Things tend to slow down in Europe in August, and the newsroom here in King’s Cross usually follows suit. So our latest edition of Guardian Weekly looks east, to China, where a crackdown on academics and human rights activists is being called the new cultural revolution, and to Japan, where world war two remembrance and nuclear issues dominated. I always enjoy coverage of this sort – a holdover, I suppose, from years of living and working in Asia.
We feature China on our front page in some solid reporting from the Guardian’s Beijing correspondent, Tom Phillips, who draws attention to President Xi Jinping’s repression of liberal opponents. Since he’s sometimes referred to as “the chairman of everything”, doubts have grown in recent years over any sort of reform from the Communist party chairman.
Inside the edition, we bring you a special report on the “secret” Chicago prisoner warehouse where mainly black detainees have been held and interrogated without access to legal assistance. This is a quite shocking piece of reporting from our colleagues at Guardian America. If this grips and informs you (and I am guessing that it will) you may also find compelling this online interactive tallying police killings in the US, called The Counted. We also report on politics in both the US and Canada. In America, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump presses the “self-destruct button” after controversial remarks about a female journalist with Fox News. In Canada, meanwhile, the leader of that country’s left-learning New Democratic party is making clear gains against the prime minister, Stephen Harper, in the run-up to an October federal election.
From Africa, Simon Allison, writing for the Guardian’s Africa network, provides analysis of political moves in Burundi, where the president, Pierre Nkurunziza, has consolidated his grip on power. And our Review pages profile a different kind of African leader in Lionel Zinsou, who went from France’s business elite to become Benin’s new prime minister.
From the Middle East, meanwhile, oil giant Saudi Arabia has taken the unusual step of raising funds through bond sales, as the price of crude continues to trade weakly, knocking the kingdom’s finances.
Our UK news coverage continues to feature the migrant crisis at the gates to Britain. Foreign secretary Philip Hammond weighed in on the migration debate last weekend by claiming that “marauding” African migrants at the France-Britain border pose a threat to European living standards and social structures. And we take a look at the re-engineered Routemaster bus, a London transport icon that has been taken on a bit of a political diversion.
Comment considers the dangers of nuclear weapons, the campaign against Islamic State and the question of taxidermy. On our Letters page, population growth, European disintegration, and the woes of Britain’s Labour party have drawn your comments. We welcome letters for publication, which you can submit by clicking here.
Ready to sit back and take in a great read? Our Review opener profiles mathematician John Horton Conway, who worried – wrongly – that an obsession with games could wreck his career. Discovery explores amnesia and flu outbreaks. And our Books pages take in India and the second world war, life in the digital age, and a murder mystery from Japan.
Some of our best feature writing this edition comes on the Culture pages, from partner paper Le Monde. Art critic Philippe Dagen reviews an exhibition in Oslo (and then Amsterdam) that pairs up Van Gogh and Munch. Had they actually met in real life, what a team they might have made!
Good to meet you profiles an amazing reader who is now a local councillor for the Norwegian Labour party. Thanks, Janet Gullvag, for sharing. And Notes & Queries asks why this column’s regular writers don’t appear more often in that Good to meet you offering. Good question! Any answers?
We welcome all your contributions, be they letters, replies or a Good to meet you submission. Please do drop me any thoughts on the editorial content of the paper by clicking here. And thanks for reading.
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