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Voyager 1: a brief history of the interstellar spacecraft

Launched into space in 1977 to study the outer planets, Voyager 1 has become the first man-made object to leave the Solar System. To celebrate its incredible achievement, we look back at the highlights of its epic journey.

James Lloyd

1977: Launch

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on 5 September 1977, a couple weeks after the launch of its sister craft, Voyager 2. Equipped with a toolbox of television cameras, infrared and ultraviolet sensors, and various other instruments, the spacecraft are still travelling through space today. They’re powered by ‘radioisotope thermoelectric generators’, which convert the heat produced by the radioactive decay of plutonium into electricity.

Also onboard each spacecraft is a ‘ Golden Record ’ that contains sounds, music and images from Earth, intended for any aliens or future humans who chance upon the craft. Sounds engraved into the copper vinyl include nature recordings of birdsong, thunder and wind, greetings in more than 50 languages, and music by artists including Bach, Chuck Berry, Beethoven, Blind Willie Johnson and Mozart.

1979: Encounter with Jupiter

The spacecraft’s first stop was Jupiter. Voyager 1 began photographing the Jovian giant in January 1979, making its closest approach a couple months later. It took some spectacular shots of the famous Great Red Spot – a perpetual storm that’s large enough to engulf three Earths – and discovered volcanic activity on Io, Jupiter’s innermost moon. It was the first time that active volcanoes had been discovered anywhere else in the Solar System.

1980: Encounter with Saturn

Next stop on Voyager 1’s cosmic odyssey was Saturn and its system of moons and rings. It made its closest approach to the gas giant on 12 November 1980, coming within 64,200 kilometres (40,000 miles) of the planet’s cloud tops. It sent back the first high-resolution shots of Saturn’s rings and discovered that the planet’s gassy atmosphere was made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, making it the only planet less dense than water. It also took close-up shots of some of Saturn’s many moons.

1990: The ‘Pale Blue Dot’

Having fulfilled its primary mission, Voyager 1 continued to streak through space. In 1990, the spacecraft turned its camera back towards the Earth to capture this humbling shot.

In this image, the Earth appears as a miniscule blue speck suspended against the blackness of space. It’s just about visible as a tiny dot approximately halfway down the brown band of light on the right. The light bands are artifacts of the photo, a result of sunlight scattering off the camera.

The American astronomer Carl Sagan poignantly wrote about the photo in his book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space :

“Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives... every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there– on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

2012: Entering interstellar space

Voyager 1 officially entered the space between stars – ‘interstellar space’ - on August 2012, going beyond the influence of the Sun’s magnetic field and ‘solar wind’ of charged particles. This means that it's the first man-made object ever to leave the Solar System.

“This is really a key milestone that we'd been hoping we would reach when we started this project over 40 years ago,” chief scientist Prof Ed Stone told BBC News. “[It’s] one of those journeys of exploration like circumnavigating the globe for the first time or having a footprint on the Moon for the first time.”

Today, 40 years after its launch, Voyager 1’s radioactive power source is still going strong. The spacecraft is currently around 19 billion kilometres (12 billion miles) from home, and its radio signals take 17 hours to reach us.

The future: Voyager continues on its adventure

It's expected that Voyager 1 will exhaust its plutonium power supply in around 2025, at which point it’ll end its broadcasts back to Earth.

But its journey won’t end there – it'll still continue to orbit the centre of our Milky Way, and is next due to encounter a star in 40,000 years time. With its communication cut off, though, only Voyager will know how it feels to be so far from home, basking in the glory of another sun.

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Voyager 40 years on: Would modern technology make a difference?

Katia Moskvitch

Cold. Dark. And alone.

That's what it's been like for the intrepid little spacecraft Voyager 1 and 2, pushing forward day after day for 40 years – the longest of any space mission. Voyager 1 has now been in interstellar space for the past four years, zooming ahead at 62,140km/h (35,000mph) – studying, among other things, how the magnetic field of our Sun interacts with the magnetic field in the interstellar space. Its sister craft is just on the edge of the interstellar space, ready to dive in.

Amazingly, the retro tech is still working, and the craft haven't collided with any asteroids along the way. Voyager "has lasted much longer than any spacecraft built today is going to last, probably," says engineer Suzanne Dodd, the Voyager project manager at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

But what if we were, indeed, to build it today – how would the technology be different?

The craft itself probably wouldn’t change much, says Dodd. The thermal blanket, for instance, which protects all the sensitive electronics inside from radiation, would be very similar – just lighter, perhaps. There would still be the same nuclear power source, because solar power isn't an option – the craft are too far from the Sun. "In a lot of ways, Voyager has lasted 40 years in part due to some of the simplicity of it and the robustness of the design," says Dodd.

Marco Scharringhausen, an engineer at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), agrees. “I am not sure if anything would be done fundamentally different if we were to build spacecraft like Voyager 1 and 2 today,” he says. “One of the fundamentals of space engineering is conservatism.”

This may be true – but the Voyager programme itself was a big leap in spacecraft engineering and design, at least when compared to the Apollo technology from a few years earlier, adds Scharringhausen. Voyager’s computer and memory is based on semiconductors, while Apollo and early Nasa Mars space probes relied on ‘core rope’ memory – a form of read-only memory for computers used in the 1960s. Copper wires threaded through or around small magnetic cores, and produced the ones and zeroes of binary code.

Dodd knows Voyager as if it were her baby – now all grown up. She started working on the project when she first left university in 1984, and was involved with the Uranus and Neptune fly-bys in the late 1980s. Then she left and worked on other missions including Cassini – but came back to Voyager in 2010 to be the project manager. Today, she is responsible for overseeing the operations, reporting to Nasa on the mission's status, and keeping track of the budget and schedule.

"It's really neat - to start your career on one project, and then be able to come back to it and potentially finish off your career on the same project," she says. "Not very many people have the opportunity to do that, especially in the space business."

Not many people get to communicate with anyone – or anything – from interstellar space either. Dodd does – every week. "I come in on Monday morning and I send a command, saying: 'Hello Voyager, how are you doing?'," she says. Then she waits to hear back. It's not instantaneous – both Voyager spacecraft are very, very far from us. Voyager 1 is 139 astronomical units, or 20.6 billion km, away, and it takes 19 hours for a signal from Earth to reach it, at a very low rate of 160 bits/sec.

