In an explosive interview to New Internationalist, the Kurdish female leader Bese Hozat opens up about peace, the party’s view on the region and the independence referendum in South Kurdistan, and accuses Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the West to have incubated Isis. By Karlos Zurutuza.

Emboldened by a recent study, The Guardian repeats the myth that becoming vegan is the ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth. Chris Saltmarsh and Harpreet Kaur Paul disagree.

The backlash against social media titans is in full swing. But are moves to bring them to heel, including new privacy laws, appropriate? Mike Morel investigates.

Trust in tatters. Business model busted. And journalism under attack from all sides. So why does Vanessa Baird think that the news media has a bright future?

Technology is changing society at breakneck speed but considerations of human impacts lag far behind. Dinyar Godrej sketches out some of the key political battles ahead.

The political landscape may seem particularly bleak at present. But, if we stand back and look at the bigger picture, the dominance of rightwing populists and neoliberal policies is likely to be a temporary blip. The evidence is mounting that greater economic equality benefits all people in all societies, whether you are rich, poor or in-between. Once this is widely understood, politicians and policymakers will be forced to take note, as Danny Dorling explains.

Hardliners are thriving on popular disenchantment with politics. Dinyar Godrej on the challenge they pose.

What makes people brave? Vanessa Baird takes a look at an under-examined quality that can change the world.

Chris Brazier returns to the village in Burkina Faso that he has visited every 10 years since helping to make a film there in 1985.

A community group is campaigning to turn the London borough of Haringey into a safer place for migrants. Charlotte England reports.

Two artists have invented a saint to protect residents from gentrification. Yohann Koshy reports.

Report from The Balkans by Alessio Perrone.

Tehran Taboo; The Heiresses (Las Herederas).

Two Sisters by Åsne Seierstad; A Moonless, Starless Sky by Alexis Okeowo; Brother in Ice by Alicia Kopf, translated by Mara Faye Lethem.

Your Queen Is a Reptile by Sons of Kemet and Radyo Siwèl, by Mélissa Laveaux.

Violent weather presages human violence. Dan Baron Cohen writes from a community and country on high alert.

Nick Dowson speaks with an indigenous lawyer and campaigner fighting a gas pipeline in Mexico.

Israel’s defence minister is a political chameleon and lightning rod for controversy, among other things.

The arms trade is a powerful and enduring obstacle to peace.

Paraguayan democracy may have come a long way since the end of dictatorship, but terror is sweeping its agricultural heartlands where farmers and indigenous communities are resisting attempts to take away what little land they have left.

Right to privacy by Elena Ospina (Colombia).