How we’re continuing the vital work of two men killed protecting the Amazon

Three years ago this week, we began reporting on the news that Dom Phillips, an outstanding and long-term Guardian contributor based in Brazil, had gone missing in the far north-western reaches of the Amazon rainforest alongside his colleague, Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira.

After a 10-day search in some of the most inhospitable territory imaginable, Dom and Bruno’s bodies were found in the jungle on 15 June 2022. It was terrible news for all of us at the Guardian, but it was particularly shocking for colleagues who worked closely with Dom such as Latin America correspondent Tom Phillips (no relation) and global environment editor Jonathan Watts, both based in Brazil.

Tom was a member of the search party that set out to try to find Dom and Bruno. Now he is telling the full, untold story of exactly what happened in a new investigation podcast series, Missing in the Amazon. The series also explores what Dom and Bruno cared so much about: the Indigenous people of the Amazon, the invasion against them, their resistance and the battle for the future of the rainforest – something that, as Tom makes clear in episode one, matters to all of us.

Early episodes describe Dom and Bruno’s disappearance from the point of view of those who first realised they were missing and those who were desperate to find them. They also paint a picture of the Javari valley, a place where people who have little or no interaction with the outside world find themselves in conflict with illegal miners, poachers and gangs working on what has become one of the world’s biggest drug smuggling routes. Episode two heads back to the 1990s and traces Dom’s journey from editing legendary UK dance music magazine Mixmag (a job that included a physical scrap with a superstar DJ outside a famous London nightclub), to becoming an intrepid reporter who faced down Jair Bolsonaro and made it his mission to expose the severity of the threats to the Amazon.

On Thursday we also published a report by Tom from the Javari valley, where he joined a group of Indigenous defenders on a gruelling week-long expedition with the activists Dom was reporting on for his book when he and Bruno were ambushed and killed.

Beto Marubo, an Indigenous leader from the Brazilian Amazon, joined us in London this week. He told reporters how vital Dom’s work was – and his appreciation that we have continued his legacy through series such as Missing in the Amazon and the Bruno and Dom project. Dom’s work has also been continued in the book How to Save the Amazon, which was finished by a team of contributors (including Jonathan Watts) empowered by Dom’s widow Alessandra Sampaio, who also came to visit us in London this week. It was very moving to have Alessandra and Beto join us in our morning conference. Last month our Long read section published this extract, in which Dom explained why preserving the rainforest, and its Indigenous people, is critically important.

Missing in the Amazon will appear on our new investigative podcasts feed, The Guardian Investigates, alongside our other recent audio series. They include Black Box, a gripping and accessible look at the impact of AI’s collision with humanity presented by Michael Safi and Can I Tell You a Secret?, Sirin Kale’s series which helped to further expose a prolific cyberstalker (later a Netflix documentary). Investigative journalism, in all its forms, is central to our journalistic mission and we hope that podcast series such as these provide a powerful new way of telling stories that matter. A great way to listen to all these shows is on our recently updated app.

See you next week.

Malak A Tantesh and Lorenzo Tondo covered the appalling scenes at the new food distribution sites in Gaza, where dozens of people have been killed in the past week, most recently on Tuesday when 27 people were killed by Israeli fire as they waited for food. The sites, which have come under heavy scrutiny and criticism, are run by a controversial US-backed initiative now headed by Johnnie Moore, an evangelical leader who advised Donald Trump. Andrew Roth profiled him. Malak and Lorenzo also wrote a powerful account of two families torn apart last week by the killings of their children on the same day in Gaza. As international pressure on Israel finally increases, Jon Henley reported on new polling in western Europe showing support and sympathy for Israel at its lowest levels recorded so far. Lorenzo also reported on the most detailed testimony yet from a paramedic who survived the terrible March attack on a convoy of emergency vehicles. Our video team published the first of a new three-part series from Israel called Along the Green Line. In it, reporter Matthew Cassel met Israelis and Palestinians living either side of the 1949 armistice line, to see how their lives are shaped by vastly different realities.

The week was marked by the extraordinary drone attack on Russian bombers by Ukraine, with the devices smuggled into Russia and launched from the roof of wooden huts. Deborah Cole, Pjotr Sauer and Artem Mazhulin reported the news, while Oliver Holmes and the visuals departments produced an in-depth visual guide.

