Tag Archives: China

The Spectator World Magazine – April 13, 2026

Arming the dragon | The Spectator

THE SPECTATOR WORLD: The latest issue features Arming the dragon‘ – How the West is empowering China’s war machine…

Operation Epic Fury is costing Trump his coalition

As US troops flock to danger, Donald Trump seeks ways to disentangle himself from the war on Iran. “We are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly,” he said in a 19-minute address at the start of the month. “It’s very important that we keep this conflict in perspective.”

How the West is empowering China’s war machine

The West’s technology brains and universities are arming China. A few of them are potentially breaking the law to do it, but most of them don’t need to. The front door has been open for years, and nobody in London or Washington has thought to close it.

The US currency is under attack like never before

It was, on the surface, a fairly routine proposal. Officials from the BRICS nations, made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, have decided to discuss, at a summit in New Delhi later this year, how to deepen trade and collaboration. No one was paying very much attention when the decision was made. And yet, according to a report in the well-informed newspaper Berliner Zeitung, a resolution was quietly suggested that might turn the global monetary system upside down. It was the start of what might be termed the “plot against the dollar.” America’s currency is likely to face its most serious challenge of the post-World War Two era.

Preview: Archaeology Magazine – MAY/JUNE 2026

Archaeology Magazine: The latest issue features ‘Exploring the World of the Odyssey.

The Unexpected World of the Odyssey

Discovering the surprising inspirations behind Homer’s great tales of the Trojan War. By The Editors

Pioneers of Lakefront  Living

Why Neolithic and Bronze Age farmers in the Alps built their villages on stilts

The Last Maya Kingdom

On the shores of a lake in Guatemala, the Itzá people defied the Spanish for nearly 200 years

Art for the Ages

A surreal style of painting endured for 4,000 years in the canyonlands of West Texas

Bridge to the Past

The Yellow River brought both prosperity and calamity to China’s dazzling medieval capital By Ling Xin

THE OBSERVER MAGAZINE – SUNDAY, APRIL 5, 2026

The Observer Magazine: The latest issue features – Coverage centers on the ongoing Middle East crisis, featuring a dramatic account of a mission to rescue the crew of a downed U.S. F-15 fighter jet. Reports also detail Israeli airstrikes in Beirut and Iranian drone attacks on energy facilities in Kuwait. Also, the Economic Impact: Analysts warn that soaring energy costs triggered by the conflict and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz could threaten the global AI boom and lead to higher taxes and mortgage rates in the UK.

A picture of home

Nasa’s moon mission has captured a view immortalised by Apollo astronauts in 1968, but its quest to beat China to the lunar surface is now under threat from Trump By Giles Whittell

White House chaos intensifies after Iran downs two US warplanes

Desperate search for missing US pilot caps a week of confusion for the president as he loses his grip on the conflict

‘Forty-eight hours before all hell will rain down’: Trump warns Iran over Hormuz

As the US president ups the ante, allies discuss using minesweepers to clear the strait and Tehran imposes new transit fees on shipping

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – APRIL 3, 2026 PREVIEW

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘The Tipping Point’ – A watershed moment for big tech’…

In a landmark case, a California jury last week found social media companies Meta and YouTube liable for deliberately designing addictive products. The ruling came the day after Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, was ordered to pay $375m after a jury in a separate trial in New Mexico found it misled consumers about the safety of its platforms.

Meta, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok are facing thousands of similar lawsuits in US courts, while governments around the world are starting to introduce measures to curb social media’s grip on children’s attention.

Guardian technology editors Dan Milmo and Robert Booth assess whether what has been called a “big tobacco” moment for the industry will lead to significant change. And in our opinion section, Jonathan Freedland argues that the court verdicts must be just the start of a global fightback.

The big story | A war of regression
Weeks into a war that was going to take days and has cost billions, Donald Trump has bombed the US into a worse position with Iran, writes Patrick Wintour

Science | ‘On the shoulders of giants’
Plant specimens and teaching materials that inspired Charles Darwin have been unearthed and will be used for the first time to teach contemporary students about botany, Donna Ferguson reports

Feature | Circuit training
After touring 11 Chinese companies making humanoid robots, Chang Che asks: just how close are we to a robotic future?

Opinion | Labour needs a thinker
Ed Miliband’s stock is rising in a party in need of an old-style intellectual heavyweight, argues Gaby Hinsliff

Culture | Gimme shelter
Catherine Slessor visits Henry Moore’s former countryside home Hoglands, now home to studios and a vast sculpture garden, to learn about a new exhibition of the drawings he made as a war artist, capturing people as they took sanctuary from the blitz

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – MARCH 27, 2026 PREVIEW

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘Strategy Backfires’ – Can Trump undo the mess he’s made in the Gulf?

