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Frankie Goodway,
Saturday Editor
"Hi there. As we settle into summer, the news follows familiar patterns. Politics plays out differently when Parliament goes into recess; protests, both organised and spontaneous, attract bigger crowds in warm temperatures. The newspapers call it silly season, but plenty of serious things happen when fewer of us are around to pay attention.
“One thing I’ll be watching over the next few weeks is a trial in Malta. There, the businessman accused of ordering the murder of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, is finally being tried for two charges related to her death, which he denies. It’s nine years since Daphne was assassinated with a car bomb. Her investigative work lives on, especially through the efforts of her family, but her loss is still one we mourn.”
Misaligned: when AI goes wrong
Yesterday we launched the first of a new series of short documentaries on YouTube. If you missed our premiere party at the Frontline Club last month, now’s your chance to watch the first episode, Blackmail. It’s about what an AI model is prepared to do to survive when the humans instructing it want to pull the plug.
Inside the story
This is the first episode of six, with new releases every two weeks. Subscribe on YouTube now to be the first to know when each episode goes live – and tell us what you think of them when they do!
It’s time to really open up the family court system
We’ve been covering the family courts for years now, and our work has had real results – but we want to do more. That’s why we’ve launched Courting Coverage, a new initiative to match up journalists who want to cover family court cases with families who want their justice to be seen and scrutinised. Right now, we’re building a list of accredited journalists who want to do this work in England and Wales – if that’s you, get in touch. Then we’ll be back soon with a map showing where those reporters are based, and which courts they can cover.
Inside the story
Since we launched our family courts project, we’ve been contacted by many parents and relatives who want greater scrutiny on their own cases. Some have got in touch because they see parallels with the issues we’ve investigated, like ‘expert’ advice and mishandled accusations of abuse, and others have wholly different, but equally pressing stories. But Hannah is only one woman! Every time someone’s been in touch, we’ve tried to find a journalist who can cover their case. This initiative will let us do that faster and better than ever before.
Coinbase gets the red carpet treatment in Westminster
Coinbase, the US’s largest crypto exchange, has gone on a lobbying blitz in London that’s already starting to pay dividends – in the form of more relaxed regulation of digital assets and currencies. The company, which poured millions into political lobbying in the States, managed to score meetings for its CEO at the Bank of England and No 10 in the same day. It’s also had dozens of meetings with ministers in just a few years, funded a parliamentary group for MPs, and has incredibly close ties to a “grassroots” organisation pushing for looser regulation.
Inside the story
It can be hard to convey the risk that loose regulation of crypto currency poses to you or me – I certainly struggled with it in editing this story. But this is the moment when we’re writing the rulebook for how these digital currencies work – how we trace them, and what we do when things go wrong. If this isn’t handled carefully, there’s a risk we unbalance the financial system, and anyone who remembers the 2008 crash knows how catastrophic that could be.
⚡ Impact this week
Our Enablers editor Lawrence Marzouk made a trip to Parliament this week as part of a Climate Earth event on fishing. Not for fly fishing tips, but because he understands corporate secrecy – and Britain’s fisheries are surprisingly secretive. We don’t know who owns about 40% of the boats that fish the UK’s waters, because of hidden layers of company ownership.
Grace Murray, from our environment team, spread the good news of impact by co-hosting a meeting of our impact network. It brought together journalists from Minneapolis to Nairobi to figure out how to make their work achieve real change.
In other news, Natwest is facing a £250m lawsuit for failing to stop the disastrous investments that led to Thurrock council’s financial collapse. The administrators of Rockfire Investment Finance claim Natwest’s subsidiary, Royal Bank of Scotland, processed unauthorised payments from the company that benefited Liam Kavanagh. If only they could have known what was going on in Thurrock somehow. Perhaps some Natwest executives would like to subscribe to Uncovered? If you know any, please forward this on.
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🗓️ Date for your diary
Franz Wild will be joining Peter Geoghegan of Democracy for Sale next week in a joint livestream on Thursday July 9 at 1pm.
What we’ve been reading
🔴 The head of Serbian football was so paranoid about criticism that he tried to get the former Man United star Nemanja Vidić beaten up, leaked messages show occrp.org
🔴 Tens of thousands of people have joined Facebook groups for fans of Restore Britain and Rupert Lowe that are being run from Bangladesh and Pakistan politicshome.com
🔴 BP sponsored research at Princeton to address the climate problem without replacing fossil fuels, hand-picking the scientists involved propublica.org
If you like Uncovered, feel free to forward it to a friend. It’s free to subscribe.
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