Toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” are ubiquitous in the Great Lakes basin’s air, rain, atmosphere and water, new peer-reviewed research shows.

The first-of-its-kind, comprehensive picture of PFAS levels for the basin, which holds nearly 95% of the nation’s freshwater, also reveals that precipitation is probably a major contributor to the lakes’ contamination.

“We didn’t think the air and rain were significant sources of PFAS in the Great Lakes’ environment, but it’s not something that has been studied that much,” said Marta Venier, a co-author with Indiana University.

PFAS are a class of 15,000 chemicals used across dozens of industries to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. The chemicals are linked to cancer, kidney disease, birth defects, decreased immunity, liver problems and a range of other serious diseases.

They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down and are highly mobile once in the environment, so they continuously move through the ground, water and air. PFAS have been detected in all corners of the globe, from penguin eggs in Antarctica to polar bears in the Arctic.

The new paper is part of a growing body of evidence showing how the chemicals move through the atmosphere and water.

Measurements found PFAS levels in the air varied throughout the basin – they were much higher in urban locations such as Chicago than in rural spots in northern Michigan. That tracks with how other chemical pollutants, like PCBs, are detected, Venier said.

But levels in rain were consistent throughout the basin – virtually the same in industrialized areas such as Chicago and Cleveland as in Sleeping Bear Dunes, a remote region in northern Michigan. The finding was a bit “puzzling” Venier said, adding that it probably speaks to the chemicals’ ubiquity.

PFAS “background levels” are now so high and the environmental contamination so widespread that the atmospheric counts, including in rain, are relatively consistent. The PFAS in rain could be carried from local sources, or have traveled long distances from other regions. Regardless, it is a major source of pollution that contributes to the lakes’ levels, Venier added.

Water contamination levels were highest in Lake Ontario, which holds the most major urban areas, such as Toronto and Buffalo, and is last in line in the lake system’s west to east flow. Lake Superior, which is the largest and deepest body with few urban areas on its shores, showed the lowest levels.

PFAS tend to accumulate in Lake Superior and Huron because there’s little water exchange, while Lake Ontario relatively quickly moves the chemicals into the Saint Lawrence Seaway and Atlantic Ocean.

The study did not address what the levels mean for human health and exposure, but fish consumption advisories are in place across the region, and many cities have contaminated drinking water.

The levels found in water and atmosphere will probably increase as scientists are able to identify more PFAS, most of which cannot be detected by currently reliable technology.

“We need to take a broad approach to control sources that release PFAS into the atmosphere and into bodies of water … since they eventually all end up in the lakes,” Venier said.

El Califa de León, an unassuming taco joint in Mexico City, measures just 3 metres by 3 metres and has space for only about six people to stand at a squeeze. Locals usually wait for 5 minutes between ordering and picking up their food.

All that changed on Wednesday, however, when it became the first Mexican taco stand ever to win a Michelin star, putting it in the exalted company of fine dining restaurants around the world, and drawing crowds like it has never seen.

On Thursday, the queue stretched to the end of the block as a motley array of tourists and trendsetters joined bemused local people, some of whom had not heard the news.

The taco comes with infinite variations on a theme. It starts with a corn tortilla folded around a typically meaty filling. Then perhaps onion, coriander and guacamole, before a punch of lime and hot sauce is added.

It is usually fast food – but not today.

A local woman named Laura said she had been a customer since she was a child and had never had to wait for more than five minutes, even at lunchtime.

She was surprised but delighted to see her neighbourhood hole in the wall get recognition.

“I took a couple of Chilean friends somewhere else the other day and it was too fancy – they gave us a knife and fork to eat a taco,” she said. “This is the real Mexican taco.”

El Califa de León’s trademark taco is the Gaonera, created in honour of the bullfighter Rodolfo Gaona and churned out without pause since the place opened in 1968.

The essence of this taco is beef fillet so tender it need not be sliced into pieces. It is simply seasoned with salt and cooked with a squeeze of lime on a sizzling grill, before being wrapped in a fresh tortilla and served with green or red salsa.

Michelin, in its report explaining the awarding of a star, said: “This taqueria may be bare bones with just enough room for a handful of diners to stand at the counter but its creation, the Gaonera taco, is exceptional. Thinly sliced beef fillet is expertly cooked to order, seasoned with only salt and a squeeze of lime. At the same time, a second cook prepares the excellent corn tortillas alongside. The resulting combination is elemental and pure.”

Rodrigo, who was also in the queue on Thursday, has his own taco restaurant, and talked with the faintly aloof air of someone checking out the competition. “I’ve never been before, but I wanted to see what the fuss was about,” he said.

“It’s a bit controversial, choosing just this one taco stand,” he added. “Everyone has their favourite taco – it depends where they’re from.”

Classic tacos include al pastor, carnitas, barbacoa, guisados and tacos de canasta – and the search for the best of each has been the subject of countless books and TV shows.

Of the 18 Mexican restaurants given one or two Michelin stars this week, El Califa de León stands out for its earthiness. Arturo Rivera Martínez, one its chefs, has been serving customers for more than 20 years. “The secret is the simplicity of our taco,” Rivera Martínez told the Associated Press on Wednesday. “It has only a tortilla, red or green sauce, and that’s it. That, and the quality of the meat.”

The stand occupies a site in San Rafael, a slightly scruffy, middle-class neighbourhood, and the street outside is lined with stalls selling phone cases, cheap jewellery and manicures.

One of the street vendors, David, said he had eaten at El Califa de León a few times. “It’s good. [But] The best tacos in the city? I don’t know.”

“But I’ve never seen so many gringos eating here,” he added.

Inside, El Califa de León is a furnace in a city currently gripped by a heatwave. The four staff – a chef, a meat cutter, a taco roller and a cashier – barely talk, working like a well-oiled machine.

Customers take their plastic plates and stand around eating where they can, sharing bowls of sauce and rubbing their greasy fingers with napkins.

Every few minutes the crowd makes way for a man with two more plastic bags of meat, which he slings behind the counter.

“I’ve no idea how many we’ve made today,” said the cashier, who barely stopped between orders. “A shitload.”

Vauxhall Bridge, from the Pissing Women series, 1995

By Sophy Rickett

The idea for the Pissing Women series came to artist Sophy Rickett at Glastonbury festival in 1994. “For some reason, I was struck by the disparity in how men and women piss,” she later recalled. “Men seem so carefree; they do it out in the open, while for women, the work of conditioning means it must be performed discreetly and always in private.” And so, in a boisterous act of rebellion, Rickett and her friends dressed up in their skirt suits and heels, and posed for photographs while urinating on the streets of London. Here, Rickett can be seen on Vauxhall Bridge, the headquarters of MI6 looming in the background. Recently, the series was published in its entirety for the first time. GS

The Women’s March, 2017

By Brian Allen

On 21 January 2017, the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, the streets of the US capital were transformed into a “sea of pink”. Half a million protesters had gathered for the Women’s March on Washington, many wearing knitted pink “pussyhats” in reference to a remark made by Trump about groping women. The hats became a symbol of solidarity for women’s rights under threat around the globe – although they were criticised by some for a perceived lack of inclusivity and for being overly cute.

Later that year, the battle against sexism had another watershed moment when the Harvey Weinstein revelations sparked a reckoning about the prevalence of sexual assault in Hollywood. The #MeToo movement quickly spread to other industries. Though Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction was overturned last month, #MeToo founder Tarana Burke has vowed the fight will go on: “Ten years ago, we could not get a man like Weinstein into a courtroom.” GS

Gail Porter on the Houses of Parliament, 1999

By Michael Walter

During the golden era of lads’ mags, the nude cover shoot was pretty much a rite of passage for young female stars. But when TV presenter Gail Porter posed naked for a 1999 issue of FHM, the 28-year-old did not know the magazine planned to project the image 60ft high on the Houses of Parliament. The publicity stunt, organised to promote a poll to decide “the world’s 100 sexiest women”, was reported to have helped sell more than a million copies of the magazine.

Porter found out about it in the news the next day. She has since gone on record about being traumatised by the incident. “Some people were kind and some people were unkind,” she told one interviewer. “It made me stay in bed for quite a long time.” Looking back, she has also reflected on how exploitative men’s magazines were in general: “You think this is fine, and it’s not until you get older that you think, ‘We got taken advantage of quite a lot.’” Particularly egregious is that Porter says she was never paid a penny for any of her naked shoots. GS

Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes, New York, 1971

By Dan Wynn

The lifelong friendship between Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes began in the late 1960s. Then a young reporter, Steinem was working on a story about the West 80th Street Day Care Center founded by Pitman Hughes. The two women bonded over their shared belief in feminism as well as racial and social justice. For five years, they conducted a speaking tour across America, drumming up support for women’s issues.

Taken during that tour and first published in the October 1971 issue of Esquire, this image of the pair standing side by side with fists raised in a Black Power salute encapsulated their vision of a sisterhood that could unite women across boundaries of race and class. GS

England v Germany final, Euros 2022

By Sarah Stier

The Lionesses made history in July 2022 with their 2-1 victory against Germany in the Euros. Not only was it their first win at an international tournament, it was the first time since 1966 that an England senior football team had won a major championship. The match became the most-watched women’s football game ever screened in Britain, with 17.4 million tuning in.

Captured by Sarah Stier, this impromptu celebration erupted at a press conference later. “I heard this rumbling. The team burst in, singing and dancing,” Stier told the Guardian in 2022. “In professional sports, so much is choreographed by media handlers. Witnessing spontaneous events like this reminds you why we are drawn to them.”

The Lionesses called on the government to ensure equal access to sport in schools, pointing out that, at that time, only 63% of girls could play football in PE. The government committed to it, and there are now twice as many female teams in England. Stier’s photograph is an ecstatic reminder that, in the end, it was women who brought it home. MW

Windblown Jackie, 1971

By Ron Galella

“I am an absolute prisoner in my apartment,” Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis said of her ordeal with paparazzo Ron Galella. “I live in dread fear that the moment I step on to the sidewalk, that man will assault me again.”

