Angelique Chrisafis was in court as Gisèle Pelicot took to the stand in the trial of her husband and the 50 other men accused of raping and abusing her (this particular article, comprehensive and bleak, achieved a huge audience this week). Gisèle told the court she was driven by a desire to change society and expose rape culture; as Ashifa Kassam writes, she has become a feminist icon all over the world as a result.
When King Charles was heckled by Indigenous senator Lidia Thorpe during his tour of Canberra, our reporters in Australia covered the fallout. Celeste Liddle wrote about why Thorpe’s outburst would not have been a shock had Australians known the whole truth about Indigenous history. Indigenous affairs editor Lorena Allam and reporter Sarah Collard looked at how Thorpe’s claims about the crown stacked up.
Zeinab Mohammed Salih spoke to desperate Sudanese refugees in Chad, where underfunded and overcrowded camps are struggling to accommodate the record numbers fleeing relentless violence in Darfur and a growing hunger crisis.
Ahmed Najar wrote about his family’s nightmare plight in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp: “My family, like so many others in Gaza, has run out of ways to survive. They’ve run out of hope, out of ways to cope.”
In a big scoop Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Lucy Osborne revealed claims by former model Stacey Williams that Donald Trump touched her in an unwanted sexual way in 1993, after Jeffrey Epstein introduced them. Trump’s spokesperson denied the allegations. Stephanie also recently reported how the leader of the US National Rifle Association was allegedly involved in the sadistic killing of a cat in his fraternity days. Guardian US columnist Sidney Blumenthal wrote powerfully about how Donald Trump’s planned rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday – an eerie echo of the infamous American Nazi mass rally held there on 20 February 1939 – will be the ultimate act of ego and the climax of his Hitlerian rhetoric.
Britain’s long history of links to enslavement, and the wealth that flowed from it, is impossible to ignore. Universities, the Church of England and the Guardian are among a growing number of institutions to have recognised this publicly and announced steps towards reparative justice. Before Labour came to power, its rising star David Lammy was among those calling for reparations to be paid to Caribbean nations. Now, as foreign secretary, he travelled with Keir Starmer to Samoa for the major Commonwealth summit amid pressure for the UK government to act. While Starmer has repeatedly ruled out apologising and paying reparations, he has opened the door to non-cash forms of restorative justice. We examined what experts say this might look like.
Since 1990, four police firearms officers have been charged with murder in the UK; none has been convicted. This week Martyn Blake was acquitted of murdering Chris Kaba in south London, during 13 seconds of chaos. The verdict prompted fury on both sides – from Kaba’s family and among many in UK Black communities, as well as from police. Vikram Dodd revealed how officers plan to use this acquittal to gain greater protections.
What is a fair price to pay for a bottle of wine? Or bed linen? Or olive oil? Our experts found out for the latest popular piece from our new sustainability-minded consumer guide The Filter (sign up to the newsletter here).
I enjoyed Kira Cochrane’s interview with the strongest woman in the world; Miranda Sawyer making the case for Britpop; and Zoe Williams on why Rivals, the saucy TV adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s novel, is making her surprisingly nostalgic for the 80s.
One more thing … I’ve been in China this week, meeting people with our senior China correspondent, Amy Hawkins. On the trip I reread Red Memory, a superb book about how the Cultural Revolution shaped contemporary China, written by another Guardian colleague, Tania Branigan. I also read Private Revolutions, by Yuan Yang, an enlightening nonfiction work detailing the changing lives of four women born in the 80s and 90s who left rural China for work in the cities, one of the dominant trends of recent decades. The writer was until very recently a journalist in the UK, before becoming a Labour MP in the last election.
