With talks ongoing between the EU and UK over the final Brexit trade deal, the clock is running down and the January deadline is looming. Daniel Boffey explains what is at stakeMore than four years after the EU referendum that set it all in motion, the Brexit talks are finally coming to a conclusion ahead of the final 31 December deadline and still there are disagreements to be resolved. If a deal can’t be reached in the next two weeks, the UK faces stark economic consequences.The Guardian’s Brussels bureau chief, Daniel Boffey, tells Anushka Asthana that fears of no deal do now seem to be receding after talks continued through the weekend deadline. However, even with the most optimistic view, the Brexit deal on the table will still mean significant disruption to cross-border trade as well as the ability to live and work either side of the Channel for EU and UK citizens alike. Continue reading...

Petition calling for New Zealand PM to intervene has hit 120,000 signatures after helicopter pilots were charged over Whakaari disasterNew Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, is facing calls to intervene in the prosecution of a former SAS soldier who led a daring helicopter mission to save tourists from White Island/Whakaari eruption.Pilot Mark Law, 49, was widely hailed a hero when he and three colleagues landed on the island when emergency services deemed it too dangerous to fly there and brought 12 people to hospital on the mainland. Continue reading...

Controversial move angers opposition lawmakers who support sending leaflets criticising the Pyongyang regimeSouth Korea’s parliament has approved contentious legislation criminalizing the flying of propaganda leaflets by balloon toward North Korea, despite fierce criticism that the country is sacrificing freedom of expression to improve ties with the rival North.The legislation passed with the support of 187 lawmakers, mostly governing party members who support President Moon Jae-in’s policy of engagement with North Korea. Outnumbered opposition lawmakers didn’t attend the vote after their attempt at delaying the balloting with nonstop speeches was foiled by governing party lawmakers and their allies who used their three-fifths supermajority to halt the speeches in a separate vote. Continue reading...

Brayden Bushby hurled metal trailer hitch that hit Barbara Kentner, who later died of complications resulting from traumaA man who hurled a metal trailer hitch at an Indigenous woman walking along a snowy street in Thunder Bay has been found guilty of manslaughter, in a case widely seen as a grim reminder of the Canadian city’s deadly legacy of racism.In her ruling Monday afternoon, Justice Helen Pierce found that the actions of Brayden Bushby led to the death of Barbara Kentner, 34, on 29 January 2017. Continue reading...

Princess Diana and Osama bin Laden are among characters in show to be staged at London’s Turbine theatreThe life of Tony Blair is to be staged as a rock opera next year, featuring a cast of characters including Princess Diana and Saddam Hussein.Tony! (A Tony Blair Rock Opera) will be performed at the Turbine theatre, at Battersea power station in London, next February with lyrics by the comedian Harry Hill. Continue reading...

London Underground cleaning staff are on the frontline of the fight against the coronavirus, but are among the lowest paid workers, writes Mike Cash, RMT general secretarySean Smith has done a great service to your readers by bringing into the daylight the hidden labour of those who have worked every day to keep the London underground clean through the pandemic (‘Unsung heroes’: cleaners keeping London’s transport Covid-safe – photo essay, 10 December).He is right to spot that they are among the lowest-paid workers. London underground cleaning is outsourced to a company called ABM. The cleaners do not receive the same pension provision as their Transport for London counterparts and they are not entitled to free travel on the network they clean. Their workloads have soared as the company has cut back their numbers every year since the contract began, leaving them desperately overstretched during the pandemic. Continue reading...

Academic Agnieszka Graff, lawyer Karolina Więckiewicz and gynaecologist Anna Parzyńska discuss their fight for abortion rights. An attempt by authorities to impose a near-total ban on terminations has sparked mass demonstrations across the countryOn 22 October, Poland’s constitutional court ruled to ban abortions in cases of congenital foetal defects, even if the foetus has no chance of survival. The decision by the court’s 15 pro-ruling party judges, many of them appointed unlawfully, would allow terminations only in instances of rape, incest and when the mother’s life is at risk – a tiny fraction of cases. Women’s groups estimate that an additional 200,000 Polish women have abortions either illegally or abroad each year – Poland has some of Europe’s strictest abortion laws.The ruling sparked an immediate reaction. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, mainly women and young people, took to the streets in the largest protest movement in the three decades since the fall of communism. The writer and activist Agnieszka Graff tells Anushka Asthana about the protests, and the influence the Catholic church has had on Poland’s increasingly restrictive abortion laws. Continue reading...

