His opponents tried to smear him for his youth, inexperience, and leftist politics. But New Yorkers didn’t want a hardened political insider to be mayor—they wanted Zohran Mamdani.
Dick Cheney’s Brand of Conservatism
For years before taking office, the former Vice-President appeared less dogmatic than he was.
The Dishy Operatics of Lily Allen’s Breakup Album
On “West End Girl,” all the gritty bits are there: messages with a husband’s mistress, the discovery of a cache of sex toys.
For some time now, El Fasher in Sudan has been a city beyond the reach of journalists. But the haunting satellite image on our cover this week, of smoke billowing from fires near El Fasher’s airport, told its own story as starkly as anything that could be reported from the ground.
Other satellite images showed clusters of burned-out vehicles, and what appeared to be pools of blood beside piles of bodies on the ground. A massacre was under way that could be seen from space.
The last major city in Darfur to fall to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) was already the scene of catastrophic levels of human suffering, but has “descended into an even darker hell”, senior UN officials warned last week. This key moment in the two-and-a-half-year-long civil war has unfolded in plain sight with minimal intervention from the international community, unless you count the United Arab Emirates, which has been arming the RSF paramilitaries.
Spotlight | The Andrew formerly known as a prince Stupidity and self-entitlement sank King Charles III’s disgraced younger brother – and the royal reckoning may not be over yet, writes Stephen Bates
Technology | What if the internet just … stopped working? Could everything suddenly go offline and if so, how? Aisha Down goes inside the fragile system holding the modern world together
Interview | Margaret Atwood puts the world to rights At 85, she’s a literary seer and saint – and queen of the Canadian resistance. So what does the writer make of our dystopian society? Lisa Allardice finds out
Opinion | World leaders: Cop30 could be your great legacy With the US backing away from the climate crisis, now is the moment when other nations must step up, says former British prime minister Gordon Brown
Culture | Back to black with Lynne Ramsay The Scottish film director burst on to the scene with Ratcatcher and terrified audiences with We Need to Talk About Kevin. Her latest film stars Hollywood darling Jennifer Lawrence, but it doesn’t flinch from the dark side of family life, finds Amy Raphael
ChatGPT does not have an inner life. Yet it seems to know what it’s talking about. By James Somers
Voting Rights and Immigration Under Attack
The President’s goals were clear on the first day of his term, when he issued an executive order overruling the Fourteenth Amendment’s birthright-citizenship clause. By Jelani Cobb
Mobsters We Have Seen on High
The jewel heist at the Louvre reminded Brooklynites of the time, in 1952, when two bejewelled crowns were swiped from a beloved local church—the one with a Mob boss on the ceiling. By Susan Mulcahy
The Poems of Seamus Heaney By Rosie Lavan, Bernard O’Donoghue and Matthew Hollis (edd.)
Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found By Andrew Graham-Dixon
A woman stands, oblivious to our gaze, absorbed entirely in her activity – reading, pouring, weighing, holding out her pearls. A window to the left admits a radiance, which falls variously on the common stuff the room contains. The light enters as an absolute blank, but infuses colour as it illuminates the scene.
Katherine Mansfield: A Hidden Life By Gerri Kimber
The rush to tell the story of Katherine Mansfield’s short, fascinating life began as soon as she died. Her husband, John Middleton Murry, a gifted editor, notoriously turned the publication of her writing into an industry.
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE:The 11.2.25 Issue features Susan Dominus on women taking testosterone; Dan Brooks on the comedian Stavros Halkias; Joshua Leifer on Haredi conscription in Israel; and more.
A mother in Florida filed a lawsuit against an A.I. start-up, alleging its product led to her son’s death. The company’s defense raises a thorny legal question. By Jesse Barron
Sulawesi, Indonesia, blurs the boundaries between myth and ecology. What might it reveal about our past – or destiny? Photographs and Text by Balarama Heller
Donald Trump’s sudden decision last week to sanction Russian oil producers suggested the US president has finally lost patience with Vladimir Putin after a series of fruitless talks over ending the war in Ukraine.
Could it break the deadlock? Oil sanctions have the potential to genuinely damage Moscow’s finances, as the Russian president himself admitted last week. It remains to be seen, though, whether economic pressure alone can bend Putin’s arm over a conflict he views as defining to his legacy.
In this week’s big story, Guardian Russia affairs reporter Pjotr Sauer asks whether sanctions could succeed where diplomacy has failed, while Christopher S Chivvis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argues that a negotiated settlement remains the likeliest way to bring nearly four years of fighting to a halt.
In the frontline Ukrainian city of Kupiansk, senior reporter Peter Beaumont finds little hope of a quick resolution, with much of the population having left and the remaining soldiers stuck in a war they believe is “going nowhere for either side”.
Five essential reads in this week’s edition
Spotlight | The populist leaders’ economic playbook From Milei to Meloni,are the economics of populism always doomed to failure? This long read from economics editor Heather Stewart tries to bridge the gaps between populist aspiration and fiscal reality
Environment | The deadly migration routes of elephants Human-wildlife conflict has overtaken poaching as a cause of fatalities among elephants – and is deadly for people too. Now some villages are finding new ways to live alongside the mammals, reports Patrick Greenfield
Interview | Is Jimmy Wales the good guy of the internet? The Wikipedia founder stands out from his contemporaries for being driven by more than money. But can the people’s encyclopedia withstand attacks from AI and Elon Musk? ByDavid Shariatmadari
Opinion | Without genuine truth and justice, the war in Gaza cannot end A fragile ceasefire is in place, but what’s needed is an international tribunal for resolution and reparation.That’s the only route to lasting peace, argues Simon Tisdall
Culture | The electrifying genius of Gerhard Richter He has painted everything from a candle to 9/11, walked his naked wife through photographic mist, and turned Titian into a sacred jumble. A new Paris show reveals the German artist in all his contradictory brilliance, says Adrian Searle