Ella Hill Archives

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Ella Hill

Ella Hill
Reporter

“For me, Tortoise is all about storytelling: from the clarity of the daily Sensemaker to our investigations shedding light on urgent, complex stories. It’s a privilege to be part of the reporting team.”

Ella is a reporter at Tortoise, working mainly on the Sensemaker team. Before Tortoise, she interned at the Economist’s 1843 magazine. Prior to journalism, she worked (briefly) as a researcher for an NGO in Jordan.

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Monday 19 April 2021
18:30-19:30 BST

Campus Injustice: are women safe on campus?

How do we fix rising sexual abuse on campus? Join us to find out.

Tuesday 5 October 2021

The soil carbon opportunity

Let the world’s farmlands breathe and come alive, and they might just steer the planet to net zero

Monday 6 September 2021

The resignation of Trinity Hall’s master should be just the start

After a Tortoise investigation into sexual assault and harassment allegations at the Cambridge college, Dr Jeremy Morris quit his post. This should be only the beginning of an institutional and regulatory overhaul in the higher education sector

Wednesday 18 August 2021
10 minute read

Sensemaker: Vaccine hoarders

What just happened

Thursday 12 August 2021
10 minute read

Sensemaker: Afghanistan on the brink

What just happened

Monday 9 August 2021
10 minute read

Sensemaker: Fire season

What just happened

Tuesday 13 July 2021

Windfall v wind power

Renewables are growing fast, but fossil fuels need to shrink much faster

Monday 12 July 2021
10 minute read

Sensemaker: Troppo Bello

What just happened

Wednesday 30 June 2021

Campus Justice II

Crisis in the colleges

Oxford’s medieval structures create a particular problem with dealing with the assault and harassment crisis

Tuesday 8 June 2021

Climate? Covid? Or both?

The world’s poorer countries are still struggling to vaccinate their citizens, which has made it harder for them to concentrate on tackling the climate crisis. Ahead of COP26 in November, that doesn’t bode well

Tuesday 1 June 2021

The People v Shell

A big case in the Netherlands dealt a significant blow to the oil multinational last week – one which could soon have major implications for similar companies

Tuesday 25 May 2021

Retrofitting net zero

Buildings account for around a quarter of the UK’s CO2 emissions – on par with emissions from surface transport. But unlike for transport, there’s no plan to get these emissions to net zero, and that’s a problem

Monday 24 May 2021
10 minute read

Off the deep end

What just happened

Tuesday 18 May 2021

The case for net zero

As John Kerry wades into the shark tank of net zero debate, this week’s Net Zero Sensemaker gets behind its name

Wednesday 14 April 2021
10 minute read

Sensemaker: Tension in Ukraine

What just happened

Thursday 8 April 2021

What teenagers are telling us on Everyone’s Invited

Young people have shared 14,000 accounts of rape culture at over 600 different schools. Analysis of their testimonies reveals the challenges children face, and what they want done about it

Wednesday 7 April 2021
10 minute read

Sensemaker: Where AstraZeneca went wrong

What just happened

Thursday 1 April 2021
10 minute read

Sensemaker: Crisis in Brazil

What just happened

Thursday 11 February 2021
10 minute read

Sensemaker: Women and MBS

What just happened

Friday 5 February 2021
10 minute read

Sensemaker: Seven year scratch

What just happened

Thursday 7 January 2021
10 minute read

Sensemaker: DC insurrection

What just happened

Tuesday 29 December 2020

The good that happened in 2020: Wealth

2020 wasn’t all bad. And it’s important that we remember that. This series considers the heartening things that happened this year, according to each of Tortoise’s five main themes

Thursday 10 December 2020
10 minute read

Sensemaker: Biology’s breakthrough

What just happened

Friday 4 December 2020
10 minute read

Sensemaker: Brexit: to diverge, or not?

What just happened

Wednesday 2 December 2020
10 minute read

Sensemaker: Brexit crunch week part 2

What just happened

Monday 30 November 2020
10 minute read

Sensemaker: Eyes off the prize

What just happened

Friday 27 November 2020
10 minute read

Sensemaker: Tiers before Christmas

What just happened

Tuesday 24 November 2020

Who was failed the most?

Thursday 19 November 2020
10 minute read

Sensemaker: Conflict in Tigray

What just happened

Wednesday 18 November 2020
10 minute read

Sensemaker: Devolution disaster

What just happened

Monday 16 November 2020

The lost month: what happened in February?