Arrest of public health expert Lukman Thalib and son Ismail Talib came three months before US accused Australian-based son Ahmed Luqman Talib of links to al-QaidaAn Australian public health professor and his son have been detained in Qatar for almost five months without charge, and are receiving consular assistance from the Australian embassy.Australian citizens Prof Lukman Thalib, 58, and his son Ismail Talib, 24, were arrested at their home in Doha by local authorities on 27 July, and are being kept at an undisclosed location. Continue reading...

Most of Essex and parts of Hertfordshire also affected, with pubs, restaurants and bars set to close

The government is threatening to force English secondaries to stay open. Should schools be shut?

Telecoms and travel data shows activist was shadowed on multiple trips before his poisoning in August, Bellingcat reportsAn undercover hit squad working for Russia’s FSB spy agency poisoned the opposition activist Alexei Navalny in August, after shadowing him on multiple previous trips, the investigative website Bellingcat has claimed.Citing “voluminous” telecoms and travel data, Bellingcat reported that the squad had secretly tracked Navalny since 2017. The operation apparently began after he announced plans to stand against Vladimir Putin in presidential elections. Continue reading...

The organisers of last weekend’s Senegalese showcase moved the event outside in response to the pandemic Continue reading...

20 March 1956 – 23 July 2020The cultural historian pays tribute to the modest but powerful woman who, having been threatened with deportation herself, became a prominent Windrush campaigner

Body of Roberts Buncis was found in Fishtoft on SaturdayA 14-year-old boy will appear in court on Monday charged with murdering a boy aged 12.The body of Roberts Buncis was found on Saturday in Fishtoft, near Boston, Lincolnshire police said. Continue reading...

Heavy rain, high tides and wild surf have caused flash flooding in Queensland and New South Wales with more storms forecastByron Bay locals say damage to the town’s main beach is “the worst in a generation” as heavy rain, abnormally high tides and wild surf, combined with long term erosion problems, washed away much of the remaining sand.Storms have battered a 1,000km stretch of the Queensland and northern NSW coastline for several days with conditions not expected to ease until Tuesday morning. Strong winds and heavy rainfall have caused damage and flash flooding in both states. Continue reading...

Commissioner says he won’t ‘throw anyone under the bus’ after video of 2018 police watch house incident emergesThe Northern Territory’s top police officer said he would not “throw anyone under the bus” over a video that showed a police officer threatening to “belt” Aboriginal teenagers and telling them: “I am in the mood to fucking lose my job tonight.”The footage, published by the ABC following a freedom of information request, is taken from a CCTV camera inside an Alice Springs police watch house in 2018. It shows police processing five Aboriginal teenagers, aged 12 to 16, who had been arrested for allegedly driving a stolen car. Continue reading...

Prime minister says New Zealand is doing more than activist suggests after Thunberg tweets about ‘so-called climate emergency declaration’The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has responded to criticism of New Zealand’s climate policies by Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, saying New Zealand is doing more than she might realise.Thunberg retweeted a story critical of the government when it came to climate change and referred to New Zealand’s “so-called climate emergency declaration”. She took a line from the piece which said: “In other words, the government has just committed to reducing less than 1 percent of the country’s emissions by 2025.” Continue reading...

Hindu rightwing conspiracy theory prompts crackdown on interfaith marriages in Uttar PradeshPolice in India have rounded up Muslim men and disrupted interfaith marriage ceremonies under new laws prohibiting so-called “love jihad”.In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, police have begun cracking down on marriages between Muslims and Hindus and have arrested at least 10 Muslim men under a law that prohibits forced religious conversions. Continue reading...

The latest in a series of attacks on shipping in the kingdom will be linked to the Saudis’ years-long war with Houthi rebels in YemenAn oil tanker off the Saudi Arabian port city of Jeddah has suffered an explosion after being hit by “an external source”, a shipping company said, suggesting the latest in a series of attacks on vessels in the kingdom amid its years-long war in Yemen.The Singapore-flagged BW Rhine saw all 22 sailors on board escape without injury after the attack on Sunday, the BW Group said in a statement. The company warned it was possible some oil leaked out from the site of the blast. Continue reading...

