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Capt . Harith al-Sudani, Iraq’s most successful spy, died behind enemy lines and his body was never recovered. His grieving family needed proof of his death in order to get the benefits owed to a fallen serviceman. For a year their requests were stymied by Iraq’s slow-moving bureaucracy.

Margaret Coker, The Times’s Baghdad bureau chief, spent five months reporting Captain Sudani’s story. Twelve hours after her article was published, an assistant to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi called the Sudanis’ home in Baghdad, offering to intervene on their behalf. A few days later, the family was told a formal death certificate would be issued.

Two other recent articles from our international desk also were followed by swift action: one by Hannah Beech, our Southeast Asia bureau chief, on the uproar over a case of a child bride in Malaysia; and one by Norimitsu Onishi, our Johannesburg bureau chief, and Selam Gebrekidan, a foreign correspondent based in London , on the lack of school sanitation in South Africa .