Galella, who died in 2022, is credited with popularising the stalk-and-ambush style of tabloid photography of the 90s and 00s that disproportionately targeted women. He photographed stars from Madonna and Elvis to Andy Warhol and Marlon Brando (who punched him), but Onassis was, he said, his “obsession”. One morning in 1971, Galella followed the former first lady from her Manhattan apartment in a taxi. The driver blew his horn. As she turned, wind blowing through her hair, Galella snatched his shot. “I don’t think she knew it was me,” he later told Time magazine. “That’s why she smiled a little.” Windblown Jackie became his most celebrated photograph, “my Mona Lisa”. Onassis despised the constant attention and took him to court; the photographer was issued with a restraining order. MW

Spice Girls, 1997

By JMEnternational

This shot of the Spice Girls performing on stage at the 1997 Brit awards captures the band at the height of their cultural influence. They were a key part of Cool Britannia, of course, but they were also global ambassadors for “girl power” – which in Mel C’s words meant “being able to do things just as well as, or even better than, the boys, and being what we want to be” – a quote with shades of their hit song Wannabe.

It may not have been the most radical brand of feminism, but it reached far and wide. Beyoncé once told Victoria Beckham that the Spice Girls not only inspired her own musical career – they “made me proud to be a girl”. GS

The Mother as a Creator No 11: Long-distance Relationship, 2020

By Annie Wang

Annie Wang took the first monochromatic self-portrait in her Mother as a Creator series in 2001, the day before she was due to give birth. The next year, the Taiwanese artist posed with her infant son, the original photo on the wall behind. Each year (with some breaks when her teenage son decided he didn’t want to appear on camera) the project continues, an ever-deepening “time tunnel”. This image has many earlier portraits visible – including the first, of a pregnant Wang, which can be seen in the open magazine.

For Wang, the idea was to capture motherhood as a complex and creative act – in contrast to the self-sacrificial stereotype. “Motherhood is a long- term process,” Wang has written about the project. “This complexity cannot be expressed solely by the generally accepted saccharine image of mother and child.” GS

Selfish book cover, 2015

By Kim Kardashian

“This book is a candid tribute to all of my fans,” writes Kim Kardashian in the opening pages of Selfish, published in 2015 and spanning three decades of self-documentation by the “queen of selfies”. Beginning with her first ever snap from 1984, the book features cameos by famous friends and nude images of her that were leaked in 2014. Out of the shadows of the blonde, blue-eyed, size zero beauty standard of the 2000s, Kardashian ushered in the ethnically ambiguous “Instagram face” – defined by critic Jia Tolentino as one with “catlike eyes and long, cartoonish lashes; small, neat nose and full, lush lips” – and the “slim thick” body, with narrow waist and large butt.

There has been an explosion in cosmetic treatments to get them: surgeons refer to the “Kardashian effect” to describe the popularity of procedures such as the Brazilian butt lift, while “tweakments” are becoming the norm. MW

Margaret Sanger Has Her Mouth Covered, 1929

Photographer unknown

In 1916, when Margaret Sanger opened America’s first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, distributing contraception was illegal. Nine days after it opened, police raided the clinic; Sanger was sentenced to a month in jail.

This photograph was taken at Boston’s Ford Hall Forum, the oldest free public lecture series in the US. Sanger – who had been banned from speaking in public – stepped up to the stage with a gag around her mouth. She stood in silent protest as Harvard professor Arthur M Schlesinger read her prepared speech: “The authorities of Boston may gag me … but they cannot gag the truth.”

Sanger paved the way for greater reproductive rights, but her legacy is controversial. She was associated with eugenics and supported selective breeding. In 2020, Planned Parenthood, which she founded, removed her name from its Manhattan Health Center, in “a necessary, overdue step to reckon with our legacy”. MW

The Dinner Party, 1974-1979

By Judy Chicago

Now on permanent view at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party is a landmark work of early feminist art. Created over five years, with the help of 400 volunteers, the installation consists of a triangular banqueting table that represents 1,038 women in history – 39 appear in place settings and another 999 names are inscribed in the heritage floor on which the table rests.

The table’s elaborate decoration includes vulva-shaped ceramic plates and embroidered runners. “My goal was to teach the unknown history of women in western civilisation to a broad audience,” Chicago says.

Some critics dismissed the project, finding its emphasis on female sexual anatomy vulgar or essentialist (or both), but it was an instant popular hit. It broke attendance records at the San Francisco museum where it was debuted, and more than a million people saw it during a subsequent tour of 16 venues around the world. Some of the named dinner guests were well-known, among them Virginia Woolf and warrior queen Boudicca. But, Chicago notes, “People do not realise how many of the 1,038 women represented have been ‘rediscovered’ since the piece premiered.” She cites Hildegarde of Bingen, the medieval visionary, and composer Ethel Smyth. “Their work, like that of so many great women before and after, was ignored, underestimated and almost erased.” GS

Queer Dyke Cruising, Hampstead Heath 1992

By Del LaGrace Volcano

“I was a practising pansexual before that term was even coined,” says Del LaGrace Volcano, an artist who has challenged the binaries of sexuality and gender for more than 50 years. The Californian was born in 1957 with an intersex variation, and spent their formative years in San Francisco in the mid-70s. They gained a scholarship to the San Francisco Art Institute before moving to London in the early 80s, where they continued to make work exploring conventional gender binaries.

This photograph is from the 1989 series Queer Dyke Cruising, which remained unseen until Tate Britain curator Linsey Young spotted it and included it in the museum’s Women in Revolt! exhibition last year. Volcano had invited their lesbian friends to a famous cruising spot for cisgender gay men on Hampstead Heath and asked them to perform sexual acts for the camera. “It was very real for everybody. They’re performing as themselves, because I was able to create a space where they felt safe, seen, and could explore certain things that maybe they haven’t given themselves permission to explore before.”

Volcano, who now lives in Sweden and has two children, has paved a way for a whole generation of queer political artists. Their 1991 photobook Love Bites, which captured underground lesbian clubbing scenes in London and San Francisco, was banned by customs in the US and censored in Canada. In the UK, it was shunned by the press, politicians and feminists, sparking debates on the difference between erotic art and pornography – some gay bookshops refused to sell it. The book has become a queer classic. Since then, Volcano has documented underground BDSM nightlife, the rise of “drag kings” and a range of subjects on gender and sexuality. MW

Fatima Whitbread, Rome, 1987

By George Herringshaw

Abandoned, raised in care and abused as a child, British athlete Fatima Whitbread defied the odds to become a record-breaking world javelin champion. The two-time Olympic medallist reportedly ate 8,000 calories a day to bulk up. Her muscular physique was criticised in the media; decades on, controversy over her body caused Twitter storms when she was on I’m a Celebrity in 2011. “I didn’t care,” she told the Guardian in 2023. “I loved what I did and that’s what it took for me to succeed.” MW

Leila Khaled, 1969

Photographer unknown

This photo of Leila Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was taken just after her hijack of a plane in 1969. Hair wrapped in a keffiyeh, she holds an AK-47, wearing a ring (just out of shot) made from the pin of a hand grenade. “I made it from the first grenade I ever used in training,” she told the Guardian in 2001. “I just wrapped it around a bullet.”

Much like the famous “guerrilla fighter” portrait of Che Guevara, this image became a popular symbol of political resistance, appearing in newspapers and magazines, as well as in a mural in the West Bank. The image became so widespread that Khaled would go on to have six cosmetic operations to avoid being recognised.

It was one of the first high-profile examples of women’s participation in violent resistance – newspapers at the time referred to her as a “girl terrorist”. “In the beginning, all women had to prove that we could be equal to men in armed struggle,” Khaled said, before concluding, “I no longer think it’s necessary to prove ourselves as women by imitating men.” MW

Somnyama IV, Oslo, 2015

By Zanele Muholi

“I picked up the camera because there were no images of us that spoke to me at the time when I needed them the most,” Zanele Muholi told the British Journal of Photography in 2021. The non-binary visual artist first took up photography after struggling to find images of Black lesbians. Muholi – whose retrospective at Tate Modern in London will open later this year – has since become renowned for documenting the lives of South Africa’s Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and intersex individuals. Collaboration is central to the artist’s photography – they refer to their subjects as “participants”, meaning that they actively contribute to the making of the image.

In this series, Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness), Muholi made 365 self-portraits to explore “what it means to be Black, 365 days a year”, as well as what they call “the concept of ‘MaID’ (‘My Identity’) or, read differently, ‘maid’, the quotidian and demeaning name given to all subservient Black women in South Africa”. Rich with symbolism that nods to their own personal story and broader political histories, the series confronts the politics of race and representation within the art world and the wider world. MW

Frida with Blue Satin Blouse, New York, 1939

By Nickolas Muray

Few artists are as instantly recognisable as Frida Kahlo, who died 70 years ago. The Mexican artist was painstaking in the construction of her own image, whether through vividly painted self-portraits or elaborately posed photographs showing her unflinching gaze, swept-back dark hair and unibrow. She also placed her personal experiences at the forefront of her work, from her sexual relationships with both women and men (including Nickolas Muray, who took this portrait) to her struggles with infertility and disability. Today the face of Frida Kahlo has itself become a feminist icon: a symbol of unapologetic self-expression and freedom from gendered expectations. GS

Scenes from a marriage, 1982

By Donna Ferrato

Donna Ferrato was first exposed to the “dark side of family life” in the early 80s, while working on a story about swingers for Japanese Playboy. She photographed the “wild sex parties” of wealthy Swedish couple Elisabeth and Bengt, and often stayed overnight in their home. Over time, she saw him becoming more violent and controlling. “One night, I heard her screaming. I ran into the bathroom and saw him pulling his hand back to hit her. I took a picture because I thought it would make him stop, and to get proof.”

