World news | The Guardian

Royal college says aid cuts on top of Covid collateral will have negative impact on poorest for generations

Detectives follow up reports of men being coerced into naked challenges for chance to win £5,000Police are appealing for information as part of an investigation into a fake nude gameshow.A 28-year-old man reported that he had been approached by a man claiming to be in the entertainment industry. Continue reading...

Severe delays as businesses try to get goods into Britain before a potential no-deal Brexit on 1 January

Less than 48 hours left to reach deal, as UK prepares to deploy naval ships to patrol waters

The sweetness of clementine curd mellows the hit of fiery ginger in this tasty winter dessertWe get through a ridiculous amount of ginger in my house. Whether it’s fresh, crystallised or stem ginger in syrup, it’s such a familiar comfort and makes many appearances in both my sweet and savoury cooking at this time of year. Sometimes I’ll lean in to the fiery heat that ginger can bring, but for desserts I prefer to mellow it out a little with sweetness. Enter sweet clementine curd. Continue reading...

Letter shows government prepared to use Coronavirus Act to force English secondaries to stay open

After a tough year for theatre, our chief critic celebrates the joy of the Christmas show, while five festive performers reveal how it feels to be waiting in the wingsRemember your first ever Christmas show – its sparkle and magic, its tinsel and thrall? I watched my first pantomime in 1978, though I couldn’t have named it as such. I was six, and still acclimatising to the shock of leaving sun-soaked Lahore to migrate to the greyest of London winters. I was led into the school hall where I sat, legs folded, with no friends and no word of English. I remember the curtain opening to a hirsute dame playing a guitar, and a half-hearted pantomime horse with elbows and heads poking out of its sides. An explosion of boos, whoops and shrieks. Classmates shouting, teachers hissing. What madness was this, and how had it managed to crack the room open to such rapture?That first rickety school panto left me with an abiding, child’s delight for Christmas shows. Like many Muslims (and Jews, Hindus, Sikhs), I did not grow up celebrating Christmas. But I have embraced the great British tradition of the Christmas show, from the lovable mayhem of an end-of-year school play to the dazzle and splash of a West End production, the stupendous ensemble of a Royal Opera House staple such as The Nutcracker, right up to my annual family pantomime, which last year turned out to be a retelling of Cinderella featuring a same-sex romance between a stepsister and a female Buttons. Continue reading...

At 94, what has the world’s most-travelled naturalist learned? He talks garden birds in lockdown, the eerie silence of Chernobyl – and tackling the climate crisis

Dad was an alcoholic, and violent and destructive with it. But when I was nine, he painstakingly created a thing of beauty, which I have kept to this dayMy father was an alcoholic; and when you grow up with an alcoholic, you get used to them pissing in places they shouldn’t. In the street, as the neighbours tut; in wardrobes; on my bed, while I was in it. He could never find his way to the bathroom in the dark.When I was around nine, I awoke one night to him shouting from the landing: “Look at this!” I kicked off my duvet, with its peach Laura Ashley print, and crept round my door. At 5ft 4in, he was a stocky, small man – though not particularly small to me. He had a beard that every so often he savaged with nail scissors, giving it an uneven, mangy appearance, but when it was long a friend compared it to George Bernard Shaw’s. This was a name I knew, vaguely, because we had many books in the house; my father read extensively. Continue reading...

Swedish chain says it is struggling to meet demand and apologises to customersIkea has become the latest victim of the UK’s gridlocked ports, with the retailer blaming delayed orders and stock shortages on the congestion, which is now also derailing food imports.The Swedish chain said it was experiencing “operational challenges” as shipments of its flatpack furniture are held up at clogged ports. The hold-ups came as Ikea struggled to meet increased demand for home furnishings, which has soared this year as Britons have switched to homeworking. Continue reading...

Scott Morrison tells Pacific islands forum Australia committed to achieving net-zero emissions ‘as soon as possible’

Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre says incorrect email sent while testing notification processThe Queensland university admissions body has apologised after it accidentally emailed tens of thousands of year 12 students telling them they were “ineligible” for a university admissions score.Due to an IT bungle, 24,000 students in the state received an email at midnight on Friday from the Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre, a week before official results were due to be released. Continue reading...

