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The secrets of the deep sea, people living with dementia fighting against stereotypes and how life is getting harder for women in China
Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days.
1. How did Mexico’s president become the world’s most popular leftwing leader?
Claudia Sheinbaum started as an activist. Now she is Mexico’s president. Her approval rating hovers about 70% or above, and she stands out against the wave of conservative and far-right leaders elected throughout the Americas in recent years. For many leftists around the world, she is an inspiration. She has also drawn praise for her management of the country’s most difficult and important relationship, that with its northern neighbour. In this Guardian Long Read, Rachel Nolan asked if she has stayed true to her ideals.
2. ‘You’re treated like this is the end’: Meet the dementia rebels – diagnosed and determined to change people’s minds
Dementia activist Maxine Linnell, 78, at her home in Mountsorrel, Leicestershire. What was striking was how many people’s attitudes changed almost immediately … they stop seeing you as a person and see only dementia, some professionals included. Like this is the end and everything after will be devastating. Few things are more feared than a dementia diagnosis. Now people living with the condition are fighting against damaging stereotypes and demanding proper medical support. Anne Karpf spoke to some of them.
3. Being a woman in China is getting harder. But in Chengdu, female-only spaces are flourishing
The rising tide of a booming economy once lifted up people from all parts of society, revolutionising lives – women’s included. Now, an economic slowdown and Chinese leadership that promotes a return to traditional family values are testing female liberation. Amy Hawkins wrote about how the socially relaxed city Chengdu has seen a cautious feminist revival despite authorities’ growing alarm at women who shun traditional roles.
4. My mother was forced to give me up for adoption. But when we finally met decades later, it was far from a fairytale ending
At midnight on my birthday, she wrote, ‘Maybe you’ll respond to this and maybe you won’t but at least you’ll know I’m still thinking of you.’ Thirty years after David Batty’s parents were pressured into placing him with an adoption agency, he finally reconnected with them. As he wrote in this moving article, it was nothing like the neat stories you see on TV.
5. Ping-pong sponges, ‘black smokers’ and floating somethings: the secrets of the deep sea
If you want to follow in the footsteps of the great explorers, forget the moon and Mars: the ocean floor is where the real action is. The deep ocean, the part that’s deeper than 200 metres, covers about 66% of the Earth’s surface. Most of it has never been surveyed in detail. Even less has been seen up close. But every journey to the deep reveals wondrous new lifeforms. As underwater mining gains momentum, Jacob Mikanowski wrote about how we risk destroying one of the Earth’s last great wildernesses.
6. Could this one man have been behind terrorist attacks on Jewish communities across Europe?
The story begins a week after the joint US-Israeli offensive that started the war with Iran when, in the dead of night, someone posted a series of messages on Telegram and Snapchat that appeared to send secret instructions to terrorist networks in Europe. Legal papers, expert investigations and social media posts tell how a 32-year-old Iraqi appeared to run a ‘proxy’ campaign. Jason Burke reported on this extraordinary story.
