Protest features prominently in this week’s Guardian Weekly, with citizens making their voices heard from Sudan to Hawaii. But nowhere have recent demonstrations resonated more than Hong Kong, where weeks of street clashes have been triggered by the government’s attempt to introduce a controversial extradition bill. With protests deadlocked almost three months on, our Beijing correspondent Lily Kuo asks whether resolution is likely to come by peaceful means – or from the iron fist of China.
When Mauricio Macri became Argentina’s president in 2015, it was meant to signal the country’s economic rehabilitation after years of catastrophe. Yet four years later, poverty levels are higher than when he took office and the spectre of 2001, when the country defaulted on its massive foreign debt, haunts Argentina once again. As former president Cristina Kirchner mounts a political comeback, Buenos Aires correspondent Uki Goñi asks how the country finds itself in such a sorry state again.
The US women’s footballer Megan Rapinoe became an overnight global sensation when she rejected Donald Trump’s invitation to visit Washington during her team’s victorious World Cup campaign. It wasn’t just the gloriously indelicate manner of her refusal – “I’m not going to the fucking White House” – but her unapologetically proud demeanour as a gay, successful woman that captured the world’s attention. Emma Brockes caught up with a new role model for social activism.
Elsewhere, you’ll find David Shariatmadari on the myth of language decline, Gaby Hinsliff on how Greta Thunberg became part of the UK culture wars, Robin McKie’s essay on how the discovery of carbon-14 revolutionised archaeology and more.
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