Since his election as head of the Roman Catholic church in 2013, Pope Francis has won admirers by refocusing the Vatican’s attention away from more traditional cultural concerns such as abortion and towards global poverty and exploitation.
But now comes the acid test for this pope on a reforming mission. Next week Francis makes his first visit to the United States and we are about to find out how his increasingly strident views on climate change and world poverty will go down in the gas-guzzling, greenback-loving Land of the Free.
In a great piece of analysis on our cover this week, the Guardian’s Rome correspondent Stephanie Kirchgaessner says the US will be listening to Francis, but wonders whether it is quite ready to take in his message about global inequality.
After a week in which Germany was forced to close its border with Austria and Hungary threw up barbed wire on its Serbian frontier, EU member states struggled frantically to find a common response to the increasingly catastrophic refugee crisis. We weigh up the latest proposals and look at the shaky-looking prospects for the future of Europe’s Schengen system of open borders.
From Syria, the departure point for around half of those refugees currently seeking to enter the EU, Ian Black in Damascus reports on how life is carrying on amid the bombs, while Martin Chulov looks at what realistic prospects remain for an end to the four-year-long civil war.
To the north, the Washington Post reports on Turkey’s fast-deteriorating security situation between government forces and Kurdish separatists.
It was a hectic week to say the least in Australian politics as sitting Coalition prime minister Tony Abbott was ousted by his Liberal party rival Malcolm Turnbull. We catch up on a breathless 24 hours in Canberra and look at the challenges awaiting the new man in charge.
British politicians and pundits have been struggling to absorb the ramifications of veteran leftwinger Jeremy Corbyn’s landslide election as new leader of the Labour party. We bring you the story of a dramatic weekend in Westminster, while in a Comment section special the Guardian’s heavyweight political commentators weigh up Corbyn’s future prospects.
Fourteen years after the 9/11 attacks on New York, the Guardian’s Jason Burke opens our Review section with a look at the myths of global terrorism and al-Qaeda. Le Monde reports on the daredevil – and frequently deadly – extreme sport of wingsuiting, while the Washington Post looks at Maryland’s growing problem of gambling addiction following a casino-building boom in the state.
Discovery considers how successful efforts to prohibit the harvesting of shark fins have failed to kill off the market for the fish. Books has a review of Terry Pratchett’s posthumously published last novel, while Culture revisits the often-overlooked art of metalpoint portraiture.
Notes & Queries contemplates what the crack of dawn sounds like (for me, it’s usually a cat scratching at the bedroom door). Following the recent call to arms, Good to Meet You hears from another well-known name from the N&Q community.
I hope you’ll agree the Guardian Weekly team has produced another fantastic edition of the paper packed with insightful news, comment and analysis – please do let me know your thoughts on it.
Would you like to change your delivery address? Your email address? Suspend delivery? You can manage your account online here.
Are you a subscriber looking for our digital edition? Click here. This edition can be viewed by subscribers on desktops, laptops, iPads, iPhones, some Kindles, Android tablets and smartphones. Log in on the device to the digital edition and the technology should take you to the correct format.