It was hard to publish the images back then, Ferrato says: “People didn’t want to see this dark side.”

Her 1991 book Living With the Enemy forced them to look – including congressmen. She met Joe Biden on a train in 1997, she tells me, and he said the book had a profound effect on him. Ultimately it helped bring about the passing of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act. MW

Miss America pageant protest, 1968

By William Sauro

In September 1968, feminists from all over the US gathered outside the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City to protest about the event. They tossed “instruments of female torture” – bras, high heels and copies of Playboy – into a “freedom trash can”. This fuelled one of the greatest myths of the women’s liberation movement: the idea of the “bra-burning feminist”. It would have made for a compelling photograph – but it never happened. The myth was kindled before the event, when the New York Post ran a report headlined “Bra-Burners Plan Miss America Protest”.

“We never burned bras and never intended to,” organiser Robin Morgan has said. “It’s a myth we’ve been trying to squelch for years.” MW

Free Angela Davis Now! poster, 1971

Photographer unknown

In the late 1960s, the scholar and activist Angela Davis joined the Black Panthers and the Che-Lumumba Club – an all-Black branch of the Communist party – making her a state target. In October 1970, after she was arrested on suspicion of involvement in an armed courtroom takeover at the trial of her friend, Black radical George Jackson, she went into hiding, becoming one of the FBI’s most wanted criminals. When she was detained two months later, media coverage fuelled outrage. The Rolling Stones, John Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote songs about her, and “Free Angela!” became a battle cry.

After 18 months, in June 1972, Davis was acquitted of all charges.

She went on to be influential in linking the women’s movement to other political struggles, as seen in her groundbreaking 1981 book Women, Race and Class. MW

American Girl in Italy, Florence, 1951

By Ruth Orkin

American photographer Ruth Orkin was in Italy when she met fellow solo traveller Ninalee Craig. They bonded and Orkin asked Craig to pose for images around the city. “Ruth said, ‘Hey, I could probably make a bit of money if we horse around and show what it’s like to be a woman alone,’” Craig later recalled.

This image of Craig strolling between leering men was published in a Cosmopolitan photo essay titled When You Travel Alone … “Ogling the ladies is a popular, harmless and flattering pastime you’ll run into in many foreign countries,” read the caption.

Craig, who died in 2018, always insisted the image is “not a symbol of harassment” but of a woman having a wonderful time!” GS

The Dagenham machinists’ strike, 1968

By Bob Aylott

In June 1968, 187 machinists walked out of the Ford factory in Dagenham. Their job was to make car seat covers, something classed as a grade B, unskilled job, for which they got 85% of the rate paid to men. The machinists pointed out that they needed to pass a sewing test for the role and demanded equal pay and for their work to be reclassified as grade C.

In 2013, one of the women, Gwen Davis, told the Guardian that people accused them of striking for cash they didn’t need. “Our wages weren’t pin money,” Davis said. “They were to help with the cost of living, to pay your mortgage and bills.”

The strike caused such disruption that, three weeks in, Barbara Castle, secretary of state for employment and productivity, intervened, facilitating negotiations between the union, Ford management and the government. The women went back to work with a pay rise that put them on 92% of the male rate.

This landmark strike led to the creation of the 1970 Equal Pay Act and played a crucial role in achieving greater gender equality in the UK. After a second strike, in 1984, the machinists’ jobs were finally made grade C. MW

All This and Overtime, Too, 1942

Photographer unknown

In 1942, a photographer snapped 20-year-old war worker Naomi Parker Fraley leaning over an industrial machine at the Naval Air Station in Alameda, California. The image was published in the local press and the following year graphic artist J Howard Miller made his Rosie the Riveter “We Can Do It!” posters, featuring a flexing female factory worker in a blue jumpsuit and red headscarf.

Though not confirmed by Miller, this photograph was believed to have inspired the character of Rosie. (For decades, it was widely thought to be of a different woman entirely, until 2016 when Fraley publicly identified herself.) Miller’s poster was made to boost the recruitment of women to defence industries during the second world war – more than 6 million took wartime jobs in the US – and it has since become an instantly recognisable symbol of female power. MW

Death at Epsom, 1913

By Arthur Barrett

On 4 June 1913, Emily Wilding Davison ran on to the racetrack at the Epsom Derby and was trampled by the king’s horse. The 40-year-old suffragette suffered severe injuries and died in hospital four days later. Media coverage of the “Thrilling incidents at Epsom” included a front-page photograph of Davison and the horse lying on the ground.

The public was divided over whether her actions had been deliberate, but a 2013 analysis of the footage showed Davison was attempting to attach a scarf to the horse, and police reported finding two flags on her body, as well as a return train ticket from Epsom, suggesting that she had no intention of dying that day.

Her death roused public sympathy for the suffragette movement. Dressed in its colours of white and purple, 5,000 supporters marched in the funeral procession through London, while an estimated 50,000 more lined the two-mile route from Buckingham Palace Road to St George’s church in Bloomsbury. MW

First woman in Boston Marathon, 1967

Photographer unknown

It is strange to think that a woman running a marathon was once so shocking that a race official would try to drag her off the course. But that’s what happened in 1967 when Kathrine Switzer became the first woman officially registered to compete in the Boston Marathon, having signed up as KV Switzer without disclosing her gender. The previous year, another woman, Bobbi Gibb, had been told by race officials that women “are not physiologically capable of running a marathon” – but she gatecrashed and finished it anyway.

“The perceptions of women,” Switzer said in a later interview, “were that you were going to get big legs, grow hair on your chest, your uterus was going to fall out.” It wasn’t until 1972 that women were officially allowed to enter, thanks to campaigning sparked by Switzer’s treatment.

In 2017, at the age of 70, she returned to the Boston Marathon with the same bib number. Since her first race, the perception of female runners has changed drastically – this year almost as many women as men applied to run the London Marathon. GS

Baker’s Elephant, 1925

Photographer unknown

Josephine Baker was an impressive multi-hyphenate: a burlesque dancer, a civil rights activist and, at one stage, a spy. Born into poverty in 1906 in Missouri, US, Baker moved to France at 19 to be a dancer. She quickly became a jazz age sensation, achieving star billing at the Folies Bergère and notoriety for dancing in a G-string decorated with bananas.

Using fame as a cover, Baker spied for the French Resistance against the Nazis, and was later awarded a French Resistance medal and the Croix de Guerre. In the 1950s and 60s, she played an active role in the civil rights movement and began to adopt, forming a family of 12 children that she referred to as “the rainbow tribe”.

She died aged 68 in 1975, but is remembered as a trailblazer for Black entertainers and as a symbol of resistance against racism and oppression; her work, Vogue recently wrote, “radically redefined notions of race and gender through style and performance in a way that continues to echo throughout fashion and music today, from Prada to Beyoncé”. MW

Demi Moore, 1991

By Annie Leibovitz

When the August 1991 issue of Vanity Fair hit newsstands, with its naked, heavily pregnant cover star, a number of distributors requested that it be wrapped in the brown paper used for pornographic magazines. There were plenty of critics – one reader called it “a desecration” and “repulsive” – but the controversy only helped to drive up sales. It also spawned a new genre of maternity photography that remains equally popular among celebrities and regular mothers-to-be, who can book their own “boudoir shoots”. This image had itself not been intended for the cover – it was a bonus shot taken for Moore and her family – but when Leibovitz saw it, she thought it would make a strong feminist statement. “I think it was an important moment,” Moore has said. “To have the courage to change the way we looked at women when they were pregnant. Before that, they had us in Peter Pan collars.” GS

The first Page 3 model, 1970

Photographer unknown

On 17 November 1970, the Sun newspaper printed a photograph of Stephanie Rahn sitting in a field, one breast fully visible, on page 3 of its daily paper. Other tabloids followed suit, hoping to boost their own sales (the Sun’s nearly doubled in a year). The tradition continued for almost 50 years, until the No More Page 3 campaign argued in 2012 that it perpetuated sexism and was damaging to women and girls’ body image. In January 2015 the Sun replaced topless women with clothed glamour models; in April 2019 the Daily Star featured its last Page 3 model. MW

Protest outside a US abortion clinic, 1971

Photographer unknown

By the late 60s, a handful of US states had begun to decriminalise abortion in exceptional cases, but the procedure was still mostly illegal, with up to 1.2m underground terminations a year. Here, a woman protests at the closure of a clinic in Wisconsin that had been operating in violation of state law – placards like hers were a common sight as protests (and counter-protests) spread across America.

That same year, a case was brought to the US Supreme Court by “Jane Roe”, the pseudonym of a 25-year-old pregnant woman from Texas challenging the state’s abortion laws. Two years later the court ruled in favour of Roe, a landmark decision legalising abortion nationwide.

Nearly half a century on, in 2022, the court overturned Roe v Wade, in a shocking move writer Rebecca Solnit described as “an attempt to make women unequal, unfree, second-class citizens”. The battle continues, not only in the US but in Poland, Italy, Argentina, Morocco and many more countries.

Myra Hindley police mug shot, 1965

Photographer unknown

In 1966, for the first time in recorded British history, a woman was sent to jail for life. Myra Hindley and her partner, Ian Brady, had kidnapped, tortured and murdered five children. Bodies of the victims were found at Saddleworth Moor in Manchester. The “Moors murders” inspired a media frenzy. The public couldn’t fathom how a woman could be capable of such a gruesome crime. For many, her widely reprinted mugshot was the face of evil itself.