When the signal does come back, on Tuesday afternoon, it usually says: “Hi JPL, I'm doing fine.” It's a much slower exchange of messages than, say, sending a command to the Moon, which takes 2-3 seconds, or to Mars, which is anywhere from a 10- to a 20-minute round trip. Apart from the routine weekly check-in, once every three months Dodd sends Voyager a so-called sequence load – where code gets stored on board the spacecraft, which is then executed over the next three months.

Smaller and lighter

Thanks to that, the spacecraft if built today would probably be smaller and lighter, because shrinking the memory chips would shrink the instrumentation. "Smaller is better in the sense that it’s lighter, so it allows you to go faster if you’re using the same size of rocket," says Dodd. "Or you could use a smaller rocket that would cost less money and travel at the same speed. Weight is always important to a mission because, the lighter the spacecraft, the faster you can go. Particularly if you’re trying to get to interstellar space."

Building a new Voyager 40 years on would bring dramatically improved computer memory and processing power for the instruments and sensors. The type of instruments would probably be the same, explains Dodd, such as a spectrometer and magnetometer among others, "but the technology for those instruments is now 40 years better". There are four instruments currently running on Voyager 1 and five on Voyager 2. “The Voyager 2 has an active operating plasma instrument, so, when it crosses into interstellar space, we should see immediately a change in the density of the plasma, which we couldn't do with Voyager 1,” says Dodd.

The medium the craft are travelling through has charged particles of different energy levels and thickness, and a magnetic field. The instruments measure all these different parameters – in other words, they measure the space weather. “And the weather changes quite dramatically the further you get away from the Sun,” says Dodd. “In interstellar space, Voyager 1 is moving through star dust – exploded stars, the medium that's in between the stars and planetary systems.”

What would remain the same, though, is the antenna size, says Dodd. It spans 3m in diameter – and it would need to stay similar to that to be big enough to scale, given any Voyager’s distance away from the planet.

It’s no Star Wars

So what's the key to Voyager success? Dodd is clear about it: "Good engineering – and we got lucky." It's not so much lucky in terms of not hitting anything, she explains, but in the sense that the spacecraft has been robust enough and that nothing is broken. One of the reasons is that everything on board has a back-up.

"To keep the price down, they don't always build them that way now, not with that much redundancy as Voyager had," says Dodd. "That's the key reason it lasted as long, and we've always been fortunate that where we have had failures we've been able to count on the back-up side, and we haven't had any double failure yet."

One also has to look at where most failures take place, says Chris Welch, astronautics engineer at the International Space University. In terms of electronics, the Voyager spacecraft have – by modern standards – “extremely basic microcomputers, a transmitter and a receiver for communications with Earth,” he says.

But, in general, mechanisms are more difficult to make reliable than electronics – more moving parts means more possible issues, adds Welch. “Spacecraft such as Voyager have relatively few moving parts beyond some attitude control gyroscope and a movable camera platform.” And it’s exactly the camera platform that once got stuck, on Voyager 2, shortly after its passage of Saturn.

“This is a potentially fatal flaw, since the camera would not be able to properly point to the targets later on,” says Scharringhausen. “The flaw could be resolved, though, by very slowly running the mechanism to overcome resistance of some soft object that got stuck in the cogs, probably a minuscule piece of tape. Failures or flaws are not always the end of a mission.”

She hopes that both Voyagers will continue to brave the emptiness of space for at least another decade. Their power source, a radioisotope thermal generator, may last for another 8-10 years, says Welch, before the output drops owing to the decay of the plutonium. Each Voyager draws less than 400W from the generator - much less than a typical home - and the power available is declining at the rate of 4W per year due to the decay. So to keep the craft running, in the next year or two Nasa will start turning off science instruments one at a time to make sure there is enough power to operate the transmitter.

First, heaters will be switched off – all instruments are heated as space is a pretty cold place, says Dodd. “We'll then see if that instrument still operates even though it's cold. If it continues, we'll get another year of data from it and, if it doesn't, we'll turn off the instrument also. We'll have to turn off an instrument about once a year over a course of about five years,” she adds.

One day, though, Voyager may not respond to Dodd’s weekly greeting. “On a personal level, I would be very worried and very scared that we have lost the spacecraft. On a technical level, we would try to figure out why we were not hearing from it – we would send some commands to try and retrieve it.

“If we did it over a few weeks and still didn't hear back, I think we would need to declare that the mission was over. And that would be an extremely sad day. It's sort of like realising that your ageing parent has passed away.” This article appears in the print July/August issue of PE

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‘I’m out millions of dollars’: Thousands of crypto investors have their life savings frozen as Voyager files for bankruptcy protection

Robert first came across Voyager Digital in March 2020. 

Like countless others, he decided to give the cryptocurrency broker a try. The platform was easy to navigate. It offered him an up to 9% annual percentage yield (APY)—much higher than a traditional savings account. It claimed to be FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) insured . And being a publicly traded company on the Toronto Stock Exchange, he thought, how bad could Voyager be?

Robert, who asked to be identified by only his first name for privacy reasons, ultimately invested six figures on Voyager, or 70% of his savings, he tells Fortune . Another user, who invested on Voyager for about six years and asked to remain anonymous due to safety concerns, has about $38,000 invested on the platform.

But now, both of them are unable to withdraw any of their money, as the company suspended trading on July 1 and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late Tuesday. 

Voyager also is not FDIC-insured, despite its advertisements that “In the rare event your USD funds are compromised due to the company or our banking partner’s failure, you are guaranteed a full reimbursement (up to $250,000).” Its “banking partner,” Metropolitan Commercial Bank, is FDIC insured, but Voyager is not. 

Learning this, the user of six years said, was “like a kick in the stomach.” 

“Every day, honestly, I cry,” Robert says. “I don’t know what to tell my wife. As partners, we decided to [invest on Voyager], but she trusted me, more than anyone else, to make the proper decision.” 

Now these investors are learning how overleveraged Voyager was, and how it invested their savings in a now-defunct hedge fund that engaged in extremely risky behavior.

‘It’s heartbreaking’

Voyager has mainly blamed defunct hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) for its troubles, saying 3AC has not repaid a $650 million loan. 

