Author: Desk

A haunting portrait of a nine-year-old Palestinian boy who lost both arms during an Israeli attack on Gaza City won the 2025 World Press Photo of the Year Award Thursday. The picture, by Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times, depicts Mahmoud Ajjour, evacuated to Doha after an explosion severed one arm and mutilated the other last year. “One of the most difficult things Mahmoud’s mother explained to me was how when Mahmoud first came to the realisation that his arms were amputated, the first sentence he said to her was, ‘How will I be able to hug you’?” said Elouf. The photographer is also from Gaza and was herself evacuated in December 2023. She now portrays badly wounded Palestinians based in Doha. “This is a quiet photo that speaks loudly. It tells the story of one boy, but also of a wider war that will have an impact for generations,” said Joumana El Zein Khoury, World Press Photo Executive Director. The jury praised the photo’s “strong composition and attention to light” and its thought-provoking subject

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The year was 1971 and the claims against dollar-based debt were pouring in from every country. The rumor was that the US did not really have the gold to pay. Foreign holders of US assets decided to test the promise, just in case.

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Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world. Klaus Schwab, founder and leader of the World Economic Forum, is “beginning the process” of stepping down from his duties as chairman of the board of trustees. This “process” is…

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