Salvini’s rock star moment

With Pavarotti’s Nessun Dorma playing in the background and hands clasped together in prayer, Matteo Salvini walked onto a stage in Rome to a long applause from a crowd of around 80,000.

It was 8 December, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, a day when the Italian capital is usually packed with people flocking to see the pope making his annual pilgrimage to the Spanish steps. But down the road at the Piazza del Popolo, those who had travelled far and wide to listen to Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister and leader of the League, the far-right party that came to power in early June in coalition with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, far outnumbered those awaiting the pope.

For me, this was the moment that underscored just how powerful Salvini has become. The adulation was palpable, akin to being at a pop concert – men, women and children waving flags in support of their hero, some carrying framed photos of Salvini or wearing T-shirts with the message “save us”.

Salvini paid brief tribute to the six people who had died overnight in a stampede at a concert before talking about “restoring dignity, pride, security, pensions and work to millions of Italians”, and celebrating his main success: “It was said that immigration was an epochal phenomenon that couldn’t be stopped. All that was needed was a little courage …”

It doesn’t matter to supporters that Salvini’s policies have meant more migrants dying at sea, more being tortured in Libyan detention camps, and many being left homeless. Nor do they care that his words amplify hate and creates divisions. It wasn’t so much of a surprise that Italy took a strong pivot to the right in national elections in March. More disconcerting is Salvini’s popularity and what seems to be indifference among a now significant swathe of the electorate. AG

Homelessness

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A homeless person’s tent on the banks of the Regent’s Canal in London. Photograph: Getty Images

For weeks we had watched them from the comfort of the Observer’s offices, the inhabitants of a makeshift village on the Regent’s Canal whose situation seemed to become ever more hopeless as the late summer gave way to autumn and then winter.

A few tents, a lot of cardboard, discarded beer bottles and the charred remnants of roll-up cigarettes: this was home for the small group of people whose abject misery was in stark contrast with the luxury boutiques and flats mushrooming around St Pancras station.

Should we have been so shocked? After all, homelessness and King’s Cross have long been synonymous. When the area was down at heel, many people sought shelter in its disused warehouses and goods yards. Now that huge amounts of money have flowed in, King’s Cross attracts homeless people for different reasons.

But, this year, something seemed to changed. The people on the streets appeared younger; there were more women; many seemed to be living permanently in tents or under bridges. In multiple interviews with street homeless people and charities, the Observer found a number of factors – some entrenched, some new – were to blame.

Many on the streets had significant mental health and dependency issues, a familiar concern down the years. But cuts to services meant that the help they would once have received wasn’t there. A large cohort had also experienced prison. Again, this was not new. What was, though, was the dearth of housing. Soaring private rents have meant many people in inner cities are being priced out of the market, resulting in those at the bottom being shunted onto the streets. Delays in paying universal credit, coupled with the way those receiving it have been stigmatised by landlords who see them as risky tenants, is cited as a significant emerging factor by numerous shelters and homeless charities.

This isn’t, of course, just happening in north London. Earlier this month, the charity Crisis said an estimated 24,000 people across Britain would be spending the festive period sleeping rough or in cars, trains, buses or tents. The housing minister, James Brokenshire, has denied that government policy is to blame for the increase. A walk around King’s Cross might change his mind. JD

The Thai cave rescue

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The 12 boys and their football coach pictured moments after they were found alive inside the cave complex. Photograph: Royal Thai Army/EPA

Arriving in Thailand to cover the attempted rescue of 12 boys and their football coach from a cave, I had anticipated I would get little sleep. The cave was deep in the jungle and the monsoon was threatening: working in sodden clothes and with a middling internet connection came also as no surprise.

But the mouthwatering cuisine freshly prepared each day by volunteers and royal Thai chefs was less expected. Thai beef salad, pad see ew noodles, barbecue chicken, tom kha soup: thousands of kilos of food were trucked to the site each day to feed the swelling ranks of rescuers, government officials and journalists who had descended on the Mae Sai jungle during those weeks in June and July.

The mood around the catering tents became a gauge of the state of the rescue. When a former Thai navy seal died while trying to lay oxygen canisters along the escape route – underscoring the danger of the path the boys themselves would soon need to traverse – a quiet gloom settled across the stalls.

And when the boys were discovered, improbably healthy and alive after nine days inside the cave without food and water, the tents pulsated with laughter, loud conversation and impromptu rounds of applause for the rescuers.

It was a carnival atmosphere by the time the rescue started and boys were being extracted one by one. Sources inside the operation were informing journalists as each child was safely removed. Every time the tally jumped, the din grew louder.

My own sources went quiet as the last member of the Wild Boars football club was freed. Dozens of my calls and messages went unanswered. After about 10 minutes, a source sent me a link to post on the Thai navy seals Facebook page. All the boys were free, it announced, with the war cry: “Hooyah!” That night, we were served pad krapow noodles: the dish some of the boys said they had missed most. And boy did it taste good. MS

Jamal Khashoggi murder

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jamal Khashoggi arrives at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. Photograph: Demiroren News Agency/AFP/Getty Images

Amid the chit-chat of a Beirut cocktail reception in October, a strange piece of news started to circulate: Jamal Khashoggi, a noted Saudi dissident, had entered his country’s consulate in Istanbul hours earlier and not left. Diplomats and correspondents gathered among the finery of the European Union’s ambassador’s home felt a sense of dread. Khashoggi had been kidnapped, we thought. If we saw him again, it would be pleading fealty to the Saudi leadership in a staged appearance in Riyadh, after a cloak-and-dagger rendition.

