Big international stories jostled for attention left, right and centre as the Guardian Weekly team put together this week’s pages.
Spain was struggling to come to terms with the shock of Catalonia’s disputed referendum, as chaotic scenes of police violence accompanied a strong vote in support of independence. Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, the dreadful consequences of yet another US gun massacre, this time in Las Vegas, were slowly becoming clear.
Both stories feature prominently inside this week’s paper (including, on the Vegas shootings, an unmissably cutting reflection from our US commentator Richard Wolffe). But our cover splash this week takes us to the Amazon, where Brazil’s plans to create a mega-trade canal through the Tapajos basin threaten to wreak untold devastation on one of our last great unspoiled wildernesses.
Told in rich detail by Jonathan Watts, and with great collaboration from our graphics team, this is another example of the relentless encroachment of so-called economic progress on the Earth’s natural wonders. I think it’s exactly the sort of reporting the Weekly should be drawing to your attention and I hope you find the piece as eye-opening as I did.
Elsewhere in the paper there’s a moving dispatch concerning families separated on Chad’s border with Nigeria, cheering news for women drivers in Saudi Arabia and heartbreak on the frontline of the Rohingya Muslim exodus from Myanmar.
From the UK we uncover fresh evidence of disturbing work practices in a chicken-processing plant, bring you news lines from the Conservative party conference and report on the sudden failure of one of the country’s biggest holiday airlines.
The Review section takes us into the world of filing cabinets and dusty offices occupied by Germany’s last remaining Nazi hunters, as the years wind down on one of the world’s final great cold case investigations.
Discovery has an interview with the great naturalist David Attenborough, still making genre-defining wildlife documentaries at 91. As a major retrospective opens in London, Culture considers the work of the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose work made the difficult transition from the street to the gallery. And there’s a look at the art of craft beer labels, whose playful designs are helping to bring traditional ales out of the tap room and into the mainstream.
I’ll admit there was a fair bit of head-scratching at times over how to piece together this week’s edition, but I’m very proud of the outcome. Special mention is due to the Weekly’s long-suffering production team, who cheerfully accommodated a testing range of fiddly page changes from the acting editor!
I can only hope you enjoy the fruits of their labours. Thank you for your support as subscribers and please feel free to email me your views about the paper.
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