Sanae Takaichi’s not-so-catchy remarks about everyone working like a horse did not go down well in a country notorious for its demanding work culture It is not, perhaps, a word many people in Japan will want to hear as they prepare for the bonenkai office party season and some well-earned time off over the new year. But the promise made by Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, that she would “work, work, work, work, and work” on behalf of her country has clearly struck a chord. Continue reading...

Trump reportedly had a ‘blunt message’ for Venezuelan president: leave power and your country immediately – key US politics stories from 1 December at a glance Donald Trump reportedly had a blunt message for Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro: leave power – and your country – immediately. Sources told the Miami Herald the US president had a phone call with his South American counterpart, who is the focus of a four-month pressure campaign in which Trump has ordered a major naval deployment off Venezuela’s northern coast. Continue reading...

Like the narco-state, a ‘scam state’ refers to countries where an illicit industry has dug its tentacles deep into institutions and transformed the economy For days before the explosions began, the business park had been emptying out. When the bombs went off, they took down empty office blocks and demolished echoing, multi-cuisine food halls. Dynamite toppled a four-storey hospital, silent karaoke complexes, deserted gyms and dorm rooms. So came the end of KK Park, one of south-east Asia’s most infamous “scam centres”, press releases from Myanmar’s junta declared. The facility had held tens of thousands of people, forced to relentlessly defraud people around the world. Now, it was being levelled piece by piece. Continue reading...

Zelenskyy says redrafted peace plan ‘looks better’ but Kaja Kallas fears Moscow meeting will wrongfully put pressure on Kyiv rather than Kremlin. What we know on day 1,378 An intensified diplomatic push to end the nearly four-year war has continued, with Volodymyr Zelenskyy visiting Paris on Monday – a day after the Ukrainian president’s team held talks with US officials – and Vladimir Putin due to meet with US special envoy Steve Witkoff on Tuesday. Zelenskyy, speaking in Paris, said the Kremlin’s claims of battlefield advances were exaggerated. He said Ukraine’s priorities remained security guarantees, sovereignty and territorial integrity, as he insisted that Russia must not get rewards for its aggression on Ukraine. He said he hoped to have talks with the US president, Donald Trump, to discuss next steps once Steve Witkoff is back from his talks in Russia. Ukraine’s president said that after revisions the peace plan circulating between Ukraine, Russia and Washigton “looks better” and the work will continue. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, warned however that talks between the Putin and Witkoff will again pile pressure on Ukraine to make concessions, write Jennifer Rankin and Pjotr Sauer. Kallas said: “In order to have peace, we shouldn’t lose focus that it’s actually Russia who has started this war and Russia that is continuing this war and Russia that is really targeting civilians, civilian infrastructure every single day to cause as much damage as possible.” The White House said it was “very optimistic” of a deal being reached to end the war. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters: Just yesterday [the White House team] had very good talks with the Ukrainians in Florida and now of course special envoy Witkoff is on his way to Russia.” Witkoff has in the past returned to Washington conveying variations of Vladimir Putin’s maximalist demands for Ukraine’s total capitulation. His role has come under scrutiny following a report that he coached Putin’s foreign affairs adviser on how to pitch to Trump. The Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov said the Florida talks “achieved significant progress” but that some issues remained unresolved. Zelenskyy, while trying carefully not to anger Trump, has refused US-backed calls for Ukraine to give up hard-fought territory that Russia has not been able to seize. Four people were killed and 40 wounded in a Russian missile attack on the eastern-central Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Monday, Ukrainian officials said. Vladyslav Haivanenko, the acting governor of the surrounding Dnipropetrovsk region, said 11 of those injured were in a serious condition. Ukraine’s emergency services said car service stations, other businesses, an office building and 49 cars were all damaged in the attack. Continue reading...

The king and queen’s visit to the former colony is the first by members of the Dutch royal family in nearly five decades The Dutch king, Willem-Alexander, vowed on Monday that the topic of slavery would not be off-limits as he visits former colony Suriname, where the practice ended just over 150 years ago. The king arrived in the capital Paramaribo on Sunday with Queen Maxima, a week after the small South American country marked 50 years of independence from the Netherlands. Continue reading...

Amar Subramanya will replace John Giannandrea after firm has struggled to catch up with AI rollouts by competitors Apple’s head of artificial intelligence, John Giannandrea, is stepping down from the company. The move comes as the Silicon Valley giant has lagged behind its competitors in rolling out generative AI features, in particular its voice assistant Siri. Apple made the announcement on Monday, thanking Giannandrea for his seven-year tenure at the company. Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said his fellow executive helped the company “in building and advancing our AI work” and allowing Apple to “continue to innovate”. Giannandrea will be replaced by longtime AI researcher Amar Subramanya. Continue reading...

