David Davis says Home Office being aoverly kindlya a and ignoring acommon sensea solution

Exclusive: Labour claims ministers lost aany chancea of getting money back amoment somebodya made case public

Former health secretary belives political career apretty much donea, minister hints

Remark comes as China says BBC cameraman adid not reveal his journalist identity at the timea

Ventilation issues on the maternity ward at William Harvey Hospital have led to treatments being withdrawn

From stricter phone rules to low emission zones, donat be caught out by new motoring rules

Grant Shapps claims there is anot really a rowa because government and rebels have same aim of alocal consenta

From stricter phone rules to low emission zones, donat be caught out by new motoring rules

Labour criticised the move as a areheated announcement with no new resourcesa

Industrial action follows earlier walkouts over pay and conditions

Industrial action follows earlier walkouts over pay and conditions

Flashing headlights and parking inappropriately could land car-owners with heavy fines

Flashing headlights and parking inappropriately could land car-owners with heavy fines

Motorists urged to anot panica when they see emergency services on the road

Motorists urged to anot panica when they see emergency services on the road

Police were called to the scene in south-west London at about 4am on Saturday and found 31-year-old Reece Newcombe with serious injuries

aI still donat understand it,a one person says

aI still donat understand it,a one person says

Proponents say the five-day week is a hangover from an old economic age

Deputy PM insists he has always abehaved professionallya

She appeared in the Australian soap between 1999 and 2004 as Holly Valanceas sister Michelle

Over 12 million votes were cast to decide the winner of the 2022 season

The actor talks to Nicole Vassell about acting deal-breakers, her new housing-crisis romcom aThe Flatsharea, the time she annoyed her own flatmates, and the character that saved her

Scott and Unitt have been engaged since 2020

Dara O Briain and David Nicholls were among the other stars to react to the clip of the filmmaker talking about the comedyas nuns

Warning: thereas a lot of screaming

The Queen of the Jungle also shared views on Matt Hancockas stint on the ITV series

The comedian reflected on her time on BBC show hours after results were broadcast

Matt Hancock finished the competition in third place

Tory MPas involvement in the series was criticised by viewers and other politicians

A second season could include a lot more of the wider Addams family, according to show creator

As played by Christina Ricci, the only daughter of the Addams Family taught Nineties kids that it was OK to be strange, different and performatively murderous. As Wednesday returns in a new Netflix series, Isabelle Aron speaks to fans and experts about why she continues to matter

As played by Christina Ricci, the only daughter of the Addams Family taught Nineties kids that it was OK to be strange, different and performatively murderous. As Wednesday returns in a new Netflix series, Isabelle Aron speaks to fans and experts about why she continues to matter

Actor reveals adeepest concerna about people no longer wanting to watch him on screen

aI donat need him for publicity so Iam not going to play his game by talking about hima

The merrymaking of last weekas episode was, of course, shortlived

The merrymaking of last weekas episode was, of course, shortlived

Beth OaLearyas novel aThe Flatsharea a about two people renting a London flat for 12 hours each per day a is now a Paramount Plus romcom, but questionable living arrangements are an increasingly fraught part of modern life, writes Katie Rosseinsky

Series came to an end on Sunday evening

Show has been a word-of-mouth hit for the streaming service

Show has been a word-of-mouth hit for the streaming service

The aHarry Pottera star has appeared alongside Depp in seven films

The aHarry Pottera star has appeared alongside Depp in seven films

Jenna Ortega plays the morbid teenager in Netflixas new series

Jenna Ortega plays the morbid teenager in Netflixas new series

aAddams Family Valuesa star Ricci appears in the new series alongside 20-year-old Ortega

aAddams Family Valuesa star Ricci appears in the new series alongside 20-year-old Ortega

Better hurry a it"s your last chance to take advantage of some of the best deals on toys, gifts, and parenting products you"ll see all year.

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"She took the pickles off and threw them at my face, demanding a new burger...the kitchen remade her order... She then opened the new burger and asked where the pickles were. I kid you not."

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Run, don"t walk, because there"s only one day left to score the *very best* deals of the year.

