Home secretary’s colleagues fear homelessness will rise as a result of changes to the asylum system
Shabana Mahmood has infuriated ministerial colleagues by failing to share what they see as crucial information about the impact of her migration changes.
Sources say the home secretary has repeatedly refused to reveal how much she expects homelessness to rise as a result of changes to the asylum system.
Up to 1.4 million people could benefit from change to trading allowance announced in budget, with some saving hundreds in tax
The amount Britons can earn from a side hustle without paying tax will rise to £3,000 next year in a fillip for those who make extra cash from hobbies or reselling.
Up to 1.4 million people could benefit from the change announced in the budget, with the chancellor confirming the tax-free “trading” allowance will increase from £1,000 to £3,000 in April 2027.
In today’s newsletter: Benjamin Netanyahu has been left without a majority, now it is up to the coalition to find out whether the desire for change will prove to be a defining political moment
Good morning. It was described by many Israelis as the most consequential election in their country’s history. And, as the final votes were tallied, it has delivered a result that presents Israel with a significant dilemma.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition has lost its mandate while the opposition has a clear majority: but only if the Jewish Israeli opposition bloc, led by retired general Gadi Eisenkot, is prepared to make a governing pact with Palestinian Israeli parties, which have secured a historic result.
UK politics | John Healey has backed away from cutting the cost of welfare this parliament, amid dire warnings his first budget could lead to brutal spending cuts because of a £28bn shortfall in public finances.
Patrick Stewart | The acclaimed British stage and screen actor renowned for both Shakespeare and sci-fi, died at his home in Los Angeles after “a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia”, his longtime spokesperson said.
Environment | One of the most ambitious nature recovery projects ever undertaken in England can go ahead after campaigners announced they had raised £30m to buy an estate in Northumberland.
Europe | Spain began three days of mourning on Thursday for at least 69 people who died in a high-speed rail collision, as hospitals continued to treat dozens of injured passengers and train drivers went on strike to urge more investment in railway safety.
US news | The Trump administration has opened a criminal investigation in California over claims that thousands of noncitizens are registered to vote in the state, and has begun subpoenaing election officials.
Cross-party committee says ‘moonshot’ vow to end obesity epidemic in a decade will fail without personal leadership from PM
The UK government’s promise to reverse rising obesity rates in the next decade is “doomed to fail” without a major rethink and a new plan led directly by the prime minister, a cross-party committee of MPs has concluded.
The health and social care select committee said in a report that there are no signs the so-called “moonshot ambition on obesity”, set out in the 10-year health plan for England, will achieve anything significant.
Next month’s poll no longer the contest it was, as Pedro Sánchez finds himself forced to defend government’s safety record
One of the most dependable cliches of contemporary Spanish politics is that it never pays to bet against Pedro Sánchez. Time and time again – as leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) and as prime minister – Sánchez has shown an almost preternatural ability to profit from adversity, and to confound expectations and wrongfoot his opponents.
Conservative-run Hillingdon aims to save £100,000 but local people fear dog poo will ‘be dumped everywhere’
People in a west London borough fear it will become covered in dog poo after their cash-strapped council decided to remove 700 dog-waste bins to save money.
“People are worried there’s going to be dog shit everywhere,” said Daniel O’Neill, the chief road steward at Ruislip Residents’ Association.
Ryan Dinnage – who accompanied Reform UK leader on walkabouts before local elections – was later jailed, raising questions about vetting failure
One of Nigel Farage’s security team who accompanied him on the local election campaign trail this year was facing a rape charge and was later jailed for eight years, raising questions about a failure of vetting.
Ryan Dinnage spent time protecting Farage in April and May, but in June was convicted of having raped a woman while she slept in a caravan at the Royal Windsor horse show.
Paul Nowak says ‘hundreds, if not thousands’ of employers could sign access agreements as ‘transformative’ rules come into force
The TUC general secretary, Paul Nowak, is predicting a wave of union recognition deals in the private sector over the next year as “transformative” rules on accessing workplaces come into force.
From Friday, as part of Labour’s Employment Rights Act, unions will have the right to enter workplaces or communicate with staff electronically. From January, employers will be obliged to inform workers of their right to join a union.
As thousands of datacentres are constructed across Europe, the Guardian and Investigate Europe have uncovered disturbing evidence that some workers building them are exposed to dangerous conditions and living in fear of speaking out
Sandu* checked his watch. He was winding down the last 15 minutes of his shift at a vast Google datacentre site in Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, in March, when the call came in. The 34-year-old electrical tester had already worked almost 10 hours, but says such last-minute jobs were normal: “I had no choice. People have been fired after saying no.”