Norway’s most celebrated photographer made his name with calm, reflective images that sit at odds with his reckless life. Friends and family remember a paradoxical man Norway has never looked as wet as in the photographs of the late Tom Sandberg. There are shots of drizzle and puddles, of asphalt slick with mizzle. A ripple of water appears to have a hole in it, a figure looms behind a rain-dappled window, a gutter glows after a downpour. Shot in either bold chiaroscuro or gentle orchestrations of greys, these are pictures with the power to make the everyday seem dreamlike. But they are also uplifting, in a confusing kind of way, like being told to dress for sun even when the clouds are black. Continue reading...

Research shows perpetrators use methods such as stopping mothers accessing bank accounts and child benefits Almost 4 million children in the UK are suffering the impact of economic abuse in their families, with some having pocket or birthday money stolen by the perpetrators, a charity has found. Data from charity Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA) showed that over the past year 27% of mothers with children under 18 had experienced behaviour considered to be economic abuse, where a current or former partner has controlled the family’s money. Continue reading...

Residents claim raw sewage and poorly treated effluent as result of Thames Water’s failings are threat to health Communities across south-east England are filing the first coordinated legal complaints that sewage pollution by Thames Water negatively affects their lives. Thames Water failed to complete upgrades to 98 treatment plants and pumping stations which have the worst records for sewage pollution into the environment, despite a promise to invest in them over the last five years. Continue reading...

Many uncertain about the future after losing everything in the country’s deadliest natural disaster for years When the rains began, Layani Rasika Niroshani was not worried. The 36-year-old mother of two was used to the heavy monsoon showers that drench Sri Lanka’s hilly central region of Badulla every year. But as it kept pounding down without stopping, the family started to feel jittery. Some relocated to a relative’s house, but her brother and his wife decided to stay behind to collect the valuables. As they were inside, a landslide hit the family home. Continue reading...

Justice secretary expected to announce plans to tackle backlog of cases as he says system has been pushed to brink of collapse A “courts emergency” that will surpass 100,000 outstanding cases without radical reforms is leaving victims waiting years for justice, David Lammy has said as he prepares to face MPs over plans to drop thousands of jury trials. The justice secretary proposed last week to reduce the 78,000 outstanding cases in England and Wales by allowing jury trials only for serious crimes such as murder, rape and manslaughter. Continue reading...

Police appeal for witnesses after collision near Tadcaster grammar school A teenage girl has been killed after the minibus she was travelling in collided with a car in North Yorkshire. The crash occurred just before 12.30pm when the minibus, carrying the girl and eight other passengers aged 16 to 18, collided with a Hyundai i10 at a junction on Toulston Lane in Tadcaster, close to Tadcaster grammar school. Continue reading...

Home Office accused of putting criminality before dignity with rule seeking intelligence on people-smugglers Children who arrive in the UK on small boats could be searched to check if they are concealing phone sim cards in their mouths under new Home Office rules. New measures will allow immigration enforcement officials to seize phones at the border if it is believed they contain useful intelligence about people-smugglers. Continue reading...

Survey also reveals Britons’ favourite festive film, views on tear-jerkers and family cinema trips When Macaulay Culkin recently said he didn’t consider Die Hard to be a Christmas film – wading into one of pop culture’s most heated holiday debates – he was booed by a live audience. But it looks like the British people are behind the actor, with a survey revealing that Home Alone is the UK’s favourite festive film, while Die Hard has officially been voted not a Christmas movie. Continue reading...

Manager criticised supporters for booing on Saturday Says Pedro Porro’s posts were ‘fair in every aspect’ Thomas Frank believes he will be shown patience by Tottenham’s owners despite the fractious home defeat against Fulham on Saturday which resulted in him criticising ­supporters for booing the goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario. After the 2-1 defeat – a third for Spurs in the space of six days – Frank said those who took aim at the ­Italian after his mistake led to a second ­Fulham goal for Harry ­Wilson were “not true fans”. Continue reading...

This old-school sitcom about a PE teacher who wakes after being frozen since the 70s is an impeccably deadpan send-up of masculinity. But it hits hardest when this unreconstructed man turns out to be right about life today You can lay the demise of political satire at the door of stranger-than-fiction governmental turmoil. You can attribute the disappearance of pop culture pastiche to a fractured zeitgeist and the thinning out of the artistic mainstream. Yet there’s no obvious reason for the scarcity of jokes about contemporary society in comedy. Maybe it has something to do with the decline of the sketch show; perhaps it’s simply because there’s far less funny stuff on TV in general (during the 2010s, the BBC’s comedy output almost halved). Whatever the reason, when we get a chance to laugh at modern mores, we should probably take it. Re-enter Mammoth, an old-school sitcom from the Welsh comedian Mike Bubbins. The 53-year-old stars as the eponymous Tony Mammoth, a PE teacher who was buried by an avalanche on a school skiing trip in 1979. A quarter of a century later he was unearthed – nice one, global warming! – with his middle-aged body and dated values perfectly preserved. Yes we can laugh at this swaggering alpha’s outmoded tastes and borderline offensive views. But the beauty of this series is that the comedy flows both ways: when Mammoth looks aghast at the things that pass for normal in 2020s Britain, it can be hard to deny that he has a point. Continue reading...