Approval marks a turning point in pandemic but distribution presents major logistical problemsThe US Food and Drug Administration has given emergency approval to a coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, the first drug to prevent Covid-19 approved in the US. Continue reading...

Survey finds more than 600,000 may want to move to Britain, many within two years of January start dateHong Kong residents are likely to move to the UK faster than the British government has anticipated, and more should be done to prepare for their arrival, a new advocacy group has said.HongKongers in Britain (HKB) surveyed city residents hoping to emigrate under a new British government scheme that opens in January, allowing those with colonial-era British National Overseas (BNO) status to obtain visas and pursue a “path to citizenship”. Continue reading...

Incident in Stamford Hill on Friday morning not being treated as terror-relatedA car has ploughed into pedestrians on a pavement in Stamford Hill, north London, injuring five people.Police do not believe the driver in the incident, which happened just after 9.30am on Friday, was acting deliberately. Continue reading...

Many of the weapons used in the murders of 119 journalists were imported – and Mexico’s laws and culture make tracing them impossibleIt was around daybreak when Mexican crime reporter Luis Vallejo received a call from a local police officer telling him that a bag of human remains had been found in the city of Salamanca where he lives.Vallejo had become accustomed to calls like this: in recent years, violence in Guanajuato, the surrounding region, has spiraled to unprecedented levels amid bloody turf wars between rival cartels. Continue reading...

New sections of the tower at the capital’s Templo Mayor Aztec site include 119 skulls of men, women and childrenArchaeologists have unearthed new sections of an Aztec tower of human skulls dating back to the 1400s beneath the center of Mexico City.The team has uncovered the facade and eastern side of the tower, as well as 119 human skulls of men, women and children, adding to hundreds previously found, the National Institute of Anthropology and History (Inah) announced on Friday. Continue reading...

Desperate and vulnerable people are forced to seek ever more dangerous routes to safety

Exclusive: two vessels to be deployed at sea with two on standby in case EU fishing boats enter EEZ

The South Korean director, who has died of Covid, was at the forefront of a new wave of uncompromising cinema

Readers respond to an article by Rafael Behr and to other Brexit developmentsRafael Behr concludes that “the UK will give up wealth in exchange for sovereignty” (This is the last exit to Brexit. But in truth, there was only ever one road, 8 December). We did not have to look very far in that same edition of the Guardian (US nuclear warhead standoff ‘has significant implications for UK’, 8 December) to see what sovereignty actually amounts to. It was a timely reminder that the UK has always had to rely on others – in this case, the US – even for what successive British governments have described as the “ultimate assurance of our national security”, a reference to the so-called independent nuclear deterrent.As the late Anthony King observed in his book Who Governs Britain?, if sovereignty means acting independently without outside interference, the UK “is no longer remotely a sovereign state”. He added: “Nor are the vast majority of other states in the world.”

Prof Keith Hayward recalls evaluating the MoD’s use of airships in Northern Ireland in the 1990sMarina Hyde (From codpieces to zeppelins: here’s to the best of Brexit, 8 December) triggered a memory: back in the 1990s I had a Ministry of Defence contract to evaluate the military uses of airships. The MoD had leased an airship to explore possible applications, which was flown by a team of army helicopter pilots but led by a Coldstream Guards officer. The aim was to explore the development of an effective surveillance platform to fill gaps in ground-based coverage.I was shown a map of the towers that dotted the Irish border by a special forces procurement official. The hope was that an airship (surprisingly illusive from the ground) would fill the blind spots that the IRA used to infiltrate into Ulster. Marina Hyde is correct in noting the airship’s weakness in bad weather. It was also vulnerable to machine guns, but the damage would cause leakage and a slow loss of lift, embarrassing but not necessarily fatal. This secret weapon was well known to the IRA. As a customs guard it might still have use, as long as it did not encounter Ulster wet snow, a unique limitation on performance.

Concerns surface that people might avoid having jabs as result of comments by Mogoeng Mogoeng

PM says no deal would be ‘wonderful’ as it emerges France and Germany rebuffed overtures

Capital’s mayor asks TfL to begin feasibility study for plan to raise £500m a year

Exclusive: document intended to help prevent future deaths allegedly pulled from website after request

Gómez made her professional debut this month, and wants to break barriers in a place where football and identity are entwinedTo get a call up to your club’s first team is every Argentinian boy’s dream. Or so the traditional tango goes.“Now it’s the girls’ dream … too,” Mara Gómez, who became the first trans footballer to play in a top-flight Argentinian league earlier this week, tells the Guardian. Gómez signed a contract with Villa San Carlos in the recently professionalized women’s Primera División, after years of journeying through the amateur leagues. Continue reading...