Brinkmanship, the ability to take countries to the edge of conflict, was a staple of cold war diplomacy. The remnants of that finely balanced standoff, bound by a rules-based order and spheres of influence, has given way to a world in freefall; to an ever-widening war in the Gulf where the aims are as unclear as the endpoint.

It is approaching a month since the US and Israel launched their attacks on Iran, arguing they were acting to remove the country’s nuclear threat, destroy its ballistic missile capability and free the populace of a tyrannical theocratic regime. Yet it seems it is these civilians and neighbouring Gulf countries who are bearing the brunt of the campaign while the Iranian regime’s willingness to escalate the war seems undimmed.

Spotlight | The ‘anyone but’ election
Pippa Crerar looks ahead to local elections in the UK, where voters seem more concerned with who they want to keep out of political office than who they vote in

Science | Not-so silent nights
Can a “vacuum cleaner turned the other way” become a popular solution to snoring disorders? Natasha May explores the rise of Cpap machines

Feature | Gamifying government
Steeped in gaming and rightwing culture, Elon Musk’s Doge team set out to defeat the enemy of the United States: its people, write Ben Tarnoff and Quinn Slobodian

Opinion | Collateral damage
Attacks on synagogues and Jewish shops in the UK, Europe and the US don’t hurt Benjamin Netanyahu, says Jonathan Freedland, they just hurt ordinary Jews

Culture | Rock return
“Validation was an insatiable monster”: Dave Grohl talks to Ben Beaumont-Thomas about Foo Fighters, life after his infidelity and grief for bandmate Taylor Hawkins

The Spectator World Magazine – March 30, 2026

THE SPECTATOR WORLD: The latest issue features ‘The End Of Trumpism’….

The end of Trumpism

Having Donald Trump as President probably resembles being a heroin addict: you undergo regular episodes of sweating terror and mortal danger, the end result of which is to get you – at best – back to normal. A year ago, the Liberation Day tariffs nearly caused the American economy to seize up, before China mercifully let the matter drop. Then came the even more reckless decision to join Israel in bombing Iran’s Fordow nuclear installation; Iran agreed to halt hostilities just as it was figuring out how to penetrate Israeli airspace with its missiles. By Christopher Caldwell

Why Iran will hasten MAGA’s demise

Readers may disagree with the cover line of this issue. Pronouncing “the end of Trumpism” feels somewhat similar to declaring “the end of history” – a provocative, albeit less grandiose, statement that risks being mocked in the near future. We should start by saying we hope that we are wrong. Trumpism, as this magazine understands….

How Trump and FIFA’s Gianni Infantino teamed up to rebrand peace

When you attend the court of King Donald, it’s important to genuflect. Unfamiliar foreigners in need of pointers can look to the man who is currently the most assiduous non-American flatterer: FIFA president Gianni Infantino. By Matt McDonald

El Mencho’s last stand

Jalisco, Mexico No one seems to know exactly how El Mencho was killed. We are told the feared leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel was captured by the Mexican army during a firefight in late February, and subsequently died of his wounds. Beyond that, there is very little information. Why are the Mexican and

FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE – WINTER 2026 PREVIEW

Foreign Policy – the Global Magazine of News and Ideas

FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘The World After Trump’…

Three Scenarios for a Post-Trump World

Ten years hence, the world will look very different.

Electrostates vs. Petrostates

China is building a new green bloc, while the United States is doubling down on oil.

A Better Trans-Atlantic Relationship Is Entirely Possible

How Europe and the United States could end up in a healthier alliance.

What Would an Abundance Foreign Policy Look Like?

Turning a popular idea from the American left outward.

Can Middle Powers Gel?

A close reading reveals multiple barriers to such a coalition.

Electrostates vs. Petrostates

China is building a new green bloc, while the United States is doubling down on oil.

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – MARCH 20, 2026 PREVIEW

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘The Squeeze’ – How Iran Blocked The Straight of Hormuz…and What Comes Next.

As fighting in the Middle East entered its third week, focus has shifted to Tehran’s closure of a key maritime passage, and the potentially huge global economic impact.

For our big story this week, Jillian Ambrose explains how the war in Iran has effectively blocked the Gulf states from exporting a fifth of the world’s oil supply through the strait of Hormuz. Peter Beaumont sets out the significance of the route and the possible options to counter the blockade, while Hannah Ellis-Petersen reports on the building anger and resentment in the region over being dragged into a war they did not start and had diplomatically tried to prevent.

Peter also looks at “the escalation trap” that lies ahead for both sides in the conflict, and we have on-the-ground reports from Jason Burke in northern Israel and William Christou in southern Lebanon, as well as a stark account of day-to-day life from inside Tehran.

