| As Israel’s bombardment of Gaza continues, we examined how the conditions in the war-torn territory deteriorated all the more while the eyes of the world were focused on the 12-day conflict with Iran, with a powerful visual guide. Jason Burke in Jerusalem and Malak A Tantesh in Gaza also covered the horrific strike at a waterfront cafe in Gaza City, drawing on harrowing testimony from witnesses and survivors. Jason went on to reveal how evidence suggested that a 500lb bomb was used in the strike, the use of which could constitute a war crime according to experts. And in the aftermath of the crisis over Iran, Deepa Parent and Will Christou reported on a new wave of repression of political prisoners as the Iranian regime attempts to reconsolidate its control. As a punishing heatwave engulfed much of Europe, our network of correspondents reported on temperatures that, in several cases, broke records for June. In the southern Spanish province of Huelva on Saturday it was 46C. As Teresa Ribera, the EU’s green transition chief, told our reporter Sam Jones: “That is not normal.” European environment correspondent Ajit Niranjan wrote a helpful explainer on why heatwaves are getting worse (just as EU policymakers are rolling back green policies). In the US, Nina Lakhani wrote a deeply reported piece warning of a lost generation of scientists in the US, as funding cuts and political interference drives talent overseas, while, in Australia, as meteorologists were warning of a “bomb cyclone”, Petra Stock looked at the importance of the language we use when talking about the weather.
It’s been an astonishing week in UK politics, with the Labour government’s last-minute decision to scrap plans to cut disability benefits culminating in chancellor Rachel Reeves crying in the House of Commons. Jessica Elgot was the first to report that the concession to backbenchers was planned, while Frances Ryan spoke to disabled people about the “months of intense fears” leading up to the vote. Helen Pidd spent a sweltering day watching the chaos unfold on Today in Focus, while the impact of Reeves’s distress was probed by the Politics Weekly team. Amelia Gentleman wrote that Reeves’s tears highlighted a little-discussed truth: sometimes women cry at work, and it’s no big deal. We also kept a focus on the people who would have been most impacted by the welfare proposals. This film by Richard Sprenger followed the journey of disabled protesters from their homes to Westminster and served as a reminder of the voices so frequently forgotten in the story amid Labour’s infighting.
Labour marked its year in office with the unveiling of a 10-year plan to rebuild the National Health Service. Ahead of the announcements, Josh Halliday’s months-long investigation found that Britain’s “medieval” levels of inequality are devastating the NHS. He wrote that in one hospital in northern England “revolving-door pensioners” were deliberately self-neglecting so they could be looked after.
In New York, we covered the verdict in the Sean “Diddy” Combs trial as the musician was found guilty on two of five counts, and not guilty of the most serious charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. After seven weeks in court, Anna Betts recapped the closely watched trial, its celebrity witnesses and graphic testimony. Reflecting on the case, Moira Donegan found the verdict a pointed example of the #MeToo backlash, writing that the movement’s brief moment of accountability has been “replaced with a sadistic and gruesomely triumphant restoration of the status quo”. Ahead of Donald Trump’s sweeping tax-and-spending bill being passed on Thursday, Chris Stein interviewed Republican voters to report what they thought of the president’s “big, beautiful bill”, finding a wide range of perspectives. Our engrossing Missing in the Amazon podcast series concluded with Tom Phillips retracing the steps of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira into the Javari valley to see what has changed – and what has not – since their murders in 2022. We continued our look at how Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is targeting Britain’s manufacturing heartlands with a focus on the closure of a 100-year-old refinery in Grangemouth, Scotland and the impact on lives and politics in the town. Last week’s Saturday magazine was full of compelling features: Jess Cartner-Morley wrote a definitive take on the modern politics of breasts, in a time of gravity-defying cleavage, popular surgery and bullet bras, and argued that the shift reflects a Trumpian worldview. Elsewhere, theatre critic Arifa Akbar explored her lifetime of insomnia, and whether creativity and sleep are more closely linked than we realised, and Nordic correspondent Miranda Bryant reported on the case of Keira Alexandra Kronvold, a Greenlandic woman who had three children taken away by the Danish government as a result of their now-banned “parenting tests”.
Glastonbury was another enormous cultural (and political) moment in the UK. Away from the controversy over Bob Vylan’s onstage comments, our critics captured bravura performances by headliners including Olivia Rodrigo, Charli xcx (who enjoyed tweeting her five-star Guardian review to her haters) and the 1975. Read Alexis Petridis’s magisterial overview here. Jason Okundaye wrote a lovely edition of our newsletter The Long Wave on his experiences of the festival, while our features team had fun sending Adrian Chiles to his first Glastonbury, where he was won over by the mass exuberance. And our hard-working photographers David Levene, Alicia Canter and Jonny Weeks seemingly covered every inch of the vast site and recorded the chaos in some beautiful picture essays. Finally, after 16 years and many, many insults (as chronicled brilliantly by Rachel Keenan), Oasis made their much-hyped return last night in Cardiff and you can read Alexis Petridis’s review on our music homepage here. Ahead of the show, Simon Armitage gave a witty and considered take on their return, Dorian Lynskey pondered what British culture would have been like without the Gallaghers, while famous fans, including Johnny Marr, chose their favourite tune. One more thing: Three years ago Antony Szmierek was a teacher in Manchester. But the likable pop poet has enjoyed a vertiginous rise since with his slice-of-life vignettes musing on everything from the Great Pyramid of Stockport to the symbolism of a piece of confetti tumbling from the ceiling and the fate of the subject of a message graffitied on the M60. His joyous Glastonbury set is still available on iPlayer in the UK and his album, the Service Station at the End of the Universe, is a welcome reminder of life’s simple pleasures. | 