After weeks of speculation and pressure, Joe Biden announced on Sunday he was withdrawing from the presidential race. It was the moment our US team had been meticulously planning for and they covered the drama of the historic event. Ed Pilkington brilliantly captured the momentous weekend that ended Biden’s campaign. Our Politics Weekly America podcast produced an excellent emergency episode homing in on what this might mean for the presidential race. Next up, Kamala-mania. Our US democracy reporter Alice Herman was in Wisconsin for vice-president Kamala Harris’s lively first rally and reported a mood of excitement, hope and relief. Zoe Williams brought us 18 things you didn’t know about the woman taking on Trump and Adria Walker reported on a viral zoom call with the vice-president that demonstrated the invigorating effect of Harris entering the race on Black female voters and donors. We also looked at the online embrace of the vice-president by gen Z. Will embracing memes like “Brat” translate into firing up young voters?
The world’s wealthiest countries, including the US, UK, Norway, Australia and Canada are leading the charge to expand their use of fossil fuels in spite of their climate pledges, exclusive new data uncovered by Oliver Milman and Nina Lakhani showed. Jonathan Watts lambasted the climate hypocrisy of these “other petrostates”. The investigation comes in a week when the world has experienced some of its hottest days on record.
The Gaza voices project is a powerful piece of work, relating the deeply moving stories of people living and working through war, in their own words: from a paracyclist to a doctor, a physiotherapist to an archeologist, a translator to people working in tech and orphanages, and aid workers.
On Today in Focus, Michael Safi travelled to the hard-to-access borderlands of southern Lebanon where Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging missiles with tensions ratcheting up for an immersive journey through abandoned villages and tourist towns – a powerful piece of reporting.
Luke Harding secured an exclusive interview with the man in charge of prosecuting Ukraine’s war against a Russia that is better armed and has far more troops. Despite the odds, Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi said that he believes Ukraine will win and he had a plan.
Black women face a much greater risk of death and stillbirth due to institutional racism, and are almost twice as likely to have their births investigated for NHS safety failings, according to analysis and interviews by Tobi Thomas. Jessica Murray spoke to the head of a large-scale review into the failings of maternity services in the English city of Nottingham that has found appalling discriminatory and racist behaviour towards pregnant women by NHS staff. Also in Nottingham, Jessica covered the inquest into the shocking case of Inga Rublite, who was found dying under her coat in a hospital emergency ward in January after staff may have mistaken her for a homeless person seeking shelter.
Josh Taylor conducted an experiment to see what Facebook and Instagram’s algorithm would automatically fill his feed with, if left entirely alone. He unleashed it to run on a completely blank smartphone linked to a new, unused email address. What it showed him was deeply troubling. Three months later, without any user input, they were riddled with sexist and misogynistic content.
Four food critics shared their secrets of how they try to survive dining out on rich food for a living, after New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells announced he was retiring due, in large part, to poor health from gorging on decadent meals for 12 years. It’s not all plain sailing for cooks either. Feast columnist and bestselling recipe writer Meera Sodha wrote about losing – and regaining – her appetite for food and life following burnout.
I thought George Monbiot’s column about the soul-deadening effect that money has on the super-rich was one of the best I’ve read for a long time. As George reflects when he comes across a pod of dolphins off the coast of Devon, only to see it disturbed by an act of mindless entitlement from some people on a speedboat, extreme wealth “can hollow you out, socially, intellectually and morally”.
One more thing … I’ve been watching the fab TV series Poker Face (from 2023). Natasha Lyonne plays Charlie Cale, a woman on the run who can tell when people are lying … which comes in handy when murders happen all around her. It’s brilliantly written and intriguingly plotted; Charlie is irresistible. The Chloë Sevigny episode is my favourite so far.