Disgraced and incarcerated music mogul claims footage in docuseries Sean Combs: The Reckoning was stolen Sean “Diddy” Combs has taken issue with a splashy new Netflix docuseries on his life and many legal troubles, that is executive produced by his longtime rival 50 Cent. The former Bad Boy Records executive and hip-hop star, currently serving a four-year sentence for prostitution-related charges, blasted Sean Combs: The Reckoning as a “shameful hit piece”, and accused Netflix of incorporating stolen footage. Continue reading...

Mental health of Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who is charged with murder, had reportedly been unravelling for years The suspect in the shooting of two West Virginia national guard soldiers in Washington DC on the eve of Thanksgiving had been struggling with his mental health, sometimes spending “weeks on end” in isolation, as he struggled to assimilate in the years since arriving in the United States, it has emerged. According to emails obtained by the Associated Press, Rahmanullah Lakanwal’s mental health had been unravelling for years, leaving him unable to hold a job and flipping between long, dark stretches of isolation and taking sudden weeks-long cross-country drives. Continue reading...

Iranian film-maker won Cannes film festival’s Palme D’Or prize earlier this year for It Was Just an Accident Iran has sentenced the Palme d’Or-winning film-maker Jafar Panahi in absentia to one year in prison and a travel ban over “propaganda activities” against the country. The sentence includes a two-year ban on leaving Iran and prohibition of Panahi from membership of any political or social groups, his lawyer Mostafa Nili told AFP, adding that they would file an appeal. Continue reading...

Demonstrators blocked the exit of ICE vehicles from a parking lot using garbage bags and metal barriers A raid by federal immigration authorities on Saturday in New York City was thwarted by about 200 protesters, several of whom were arrested after scuffles with police officers. The episode was the latest in which citizen activists have stood up to agents enforcing Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration agenda through targeted raids in various cities across the country after his second presidency began in January. Continue reading...

Britain quit EU programme after Brexit, when Boris Johnson claimed it did not offer good value for money The UK is hoping to secure an agreement within weeks to rejoin the EU’s flagship student mobility programme, as part of a drive to pursue closer relations with Brussels after a setback on defence. Negotiators are aiming to finalise a deal by January that would allow the UK to participate in Erasmus from 2027 onwards, according to two UK and EU officials. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Richard Hermer, a senior Jewish minister, says Reform leader ‘clearly deeply hurt’ many people with his alleged behaviour The UK’s top law officer, one of the most senior Jewish government ministers, has urged Nigel Farage to apologise to school contemporaries who claim the Reform UK leader racially abused them while at school. The attorney general Richard Hermer said that Farage had “clearly deeply hurt” many people with their descriptions of his behaviour, and that his “constantly changing” denials had been unconvincing. Continue reading...

Red Bull driver can win fifth world title in Abu Dhabi Dutchman was 104 points behind top after Dutch GP Max Verstappen is fired-up to go to Abu Dhabi and compete for his fifth F1 world championship after the Dutchman won in Qatar, narrowed the gap to 12 points within the championship leader, Lando Norris and overtook Oscar Piastri to set up a three-way season-deciding finale at the Yas Marina circuit. Verstappen delivered a superb drive for Red Bull in Lusail on Sunday but it was a victory handed to him by McLaren, who made a calamitous strategy call for Norris and Piastri. Continue reading...

The government is trapped between Labour’s instincts and bond traders’ demands. Sensible fixes exist, but require imagination ministers have yet shown The confected frenzy splashed across the morning front pages from the Telegraph to the Mail is remarkable mostly for its absurdity. An outrage machine has decided that a forecast of a few billion pounds in a model that makes projections about trillions of pounds of taxes and spending is the lie of the century. We can’t predict the weather next year, but apparently the public finances in 2029 can be judged with pinpoint accuracy. That’s why the headlines about “holes” and “sleaze probes” are a joke. It is theatre, but it is bad theatre. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) possesses no great moral or predictive authority. Yet many of its accusers and defenders treat it as an all‑seeing oracle. In fact, the OBR, to its credit, admits that its medium-term projections are frequently wrong. It often wrongly estimates inflation and productivity, and has had its assumptions upended by unforeseen events. The OBR’s 2019 five-year forecast undershot actual GDP growth by £200bn. Given this degree of error, treating a projected current budget balance of £20bn in 2029-30 as a hard fact is deeply unserious. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

The specific health issues faced by boys and men deserve attention. But waiting lists stand in the way of improvement Men, on average, have lower life expectancy than women – by around four years in the UK. They account for three-quarters of all deaths by suicide and are more likely to smoke and be overweight. Young men are more likely than young women to die as a result of accidents, violence or overdoses. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, with around 12,000 deaths every year. A public consultation on whether to introduce screening for the disease opened last week, after an expert committee advised against it. So the men’s health strategy for England launched recently by the health secretary, Wes Streeting, should be welcomed on principle. Just as a women’s health lens helps policymakers to focus on female reproductive health and risks, a men’s health lens should enable specific problems to be targeted more effectively. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...