Hindley maintained her innocence until 1986 when she confessed and was taken to the moor to help search for bodies. The murders were referenced in a song by the Smiths and in 1995 artist Marcus Harvey used a composite of children’s handprints to reproduce the notorious image in one of the most controversial works of art of the 90s. MW

Untitled (Woman and Daughter with Makeup), 1990

By Carrie Mae Weems

When Carrie Mae Weems first photographed herself at her kitchen table in 1989, she had no idea of the impact such images would have. “I knew what it meant for me, but I didn’t know what it would mean historically,” she told W Magazine in 2016. Over two years, Weems captured staged scenes of herself, as well as friends, neighbours and strangers, at the table, reflecting themes of family, love and power. The result is a series of 20 photographs, interweaving narratives acted out across a single frame and illuminated by a single light above Weems’ table.

The kitchen table is a site that has historically belonged to women, yet it is rarely depicted as somewhere of importance. Weems positions it as a place where key human experiences unfold: “The site of the battle around the family, the battle around monogamy, the battle around polygamy, the battle between the sexes,” the artist, now 71, has said.

The series was pivotal for Weems as an artist – she went on to achieve international success – and paved the way for a new generation to explore race, representation and domesticity through photography. MW

Christine Jorgensen, New York, 1954

Photographer unknown

Actor, singer and activist Christine Jorgensen was the first widely known American to undergo gender reassignment surgery. Born in 1926 in New York City, Jorgensen served as a military clerical worker in the second world war. After undergoing surgery in Denmark in 1952, she became an instant celebrity, the Daily News reporting “Ex GI becomes blonde beauty”.

Jorgensen used this platform to advocate for transgender people. Her story was a watershed moment: while doctors across America reported being “besieged” with requests for “the Danish cure”, she received tens of thousands of letters. “The letters that say, ‘Your story is my story; please help,’” she wrote, “make me willing to bare the secrets of my confused youth in the hope that they will bring courage, as well as understanding, to others.” MW

Human Erosion in California (Migrant Mother), 1936

By Dorothea Lange

In the mid-1930s, the photographer Dorothea Lange was working for the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal-era agency created by Franklin D Roosevelt to combat rural poverty. While walking through a pea picker’s camp, Lange spotted a young mother with seven children. “I approached as if drawn by a magnet,” Lange told Popular Photography magazine in 1960. The 32-year-old woman told Lange she had sold her car tyres to buy food, and was living off frozen vegetables and birds the children had caught. “There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.”

Lange’s images appeared in the San Francisco News in March 1936. They showed the extreme hardship workers faced, and soon after the government sent 20,000lb of food to the camp. By that time, the mother and her family had moved on. Who she was remained unknown until 1978, when Florence Owens Thompson wrote to the Modesto Bee newspaper, identifying herself.

In a later story, she said, “I wish she hadn’t taken my picture … I can’t get a penny out of it. She didn’t ask my name. She said she wouldn’t sell the pictures. She said she’d send me a copy. She never did.”

The revelation that Owens was a descendant of two Cherokees led to speculation about whether the photograph would have resonated so widely if it had been known its subjects were Native American. Even with its contested backstory, the image is a testament to how photography can shape public opinion and influence policy. MW

Smoking Amy, 1930

By Eugene Robert Richee

Here Marlene Dietrich is pictured in white tie and a top hat for her Oscar-nominated role as cabaret singer Amy Jolly in the 1930 film Morocco – a performance that included one of cinema’s first on-screen lesbian kisses. “I’m sincere in my preference for men’s clothes,” the German-born film star once said. “I do not wear them to be sensational. I think I am much more alluring in these clothes.” Yet her androgynous style was subversive in its time: in 1933, it is said a police chief in Paris threatened to have her arrested if she wore men’s trousers within his jurisdiction. With typical insouciance, Dietrich responded by arriving in the city in a trouser suit. The “Dietrich silhouette”, as it came to be known, expanded the possibilities of women’s fashion for generations to come. GS

Untitled (Witness ’79 series), 1979

By Hengameh Golestan

On 7 March 1979, weeks after the conclusion of the Iranian revolution, supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini announced that veiling would be mandatory for women at work. The next day, International Women’s Day, tens of thousands of people protested in Tehran. Pioneering photographer Hengameh Golestan joined them.

“At first everybody was in good spirits,” she says. “The feeling was we’d win.” But the papers wouldn’t publish her images: “No one wanted to admit that such a significant number of women had taken to the streets.” Despite six days of protests, mandatory veiling was soon in force. Since then, Iranian women have continued to speak out against the nation’s politics. GS

Eva Perón, Buenos Aires, 1951

By Dom Slike

Former Argentine first lady Eva Perón went from being an impoverished actor to one of the most powerful women in the world. Born María Eva Duarte in 1919, she moved to Buenos Aires at 15 and 11 years later married Juan Perón, who was elected president the following year. As first lady, Perón championed social justice and gender equality: she funded schools and orphanages, promoted paid holidays for workers and was instrumental in giving women the right to vote. She also shared her husband’s admiration for Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany and Franco’s Spain, and was said to enable his most repressive policies.

Her popularity earned her the nickname “Evita” (“Little Eva”), and when she died at 33 in 1952 after a long struggle with cervical cancer, millions attended her funeral. Her life inspired a blockbuster musical – she was played by Madonna in the 1996 film – and her image is still widespread across Argentina, on murals, merchandise and placards at protests. In 2019 the country’s largest labour union called on the Catholic church to declare her a saint. MW

Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs arm wrestling, 1973

Photographer unknown

“She doesn’t stand a chance,” stated tennis champion Bobby Riggs in September 1973, 10 days before he faced women’s world number one Billie Jean King in the historic “battle of the sexes” match. Riggs, 55, had said women’s tennis “stinks” and “women belong in the bedroom and kitchen, in that order”. He challenged King, 29, to a $100,000 winner-takes-all game. Here, they engage in a playful pre-match arm wrestle. Later, she would defeat him in straight sets in front of a TV audience of 90 million.

King took home the cash, but the real prize was what she achieved for women’s sport. “I thought it would set us back 50 years if I didn’t win,” she said. “To beat a 55-year-old guy was no thrill for me. The thrill was exposing a lot of new people to tennis.” MW

Wonderbra’s Hello Boys advert, 1994

By Ellen von Unwerth

As an ad campaign, the 1994 Wonderbra “Hello boys” poster – once voted the most iconic billboard of all time – was certainly successful. Even now, Ellen von Unwerth’s black and white photograph of Eva Herzigova in a push-up bra remains instantly recognisable. And everyone remembers the tagline, with its cheeky double entendre. But the ad has also come in for criticism for its unabashed pandering to the male gaze (it was apparently so distracting to men that it caused traffic accidents). Looking back, the ad could be said to sum up the contradictions of 90s lad culture – blatant misogyny delivered with ironic humour.

In 2018, Wonderbra launched an updated version of the campaign with a new, somewhat more progressive, tagline: “Hello me!” GS

Untitled Film Still #21, 1978

By Cindy Sherman

The malleability of female identity is exposed in Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills, her breakthrough series of self-portraits taken between 1977 and 1980. In each photograph, the American artist dressed up as a different character, taking her inspiration from the stereotypical roles assigned to women in films (from Hollywood noirs to European arthouse) in the 1950s and 60s: the femme fatale, the desperate housewife, the jilted lover and so on. Here, she is a smartly attired career girl in the big city. While the meticulously staged photographs look like promotional stills, in fact none of them are real – a comment on the artificiality of the roles constructed for women in our culture. GS

Tiny sticky droplets sprayed on crops to trap pests could be a green alternative to chemical pesticides, research has shown.

The insect glue, produced from edible oils, was inspired by plants such as sundews that use the strategy to capture their prey. A key advantage of physical pesticides over toxic pesticides is that pests are highly unlikely to evolve resistance, as this would require them to develop much larger and stronger bodies, while bigger beneficial insects, like bees, are not trapped by the drops.

Pests destroy large amounts of food and chemical pesticide use has risen by 50% in the past three decades, as the growing global population demands more food. But increasing evidence of great harm to nature and wildlife, and sometimes humans, has led to a rising number of pesticides being banned.

Some farmers already use alternatives to chemical pesticides, such as introducing other insects that kill the pests, but the new sticky drops are thought to be the first such biodegradable pesticide to be demonstrated.

The drops were tested on the western flower thrip, which are known to attack more than 500 species of vegetable, fruit and ornamental crops. More than 60% of the thrips were captured within the two days of the test, and the drops remained sticky for weeks.

Work on the sticky pesticide is continuing, but Dr Thomas Kodger at Wageningen University & Research, in the Netherlands, who is part of the self defence project doing the work, said: “We hope it will have not nearly as disastrous side-effects on the local environment or on accidental poisonings of humans. And the alternatives are much worse, which are potential starvation due to crop loss or the overuse of chemical pesticides, which are a known hazard.”

The research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, took an edible plant oil and oxidised it to make it as sticky as duct tape, a process similar to deep frying. The oil was then blitzed in a “glorified blender” along with water and a little soap to stop the droplets sticking together.

This solution was then sprayed on to the leaves of chrysanthemum plants, the thrips’ favourite food and a huge commercial crop in the Netherlands. It was also tested on strawberries. The sprayers used are the same design as those already used by farmers and field trials this summer will test the process at scale.

Fly paper already exists but obviously cannot be sprayed and Kodger said: “Fly traps are extremely effective against pests but they’re also extremely effective against pollinators.” He said bees were too big and strong to get stuck in the millimetre-size drops.

The team is testing to see if scents can be incorporated into the droplets to make them even more attractive to the thrips or to attract natural predators of the pests such as Orius laevigatus, a pirate bug that is already sold as a control measure for thrips.

The sticky drops will biodegrade but the team is investigating how long this takes. It is also assessing how quickly dust reduces the stickiness of the drops, though this is expected to be less of an issue in greenhouses where many horticultural crops are grown.

