Global affairs often take a back seat to domestic events in American newsrooms; after all, there’s plenty going on in the United States. U.S. coverage of the Caribbean, I find, is particularly lean. Still, as international editor here at The Conversation, I do my best to help our readers stay on top of events in this island region. The Caribbean is just a few hundred miles off the shore of the East Coast; West Indian immigrants make up about 4% of the U.S. population (and much more in the “Little Haiti” section of Brooklyn, where I happen to live).

Our Caribbean coverage served us well this week when Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated on July 7 in a shocking attack in his private home.

We’ve been following Haiti’s deepening crisis for years. We’ve published stories on nationwide protests against Moïse, on the country’s crippling gas shortages and on Haiti’s history of exploitation by world powers like France and the United States. So we knew whom to turn to after Moïse’s killing.

First, Tamanisha John, a Caribbean studies scholar at Florida International University, quickly, and substantially, updated her profile of the unpopular Moïse to serve as a political obituary for the assassinated leader – the time pressure was so great that she literally dictated some revisions to me over the telephone. Then I pulled together the best history and expert analysis we’ve published on Haiti in this Essential Read.

We also brought you important domestic stories this week, of course. We assessed the federal pandemic bailout of states – yes, our budget expert says the states got too much money – examined America’s declining fertility rates and asked what makes a court verdict into a landmark moment in U.S. history.