AM PST

Tiny particles including tyre dust found in ice cores stretching back 50 years, showing global plastic contamination

Nanoplastic pollution has been detected in polar regions for the first time, indicating that the tiny particles are now pervasive around the world.

The nanoparticles are smaller and more toxic than microplastics, which have already been found across the globe, but the impact of both on people's health is unknown.

USC is resuming frat parties after abuse claims - with guards at the door

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 03:00 AM PST

Ramped up security, risk trainings and compliance reviews part of new policies to be implemented – but will they work?

A slew of sexual violence and drugging allegations prompted officials at the University of Southern California to shut down all fraternity parties last fall. Now the parties are back on – but with new rules.

Security guards will be stationed on stairways and in public areas, risk and sexual violence prevention trainings will be mandatory for members and chapters will have to complete compliance reviews before and after all gatherings when they resume in March, according to details outlined in an action plan this week.

New York City’s mayor is getting paid in cryptocurrency. These are the bills he can (and can’t) pay

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 03:00 AM PST

Eric Adams will find it difficult to spend his cryptocurrency paycheck to pay for the daily costs of living in the Big Apple

New York's new mayor gets his first paycheck on Friday – and as part of his bid to keep the city "on the forefront of innovation", he'll be receiving his wages in cryptocurrency.

"New York is the center of the world and we want it to be the center of cryptocurrency and other financial innovations," Eric Adams said in a press release.

Memories of office life: on 9/11, we walked through a wormhole separating before from after

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 03:18 AM PST

We rushed back from lunch to find the Guardian newsroom in a state of hushed pandemonium. I have never felt so humbled by the responsibility of finding words to shape an unimaginable event

It was an ordinary Tuesday at the office – and the day everything changed. We had breakfasted in a time of optimism, inside and outside the Guardian. The lustre was yet to fade from a Labour party that had recently been elected for a second term, while the internet was bringing the world to our doors.

I was the literary editor. Come lunchtime, a group of us headed out to celebrate a new partnership with the Hay festival, which the previous year had been declared "the Woodstock of the mind" by Bill Clinton. It was all very jolly and perhaps a bit smug – part of a mission to seize the literary high ground.

Sharleen Spiteri: ‘I blew my drink at Paris Hilton. We ended up nose to nose’

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 02:00 AM PST

After tens of millions of sales and with a UK tour this month, the Texas frontwoman answers readers' questions, from enmity with the reality star to friendship with Thierry Henry

What was your best memory or high point of your career so far with Texas? RainbowEden47

Having another hit album [2021's Hi], all these years in, feels poignant, because the beginning feels like yesterday. There's been amazing moments like Glastonbury or playing to 175,000 people in Valencia, but the funnier stuff makes for great stories as you get older. Once we were in Clint Eastwood's daughter's vintage Mercedes and a handle came off in my mate's hand, so she hid it in her handbag. When I was 15, if somebody had told me that I'd have Debbie Harry and John Taylor from Duran Duran in my kitchen, I'd have melted. Debbie actually lent me the Heart of Glass dress. I never wore it because I'd never look like fuckin' Debbie Harry in it. Well, I wore it secretly, in the house.

The smell of money: why locals think Peru’s billion-dollar fishmeal sector stinks

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 03:30 AM PST

Those living in the coastal city of Chimbote say the industry pollutes the air and water, makes their children sick and has put local fishers out of work

Just before you reach Chimbote, a seaside city 260 miles (420km) north of the Peruvian capital Lima, you can smell it. It's like the whiff of a fishmonger's stall on a hot afternoon. For Peruvians, it's synonymous with a bad pong; "smells like Chimbote" means something stinks.

Once that scent was "the smell of money", according to another popular expression. A natural superabundance of Peruvian anchovy – known locally as anchoveta – off its Pacific coast makes Peru the world's biggest producer of fishmeal, a condensed powder or cake made from ground dried fish.

Abba settle lawsuit with ‘parasitic’ tribute band Abba Mania

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 02:49 AM PST

Swedish pop group, who begin a live concert event in May, had described British band as 'bad faith'

Abba have reached a settlement with a tribute band they described in a lawsuit as "parasitic and bad faith".

Lawyers for Abba filed the lawsuit in December, arguing that the British group Abba Mania could be confused with the original act. They said they had asked Abba Mania to change their name but the quartet had refused.