The cost of the sticky drop pesticide is uncertain as it is not yet known how much will need to be applied and how often, though the raw material could be cheap waste oil. The team is applying for a patent founding a spin-off company to commercialise the product.

Nick Mole, from Pesticide Action Network UK, said: “This is a very interesting piece of research that could result in much-needed decreases in the use of synthetic pesticides. Using natural oils to make physical traps for disease-carrying insects could be a sustainable alternative to toxic pesticides. More research is required to assess the impact on the environment and non-target insect species, but it definitely looks promising.”

“Innovative approaches to replacing toxic pesticides are welcome,” said Craig Macadam, at the invertebrate charity Buglife. “For too long our countryside has been poisoned by toxic chemicals contributing to a significant loss of pollinators and aquatic invertebrates. However, any replacement must undergo a rigorous assessment process to ensure all non-target species are properly protected.”

Kodger said: “Growers feel like all of these [chemical pesticides] are being taken away by regulators. We want to give them a new fighting tool that is not harmful for the environment. It is rewarding to witness our idea potentially changing the world within my lifetime.”

In the middle of the main road in Rivière-Salée, north of Nouméa, sits a burnt-out car. After days of rioting, young men with masked faces wave a Kanak flag as vehicles pass. All around is desolation. Shops with gutted fronts, burnt buildings, debris on the pavements and roads. Gangs of young people roam the area.

The violence that erupted last week is the worst in New Caledonia since unrest involving independence activists gripped the French Pacific territory in the 1980s.

Anger over France’s plan to impose new voting rules swelled in the archipelago of 270,000 people. The plan would expand the right of French residents living in New Caledonia to vote provincial elections, which some fear would dilute the indigenous Kanak vote. Kanaks make up about 40% of the population.

The images flooding out of Nouméa have been alarming: black smoke billowing above the capital as cars, shops and buildings were set alight. Rioters angry with the electoral change have also set up road barricades, cutting off access to medicine and food. On 15 May, a state of emergency was declared for 12 days and a nationwide curfew remains in place.

Hundreds of military and armed police have been deployed to restore order and keep the peace. As of Friday, five had been killed, including two police officers. The three other people were Kanaks.

On Friday, local authorities said the situation was “calmer”, after hundreds more French marines began arriving.

However, despite appeals for calm from political groups – in particular, the pro-independence parties most angered by the planned voting change – unrest has continued to be reported.

“We don’t want to let our people disappear, we’ll fight until Kanaky is free,” say two rioters, who did not want to be named. They stood near a roundabout in the New Caledonia capital, Noumea, as a vehicle burned.

The men, aged in their 20s, clash with police but say they hold back from vandalism.

“We don’t loot the shops, we try to tell the younger brothers not to do that, not to set fires, but they don’t listen to anyone any more,” one says.

In the southern districts of the city, where mostly Europeans live, fear dominates. People have organised themselves into collectives and set up barricades to defend their homes. Many have guns.

Jérôme’s family has lived in New Caledonia for several generations. He lives in the Sainte-Marie district and is married to a Kanak woman. He says his heart is broken.

“The neighbours have gone mad, they’re armed and ready to shoot, and I’m trying to calm them down. How are we going to get back together after that?” he says.

The frustration that erupted into deadly violence this week has been building for years. The proposed change to electoral law marks the latest flashpoint in long-running tensions over France’s role in the island.

Although New Caledonia has on three occasions rejected independence in referendums, the cause retains strong support among the Kanak people, whose ancestors have lived on the islands for thousands of years. The third referendum, held in 2021, remains contested by pro-independence groups, who had sought to postpone the vote due to the Covid crisis. It nevertheless went ahead and was boycotted by independence groups. This has contributed to rising discontent ever since.

Colonised by France in the second half of the 19th century, New Caledonia has special status with some local powers that have been transferred from Paris.

French lawmakers this week pushed forward plans to allow outsiders who moved to New Caledonia at least 10 years ago to vote in the territory’s elections. Pro-independence forces say that would weaken the Kanak vote.

The proposal must still be approved by both houses of the French parliament later this year. The president, Emmanuel Macron, has said French lawmakers will vote to adopt the constitutional change by the end of June, unless New Caledonia’s opposing sides can strike a new deal.

Opposition to the voting changes within the French territory has been building for months. The Field Action Co-ordination Cell (CCAT) created last November has been driving the protest movement. It is an offshoot of Union Calédonienne, the radical fringe of the pro-independence FLNKS party.

Fiercely opposed to the French interior minister Gérald Darmanin’s proposed constitutional reform that aims to enlarge the electorate – and disappointed by the inability of pro-independence politicians to make their voices heard – it has been mobilising young people in working-class neighbourhoods for several months.

When the CCAT called for people to mobilise against the electoral law change in April, tens of thousands of people – including many young people – flocked from across the territory to march through the streets of Nouméa.

In a country marked by inequality, where much of the population is young, the message is appealing. New Caledonia has mineral resources – it is one of the world’s largest nickel producers – but wealth is spread unevenly.

Despite attempts to reduce gaps in equality and improve access to employment, Kanak people remain under-represented in positions of power and responsibility.

Kanak people typically have lower levels of education than non-indigenous Caledonians. They are also make up large numbers of the prison population – which has helped fuel a sense of frustration, particularly among young Kanaks living in urban areas.

France’s justice minister, Eric Dupond-Moretti, has called on prosecutors to “take the strongest possible action against the perpetrators of the violence”, while a local business group estimated the damage, concentrated around Noumea, at €200m.

Thierry de Greslan, a representative from the hospital in Noumea, said he was predominantly concerned for his patients amid the deteriorating situation.

“We estimate that three or four people may have died due to lack of access to medical care,” he said, adding that there was a difficulty getting patients and healthcare works to the facility due to road blocks.

With the hospital’s operating rooms running around the clock and his staff prepared for any crisis, De Greslan said his concern was for future.

“We are in an urban guerrilla situation with nightly gunshot wounds,” he said. “We are ready to face this.”

Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press contributed to this report

Humanitarian assistance has begun to arrive in Gaza along a US-made pier, but the US aid chief said the new sea corridor could not be a substitute for land crossings, and warned that deliveries of food and fuel entering Gaza had slowed to “dangerously low levels”.

The White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, confirmed on Friday that truckloads of humanitarian aid, including food from the United Arab Emirates, sent by ship from Cyprus, had been unloaded on the Gaza coast and handed over to the control of the UN.

Kirby told reporters at a White House briefing: “Hopefully by the time we’re done here, some of that stuff will actually be in the mouths of some hungry people.”

The Associated Press, however, quoted an unnamed UN official as saying distribution of the shipment had not begun as of Friday afternoon.

The UK said the aid delivery unloaded on Friday also included 8,400 kits to provide temporary shelter made of plastic sheeting.

The head of the US Agency for International Development (USAid), Samantha Power, said the US would use the sea route to deliver “metric tons of life-saving aid, including nutrient rich food to support thousands of Gaza’s most vulnerable children and adults; and critical supplies such as plastic sheeting for shelter, jerry cans to hold clean water, and hygiene kits”.

But, Power added: “The pier that opened today does not replace or substitute for land crossings into Gaza, every one of which needs to operate at maximum capacity and efficiency. Every moment that a crossing is not open, that trucks are not moving, or where aid cannot safely be distributed, increases the terrible human costs of this conflict.

“In the past two weeks, food and fuel entering Gaza has slowed to dangerously low levels – barely 100 trucks of aid a day entered Gaza, far less than the 600 needed every day to address the threat of famine,” Power warned. “Much more must be done to save lives and alleviate the widespread suffering.”

Israeli military operations around the southern city of Rafah have led to the closure of a nearby crossing point from Egypt, and the interruption of almost all land deliveries through another southern gate at Kerem Shalom. Meanwhile, trucks heading for the northern crossing at Erez have been ambushed and looted by Israeli extremists in recent days, with little attempt by the police to protect the convoys.

Although the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have yet to launch an attack on the centre of Rafah, the UN said on Friday that nearly 640,000 people had been displaced from the city, many of them going north to Deir al-Balah, where, it said, conditions were “dire”.

The maritime route involves shipments of aid being inspected by Israel at the Cypriot port of Larnaca, then transported by large ships to a floating dock a few kilometres off the Gaza coast. There, aid pallets are loaded on to trucks that are taken by smaller vessels into the shallow coastal waters; then the trucks drive on to a floating, 500-metre causeway to a marshalling yard dug in to the sand. The capacity of the route is intended to be 90 truckloads of international aid into Gaza each day, eventually building up to 150 truckloads a day.

The aid is formally handed to the World Food Programme on the coast, but it is unclear how it will be distributed around Gaza. It would have to pass through an Israeli checkpoint to reach northern areas where famine is most severe. Renewed fighting was reported in the northern areas on Friday, as Israeli tanks and planes took part in an assault on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

Residents said that Israeli armoured vehicles had reached as far as the market in the town, and had thrust as far as the market at the heart of Jabalia, which the IDF had previously claimed had been cleared of Hamas fighters. The reports said bulldozers were demolishing homes and shops in the path of the Israeli advance.

“Tanks and planes are wiping out residential districts and markets, shops, restaurants, everything. It is all happening before the one-eyed world,” Ayman Rajab from western Jabalia was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Late on Friday, one person was killed and eight injured in an Israeli airstrike on the West Bank city of Jenin, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The IDF said a fighter jet had targeted a building in Jenin as part of a counter-terrorism operation against “a terrorist squad that was under surveillance and planned an attack in the near future”. The Guardian could not independently verify the claim.

Meanwhile, Kirby said that 17 doctors with US citizenship who had been trapped in Gaza were able to leave on Friday. Twenty doctors were initially reported to be stuck inside the coastal strip.

“I won’t speak for the other three, but I can assure you that any of them that wanted to leave are out now,” Kirby said.

