As tensions between the US and Israel increased over the military offensive on Rafah, Malak A Tantesh and Jason Burke reported powerfully on the growing humanitarian crisis in the southern Gazan city (above), now home to more than a million refugees who have fled the fighting further north. For Today in Focus, Michael Safi spoke to people on the ground in Rafah as they weighed up the decision to stay or leave the city.
Three sisters who raised their voices to protest against the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia have found their lives ruined by the regime in Riyadh. Tom Levitt told the devastating story of the Al-Otaibi siblings: one who is living under constant fear of arrest, one who is living in exile and another who was recently imprisoned for 11 years for “her choice of clothing and support for women’s rights”.
London’s 193-year-old Garrick Club has only ever admitted men. Now, thanks to Amelia Gentleman, who revealed in March that its members included top judges, politicians and even the king, London’s last male-only social club has finally voted to accept women. Amelia first wrote about the fight to accept female members almost a decade ago in this Long Read and has been leading on the story, which has had a considerable impact in Britain’s corridors of power.
As part of a new series exploring the scale of Europe’s housing crisis, Jon Henley travelled to the Netherlands to witness first-hand how the country is struggling to meet people’s needs, and heard a stark warning from the UN’s housing envoy that far-right parties across the continent stand ready to exploit the situation for political gain. Ashifa Kassam looked at how, even as they are scapegoated by populists, people of colour are disproportionately affected by a crisis that feeds further segregation and stigmatisation.
In a Guardian exclusive, Carmen Aguilar García, Sarah Marsh and Philip McMahon revealed a vast Chinese-operated web of fake online shops that took money and personal details from 800,000 people in Europe and US.
Simon Hattenstone’s final instalment in his series about the scandal of indeterminate-term prison sentences (known as IPPs) in England and Wales is an important read. He spoke with Marc Conway – who risked his life to stop the London Bridge terror attack – about why he feared that the deed could send him back to prison under the conditions of his 99-year sentence.
In some encouraging environment news, Australian scientists who spent two decades listening to the distinctive songs and calls of Antarctic blue whales – the largest that have ever lived – are delighted by hints of a resurgence in the species after numbers dwindled to just a few hundred.
The National Trust is a UK charity dedicated to preserving places of historic or natural beauty. It’s also become a focus for “anti-woke” culture warriors who keep trying to drag the cherished institution into divisive rows. This week Celia Richardson, the Trust’s communications director, wrote a brilliant opinion piece about how her organisation has worked to counter this kind of polarisation.
George Monbiot wondered why people obsess about false conspiracy theories and ignore actual conspiracies, so he interviewed a “believer” in his home town to find out. The result was a fascinating character study and a truly absorbing read.
Four Weddings and a Funeral – the low-budget romcom about Britain’s upper classes that came out of nowhere to become a huge hit – is 30 this year. The Guardian’s Ann Lee heard how it was made and costs were kept low, from waiting around for hours for the bus to borrowing “tails and black ties”.
Finally, this week the Met Gala took place in New York, an event which has become one of the most important nights of the year for designers to show off their most extraordinary creations. Our fashion team blogged some wild red carpet sights. Our fashion expert Jess Cartner-Morley summed up the cultural import of this “Super Bowl of fashion-entertainment”, writing that it shows us a “heat map of the connections between culture and entertainment, between the establishment and new money … these are the new corridors of soft power.” Marina Hyde was in equal parts bemused and enthralled by the spectacle.
One more thing … The Time is Always Now exhibition, at London’s National Portrait Gallery, has one week more to run. I thought it was wonderful. It features contemporary Black artists on the theme of the Black figure in art, with mesmerising works by some of my favourite British artists, including Lubaina Himid, Chris Ofili and Claudette Johnson. But it was Barbara Walker’s pictures that made the biggest impact. The artist forces you to consider what it really felt like to be a servant or enslaved person by reinterpreting Old Master paintings, whiting out everyone but the Black figure, who is drawn in beautiful and loving detail. As the Observer’s Laura Cumming wrote, “you are now looking (only) at the overlooked”. It takes my breath away just thinking about it.
