Despite turmoil, star ballerina strikes note of optimism

Cuba's favourite ballerina, Viengsay Valdés, will run on to the stage of the island's National Theatre on 2 November, fairly certain that it won't collapse beneath her.

Terrified villagers flee as the battle for Kherson rages on

As she was driven by her son out of Dudchany, a small village in the north-east of the Kherson region a few days ago, Rosaliya Kovalchuk, 72, glimpsed something that will haunt her forever.

Foreign intervention has hollowed out the state and led to disaster

What comes first in Haiti: disaster or foreign intervention? The conventional, eg first world, wisdom has it that disaster comes first.

Can period tracking help athletes win?

For many sportswomen, fluctuating hormones can be the difference between winning a medal and going home empty-handed, but researchers and companies hope to turn monthly woes into record-breaking heights

Relief and unease as two years of isolation finally end

After more than two years of near-total isolation, Japan has reopened its borders to overseas visitors - but the road back to the pre-Covid tourism boom could be long and bumpy.

Xi's vision of greater isolation will make his country poorer

In August, there was an unexpected stir in China about a scholarly article. The piece, published in a respected but specialist journal, argued that during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) and Qing dynasty (1644-1911), China had been a country relatively closed off to the outside world. Most recent I scholarship has assumed that this was a bad thing and that greater openness in the modern era had led to China's rise in global standing and growth. But the article took a contrarian position, suggesting that there were economic and social advantages to the doors being closed in large part. The argument was then sent out on the social media feed of a thinktank closely linked to the Chinese Communist party. There was plenty of social media comment, mostly wondering whether the CCP was hinting that today, too, China should think about whether openness was quite such a good idea.

Confessions of a rock star

Bono on the birth of U2, that iTunes album, and the Live Aid show: 'There's only one thing I can see when I watch it: the mullet'

'I struggle with the so-called free world compared with life in prison’

When Chelsea Manning leaked hundreds of thousands of classified documents, everyone thought they knew why. They were wrong

The truth behind the Cop27 masquerade

Sisi's Egypt is making a big show ahead of the summit. Meanwhile it is torturing activists and banning research. The global community should not play along

A busted flush Truss discredited high-octane, freemarket economics, perhaps for ever

Boris Johnson's tenure had been short, but it had been consequential. At first glance, a similar verdict on Liz Truss's 50 days in office seems improbable.

As Trump goes front and centre, Biden takes a back seat

Raucous music was played, bellicose speeches were given and big lies were told. Donald Trump held his 20th and 21st campaign rallies of the year in Nevada and Arizona last weekend, urging voters to support Republican candidates in the midterm elections.

Beam me down

Space solar power is a potentially limitless energy source for Earth, but was deemed too expensive to set up. Is that about to change?

Cuts and strikes No respite for Truss as a perfect storm of crises builds

Liz Truss is hoping her conference speech on growth, growth, growth” last week will have set a new agenda for her party, drawing a line under the disastrous week of her U-turn over the 45p tax rate and 10 days of market turmoil after the mini-budget. However, there are multiple potential crises on the horizon. Here are some of the most difficult and intractable problems.

‘Climate justice’ PM demands rich nations pay up

Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister, has said Pakistan should not be forced to go out with a begging bowl” to rich polluting nations after the floods that have devastated the country and said he would be seeking climate justice” from the international community.

Putin’s revenge Missile strikes give temporary cheer to Russia hardliners

The victims were ordinary Ukrainians: those who died at the busy intersection of Volodymyrska and Shevchenko streets in Kyiv, at a downtown playground, or the hundreds of thousands now in homes without light, water and heat in cities across the country due to a barrage of Russian cruise missiles.

Defiance as Russian strikes bring war back to the capital

Shevchenko Parkin central Kyiv is a tranquil public garden, where the trees are turning golden against the city’s blue, autumnal skies. Presiding over the park is a statue of Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine’s national poet, persecuted by the Russians in the 19th century for writing in Ukrainian.

‘Get lost' Schoolgirls vow to take their country back from the mullahs

Last Monday night, 16-year-old Elnaz sat at home in the Iranian city of Karaj and wept with shock and rage as she scrolled through social media posts about the death of NikaShakarami.

'Women, life and freedom'

The scale of the uprising over the death of Mahsa Amini is unprecedented, but will it lead to the end of the Iranian regime?

PAYBACK TIME

Ransomware hackers are on the rise, encrypting our computer data and demanding huge sums for its release. But a network of self-taught tech geniuses is leading the digital resistance.

We are waking up to the truth: Brexit left us poorer and adrift

Last week, having whiled away two joyous days at the Tories' conference in Birmingham, I spent a long afternoon an hour's drive away, in the cathedral city of Worcester.

King Charles can go greener now, even if his government sees red

So King Charles won’t be going to Cop27, by order of Liz Truss; an inauspicious start fora monarch with pretensions to remain an influencer and be known as the first green” king.

This uprising could fail like others did - but something feels different

In Hong Kong in 2019-20, millions took to the streets to oppose the repressive actions of an authoritarian regime. But ultimately their voices were silenced, their leaders jailed and China stripped away their democratic rights as hand-wringing western leaders looked on.

'The Scale Is Chilling' Floods Offer A Devastating Glimpse Into Earth's Future

Ali Baksh stood on the embankment and pointed across the flooded landscape to the spot where his fields used to be. The 45-year-old farmer is sheltering in a makeshift camp only accessible by boat in the Sindh province of Pakistan along with more than 2,000 others forced to flee their homes as the floods hit.

Head of the family

She was tired of fame at 10. Now, as her fifth album is released, the daughter of Will and Jada is still learning to live in the spotlight

A distressing search for answers amid Izium's mass graves

The men digging in the dusty ground looked visibly sickened by the gruesome task they had been given. The rotted bodies were mangled and the smell poisoned the fresh forest air. One corpse had a rope around the neck.

A very modern pilgrimage: in the queue with Waitrose bags, pizza and tired legs

Following the death of George VI in 1952, the Guardian's reports of his lying in state, witnessed by nearly 300,000 people over three days, were lively with detail. Other newspapers carried similar details. What marked out the Guardian was its wryness, its refusal to get carried away. It was a Manchester paper, after all.

The kingdom to come

Queen Elizabeth II was a political and diplomatic asset who spoke with the moral weight of the wartime generation. How will Britain face her loss?

Rack to the future: robot labs are here

At high-end labs in the US and UK, anybody, anywhere, can conduct experiments by remote control cheaply and efficiently. Is the rise of the robot researcher now inevitable?

Realms of possibility

Can King Charles III hold the Commonwealth together? | King Charles III's accession to the throne has reignited debate over the British royal family's role in the 21st century-and no more so than in the Commonwealth, where the monarch remains head of state in 15 of its 56 members. Now its devoted former figurehead Queen Elizabeth II is gone, and in the light of its roots in empire and slavery, will the 'family of nations' rethink its links with the crown? Our correspondents assess the mood in six key member states

Truss is preaching the discredited and toxic gospel of neoliberalism

Soon, the focus will return, and the collapse of many people's economic prospects will dominate once more. As winter approaches, it will become clear that our politics is spectacularly lacking in answers.