12 African Artists Leading a Culture Renaissance Around the World

In one of his famed self-portraits, Omar Victor Diop, a Senegalese photographer and artist, wears a three-piece suit and an extravagant paisley bow tie, preparing to blow a yellow, plastic whistle. The elaborately staged photograph evokes the memory of Frederick Douglass, the one-time fugitive slave who in the 19th century rose to become a leading abolitionist, activist, writer and orator, as well as the first African American to be nominated for vice president of the United States. Diop is no stranger to portraying the aches and hopes of Black people…

Fifth of UK universities’ income comes from overseas students, figures show

One in every five pounds received by UK universities last year came from international students, according to Guardian analysis that reveals the scale of the sector’s growing dependence on overseas tuition fees for financial survival. With the annual dash to allocate university places for the next academic year about to begin, there are fears UK students could lose out to their overseas counterparts, whose higher fees have become critical to university budgets. Tuition fees from international students now make up a third or more of the total income at some…

The world in 2023: what our writers say you should watch out for

A near-inevitable global recession sparked by a lengthening war in Europe’s frozen east; an energy crisis coupled with soaring inflation; Covid-19 finally running rampant in China – predictions for 2023 are grim. Still, there are reasons to be hopeful. That same energy crisis has spurred an unprecedented demand for renewables, which are expected to boom, while in Brazil, a new president has sworn to protect the Amazon. Repressive regimes, meanwhile, will be nervously looking at Iran, where hardline clerics are locked in a struggle with a formidable pro-democracy uprising that…

OPEC and Russia to Meet as War in Ukraine Roils Oil Market

In the last month, oil markets have been shaken by a war that has sparked a jump in prices and threatened a critical shortfall in crude and other petroleum products. But when most of the world’s largest oil producers meet by teleconference on Thursday to discuss supplies, analysts don’t expect much action. Officials from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia are likely to do little more than announce their usual modest monthly production increases, leading to questions about how much oil the group really does have in…

‘A necessary war’: reporting on the Ukraine ‘disagreement’ outside the west

Many an insult has been hurled at Vladimir Putin since he invaded Ukraine a fortnight ago, causing chaos, heartbreak and death. A bloodstained aggressor. A 21st-century Stalin. A total fucking dickhead. Beelzebub. “Look at the face of Putin. You will see the devil,” one US commentator opined on Wednesday as a maternity hospital was bombed in the city of Mariupol. But for the Venezuelan pundit Alberto Aranguibel, Putin’s 24 February invasion was “la guerra necesaria” – the necessary war. The Chinese academic Wang Shuo saw it as “a US-created crisis”.…