Monday 9 November 2020
10 minute read

Sensemaker: Biden’s time

What just happened

Friday 6 November 2020
10 minute read

Sensemaker: Neck and neck

What just happened

Friday 30 October 2020
10 minute read

Sensemaker, 30 October 2020

What just happened

Monday 26 October 2020
10 minute read

Sensemaker, 26 October 2020

What just happened

Monday 12 October 2020
10 minute read

Sensemaker, 12 October 2020

What just happened

Friday 9 October 2020
10 minute read

Sensemaker, 9 October 2020

What just happened

Thursday 8 October 2020
10 minute read

Test and trace

A shot in the dark

The prime minister is reaching for the stars, but the test and trace scheme is still in the gutter

Thursday 1 October 2020

Big Egg

Hatching the egg

Meet the new generation of pioneers in fertility science, technology and ethics

Wednesday 17 June 2020

The government is unwell

Infection HQ

Britain’s leading politicians are spread across a few buildings and streets in central London. Here’s how – and when – the virus swept through them

Friday 29 May 2020

Universities in crisis

Safe space?

Making campuses covid-secure is a complex problem and good information is hard to find

Wednesday 20 May 2020

Social care

A new deal

Could Covid-19 do for social care what World War II did for the NHS?

Tuesday 18 February 2020

Campus justice

A college with secrets

Sexual assault allegations from three different women against the same man. A grave allegation of sexual assault by a senior academic on a male student. And an historic allegation of sexual assault against another academic.

These three cases all crashed into a Cambridge college within a few months of one another, early in 2018, each more complex than the last.

This investigation asks: does the reputation of an institution and its close-knit group of tutors count for more than the welfare of students in their care?

Friday 22 October 2021

Time for Covid Plan B

Covid cases are rising fast in the UK, and the government is under pressure to take steps to slow them down. Is it time for the government to turn to Plan B?

Monday 11 October 2021

The sheikh who spied on his family

A British court ruled last week that Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, had used one of the most powerful surveillance tools available to security services to spy on his ex-wife in the middle of a custody case.

Wednesday 6 October 2021

Changing a police force for good

After Sarah Everard’s murder, there are now going to be two separate inquiries into the culture of the Metropolitan Police. What chance do they have of bringing about real change?

Wednesday 29 September 2021

The Huawei hostages

After almost three years, a tit-for-tat row over the arrest of a Huawei executive for fraud has finally come to an end. Two men called Michael paid a heavy price.

Monday 13 September 2021

Sinister cement

When Syria descended into a bloody and brutal civil war ten years ago, many multinational companies pulled out of the country. One stayed. Now, it’s facing allegations that it was complicit in crimes against humanity.

Monday 6 September 2021

Justice at the end of the opioid epidemic?

A big opioid case has been settled in court. Purdue Pharma, one of the drugs companies behind the opioid epidemic has been dissolved, and the family that ran it agreed to pay a mammoth $4.5 billion court settlement. The payout will go to help victims of the crisis, but is money enough? What about justice?

Tuesday 31 August 2021

The trial of Elizabeth Holmes

She was once a female Silicon Valley icon. The world’s youngest female self-made billionaire. Now, she’s a disgraced former CEO, on trial for fraud. Is this where the story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos finally ends?

Monday 23 August 2021

Haiti’s double disaster

Haiti was hit by a deadly earthquake and then, a few days later, a huge storm. It’s not the first time the country has faced a catastrophe…

Tuesday 17 August 2021

Australia’s third wave

Australia’s triumphant Olympians are returning to a month-long quarantine as the country hits its third wave of Covid infections. What’s gone wrong?

Thursday 12 August 2021

The Taliban returns

Just months after US President Joe Biden announced he’d be withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan, the country is in chaos. How serious is the Taliban threat?

Wednesday 4 August 2021

The Olympian who won’t go home

Krystsina Timanouskaya is a Belarusian sprinter who fell out with her coaches in Tokyo. She got so worried about the fall-out that she’s applied for political asylum.

Monday 19 July 2021

Why South Africans are rioting

South Africa has seen an outbreak of widespread violence and looting. What’s going on?

Wednesday 14 July 2021

A horror in Haiti

Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in his own home last week. But who was behind it all? And why did they want to kill him?

Thursday 8 July 2021

Slow justice for the Stockwell Six

Why it took 50 years for a set of unjust convictions – made by a corrupt copper – to be overturned.

Tuesday 6 July 2021

A tragedy in Miami

As 28 people are confirmed dead and 117 are still missing in the rubble, America is asking: what went wrong at Miami’s Champlain Towers?

