Every three days, a woman in Britain is killed at the hands of a man: her partner, her son, a stranger, even a serving police officer. So normalised are these cases that many victims’ stories go untold. Since the beginning of 2024, we have committed to running a story each time a man is charged with killing a woman. Yesterday, on International Women’s Day, we marked the lives of the 12 women allegedly killed by a man this year.
The history of UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia is steeped in scandal and corruption – much of it exposed by the Guardian. Now, an investigation by David Pegg and Rob Evans raises questions about why the Ministry of Defence paid millions to a company later alleged to have been a conduit for secret payments to high-ranking Saudi Arabian officials, as recently as 2017. The investigation comes at a time when two men were acquitted of bribing high-ranking Saudis after their lawyers successfully argued that the payments were authorised at the highest levels of the British government.
Despite Super Tuesday’s predictable outcome, our US team didn’t take the stakes for granted, and brought energy and urgency to our coverage. Osita Nwanevu provided sobering analysis of how the US could be sleepwalking into another Trump term. David Smith covered a State of the Union address in which Joe Biden came out swinging.
As Israel’s war on Gaza entered a sixth month, international pressure continued to build on Israel to facilitate humanitarian aid delivery amid soaring hunger. Aseel Mousa and Emma Graham-Harrison told the story of Bilal el-Essi, one of 100 people killed trying to get food aid in Gaza City. Shukri Fleifel, a 21-year-old photographer and film-maker, who was also in the crowd described the scenes as “worse than anything depicted in a horror movie”.
After a February ruling by Alabama’s supreme court that frozen embryos are “children”, IVF services in the state were quickly halted. This week the state passed a law protecting IVF providers from lawsuits. Meanwhile, in France, parliament made abortion a constitutional right, a move that columnist Agnès Poirier described as a rare moment of unity for the country and one which could help push forward abortion rights around the world.
In the final budget in the UK before the election, our team kept the focus on the impact on people outside Westminster. The disillusionment and anger of voters (and non-voters) in many different parts of the country was visceral.
With an increase in cost of living pressures, and supermarket giants facing accusations of price gouging, readers in Australia loved this constructive and informative piece by Daisy Dumas and Mostafa Rachwani on the food co-ops and families saving a fortune by buying in bulk at a Sydney fruit and veg market.
Europe environment correspondent Ajit Niranjan visited a church in Spain that should be under water, having been flooded in the 1960s during the creation of a reservoir. Now, due to severe drought, it has resurfaced. Ajit spoke to local farmers, politicians and scientists about the devastating impact of the drought. By contrast environment correspondent Damien Gayle published an uplifting story about the “pay-what-you-can” Long Table restaurant in south-west England which rescues food waste, sources local produce and pays the real living wage.
South Asia correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Aakash Hassan told the shocking stories of the Indian and Nepali men who signed up for jobs in Russia, Germany or Dubai and then found themselves on the Russian frontlines in Ukraine against their will. Meanwhile, Rachel Hall met academics from the destroyed Ukrainian city of Mariupol who are taking inspiration from Hull, in northern England, which was successfully regenerated after brutal bombing during the second world war.
Marina Hyde amusingly summed up the scandal surrounding Red Bull’s Formula One boss Christian Horner as a “Keeping Up With the Carkrashians” soap opera, while Jonathan Liew explored F1’s other ethical and moral dilemmas as the scandal coincided with this weekend’s racing in Saudi Arabia.
John Harris had a lively interview with legendary tech journalist Kara Swisher, who pulled no punches about Elon Musk (“[He] needs to be adored. That’ll kill you”) and Mark Zuckerberg (“the most damaging man in tech”). The piece featured brilliant portraits by Shuran Huang.
