NATIONAL REVIEW: The latest issue features ‘The Fire Next Time’ – Noah Rothman on Woke, the Sequel
Are we ready for the sequel? Noah Rothman
How the newly contentious facilities make the things we do possible. Charles C. W. Cooke
What America needs to do to keep its defenses strong. Rebeccah Heinrichs
A federal rule change could bring upward mobility. Howard Husock
Friedrich Merz is a man with few choices and little popular support as he faces the end of Germany’s postwar settlement and the collapse of all the checks and balances to maintain democratic norms after the second world war and reunification. While Alternative für Deutschland’s success in state elections in Saxony-Anhalt saw the party win 44% of the vote, they are three seats short of a governing majority and, so far, no other party has said they are prepared to work with them, which means that for the moment, at least, the threat of Germany’s first rightwing extremist state government since the Nazi period has not yet come to pass.
As Berlin correspondent Deborah Cole explains, Merz is seen as the wrong man to present and sell a political counterpoint to the AfD’s populist policies. Seen as lacking in empathy and political dexterity, his demeanour is in sharp contrast to Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt. But as Deborah’s Berlin colleague, Kate Connolly, reports, some of Siegmund’s prospective new MPs have questionable backgrounds, including criminal records, Stasi pasts and connections to far-right networks.
Spotlight | Stop, slow down and swerve the apocalypse
Can the world heave a collective sigh of relief after fellow tech bosses heeded a proposal by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s to put the brakes on AI’s headlong rush to over take human intelligence? Nick Robins-Early weighs up our chances
Science | Can I borrow your coyote?
Guardian US reporter Lois Beckett visits a one-of-a-kind California lending library where you can check out taxidermied animals and fossilised dinosaur bones.
Feature | Slime is not as simple as it seems
Scientists are battling to determine whether supposedly simple organisms demonstrate a form of intelligence. If they do, what does it mean for our understanding of brain power, asks Samanth Subramanian
Opinion | Ethics make a return to UK foreign policy
The evidence is Ed Miliband’s bold decision to label settler violence in the West Bank as “ethnic cleansing” and institute a boycott, argues Steve Bloomfield
Culture | Shear fun
Catherine Shoard is rounded up for a trip down to Mossy Bottom farm to get a behind-the-scenes preview of the latest Shaun the Sheep film
THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE: The latest issue features “EMPIRE OF GRIFT” – Anne Applebaum examines how hardened ideologues and opportunistic profiteers are bending American diplomacy to advance an antidemocratic agenda—and their own financial interests. For our cover, the illustrator Ben Hickey created an ominous image of figures in shadow arrayed around a map of the world, evoking the war-room scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Far-right ideologues have transformed American foreign policy into a tool of private gain and antidemocratic reaction. By Anne Applebaum
The president’s recent Truth Social barrage of fake images reflects the dangers—for all of us—of virtual self-aggrandizement. By Gal Beckerman
A new book suggests that arguing isn’t about winning but seems preoccupied with it anyway. By Lily Meyer
THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘A Season In Hell’ – Tourism on a heating planet.
California’s Big Sur coastline is often called a slice of heaven. But this year – beset by wildfires, road closures and disruptions to tourist amenities – it has endured a long summer of hell. Now questions are being asked about how many visitors it can sustain in the face of the climate crisis.
For our big story this week, Andrew Gumbel visits Big Sur, where the tourist industry accounts for about 90% of the local economy, to hear why the community fears its ethos is under threat.
The UN has warned that the El Niño climate phenomenon is “supersizing before our eyes”. Environment editor Damien Carrington reports on the latest forecasts, which predict the event is near certain to shatter temperature records.
Then, the mayors of Paris, Milan and Phoenix write about how their cities are learning from each other on responding to the heat crisis. “How do you protect millions of people,” they ask, “when extreme heat is no longer an exceptional event, but an increasingly familiar part of summer?”
Spotlight | ‘It breaks my heart’
Kate Connolly reports from Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt, where voters are digesting the far-right Alternative für Deutschland’s state election triumph
Science | Forbidden planet
Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting the decision – and they’re only getting more passionate, writes Tim Dowling
Feature | Your lying AIs
LLMs have an alarming tendency to deceive and manipulate their users. As they become ever more embedded in society, the race is on to find out why – and stop them doing it. Snigdha Poonam explains
Opinion | The route to a brighter future
The world is being driven to the brink by thugs and dictators, says Simon Tisdall, but ordinary people have more power than we think
Culture | A stitch up
As the Bayeux tapestry goes on show in London, cartoonist Edith Pritchett offers an alternative 21st century take, capturing today’s battles, while art critic Jonathan Jones reviews the British Museum’s blockbuster exhibition of the original masterpiece
For much of its history, Albania remained as shadowy and remote as the fictional Syldavia of the Tintin comics. Letters to Albania were sometimes returned from Albany, New York, with the postal direction “Try Europe.” The country came into existence only after 1912, with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Its first ruler, King Zog, was hounded out by Mussolini when he invaded in 1939. Five years later, the Italians and…
In August, Donald Trump sided with consumers by increasing the tariff-free quota on imported beef for 90 days beginning September 1. The concession will last three months. It would be a minor story with any other president in the White House. But under Trump, even dull-sounding trade news can take on a sudden importance, especially when mixed up with foreign affairs. Trump’s justification for favoring Argentina, whose 2026 quota he increased by 80,000 metric tons, is partly geopolitical: he wants to give support to Javier Milei’s free-market regime, seeing it as a foil to left-leaning governments elsewhere in Latin America.