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"Turns out that person who was "just a friend" was a full-fledged relationship."

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Different strokes for different folks.

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Support small businesses in a ~big~ way and cross everyone off your list *before* December even starts.

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Great deals on already-budget friendly items = the winningest win that ever winned.

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There"s still time to snag the *best* deals of the year a but you"ll wanna act fast before they disappear.

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Don"t get mad, get petty.

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You just know Riverdale is going to be on this list.

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These toys got a big thumbs up from the experts aka kids.

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I"ve combed through the options so you don"t have to.

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Cheap, cheerful, and something they won"t need to re-gift.

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Oh, to be an 11-year-old riding a Razor scooter again.

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Don"t ~brush~ off these deals on your fave makeup and skincare products because they won"t be around for much longer.

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Winter"s actually not so bad when you"re not perpetually freezing.

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Because a little bit of joy deserves to be injected into every aspect of your life.

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Act fast or you might miss out on some of the best prices being ~served~ up this year.

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Cyber Monday shoppers never finish last... d So make sure to grab some of the best sex toy deals this year before they"re gone.

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It"s your *last chance* to get deals this good for a while, so don"t waste your time a we"ve found the very best of the best.

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But hurry a these deals are not going to be ~in style~ for long.

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Beijing, Chengdu and Wuhan see demonstrations as anger over Xi Jinpingas strict Covid policies builds, in a test for the Communist party

Hundreds of demonstrators and police have clashed in Shanghai as protests over Chinaas stringent Covid restrictions flared for a third day and spread to several cities, in the biggest test for president Xi Jinping since he secured a historic third term in power.

The wave of civil disobedience is unprecedented in mainland China in the past decade, as frustration mounts over Xias signature zero-Covid policy nearly three years into the pandemic.

Latest updates: business secretary hints that government may avoid rebellion over windfarms by giving in while row grows over Albanian asylum seekers

My colleague Peter Walker is not the only journalist who thought it was misleading of Grant Shapps to imply in his morning interviews that the government was already in favour of allowing new onshore windfarms to be built so long as there is local consent. (See 9.29am.)

This is from ITVas Anushka Asthana.

• Minute-by-minute updates on the Group G encounter
• Any comments? You can email John or tweet John

Itas nothing to do with a Michael Crawford revival. Or Steve Harley.

KA!ri Tulinius gets in touch:a One theme of this World Cup so far is good teams without top class strikers. So itall be fascinating to see whether Choupo-Moting or MitroviA step up. Of course, neither is exactly a dependable goalscorer, but the former did net a crucial goal against Algeria in the playoff which took the tie into extra time, and the latter has a half-century of goals in 77 matches for Serbia.a

Fresh evidence of ownersa lavish lifestyle discovered at same site as rare Iliad mosaic

If you thought barn conversions were a relatively recent development for the property-owning classes, youad be wrong a probably by 16 or 17 centuries.

Archaeologists at the site of a Roman villa complex in the east Midlands have discovered that its wealthy owners converted an agricultural timber barn into a dwelling featuring a bathing suite with a hot steam room, a warm room and a cold plunge pool.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy urges Ukraine to prepare for a fresh series of strikes; Ukraineas state-run nuclear energy firm suggests Russian forces are apacking their bagsa to leave power plant

• At a glance: what we know on day 278 of the war

The Kremlinas spokesperson has denied reports that Russian forces were planning to leave the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine, telling reporters they should not look for signs where there were none.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin said it welcomed a Vatican offer to provide a negotiating platform to resolve the Ukraine conflict, but that Kyivas position made this aimpossiblea.

Tenant, who is suing landlord in test case, calls on UK government to back renters in claiming damages

A woman with potentially terminal lung disease who claims it was due to being exposed to mould in her rented home has demanded the government empowers victims to take rogue landlords to court and ahit them in the walleta.

The woman, who is in her 50s, said she may have as little as 18 months to live. A medical expert she engaged in a legal action against her landlord believes her illness was likely triggered by moulds within her home caused by disrepair. She now requires constant oxygen via mask or nasal catheter and is on the waiting list for a lung transplant.

