post
If the world’s democracies are having a crisis of confidence they should get over it. Russia’s war in Ukraine is a reminder they are vastly richer, stronger and more innovative than the police states that think it’s OK to redraw maps by force
post
Voters across the world care about the climate – so why don’t green parties do better at the ballot box, and could something be about to change?
post
Flying will always come with a hefty carbon footprint. The best way to green the industry is to avoid it
post
A series of domestic and international crises have deepened China’s addiction to coal. What will it take to wean it off?
post
The UK is using its limited land badly. Government plans won’t make agriculture change fast enough
post
We’ll need a wider variety of ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere if we’re going to keep the planet cool.
audio
History was made last week when Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed as the first ever Black woman to serve as a United States Supreme Court judge. But her confirmation hearings were marred by baseless verbal attacks from Republican Senators. Why did they do it?
post
The West doesn’t control the resources it needs to build a renewable energy future. China does
audio
The government’s conversion therapy ban is going ahead, but will not cover trans people. Why?
audio
The United Nations is stuck. Russia wields the power of its veto to block any Security Council resolutions condemning its invasion of Ukraine. How did it come to this?
post
Nuclear power is a key part of the government’s strategy, but an inadequate solution to the energy crisis and the need for immediate and deep decarbonisation
post
The atrocities inflicted in this Ukrainian city should force the West to answer difficult questions about the war – and what, exactly, we are willing to sacrifice
post
During the Falklands War, soldiers and photographers on both sides recorded their experiences on film. This is the conflict through their eyes
post
In a climate and energy crisis, the UK’s leaky, old housing stock is an extravagance neither people nor the planet can afford.
post
Acts of aggression should not be rewarded – and President Biden was only speaking the unpalatable truth when he said that Putin has to go
audio
What does the story of Alexei Navalny and his wife Yulia Navalnaya tell us about Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the state of opposition?
audio
After Tony Sewell chaired the controversial Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities the University of Nottingham decided to revoke their offer of an honorary degree. Was it justified?
post
There is evidence Ukraine is actually winning this war. If so, the West’s role must be to give it everything it needs for a decisive victory, not just to prop up a plucky David against Goliath
audio
Yesterday’s economic update was not a Budget, but with the cost of living soaring Rishi Sunak was facing calls to ease the squeeze. Did the chancellor rise to the challenge?
audio
When a 40-year-old debt was settled between Britain and Iran last week, two British hostages were allowed to return home. So why was Morad Tahbaz, also a British hostage, left behind?
post
It’s getting cheaper to make the energy-storing gas using renewables – and that could help the world through the energy crisis.
audio
The Kremlin has near total control over the media in Russia, so when one woman protested the Ukraine war live on air, she disrupted the narrative – and sent shockwaves around Russia.
audio
Western leaders are trying to predict the Russian president’s next move. Some believe he has become isolated. What do we know about Vladimir Putin’s life?
post
It’s tempting to believe the solution to cutting soaring energy bills is lying beneath our feet. But after a decade dreaming of a US-style shale revolution, fracking has failed to deliver.
post
If Europe were to survive next winter without Russian gas, it would have to shift to a wartime footing. In the short term that could put net zero at risk. In the longer term it could accelerate climate action
post
audio
We thought the Russians were masters of the information war; that they’d sweep Ukraine aside. Why is it not turning out that way?
audio
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and the West’s response – has brought a sudden, bloody end to the chapter of history that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall. We’re in a new age now
post
Paul Caruana Galizia reports from Przemyśl
audio
Door after door in Britain has been opened for Evgeny Lebedev, all the way to the House of Lords. Who has opened them, and why?
audio
America and Europe have done little to deter Vladimir Putin over the years, despite the warning signs. Now he has invaded Ukraine, what is the West prepared to do in response?
