In Kharkiv in north-east Ukraine, regular Russian bombing and missile attacks are targeting civilian infrastructure (pictured above), leading the mayor to warn that the city risks becoming a “second Aleppo”. Dan Sabbagh filed a fascinating dispatch from a city on the brink. The piece included stunning photography by Julia Kochetova.
The historic Donald Trump hush money trial began in New York this week, marking the first time a US president has faced criminal charges at trial. Our team in the US captured the unprecedented and often strange scenes – from jurors airing their views on the ex-president, to Trump appearing to nod off during proceedings.
The scandal over carers’ payments in the UK, exposed by the Guardian last week, continues to grow. This week we revealed “threatening and cruel” tactics deployed by government officials and harrowing victims’ stories including a 92-year-old woman with dementia and Parkinson’s who was forced to pay back £7,000.
Phoenix is the United States’ hottest city, a sprawling urban heat island. Nina Lakhani headed there to learn about a tree-planting programme that vulnerable residents hope will help to cool those most in need. Maanvi Singh’s investigation into a water rights sale in Arizona was a gripping and worrying read exposing the tactics of companies that strategically buy farmland along the Colorado River with the intention of piping valuable natural resources to suburbs, hundreds of miles away.
Meanwhile, in the UK, the nation’s biggest water company Thames Water is on the brink of collapse. Alex Lawson and Anna Isaac dug into the deepening crisis, revealing details of the government’s contingency plans to renationalise it 35 years after it was sold off.
Everton, a founding member of the Premier League who have played more seasons in the English top division than any other football club, are flirting with relegation and insolvency. Simon Goodley looked at the Liverpudlian team’s grim prospects, and what could happen next.
We announced the winner of our inaugural UK invertebrate of the year competition - the Lumbricus terrestris, also known as the common earthworm. As Patrick Barkham wrote, “the soil-maker, food provider and grand recycler ... is increasingly hailed in an era where regenerative farmers and many others are paying new attention to soil health”.
Taylor Swift continues to tower over pop culture. Yesterday she released her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, and our music team was there for every semiquaver. Alexis Petridis gave it four stars and concluded that “If we have to have a single artist dominating pop, we could have picked worse.” Meanwhile, our resident Swiftologist, Laura Snapes, took a deep dive into the lyrics.
After a story that gripped the art world last week, our European culture editor Philip Oltermann managed to get hold of the artwork which had been sneaked into a German gallery by an employee. Philip revealed that, rather than being a frustrated artist seeking their breakthrough by exhibiting their work alongside Andy Warhol, the artwork was instead “designed to provoke debate about elitism in the art world”.
Finally, I loved our interview with folk rock legend Linda Thompson, who was told her behaviour was “worse than the Sex Pistols”; One Day author David Nicholls’ lovely paean to the healing power of long, wet, solo walks, with evocative photographs by Cian Oba-Smith; and Lisa Allardice’s interview with the Scottish poet Jackie Kay – noting in particular her mother’s response to Kay placing a copy of the Guardian in her late father’s casket: “I hadn’t read it yet!”
One more thing: Witch is a 13-part podcast series from the BBC which examines the figure of the witch in history, in our imaginations, as a symbol of power and terror. Presented by India Rakusen – a former host of the Guardian’s flagship podcast, Today in Focus – it’s pure pleasure, and I learned a lot.
