Sometimes finding the right story for the Weekly’s front page can be a tricky business, but this week was not one of those occasions. Our lead, examining the tobacco industry’s dirty war for the African cigarette market, is an investigation in the best traditions of the Guardian Weekly, touching on economics, global health and corporate political lobbying. Sarah Boseley’s report from Nairobi shines a light on an industry that many people in the developed world might have thought was in retreat, but which in fact has some ambitious plans for future growth.
The Guardian has launched several big-issue journalistic campaigns of late, one of which we give expanded coverage to inside the paper. As US policies introduced by Donald Trump slash funds for international family planning programs, we take a look at how looming cuts are damaging campaigns to improve women’s economic chances and address concerns over population growth in the world’s poorest countries.
A new series of articles focusing on inequality takes us to Sweden, ranked highest internationally in terms of its efforts to tackle social imbalance, but which none the less has problems of its own to address.
International news coverage takes us from the US to Venezuela via China, France, Iraq and Jupiter (not strictly a global destination, of course, but no less fascinating for that). UK coverage looks at the increasingly chaotic efforts to get the legal administrative challenges of Brexit in hand, as well as a disturbing spate of acid attacks in London.
The Weekly Review section bids a welcome return to the Guardian’s former technology editor Charles Arthur, who considers whether the time has come for the power of the internet’s tech giants to be reined in.
An expanded Discovery section takes an anxious look at the rapid decline of many animal species, a phenomenon some experts are describing somewhat ominously as the Earth’s sixth mass extinction. Luckily it’s not all bad news for life on Earth, as an examination of efforts to re-establish migratory bird havens in Kabul proves.
Books takes us though the doors of a new writers’ museum in Chicago, while Culture meets Samira Wiley, one of the stars of the claustrophobic and brilliant new TV dramatisation of The Handmaid’s Tale.
Sport hails Switzerland’s Roger Federer, conqueror of Wimbledon for a record eighth time, and Spain’s Garbiñe Muguruza, winner of her first women’s title and very likely not her last.
The last word goes to American climate scientist Victoria Herrmann, who reminds us that, in spite of the country’s current bleak environmental policies outlook, there are many stories of individual hope still waiting to be told.
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