The task was one Sandu had done many times before and involved a series of tests measuring the safety and integrity of the electrical wiring. A protective suit was locked away in an equipment room. The round trip would have added another 15 minutes to the job, he says, and people were waiting, so he decided not to retrieve the suit.
Commons report calls on Foreign Office to bail out soft-power flagship reeling from job cuts and asset sales
Ministers should explore writing off a crippling £197m loan to the British Council by converting as much of it as possible into “a grant or similar”, MPs have said.
The Commons public accounts committee said the government lacked a “positive vision” for the council, whose soft power value to the UK is put at £1bn a year. The MPs called on the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) to set out what more it could do to support the council and its work.
There is no end in sight for the drivers of illegal mining, while police action appears ineffective
Cora Bailey has been encountering illegal miners ever since she first started treating injured animals in the townships around Roodepoort, west of Johannesburg, in 1991. But as the price of gold has soared, so too has activity in the abandoned mine shafts that mark the area.
In late September, dozens of zama zamas – the name given to illegal miners in South Africa, meaning roughly “to take a chance” in Zulu – arrived to dig for gold across the dirt road from her charity, Claw (Community Led Animal Welfare).
Critics cite Lana Nusseibeh’s denial of accusations the UAE is fuelling Sudan war by supporting paramilitary RSF
Members of the Sudanese diaspora and international human rights monitors have denounced the candidature of an Emirati diplomat for the top job at the UN, citing her denial of accusations that the United Arab Emirates is fuelling the war in Sudan by supporting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The UAE nominated Lana Nusseibeh last week to replace the UN secretary general, António Guterres, as he finishes his second five-year term this year, upending a race that had become gridlocked.
An unpublished government report on feral deer shows Australia is failing in its efforts to stop the spread of what one advocate warns could become “Australia’s next feral pig”.
The five years from 2020-2025 over which the national feral deer action plan was assessed covers a period in which the famously elusive species has increasingly encroached upon major cities, leading to more frequent encounters – including a memorable occasion in which two men in various degrees of undress were fined after becoming lost in the bush when they were spooked by deer while nude sunbathing.
The unprecedented number of empty seats at the fifth plenum – a symbol of expulsions – serve as a symbol for the scale of the purges under Xi Jinping
China expelled a record number of officials from the Chinese Communist party (CCP) as it concluded a major political gathering, which saw an unprecedented number of empty seats indicating the scale of the purges under Xi Jinping.
A record 33 members were expelled at this week’s fifth plenum, a gathering of top officials that takes place roughly once a year.
Former Bachelor star Sam Wood will remain in custody while he awaits trial on domestic violence charges, after he was refused bail for a second time.
Wood, 46, from Melbourne, has been held in custody since his arrest on 4 October at Noosa.
On Friday supreme court justice Patrick McCafferty said Wood posed “an unacceptable risk” of further offending, meaning he will remain in the high-security Wolston correctional centre until his trial, which the court heard might not take place until 2028.
One of Australia’s most notorious paedophiles is facing hundreds more child abuse charges, including for the alleged rape of children as young as one.
Days after being extradited from Queensland to New South Wales, Ashley Paul Griffith was hit with 202 charges dating from between 2014 and 2017, with police labelling the allegations “deeply disturbing”.
As many as 8 million people have been affected by food shortages, electricity blackouts and health clinic closures
Extreme drought driven by an historic El Niño is affecting as many as 8 million people in Papua New Guinea, causing a cascade of issues from shortages of food and water, to electricity scarcity and schooling disruption.
An influential coalition that includes churches, trade unions and business groups has said the Pacific nation is in the midst of a “national crisis”, but there appears to be “no coordinated plan to protect vulnerable communities from the worsening impacts of El Niño.”
Candidate for Ohio governor confirms campaign no longer airing ad that smeared rival and was defended by Trump
Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for Ohio governor, confirmed on Thursday that his campaign is no longer airing an attack ad that features the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton.
The ad prompted a wave of revulsion since Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, lost custody of her daughter in 1978, when her second husband, Cledith Arthur, was charged with raping her daughter between the ages of 10 and 12.
The federal government’s antisemitism envoy has proposed an “external independent ombudsman” to monitor ABC and SBS coverage of the war in Gaza, and a requirement that all visa applicants be screened for “the risk of holding antisemitic views”.
In an updated plan released on Friday, Jillian Segal said Australia’s two public broadcasters should be subjected to greater oversight.
Breach may have started with a hacked laptop belonging to engineer, in incident analysts say could be of the most significant intrusions on record
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has said it’s investigating reports of a potential $6.3bn security breach that analysts said could amount to the most significant incident relating to digital assets on record.
It wasn’t immediately clear the extent of the damage hackers might have been able to cause, and Binance did not explicitly confirmed that funds had been stolen. The company said its teams are “working around the clock” to resolve the issue.
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