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Dictators

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Nanette Castillo in Manila on Monday night watching the livestream from the first day of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s committal hearing at The Hague.

For more than eight years, Nanette has been waiting for Rodrigo Duterte to pay

The first day of the former Philippine president’s committal hearing for crimes against humanity took place in The Hague on Monday. In Manila, families of the dead gathered to watch the livestream.

  • Zach Hope

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America’s attack on Venezuela has drawn international criticism, such as these protesters in South Korea.

Trump has pulled the US into a joint venture with a leftist kleptocracy

Little now remains of the moral and legal order that we used to call the West.

  • Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
A court sketch of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

With slow, deliberate steps and a smile, ousted autocrat meets his new reality

Ripped from his compound two days earlier as he slept, Nicolás Maduro found himself in a crowded New York courtroom - where he was no longer the highest authority.

  • Jonah E. Bromwich, Benjamin Weiser, Maia Coleman and Hurubie Meko
After the fall of his regime in Syria, Bashar al-Assad and his family live a luxurious life in Moscow.

Private yachts and $20,000 hotels: Online posts reveal exiled dictator’s life of luxury

From the moment they fled their Damascus palace via private jets and convoys of cars, the Assad family has maintained an opulent lifestyle.

  • Erika Solomon, Christiaan Triebert, Haley Willis and Ahmad Mhidi
Sergei and Svetlana Tikhanovsky in Warsaw earlier this year.

The accidental power couple taking on a dictator – and Putin

She was a housewife until her politician husband was sent to jail. When he was finally released, he was shocked at what he found.

  • Francesca Ebel
Could Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin beat ageing?

A hot mic revealed Putin’s secret immortality hope. Here’s how that could go

A regenerative medicine expert weighs in on the Russian leader’s ideas about living forever.

  • Angus Dalton
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Illustration by Joe Benke

Democracy was on the defensive before Trump 2.0. Now it may be dying

Donald Trump is not the cause of democratic decline around the world. He’s a symptom of it. But we’re facing a third wave of global autocratisation.

  • Peter Hartcher
Adolf Hitler with filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl on Nazi party day in Nuremberg, 1934.

Hitler’s favourite filmmaker always denied she was a Nazi. Now we know the truth

The director of a new documentary on Leni Riefenstahl trawled through 700 boxes of material from her estate to find answers.

  • Garry Maddox
America, led by Donald Trump (pictured here with Xi Jinping in 2019), is becoming more like China at a rapid rate.

Peter Hartcher on how Trump is remaking America in China’s image

A secret directive issued by Xi Jinping in 2013 holds the key to the most successful one-party dictatorship in the world. Peter Hartcher in The Morning Edition says it appears the new US president has been reading it.

Day by day, Trump’s America becomes more like Xi’s China

The West thought China would be entranced by its freedoms. But now an American president is aping Beijing’s repressive controls.

  • Peter Hartcher