Power said that the US was leaning on Israel to ensure there would be no repeat of the bombing of an aid convoy on 1 April, in which seven workers for the World Central Kitchen were killed.

“In light of unconscionable attacks on aid workers since the war began, we will continue to press the Israeli government to protect civilians and humanitarian workers,” she said in a written statement.

Kirby insisted, however, that the White House was not concerned about Israel bombing the aid coming through the maritime corridor.

“We are not worried about the Israelis striking the convoys of trucks that are coming off of that pier,” he said. “They are actually participating in helping marshal that material ashore, and then get it into Gaza. So that’s not a concern.”

The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, is expected to travel to Saudi Arabia on Saturday for talks with the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, followed by a stop in Israel for a meeting with the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Kirby said Sullivan would restate US opposition to a large-scale Israeli assault on Rafah, and would continue to press for more targeted operations against Hamas.

Four New Hampshire daycare employees allegedly spiked children’s food with the sleep supplement melatonin and were arrested on Thursday.

The arrests stem from a November 2023 investigation at a daycare in Manchester, New Hampshire, about 30 minutes outside the state capital of Concord.

Authorities were called to investigate a report of “unsafe practices going on” at the day care in question, ABC News reported, citing a press release from the Manchester police department.

After a six-month investigation, police discovered that children had been furtively dosed with melatonin. Officers arrested the daycare owner, 52-year-old Sally Dreckmann, along with three of her employees: Traci Innie, 51; Kaitlin Filardo and Jessica Foster, who are both 23.

“The children’s food was being sprinkled with melatonin without their parent’s knowledge or consent,” police said they had determined after the investigation.

Dreckmann and her three colleagues each face 10 charges of endangering children, the New York Daily News reported.

It was unclear on Friday how many children at the daycare had been receiving melatonin or for how long.

Melatonin is a sleep aid supplement that is sold over the counter. But the long-term impacts of melatonin on children are not widely known.

Furthermore, there have been several reports of children being overdosed with melatonin in recent years. About 7% of emergency department visits between 2012 and 2021 were for children who had accidentally ingested melatonin, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine issued a health warning for melatonin use around kids and adolescents, warning against the lack of US Food and Drug Administration oversight for the sleep aid.

Police also discovered that Dreckmann’s daycare was not licensed, WBZ News reported. It is legal to operate an unlicensed daycare facility in New Hampshire as long as no more than three children at a time are watched there.

Local neighbors told WBZ that they were unaware that a daycare had been operating in their community.

“I’m a grandparent so I know,” Gary Boucher said. “That’s outrageous – it really is.

“If it was my child, I’d be extremely upset.”

Boucher also said that he hoped authorities would go beyond the arrests at the daycare and shut down the facility.

A newly released video shows Sean “Diddy” Combs manhandling and kicking singer Cassie Ventura – his former girlfriend – in plain view of hotel surveillance cameras in 2016, before the rapper, music producer and businessman rapidly settled a lawsuit that she brought against him this past November, according to footage exclusively obtained by CNN.

The video in question illustrates in the most graphic nature possible one of the beatings alleged and described in Ventura’s lawsuit, which Combs had vehemently denied.

Ventura’s lawsuit preceded federal authorities’ March raid of Combs’ properties in Los Angeles and Miami as part of a sex-trafficking investigation.

Combs, in the footage obtained by CNN, is seen exiting a room at the since-shuttered InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles’s Century City neighborhood while holding a towel around his waist. He runs down a hallway after Ventura, grabs her by the back of the neck and throws her to the floor near a bank of elevators.

The video – which had never before been seen publicly – shows Combs then kick Ventura twice and drag her before letting her go and walking away.

Ventura later stands up, gathers some of her items from the floor, and picks up a telephone on the wall next to the elevators. Combs soon returns – still clad in just a towel and socks – and shoves Ventura into a corner while they are in front of a mirror directly across from one of the security cameras that captured footage of the attack.

He throws something at Ventura before starting to walk away. The clip shows Combs then double back to Ventura when one of the elevator doors opens and someone apparently exits.

A statement that Ventura’s attorney, Douglas H Wigdor, provided to CNN called the video “gut-wrenching”. Wigdor said the footage “further confirmed the disturbing and predatory behavior of Mr Combs”.

“Words cannot express the courage and fortitude that Ms Ventura has shown in coming forward to bring this to light,” Wigdor said.

Combs did not immediately comment on the footage, which vividly contradicted his prior vehement denials of Ventura’s allegations.

Ventura’s lawsuit in November accused Combs of rape and severe physical abuse spanning more than a decade. She also detailed how he allegedly forced her to have sex with male prostitutes and used his network of powerful entertainment contacts to entrap her in the relationship, which reportedly started in 2007 – when she was 19 and he was 37 – and lasted on and off until 2018.

Combs and Ventura settled the lawsuit one day after she filed it. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed, and commentary about the agreement overwhelmingly focused on how quickly Combs moved to resolve the case in a manner that prevented it from even coming close to a courtroom.

Since then, Combs has faced several more lawsuits attributing rapes, sexual assaults, other instances of physical violence and “revenge porn” distribution to him. Combs has denied all allegations while pledging to “fight for [his] name”.

The extent of Combs’ metastasizing legal problems became clearer than ever when federal agents searched his homes in Los Angeles and Miami in the course of a sex-trafficking investigation. The 54-year-old three-time Grammy winner once known as P Diddy, Puff Daddy and Love spoke with authorities during the searches but was not detained, was not charged and was not restricted from traveling as he wished, his attorney told media outlets that day.

In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247, or visit Women’s Aid. In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org

Authorities rescued a 17-year old girl after she was trafficked to Ventura county, California, from Mexico two months ago and texted 911 for help.

On Thursday, the Ventura county sheriff’s office announced that on 9 May authorities rescued the girl after she sent messages to 911. The text message correspondence began with a call taker at a 911 communication center, according to the sheriff’s office, which added that the messages were received in Spanish and translated into English.

In the messages, the girl, who did not know where she and her captor were, was able to identify landmarks and provide other identifiable information, authorities said. As the 911 dispatcher corresponded with the girl, other communications center team members delivered real-time information to authorities who were responding to the search.

After approximately 20 minutes of searching the area of Casitas Springs, a community located about 86 miles from Los Angeles, authorities located the girl. She was evaluated and transferred to Ventura county child family services until she can be reunited with her family. Authorities did not disclose whether the girl will remain in the US or return to Mexico.

The suspect has been identified as 31-year-old Gerardo Cruz from Veracruz, Mexico. Booked at the pre-trial detention facility, Cruz has been charged with human trafficking, forcible rape, lewd acts upon a child, luring and sexual penetration with force. He remains in custody with bail set at $500,000.

In its announcement, authorities hailed the ability to send text messages to emergency call centers, adding, “This incident also utilized integrated translation technology as the call taker only spoke English and the victim only spoke and wrote in Spanish. The call taker was able to quickly interpret and text back a response in English, which was quickly re-translated to Spanish for the victim.”

California is one of the largest sites of human trafficking in the US, according to the state’s office of the attorney general. Since 2015, between 20 and 30% of human trafficking cases in California that are reported annually to the National Human Trafficking Hotline involved children under 18 years old.

Lacey Carroll headed straight to Harborview Medical Center after touching down in Seattle following a three-day stay on David Copperfield’s private island in the Bahamas. It was August 2007 and – according to police records – she had gone to get medical treatment for sexual assault.

The 20-year-old later alleged to Seattle police and in court filings that she had embarked on the long journey to Musha Cay – the islands in the Bahamas that Copperfield reportedly bought for $50m in 2006 – because she had been offered a chance to do promotional work and some modeling there along with a team of others. Instead, she claimed, she found herself alone with Copperfield and a few members of his staff. Copperfield, she alleged, raped and assaulted her multiple times.

Carroll’s allegations in 2007 set off an FBI investigation and created a media storm around Copperfield. More than two years later, the FBI dropped the matter with little explanation. No charges were filed.

An investigation by the Guardian US has re-examined Carroll’s claims and the depiction of the case in the media, as part of its broader investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct by the master illusionist. Lawyers for the illusionist have denied all allegations.

The prevalent public perception at the time was that Carroll had ultimately been discredited after being charged with a crime in an unrelated matter. Some 2010 media reports noted the FBI had dropped its years-long investigation at the same time, suggesting a link. But the Guardian’s reporting found this narrative was inaccurate.

Copperfield said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2012 that he had been “exonerated” by federal authorities. A source close to the federal investigation said in connection to the case, “declining to charge someone is not equivalent to exonerating someone or declaring them innocent”. When asked why the FBI investigation had taken more than two years, the person said: “They tried very, very hard.” The Guardian’s investigation found that the federal investigation faced jurisdictional challenges, given that the alleged incidents occurred on the Bahamian island.

Lawyers for Copperfield said he denies “all the allegations” made by Carroll and that the matter had been “extensively investigated” by law enforcement.

The alleged assault on Musha Cay

Carroll’s first interactions with David Copperfield bore many of the hallmarks of the accounts of other young women who have made sexual misconduct allegations against the celebrity illusionist.

Carroll met the entertainer at one of his shows at a venue in Tri-Cities, Washington, in January 2007. According to a civil case Carroll filed in Washington state in 2009, Copperfield had called her on stage to assist him with one of his tricks. After the performance one of Copperfield’s assistants asked her to wait in her seat after the show. She was given a questionnaire, and told that a picture of her with Copperfield would be taken and be attached to the form.

According to the lawsuit, one of Copperfield’s assistants told Carroll the magician had a private island, and that she might be asked to participate in promotional activities there.

The alleged exchange appears to follow standard procedures followed by his staff, as outlined in an internal memo.

