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4 weeks ago | 
theguardian.com | Michael Safi |Sami Kent |Ruth Michaelson |Hannah Moore |Lucy Hough |Joel Cox | +1 more
It has been more than two decades since Recep Tayyip Erdoğan became Turkey’s president. Over the years, Erdoğan’s regime has become increasingly authoritarian, eroding press freedoms and removing checks to his power. But in the last week mass protests have erupted. Pouring on to the streets of Istanbul, thousands have defied government warnings and a crackdown by riot police to ensure their voices are heard.
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Michael Safi |Patrick Wintour |Ruth Abrahams |Rudi Zygadlo |Homa Khaleeli |Sami Kent
It’s the most important international relationship the UK has, and for decades has been referred to as “special”. Since the second world war, the UK and the US have considered themselves the closest allies, working together for shared values, with any resentments, differences of opinion or cross words kept to private channels. But now Donald Trump is back and he seems keen to throw the usual world order of alliances and enmities into chaos.
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2 months ago | 
theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Eli Block |Tom Glasser |Sami Kent
This Sunday, millions of Germans will head to the polls to vote in the country’s federal elections – historic not only because they will determine who will be the next chancellor, but because they come at a time when the far right in Germany is polling better than in any other period since the second world war. Regardless of the result, it is a remarkable development for a country so haunted by its Nazi past.
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2 months ago | 
theguardian.com | Michael Safi |Alex Atack |Homa Khaleeli |Sami Kent |Joel Cox
Michael Safi was in Lebanon in the summer, when it was on the brink of war between Israel and Hezbollah, the most powerful force in the country. Months later, in October, Israeli troops invaded Lebanon amid a wave of airstrikes and assassinations of top Hezbollah leaders and commanders. Michael returned this month and visited destroyed villages in southern Lebanon as civilians were returning to their homes.
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2 months ago | 
theguardian.com | Michael Safi |Shaun Walker |Lucy Hough |Matthew Pearce |Rudi Zygadlo |Sami Kent
Last Monday, the Guardian’s central and eastern European correspondent, Shaun Walker,sat down in Kyiv to interview the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The conversation, Walker explains, was dominated by what Zelenskyy hoped to achieve in any upcoming talks on a ceasefire deal in Ukraine.
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2 months ago | 
theguardian.com | Hannah Moore |Eleni Courea |Eleanor Biggs |Joel Cox |Sami Kent
In October last year, the UK and Mauritian governments reached a historic agreement to transfer the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, a series of atolls in the Indian Ocean that have been described as Britain’s last African colony. It seemed, as political correspondent Eleni Courea describes, a diplomatic triumph for the new Labour government, ending decades of legal dispute over the ownership of the islands.
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2 months ago | 
theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Patrick Wintour |Natalie Ktena |Joel Cox |Sami Kent
Even by his own wild standards, Donald Trump shocked the world on Tuesday evening by suggesting the US should take over the Gaza Strip, displace millions of Palestinians and turn the territory into the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’. It was a plan casually announced by the US president and immediately denounced around the world. In particular, the idea that the Palestinians of Gaza should be resettled in neighbouring Arab countries seems to amount to a form of ethnic cleansing.
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2 months ago | 
theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Kate Connolly |Eli Block |Sami Kent
Alice Weidel is a politician of contradictions: a German nationalist who lives in Switzerland; a former investment banker who rails against elites; and a lesbian with two adopted sons, leading a party that defines a family as “father, mother and children”.
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2 months ago | 
theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Heather Stewart |Eli Block |Sami Kent |Joel Cox |Homa Khaleeli
Ahead of a landmark speech today, Rachel Reeves has been signalling she is ready to be ruthless to grow the economy. She has spoken about cutting regulation, pushing through building projects and even finally seeing a new runway at Heathrow. All surprising measures from a government that championed their green agenda while in opposition.
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2 months ago | 
theguardian.com | Hannah Moore |Shane Harrison |Rudi Zygadlo |Sami Kent
The Omagh bombing was the single worst atrocity of the Troubles. As the journalist Shane Harrison explains, it was carried out when hopes were high in Northern Ireland that the country would never experience such violence again – four months after the signing of the Good Friday agreement in April 1998. The car bomb on 15 August killed 29 people, including Aiden Gallagher, a 21-year-old mechanic.
