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Take this hopeful thought into 2026: the tyrants we endure always falter, and their ‘seismic’ upheavals are usually false dawns
For those who lived through the cold war, the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, was an unforgettable moment. The sinister watch towers with their searchlights and armed guards, the minefields in no-man’s land, the notorious Checkpoint Charlie border post, and the Wall itself – in an extraordinary, popular lunge for freedom.
Less than a month later, on 3 December 1989, at a summit in Malta, US president George HW Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared that after more than 40 years, . All agreed it was a historic turning point.
Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

Liu De-wen operates at a sensitive space in Taiwan’s history, as Beijing demands reunification with the island
In the leafy back blocks of a military cemetery in northern Taiwan, Liu De-wen strides through a room holding rows and rows of shelves. He stops and stoops to the lowest row, opening a small, ornate gold door. He pulls out an urn, bundles it into his lap, and hugs it.
“Grandpa Lin, follow me closely,” Liu says. “I am bringing you back home to Fujian as you wished. Stay close.”

As the military pushes ahead with a widely condemned election, Beijing’s priorities are proving decisive

Myanmar’s military has managed to regain momentum in its battle against a determined patchwork of opposition groups, retaking some territory, and pushing ahead with a widely condemned election that begins on Sunday.
It is a turnaround for the military, which had that some dared to question if it could collapse.

$10bn Trump-approved sale to Taipei triggers Beijing sanctions against firms such as Boeing and Northrop Grumman
China’s foreign ministry has hit US defence companies including Boeing with sanctions after Donald Trump approved a large package of arms sales to Taiwan.
The ministry said on Friday that the measures – against 10 individuals and 20 US firms including Boeing’s production hub at St Louis in Missouri – would freeze any assets the companies and individuals hold in China and bar domestic organisations and individuals from doing business with them.

Japanese strike-back capabilities and coastal defences to be boosted while Beijing accuses Tokyo of fuelling a ‘space arms race’
Japan’s cabinet has approved a record high defence budget as tensions with China continue to spiral, with Beijing this week accusing Tokyo of “fuelling a space arms race”.
The draft defence budget for the next fiscal year – approved on Friday – is more than ¥9tn ($58bn) and 9.4% bigger than the previous budget, which will end in April. The increase comes in the fourth year of Japan’s five-year program to double its annual arms spending to 2% of GDP.

A degraded government in Washington today is a far cry from its once-feared global leadership Minxin Pei is one of America's leading sinologists. His commentaries appear everywhere, including in this ...

She was given the “hardest job under heaven”: upholding birth limits enforced by often brutal local officials. She came to support softening the policy, then abolishing it.

Elections will be first since military seized power in 2021, but analysts say vote is far from a step toward democracy
Myanmar is preparing to go to the polls for the first time since its military seized power in a coup in 2021, but with its former leader behind bars, its most successful political party disbanded and roughly a third of the country either disputed or in rebel hands, few believe claims by its military rulers that its 28 December election will be “free and fair”.
“This is not for the people, this is for themselves,” says Pai, 25, who fled Myanmar after the military seized power. “They [the ruling junta] are looking for a way out of the trap they are [in].”

A video of a child crying over her broken A.I. chatbot stirred up conversation in China, with some viewers questioning whether the gadgets are good for children. But the girl’s father says it’s more than a toy; it’s a family member.

From the Indigenous doctor balancing traditional and western medicine to a father risking death to provide for his family in Gaza, these are some of the people whose determination and bravery stood out
In 2012, Adana Omágua Kambeba travelled 4,000km (2,500 miles) from her home in Manaus, in the Brazilian Amazon, to take up a coveted place to study medicine at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in south-east Brazil. She became , the Kambeba, or Omágua, to graduate in the field, still largely dominated by white elites. According to the of those who graduated in medicine in Brazil.
Adana Kambeba uses the ancestral knowledge of her people alongside conventional medicine in her work. Photograph: Marizilda Cruppe/the Guardian

The Christmas Chinese dinner is one of the truly great and unique nights of the American Jewish year. Jewish families patronize the same restaurant every year with the dedication generally reserved ...

In 2025, Asians and Asian Americans reached historic milestones across politics, science, technology, and global culture.