World news | The Guardian

Counsel for former PM says he should be able to refer to secret cabinet documents when giving evidence

ACCC says they will closely monitor companies to ensure they do not keep prices high through artificial scarcity

NSW treasurer says referendum is an ‘opportunity to unite the nation’ and the party’s backing would ensure broad support for yes vote

Labour-endorsed study finds initiative would save families thousands of pounds, cut benefits spending and raise tax revenuesFree universal preschool childcare and more funding for after-school clubs could increase government revenues and save a family with young children between £620 and £6,175 a year, a joint report endorsed by the Labour party has revealed.The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and the charity Save the Children have called for a universal childcare guarantee for all families until the end of primary school to allow more women to get back into work and reduce the attainment gap between rich and poor children in their early years. Continue reading...

Accolade presented by Florence Pugh at London ceremony that Balenciaga creative head was absent from after ad controversyPierpaolo Piccioli, the creative director of Valentino, has won the designer of the year award at the 2022 Fashion Awards.Piccioli was presented with his award on Monday night by the actor Florence Pugh, who regularly wears the Italian brand for red carpet events. Continue reading...

Ruling party’s decision is a relief for the country’s president after doubts about his political futureSouth Africa’s ruling African National Congress party has said it will block attempts to impeach the country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, at a crucial vote in parliament on Tuesday, providing relief to the embattled leader after days of uncertainty about his political future.Ramaphosa launched legal action on Monday to challenge a report handed over last week by an independent panel appointed by parliament that accused him of serious misconduct after the theft from his private game ranch of somewhere between $500,000 (£410,000) and $5m in cash almost three years ago. Continue reading...

No reports of missile impacts in Kyiv but two killed in Zaporizhzhia and Odesa hit hard after Russian strike follows blasts at Russian airfields. This blog is now closed

Proposals, including abolishing House of Lords, aimed at moving power away from LondonKeir Starmer has vowed to undertake a root-and-branch reform of the UK constitution, moving political power out of London, banning second jobs for MPs and abolishing the House of Lords.The plans are a victory for the former prime minister Gordon Brown, who has pushed for Labour to set out a bold strategy that would hand new powers to local and regional government, including over transport and infrastructure, development funding, housing, training and jobcentres. Continue reading...

Keir Starmer had something for everyone in his speech, but the details were a little sketchyGo out on to the streets of Leeds, Keir Starmer told the BBC’s Chris Mason. And what you will hear is that people have a passion for constitutional reform. Not sure that’s exactly what I overhear when I’m out and about. The conversations I eavesdrop tend to be rather more mundane. Why the buses and trains aren’t running on time. Hospital appointments being cancelled. The cost of living. What they are planning on eating that night.But no one can accuse Labour of ducking the difficult issues. Where the Conservatives are out of ideas, running on fumes and trying not to collapse under the weight of the latest daily crisis – the political entropy of 12 years in government – Starmer is trying to think beyond daily survival. Continue reading...

Shopkeepers and truck drivers from almost 40 cities are participating in mass walkoutsIranian shopkeepers and truck drivers staged a walkout in nearly 40 cities and towns on Monday after calls for a three-day nationwide general strike from protesters as the government declined to confirm a claim by a senior official that the morality police had been abolished.Iranian newspapers instead reported an increase in patrols, especially in religious cities, requiring women to wear the hijab, and shop managers being directed by the police to reinforce hijab restrictions. Continue reading...

Family pays tribute to one of four Vietnamese men whose bodies were found at millThe family of one of four men whose bodies were found after a mill fire in Oldham earlier this year say they are devastated to learn of the “most terrible circumstances” of his death.An inquest into the deaths of Cuong Van Chu and three other Vietnamese men whose remains were found by demolition workers in August after a fire at the derelict Bismark House Mill in May, was opened and adjourned pending a criminal investigation. Continue reading...

Hip replacements fell 46% in UK as a result of Covid and knee operations by 68%, study findsBritain may be the hobbling man of Europe, according to figures showing that the fall in the number of hip and knee surgeries as a result of the Covid pandemic was greater in the UK than in any EU country.The number of hip replacement operations fell 46% in 2020 in the UK, compared with just 7% in Germany and 12% in France. Meanwhile, the number of knee operations slumped 68% in the UK, compared with just 3% in Finland and an average of 24% across the EU. Continue reading...