If the Democrats don’t shape up, Biden’s presidency will lead to a Trumpian sequel | Astra Taylor

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 02:00 AM PST

The president has failed to capitalise on progressive sentiment: his party needs to stand up for the working class

How should one feel about the first year of the Biden presidency?

I can't really say I'm disappointed, since I didn't have high hopes going into it. But I do feel dread. This last year has felt a bit like being trapped in a nail-biting intermission between two horror films. The opening instalment consisted of Donald Trump's first four years in office – it ended with the cliffhanger of a deadly plague and a surreal, poorly executed, but still terrifying ransacking of the Capitol. The sequel practically writes itself, as the man ascends to power a second time, even more emboldened and determined to hold on to power.

Astra Taylor is a writer, organiser and documentary maker

Twelve years to sort six boxes. To bin, or not to bin - that is the question | Emma Brockes

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 04:00 AM PST

Ticket stubs, newspaper cuttings and letters from my mother's old employer. But what is treasure and what is trash?

I moved into my present apartment seven years ago, and my six crates of papers moved with me – directly from one closet, where they had squatted undisturbed for five years, to another, where the same fate awaited. For almost two decades, these things have followed me around, and I've never had the slightest inclination to go through them.

Then last week, in a fit of January decluttering fervour, I decided to reclaim my closet. Everything came out into the living room, where it seemed to me an achievable aim to aggregate these six crates down into a single container. I could probably do it in an hour, I thought. Four days later and here I still am: surrounded by papers, trying to weigh the value of a letter from my mother's then 17-year-old brother to her in 1967, and whether I should keep receipts from my tax return in 1998.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

No way back! Why the superhero multiverse is a totally bonkers idea

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 01:32 AM PST

Now that anything goes in Marvel and DC's extended cinematic universes, how long before the barminess of the comic-book blockbuster starts to get boring?

The Multiverse – or should that be Multiverses, as there are now Marvel and DC versions? – is clearly a good thing for superhero movies. Just as naysayers had begun to suggest comic book flicks might have exhausted all their vim and verve, along comes Spider-Man: No Way Home, a movie that uses the introduction of alternate realities to restore characters such as Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin and original wall-crawler Tobey Maguire with all the wide-eyed enthusiasm of a nine-year-old who's just realised he can have He-Man and Jabba the Hutt battling a team comprising Snarf from the Thundercats and the Care Bears?

The problem is, the internet has now worked out that if Maguire and Andrew Garfield can return to the big screen despite having never previously been in any Marvel superhero flicks, fans can really have anyone they want in future episodes. Dig deep enough and there are web rumours that the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness could feature the return of Robert Downey Jr as a version of Iron Man from another universe who did not die in the Infinity Wars. Not enough of an eye-popper for you? Some reports have even suggested that Tom Cruise could play a third version of Iron Man.

My Bloody Valentine criticise Spotify for showing ‘fake’ lyrics to their songs

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 03:10 AM PST

The band, who are famously cryptic about their songs, called the inaccurate lyrics 'completely incorrect and insulting'

My Bloody Valentine have criticised Spotify for showing "fake lyrics" to the shoegaze band's famously cryptic songs.

In November 2021, Spotify launched a feature allowing users to read along to the lyrics while they listen to any song.

Meat Loaf was a spellbinding performer who fused sincerity with showmanship

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 04:25 AM PST

The hard-rock icon injected even the most absurd songs with deeply felt emotion and formed the perfect musical partnership with Jim Steinman

There is a mean-spirited and cynical argument that Michael Lee Aday owed his career to someone else's talent: the late songwriter Jim Steinman, who wrote everything on Meat Loaf's 43m-selling breakthrough album Bat Out of Hell, rescued his career when it was in the doldrums by agreeing to make 1993's Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell and was behind virtually every song for which Meat Loaf will be remembered. Of the 18 tracks on The Very Best of Meat Loaf, only four were not written by Steinman.

It's certainly true that Meat Loaf found things much tougher without Steinman on board. Steinman had hits with other people – the Sisters of Mercy and Celine Dion among them – but not one of the Steinman-less albums Meat Loaf released in the 80s was a hit in the US. European fans remained a little more loyal and he occasionally scored a UK hit, most notably the distinctly Steinman-esque Modern Girl in 1984. But he spent most of the decade relentlessly touring in order to stave off bankruptcy, and the leap in sales between his 1986 album Blind Before I Stop – which had its greatest success in Switzerland, reaching No 22 – and Bat Out of Hell II, a global number one that sold 14m copies, tells its own story.