Like the rest of the crypto market, 3AC took a hit after the Terra ecosystem collapse in May. By June, major cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network was rumored to be bankrupt , and 3AC wasn’t far behind. Their failures set off a domino effect throughout the industry as many of the major crypto lenders and funds seemed to be exposed to each other, and last week, 3AC creditors sought its liquidation in a court in the British Virgin Islands.

Voyager, however, is trying to restructure and not liquidate, meaning that it hopes to return at least a percentage of its customers’ investments, according to its court filings. Voyager also said in court filings that it may potentially offer shares or tokens in its reorganized company to customers post-bankruptcy. But in the meantime, its customers struggle being unable to withdraw their savings. As they await next steps, some have even shared thoughts of suicide and depression online.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Robert says. “I feel extremely awful because I was unprepared.” 

Voyager acted like a bank, and most of its users treated it as such. Over time, the broker began offering customers high yield for their deposits. To make good on their offerings, Voyager lent such funds to others for sometimes even higher yield.

Up until the company announced it was pausing withdrawals and filing for bankruptcy protection, Voyager continued to tell customers that it was doing fine.

Just weeks before Voyager filed for bankruptcy protection, CEO Stephen Ehrlich stated that customers’ assets were safe . In early June, Voyager tweeted that all “products and services are fully operational and remain unaffected by current market conditions, including trading, rewards, deposits, and withdrawals. We take risk management very seriously, and safeguarding customer assets is our number one priority.”

The company stated that it “never engaged in DeFi [decentralized finance] lending activities.”

Regardless of whether it engaged in DeFi lending or not, Voyager’s overexposure to 3AC became obvious once the market took a turn for the worse. The company hoped to shore up its finances after securing a roughly $500 million line of credit from quant trading shop Alameda Research in late June. But, still worried about a “run on the bank” due to users attempting to withdraw their funds, as its court filing states, Voyager ultimately decided to move forward with filing Chapter 11.

“I had no idea that Voyager would be lending [customers’ USDC] out to a hedge fund,” said the user of six years. “Had I known that it would be possibly lent out, I probably would have just kept it in cash in my safe.”

“I did every single thing a reasonable person would do, which is go through and look at the company,” Robert said. He noticed that the company wasn’t targeted by regulators and thought that was a good sign. “I should have known. Everything in hindsight, obviously, is a different thing.”

Scott Melker, a well-known crypto investor and podcaster with over 851,000 Twitter followers, tells Fortune that he has been using Voyager since 2019 and has “multiple seven figures” stuck on the platform.

It “hurts” being unable to access an account he used for savings, he says, but notes that he’s hedged his portfolio and understands that he took a big risk. Mostly, Melker feels badly about those he told Voyager about, including friends, family and his viewers. 

“I understand that people make their own decisions, but they wouldn’t have even thought about it if I had not brought [Voyager] to their attention. And, frankly, that’s worse than losing my own money,” he said.

What’s ahead

A bankruptcy lawyer and a crypto lawyer told Fortune that it’s unclear how long the bankruptcy process will take. But, they emphasized that Voyager is hoping to restructure, not liquidate, a hopeful sign for retail investors getting any of their money back. 

The company mentioned it hopes to provide its users with at least some of their funds after it reorganizes. Due to the variety of assets users bought on the platform, it’s uncertain whether users can be made entirely whole.

Melker tells Fortune that he is one of the top 50 asset holders on the platform, and the top 10 or 20 holders might have a say in what happens moving forward in the bankruptcy procedure, citing a hearing that just happened.

Voyager recently said it had approximately $1.3 billion of crypto assets on its platform, adding that the company has over $110 million of cash and owned crypto assets on hand, which will “provide liquidity to support day-to-day operations during the Chapter 11 process,” it says. Voyager also mentioned it has $350 million of customers’ cash held in an account at Metropolitan Commercial Bank. 

This experience has scarred some to such an extent that they’ve vowed to never invest in cryptocurrency again. Others, in contrast, remain bullish.

Melker, for example, doesn’t have anything against the company or its creators. His history with Voyager runs deep—the company even briefly sponsored his podcast for a small period of time when he first started it, he says. He is hopeful that he and others will see their assets again.

“Listen, I’m out millions of dollars,” he says. “You know, it’s embarrassing. I’m a person who talks about risk management and protecting your assets, but I was arguably, in hindsight, overexposed, but it was what I was comfortable with.”

Of course, Voyager users are also hoping that they will soon have access to their savings. 

“Hope, unfortunately, is not a plan, but there’s nothing I have control over,” Robert says. “All I need is to get my original assets back. I don’t need the rewards or the interest earned. I just need the assets back.”

Voyager Digital did not immediately respond to Fortune ’s request for comment.

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Voyager 1 Sends Clear Data to NASA for the First Time in Five Months

The farthest spacecraft from Earth had been transmitting nonsense since November, but after an engineering tweak, it finally beamed back a report on its health and status

Will Sullivan

Daily Correspondent

For the first time in five months, NASA has received usable data from Voyager 1, the farthest spacecraft from Earth.

The aging probe, which has traveled more than 15 billion miles into space, stopped transmitting science and engineering data on November 14. Instead, it sent NASA a nonsensical stream of repetitive binary code . For months, the agency’s engineers undertook a slow process of trial and error, giving the spacecraft various commands and waiting to see how it responded. Thanks to some creative thinking, the team identified a broken chip on the spacecraft and relocated some of the code that was stored there, according to the agency .

NASA is now receiving data about the health and status of Voyager 1’s engineering systems. The next step is to get the spacecraft to start sending science data again.

“Today was a great day for Voyager 1,” Linda Spilker , a Voyager project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said in a statement over the weekend, per CNN ’s Ashley Strickland. “We’re back in communication with the spacecraft. And we look forward to getting science data back.”

Hi, it's me. - V1 https://t.co/jgGFBfxIOe — NASA Voyager (@NASAVoyager) April 22, 2024

Voyager 1 and its companion, Voyager 2, separately launched from Earth in 1977. Between the two of them, the probes have studied all four giant planets in the outer solar system—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune—along with 48 of their moons and the planets’ magnetic fields. The spacecraft observed Saturn’s rings in detail and discovered active volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io .

Originally designed for a five-year mission within our solar system, both probes are still operational and chugging along through space, far beyond Pluto’s orbit. In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to reach interstellar space, the area between stars. The probe is now about eight times farther from the sun than Uranus is on average.