audio
China stands accused of committing crimes against humanity, and possibly even genocide, against the Uyghur population in Xinjiang. Yet Beijing compares its system of “re-education camps” to the West’s war on terror and says it’s entitled to protect its citizens from domestic terrorism. This is the sharp end of the China problem; exhibit A of Xi Jinping’s authoritarianism and the West’s impotence to defend human rights within China’s borders
audio
Universities in the UK rely heavily on students from China, and on Chinese money and academic collaborations. But does it all come at a price? A chipping away of academic freedoms and a gagging order on discussing sensitive issues? It’s a dilemma which brings the China problem much closer to home
post
The Kaka’i minority ethnic group found in Iraq and Western Iran has long been persecuted, and was recently subjected to attempted genocide by Isis. David Barnett meets the survivors
audio
China’s national security law has dismantled freedoms and silenced dissenters in Hong Kong. What does the strangling of freedom of speech reveal about Xi Jinping’s China?
audio
What does the story of the difficult search for the origins of Covid-19 reveal about China? The unresolved question of whether the virus occurred naturally or escaped from a laboratory, and the contortions of the Chinese authorities under scrutiny are a parable of our times
audio
How dangerous is China? Are the growing fears that China might attack Taiwan justified, or are the two countries facing an eternal standoff; a prolonged state of fear?
audio
In the technology great game there are plenty of battlefields, but TikTok has been the most public, and the most revealing. This addictive, Chinese-owned video-sharing app has exposed a paranoia from governments in both the east and west over who controls access to information and the power of social media. What does this mean for the future of the internet?
audio
In Kabul, the Taliban’s takeover was assured. In London, an ignominious retreat, and the betrayal of former comrades in the Afghan army, was more than a group of ex-soldiers, now MPs, could stomach
audio
As the Taliban closed in on Kabul, and Western troops and desperate Afghans scrambled to leave, Britain found itself frozen out of decision making and incapable of influencing events. It was a stark illustration of the UK’s status, made worse by catastrophic misjudgements at the top of government
post
Former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has been on hunger strike now for 48 days, in protest against what he alleges is his politically-motivated arrest. It’s a fight that serves as a proxy for the debate over Georgia’s future and its fragile democracy
post
The lesson of Cop is that it is open to a small number of key protagonists to save the planet. Will they?
audio
Since 2016, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been held hostage in Iran. Her supporters recognise that the Iranian government must be held responsible for her ordeal, but missteps and machinations in London have ensured that it hasn’t been brought to a swift end
post
Colin Powell’s decision not to run for the White House in 1996 was one of the most consequential moments in recent American history
post
The world’s most populous continent, with its fastest-growing economies, depends on coal. We’ve mapped the data over the last 50 years to try and get a sense of this critical challenge for Asia – and the world
post
Ahead of Cop26, the world’s two biggest superpowers, China and the US, have tried talking to each other about emissions. Nothing has been achieved
post
It is four years since the murder of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. We still await full justice – and a chance for her country to break from its corrupt past
post
The truth is: very little. But that says more about Cop than it does about Germany, which has a chance to lead global climate policy once its governing coalition is decided
post
The global fight against climate change depends on us protecting the natural resources we still have left. We should be prepared to pay for that
post
Tunisia’s leader used vaccine shortages to take power, and then vaccine supply to consolidate his new position
post
Due to vaccine inequality, trust is breaking down ahead of the crucial Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow. Genuine solidarity is needed to solve both transnational crises
post
Vaccination against Covid has saved 100,000 lives in England. How many lives would have been saved by a similar effort around the world?