No plans to amend legislation that could stop removal back to Greece, after secret talks held over their futureRishi Sunak has ruled out changing a law that could prevent the British Museum from handing the Parthenon marbles back to Greece, after it emerged that trustees have held secret talks with the Greek prime minister about the future of the artefacts.The prime minister’s official spokesperson said there were no plans to amend legislation under which a museum can dispose of objects within its collection only in very limited circumstances. However, it could decide to lend part of the collection to Greece. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Officials told of delays caused by Dominic Raab’s refusal to review Kabul evacuation documents in formats he did not likeA meeting of Ministry of Justice officials at which Dominic Raab’s conduct was discussed was told “people had died” in the Afghanistan evacuation because of his refusal to review documents in formats which he did not like, the Guardian has been told.Raab, who was formerly foreign secretary but was recently reappointed as justice secretary and deputy prime minister, is the subject of an investigation into bullying allegations, first revealed by the Guardian. They have led to Rishi Sunak’s judgment being called into question for bringing him back into the cabinet. Continue reading...

Jewellery and watches stolen during break-in on Saturday at Leatherhead home of England footballerJewellery and watches were among items stolen at the Surrey home of the England footballer Raheem Sterling in a burglary that forced the winger to return to the UK from the World Cup in Qatar.Surrey police confirmed it was investigating a burglary at a property in Oxshott, Leatherhead, after Sterling missed England’s win against Senegal in the knockout stages of the tournament on Sunday due to a “family matter”. Continue reading...

Economists widely predict 25 basis point rise but some say central bank may consider pausing rates after seven straight hikes

‘There’s too much risk in doing it on our own’, says shadow defence minister citing an immediate need for ‘hard power’

Emails show how NSW premier Dominic Perrottet’s advisers, along with several other ministers, sought to fast-track bill after media furore

Chinese fashion retailer responds after Channel 4 documentary alleged 18-hour days with one day off a monthThe Chinese fashion retailer Shein has vowed to invest $15m (£12.2m) in improving standards at its supplier factories as it admitted working hours at two sites breached local regulations.The online brand said an independent investigation, launched after allegations over labour abuse made in a recent UK documentary, had uncovered that employees at two of its Chinese sites were working hours that were longer than allowed. Continue reading...

Former Conservative MP was jailed for 18 months in May for sexually assaulting teenage boy in 2008The former Wakefield MP Imran Ahmad Khan has lost a court of appeal challenge against his conviction for sexual assault.Khan was sentenced to 18 months in jail in May, and expelled from the Conservative party, for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy after plying him with gin at a party in 2008. Continue reading...

Nick Read will be replaced as CEO by finance chief Margherita Della Valle during search for successorThe Vodafone chief executive, Nick Read, is to step down after failing to reverse a sharp fall in the company’s share price, as the telecoms company launches steep cost cuts and potential job losses.Read, a two-decade Vodafone veteran who has run the company since 2018, has been ousted after failing to get to grips with a more than 40% fall in the company’s share price during his four-year tenure. Continue reading...

Pilot scheme is under way in Cornwall, with hope that self-testing will ease pressure on NHSThe midlife health check with a GP, designed to spot some of the most common conditions that affect people as they age, is to be moved online in England, relying increasingly on self-testing, under plans announced by ministers.A pilot scheme is under way in Cornwall, with health officials saying they hope to capitalise on people’s increased familiarity with testing themselves at home and reporting the results online since the emergence of Covid, to ease the burden on the NHS. But, while some patients’ groups welcomed the move, they said self-testing would not be for everyone. Continue reading...

Big Brother Watch’s FoI request shows force rebuked by watchdog for recording 2019 school strike action in LondonPolice unlawfully spied on children as young as 10 taking part in a climate strike protest in London, documents have shown.The previously unseen papers reveal the Metropolitan police was rebuked by the information commissioner’s office (ICO) for video surveillance of the March 2019 protest, which was attended by up to 10,000 children and young people. Continue reading...

Activists are cautiously hopeful that the incoming president will bring relief to Bolsonaro’s forest-wrecking administrationIt was a hunting shotgun like to the one used to murder Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira – and it was pointing straight at Julia Kanamari’s chest.“You’ll be next,” she remembers the bleary-eyed gunman snarling after being caught smuggling a boat-load of illegally poached river turtles out of the Javari Valley Indigenous territory in the Brazilian Amazon. Continue reading...