The memo, which was obtained by the celebrity gossip site TMZ and published in 2007, described how Copperfield would scan the audience and pick women he thought had “potential for future projects”. If he gestured toward these women, the memo said, staff were expected to “pull” them into after-show “meet and greets” with him. The memo instructed staff to give the women questionnaires and take polaroids and tell them about Copperfield’s islands in the Bahamas and how they might have opportunities to do marketing work there. In special cases, the memo suggests, Copperfield would seek to speak to “the prospects” about their possibilities privately.

In response to questions from the Guardian, Copperfield’s lawyers declined to comment on the memo.

In her lawsuit, Carroll said her family was not allowed to accompany her when she went backstage to meet Copperfield.

Copperfield and Carroll began to exchange phone calls, with Carroll ultimately being invited to the island.

Carroll alleged in her lawsuit that Copperfield’s assistant assured her others would be there for the promotional opportunity. When Carroll asked whether her boyfriend could come, she was told “no”, she alleged; but she said she was told everyone would have their own room, and she would have access to email and telephone coverage so that she could stay in touch with her family.

In the 2009 civil lawsuit, Carroll described her journey from Seattle to the small private island, and claimed that once she got there “no one else was in attendance” apart from Copperfield and some of his staff. Copperfield allegedly told her more people would be arriving the next day. That night, the two had dinner and then began to watch a movie when – Carroll alleged – Copperfield attacked and raped her with a dildo. Carroll said in the lawsuit that she physically and verbally resisted and struggled to get away.

Carroll claimed she tried to call her family and boyfriend but was unable to reach them on her mobile phone. She then reached her boyfriend using the house phone, but was interrupted during the call when Copperfield entered her room, she said.

Carroll’s boyfriend at the time, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed the account to the Guardian, saying he remembered getting a call from Carroll that was “strained” and “not normal”.

The next day, according to her lawsuit, Copperfield ordered Carroll to get naked on Copperfield’s private beach, and when she refused he held her head under water, causing her to fear she would drown. Copperfield warned her not to tell anyone about what had happened, the lawsuit alleged. She claimed Copperfield untied her swimsuit top and forced Carroll to masturbate him while he fondled her breasts. She said she walked on the beach and then returned to her room and went into the shower. According to the lawsuit, Copperfield pulled her out of the shower and assaulted her again.

In response to questions from the Guardian, lawyers for Copperfield pointed to a statement Copperfield made in 2009, when he claimed that Carroll had “never complained to anyone about her treatment”, had not been seen with bruises “or other signs of assault” and had been suntanning in her bikini. Copperfield also said at the time – and his lawyers reiterated in written responses to the Guardian – that Carroll had access to jet skis and boats, which Copperfield claimed she could have “taken to the neighboring inhabited islands that are minutes away”. He also suggested that Carroll could have called 911 on his private island. Copperfield’s lawyers said more than 20 people had been on the island at the time and that witnesses – whose names were not provided – said she was “upbeat” and “showed no sign of concern, discomfort or unhappiness”.

Carroll spent the next day and night on the island, according to the civil suit. When it was time to return home, Carroll said a golf cart arrived to transport her to a boat, where men she believed were Copperfield’s staff were also present, along with a woman who Carroll said she had not previously seen. She was taken to another small island, she alleged in the civil complaint, and put on a small plane to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Nicholas Schrauwen, a contractor who worked for Copperfield at the time and recalled being on a plane with Carroll as she returned home, said he was later questioned by authorities.

In an interview with the Guardian, he said: “Her head was facing out the window the whole time … What I thought about was that she was well dressed and definitely upset,” Schrauwen said. “I think she was crying, not sobbing.”

Once Carroll was back in Seattle, she immediately headed to the sexual assault and trauma center at Harborview Medical Center, where she was met by her mother and then boyfriend, police records show.

The Seattle police took her statement that day. Police records obtained by the Guardian through a public records request show that Carroll gave hospital staff a napkin she said she used to wipe some of Copperfield’s semen off her and underwent a medical examination with a rape kit.

Lawyers for Copperfield did not answer the Guardian’s questions about whether he had sex with Carroll.

It is not clear if the kit was ever tested or what the results of the test were. The matter was then transferred to the FBI, which – months later – would launch raids on multiple Copperfield properties in Las Vegas.

The FBI investigation

One of the 16 women who have alleged that Copperfield engaged in sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior remembers when she first heard the news on television – sometime around 2008 – that the illusionist was under criminal investigation. When she heard Copperfield’s lawyer denying Carroll’s allegations, she got in touch with the FBI and made a statement.

She was not the only one.

The Guardian has talked to four other people who say they spoke to the FBI after Carroll’s allegations against Copperfield became public. They include Brittney Lewis, whose allegation that Copperfield drugged and sexually assaulted her was detailed by the Guardian on Thursday . Lewis said she reached out to the FBI after she saw the news about Carroll’s allegations. A friend of Lewis’s at the time, who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity, said she also talked with the FBI to corroborate Lewis’s account. Lawyers for Copperfield have denied Lewis’s allegations.

Another individual who contacted the FBI told the Guardian that years earlier he had heard that two women believed they had been drugged by Copperfield before he had sex with them. The individual told the Guardian he shared the name of one of the women, Gillian*, with the FBI. Gillian’s allegations, which were denied by Copperfield’s lawyers, were reported in the Guardian on Wednesday. Gillian told the Guardian she was never contacted by the FBI.

Another source who spoke to the Guardian said she was called by the FBI because agents apparently learned she had once attended a Copperfield show, had filled out a questionnaire and had been invited to the island for a modeling opportunity after Copperfield contacted her.

The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, declined to take Copperfield up on the invitation, in part because she doubted it was a legitimate job offer.

A US prosecutor at the time said in a court filing that federal investigators had collected more than 300 witness statements over the course of its investigation.

A person with direct knowledge of the federal investigation declined to comment on the specific claims that witnesses made, but said that while such additional evidence can be helpful in sex crime prosecution it may not always be admissible, as the court consider factors like how long ago the other allegations occurred, the strength of the evidence relating to the prior incident, and how similar or dissimilar the claims are.

As the FBI continued its investigation, Carroll filed her civil lawsuit in the western district of Washington. The lawsuit sought damages for past and future emotional and physical suffering, emotional and psychological injury, past and future impaired earning capacity, and medical bills for past and future expenses. She was 22 years old at the time and represented by a seasoned Washington state attorney, Rebecca Roe.

FBI and grand jury investigations are usually cloaked in secrecy but statements filed by prosecutors in Carroll’s civil claim against Copperfield disclosed some details about their work.

According to statements filed by law enforcement officials in court, agents had opened their investigation in the summer of 2007 but kept the inquiry secret from Copperfield until October 2007, when authorities raided several of his properties in Las Vegas, recovering “thousands of documents and several computers”.

CNN at the time quoted Copperfield’s lawyer, David Chesnoff, “categorically” denying Carroll’s allegation.

“Mr Copperfield’s reputation precedes him as an impeccable gentleman,” Chesnoff said.

“So we’re obviously disturbed that those kinds of allegations are being made, but we believe that that’s a common event now, unfortunately, for celebrated people to be falsely accused,” lawyer said.

“Certainly no one [Copperfield] ever had a relationship with could ever say that about him,” he said

About one week after the raid – on 26 October 2007 – staff who worked for Copperfield companies were reminded in a letter from attorneys that confidentiality agreements they had signed precluded them from disclosing matters to the press and media, according to a letter obtained and published by TMZ.

“We will take all necessary and appropriate action to enforce the terms of the Confidentiality Agreement and other confidentiality agreements, oral or written,” the letter by Laxalt & Nomura, a Nevada-based firm, said. “The confidentiality agreements do not preclude you from speaking with law enforcement in the course of an investigation, if you so choose.”

Copperfield’s lawyers said in response to the Guardian’s questions that it was “not unusual” to remind people of their obligations of confidentiality shortly after a raid by the FBI, especially as they were “expressly told the confidentiality agreements did not preclude them from speaking with law enforcement”.

The civil case in Washington was paused while the FBI investigation continued.

But the FBI and US attorney’s office faced serious challenges pursuing the case.

A source with direct knowledge of the matter said the investigation was closed around December 2009, after more than two years. The source claimed the decision reflected the difficulty of prosecuting cases in which the alleged crime occurred overseas, because, the source said, prosecutors would have had to prove that some criminal conduct occurred in the US in connection to the allegation.

In a statement in response to the Guardian’s questions about its handling of the case, a spokesperson for the US attorney’s office in Washington said: “After a thorough investigation by experienced prosecutors of all available evidence, facts, and jurisdictional considerations, the US attorney’s office determined it was unable to prove a federal crime occurred in the US beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The US prosecutors’ decision, a person close to the matter said, was made before another twist in the case emerged, which would come to dominate headlines and be used by Copperfield to allege Carroll was a liar.

A night in Bellevue

The 27 January 2010 headline on ABC News – “Woman in David Copperfield’s Rape Probe Arrested” – could not have been more welcome by Copperfield and his legal team. News organizations and outlets across the country widely published similar stories: Carroll had been charged in Bellevue, Washington, with prostitution and providing a false statement to police, regarding a December 2009 incident in which – news organizations reported – she claimed to have been sexually assaulted by a 31-year-old man named Sean Loomis.

Patty Eakes, one of Copperfield’s lawyers, said the developments vindicated Copperfield and “confirmed what he has said all along – this woman tried to extort money from him by making false claims.”

Behind the headlines, however, police records obtained by the Guardian appear to reveal a more complicated story.

Carroll was supposed to see a Twilight movie with a friend on that night, according to a statement she gave to police. But her plans changed. She had been texting with Loomis, a customer at Earl’s, a restaurant where she worked, and decided that she and her friend would meet him for drinks at a bar called Lucky Strike.