We charted global reaction to Donald Trump’s wide ranging travel ban – and explained who was affected by it. Before that, south Asia correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Aakash Hassan spoke to another group who fear Trump has ended their American dream, Indian students hoping to study in the US who are now in limbo after last week’s order to indefinitely pause all student visa interviews. Hugo Lowell and Andrew Roth covered the dramatic fallout between the president and Elon Musk, while Jasper Jolly explained how Trump is not a fan of Wall Street’s Taco trade (“Trump Always Chickens Out”) and Zoe Williams interviewed the indefatigable Bernie Sanders in our London offices, with great portraits by Linda Nylind.

Health editor Andrew Gregory covered the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting, reporting on some astonishing findings – from a study that found exercise can be “better than drugs” at stopping cancer from returning, to a warning that patients were increasingly snubbing proven treatments in favour of online “cures” such as coffee enemas and raw juice diets. An investigation by Rachel Hall and Rachel Keenan found more than half of all the top trending videos offering mental health advice on TikTok contain misinformation.

Defence and security editor Dan Sabbagh anchored our coverage of the UK government’s review of its armed forces, warning the country was facing “a new era of threat” with warfare changing more fundamentally than at any point in history. At the same time, as part of a project on militaries and the climate, Damien Gayle reported that the ongoing rearmament of Nato will lead to 200m tonnes more carbon emissions per year, and Nina Lakhani revealed that the carbon footprint of Israel’s war on Gaza has already exceeded the annual emissions of more than 100 countries.

Last week we ran a shocking story by Tom Levitt and Deepa Parent about what is happening inside Saudi Arabia’s secretive rehabilitation “prisons” for women banished by their families or husbands for disobedience, extramarital sexual relations or being absent from home. Over six months, they gathered testimony about what it is like inside these institutions, with weekly floggings, forced religious teachings and no visits or contact with the outside world. We’re committed to exposing the treatment of many women living in repressive regimes around the world: on Wednesday photographer Kiana Hayeri was awarded the Amnesty photojournalism award for this series she made with journalist Melissa Cornet on women and girls living under Taliban rule in Afghanistan.

Tess McClure wrote a terrifying piece sharing the fears of entomologists in Costa Rica watching with horror as dense forests in nature reserves are rapidly emptying of insects, as climate-led species collapse moves up the food chain – even in supposedly protected regions free of pesticides. Petra Stock reported on the discovery of a metres-long oarfish on a Tasmanian beach. Nicknamed the “king of herrings” or more unkindly the “doomsday fish”, some legends and stories consider the animals to be harbingers of disaster.

Our fantastic Euro visions series shares big ideas on how to make life better from across Europe. This week Zoe Williams was in Slovenia, where the former communist state has the lowest levels of child poverty in the continent. Also inspiring were the astonishing results Tom Huggins achieved when he set up a food co-op with his neighbours in London.

Our sports team covered Paris Saint-Germain’s emphatic 5-0 win over Inter in the men’s Champions League final, marvelling at their football while also asking questions about the sportswashing of their Qatari state owners, notably in these pieces by Barney Ronay and Jonathan Wilson. Women’s football writer Tom Garry broke several stories including Manchester City’s plans to appoint the manager of Denmark to coach their women’s team, and also wrote intelligently about the pressures on England’s players as late absences from the Women’s European Championship squad mounted up.

I enjoyed our Long read on Mr Beast, the world’s biggest YouTuber and the “Mozart of the attention economy” by Mark O’Connell; Phil Daoust’s turn as a human barbell in his article on deadlifts; our soundscape of a nightingale, which are under threat; Emma Beddington on the domestic split within straight couples working from home, namely: who gets the nice quiet room with the big monitor, and who is hunched over a laptop on the kitchen table. Also fabulous was this How we made, our long-running arts series, featuring Bernard Butler and David McAlmont talking about how they created their transcendental hit Yes.

We love the fact that many of our readers care enough to tell us when we’ve gotten something wrong. Elisabeth Ribbans, our global readers’ editor is often the person who has to break that news to reporters and editors. In her Open Door column this week she explored the Guardian’s approach to how we use British and American English in different contexts and, in particular, the one word that has upset many readers in the UK. Yes, it’s “gotten”. Our commenters had a very lively discussion about this one.

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, for the first major interview she’s given in the two years since she quit. We spoke about the impact of the pandemic on everything, from her once-stratospheric popularity to increasing public rage; about giving birth in office; about what it’s like for her, the anti-Trump, to be living in Trump’s America.

One more thing … I loved Toxic Town, which came out on Netflix a few months ago. Dramatising the scandal and cover-up of birth defects in the English town of Corby caused by toxic substances