Over the decades, the Voyager spacecraft have transmitted data collected on their travels back to NASA scientists. But in November, Voyager 1 started sending gibberish .

Engineers determined Voyager 1’s issue was with one of three onboard computers, called the flight data system (FDS), NASA said in a December blog post . While the spacecraft was still receiving and executing commands from Earth, the FDS was not communicating properly with a subsystem called the telemetry modulation unit (TMU). The FDS collects science and engineering data and combines it into a package that the TMU transmits back to Earth.

Since Voyager 1 is so far away, testing solutions to its technical issues requires time—it takes 22.5 hours for commands to reach the probe and another 22.5 hours for Voyager 1’s response to come back.

On March 1, engineers sent a command that coaxed Voyager 1 into sending a readout of the FDS memory, NASA said in a March 13 blog post . From that readout, the team confirmed a small part—about 3 percent—of the system’s memory had been corrupted, NASA said in an April 4 update .

The core of the problem turned out to be a faulty chip hosting some software code and part of the FDS memory. NASA doesn’t know what caused the chip to stop working—it could be that a high-energy particle from space collided with it, or the chip might have just run out of steam after almost 50 years spent hurtling through the cosmos.

“It’s the most serious issue we’ve had since I’ve been the project manager, and it’s scary because you lose communication with the spacecraft,” Suzanne Dodd , Voyager project manager at JPL, told Scientific American ’s Nadia Drake in March.

To receive usable data again, the engineers needed to move the affected code somewhere else that wasn’t broken. But no single location in the FDS memory was large enough to hold all of the code, so the engineers divided it into chunks and stored it in multiple places, per NASA .

The team started with moving the code responsible for sending Voyager’s status reports, sending it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18. They received confirmation that the strategy worked on April 20, when the first data on the spacecraft’s health since November arrived on Earth.

In the next several weeks, the team will relocate the parts of the FDS software that can start returning science data.

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Will Sullivan is a science writer based in Washington, D.C. His work has appeared in Inside Science and NOVA Next .

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NFL Cheerleader Salaries: How Much Money Do They Make During Football Season?

The Netflix docuseries America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders has put NFL cheerleaders into the limelight during the sport’s offseason. And with all eyes on the hardest-working fans in the stadium, it begs an obvious question: Just how much do NFL cheerleaders get paid?

It turns out, not a whole lot.

NFL cheerleaders are contract workers, meaning they do not work for teams full-time and do not receive a salary. They are, instead, paid on a per-game or hourly basis.

That’s why on America’s Sweethearts you see the cheerleaders working second jobs, like group leader Kelcey Wetterberg , who is a pediatric nurse. Meanwhile cheerleading rookie Reece Allman works at a flower shop.

Related: Celebs Who Were Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders

Cowboys cheerleaders do make more than the league average, but it may not be enough to make a living.

How Much Do NFL Cheerleaders Make?

The answer varies. Cowboys cheerleaders are rumored to earn around $75,000 per year, but that doesn’t seem to match up with what current and former cheerleaders say on America’s Sweethearts .

“I would say I’m making, like, a substitute teacher [salary],” former Cowboys cheerleader Kat Puryear says in the docuseries. “I would say I’m making, like, Chick-fil-A worker that works full-time.”

As of a 2017 ESPN report , NFL cheerleaders made an average of $150 per game, plus additional money for practice time and public appearances, adding up to around $22,500 per year. Cowboys cheerleaders earned considerably more, around $500 per game, according to a 2022 report from NBC Boston .

Related: Celebrities Who Love Football: Nick Lachey, Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Swift and More

The cheerleaders work grueling hours to earn that money, too. The series highlights one stretch in December 2023 when the Cowboys cheerleaders worked 21 days straight on top of their outside jobs.

Despite the rumors, not even the series director knows exactly how much the cheerleaders make.

“I think that’s because it varies depending on how senior you are in the group,” Greg Whiteley told Glamour . “You may even get paid more if you’re a group leader, though that was never clear to me.”

Cheerleaders Have Sued the NFL to Improve their Pay

Former Oakland Raiders cheerleader Lacy Thibodeaux-Fields filed a class-action lawsuit against the NFL in 2014 for wage theft and gender discrimination. She claimed that she was only paid for the hours she was performing, not the countless hours that went into practicing her craft. That resulted in her making only $1,250 for the season.

A former Buffalo Bills cheerleader then sued the league, saying she made only $105 for the season but had to pay $600 for her uniform.

By 2020, 10 of the NFL’s 32 franchises faced a lawsuit from the cheerleaders, The Guardian reported .

Thibodeaux-Fields’ lawsuit prompted an investigation from the US Department of Labor that determined Raiders cheerleaders were only earning around $5 per hour, well below the $8 minimum wage in California at the time.

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Related: Recapping the Chiefs' Highs and Lows Since Winning the Super Bowl

How does the nfl cheerleaders’ pay compare to other gameday staff.

Naturally, the players make by far the most money of anyone working on gameday. Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow , the highest-paid player in the NFL next season, is set to make $65.7 million in 2024 alone. Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce will make $17.1 million, and the league’s minimum salary will be $795,000.

While other staff working on gameday don’t come close to the players’ bloated contracts, many make considerably more than the cheerleaders. Waterboys, for example, take home between $50,000 to $60,000 per year, according to P ro Football Network — and that’s without the grueling practice schedule that cheerleaders must endure. They are also full-time employees, entitled to holidays, a benefits package and other perks.

That’s about on par with what mascots make as well. Pro Football Network estimates they earn around $60,000 per year.

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Money blog: Energy bills 'to rise 10% in October' as wholesale costs head up again

Welcome to the Money blog, your place for personal finance and consumer news and tips. Enjoy our Weekend Money content below and we'll be back with live updates on Monday - when we'll also have a Q&A on energy prices. Submit a question below.

Sunday 30 June 2024 21:01, UK

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• Winter energy bills projected to rise for millions of households - submit a question for Q&A on Monday above
• How to split housework fairly with your partner
• Ofgem urged not to lift ban on acquisition-only energy tariffs
• Your comments : Paying off a mortgage into retirement and new cars turning faulty

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• A week when probable future of mortgage rates became clearer
• Women in Business : How accident in cafe and £400 turned into a genius business idea that's about to go global
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• Best of the Money blog - an archive

Ask a question or make a comment

Winter energy bills are projected to rise significantly due to an uptick in the wholesale market, according to a closely watched forecast.

