Cover your eyes: it really is about to happen. The day is edging ever closer when Barack Obama must make way for Donald Trump at the helm of the world’s most powerful nation. But as Obama showed last week, there is life in the outgoing president yet.
The expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats in retaliation for alleged Moscow interference in the US election leaves relations between the two superpowers at their lowest ebb since the early 1980s. Yet despite the expectations of a rapid thaw once Trump takes the reins – his dogged and sustained praise of Vladimir Putin on social media continues to bewilder foreign policy analysts – Obama’s latest move leaves his successor in a tricky spot. Reverse the diplomatic expulsions and Trump could look like a Kremlin stooge; uphold them and his fledgling friendship with the Russian president could be at risk before it has begun.
On the Guardian Weekly’s cover this week, Luke Harding analyses another nadir in US-Russia relations and asks what lies ahead for the two former cold war adversaries.
Inside the paper we look at the aftermath of Islamic State’s terror attack on an Istanbul nightclub, a tragic end to a dismal year for Turkey and its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Guardian Middle East writer Martin Chulov considers the prospects for a Russian-brokered peace in Syria, where the latest ceasefire seems to be holding. And while the international focus remains on Islamic State, Jason Burke warns of a global resurgence for rival Islamists al-Qaida, now considered by many to be the greater long-term threat.
On a brighter note, we bring you news of a gold rush on New Zealand’s west coast, and a ban on the ivory trade in China, which could be a game-changer for international elephant conservation efforts.
There’s also an in-depth profile of Antonio Guterres, the former Portuguese PM who this week took over as secretary general of the United Nations. Wish him luck – he’s likely to need it.
In the UK we visit York, the heritage city devastated by flooding this time last year, where local people are unimpressed by the government’s response in the 12 months since.
On the Comment pages, some of the Guardian’s leading opinion writers take a well-earned break from prophecies of doom to reveal what gives them hope for the coming year. Also look out for Ben Jennings’s 2016-summarising cartoon which, if not exactly one to raise the spirits, is a thing of wonder in itself.
Working out a New Year’s productivity schedule? Forget it. In the Weekly review, Oliver Burkeman explains why time management is an illusionary task that only serves to makes us busier and more stressed. The back half of the paper has plenty more fine longer reads, including a Discovery piece about advancements in exoskeleton technology, and a Culture trip behind the scenes at the weird and wonderful Volksbuhne theatre in Berlin.
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