Donations flood in to community kitchens as farmers protest against liberalisation of agriculture sectorWhen the sacks were ripped opened, almonds poured out, more than 10,000kg of them. It was not the first donation that had been sent to the Indian farmers defiantly camped out along the periphery of Delhi. In previous days trucks had rolled up and disgorged sacks of rice, pulses, flour, vegetables, sugar, tea and biscuits.“This is food being sent by supporters from all over India and from as far as England and Canada. There is no shortage of food. We have enough to eat for months,” said Jaswinder Pal Singh, a farmer from Punjab. Continue reading...

Exclusive: more than 100,000 patients will have to get jab elsewhere as GPs decline to take partMore than 100,000 patients will not be able to get the Covid vaccine from their family doctor after their GP surgeries decided not to take part in its rollout, the Guardian can reveal.Dozens of GP practices in England have opted not to join the NHS’s deployment of the vaccine amid fears that their workloads are already too heavy, they have too few staff and that patients could suffer if practices have to cut back other services so doctors can administer the jabs. Continue reading...

Car carrying Richard Addicott, his Spanish wife and two members of her family falls into ravine

Court expected to rule there is still insufficient evidence against China, but file to be kept open

Hayden Christensen returns as Darth Vader in the Obi-Wan Kenobi mini-series, while Chadwick Boseman won’t be replaced for Black Panther sequelDisney has unveiled a huge slew of new projects for the next decade at an investor event.Speaking on Thursday, Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy announced that the new Star Wars film, Rogue Squadron, will be directed by Wonder Woman’s Patty Jenkins – the first time a female director has taken charge of one of the franchise films. Continue reading...

UK government’s decision not to offer tax-free shopping to international visitors criticisedHeathrow could lose 2,000 retail jobs because of the government’s decision not to offer tax-free shopping for tourists, according to the airport’s chief executive.John Holland-Kaye said the move, which will make the UK the only country in Europe to have a “tourist tax” on international visitors, could be the “final nail in the coffin” for many struggling businesses in the retail and hospitality sectors. Continue reading...

Carmen Ali and Siân Docksey are among the comedians who riff on their experiences as strippers. The pandemic has revealed both industries to be precarious – but they’re looking out for each otherWhat do standup comedy and stripping have in common? “I see them as the same, but one is better paid and heavily stigmatised. They’re both disappointments to your parents,” says Jacqueline Frances, who has careers in each and has the online pseudonym Jacq the Stripper. “Strip clubs and comedy clubs used to be the same thing: cabarets. You’re getting people to feel something, and don’t have a lot of time to do it, so you need to be swift and clever.”There have always been performers who combine both jobs. “A lot of people in the arts have dabbled, out of necessity, in various areas of the sex industry, while in between jobs or to finance the Edinburgh fringe,” says comedian Siân Docksey, who has worked as a stripper before. Continue reading...

Rejection of Mohamed al-Tayeb’s asylum case comes amid changes to immigration policy critics say are an attempt to placate far rightA Sudanese singer whose television appearance on The Voice brought him threats from security officers is facing deportation from the Netherlands, where he has lived for two years.Mohamed al-Tayeb, 30, who appeared on the Arabic version of the show in 2015, has been told his request for asylum had been rejected. The Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) said it did not believe he would be harmed if he returned to Sudan, following the ousting of Omar al-Bashir last year, but critics accuse the Dutch government of playing politics over anti-immigrant rhetoric. Continue reading...

After the rigours of 2020, trend forecasters have hedged their bets by picking two shades for Colour of the YearIn 2020 Pantone’s colour of the year choice, Classic Blue, proved eerily prescient. Announced weeks before the first Covid-19 cluster was discovered, it is a shade used for medical scrubs around the globe.Perhaps knowing that lightning is unlikely to strike twice, for 2021 the US-paint brand’s team of trend forecasters have selected two shades – Ultimate Grey and Illuminating – the second time they have done so in the Colour of the Year’s two decade history. Continue reading...