Art activism has increased in and outside the country since death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini

Dozens of Iranian artists have called for an international boycott of cultural institutions run by or affiliated with the Islamic Republic in protest against the regimeas worsening human rights abuses.

The call by artists, writers, film-makers and academics living in Iran and among its diaspora comes amid growing anti-government art activism by Iranians inside and outside the country after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.

Police treating both incidents, in which two 16-year-olds died in Thamesmead and Abbey Wood, as linked

A teenager has been arrested over the fatal stabbings of two 16-year-old boys a mile apart in south-east London, police said.

Kearne Solanke was found with stab wounds in Thamesmead, and Charlie Bartolo was discovered in Abbey Wood, on Saturday afternoon.

Footage was taken down only after the New Zealand government alerted Twitter, which had failed to pick up the content as harmful

Twitter has removed freshly uploaded footage of the Christchurch terror attack that was circulating on the platform, but only after the New Zealand government alerted the company, which had failed to recognise the content as harmful.

The video clips, filmed by the Australian white supremacist who murdered 51 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch in 2019, were uploaded by some Twitter users on Saturday, according to the office of the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern.

Musician admits he used an autopen to sign books and artworks due to his vertigo, after fans compared signatures and discovered they were identical

Bob Dylan has issued a rare public statement to apologise for his aerror in judgmenta, amid controversy over his use of a machine to autograph special copies of his new book that had been advertised as ahand-signeda.

The book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, features the legendary singer-songwriteras commentary on tracks by other artists and was released in early November, with a limited run of 900 ahand-signeda editions sold for US$599 each. All copies came with a letter of authenticity from publisher Simon & Schuster.

Historian says Russia needs to lose its war in order to become a anormala European country a and stopping destruction of Ukraineas power grid is essential

• Russia-Ukraine war: latest news updates

When the Yale historian Timothy Snyder was asked by Ukraineas government to fundraise for the war effort, he considered a project to restore Chernihiv library. It would have been an obvious choice for the bestselling author, who has visited the ruined library a a gracious gothic terracotta structure that survived two world wars but was smashed to rubble in March by Russiaas 500kg bombs.

Yet he soon decided that a fundraiser for a library would be akind of morally self indulgenta. When he asked his friends in Kyiv what was most urgently needed, nobody hesitated: anti-drone defence. aI thought I should do the thing which is most urgent now,a Snyder told the Guardian in a phone interview from the Yale campus. aThe ruins of the library are going to be there. I can raise money for that later. But right now, whatas happening is that the Russians are trying to freeze millions of people out by destroying the power grid. And so what I should be trying to do is try to stop that.a

Zelenskiy says Russia planning new missile attacks; Ukraineas nuclear energy chief suggests Russian forces may be preparing to leave Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant

• See all our Russia-Ukraine war coverage

They fled Russia disguised as food couriers. Now a major exhibition is celebrating the collectiveas punky protest art, from a urine-splattered portrait of Putin to the cathedral gig that landed them in prison

The first thing you see is a framed portrait of Vladimir Putin propped against a table. The Russian leader looks like a secular icon, like Lenin in his mausoleum, seemingly incapable of human expression. But this being a video installation, there is more. Standing on the table is figure in a long gown and orange balaclava, like Rasputin in womenas clothes, or a very unorthodox priest. The figure raises their skirts and a jet of urine spurts over the portrait.

Welcome to ReykjavAk and to Velvet Terrorism, an exhibition tracing the decade-long history of Russian art collective Pussy Riot. aIs that you?a I ask Maria Alyokhina, AKA Masha, pointing at the masked urinator? The Pussy Riot co-founder has been showing me, over a video conferencing app, around the exhibition she and members of Icelandic art collective Kling & Bang (Dorothee Kirch, IngibjAPrg SigurjA3nsdA3ttir and Ragnar Kjartansson) are installing. Kjartansson, who earlier this year helped Alyokhina flee Russia, holds the phone and gives me a view of Alyokhina at work.