post
As Germany’s leader for the past 16 years, Angela Merkel has taken her country far – but no further. The future demands a more radical politics
post
The humiliating retreat from Afghanistan shows how little we understand about the new realities of 21st-century warfare so horrifically made clear on 11 September 2001
post
Poorer nations have barely received any doses, while richer countries build up ever greater surpluses. All that is lacking is the political will to get the jabs to where they are needed
audio
Thousands of children were separated from their parents at the US border under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. This is the story of how, five years later, 300 remain lost in a system designed to swallow them
post
We should always expect the Spanish Inquisition: which is to say, leaders should use the lessons of behavioural science to prepare for all outcomes – like Covid, or the fall of Kabul
post
The president is close to announcing a special gathering of world leaders to draw up a strategy to end the pandemic. Here are the main issues they must tackle
post
Biden’s poll numbers, Johnson’s wounded pride and Raab’s holiday are minor details in a huge story. The Afghan crisis is forcing us, very uncomfortably, to ask what we truly believe in
audio
The story of Rohullah Yakobi, and a 20-year war
post
Afghanistan has been surrendered to a mob of theocratic gangsters, who have exploited the folly and laziness of the West. The civil war that will now follow the Taliban’s return to power is an unconscionable moral disaster
post
Data on vaccine donations and deliveries is delayed, incomplete or absent. Opacity on this, the single most important global supply crisis we currently face, is a barrier to ending the pandemic
post
As US forces depart, those left behind are hunkering down or arming up – all in anticipation of worse conflict to come. And who can blame them? The government is weak, and the Taliban rampant
post
Hundreds of athletes didn’t get the chance to compete in the 1980 Olympics, their dreams crushed under the wheel of global politics. This is what it meant then – and means now
post
The country is suffering from a terrible third wave and continuous conflict. Help has been promised and some has arrived – but, ahead of one of the year’s major religious festivals, it’s not enough
audio
Last month the richest nations on the planet squared up to its greatest public health challenge, how to vaccinate every adult everywhere against Covid. They failed. The story of how and why they came up catastrophically short is a litany of political parochialism, low ambition and poor organisation – with potentially dreadful consequences
post
COP26 is in trouble. With only four months to go, the broad goals are clear but no one is confident of progress towards achieving them and the big Biden dividend – US climate leadership after the Trump disaster – is nowhere to be seen
audio
Nick Alexander tells the story of his torturous escape from the ambushed Amarula Hotel convoy – and the question left lying in the dust of the attack: who, really, abandoned them all?
post
The election of Ebrahim Raisi as Iranian president does not mark a return to darker days but a more brazen declaration of the character – and terrible crimes – of this theocratic state
audio
In the second part in our series investigating how 200 civilians were left to die at the Amarula Hotel in northern Mozambique, we tell the story of their harrowing escape
audio
A different set of threats has arisen in recent years, exposing the weaknesses of the international rules-based order. Next week, the leaders of the G7 nations will be meeting in Cornwall – and we’ll be looking to them for answers
post
The G7 summit must make global vaccine roll-out its highest priority. Covid respects no border, and will continue to mutate until the citizens of all nations – rich and poor – are vaccinated in high numbers
post
During decades of Soviet rule, Lithuanian basketball became a proxy independence struggle. As geopolitical tensions in the Baltic states rise, the sport is once again a venue for political competition
thinkin
audio
“Weird shit happens every single day”
post
Charting the stages of Trump’s response to crisis at home
post
An ex-ambassador’s view of a world without political leadership. By Peter Westmacott
post
How America fuelled a conspiracy theory
post
Covid-19 has underlined what we surely already knew – the long era of American global leadership has passed
post
post
post
Images taken from space show a planet wreathed in forest fires. They aren’t started by climate change, but they will speed it up with a vengeance
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
One year on, an unsolved execution casts a shadow of corruption over Europe
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
The Brexit negotiations are not really about the UK and 27 other countries – they are about Britain’s long and troubled relationship with Ireland. And while Dublin was prepared for that, it took London completely by surprise
post
Fracking has transformed the US energy industry. But in Britain, where financial benefits do not flow to landowners, it’s attracted fierce opposition from environmentalists. To frack or not to frack? That is the question. Or is it?