Market specialist Cornwall Insight released an updated winter forecast ahead of the latest price cap change kicking in on Monday.

Britons who pay by direct debit will see their typical annual bill for gas and electricity go down 7%, or £122, to £1,568 this week until 1 October.

However, a 10% rise is then expected, taking the annual bill for a typical household back up to £1,763, Cornwall predicts.

This is actually slightly lower than its previous forecast - but still represents bad news for Britons who may have thought energy bills were on a linear path down following two years of sky-high prices.

"The drop in forecasts for October are positive, but we need to keep this in perspective," the Cornwall report says.

"We are still facing an average 10% increase in bills from October, and as winter approaches this will put a strain on many household finances."

We'll have experts from Cornwall Insights and consumer group Which? answering your energy-related questions here in the Money blog on Monday afternoon - so whether it's about why bills could rise again or if now is a good time to switch, submit your query above.

By Jess Sharp , Money team

Splitting up household jobs, whether that be cleaning, washing or life admin, is an issue that affects a lot of couples. 

Starling Bank found women do a total of 36 hours of household tasks and admin per week - equivalent to a full-time job. 

This is nine hours more than men - and yet men believe they do the majority in their household. The average man estimates they do 52% of work overall.

It's the discrepancy between perception and reality (and, of course, this can work both ways) that leads to arguments.

Couples who don't divide the housework equally have roughly five arguments about housework each month - rising to eight for couples who rely on just one person for the work.

We spoke to relationship expert Hayley Quinn about the best ways to split household work - and how to deal with arguments should they arise with your partner. 

She explained that it's necessary to be "transparent" when deciding how to split the workload - but also to be flexible in order to find a solution that suits all involved. 

While a 50/50 split might be your idea of perfection, Hayley said it was "almost inevitable that one partner may take on slightly more of the load" at different periods of time. 

"Striving for perfect 50/50 fairness at all times is a really nice ideal, but it just may not be that practical for modern life," she said. 

She said some jobs may be more visible than others, like cleaning, sorting out the washing, and taking the bins out.

Other jobs can take up just as much time and resource, but will fly under the radar. She gave the examples or sorting out travel insurance or changing over internet provider. 

How should you approach a conversation with your partner about splitting the work? 

To start off, Hayley said you should enter the conversation with a positive mindset - think how you are both contributing to the relationship in different ways.

"When you're having these conversations, it's not that many people are sitting around feeling like they're not contributing," Hayley said. 

"In fact, I think if there's a discrepancy in how people contribute, it's just due to a lack of awareness as to what the other partner does, and some chores are just more obviously visible than others."

Try to avoid starting the chat with the perspective that you are working a lot harder than your partner and they're not pulling their weight. 

"That way, you start from a place of we're all on the same team," she said. 

"When you're doing that as well, it's really important not to make statements which assume what the other partner is thinking, feeling, or contributing. 

"So, for instance, saying something like 'I'm always the one that's picking the kids up from school and you never do anything',  becomes easily very accusational, and this is when arguments start.

"Instead, most partners will be much more receptive if you simply ask for more help and assistance." 

When asking for help, Hayley said it's important to ask in a way that's verbal and clear - don't assume your partner is going to intuitively know what share of household chores to take on if you just complain. 

"In a nice way, explicitly ask for what you want. It could be something like saying, 'Look, I know that we're both working a long week, but I feel like there's so much to do. It would be really helpful if... I'd really appreciate it if you take over lunch,'" she explained. 

"Again, start from a place of appreciation. Acknowledge what your partner contributes already, and be explicitly clear as to what you would like them to do. Phrase it as a request for their help." 

She also said some people can feel protective of how jobs are completed, and learning to relinquish that control can be helpful. 

"If you want it to feel more equitable, you have to let your partner do things in their own way," she said. 

What happens if that doesn't work? 

If you find the conversations aren't helping, you can always try organising a rota, Hayley said. 

She recommended using Starling Bank's Share the Load tool to work out your chore split. 

However, she said if you feel there are constant conversations and nothing is changing then the issue is becoming more about communication than sharing the workload. 

"It's actually about someone not hearing what you're trying to communicate to them, so it's more of a relationship-wide issue," she said. 

She advised sitting down and trying to have another transparent verbal conversation, making it clear that you have spoken about this before and how it's making you feel in a factual way, without placing blame. 

Using phrases like "I've noticed" or "I've observed" can help, she said. 

If after all that, the situation still isn't getting better, she said it's time to consider confiding in friends or family for support, or seeing a relationship counsellor. 

The oldest and most prestigious tennis event in the world returns on Monday, with the best of the best players to battle over two weeks to be named champion.

Crowds in their thousands will flock to Wimbledon to enjoy a spot of sport - as well as the range of food and drink on offer.

It's not the cheapest day out, with a cool cup of Pimms setting you back just under £10 and a bottle of water coming in at nearly £3.

But did you know that despite souring inflation in recent years sending food prices through the roof, one fan favourite - the quintessentially British strawberries and cream combo - has stayed at the same price since 2010?

A pot of the sweet snack costs just £2.50, making it one of the more affordable offerings at the All England Club. It has been served up there since the very first Wimbledon tournament in 1877.

Perdita Sedov, Wimbledon's head of food and beverage, previously told The Telegraph the price freeze "goes back to a long-standing tradition" of strawberries and cream being associated with the championship.

"It's about being accessible to all," she said.

According to the Wimbledon website, each year more than 38.4 tonnes of strawberries are picked and consumed during the tournament.

Ofgem is being urged not to lift a ban on acquisition-only energy tariffs (deals that are available only to new customers, not existing ones).

A coalition of consumer organisations and energy companies led by Which? has penned a letter to the government regulator for electricity and gas warning it of the risk of a "return to a market which discriminates against loyal customers". 

They have also raised the potential impact on customers in debt, who may not be able to switch but could also find themselves struggling to access a better deal with their current supplier under the plans. 

The letter also notes the "very recent history" when more than 30 suppliers went bust - many after trying to win customers with unsustainably cheap tariffs.