Spotlight | ‘Extraordinary cruelty’
Kaamil Ahmed and Alex Clark examine the evidence that starvation is being used as a weapon of war in Sudan

Technology | Star fruit
As Apple reaches its half-century, Chris Stokel-Walker rounds up its biggest triumphs and flops

Feature | Feminism’s not dead!
In a stirring riposte to all those who have declared the death of the women’s movement, Rebecca Solnit outlines the advances that have been made and argues it’s no time to give up the fight

Opinion | The British right’s Maga obsession
UK conservatives were once hostile to the US, but now are keen to emphasise loyalty to Trump above all else, writes Kojo Koram

Culture | One win after another
After 11 nominations without a single win, film-maker Paul Thomas Anderson deservedly struck gold at the Oscars with One Battle After Another, says Xan Brooks

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – MARCH 13, 2026 PREVIEW

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘The Legacy of War’ – Two previous US military campaigns brought chaos to the Middle East. Why has it started a third?

When news breaks that dominates the agenda to the extent of the US-Israeli attack on Iran, one challenge for the Guardian Weekly team is how to keep the magazine’s covers feeling fresh, week after week, while remaining focused on the same story.

For this week’s edition, in response to Patrick Wintour’s must-read essay on how the US has ignored the lessons of two previous Gulf wars, we asked illustrator Doug Chayka to play with the idea of a Middle East that the US either cannot, or refuses to, see. Doug’s artwork neatly captures the dilemma of a Trump administration that now finds its Iran exit strategy – assuming there was one – cut off by chaos.

Spotlight | War losses mount in rural Russia
Residents of a remote village in Komi Republic say dozens have left to fight in Ukraine, leaving behind grieving families and labour shortages. Pjotr Sauer reports

Science | Is the passion for taxonomy in danger of dying out?
Insect taxonomist Art Borkent fears his field of science is fading, despite millions of insects, fungi and other organisms waiting to be discovered, he tells Patrick Greenfield

Feature | The miraculous survival of Nada Itrab
After a nine-year-old girl was kidnapped and taken from Spain to Bolivia, authorities feared the worst. They found her in the rainforest nine months later – but that wasn’t the end of her ordeal. Giles Tremlett picks up the story

Opinion | In this war, Britain’s enemy now is Donald Trump
As the Iran disaster escalates, Simon Tisdall argues that Starmer should treat the US president as someone whose actions threaten the lawful, democratic way of life everywhere

Interview | Corinne Bailey Rae
The English singer and songwriter was riding high with a hit album when her husband died tragically young. She discusses grief, fame and rebuilding her life with Simon Hattenstone

The Spectator World Magazine – March 16, 2026

THE SPECTATOR WORLD: The latest issue features ‘The Greater Game’ – Trump’s ultimate target in this war is China says Geoffrey Cain…

Trump’s ultimate target in this war is China

Geoffrey Cain

The United States and Israel killed Ayatollah Khamenei, and Xi Jinping’s decade-long project to build an alternative to the American-led order died with him. For years, Beijing quietly assembled a network of dictatorships and client states designed to blunt American power. Iran supplied China with cheap oil and kept Washington bogged down in the Middle

The Iran war has exacerbated the failure of European energy policies

Daniel McCarthy

The history of the global trading system is a story of narrow and vulnerable waterways: the Suez and Panama Canals, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Straits of Dover and the Skagerrak, which defends the entrance to the Baltic. But none has the power to seize up the global economy as much as the Strait of…..

I spent 25 years fighting neocons. Then Trump became one

Like everyone, I’m glued to the news coming out of Iran. I’m experiencing some depression, as one might, upon realizing that much of what one has worked on for 25 years has suddenly gone up in smoke, destroyed when Donald Trump discovered he was pretty much a neocon after all. Like everyone else, I have…

America’s last war in the Middle East

Win or lose, Donald Trump has begun the last war the United States is ever likely to fight in the Middle East. That might sound wildly optimistic, but what it really means is that war with Iran has been decades in the making. If the mission succeeds, it will mark the end of an era.

Inside MAGA’s meltdown over Iran

Freddy Gray

When President George W. Bush invaded Mesopotamia in 2003, everybody laughed at Comical Ali, the bespectacled Iraqi information minister who kept insisting that the American “rats” were doomed as Saddam Hussein’s regime collapsed around him. The world moved on. Iran is not Iraq, as President Donald Trump’s supporters are so fond of saying, and Bush-eraOwen Matthews

Will Turkey intervene in Iran?

With the exception so far of a single missile intercepted over Turkish airspace and a strike on an Azeri-controlled territory near the Iranian border, Tehran has so far declined to mess with the Turks, and for good reasons. Turkey is a member of NATO and attacking it would trigger Article 5 mutual defense measures. And