Tuesday 29 June 2021

A political affair

Matt Hancock’s resignation as Health Secretary has triggered a bout of political infighting. Who’s going to win?

Monday 28 June 2021

DIY justice

How one woman was asked to deal with an allegation of rape by herself

Thursday 24 June 2021

Drama in the DUP

In just two months, Northern Ireland’s DUP has toppled a leader, elected a new one, forced him to resign and now they’re electing another one. Huh?

Monday 14 June 2021

When a billion isn’t enough

The world’s richest countries have promised a billion vaccine doses to poorer nations. It sounds a lot. Is it?

Thursday 3 June 2021

The risk of reopening

The last Covid restrictions are supposed to be lifted in about three weeks. Is it safe to lift them?

Saturday 29 May 2021

A political assassination attempt

Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s old adviser, tried to finish off the health secretary’s career this week. Will he succeed?

Wednesday 26 May 2021

Ready, set…stop? The Tokyo Olympics

The Tokyo Olympic Games are supposed to start in July. They’ve already been postponed from last year because of Covid. Could it happen again?

Wednesday 19 May 2021

Bill Gates’s halo slips

Bill Gates is one of the world’s greatest philanthropists. But since we learned he’s getting divorced there’s been nothing but bad news.

Wednesday 12 May 2021

Fist fights at 36,000 ft

There’s been an increase in brawls and bad behaviour on planes. What’s fuelling the fury?

Tuesday 11 May 2021

Making a murderer

A child soldier grows up to commit terrible crimes. Was his childhood entirely to blame?

Wednesday 5 May 2021

The oracle of Omaha

The richest 90-year-old man on earth, Warren Buffett, has announced his succession plan for the company he runs. But he’s not retiring just yet.

Monday 3 May 2021

Trump’s keeper of the keys

Tuesday 27 April 2021

India’s Covid crisis

How much responsibility does India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, bear for the country’s catastrophic coronavirus outbreak?

Monday 19 April 2021

Russia vs Ukraine, take 2

Seven years after Russia annexed Crimea, Russian forces are assembling on the border with Ukraine once again. So what does President Vladimir Putin want this time?

Tuesday 13 April 2021

The ambassador who got locked out

Kyaw Zwar Minn is the Myanmar ambassador to the UK. But, as a military takeover seizes power at home, he has been locked out of his own embassy in London. Why?

Thursday 8 April 2021

A royal squabble

A high-profile prince has fallen out with the king of Jordan. Does it spell trouble in a usually calm Middle Eastern country?

Wednesday 7 April 2021

AstraZeneca’s PR woes

What had been a huge success for the vaccine maker is now looking more like a comms disaster… how did it go so wrong?

Thursday 1 April 2021

Ghislaine Maxwell’s future

Ghislaine Maxwell’s charge sheet just got longer: Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend is now accused of sex trafficking, too.

Tuesday 23 March 2021

A dangerous love story

The story of Jang Yeong-jin’s escape from North Korea, a country where citizens are told that homosexuality doesn’t exist

Friday 19 March 2021

Europe’s vaccine battles

She seemed like the perfect candidate to oversee the EU’s vaccine rollout…what went wrong for Ursula von der Leyen?

Tuesday 16 March 2021

John Hollis’s exciting antibodies

An American man caught Covid – and his body responded by making some amazingly powerful antibodies. It could be a breakthrough for medicine.

Friday 12 March 2021

Who’s in charge in Hong Kong?

Hong Kong is meant to have some independence from China. But those days are nearly over.

Wednesday 10 March 2021

Is Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe coming home?

After five years locked up in Iran, the British-Iranian mother’s sentence has come to an end. But returning to her family might still be a way off.

Monday 8 March 2021

A reckoning for New York’s governor

Two serious scandals are unfolding around Andrew Cuomo. For now, he’s staying in office. But how long will he last?

Tuesday 2 March 2021

The missing patient

Someone, somewhere in England, has the super-infectious Brazil variant of Covid-19 – and the authorities are racing to track them down.

Monday 1 March 2021

The story of Shamima Begum

She left London to join Isis in Syria when she was 15. Now, she’s been stripped of her British citizenship and denied any chance to return home. But is Shamima Begum a victim, or a threat?

Wednesday 24 February 2021

Harry, Meghan and the Royals: why couldn’t they work it out?

Prince Harry and Meghan’s trial separation from the Royal family has just been made permanent. It’s not the outcome anyone involved wanted. So why has it turned out this way?

Monday 22 February 2021