U.S. Senate moves to punish Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi murder

A Brazilian Senate committee has backed criminal charges against President Jair Bolsonaro over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. A 1,200-page report accuses the president of downplaying the disease and questioning the safety of vaccines, exposing the public to mass infections. However, the Senate committee doesn't have the power to bring charges, and it's unlikely that the attorney general or lower house speaker will open criminal proceedings, since they are both Bolsonaro allies. We tell you more.

In more than 80% of cases involving murdered journalists, the killers are never brought to justice. A tribunal set up by press freedom NGOs wants to stop this impunity and call governments to account, as well.

Here are a few reasons to pick up a copy of The Guardian on Thursday. Find these stories and much more when you grab a copy of The Guardian on Thursday.

Despite announcing his retirement last month, outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte has indicated that he will not be bowing out of politics after all.

President Sebastian Pinera was involved with the controversial sale of a mining company in 2010, as revealed in the Pandora Papers. If impeached, he could have faced five years in prison.

Journalists are under fire from all factions in the Yemen conflict. Rasha Abdullah al-Harazi, nine months pregnant, recently died in a bomb attack, her husband barely survived. Without legal protection, many simply flee.

Here are a few reasons to pick up a copy of The Guardian on Wednesday.

On June 15, RSF Germany's Christian Mihr tweeted: "A heavy blow against press freedom in the Philippines! Maria Ressa, who has only done her job as a journalist, was sentenced to prison this morning in Kafkaesque proceedings for Internet crime. The court has shown that it is not independent of the Duterte government."

A report by a US Senate Committee has raised concerns by whistleblowers about the safety approval process for new aircraft, in the wake of the deadly Boeing 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019. Senators spoke to whistleblowers at Boeing, its supplier GE, and engineers working for the Federal Aviation Administration. It found the FAA's certification process had been "eroded" and that the agency had "increasingly delegated away its authority". Our business editor Stephen Carroll tells us more.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has withdrawn his candidacy for the Senate in the country's May 2022 elections, according to the election commission. He reaches term limit as president in 2022.

Press freedom in Africa has suffered in 2021 due to growing authoritarianism and insecurity, especially in East Africa – the region most hostile to journalists on the continent.

An internet watchdog said an operator of the Israeli firm NSO Group's Pegasus was working almost exclusively in El Salvador in early 2020. El Salvador government denied using the sophisticated spyware.