Matthew Jordan Lindner of Texas is alleged to have harassed and threatened to kill a doctor at Fenway Institute center in BostonA Texas man has been charged with threatening a Boston doctor for providing medical care to transgender patients and gender-nonconforming children.On Friday, the US attorney’s office in Massachusetts said Matthew Jordan Lindner, 38 and from Comfort, Texas, was arrested and charged with one count of transmitting interstate threats. Continue reading...

Term resonates with people feeling ‘overwhelmed’ with having to present their best selves“Goblin mode” has been chosen by the public as the 2022 Oxford word of the year. The term, which refers to “a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations”, has become the first word of the year to have been decided by public vote.Given a choice of three words (or phrases/hashtags – “word” is defined fairly loosely), narrowed down by lexicographers from Oxford University Press (OUP), more than 340,000 English speakers around the world cast their vote. Continue reading...

Flavia Nascimento insists Brazilian footballing great ‘is not saying goodbye right now’The Brazilian footballing great Pelé has not been moved to palliative care, one of his daughters has said, downplaying reports that he was in end-of-life care after the 82-year-old was hospitalised last week to re-evaluate his treatment for colon cancer.One of the greatest players of all time, Pelé had a tumour removed from his colon in September 2021 and has been receiving hospital care on a regular basis. Continue reading...

PM urges state and territory leaders to agree to cooperative intervention to halt climbing electricity prices

SNP MP follows Alison Thewliss in making bid to replace Ian Blackford, who resigned earlier in the weekStephen Flynn has launched a bid to become the SNP’s next leader in Westminster. Flynn, who has represented Aberdeen South since 2019, announced his candidacy on his Twitter account on Sunday evening.The news comes just two weeks after Flynn denied rumours he would be standing for the leadership position, following speculation in news articles he was “mounting a coup” against Ian Blackford, 61, who resigned as Westminster leader earlier this week. Continue reading...

Proposed changes include allowing retired staff to return to work – but not all nurses and doctors are willingPlans to overhaul NHS pension rules have been set out by the government in an attempt to retain more senior doctors in the health service.Launching an eight-week consultation, ministers said the proposed changes would also remove barriers to retired clinicians returning to work. Continue reading...

Union says offer would mean loss of thousands of jobs and implementation of unsafe practicesThe RMT has rejected an offer from rail employers aimed at heading off more strikes.The Rail Delivery Group (RDG) offered the union a pay rise of 8% over two years with a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies to April 2024, in an attempt to resolve a long-running dispute over jobs, pay and conditions. Continue reading...

British ministry of defence says it obtained official confidential survey that shows only 25% of Russians want war to go on

Washington focusing on protests and Tehran’s support of Russia in Ukraine rather than nuclear talks, envoy saysIran’s leadership has locked itself into a “vicious cycle” that has cut it off from its own people and the international community, the US special envoy has said, adding that Washington was more focused on Tehran’s decision to arm Russia in Ukraine and the repression of its internal protests than on talks to revive the nuclear deal.“The more Iran represses, the more there will be sanctions; the more there are sanctions, the more Iran feels isolated,” Rob Malley, the US special envoy on Iran, told a conference in Rome. Continue reading...

Dramatic U-turn following widespread unrest leaves country ill-prepared for OmicronThe portable PCR testing booth dangled in the air over a dark Beijing street, captured on camera as it was winched away by a crane in the middle of the night. The image spread rapidly across Chinese social media, the perfect symbol of the bewilderingly rapid end of a draconian era.In the face of the most widespread national protests since the bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square demonstrators in 1989, the Chinese government has abruptly abandoned its flagship zero-Covid policy. Continue reading...

Raelene Cooper was giving evidence as an expert witness during the trial of three climate protesters when officers searched her property

Move has come as a relief to many families but also damaged the ‘already fragile trust’ communities had in government’s decisions

As fans crammed into the Darling Harbour park, many were frustrated it took the city so long to clue into the huge groundswell of support

Time is running out for a deal to send threat of disruption into the sidings and keep holiday travel plans on trackChristmas is, of course, a time to believe in miracles – but when the government is reduced to publicly imploring the RMT union to bring out its altruistic side, it seems more likely that the railway is teetering on the edge of a not very festive abyss.The new rail minister, Huw Merriman, got all sides together on Friday, in a statement of intent. But time is running out to avoid what will probably be the most damaging strike action yet: two 48-hour walkouts across Network Rail and train operators between 13-17 December, and an overtime ban that will bring more disruption to services throughout the Christmas period – right up to another planned week of strikes in early January. Continue reading...