According to her police statement, Carroll had two-three drinks and began to feel “strange and dizzy” and agreed to leave with Loomis, believing they were meeting up with another friend. From that point, she told police, “everything went blank”. She came to, she told police, with Loomis on top of her at a local Bellevue hotel and she had no idea how much time had passed. Feeling scared, and realizing she was not wearing tights or underwear, she allegedly ran out to the front desk and asked hotel staff to call her a taxi. She told police all she had wanted was to go home.

Loomis, police records show, called the police first, just minutes after Carroll left their hotel room and talked to staff at the concierge desk. In a transcript of his call to 911, Loomis claimed that Carroll had told him she was “calling the cops”.

“Honestly … I don’t need this right now,” Loomis told the 911 dispatcher, who asked whether Loomis wanted to be put in touch with an officer. “Yeah, I actually … I would love to because I think she’s done this before.” It was an apparent reference to Carroll’s allegations against Copperfield.

The Guardian tried to reach out to Loomis by phone and email but could not reach him for comment.

Loomis later claimed to authorities that, while they were in their hotel room, Carroll allegedly offered to engage in “continued sexual activity” in return for $2,000, an offer that he told police he refused. Loomis said he and Carroll had engaged in “consensual touching” and that her allegations of sexual assault were “a lie”.

But Carroll had not alleged with certainty that she had been sexually assaulted. Her description of events, police records and transcripts show, were always conditioned by statements that she was unsure about what exactly had occurred.

In her 911 call to the police later that night, a transcript of which was seen by the Guardian, Carroll initially claimed she had been “physically assaulted” but was not injured. As the call progressed, Carroll was asked by the dispatcher whether she had been physically assaulted and she answered: “I don’t think so”. When the dispatcher asked if she had been sexually assaulted she said: “Yeah, I think so. I really don’t know. I was just scared and I took off.”

Under police questioning, Carroll alleged she had blacked out that night. When police asked Carroll whether she had been flirting with Loomis earlier in the evening she declared – in a statement that would later be held against her – “Nothing like that.”

A friend of Carroll’s who had been with Carroll and Loomis that night at Lucky Strike contradicted Carroll’s claim when police questioned her. She alleged that Loomis and Carroll had been talking in a “sexual” way that made her uncomfortable, according to police records.

Carroll was asked whether she had ever left her drink unattended while she was drinking with Loomis. She said she had. According to police records, Carroll’s urine was tested for Gamma Hydroxybutyric Acid, a “date rape” drug also known as Liquid Ecstacy, and she tested negative. No other drug tests were performed.

Carroll also denied ever seeking money from Loomis in exchange for sex.

Police records show Carroll was asked to go to a local hospital to have a rape kit exam, but that Carroll declined to have the evidence released to the police. In a rare move, the police then obtained the rape kit evidence via a search warrant.

“[It was] highly unusual,” Carroll’s lawyer Rebecca Roe told the Guardian.

Carroll voluntarily agreed to take a breathalyzer test, and her blood alcohol content measured .14, which is close to a state of “severe impairment”, according to the National Institutes of Health standards.

In his own statements to police, Loomis claimed Carroll had been “all over him”. One witness who worked at the hotel told the police the couple seemed intoxicated when they were checking in and that Carroll was slurring her speech. The same hotel staff member told police he later saw Carroll coming out of the room crying and telling the concierge that her companion had tried to take advantage of her. But the witness said he never heard her say she had been assaulted.

Carroll told police she was not interested in filing charges against Loomis and that she wanted to put the matter behind her. When she was asked why she had called the police that night, Carroll said it was at the urging of her ex-boyfriend, who had allegedly told her it was important to report what happened to the police. She also wanted her employer at Earl’s to know, she said, because she would feel uncomfortable seeing Loomis at the restaurant where she was a waitress.

What Carroll – who had no criminal history – did not know at the time is that the head detective overseeing the case, Jerry Johnson, who is now retired, got wind of Carroll’s allegations against Copperfield over the course of the police’s investigation into events that night.

In an interview with the Guardian, Johnson said he called Patty Eakes, Copperfield’s lawyer , while he was investigating the Bellevue matter, to alert Eakes that Carroll was involved in a new case. In an interview, he could not recall exactly why he made that decision, or how he knew that Eakes was involved in a separate case involving Carroll. Police records show he called Eakes on 8 December 2009, six days after the alleged incident, even as his investigation was ongoing. Police records show he also called the US attorney’s office.

“It is the fair thing to do when a situation has occurred with similar aspects to it. That’s just fair play, and that’s what I did,” Johnson said.

But Carroll’s lawyer, Rebecca Roe, said she believed the decision to contact Eakes was improper.

An independent expert and former Boca Raton police chief named Andrew Scott, who now consults police departments and law firms on police practices, said he did not believe Johnson had any reason to reach out to Copperfield’s attorney from an investigative perspective. The decision to reach out to the US attorney’s office was proper, he said.

Before joining private practice, Eakes was a senior prosecutor who led high-profile criminal cases in Washington state. Johnson acknowledged in an interview with the Guardian that he had a previous professional relationship with Eakes when he called to tell her about the Bellevue case, but said he had only shared basic details with her.

Records show the King county prosecutor declined to prosecute Carroll, but that local prosecutors in Bellevue decided to take on her case and charge Carroll with two misdemeanor offenses: prostitution and making a false statement to a public servant. Johnson said in one document related to the case that Carroll and Loomis had been captured on security cameras exhibiting “normal and romantic behaviors” toward each other at the hotel while they waited to get a room. That, Johnson said, undercut Carroll’s statement that she had been in a black out state.

Asked why he believed Carroll had been charged with prostitution, Johnson said he could not fully remember the details. He recalled that Carroll was a “very, very attractive woman” and said that he believed as a pair, she and Loomis were “dramatically mismatched”.

Copperfield referenced the security footage many years later, in 2018 when Brittney Lewis came forward in The Wrap and claimed she had been drugged and assaulted by Copperfield in the late 1980s. In a tweet in response to the story, Copperfield – who denied Lewis’s allegations – said the “end result” of a previous rape allegation had been that his accuser was “caught by law enforcement making the same false claim about another man.”

He added: “The proof was on tape. The accuser was arrested and charged.”

Lawyers for Copperfield also claimed – inaccurately – Carroll had been charged criminally “for making a false rape claim against another man.”

Carroll was never charged with falsely accusing Loomis of rape or sexual assault. She was instead charged with “obstructing” the Bellevue investigation because she denied flirting with Loomis while they were at Lucky Strike. Later, she acknowledged in a handwritten guilty plea that she had, in fact, flirted with Loomis. The court fined her $953 and ordered her to perform 30 hours of community service.

The prostitution charge against Carroll was dismissed, according to court records, which did not provide further details.

Some of these details were never widely reported in coverage of Copperfield’s case. ABC News reported that it was “no illusion” that Carroll had been arrested in connection to another case “where she alleged rape” and the Associated Press reported that she had been “charged with fabricating sexual assault claims against another man”.

Carroll did not respond to multiple requests to be interviewed. She has never given a media interview. She dropped her civil case against Copperfield shortly after the US attorney’s office said it had closed its investigation of Copperfield.

Copperfield’s lawyer said at the time that her allegations were a “pathetic attempt to extort Mr Copperfield”.

Through an attorney, Carroll issued a statement at the time, saying: “It has never been about money … I just wanted him held accountable for what he did.” Her lawyer added: “Sexual assault is a very traumatic event which has a long lasting impact on the victim. This is even more true when the perpetrator is a celebrity with the money and power to relentlessly attack the victim while shielding his own acts from scrutiny. Ms Carroll feels she has done all she reasonably can to bring this to light.”

Carroll’s lawyers also claimed in a statement they released when they dropped their civil case that Carroll had been subjected by Copperfield’s team to “intense scrutiny and constant surveillance, while her family, friends, and co-workers have been besieged with subpoenas and demands for personal information”. Her lawyer did not provide additional details to the Guardian.

As the civil case came to a close, a reporter for the Seattle Times requested that the judge unseal court records related to the closed FBI investigation. Carroll’s lawyer had suggested in a press release that the sealed records supported Carroll’s allegations and contained some evidence that Copperfield had a “scheme of targeting young women who attend his shows” and “statements of other women who corroborate [Carroll’s] claims”. Federal prosecutors didn’t object to the records being unsealed, but Copperfield’s lawyers did. Judge John Coughenour rejected the Seattle Times request and the documents remain under seal.

The Guardian asked Copperfield’s lawyers if they would support the release of the records now. The lawyers said it was “wholly unreasonable” for the Guardian to “suggest that our client should give them carte blanche simply to rake over these historic matters”.

Copperfield, the ‘victim’

Copperfield’s secluded group of islands – which he rents out and calls The Islands of Copperfield Bay – continue to be a holiday destination for the rich and famous. A stay on the island is currently advertised at $57,000 a night and previous guests reportedly have included Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates and Penelope Cruz.

In 2012, two years after federal authorities closed their investigation into allegations Copperfield had raped Carroll on Musha Cay, Oprah travelled to the island to interview the man she called “iconic for all time for our culture” for a special on her network.

“Everything is beautiful in the Bahamas!” Oprah swooned as the pair rode around on a golf cart.

The pair discussed Copperfield’s views on marriage, his childhood struggles with a mother he claimed was abusive, and his place in history alongside Houdini.

In an apologetic tone, Oprah then broached the topic that had dogged Copperfield for years.

“This is a beautiful life, but it comes with a price,” she began. “Meaning, people are out to get you, [you’re] easily betrayed, taken advantage of, all that stuff,” she said, in a clear reference to Carroll’s allegation.

“To be falsely accused of something that horrendous is devastating for yourself, your friends, your family,” Copperfield said. Indeed, he claimed he had not only been exonerated, but “I was the victim. Big difference.”