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
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How Northern Ireland’s moderates are losing the faith
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post
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post
post
post
post
post
post
post
If the world’s democracies are having a crisis of confidence they should get over it. Russia’s war in Ukraine is a reminder they are vastly richer, stronger and more innovative than the police states that think it’s OK to redraw maps by force
post
Voters across the world care about the climate – so why don’t green parties do better at the ballot box, and could something be about to change?
post
Flying will always come with a hefty carbon footprint. The best way to green the industry is to avoid it
post
A series of domestic and international crises have deepened China’s addiction to coal. What will it take to wean it off?
post
The UK is using its limited land badly. Government plans won’t make agriculture change fast enough
post
We’ll need a wider variety of ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere if we’re going to keep the planet cool.
post
The West doesn’t control the resources it needs to build a renewable energy future. China does
post
Nuclear power is a key part of the government’s strategy, but an inadequate solution to the energy crisis and the need for immediate and deep decarbonisation
post
The atrocities inflicted in this Ukrainian city should force the West to answer difficult questions about the war – and what, exactly, we are willing to sacrifice
post
During the Falklands War, soldiers and photographers on both sides recorded their experiences on film. This is the conflict through their eyes
post
In a climate and energy crisis, the UK’s leaky, old housing stock is an extravagance neither people nor the planet can afford.
post
Acts of aggression should not be rewarded – and President Biden was only speaking the unpalatable truth when he said that Putin has to go
post
There is evidence Ukraine is actually winning this war. If so, the West’s role must be to give it everything it needs for a decisive victory, not just to prop up a plucky David against Goliath
post
It’s getting cheaper to make the energy-storing gas using renewables – and that could help the world through the energy crisis.
post
It’s tempting to believe the solution to cutting soaring energy bills is lying beneath our feet. But after a decade dreaming of a US-style shale revolution, fracking has failed to deliver.
post
If Europe were to survive next winter without Russian gas, it would have to shift to a wartime footing. In the short term that could put net zero at risk. In the longer term it could accelerate climate action
post
post
Paul Caruana Galizia reports from Przemyśl
post
The Kaka’i minority ethnic group found in Iraq and Western Iran has long been persecuted, and was recently subjected to attempted genocide by Isis. David Barnett meets the survivors
post
Former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has been on hunger strike now for 48 days, in protest against what he alleges is his politically-motivated arrest. It’s a fight that serves as a proxy for the debate over Georgia’s future and its fragile democracy
post
The lesson of Cop is that it is open to a small number of key protagonists to save the planet. Will they?
post
Colin Powell’s decision not to run for the White House in 1996 was one of the most consequential moments in recent American history
post
The world’s most populous continent, with its fastest-growing economies, depends on coal. We’ve mapped the data over the last 50 years to try and get a sense of this critical challenge for Asia – and the world
post
Ahead of Cop26, the world’s two biggest superpowers, China and the US, have tried talking to each other about emissions. Nothing has been achieved
post
It is four years since the murder of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. We still await full justice – and a chance for her country to break from its corrupt past
post
The truth is: very little. But that says more about Cop than it does about Germany, which has a chance to lead global climate policy once its governing coalition is decided
post
The global fight against climate change depends on us protecting the natural resources we still have left. We should be prepared to pay for that
post
Tunisia’s leader used vaccine shortages to take power, and then vaccine supply to consolidate his new position
post
Due to vaccine inequality, trust is breaking down ahead of the crucial Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow. Genuine solidarity is needed to solve both transnational crises
post
Vaccination against Covid has saved 100,000 lives in England. How many lives would have been saved by a similar effort around the world?