The extraordinary shock of people power gave way to a bitter backlash. So where to now?A decade ago this week, a young fruit seller called Mohammed Bouazizi set himself alight outside the provincial headquarters of his home town in Tunisia, in protest against local police officials who had seized his cart and produce.Accounts of the 26-year-old’s shocking act rippled through his homeland, where hundreds of thousands of people who had also been humiliated by an atrophied state and its officials now found the courage to raise their voices. Continue reading...

President says he is not scheduled to take vaccine as the most complex distribution project ever in the US gets underway

Exclusive: Buttrose mounts robust defence of broadcaster’s independence in response to questions about Four Corners’ episode Inside the Canberra BubbleThe ABC chair, Ita Buttrose, has accused the government of a pattern of behaviour which “smacks of political interference” in a robust defence of the public broadcaster’s independence, according to a draft of a letter responding to a barrage of Coalition complaints about the Four Corners program Inside the Canberra Bubble.In the program broadcast last month, the journalists Louise Milligan and Lucy Carter investigated complaints about attorney general Christian Porter, including an alleged history of sexist and inappropriate behaviour towards women, and an affair the acting immigration minister, Alan Tudge, had with a female adviser in 2017. Continue reading...

Writer whose spy novels chronicle how people’s lives play out in the corrupt setting of the cold war era and beyondJohn le Carré, who has died aged 89 of pneumonia, raised the spy novel to a new level of seriousness and respect.He was in his late 20s when he began to write fiction – in longhand, in small red pocket notebooks, on his daily train journey between his home in Buckinghamshire and his day job with MI5, the counter-intelligence service, in London. After the publication of two neatly crafted novels, Call for the Dead (1961) and A Murder of Quality (1962), which received measured reviews and modest sales, he hit the big time with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963). Continue reading...

Refugees arrive in the United States with barely the clothes on their back and many say they feel abandoned

Asylum seekers forcibly returned to their home countries have faced arrest and threats. Some have died

Support services in Poland and abroad say numbers increasing even before legislation is tightenedPolish women are increasingly being forced to travel abroad to seek abortions even though a court ruling to tighten the country’s already strict laws has not yet coming into force, activists have said.The constitutional court ruled in October that abortion was illegal even in cases where there were severe foetal abnormalities. Around 1,000 abortions a year – almost all of the country’s legal abortion procedures – are carried out for this reason. Continue reading...

Exclusive: service announces collaborations with Stormzy strategist Akua Agyemfra and writer Bisha K Ali among othersNetflix has declared it is on a mission to “be a force for good” by increasing the diversity of its programming, and that British film-makers and writers will have their voices “amplified globally” by the streaming service.Announcing a wide-range of new programmes involving Stormzy’s cultural strategist Akua Agyemfra, the film-maker Rapman, and the Sex Education and Ms Marvel writer Bisha K Ali , Anne Mensah, Netflix’s vice-president of original series, said it was an “indication of how seriously” the global giant takes the UK. Continue reading...

Peak body argues proposed changes give for-profit sector unfair advantage and ‘could handcuff industry super’The industry super sector has rejected Josh Frydenberg’s “Your Money, Your Super” package of changes to superannuation as a “gift” to for-profit fund operators that will enable them to continue making billions in profits each year off dud retirement savings schemes.According to Productivity Commission data, industry funds, which are run only for the profit of members, systematically outperform retail funds, which are run to profit financial institutions such as banks. Continue reading...

Arman’s claim for asylum was rejected because the Australian government thought it was safe for him to return to Afghanistan. While this is no longer the government’s view, Australia’s appeal system means the decision still stands. In this episode of Full Story, Arman explains how he has nowhere to turn – his only chance to stay in Australia is if Peter Dutton personally intervenesTemporary is a project from the University of New South Wales Centre for Ideas and Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law in partnership with Guardian Australia, inspired by the book Refugee Rights and Policy Wrongs by Jane McAdam and Fiona Chong. Series artwork by Matt Huynh.You can find additional information, photography and artwork at the Kaldor Centre’s Temporary website. Continue reading...

Claims did not meet ‘evidential test’ and no further action will be taken against MP arrested in AugustPolice have dropped an investigation into allegations of rape against a Conservative MP and former minister.The MP, who has not been named, was arrested on suspicion of rape on 1 August and later released on bail. Continue reading...

