The Fourcast

In this exclusive investigation: a senior ExxonMobil lobbyist has been captured on camera claiming that the oil giant is using its power and influence to water down US climate legislation.

And not just that. In this Greenpeace UnEarthed investigation, exclusively reported by Channel 4 News, the senior lobbyist revealed that ExxonMobil secretly uses “forever chemicals” in some products.

ExxonMobil is one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world, and a major contributor to carbon emissions. 

They say they’re committed to a greener planet, to having a carbon tax, and that they’re listening to the science when it comes to climate change.

But is there more to the story?

Today, our chief correspondent Alex Thomson asks if this dying industry could take the planet down with it. 

South America's biggest country has been struggling with pandemic since the start. Brazil reached a grim milestone of half a million deaths from the virus. 

And it's this number that's been written on signs at demonstrations all over the country. Some Brazilians have become so exasperated they're out on the streets, putting them at risk to the virus, to protest against the man they blame for this covid-19 crisis, President Jair Bolsonaro, a  president who is known for craving alternative facts. 

Matt Hancock is health secretary no more, after footage revealed he’d broken the Covid rules during an affair with an aide.

While he may be gone, he leaves behind many questions about his handling of the Covid pandemic, particularly when it comes to care homes.

Georgina Lee from our Fact Check team has looked into his past claims: did he really not have a list of homes in the country? Was the number of Covid positive patients sent back to care homes from hospitals really incredibly low?

And also: did he break the law or just Covid guidance during that infamous kiss?

These are the issues that will dominate a future inquiry - and Matt Hancock’s legacy will once again come under scrutiny.

Institutionally corrupt. That’s how the Metropolitan Police have been described after a review into an unsolved murder of a man called Daniel Morgan in the 1980s, a now infamous crime committed 34 years ago, that's still not been solved.

Our Home Affairs Correspondent Andy Davies has been looking into the panel's findings, which leave many asking, who can we trust when the institutions meant to protect us failed so badly in their duty?

Sources: Channel 4: Murder in the Car Park, ITV Wales News

Ghislaine Maxwell will go on trial later this year accused of helping convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein recruit, groom and sexually abuse girls under the age of 18.

Ms Maxwell has denied all of the charges. 

Yet the question is why is this taking place in the United States given that one of the victims in Maxwell’s case claims the alleged abuse happened in London?

A new Channel 4 News investigation has more than half a dozen claims that young women and girls are alleged to have been targeted, trafficked, groomed, or abused in the UK by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, over a period spanning more than a decade.

And the Met Police was contacted - but decided to do nothing.

Girls being constantly sent nude images, sexist name-calling, harassment, rape, a climate of fear, an over-sexualised culture that has become the normality in schools across the country. 

That's the conclusion of Ofsted's recent report into sexual harassment, which revealed that for some children, incidents are so commonplace they see no point in reporting them. 

Our social affairs editor, Jackie Long, asks: how did we get here and why are our schools no longer safe spaces? 

Warning: This episode contains reference to sexual abuse and includes distressing testimony some listeners may find upsetting.

Sources: BBC News, ITV News

The United States is set to make the 19th of June - known as “Juneteenth” - a national holiday. The day commemorates the emancipation of slaves.

It marks a shift in American society; of the nation recognising past injustices. And it comes shortly after Joe Biden became the first US President to mark the anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

100 years ago, the city in Oklahoma saw a prosperous Black neighbourhood burned to the ground and innocent citizens killed. There were no arrests, no justice. There was just silence.

We talk to the historian Dr Scott Ellsworth and Anneliese Bruner about those events - and the America of today.

Sources: AP, ITN archive, CNN

Homelessness is at record levels in New York City, and the economic carnage of Covid is making it worse. 

With one epidemic feeding another, there is now more homelessness in YC than at any time since the Great Depression, and it's disproportionately affecting Black and brown people. More than 3000 people live on the street, and at least another 60,000 in shelters, including 21,000 children. 

Krishnan Guru-Murthy finds out what it's like for the homeless in New York City.

In recent years, Republican states have passed restrictive voter ID laws that they say stop electoral fraud, but which activists say discriminate and disenfranchise certain voters.

Here in the UK, the government wants to introduce a voter ID law so that when you vote in the next election you have to prove who you are before casting your ballot.

Yet with fraud vanishingly rare, why do we need this new law?

And are the lessons from America a warning for its potential impact on turnout?

Today, we talk to voting rights expert Ari Berman and Factcheck’s Paddy Worrall.

Sources: CNN, CBS 60 Minutes, ITV News, MSNBC, ITV Peston, KVUE

At least 16 teenagers have been stabbed to death in London this year alone - that’s more than were killed in knife attacks in all of 2020, and it’s only June. 

For decades, police and community leaders have tried and failed to tackle knife crime across the capital. But Croydon, one of the boroughs worst hit by this type of violence, is now taking a different approach, one that favours communication and community policing. But is it enough to stop the bleeding?

Our social affairs editor Jackie Long went out with the Metropolitan Police to find out more.