CATEGORIES

Swan songs - At Kharkiv's opera house, the show must go on

Crouched on the edge of a park in central Kharkiv, 30km from the Russian border, the city's vast brutalist opera house resembles a battered spacecraft that has crash-landed after some epic intergalactic battle.

Toxic lake a symbol of Northern Irish decay

It is a grim milestone for Northern Ireland that some of its problems are now visible from space. A vast bloom of blue-green algae is choking Lough Neagh, which supplies 40% of Northern Ireland's drinking water, owing to farm slurry, human sewage discharges and other management blunders.

'Boring' Labour plot a conference course to government

MPs stayed on-message, and businesses queued up to get involved, at a gathering that passed with barely a hitch

Ardern's legacy - Some Labour policies are safe. A lot are on the chopping block

The most common and cutting critique of Jacinda Ardern's Labour government was that it couldn't get anything done.

'A knife in your heart' - Soul-searching over Indigenous vote loss

Heavy referendum defeat seen as a bitter blow in the struggle to advance reconciliation and improve the lives of First Nations Australians

Road to conflict - A long history of occupation, uprising and disputed power

The starting point for many is the 1947 UN vote to partition British Mandate Palestine into two states - Jewish and Arab.

'People are terrified' - Gaza's main hospital near to collapse

At Gaza City's al-Shifa hospital, the living sleep between beds filled with patients, in corridors, and even in the grounds, while the dead overflow the morgue.

Seven days of terror that shook the world and changed the Middle East

Since dawn broke on 7 October, thousands have died and the political fallout has spread across the region. Reporters tell the full story of a week that began in bloodshed and ended in fear

Me, mice elf and I

Sly Stone changed the face of soul when he found fame in the 1960s. Now the highly erratic star opens up on drugs, feuds and his treasure trove of unreleased tracks

Talk of your town

The way we speak still defines who we are and causes others to make assumptions about us. People with distinctive voices reveal how talkin' wiv an accent has shaped their life...

This is Sultan Al Jaber. He is the United Arab Emirates' choice to lead the Cop28 climate talks.

He is also the CEO of a fossil fuel company, Adnoc. What's the problem with that, he asks Fiona Harvey

September's 'bananas' record highs stun climate scientists

Global temperatures soared to a new record in September by a huge margin, stunning scientists. The hottest September on record follows the hottest August and July, with the latter being the hottest month ever recorded. The high temperatures have driven heat waves and wildfires across the world.

'He loves it' - Trump takes 2024 bid into the courtroom

The blue suit, white shirt, red tie, and American flag pin looked familiar. So did the TV cameras following every move and reporters hanging on every word. So did the wild hand gestures as he unleashed a torrent of incendiary rhetoric about the elites supposedly out to get him.

How Dhaka is battling to cool down extreme heat

Set in post-apocalyptic Dhaka, Nuhash Humayun's Moshari became the first Bangladeshi film to qualify for the Oscars last year. The thriller follows two sisters and their fight for survival, but for the film's co-producer, Bushra Afreen, the fiction felt closer to reality.

Paddington's move to Colombia makes fur fly

New legislation to revitalise Peru's film industry has been proposed after the makers of the British comedy Paddington in Peru chose Colombia as the filming location for the section of the movie in which the bear finally returns to his home country.

Graphic tale - Murdered comic writer finds new fans and foes

As Netflix adapts his beloved El Eternauta, Héctor Oesterheld's literary legacy is dragged into a bitter current political fight

Temu is the app that's undersold the world. Can it last?

A chicken-shaped lamp. An apron that catches beard hair during shaving. The list of unusual products goes on.

'I've shed tears over the land I lost to HS2'

Farmer whose fields were bought days before rail route was scrapped fears he'll never be able to buy them back

Red shift - Resurgent Labour could end decade of SNP dominance

Last Thursday was a big day for Scottish Labour. The declaration that Labour had retaken Rutherglen and Hamilton West from the SNP prompted phones and social media to light up with triumphant messages from the winning party. With good reason. This was the best result for Labour in a Scottish byelection since the Second World War, and the worst for the SNP since the independence referendum upended Scottish politics.

Orbán objects as EU strikes a deal over migration law

EU leaders have clashed again with Hungary after the country's prime minister, Viktor Orbán, insisted at a summit in Granada that it would not support proposed laws to deal with migration.

'Last chance' - Liberal Poles face a moment of truth

'I want this message to reach everybody in Poland,' said Donald Tusk, speaking to a . rally of supporters, gathered in a cavernous indoor sports arena in the city of Bydgoszcz. 'This is really the last chance.'

A cycle of violence - Netanyahu's policies of escalation and fear lead back to war

Why is Benjamin Netanyahu still prime minister of Israel? More than any other single political leader, on either side of the Israel-Palestine divide, he is responsible for the spiralling tensions, divisions and anger that preceded this horrific catastrophe. Disastrously, Israelis and Palestinians are again at war. Yet Netanyahu's first duty was to prevent such an eventuality. He has failed miserably, and the measure of his failure is the unprecedented number of civilian dead. He promised security. He created a sea of tears. He should resign immediately.

Regional rifts - Attacks have upended the diplomatic landscape

As the death toll rose, and the security consequences multiplied, Israel pointed its finger at Tehran for orchestrating the Hamas attacks. These may have been born of anger at the Netanyahu coalition's behaviour, including the provocations at al-Aqsa mosque, but Iran and the forces it supports have a longer-term strategic goal: to thwart the US-led effort to normalise relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, a move that would entrench the US in the Middle East - and in Iran's eyes deprive Palestinians of their last influential sponsor.

Security blindsided - How militants managed to carry out a rampage

The Hamas assault on the Erez crossing, the looming symbol of Israel's security infrastructure at the far northern end of the Gaza Strip, was indicative of what would come at other key locations.

How the war unfolded - What has happened, why now?

EXPLAINER - How the war unfolded

The darkest day

A devastating attack on Israel by Hamas militants from Gaza has left more than a thousand civilians dead on both sides and provoked a conflict likely to unfold on a scale not seen in the region for 50 years. How did it come to this, and what now lies ahead?

Napoli every after

With its decaying beauty and unique way of life inspiring books, films, TV and music, the Italian, city has captured the cultural zeitgeist

What internet fad will replace NFTs now they are all but worthless?

With last month's report that 95% of them are now worthless, I think it's just about safe to say that the NFT moment is finally over. Phew. There really was a six-week period at the start of last year when I thought I was going to have to attach my digital soul for ever to a really bad picture of a monkey with a tentacle coming out of its nose and mouth. I kept practising saying, \"No, it's actually quite cool! It's good. And it only cost me about as much as a car!\" in the mirror a lot, with a ghoulish rictus grin.

Unless Biden steps aside, we must prepare for the return of Trump

During the two months I spent in the US earlier this year, I kept asking every journalist, academic and analyst I met one simple question: \"Who will be the next president of the United States?\"

ONE FALSE MOVE

In a conference room in central London, Nato staff, military personnel and academics face off in a contest whose stakes could not be higher. The challenge: to prevent the world plunging into all-out war