Negotiations to continue say Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen in joint statement after phone call

Boosted iron ore prices due to anxious markets are likely to help federal budget’s bottom line, Deloitte says

Fleeing Ethiopia and Somalia, refugees made their way across the world’s busiest migration route, only to be left in the hands of smugglers in a lawless landSaudi Arabia was Tigrit’s dream: a place where she could find work as a cleaner or maid, and send money back to her husband and young daughter in Ethiopia. Now, like hundreds of thousands of East Africans who have left home and travelled across the Red Sea in search of a better life, she finds herself stranded in Yemen instead.“We’re stuck. I don’t have food or money for phone credit to call home. I don’t have anything,” she said, sitting on the floor in a building site with no electricity or running water on the edge of the desert. Continue reading...

When £2.5m of rare books were stolen in an audacious heist at Feltham in 2017, police wondered, what’s the story?Everything went exactly to plan. Late on the evening of 29 January 2017, Daniel David and Victor Opariuc parked up and made their way towards the Frontier Forwarding customs warehouse in Feltham, less than a mile from Heathrow. After cutting a hole in the fence, the men made their way to the side of the building and scaled a wall to the roof. There, they cut through a skylight and lowered themselves on to shelving inside the building. The warehouse burglar alarms stayed silent; the men had carefully avoided tripping motion sensors positioned by the doors.Once inside, with several lookouts posted around the surrounding industrial estate, the men took their time. Over the next five hours and 15 minutes, they broke padlocks off packing cases and placed items inside 16 large holdalls taken from inside the warehouse. The men escaped the same way they had entered: out through the skylight and back into the night. Continue reading...

Innovation and competition are being stifled. But there are signs of optimismWhen the history of our times gets written, historians will shake their heads, wondering why so few remarked on what was going on before their eyes. Rather than allow foreigners and immigrants and the EU to be blamed for the ills of great swathes of our working populations who became prey to the fantasies of a Boris Johnson or a Donald Trump, why did the political classes not identify and correct the real source of the just grievances that drove support for such warped politicians?The US and Britain in particular have created an economic system of organised plunder, resulting in widespread precarious livelihoods. Over the last generation we have witnessed the rise of rentier capitalism, supercharged by new technologies, to establish economic structures in which having and owning has been vastly privileged over doing, creating and risk-taking. The share of profits in national income has risen, the share of wages fallen while work has become organised around short-term contracts. The decline in the incentive to make and innovate has been accompanied by a weakening in the rate of productivity growth. Continue reading...

Clarity is vital as companies struggle under the uncertainty of the transition and Covid-19, says Adam Marshall of the British Chambers of CommerceThis has been a year of disruption and frustration for so many businesses.It will end, as it began, with huge uncertainty around the final terms of the UK’s exit from the EU – and the impact on individuals, businesses and communities. Continue reading...

NSPCC warns of ‘pressure cooker elements’ after figures show increase in incidents since the start of lockdownThe NSPCC is warning that this Christmas poses an unprecedented challenge for many British children, with new data from the charity revealing it has received more than 31,000 calls since April from adults anxious about child abuse or neglect.Its chief executive, Peter Wanless, said the cumulative impact of the effects of the pandemic meant young people would be “cooped up” with their abusers over the festive period. Continue reading...

The prime minister’s gung-ho actions will irreparably damage Britain and its reputationThe shambolic, self-destructive and humiliating consequences of Brexit are finally coming into sharp focus. The emerging picture is worse than its most pessimistic opponents feared. As the mist of lies, illusions and jingoism created by Boris Johnson and other Tory opportunists lifts, we see not the sunlit uplands of a newly liberated nation but endless queues of fuming diesel lorries, fouling the air and blocking the lanes of the Garden of England.Miles-long lorry jams are but the most visible aspect of the approaching no-deal nightmare. The strangulation of Britain’s ports is already under way. Operators report unprecedented container backlogs, with some deliveries cancelled altogether. This is not a mere logistical, pandemic-related hiccup. It is an augury of panic-inducing food and medicine shortages, rising prices, and huge economic pain. Continue reading...