Scott Morrison says University of Queensland coronavirus vaccine ‘will not be able to proceed’The Australian government has terminated its agreement with Australian biotech company CSL Limited to supply 51m doses of a Covid-19 vaccine being developed by the University of Queensland, after vaccine trial participants returned false positive test results for HIV.Australia had hoped the protein vaccine would be available by mid-2021. Phase one clinical trials in humans began in July in Brisbane, with phase two and three clinical trials due to commence in December. It is one of four vaccines secured by the Australian government. Continue reading...

Companies respond as investigation finds videos of rape and revenge pornographyMastercard and Visa said on Thursday they would block their customers from using the credit cards to make purchases on Pornhub following accusations the pornographic website showed videos of child abuse and rape.They reacted following an investigation by the opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times that also alleged the site depicts revenge pornography and video taken without the consent of participants. Pornhub has denied the allegations. Continue reading...

Construction workers ‘up for the fight’ as ACTU coordinates campaign against new lawUnion leaders are warning that the Coalition’s industrial relations bill will embolden bosses seeking pay cuts and provoke industrial action in retaliation.The Construction Forestry Mining Maritime Energy Union’s national secretary, Dave Noonan, told Guardian Australia the construction union was “up for the fight” and would do “everything we can” including action in the workplace to resist the changes. Continue reading...

The forward’s goals made him a national hero in 1982 after a two-year ban threatened to destroy his playing careerPaolo Rossi scored more than 150 goals in his career but if you wanted to understand the brilliance of a player whose death at the age of 64 sent Italy into mourning on Thursday, it may be enough to watch the one he grabbed in the 1982 World Cup final.Or, more realistically, perhaps a slow-motion replay. The Italy striker does not appear to have position on his West Germany opponent Karlheinz Förster as Claudio Gentile prepares to send in a cross from the right. Only with repeat viewings does it become clear Rossi has started his run a frame or two sooner, building velocity, anticipating the delivery before it has even been dispatched. He beats Förster, and his own team-mate Antonio Cabrini, to the ball by a fraction, heading in from close range. Continue reading...

Friday: Budget reveals expenditure will rise even as asylum seeker numbers fall. Plus: Greta Thunberg’s climate warningGood morning, this is Imogen Dewey bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 11 December. Continue reading...

Process unblocked after Hungary and Poland lift objections to link between payments and upholding rule of law

PM says he cannot accept UK being ‘locked in EU’s orbit’, but Tories urge him to strike dealBoris Johnson has ordered ministers to prepare for the “strong possibility” of a no-deal Brexit, warning that the UK risks being “locked in the EU’s orbit” as senior Tories urge him to find an agreement.After a three-hour summit with the European commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen, failed to bridge major gaps between them, the prime minister said he was prepared to “go the extra mile” by flying to Paris or Berlin for face-to-face talks with EU leaders. Continue reading...

Learning will move online, in contrast to England’s plans for mass testing of students

Notice seen by Guardian states three wings at Serco-run Brook House in lockdown

Struggle of murdered student’s parents has come to symbolise broader fight for justiceWhen the body of the Italian doctoral student Giulio Regeni was found by the side of a Cairo highway in 2016, his mother later said she only recognised her son’s corpse by “the tip of his nose”, as he had suffered such extensive torture.Almost five years after Regeni’s body was found, and following years of investigation by the Italian authorities, prosecutors in Rome on Thursday charged four men with Regeni’s kidnapping, including one accused of grievous bodily harm. Continue reading...

Stencil mural unveiled on side of house shows woman sneezing out her false teeth

Four officials accused of negligence in connection with explosion at port, which killed more than 200 people

Cairo killing of doctoral student in 2016 long believed to be work of Egypt’s security forces

Ian Silk, the head of Australia’s biggest fund, questions if Coalition reforms are in the interests of membersThe boss of Australia’s biggest super fund, AustralianSuper, has questioned whether changes to laws governing the sector proposed by the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, are genuinely directed at improving retirement savings.Speaking as Aussie Super reached a new high of $200bn in funds under management, chief executive Ian Silk said many attacks on the industry super sector were “basically politically motivated by people looking to give themselves a bit of profile, in the hope of advancement”. Continue reading...