Images of starving Palestinians have appeared with increasing insistency across the world’s media over the past few weeks. Deciding whose child and which picture best illustrates the territory’s slide into famine is a grim task. Five-year-old Lana Salih Juha, on this week’s cover, weighed just 8kg when this photograph was taken in Gaza City on 28 July.
As Malak A Tantesh reports from Gaza for this week’s big story, Lana’s parents are among many inside the territory forced to watch children waste away as deliberate aid restrictions from Israel mean hunger is becoming a killer. It was, as Malak reports, a week when two milestones were reached: a Palestinian official record of 60,000 deaths and the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a group of UN and aid organisations, stating that the whole population of 2.2 people were now living in a state of famine.
Five essential reads in this week’s edition
Spotlight | Transatlantic barbs traded over social media safety The UK’s new law restricting under-18s’ internet access has only just come into force but already US tech giants and rightwing commentators are bolstering Nigel Farage’s efforts to turn restriction into a free speech issue, reports Dan Milmo
Environment | The best job in the world Matthew Jefferyexplains to Donna Ferguson how he became Cambridge University’s first expedition botanist since Darwin and how he prepared for his new post
Feature | Has nature writing strayed off the path of success? In the footsteps of the controversy over The Salt Path, Alex Clark explores how, despite public appetite, memoirs of redemption through the natural world may have reached journey’s end
Opinion | A good jigsaw is simply champion Why did the Lionesses bring Lego, sourdough starters and a puzzle or two to the Women’s Euro 2025? Because they are perfect ways to build mental resilience, explainsAmy Izycky
Culture | AI rescues Woody Guthrie’s basement tapes The legendary folk singer’s daughter and granddaughter tell Dave Simpson how they became custodians of his vast archive, including tracks that have now been released
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘Tech Bro Utopia’ – Why Bacon’s New Atlantis is Peter Thiel’s favorite book; The monarch who built Britain; Charles and the carbuncles; The miseries of Victor Hugo’s daughter…
As a Presidential candidate, Donald Trump made his world view plain: there was “us” and there was “them.” Once he was in the White House, the fear factor would prevail. By David Remnick
The Pain of Perfectionism
It’s the fault people humblebrag about in job interviews. but psychologists are discovering more and more about the real harm it causes. By Leslie Jamison
As plans are laid for a new casino, one can trace, through four figures, a history of rivalry and excess, rife with collisions of character and crime. By Adam Gopnik
As this week’s issue of the Guardian Weekly went to press, a UN-backed monitor said famine was now unfolding in Gaza. That statement came less than 24 hours after Donald Trump acknowledged for the first time that there was “real starvation” and told Israel to allow “every ounce of food” into Gaza. This week’s big story, led by on-the-ground reporting by Gaza-based journalist Malak A Tantash, focuses on the limited pause in fighting by Israel to allow aid deliveries.
Spotlight | Russia’s kamikaze attacks Luke Harding reports from the frontline in Dnipropetrovsk as once-safe Ukrainian villages are abandoned and the last inhabitants leave their animals and vegetable gardens behind
Environment | Nature fakes Photographer and author of The Anthropocene Illusion, Zed Nelson reflects on the how humans seek to recreate versions of the environments and creatures they have destroyed to satisfy their cravings to be in nature
Science | Life of plastics The journey of a single thread is traced by Phoebe Weston and Tess McClure, from garment to field and onwards, to illustrate how ubiquitous microplastic pollution has become
Opinion | Queens of England As we celebrate the Lionesses’ historic win, isn’t it time English football fans stopped chasing glory through their men’s teams when the women are the ones delivering, asks Ava Vidal
Culture | In the cradle of country music As the Grand Ole Opry turns 100, Jewly Hight visits the Nashville institution to find out how it has kept reinventing itself while honouring tradition over the decades
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features Daniel Karlin about his twelve-month abstinence from the printed word. As one of his friends remarked, he must have been the first person to make a New Year’s resolution to read less.