The two pieces of good news this month are about more people gaining access to safe drinking water and four countries being declared free of the neglected tropical disease trachoma.

US President Donald Trump’s decision to freeze foreign aid has restricted access to HIV therapies in South Africa, particularly for undocumented migrants and other marginalised people. A dangerous black market has sprung up as a result.

Autocracies work together worldwide to stay in power. They flood the public sphere with targeted disinformation in order to destroy democratic discourse and impose their own narrative on the world, as Anne Applebaum argues in her book “Autocracy, Inc.”.

With little being done to clean the skies over New Delhi, the huge city struggles with toxic air.

In May, Ugandan lawyer and activist Agather Atuhaire was abducted in Tanzania. Days later, she was found near the Ugandan border and gave a harrowing account of her ordeal. In this interview, she speaks about the trauma of state repression, the shortcomings of symbolic women’s leadership, the strength she draws from family and solidarity and the shrinking international support that has emboldened authoritarianism.

A new online platform connects Zimbabwean businesses to customers abroad and helps them foster trade and partnerships.

Boniface Mwangi is one of many people who have left their homeland because they no longer see any job prospects there. The Kenyan civil engineer arrived in Germany a few months ago and spoke with Katharina Wilhelm Otieno.

This is a first-hand account of displacement, pain and the impossibility of saying goodbye. Ansam Al-Kitaa is a freelance journalist from Palestine. She wrote the following on 18 October 2025.

Brazilian president underlines need to reduce emissions as Turkey set to host next year’s summit On Wednesday evening I joined a crowd of journalists, including my colleague Fiona Harvey, veteran of many Cops, to wait outside a plenary room in the artificially Baltic surroundings of the Cop30 conference centre. Rumour had it that the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who had earlier arrived at the UN climate summit, would soon emerge to speak to journalists. What exactly we would do if he did emerge was unclear. Continue reading...

Private wealth could play a transformative role in tackling global challenges. Yet many wealthy individuals are hesitant about investing for impact. Changing mindsets, reducing risk and building trust are essential to unlock private capital for sustainable development.

Despite considerable differences, the world’s two most populous countries have recently grown closer, a shift fuelled not least by the US’s punitive tariff policy. Here’s how experts from India and China analyse this geopolitical development.

Climate activists were anything but optimistic as COP30 drew closer: hundreds of billions more need to be spent on climate action – but it’s not clear where the money is supposed to come from. Which makes it all the more important to focus on what has already been achieved.