Elders say community-led justice reinvestment programs are having a real impact on the Northern Territory island

Richard Sharp made remarks on coverage of lockdown drive while setting out his blueprint for improving broadcasterThe BBC’s chairman has said he believes Emily Maitlis was “wrong” in her Newsnight coverage of Dominic Cummings’ visit to Barnard Castle in 2020, as he set out his blueprint for improving the broadcaster.Richard Sharp criticised Maitlis, who has since left the broadcaster, for starting the programme by saying “the country” could see that Cummings had broken lockdown rules “and is shocked the government cannot”. Continue reading...

Whitehall sources reportedly say ‘rude’ peer lobbied Michael Gove and Lord Agnew to secure business for PPE MedproMichelle Mone has been accused of attempting to “bully and hector” ministers into awarding public PPE contracts worth more than £200m to a company that she appeared to profit from.The Guardian revealed last month that the Conservative peer and her children secretly received £29m originating from the profits of a PPE business that was awarded large government contracts after she recommended it to ministers. Continue reading...

Most cases not caused by decision to discharge patients from hospital without testing, says former health secretaryCare workers have hit back at claims by the former health secretary Matt Hancock that the Covid virus was brought into homes by infected staff.In his book, the Pandemic Diaries, which is being serialised in the Daily Mail, Hancock said only a small proportion of cases were caused by his decision to discharge patients from hospital without testing. Continue reading...

While health secretary Steve Barclay says he will not negotiate, unions suggest the compromise reached in Scotland could help avert strikesMinisters were under intense pressure last night to open new pay talks that could avert a devastating series of NHS strikes as health unions suggested a deal could be struck if both sides were willing to negotiate and compromise.Amid claims from Labour and from NHS sources that ministers appeared to be playing politics and deliberately “spoiling for a fight”, union leaders strongly suggested that an improved, but still sub-inflation, offer similar to that made to Scottish health unions at the end of last month by the Holyrood government – which has led to strike threats being lifted north of the border – could help break the deadlock elsewhere in the UK. Continue reading...

Duke of Sussex records video to comfort youngsters at Scotty’s Little Soldiers, a charity for military childrenThe Duke of Sussex dressed up as Spider-Man in a surprise video message to try to comfort bereaved military children.He donned the superhero outfit and only lifted his mask to reveal his true identity at the end of a specially recorded message for youngsters at Scotty’s Little Soldiers, a charity for bereaved British forces children and young people. Continue reading...

Warren Mundine criticises government for giving tax-free status to yes vehicle but not an equivalent no group

Ukraine’s foreign minister says 17 diplomatic missions have now received suspicious packages

39 of 197 unaccompanied children taken in between 1 January and 31 October this year are missingAlmost a fifth of lone Albanian child refugees have gone missing, an English council has revealed. Kent county council took in 197 unaccompanied children from Albania between 1 January and 31 October of this year and, of those, 39 are missing.The figures were revealed following a freedom of information request by the BBC. Continue reading...

Small farmers say reports of ‘shortage’ are driving customers to grab mass-produced poultry from supermarket freezer cabinetsFears over bird flu and the cost of living crisis could impact free-range turkey sales, farmers have warned, as growing numbers turn to supermarkets for frozen birds this Christmas.After months of worry for their flocks, which since last month have to be housed indoors, destroying livelihoods across the country, turkey farmers are facing significant pressure this holiday season. Continue reading...

Officials say they have met with George Osborne, and are keen to see the masterpieces back in AthensSenior Greek officials have been in “preliminary” talks with the British Museum in what could amount to a tectonic shift in resolving the world’s longest-running cultural dispute: the repatriation of the 5th-century Parthenon marbles to Athens.Revelations about the negotiations were first reported on Saturday by Ta Nea, which said that officials including the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, had met George Osborne, the chair of the British Museum, in a five-star London hotel as recently as Monday. Continue reading...

Asa Bennett told the BBC the ex-prime minister demanded the volume was ‘turned up to 11’ when she arrivedLiz Truss took a “Spinal Tap approach” to government, demanding the volume was “turned up to 11”, her former chief speech writer has said.Asa Bennett said the former prime minister had arrived in Downing Street determined to put “rocket boosters” under the economy and that it was a matter of “bitter regret” that her efforts had failed. Continue reading...