A shot that rippled around the world

It was, of course, a massive week in US news, with events that could have serious ramifications across the globe.

At 6.13pm last Saturday, as Donald Trump spoke in Butler, Pennsylvania, a lone gunman on a nearby rooftop began to fire shots at the former president. Within a minute the shooter and a member of the crowd were dead and Trump, who escaped with a small wound to his ear, had the instinct to stand up, pump his fist and shout “Fight! Fight! Fight!” before being whisked away by the Secret Service. He had escaped death by millimetres.

After millions around the world followed our live coverage of the assassination attempt, our US politics team spent the next few days trying to answer a question many of our readers had: what would the political impact of this attack on democracy be?

Right now, three months before the election, the answer seems to be an even greater chance of a second Trump presidency.

The narrative of an emboldened Trump was shaped by an immediately unforgettable photograph of a bloodied Trump mid-fist pump. The man who captured it – Evan Vucci of the Associated Press – spoke to Helen Sullivan about the instincts he drew upon to capture the shot, including repeating to himself in the chaos: “Slow down, think, compose.”

Just two days after the shooting, the rapturous Republican convention began in Milwaukee. Hugo Lowell was there to witness the mood of the GOP as it turned quickly from calls for unity to familiar talking points about immigration and crime. On Monday, JD Vance was announced as Trump’s running mate, and we explored the impact of that decision domestically and internationally. David Smith described the nomination as “red meat to the Maga base” while Appalachian author Neema Avashia critiqued Vance’s stereotypical depictions of the region, as interest surged in his memoir Hillbilly Elegy. (Paul Lewis’s interview with Vance from 2017, before he was a Trump supporter, is well worth a read.)

On Thursday, Trump made his own acceptance speech which followed a similar trajectory to the convention itself: calls for unity, which quickly turned into familiar attacks. We factchecked the claims made by Trump and others at the convention and, as columnist Margaret Sullivan noted, it’s important to remember that against calls to “turn down the temperature” of political rhetoric in the US, it’s still vital that we continue to hold Trump to account.

Amid all this, calls for Joe Biden to stand down are intensifying by the day, with reports suggesting the president is open to reconsidering his run. Guardian US columnist Mehdi Hasan wrote about the schism in the party, with those calling for change being accused of treason by others. Have some Democrats taken a cult-like turn, he asked. The Democrats convene in Chicago in a month’s time. When it comes to US politics, we’ve learned to expect the unexpected.

The Olympics opens on Friday in Paris. Our architecture critic Oliver Wainwright visited the new and repurposed sports venues – many of which are in famous sites in the city – to see whether its aspirations to stage the “greenest and leanest” Olympics ever have been met. Kim Willsher was riverside at the Seine, where Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo, showed the world how clean the river – which will host swimming events – now is, by jumping in for a dip. Her exuberance was clear!

One of the new UK government’s biggest early challenges is to try to fix a creaking prison system at near-capacity. Pippa Crerar revealed that civil servants had warned Rishi Sunak a week before he called the election that he risked breaching his legal responsibilities if he did not address the crisis. Rajeev Syal reported that ministers were now considering cutting the time rapists and murderers spend under intensive supervision in the community to tackle overcrowding.

A year ago, Andrew Malkinson was released after spending 17 years in prison having been falsely convicted of rape. This week, after years of committed reporting by Emily Dugan, an inquiry into the Criminal Cases Review Commission’s handling of the case laid bare “a catalogue of failures”, finding that he could have been exonerated almost a decade earlier. Writing for the Guardian, Malkinson said: “The truth is that there is something deeply wrong at the CCRC and nothing less than a complete overhaul is needed.”

Damien Gayle has been reporting on what turned into one of the wildest trials to take place in the UK, involving contempt, gagging and an intervention from the UN concerned about “judicial persecution”. The case involved five protesters from the group Just Stop Oil who were jailed for coordinating direct action protests on the M25 motorway over four days in November 2022. George Monbiot reflected on the draconian sentences handed down and called for Labour to change the law on peaceful protest.

The Guardian is one of the few outlets continuing to cover Afghanistan’s gender apartheid in depth. For the past two months we have been working with journalists from Afghan women’s media groups Rukhshana and Zan on stories including 1,000 days without education for girls in the country, and the horrific story of the deliberate recording of a rape by Taliban soldiers to use the footage as leverage to control the victim after her release from detention.

Guardian Australia’s In the box series examined the treatment of children in Queensland police custody after Ben Smee obtained harrowing footage of a severely disabled 13-year-old First Nations girl, and another 15-year-old First Nations boy struggling to breathe.

On Sunday evening, a whole nation deflated as one as England’s men’s football team lost to Spain in the final of Euro 2024. Jonathan Liew wrote an instant classic of a piece about how a single backwards long throw by Kyle Walker encapsulated 58 years of sporting hurt.

I was fascinated to learn about our “sixth sense” and how to improve it through exercise. Joel Snape wrote about proprioception – our physical sense of where we are in space and protecting it helps us maintain our coordination and avoid falls and injuries as we age.

One more thing … I’m definitely here for the so-called “Brat Girl summer” if it means the era of clean eating, sobriety and intensive self-care is really over. Zoe Williams was fun on the concept, which is inspired by Charli xcx’s hit album, Brat. I’ve been listening to the fantastic album non-stop.

Cook this | Rachel Roddy’s recipe for spaghetti with courgettes, basil and cheese

According to the magazine La Cucina Italiana, spaghetti alla Nerano dates back to the early 1950s and was the result of chance. The story is familiar: a regular customer (a prince) arrived (maybe) at an unusual hour at a restaurant on the Sorrento coast and was made a meal with what was available, namely, thin slices of courgette that had been fried that morning and three local cheeses. The dish was a hit – and soon became a fixture.

Listen to this | Can the climate survive AI’s thirst for energy?

Artificial intelligence companies have lofty ambitions for what the technology could achieve, from curing diseases to eliminating poverty. But the energy required to power these innovations is threatening critical environmental targets. In this edition of Science Weekly, Madeleine Finlay hears from the Guardian’s energy correspondent, Jillian Ambrose, and UK technology editor, Alex Hern, to find out how big AI’s energy problem is.

Watch this | Frozen in Time: the motherhood dilemma for single women in China – documentary

Fertility tourism is booming for single Chinese women with hopes of future motherhood. China’s birthrate is at a record low, yet unmarried women are not legally allowed to freeze their eggs there. We meet Lei and Abu, as they travel to the US for the procedure, battling self-doubt and scepticism along the way. What does this mean for womanhood and parenting in modern China?

The Guardian’s crosswords and Wordiply are here to keep you entertained throughout the weekend.