The Guardian Weekly (January 10, 2024) – The new issue features ‘Middle East on the brink’ – The threat of a regional war. Also, Inside the Post Office Horizon IT scandal…

The assassination of a Hamas chief in Lebanon. A terror attack on mourners of an Iranian former general. Commercial shipping in the Red Sea targeted by Yemeni rebels, and a US airstrike in Iraq. All were separate events in the Middle East last week but all were linked, in one way or another, to the presence of autonomous but Iranian-backed militia forces in the region.

When asked to visualise the threat of war engulfing the Middle East, for this week’s cover, illustrator Carl Godfrey took a literal approach. “I wanted to convey the tense and unpredictable situation,” says Carl, “and there’s nothing more tense than looking down the barrel of a gun. Especially when those barrels are pointing in all directions, and the risk of war is expanding in all directions.”

The Guardian Weekly (January 4, 2024) – The new issue features ‘Make or Break 2024’ – The biggest election year in history.

About 2 billion people have the opportunity to cast their ballots in polls that span the globe from the United States to Taiwan, and India to Mexico in 2024. The outcomes, as our analysts and correspondents explain in our big story, have implications for us all.

Washington bureau chief David Smith looks at the likely rerun of 2020’s Biden v Trump contest in November and explores what has changed and what has not in the US as the old adversaries square up. It is an almost foregone conclusion that Narendra Modi will be back for a third term as Indian prime minster, reports Hannah Ellis-Petersen from Delhi where analysts fear his victory will further imperil the country’s Muslim minority. And while Vladimir Putin will certainly continue as president in Russia, Pjotr Sauer explains why the man about to become fifth-time president might allow other candidates onto the ballot list. From Taiwan’s poll on 13 January to the 27-state European elections in June, how citizens vote will influence the geopolitical landscape for us all, while the conduct of campaigns will reveal how vulnerable democracies now are to misinformation and cyber interference from malign actors.