Portrait of the year | 13 December 2018

January

Four young men were stabbed to death in London as the New Year began. The Crown Prosecution Service was to review rape cases, after several prosecutions collapsed when evidence was not disclosed to the defence. Carillion went into liquidation. London Zoo delayed its annual stock take after a fire killed an aardvark called Misha. Turkish forces shelled the Kurdish enclave of Afrin. The supreme court of Iceland upheld an import tariff on potato chips of 76 per cent. The Grand Mufti of Egypt said that bitcoin was forbidden by Islam. California legalised recreational cannabis.

February

The Charity Commission launched an inquiry into Oxfam staff paying for prostitutes in Haiti in 2011. The number of child sexual abuse victims in Rotherham (1997-2013) was more than 1,500, the National Crime Agency said. Henry Bolton was removed as leader of Ukip. Britain sold HMS Ocean to Brazil. Toys R Us went into administration. The Syrian government continued to bombard Eastern Ghouta, near Damascus. Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, members of an Islamic State cell said to have beheaded 27 people, were held by Kurdish forces.

March

Sergei Skripal, a retired Russian intelligence officer, and his daughter Yulia were found in a bad way on a bench in Salisbury, poisoned by the Russian nerve agent novichok. Cumbrian villagers, cut off by snow, burnt furniture to keep warm. ‘We recognise that anti-Semitism has occurred in pockets within the Labour party,’ Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, said. Facebook apologised for data from millions of users being ‘leaked’ in 2014. The Five Star Movement became Italy’s biggest party. Carles Puigdemont, the breakaway leader of Catalonia, was arrested in Schleswig-Holstein. Vladimir Putin was re-elected President of Russia. President Donald Trump of the United States imposed higher tariffs on steel imports. He sacked Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, replacing him with Mike Pompeo.