THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘A New Hope’ – How Zohran Mamdani broke the mould of US politics’

The dust may have settled on Zohran Mamdani’s astounding, against-the-odds victory in the New York mayoral election. But a week on, the scale of his achievement looks no less impressive.

As Ed Pilkington outlines in this week’s big story, Mamdani swept away his establishment-backed heavyweight opponent Andrew Cuomo by mobilising an army of grassroots volunteers and donors, while also connecting deeply with the voters whose support he most needed on the issues that mattered most to them, namely affordability and economic justice.

It’s a ground-up approach to doing things that US Democrats – who also won governorships in Virginia and New Jersey on an encouraging night – can learn from as they reflect on a torrid year since Donald Trump swept to power.

Spotlight | The green monster of Cop30
Amid bombast, strife and competing interests, is the annual climate summit, which opened in Brazil this week, still the forum we need to save the planet? Fiona Harvey reports from the Amazonian city of Bélem

Spotlight | The extraordinary fall of the BBC’s top bosses
A whirlwind that began with a report criticising the editing of a speech by Donald Trump is part of a wider political story, some say. Media editor Michael Savage charts the tale

Feature | Why not everyone is sad to see the end of USAID
When Donald Trump set about dismantling USAID, many around the world were shocked. But on the ground in Sierra Leone, the latest betrayal was not unexpected. Mara Kardas-Nelson finds out why

Opinion | A president groped? Sadly it isn’t a shock
After Claudia Sheinbaum was assaulted last week, her opponents claimed she staged it. From their own experiences, the women Mona Eltahawy met know she didn’t have to

Culture | Rosalía, the Catalan queen of pop
With a towering new album about female saints in 13 languages, she’s pop’s boldest star – and one of its most controversial. She tells Laura Snapes why we need forgiveness instead of cancel culture

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘A Massacre Foretold’ – The Tragedy of El Fasher’

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