post
As Germany’s leader for the past 16 years, Angela Merkel has taken her country far – but no further. The future demands a more radical politics
post
The humiliating retreat from Afghanistan shows how little we understand about the new realities of 21st-century warfare so horrifically made clear on 11 September 2001
post
Poorer nations have barely received any doses, while richer countries build up ever greater surpluses. All that is lacking is the political will to get the jabs to where they are needed
post
We should always expect the Spanish Inquisition: which is to say, leaders should use the lessons of behavioural science to prepare for all outcomes – like Covid, or the fall of Kabul
post
The president is close to announcing a special gathering of world leaders to draw up a strategy to end the pandemic. Here are the main issues they must tackle
post
Biden’s poll numbers, Johnson’s wounded pride and Raab’s holiday are minor details in a huge story. The Afghan crisis is forcing us, very uncomfortably, to ask what we truly believe in
post
Afghanistan has been surrendered to a mob of theocratic gangsters, who have exploited the folly and laziness of the West. The civil war that will now follow the Taliban’s return to power is an unconscionable moral disaster
post
Data on vaccine donations and deliveries is delayed, incomplete or absent. Opacity on this, the single most important global supply crisis we currently face, is a barrier to ending the pandemic
post
As US forces depart, those left behind are hunkering down or arming up – all in anticipation of worse conflict to come. And who can blame them? The government is weak, and the Taliban rampant
post
Hundreds of athletes didn’t get the chance to compete in the 1980 Olympics, their dreams crushed under the wheel of global politics. This is what it meant then – and means now
post
The country is suffering from a terrible third wave and continuous conflict. Help has been promised and some has arrived – but, ahead of one of the year’s major religious festivals, it’s not enough
post
COP26 is in trouble. With only four months to go, the broad goals are clear but no one is confident of progress towards achieving them and the big Biden dividend – US climate leadership after the Trump disaster – is nowhere to be seen
post
The election of Ebrahim Raisi as Iranian president does not mark a return to darker days but a more brazen declaration of the character – and terrible crimes – of this theocratic state
post
The G7 summit must make global vaccine roll-out its highest priority. Covid respects no border, and will continue to mutate until the citizens of all nations – rich and poor – are vaccinated in high numbers
post
During decades of Soviet rule, Lithuanian basketball became a proxy independence struggle. As geopolitical tensions in the Baltic states rise, the sport is once again a venue for political competition
post
Charting the stages of Trump’s response to crisis at home
post
An ex-ambassador’s view of a world without political leadership. By Peter Westmacott
post
How America fuelled a conspiracy theory
post
Covid-19 has underlined what we surely already knew – the long era of American global leadership has passed
post
post
post
Images taken from space show a planet wreathed in forest fires. They aren’t started by climate change, but they will speed it up with a vengeance
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
One year on, an unsolved execution casts a shadow of corruption over Europe
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
The Brexit negotiations are not really about the UK and 27 other countries – they are about Britain’s long and troubled relationship with Ireland. And while Dublin was prepared for that, it took London completely by surprise
post
Fracking has transformed the US energy industry. But in Britain, where financial benefits do not flow to landowners, it’s attracted fierce opposition from environmentalists. To frack or not to frack? That is the question. Or is it?
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
post
How Northern Ireland’s moderates are losing the faith
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audio
History was made last week when Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed as the first ever Black woman to serve as a United States Supreme Court judge. But her confirmation hearings were marred by baseless verbal attacks from Republican Senators. Why did they do it?
audio
The government’s conversion therapy ban is going ahead, but will not cover trans people. Why?
audio
The United Nations is stuck. Russia wields the power of its veto to block any Security Council resolutions condemning its invasion of Ukraine. How did it come to this?
audio
What does the story of Alexei Navalny and his wife Yulia Navalnaya tell us about Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the state of opposition?
audio
After Tony Sewell chaired the controversial Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities the University of Nottingham decided to revoke their offer of an honorary degree. Was it justified?
audio
Yesterday’s economic update was not a Budget, but with the cost of living soaring Rishi Sunak was facing calls to ease the squeeze. Did the chancellor rise to the challenge?
audio
When a 40-year-old debt was settled between Britain and Iran last week, two British hostages were allowed to return home. So why was Morad Tahbaz, also a British hostage, left behind?