The trail immediately went cold, with Saudi officials claiming he had walked away freely and his bewildered fiancée, who had waited out front, insisting that he hadn’t. This needed a trip to Istanbul to learn the truth. It soon turned out to be far more shocking than anyone had imagined.

At midnight on 6 October, four days after the disappearance, a message flashed on my phone; it was a Turkish government statement released to Reuters claiming Khashoggi had been killed inside the consulate. Calls to sources soon revealed another scarcely believable claim; his killers had dismembered him, then fled the country.

For the next three weeks, one gruesome revelation after another painted a picture of Khashoggi’s end; an ambush, bone saw, boardroom table, body double and a team of state hitmen who had watched more Pulp Fiction than Keystone Cops, but should have studied the latter. Every word of the assassination was captured by bugs.

The drip feed became a tactical masterclass in how to manage a crisis and damage a foe. The case against the kingdom’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was soon overwhelming. The horrific end of Jamal Khashoggi marked the beginning of something new and uncertain in the region. It will likely reverberate for years. MC

Helsinki summit

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Soccerball: Melania, Vladimir and Donald in Helsinki. Photograph: Valery Sharifulin/TASS

It was not the nuclear football that came towards me but it was a football all the same. Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin were holding a press conference after their summit in Helsinki, Finland.

Basking in Russia’s successful hosting of the World Cup, Putin presented Trump with a football, explaining: “I’ll give this ball to you, and now the ball is in your court. All the more that the United States will host the World Cup in 2026.”

Not quite sure what to do with the gift, Trump took it, smiled, posed awkwardly, and then petted it like a hamster. “That will go to my son, Barron,” he said. “In fact, Melania, here you go.” He lobbed it to the front row where after one bounce secretary of state Mike Pompeo caught it and handed it to Melania. It was a subtle rebuke from a smirking Putin just hours after Pompeo had tweeted “the ball’s in Russia’s court”.

Putin’s stunt would then give way to political catastrophe. Trump was asked whether he took the word of Putin or his own intelligence agencies on the question of whether Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. He declined to choose, replying he had confidence in both. Our jaws dropped. Back in America, there were cries of treason.

It summed up the Trump presidency: political naivety, a strange affinity with authoritarians, saying the unsayable in a can’t-take-your-eyes-off-him pantomime. Up close, I thought that 6ft 3in Trump was the commanding figure. But 5ft 7in Putin – faster, nimbler and more skilled at this game – had run rings around him. DS

World Cup fans

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Peru fans enjoy the World Cup finals atmosphere before their team’s opening game against Denmark in Saransk. Photograph: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

It was day two of the World Cup finals and Guillermo Espinoza, a 40-year-old English teacher from Lima, was regaling me with wonderful tales about Peru’s fanatical supporters on a flight from Moscow to Saransk. “There was a guy who was worried he wouldn’t get a ticket for a Peru match, so he said he would try to put on 24kg so that he could apply for one of the special [easy-access extra-width] seats in the stadium that are much easier to get,” Espinoza said, smiling. “You get a good view as well from those seats.”

Peru were appearing at their first World Cup since 1982 and for the man, who was later identified as Miguel, it was worth the weight. Anyone who spent some time in Russia last June will know that plenty of his compatriots felt the same way. Peru’s friendly invasion of Russia – their supporters sold cars, gave up jobs, slept on floors, survived on a diet of cookies and made 32-hour train trips across the largest country on the planet in order to get to matches – brought a feelgood factor to the feast of football that, greatly helped by some brilliant and unforgettable matches across 64 matches, never went away.

One of the abiding images of the tournament for me was the moment when I turned a corner in the city of Saransk, on to Volgogradskaya Ulitsa – the main road to Mordovia Arena and the venue for Peru’s opening game at the tournament – and walked into an extraordinary sea of tens of thousands of red and white shirts, stretching out into the distance. Marching, dancing, singing and smiling, they were having the time of their lives. It was quite tempting to join them. SJ

Royal wedding

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bishop Michael Curry stealing the royal thunder in St George’s chapel. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/Reuters

Royal weddings are designed to dramatise hierarchies, everyone showing up at the appointed hour and assuming their appointed place – countesses before Clooneys, baronets after Beckhams, earls beside Eltons. The fun comes in the disruption to the expected order. Meghan Markle, who had swapped a starring role in Suits for a future bit part in The Crown promised plenty of the latter.

All the talk leading up to the big day centred on whether her father, stitched up in his wedding suit for the tabloids, would appear to meet Prince Harry finally and give her away. In the event – “thank you, Pa” – that role was affably understudied by her new father-in-law. While one side of St George’s chapel, Windsor, was dominated by all known branches of the royal family, only one of the bride’s relations attended: her mother.

Otherwise, the match was more than equal. Gospel choirs complemented trumpet voluntaries to welcome the woman breathlessly described as the nation’s first “biracial princess”.

Bishop Michael Curry, flown in from Chicago, stole all the royal thunder, saying more about the rumbling, fiery power of love than the Duke of Edinburgh appeared to have encountered in 97 years of Anglican sermons.

The press, perhaps in penance for its treatment of Thomas Markle, were barely extras in the drama. After a tour of the chapel, stepping lightly on the tomb of Henry VIII, we were invited to view proceedings on a single unreliable television in a sweaty, dungeon-like turreted tower of Windsor Castle.

You suspected certain of the royal party might have harboured thoughts of mislaying the key. TA