The religious branch of the co-ruling PJD party described the move as ‘deplorable’Morocco’s main Islamist groups rejected the government’s plan to normalise ties with Israel, following a deal brokered by the United States.The religious branch of the co-ruling PJD party, the Unity and Reform Movement (MUR), said in a statement on Saturday the move was “deplorable” and denounced “all attempts at normalisation and the Zionist infiltration”. Continue reading...

Row over Parthenon marbles deflected attention from secret courtship with wife Amal, star revealsGeorge Clooney will not be sending Boris Johnson a Christmas card, but he may send a thank-you note to No 10 – along with a comb, he told the Observer this weekend.The Hollywood film star and director has recognised he owes part of his current domestic contentment and job satisfaction to a strange run-in he had with the prime minister early in 2014, while Clooney was secretly courting his future wife, Amal. Continue reading...

Himalayan kingdom is latest country to recognise the Jewish state in a normalisation dealIsrael established diplomatic relations with the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan on Saturday, the Israeli foreign ministry said, in the latest of a string of normalisation deals agreed by the Jewish state.“The circle of recognition of Israel is widening,” the Israeli foreign minister, Gabi Ashkenazi, said in a statement. “The establishment of relations with the Kingdom of Bhutan will constitute a new stage in the deepening of Israel’s relations in Asia.” Continue reading...

The late politician specialised in sowing division and indulged in national fantasiesThe ghost of Enoch Powell hangs over Britain this weekend, with a smile on its thin lips. If you are too young to remember him, Boris Johnson offers a recrudescence. Powell was a genuine classical scholar. Cambridge awarded him a starred double first in Latin and Ancient Greek in 1933. Johnson was so-so academically. His failure to achieve a first at Oxford enraged him. But, like Powell, he learned the value of dropping a Latin phrase in a class-ridden country, which still thinks a classical education is a sign of superior intelligence.Both told monstrous lies: not the usual dishonesties of politics, but lies that break people’s lives. Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech had a title adapted from a line from Virgil, but that didn’t make it classy. He unleashed hatred and violence against black and Asian immigrants and their children in 1968 by using the story of an old white woman in Wolverhampton. She had lost her husband and sons in the war and her reward was to be intimidated by “Negros”. Her “windows are broken. She finds excreta pushed through her letterbox. When she goes to the shops, she is followed by children, charming, wide-grinning piccaninnies. They cannot speak English, but one word they know. ‘Racialist,’ they chant.” Continue reading...

The man, who was being arrested for domestic violence offences, resisted arrest and also set fire to a propertyPolice officers were doused in petrol as they tried to arrest a man in Bolton.The incident, which also saw a property set alight, happened shortly before 11pm on Friday as Greater Manchester police (GMP) attempted to detain the man at a house in Farnworth for recent domestic violence offences. Continue reading...

Letter to Priti Patel says sending man with autism to Jamaica, which he left aged four, is a ‘death sentence’

Every country should declare a state of climate emergency until the world has reached net-zero carbon emissions, the UN secretary general told a virtual summit of world leaders on Saturday. António Guterres said countries had a responsibility to young people to reduce and eliminate high-carbon activities after borrowing trillions to cushion the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic

29 November 1976 – 28 August 2020The Oscar-winning costume designer – who worked with the actor on Black Panther – recalls a kind, self-assured man who would rather crack a joke than talk about his illness

Companies are praying a trade agreement can be struck, but must prepare for talks to fail. Which will be most affected?The scene is set for a showdown, and the future of the UK economy is at stake. Will Britain secure a free trade deal with the EU? Or will the prime minister choose to sail into uncharted waters, not only stepping outside the single market and customs union, as the UK will be even under a deal, but adding the tariffs and border checks that come with a no-deal Brexit?Armed with a determination to end the transition period on 31 December, Boris Johnson is poised to force British businesses to sell their goods and services across the EU without any of the benefits that a deal offers, and with only a few days’ notice. Here we assess the impact on some of the worst-hit industries of securing a deal – albeit a slimmed-down one – compared with the alternative. Continue reading...

Police detain 25-year-old on suspicion of murder after teenager pronounced dead at sceneA 25-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after a teenage boy was stabbed to death in east London.Police were called just before 7pm on Friday after reports of a stabbing in Woodman Street, near the royal docks in Newham. Continue reading...

6 April 1963 – 17 February 2020The composer pays tribute to a brilliant polymath with singular musical vision, who was also a warm and wise friend