audio
The Kremlin has near total control over the media in Russia, so when one woman protested the Ukraine war live on air, she disrupted the narrative – and sent shockwaves around Russia.
audio
Western leaders are trying to predict the Russian president’s next move. Some believe he has become isolated. What do we know about Vladimir Putin’s life?
audio
We thought the Russians were masters of the information war; that they’d sweep Ukraine aside. Why is it not turning out that way?
audio
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and the West’s response – has brought a sudden, bloody end to the chapter of history that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall. We’re in a new age now
audio
Door after door in Britain has been opened for Evgeny Lebedev, all the way to the House of Lords. Who has opened them, and why?
audio
America and Europe have done little to deter Vladimir Putin over the years, despite the warning signs. Now he has invaded Ukraine, what is the West prepared to do in response?
audio
China stands accused of committing crimes against humanity, and possibly even genocide, against the Uyghur population in Xinjiang. Yet Beijing compares its system of “re-education camps” to the West’s war on terror and says it’s entitled to protect its citizens from domestic terrorism. This is the sharp end of the China problem; exhibit A of Xi Jinping’s authoritarianism and the West’s impotence to defend human rights within China’s borders
audio
Universities in the UK rely heavily on students from China, and on Chinese money and academic collaborations. But does it all come at a price? A chipping away of academic freedoms and a gagging order on discussing sensitive issues? It’s a dilemma which brings the China problem much closer to home
audio
China’s national security law has dismantled freedoms and silenced dissenters in Hong Kong. What does the strangling of freedom of speech reveal about Xi Jinping’s China?
audio
What does the story of the difficult search for the origins of Covid-19 reveal about China? The unresolved question of whether the virus occurred naturally or escaped from a laboratory, and the contortions of the Chinese authorities under scrutiny are a parable of our times
audio
How dangerous is China? Are the growing fears that China might attack Taiwan justified, or are the two countries facing an eternal standoff; a prolonged state of fear?
audio
In the technology great game there are plenty of battlefields, but TikTok has been the most public, and the most revealing. This addictive, Chinese-owned video-sharing app has exposed a paranoia from governments in both the east and west over who controls access to information and the power of social media. What does this mean for the future of the internet?
audio
In Kabul, the Taliban’s takeover was assured. In London, an ignominious retreat, and the betrayal of former comrades in the Afghan army, was more than a group of ex-soldiers, now MPs, could stomach
audio
As the Taliban closed in on Kabul, and Western troops and desperate Afghans scrambled to leave, Britain found itself frozen out of decision making and incapable of influencing events. It was a stark illustration of the UK’s status, made worse by catastrophic misjudgements at the top of government
audio
Since 2016, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been held hostage in Iran. Her supporters recognise that the Iranian government must be held responsible for her ordeal, but missteps and machinations in London have ensured that it hasn’t been brought to a swift end
audio
Thousands of children were separated from their parents at the US border under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. This is the story of how, five years later, 300 remain lost in a system designed to swallow them
audio
The story of Rohullah Yakobi, and a 20-year war
audio
Last month the richest nations on the planet squared up to its greatest public health challenge, how to vaccinate every adult everywhere against Covid. They failed. The story of how and why they came up catastrophically short is a litany of political parochialism, low ambition and poor organisation – with potentially dreadful consequences
audio
Nick Alexander tells the story of his torturous escape from the ambushed Amarula Hotel convoy – and the question left lying in the dust of the attack: who, really, abandoned them all?
audio
In the second part in our series investigating how 200 civilians were left to die at the Amarula Hotel in northern Mozambique, we tell the story of their harrowing escape
audio
A different set of threats has arisen in recent years, exposing the weaknesses of the international rules-based order. Next week, the leaders of the G7 nations will be meeting in Cornwall – and we’ll be looking to them for answers
audio
“Weird shit happens every single day”