Features

From occupied Palestine to Scottish high schools, people across the world are challenging the warmongers. We profile eight extraordinary women and men on the peace frontline. Words: Hazel Healy and Louisa Waugh. Illustrations: Olivier Kugler.

The pressures on our world are serious, and expected to grow. If we take the following approaches, peace will be more likely. It’s time to ditch the military habit...

Can peacebuilders end the war with Boko Haram in Nigeria? Hazel Healy travels there to find out.

Lea Surugue and Gisella Ligios report from the Czech Republic where Roma women who were forcibly sterilized are demanding the authorities take responsibility.

Trusted in the communities they serve, India’s women health activists are making a difference in getting help for people stigmatized for mental health problems. Yet, as Sophie Cousins reports, the challenge remains vast.

Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s autocratic hard man, is riding high, with the help of young propaganda-mongers. Lorraine Mallinder investigates a media takeover.

Ten years ago the world focused on the US foreclosure crisis as thousands lost their homes in dodgy mortgage deals. Today, the crisis is still a reality for many. Jack Crosbie reports.

With president Trump, Zhou Xiaochuan, a US official, and Christine Lagarde.

If the global financial crisis symbolized the decline of the West, it also signalled that the future belongs to China – a superpower that ‘understands’ the developing world better than the US, IMF or World Bank, according to Martin Jacques.

Clueless central banks? A trade war? Southern debt? Leading economists on where the next crisis might come from...

Yohann Koshy looks at the impending catastrophe linking the stock market to climate change.

It’s 10 years since the global financial system almost sent the world into a great depression. Yohann Koshy takes stock of what went wrong and where we are now.

Syrian reporter Zaina Erhaim on training citizen reporters and the importance of documenting the Assad regime’s atrocities. Interview by Anton Mukhamedov.

China’s dazzlingly ambitious international investment programme – the Belt and Road Initiative – is well under way, with designs to bring infrastructure to half the planet. Wayne Ellwood on the scale of this juggernaut and its economic and political ramifications.

Violeta Santos Moura reports from Poland, where air pollution claims some 45,000 lives annually. The country’s reliance on coal is the main culprit but it’s an issue bound up in national pride and political manipulation.

Wars in cyberspace are wars on our minds. JJ Patrick on the murky underworld of big data, social media, espionage and the spread of chaos through disinformation.

We’re increasingly relying on social media companies to act like governments and censor dubious content. Jillian York on the failures of this approach – and how to fix it.

Changing habits; Tech takeover; Trust in media; Who owns it?

So many voices online. Surely that means more diversity and media democracy? Not really, explains Laura Basu.

Vanessa Baird writes on the strange mutations of ‘fake news’