Pete Hegseth has a face for television and a machismo of sorts. It appears, even to parts of MAGA, that Donald Trump put him in charge of the armed forces because the President likes attractive people on TV. “Right out of central casting,” Trump once told Secretary Hegseth, patting him on the bicep. “Pete loves war!”
Focus centers on the next paradigm of technology, such as advanced AI chips, robotics, and the economic infrastructure behind massive AI model rollouts.
Major themes include global security, currency volatility (across the Dollar, Euro, and Yen), public health resilience, and shifting spheres of influence—particularly between the U.S. and China.
Predictive coverage features regional climate shifts, extreme weather management (like wildfires), and a massive transition toward renewable energy infrastructure, such as Europe’s expanding solar-battery hybrid grids.
The year will also track major demographic shifts, including the second phase of India’s first national census since 2011.
THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘Swept Away’ – After the Nepal-Tibet flood disaster…
Over the last week, the world has watched with horror the scenes from the Tibet-Nepal border where a devastating torrent of mud, water and ice tore along the Bhotekoshi River, destroying entire communities and leaving more than 1,000 people dead and several thousand more missing.
From the Nepali town of Devighat, our south Asia correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen describes a nightmarish scene of overflowing mortuaries and unidentifiable bodies, as shellshocked survivors of the flood slowly return to the ruins of their homes.
The disaster happened after the collapse of a glacier – and while global heating has not been definitively attributed as the cause, it is undeniable that steep mountain slopes and valleys are especially vulnerable to flooding and landslides, while extreme weather events such as monsoons and melting glaciers have become more common because of warming due to human-caused climate breakdown, as our global environment writer Jonathan Watts explains.
Then columnist Nesrine Malik paints a wider picture and argues that while for many people these floods may feel as though they have happened a world away, the climate crisis is coming for us all, one way or another.
Spotlight | Mark Carney shows combative nature in face-off with Trump
The Canadian PM is one of the few world leaders to stand up to the US president. Former colleagues say they are not surprised. Leyland Cecco, Heather Stewart and Kalyeena Makortoff report
Science | The robots are coming!
… Or are they? As entrants at the World Humanoid Games lurched from triumph to farce, Robert Booth finds that a robotics revolution may not be as close as it first appears
Interview | Gordon Brown on Burnham, billionaires – and a better Britain
The former UK prime minister is still shaping politics (even if he doesn’t want to interfere). He tells Charlotte Edwardes about keeping his temper, staying fit – and why he won’t splash out for a Scotland football shirt
Opinion | The tech titans must be stripped of their power, and soon
Those who said Meta harms children struck a blow, but the ability of big tech to gouge profits and cause harm is barely diminished. That’s the battle to come, argues Jonathan Freedland
Culture | Dolly Parton’s peerless career turned country music cliches inside out
Beneath the wig and rhinestones, the late US country singer was the genius behind strings of classic songs that continue to inspire new artists, says Alexis Petridis
MONTHLY REVIEW MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘India’s Ruling Class and the Global Crisis’….
In recent years, India’s ruling classes claimed—and perhaps came to believe—that their time had come on the world stage. India was the fastest-growing major economy, due soon to be the third largest, constituting a new global power. India’s biggest tycoons figured among the world’s top twenty billionaires, part of the transnational elite. Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that India would be a “developed country” by 2047, the centenary of the end of colonial rule.
THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘The forgotten health crisis’ – DRC’s Ebola outbreak passes grim milestone.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has just passed the grim milestone of 100 days since it declared its 17th Ebola outbreak.
What is the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record could also become the world’s deadliest ever.
For our big story this week, Prosper Heri Ngorora and Rachel Savage report on the frontline health workers who say, as the disease spreads “exponentially”, they have been left unpaid and at risk of infection.
Explaining the figures behind the outbreak, and the race to find vaccines and treatments, global health correspondent Kat Lay answers five key questions.
And Jean Kaseya, director general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, write that tapping into community leadership and knowledge is essential to halting the virus’s spread.
Spotlight | ‘We will go on – but it will be more scary’
Dan Sabbagh reports from Kyiv where, as Russian missiles rain down, casualties are mounting and the mood is darkening
Environment | Killed by kindness
Scientists were surprised to find all but two of 12 grizzlies died within a year of their “feelgood” release, unable to sustain their high-calorie diet and inclined to approach humans, writes Rebecca Ratcliffe
Feature | A family at war
Meaghan Beatley tells the remarkable story of a young Argentinian activist who thought her father’s disapproval of her leftwing views was purely political. But one evening, a kiss goodbye sent her on a remarkable journey that continues today
Opinion | Marine Le Pen’s career resurrection
No longer banned from next year’s presidential election, the far-right veteran is a bigger threat than ever, says Mujtaba Rahman
Culture | Playing the bad guy
As his new film Bitter Christmas is released, legendary Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar talks to Ryan Gilbey about Donald Trump, Netflix – and being the villain in his own movie
NATIONAL REVIEW: The latest issue features ‘Improving By Degrees’…
The battle has not yet been won, but the signs are auspicious. Frederick M. Hess
The dangerous Islamist-socialist vanguard. Andrew C. McCarthy
The real divide in America today: nostalgia vs. reality. Charles C. W. Cooke
Where Silicon Valley meets the Pentagon, the wheels of innovation are whirring. Luther Ray Abel
I hiked, I camped, I conquered. Sarah Schutte
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