CATEGORIES

Paris TV station that's a lifeline for women in Afghanistan

From a tiny television studio in Paris, 7,000km from Kabul, a slate of female hosts and programming geared to women beams 24 hours a day into homes across Afghanistan even as women are being steadily erased from public life in the country.

Fever pitch The pop star named after an English footballer

The house lights were dimmed in one of Rio's top music venues and, as the star of the show prepared to take the stage, thousands of enraptured fans cried out their idol's name in the darkness: \"Liniker! Liniker! Liniker!\" It was not, though, the England striker turned TV football presenter Gary Lineker the sellout crowd was here to see.

Senior service The barista still going strong at 100

Anna Possi answers the phone in the cafe but immediately asks to call her back.

Raising the bar: Dublin's dry(ish) pub one year on

As young people lose the taste for alcohol, Board's menu of zero per cent drinks and board games finds an eager audience

Unearthed Rare fungi, ghostly palms and hairy herbs

List of new species discovered in 2024 highlights the natural world's fragility as well as the growing extinction risks

The fight to restore street that's a medieval marvel

Choir singers have lived in two handsome terraces of silvery-pink-stoned medieval houses beside Wells Cathedral for more than 650 years.

EU presidency Tusk's revival masks deeper divisions with neighbours

Germany's chancellor appears to be heading for defeat; France's president is mired in crisis.

WHO anger at attack on last working major hospital

The World Health Organization says it is \"appalled\" by an Israeli raid that it said had shut down and partly destroyed the last major hospital still functioning in northern Gaza.

'It was like I was reborn' Ex-inmates adapt to life after Assad

Prisoners in Sednaya prison endured squalid conditions, torture and the noise of fellow inmates being executed

Muan plane crash Runway disaster tests political unity amid leadership crisis

As 2024 drew to a close, South Koreans must have hoped for respite from the political chaos visited on their country in recent weeks.

Rally calls for suspended president's removal

Hundreds of thousands of South Koreans flooded central Seoul last Saturday in the latest wave of protests demanding the removal of the country's suspended president, Yoon Suk Yeol, a day after parliament voted to impeach his acting replacement.

Nato steps up Baltic patrols after possible cable sabotage

Nato is to increase its military presence in the Baltic Sea, the alliance has announced, after the suspected sabotage of an underwater power cable running between Finland and Estonia.

The Kursk front and the secret soldiers of North Korea

At dusk one afternoon last month, two dozen wounded North Korean soldiers were brought to one of the main hospitals in the Russian city of Kursk.

TRUMP VS THE WORLD

Before Donald Trump has taken a single executive decision, countries around the world are positioning themselves for his impact

The Saudi football World Cup is an act of violence and disdain

Well, that's that then. In the event there were only two notes of jeopardy around Fifa's extraordinary virtual congress last week to announce the winning mono-bids, the vote without a vote, for the right to host the 2030 and 2034 football World Cups.

AI has made the move into video and it's worryingly plausible

I recently had the opportunity to see a demo of Sora, OpenAI's video generation tool, which was released in the US last Monday, and it was so impressive it made me worried for the future.

With tyrant Assad ousted, Syrians deserve support and hope

Last week, time collapsed. Bashar al-Assad's fall recalled scenes across the region from the start of the Arab spring almost 14 years ago. Suddenly history felt vivid, its memories sharpened. In fact it no longer felt like history.

TV

The Guardian Weekly team reveals our small-screen picks of the year, from the underground vaults of post-apocalyptic Fallout to the mile-high escapism of Rivals

Albums

Murky love stories, nostalgic pop and an in-your-face masterpiece captured our critics' ears in 2024

Film

Visual language, sound, light and rhythm are to the fore in the best movies of the year

Hidden delights Our 24 travel finds of 2024

Guardian travel writers share their discoveries of the year, from Læsø to Lazio

'It's really a disaster' The fight to save lives as gang war consumes capital

Dr James Gana stepped out on to the balcony of his hospital overlooking a city under siege. \"There's a sensation of 'What's next?'. Desperation is definitely present,\" the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medic said, as he stared down at one of scores of camps for displaced Haitians in their country's violence-plagued capital.

Trailblazers The inspiring people we met around the world this year

From an exuberant mountaineer to a woman defiantly facing the guns of war, here are some of the brave individuals who gave us hope in a tumultuous 2024

Votes of confidence

From India to Venezuela and Senegal to the US, more people voted this year than ever before, with over 80 elections across the world. With rising authoritarianism and citizen-led resistance revealing its vulnerabilities and resilience in the face of unprecedented challenges, has democracy reached its breaking or turning point?

Out of touch How president sealed his own fate in martial law gambit

For Yoon Suk Yeol, this month's short-lived martial law declaration wasn't just a catastrophic miscalculation - it was the culmination of a presidency that had been troubled from the start.

Son of the soil Who is François Bayrou, the farmer turned prime minister?

François Bayrou, the new French prime minister, calls himself a country man. A tractor-driving \"son of the soil\" and breeder of thoroughbreds, he has run for president three times, saying his rural roots and centrist politics led him to try to find common ground between left and right.

Power plant workers keeping the lights on

The Guardian Weekly visits a Soviet-era coal-fired thermal installation to learn how it has held up to Russian attacks

Prince charmed Alleged spy scandal may have exposed China threat

Prince Andrew should be commended for doing Britain a great service, according to longstanding China watcher Charles Parton. The now marginalised royal has, the analyst observed, \"almost single handedly\" succeeded \"in highlighting the threat to free and open countries\" posed by the contemporary Chinese state.

In Moscow, a new life of secluded irrelevance awaits Assad

He was whisked away without a last message to his people, the aircraft's transponder deliberately switched off to avoid detection as it departed from an airbase in Syria.

'We fear new oppression' Alawites worry over rebel rule

To prepare khubeiza, the leaves of the kale-like plant must be roughly chopped and sauteed with onions, garlic and a dash of salt. According to folklore, the recipe originated among the Alawite communities who lived in Syria's mountainous coastline where the fibrous, wild-growing plant can be found in abundance. So poor were the Alawites in Ottoman times, the story goes, that the only food they could find to eat was khubeiza, which sprouts like a stubborn weed every spring.