Ofgem has said it could remove the ban on acquisition-only tariffs from 1 October but consumer choice website Which?  has research that shows the public are opposed to cheap deals that exclude existing customers, with 81% feeling it would be unfair if their supplier was offering cheaper deals to new customers only. 

The consumer champion has signed the letter to Ofgem alongside E.ON, Octopus, So Energy, Rebel Energy, End Fuel Poverty Coalition, Citizens Advice and Fair by Design.

Two topics dominated our inbox this week.

Many readers got in touch about our Weekend Money feature on older Britons who face having to work past pension age to pay off long-term mortgages.

Lots of you share the fears of those we spoke to in the feature...

I am in my 70s with still about five years to go on my mortgage. It stands at 30k on a 300k house. The mortgage repayments are £800 a month, this doesn't sound much but on a static pension it is massive and I am literally on the point of not having sufficient money to pay it. Red

I was supposed to retire in 2.5 years at 66 and 4 months, my mortgage finishes when I'm 70. I was paying off extra (double) on my previous rate to reduce an interest only mortgage, but the recent increases in mortgage rates have meant I'm paying off hardly any. AVB

I'm 67 and still trying to pay off a mortgage that has another five years to run. I can't stop working and do over 10 hours a day, 5 days a week. Keith

My problem is going to be paying off an interest-only mortgage. More than anything I wish I hadn't changed when I had my twins but we couldn't make ends meet at the time. Sazavan

Six years ago I reached the age of 70 and my interest-only mortgage ended - to extend it was impossible with the conditions attached. This then threw me into the rental market, paying more than my mortgage. Now I am facing eviction from the rental due to it being sold. Marianj

We also heard from a mortgage adviser, whose recommendations matched those of Gerard Boon, the managing director of online mortgage broker Boon Brokers, who we spoke to for the feature...

I am a mortgage adviser in Leicestershire and have found an increasing number of people asking to go as long as possible past normal retirement age. I always point out that it's great to have lower payments in the short term but you will need to work to 75. There's no choice. Semaine

Onto the second topic that dominated your correspondence, and we were sorry to learn that lots of you face similar issues as reader Adam, who has had to take his faulty car back to the garage six times - and is still not convinced it is fixed. 

Scott Dixon, from The Complaints Resolver , was on hand to help break down what Adam could do for our Money Problem feature - read his advice here:

Same thing happened to me, except that they didn't let me refund the vehicle and claimed it was my fault even though I told them about the issue during the six months' warranty multiple times... they barely replied. K

I have bought a used car and there is an engine management light on. The garage where I bought it from has since changed name and moved premises (found out by accident). When I call to book in I am told to expect a call back or the mechanic will ring me but they never do. Andy D

I have taken my car to Halfords four times in the last 14 months. Each time they guarantee me it's fixed and within a week it's back to normal. Can I get it repaired elsewhere and bill Halfords? Simon

I have a JAG SVR that's been faulty since day one, the garage sent me home with it faulty and not working correctly. I have tried to reject it but the finance company are playing David versus Goliath... we can prove issues from day one, we have two vehicle reports to back it up. Jezza

Have a Nissan Juke, which has a seat issue where it sinks on its own… Nissan saying it's not a manufacturing fault, but "user error". Where do I stand in getting it fixed? Technical team keeps fobbing it off as our fault. Esmith97

If you're in a position like this, do check out Scott Dixon's advice in the feature above.

The Money blog is your place for consumer news, economic analysis and everything you need to know about the cost of living - bookmark news.sky.com/money.

It runs with live updates every weekday - while on Saturdays we scale back and offer you a selection of weekend reads.

Check them out this morning and we'll be back on Monday with rolling news and features.

The Money team is Bhvishya Patel, Jess Sharp, Katie Williams, Brad Young, Ollie Cooper and Mark Wyatt, with sub-editing by Isobel Souster. The blog is edited by Jimmy Rice.

Starting from next month, gamers will be able to play Xbox titles like Fallout 4, Starfield and Fortnite using Amazon Fire TV.

A new upgrade coming to the Fire TV 4K devices transforms your television into a console, thanks to Xbox Cloud Gaming.

You'll need to be a member of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to take advantage, plus you'll need a compatible controller and a solid internet connection.

"One of the biggest benefits of cloud gaming is the ability to play premium games without needing a console," Amazon explained.

"The Fire TV Stick may be compact, but it can stream and run graphically intense Xbox games like Senua's Saga: Hellblade II.

"This portability also means you can easily move your cloud gaming setup from the living room TV to a different room or even take it on the road.

"As long as you have a solid internet connection and your compatible Fire TV Stick, and a compatible controller, you can take your Xbox Game Pass games and saved progress travels with you."

Once downloaded, the Xbox app is designed to offer a smooth and seamless experience. Here’s how it works:

• Install and launch the Xbox app from your Fire TV device;
• Sign in with your Microsoft account to play. If you’re an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate member, you’ll have instant access to hundreds of cloud-enabled games;
• Connect a Bluetooth-enabled wireless controller. Controllers like the Xbox Wireless Controller, Xbox Adaptive Controller, PlayStation DualSense, or DualShock 4 controller are all compatible.

A new Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K will set you back £59.99 on Amazon, while a new Xbox Wireless Controller costs £49.59.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate currently costs £1 for the first 14 days for new members, then is billed at £12.99 per month.

House prices are overvalued by thousands of pounds, according to a major property company.

The typical property is £20,000 more than is affordable to the average household, says Zoopla.

But rising incomes and longer mortgage terms mean the "over-valuation" is expected to disappear by the end of the year.

Zoopla's report said: "House prices still look expensive on various measures of affordability.

"We expect house price inflation to remain muted, likely to rise more slowly than household incomes over the next one to two years."

The average house price is around £264,900 – but according to Zoopla's calculations, the affordable price is £245,200.

"A new government will add a dimension of political stability when the autumn market starts in September and even if the [Bank of England base] rate is not lower by then, a cut will be imminent," said Tom Bill, head of UK residential research at estate agent Knight Frank.

"Given that mortgage rates will steadily reduce as services inflation comes under control, we expect UK house prices to rise by 3% this year."

Zoopla's over-valuation estimate was reached by comparing the actual average house price in its index with an "affordable" price, which was calculated based on households' disposable incomes, average mortgage rates and average deposit sizes for home buyers.

