US president Barack Obama is fulfilling his campaign pledge to get US troops out of Iraq. Ian Black, the Guardian's Middle East editor, discusses what Obama's announcement of troop withdrawals will mean for peace prospects in the region.
Obama's has also raised the profile of the environment after years of denial about global warming by the Bush administration. Suzanne Goldenberg, the Guardian's US environment editor, reports on the greening of Capitol Hill.
As the global economic crisis continues to worsen, scapegoats must be found. Dan Roberts, the Guardian's head of business, explains how Sir Fred Goodwin, formerly of the Royal Bank of Scotland, became Britain's public enemy number one.
The French Foreign Legion conjures up images of camaraderie and song. But Angelique Chrisafis, the Guardian's Paris correspondent, tells Guardian Daily's Jon Dennis that some legion recruits claim they were subjected to abuse.
How do the often dry findings of scientific research get transformed into news stories? Ian Sample, the Guardian's science correspondent, visited a conference where scientists try to turn their experiments into headlines.
From time to time in the Guardian Weekly we feature a piece from one of our listeners to find out what life is like in a different corner of the world. In her Letter from the Solomon Islands, Kimberley Warren-Rhodes notes that market day in Gizo can be very noisy indeed.
