Is the world, as the UK’s chief medical officer put it recently, really facing “an antibiotic apocalypse”? That was an issue looming over an international meeting of scientists in Berlin this week, where the problem of antimicrobial resistance was under intense scrutiny.
Antibiotic misuse has long been associated with the global livestock industry but, as the Observer’s Robin McKie discusses in the Guardian Weekly this week, it is time that humans moderated their use and consumption of these drugs as this growing crisis threatens to profoundly impact many routine aspects of modern medicine.
This subject made it on to our front cover, but it was a close call between that and a deeply moving dispatch from Guardian correspondent Martin Chulov from Raqqa, the besieged Islamic State capital, where the last remaining jihadist fighters appear to be on the brink of defeat. This important piece gets extended coverage inside the paper.
There’s great reporting from Catalonia, where separatist-related turmoil continues, to Uzbekistan, where some sense a loosening of political repression, to Dominica as it struggles with the aftermath of recent hurricane damage.
Important social stories also made the news this week, from female students in Varanasi, India, protesting over sexual harassment, to Japanese outrage at the death of a journalist who had worked gruelling hours of overtime.
In the UK, Theresa May was still prime minister, arguably an achievement in itself after a disastrous Tory party conference speech marred by misfortune and backbiting colleagues.
If you’re a person who struggles to sleep at night, you may not wish to save for bedtime the Weekly Review lead, which reveals new research into the damaging effects of not getting enough rest. Turn instead to the moving interview with Parastou Forouhar, an Iranian artist who reveals how her parents’ murder during the Islamic Revolution has informed her work.
Books looks at a bittersweet biography of the Victorian writer Edward Lear, whose nonsense verse could perhaps be interpreted as the frustration of a gay man trapped in repressive Victorian England. Culture meets Steve Buscemi, whose cultivated barfly persona seems to belie his true acting strengths.
On the back page George Monbiot rounds things off with a scathing view of the international meat industry, a topic that may well lead you back to the paper’s cover story.
No doubt this is a subject that will chime with many readers; if so, you are more than welcome to send your thoughts for consideration on our Reply page – we’d love to hear from first-time correspondents as well as our more regular letter writers!
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