Contributing Writers

In Chile, voters this weekend will determine a close runoff election between far-right candidate José Antonio Kast and leftist Gabriel Boric, a former student leader. If Boric, who holds a narrow lead, wins the race, he would become Chile’s youngest and most progressive president in years.

The United States is continuing talks with Iran over its nuclear program after President Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015. With a new Iranian administration after April’s controversial election, many worry that if talks fail, tensions between the two countries could turn into military escalation fueled by pressure from Israel.

The U.S. House voted to recommend the Department of Justice charge former President Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows with criminal contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack. The vote came after the committee released a series of text messages from Republican lawmakers and Fox News hosts to Meadows on January 6 that begged him to convince Trump to tell his followers to leave the Capitol.

As unionizing efforts have taken the U.S. by storm, we look at the history of the U.S. labor movement and how unions have acted as a bulwark against corporate power. Worker organizing at Starbucks, Kellogg’s and Amazon shows that unions help enforce health and safety measures and protect workers who speak out.

Kellogg’s announced it would begin permanently replacing the 1,400 workers who have been on strike for over two months to demand fair wages and better working conditions. The move comes after an overwhelming majority of Kellogg’s workers rejected a new five-year agreement they say falls short of their demands and sparked widespread public backlash, including from President Biden.

We look at the historic workers’ victory at the Elmwood Starbucks store in Buffalo, New York, where workers successfully voted to unionize last week, making them the first to do so among the coffee chain’s 9,000 locations in the United States, and sparking new efforts at stores across the country. We speak to one of the 19 employees who voted in favor of forming a union about confronting the company and overcoming the challenges.

A shocking exposé reveals how a secretive Customs and Border Protection division investigated as many as 20 journalists and their contacts by using government databases intended to track terrorists. Those investigated include the Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press reporter Martha Mendoza, along with others at The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

We speak with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney on his new film, “The Forever Prisoner,” which follows the story of Guantánamo prisoner Abu Zubaydah, who was the first so-called high-value prisoner subjected to the CIA’s torture program and has been indefinitely imprisoned since 2006 without charge. Nearly two decades after the start of the U.S.

Filipina journalist Maria Ressa and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov accepted the Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their “efforts to safeguard freedom of expression.” “There are so many more journalists persecuted in the shadows with neither exposure nor support, and governments are doubling down with impunity,” said Ressa in her acceptance speech at Friday’s Nobel ceremony, which we play in full.

We go to Kampala, Uganda, to speak to climate activist Vanessa Nakate on the occasion of her first book being published, “A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis.” In an extended interview, she describes the challenges of being a young Ugandan woman from a continent that contributes less than 4% of the world’s carbon emissions yet suffers the worst consequences of the climate crisis and is often ignored by the Global North.

At least 100 people are feared dead after 30 deadly tornadoes devastated towns in eight states, from Kentucky to Arkansas, in a supercell thunderstorm that raged more than 200 miles, leaving behind scenes some compared to a war zone. President Biden has declared a major federal disaster and called for an investigation into the role climate change played in the storms.

We speak with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney on his new film, “The Forever Prisoner,” which follows the story of Guantánamo prisoner Abu Zubaydah, who was the first so-called high-value prisoner subjected to the CIA’s torture program and has been indefinitely imprisoned since 2006 without charge. Nearly two decades after the start of the U.S.

Filipina journalist Maria Ressa and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov accepted the Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their “efforts to safeguard freedom of expression.” “There are so many more journalists persecuted in the shadows with neither exposure nor support, and governments are doubling down with impunity,” said Ressa in her acceptance speech at Friday’s Nobel ceremony, which we play in full.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could soon face charges in the United States after a U.K. court ruled Friday in favor of the U.S. government’s appeal to extradite him. U.K. Judge Timothy Holroyde said he was satisfied with a pledge from the United States that Assange would not be held in a so-called ADX maximum-security prison in Colorado, despite a U.K.

An explosive new investigation details how the European Union has created a shadow immigration system that captures migrants arriving from Africa before they reach Europe and sends them to brutal militia-run detention centers in Libya. “This is a climate migration story,” says Ian Urbina, investigative journalist and director of The Outlaw Ocean Project, who authored the report for The New Yorker magazine.