It's one of the most iconic and popular music festivals in the world, and it's notoriously hard to get a ticket.

Glastonbury has rolled around once again and roughly 210,000 people have flocked to Somerset this year as Dua Lipa, Coldplay and SZA headline the UK's biggest festival this weekend.

Those in the crowd are in the lucky minority — an estimated 2.5 million people tried to get tickets for this year's event, meaning the odds really aren't in your favour if you fancy going.

Tickets routinely sell out within an hour of going on sale, and that demand is unlikely to decrease next year, given the festival will likely take a fallow year in 2026.

So, if you're feeling jealous this year, how do you get tickets for Glastonbury 2025, and how can you give yourself the best possible chance?

We've run through all the available details as well as some tips so you're best prepared when the time comes.

Registration details:  Before potential festivalgoers get the chance to buy tickets, they must register on the official website.

One of the reasons this is done is to stop ticket touting, with all tickets non-transferable. Each ticket features the photograph of the registered ticket holder, with security checks carried out to ensure that only the person in the photograph is admitted to the festival.

Registration is free and only takes a few minutes. You will be asked to provide basic contact details and to upload a passport-standard photo.

Registration closes a few weeks before tickets are released.

Where to buy tickets:  Tickets can be bought exclusively at  glastonbury.seetickets.com   once they become available.

No other site or agency will be allocated tickets, so if you see anyone else claiming to have Glastonbury tickets available for purchase, it's most likely a scam.

When tickets go on sale: We don't know the details for next year yet - but Glastonbury ticket sales usually take place in October or November of the year before the festival. 

This year's ticket sales began, following a delay, in November 2023. Coach tickets typically go on sale a few days before (traditionally on a Thursday), with general admission tickets following on the Sunday morning a few days later.

For those that miss out, there's also a resale that takes place in April for tickets that have been returned or for those with a balance that has not been paid.

This year's April resale took place on 18 April (for ticket and coach travel options) and 21 April (general admission tickets and accommodation options).

How much it costs:  General admission tickets for this year's festival cost £355 each, plus a £5 booking fee. That's an increase on last year's price of £335 each, which was also an increase on the 2022 price of around £280.

So, we can probably assume that ticket prices will go up once again for next year's festival. 

Remember, there are options to pay for your ticket in instalments, so you won't have to pay the full price in one go if you don't want to. All tickets are subject to a £75 deposit, with the remaining balance payable by the first week of April.

It's also worth noting that Glastonbury is a family festival, and that's reflected in the fact that children aged 12 and under when the festival takes place are admitted free of charge.

TIPS FOR THE BIG TICKET SALE DAY

The scramble for tickets when they go on general sale is nothing short of painstaking, with demand far outweighing supply.

Here are some tips to give you the best possible chance of bagging tickets:

Familiarise yourself with the website: You may see a reduced, bare-looking version of the booking page once you gain entry. The organisers say this is intentional to cope with high traffic and does not mean the site has crashed, so be sure not to refresh or leave the page.

Once you reach the first page of the booking site, you will need to enter the registration number and registered postcode for yourself and the other people you are attempting to book tickets for.

When you proceed, the details you have provided will be displayed on the next page.

Once you have double checked all of your information is correct, click 'confirm' to enter the payment page, where you will need to check/amend your billing address, confirm your payment information, accept the terms and conditions, and complete the checkout within the allocated time.

Timekeeping: You can get timed out if you don't act fast, so it's a good idea to have your details saved on a separate document so you can copy and paste them over quickly.

You might also have to approve your payment, which could mean answering security questions from your card issuer. Have a device on hand to ensure you're ready for this.

Internet connection: This should go without saying, but you won't stand a chance without a solid internet connection.

Avoid trying to rely on your mobile phone signal, and politely ask those you might share the internet with to delay any online activity that might slow your connection.

Don't give up: Until the page tells you that tickets have sold out, you still have a chance. 

Shortly before that point, there will be a message saying 'all available tickets have now been allocated,' which users often think means their chances are up. 

What it actually means is that orders are being processed for all the tickets that are available. But if somebody whose order is being processed doesn't take our previous advice and runs out of time, their loss could be your gain.

Multiple tabs and devices: Glastonbury advises against its customers trying to run multiple tabs and devices to boost their chances of getting a ticket.

Glastonbury's website says running multiple devices simultaneously is "a waste of valuable resources, and doesn't reflect the ethos of the festival".

"Please stick to one device and one tab," it adds, "so that you can focus on entering your details without confusing your browser and help us make the ticket sale as quick and stress free as possible for all."

Shoppers have been buying bigger TVs to enjoy this summer's European Championships, according to the electrical retailer Currys.

The chain said UK sales were up by more than 30% in the past month, with "supersize" screens — 85-inch and above — selling well in the run-up to the Euros.

"Having a third of the TV market and the Euros being a big event for many people, we're seeing that super-sizing trend keep on giving," said Currys chief executive Alex Baldock.

The most popular, and also cheapest, 85-inch TV on the Currys website costs £999. 

The most expensive super-size TV is a 98-inch offering from Samsung that will set you back £9,499.

Currys reported adjusted pre-tax profits of £118m for the year to 27 April. That represented a 10% increase from the previous year's profits of £107m.

Like-for-like sales for Currys UK and Ireland declined by 2% to £4.97bn in the 12 months to 27 April, with consumer confidence knocked by high inflation levels and rising interest rates.

"We can see our progress in ever-more engaged colleagues, more satisfied customers and better financial performance," Mr Baldock added.

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5 takeaways from the first Trump-Biden 2024 debate

The president stumbled repeatedly, and the former president made false claims repeatedly.

The Washington Post is providing this news free to all readers as a public service.

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President Biden and former president Donald Trump faced off in the first of two 2024 presidential debates Thursday night in Atlanta.

The unusually early first debate came as Biden appears to struggle in the rematch of the 2020 campaign and as Republicans are buoyant about Trump’s chances. But polls suggest it’s still a close race in the key states.

So what did we learn? And what marked the first big clash between the two candidates?

Below are our takeaways.

1. Biden was rough

Perhaps the biggest question heading into the night was how Biden would manage, given voters’ strong concerns about his age and sharpness, as well as his campaign’s previous reluctance to debate.

Biden gave an energetic State of the Union address in March. But it didn’t appear to allay many of those concerns, and jousting with an opponent at a debate — rather than giving a scripted speech — is a different animal.

