THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘The New Age of Empire’

We’re just a couple of weeks into 2026 and already it feels like an eternity has passed.

From Venezuela to Greenland, a blitz of revanchist US foreign policy moves by Donald Trump has thrown the world into turmoil. Domestically, it’s little better: in Minneapolis, the killing last week of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent – who was defended aggressively by Trump – prompted shock and fury across America.

While some argue that recent events simply represent a more honest, open approach towards US policy goals than in the recent past, others believe such brazen expansionism profoundly threatens the world order.

In a terrific essay this week, our senior international correspondent Julian Borger argues that these events signal a shift away from the postwar rules-based order and into a new age of global imperialism where, alongside Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China, powerful nations use overtly brute force to achieve their objectives.

Spotlight | Iran protests: ‘The streets are full of blood’
After several days of protests amid an information blackout and a brutal crackdown, demonstrators recount their experiences on the frontlines to Deepa Parent and William Christou

Technology | Elon Musk’s pervert chatbot
‘Add blood, forced smile’: Amelia Gentleman and Helena Horton investigate how Grok’s AI nudification tool went viral

Feature | Trump’s assault on the Smithsonian
The US president has vowed to kill off ‘woke’ in his second term in office, and the venerable cultural institution a few blocks from the White House is in his sights. Charlotte Higgins reports

Opinion | As the bombs fell, my family planted hope in a garden in Gaza
Amid constant danger, Taqwa Ahmed ­al-Wawi’s seed-planting was a tiny act of resistance, offering food – and a sense of achievement among the devastation

Culture | Interview with Park Chan-wook
The South Korean film director talks to Steve Rose about cultural dominance, the capitalist endgame and why we can’t beat AI

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘The Donroe Doctrine’ – Donald Trump stakes his claim to the Western Hemisphere.

Donald Trump consigned the remnants of the rules-based international order to the bottom of the Caribbean Sea as US forces extracted Nicolás Maduro to face trial in the US. With allies and adversaries of Washington still adjusting to last weekend’s audacious assault on Caracas, Trump and his inner circle are thinking about their next steps to secure US interests in what they regard as “our hemisphere”.

Our reporting team, led by Latin American correspondent Tom Phillips, gauges the reaction to Maduro’s abduction on the ground in Caracas and among Venezuela’s closest neighbours, while Dan Sabbagh explains how the US military had planned and executed the operation.

Since the start of the US military buildup and blockade of Venezuela, Trump had claimed that Maduro needed to be “brought to justice” for his alleged role in drug trafficking, which Trump claimed had caused thousands of deaths in the US. But, as international commentators Julian Borger and Nesrine Malik explain, that has proved the thinnest of justifications and already by last Saturday it was clear that Venezuela’s huge oil reserves were uppermost on his mind.

Spotlight | Iran in turmoil
An ailing economy and plummeting exchange rate have prompted the biggest street protests in many years, report Deepa Parent and William Christou

Science | Is de-extinction really possible?
Bringing woolly mammoths and dire wolves back to life captured the public’s imagination last year but, Patrick Greenfield reports, there are questions around what can actually be achieved

Feature | The power and purpose of guilt
Psychologist Chris Moore saw first-hand how powerful and complex an emotion it is, as he explains to Emine Saner

Opinion | Adieu to the French art of lunch
Paul Taylor mourns the demise of a convivial lunch at a bistro serving freshly prepared food and the end of an unpretentious part of working culture

Culture | Is the crisis in masculinty just a joke?
It’s a ridiculous time to be male – and that’s good news for a new genre of social media comedy poking fun at the manosphere, finds Matthew Cantor