THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY (May 28, 2025): The latest issue features Who will help Gaza City? – Hunger and despair in the Ruins of Gaza City; Plus: Dom Phillips’ last Amazon dispatch

Israel allowed a trickle of aid to enter Gaza last week while pinning its hopes of assuaging condemnation of the two-month-long blockade of the territory by this week permitting the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israeli-backed logistics group, to begin rigidly controlled deliveries that are barely a drop in the ocean of what the population needs.

While foreign journalists remain unable to report from Gaza, our correspondents Jason Burke, in Jerusalem, and Malek A Tantesh, who is based in Gaza, have written a powerful report on life in Gaza City for this week’s cover story. Even as attacks continue, more and more civilians move into the city, pushed out from northern Gaza as Israel’s new offensive intensifies. Life has been reduced to the very basics with, as the head of the Gaza NGOs Network, Amjad Shawa, put it, people “living in rubbish dumps, cesspits. There are flies, mosquitoes. We have no water to deliver, no food, no tents or blankets or tarpaulins, nothing. People are very, very hungry but there is nothing to give them.”

Spotlight |‘I knew I would die in jail’

Daniel Boffey reports on how the right-hand man of Georgia’s de facto ruler ended up on the run and what effect that had on the country’s relationships with Russia and the west

Science | Weight-loss drugs have additional gains
The benefits of Ozempic and similar medications go beyond treating obesity, as science correspondents Hannah Devlin and Nicola Davis discover from talking to researchers

Feature | A deadly Amazon quest
An extract from the book Dom Phillips was working on when he and the Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira were killed

Opinion | Why Trump’s jaw-jaw isn’t working
Because, argues Simon Tisdall, both Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu have calculated that a forever war is better for them personally than the reckoning peace would bring

Culture | The soul queen of New Orleans
At 84, Irma Thomas has a new album and a new generation of fans, but as she tells Garth Cartwright, her musical journey has not been easy