Thursday wasn’t as strong a performance. At points, it was downright rough.

Biden came out raspy and with relatively little vigor or inflection in his voice. He stumbled over his words and lines of argument. Perhaps the most striking example came as he tried to make an early point about health care, failing to finish his thought before his time was up.

“[We’re] making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with —” Biden said, before trailing off and adding, “the covid — excuse me, with — dealing with everything we have to do with — look — if — we finally beat Medicare.”

It’s at this point that the moderator said his time was up.

Later on, while talking about the border, Biden said, “I’m going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the — the total initiative, relative to what we can do with more Border Patrol and more asylum officers.”

Trump shot back, “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

Later in the debate, Biden sought to get a little feistier, referring to Trump as a “whiner” over his statements that Capitol riot defendants were too harshly treated. He called him a “loser” and a “child.” But the points didn’t land with much force, just like much of Biden’s performance.

Shortly after the debate, Democrats set about fretting about Biden’s candidacy in a way we haven’t seen before — one top former Biden White House aide called his performance “ really disappointing ” — and the worries will probably continue in the days ahead.

2024 presidential election

2. Biden got some rare traction on Jan. 6, Trump’s legal problems

If there were good moments for Biden, it’s when the conversation turned to democracy; the Jan. 6 , 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol; and Trump’s legal problems.

Biden made a point to highlight Trump’s felony convictions — “The only person on the stage who’s a convicted felon right now is the man I’m looking at right now” — and cite the substance of the former president’s other problems. He mentioned “sex with a porn star” (the underlying alleged event in Trump’s Manhattan conviction) and “molesting a woman in public” (which Trump has been found liable for in the E. Jean Carroll civil case).

Biden also sought to put Trump on the spot over his suggestions that Jan. 6 defendants have been persecuted, something the American people broadly disagree with.

“The idea that those people are patriots? Come on,” Biden said.

Toward the end, Biden told Trump that following his 2020 loss — after which he sought to overturn the results, leading to two of his indictments — “something snapped in you.”

Trump didn’t have great responses, except to cite his claims that his cases have been brought by a weaponized justice system — something that, like Jan. 6 pardons, Americans aren’t on board with . He didn’t really stand by his past comments about Jan. 6 pardons. At one point, he felt compelled to deny having had sex with Stormy Daniels (“I didn’t have sex with a porn star, number one,” he said.)

While Trump’s Manhattan conviction doesn’t appear to have hurt him much so far, it’s also evident that many Americans — especially casual watchers of politics — are unfamiliar with many of these specifics .

But this was largely the exception. Despite Biden’s hopes to turn the 2024 election into a choice and even a referendum on Trump, much of the debate wound up focusing on Biden.

3. Trump unleashed many false claims

It’s no surprise at this point, but Trump’s performance included his usual stream of false and misleading claims.

They included his false claim to having capped insulin costs before Biden did ; blue states executing babies after birth ; there being no terrorist attacks on his watch ; Biden’s wanting to quadruple people’s taxes; and Biden’s having indicted him. (There is no evidence of Biden’s involvement in the cases.)

Biden had a few, too, including at one point mixing up when Trump was accused of having his tryst with Daniels. (He said Melania Trump was pregnant; in fact, she had a young child).

4. A great debate it wasn’t

There were plenty of questions before the debate about whether the format would work. In addition to being very early, the debate featured no audience and a mute button if the candidates talked over one another.

The format mostly worked okay. But that didn’t make it a great debate.

Whether because of the mute button or not, we avoided a replay of the messy food fight of a first 2020 debate . The candidates seemed to understand that talking when it wasn’t their turn wouldn’t do any good.

The lack of an audience also meant they weren’t playing to a crowd — and the crowd wasn’t influencing the affair.

But even without all the shouting and theater, the debate was hardly a substantial master class. It really didn’t get into much of a contrast on the issues.

Trump largely filibustered, repeating his false claims, mostly without fact-checking by Biden and not really at all by the debate moderators (who decided beforehand that it wasn’t their role ). Biden struggled to make his points and drive the contrasts in a way that deprived the proceedings of much flow, though he did counter some of Trump’s claims.

It’s not clear any format could have made for a more compelling debate. Many of the problems traced to the candidates themselves. But it just wasn’t the kind of debate that seems likely to whet people’s appetites for the campaign.

Toward the end of the debate, the two candidates saw fit to argue about their golf games, with Biden talking about his drive and handicap and Trump casting doubt on his ability.

“Let’s not act like children,” Trump eventually said.

“You are a child,” Biden responded.

It was a fitting moment.

5. Trump finally takes an abortion position

Trump has strained to avoid getting pinned down on his abortion position, seeking to say merely that it should be a state’s choice and trying to leave it at that .

But on Thursday night, Trump did — at long last and after blowing his previous deadline for offering a position — finally weigh in on the abortion pill mifepristone .

“First of all, the Supreme Court just approved the abortion pill, and I agree with their decision to have done that, and I will not block it,” Trump said.

The Supreme Court didn’t actually “approve” the abortion pill, instead rejecting a challenge to it based on a technicality.

But it’s a potentially significant statement, given Democrats have cautioned that a second Trump administration could target the abortion pill using an antiquated federal law. It’s the latest signal that Trump fears what restricting abortion in a post- Roe v. Wade world could mean for his candidacy. Imagine even a few years ago that a Republican presidential candidate would say he supports the abortion pill.

Election 2024

Follow live updates from the 2024 campaign trail a day after President Biden and Donald Trump faced off in the first presidential debate of 2024. Here are takeaways and fact checks from the debate .

Who is running: President Biden and Donald Trump secured their parties’ nominations for the presidency . Here’s how we ended up with a Trump-Biden rematch .

Key dates and events: Voters in all states and U.S. territories have been choosing their party’s nominee for president ahead of the summer conventions. Here are key dates and events on the 2024 election calendar .

Abortion and the election: Voters in about a dozen states could decide the fate of abortion rights with constitutional amendments on the ballot in a pivotal election year. Biden supports legal access to abortion , and he has encouraged Congress to pass a law that would codify abortion rights nationwide. After months of mixed signals about his position, Trump said the issue should be left to states . Here’s how Biden’s and Trump’s abortion stances have shifted over the years.