The Guide #18: livestreamed gigs have changed music – for the better

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 03:45 AM PST

In this week's newsletter: streamed events were once only for global stars at the top of the tree. Now they're proving accessible for smaller artists too

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In the pandemic's darkest days, when our horizons were largely limited to the four walls of our house and the very notion of attending a 'gig' seemed completely preposterous, something amazing happened. Across the music industry, artists and bands dug out their webcams (or high quality recording equipment), ushering in the age of the livestreamed gig. Some of these performances were strikingly professional – mammoth pyrotechnic happenings beamed from cavernous super-clubs – while others were endearingly homespun, putting the 'bedroom' into bedroom pop. But they all shared an admirable desire to put on a show in trying times.

Still, I think I'm finally ready to admit, nearly two years into the 'age of the live stream gig', that pretty much all of those performances left me somewhat cold. No shade cast on the performers, who were busting a gut as per. It was simply that, without the thrum of the crowd, the atmosphere frequently felt funereal. It reminded me of the days of Top of the Pops, when a band like U2 couldn't (or wouldn't) make it to the studio and would instead play a sterile, audience-less beamed in from LA. It would invariably fall flat, not least when followed by footage of people pogo-ing around to Aqua or someone similarly naff back in the studio.

‘Women like to be afraid’: why Romola Garai swapped costume dramas for gory horror

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 03:00 AM PST

Best known for starring in Atonement and Suffragette, the actor has now turned to writing and directing with a spine-chilling film. What possessed her?

I meet Romola Garai in a velvet-sofaed establishment in central London, which feels radically incongruous. Not because one wouldn't expect to find an actor of nearly 20 years on such a sofa, but because an hour before, I'd been forcing myself to watch the gory centrepiece moment of her new horror film, Amulet, which marks a dramatic departure into writing and directing.

Amulet lulls you into a fragile sense of security with its arthousey tension, beautiful, subtle performances and lingering shots of decaying wallpaper. When it explodes into body horror – toilets birthing hideous, hairless newborn creatures, a prelude to the worse gestations to come – well, you'd be tempted to cover your eyes if it wasn't all so horribly compelling.

Can you ever use lube as a facial primer?

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 02:00 AM PST

It can give your skin glowy finish, and there are millions of TikTok hits to prove it. But is it a bit weird?

The hack
Using personal lubricant, which often contains silicone, glycerine and water, as a skin primer to be worn under make-up.

The promise
Dewy, wet-look skin may be the beauty trend du jour, but is lube an affordable alternative? About 10.8 million TikTok views suggest so.

Hundreds stripped of British citizenship in last 15 years, study finds

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 03:28 AM PST

Research by lawyer-run website finds Home Office has removed citizenship of at least 464 people since relaxation of law

Hundreds of people have been stripped of their British citizenship in the last 15 years, according to research, including one man who was stateless for almost five years.

Research carried out by Free Movement, a website run by lawyers to provide information for those affected by immigration control, has found that at least 464 people have had their citizenship removed since the law permitting this practice was relaxed 15 years ago.

Vulnerable Malians could ‘pay the price’ of heavy sanctions, warn aid groups

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 04:25 AM PST

NGOs call for aid exemption to EU-backed sanctions imposed after election postponement and arrival of Russian paramilitary

More than a dozen aid organisations have called for humanitarian exemptions to heavy sanctions imposed on Mali after the military leadership postponed planned February elections.

The EU has announced support for the sanctions imposed earlier this month by the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), which include closing borders and a trade embargo.

‘My customers like zero waste’: the blacksmith recycling canisters into cult kitchen knives

Posted: 20 Jan 2022 05:34 AM PST

Tim Westley takes up chef friend's challenge to transform laughing gas litter

The little steel bulbs that litter parks, roadsides and city centres – the discarded canisters from Britain's second favourite drug, laughing gas – cause misery to many communities. But now one blacksmith has found an innovative use for them: turning them into handmade kitchen knives.

The prevalence of the canisters has prompted some councils to impose local bans, while the home secretary is keen to outlaw them nationally. But Tim Westley's handmade kitchen knives are gaining a cult following among environmentally conscious foodies after being endorsed by chefs committed to low waste.

The week in wildlife – in pictures

Posted: 21 Jan 2022 04:00 AM PST

The best of this week's wildlife pictures, including beluga whales, a 'snow fairy' and two egrets hitching a lift