TV made him a star, but activism turned him into a hero. Now 85 and still going strong, the actor remembers his friendships and feuds, and his shameful treatment in the second world war

George Takei is on a mission. But this time the Star Trek actor is not boldly going where no man has gone before. Now heas boldly going where too many men went before, to ensure history does not forget them.

Takei is about to star in the British production of the musical Allegiance, inspired by his childhood as one of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans forced into internment camps after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. Now a youthful 85, he says it remains the defining experience of his life a one that shaped him as an actor and an activist.

Millions of Germans were faced with that question after the collapse of communism and the Stasi a and most of them choose ignorance rather than knowledge. Is it sometimes better to forget the past than to investigate it?

In East Germany, during the communist period, people would sometimes join a queue on the basis that if others were waiting, there must be something worth having at the end of it. Siegfried Wittenburg, whose images accompany this article, photographed this waiting-for-I-know-not-what in his home town of Rostock. It was safer to take photos than to criticise the regime in words, but only just.

The Ministry for State Security, or Stasi, kept Wittenburg under surveillance from 1972 almost until its own dissolution. The last entry in his file, which concerned some photos he had exhibited of Rostockas dilapidated old town, was dated 27 November 1989 a almost three weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He knows this because he applied to see that file in 1999. Having discovered the identities of his informers, he made peace with one of them a whom the Stasi had blackmailed a and cut ties with the others. aEver since I cleaned up my past, I feel free,a says the 69-year-old. aI became more open, happier, warmer a and successful.a

Whether anybody else could see it or not, I had lost someone: my former, healthy self.

On Friday, 14 December 2012, I would experience the sudden onset of an illness that, looking back almost a decade later, bears a powerful resemblance to the narratives of those suffering from long Covid.

That night, I had plans to meet a woman I was seeing. At the time, I was working as an adjunct English professor at a local college in Westchester, New York, commuting over the George Washington Bridge from my fourth-floor walkup in Hoboken, New Jersey, and trying to persuade distracted 19-year-olds to appreciate the black comedy and cryptic comeuppances of Flannery OaConnor. After walking back to my apartment from the gym, I showered and sprayed on cologne. But before I could leave, a wave of weakness and disorientation crashed over me. My balance became wobbly, and my stomach lurched forward and back. I staggered through my apartment as if it was the cabin of a boat heaving and pitching in a storm.

Aaron Horsey, whose wife died in childbirth, had no automatic right to leave despite being babyas sole carer

When Aaron Horsey found out his wife, Bernadette, was pregnant he decided to change jobs to make sure he could work flexibly and be present for his new child. But when Bernadette died unexpectedly in childbirth, he suddenly realised the move had left him with no right to time off work to look after their newborn son, Tim.

Horsey already knew that fathers and partners only have the right to paternity or parental leave if they have worked for a company for nine months before their child is born a even if it is unpaid. Instead, he was planning to take unpaid leave and holiday.

Rapid smart TV upgrade with every streaming service available and a quality ad-free home screen

Appleas latest TV streaming box is faster, smaller, more efficient and cheaper than its predecessors, making it one of the best and most reliable smart TV experiences you can get.

The third-generation Apple TV 4K costs from APS149 ($129/A$219). While APS20 cheaper than last yearas model, it is still a premium over rivals from Google, Amazon and others, which are priced at between APS50 and APS140.

From Scandinavian honey bombs, a German take on pizza, Nigellaas sticky toffee pudding to American candy cane cookies, thereas a treat for everyone and every taste in this selection of simple bakes

Easy. Christmas. Baking. Three of my favourite words. Three of my favourite things. Twenty perfect recipes. Nigel and Nigella! Maple walnut biscuits from Jeremy Lee. A breakfast loaf from Honey & Co, marmalade popovers from Margaret Costa. Advent treats: flammkuchen from Anja Dunk and Yotamas Swiss chocolate cookies. There are savouries: cheese and quince shortbread from Olia Hercules, sage and onion twists from Benjamina Ebuehi, stilton scones from Claire Thomson. Thereas sweet: chocolate plum pudding and candy cane cookies. Truly, simply delicious. Merry Christmas from OFM.

Paul Edwardsa childhood was full of music, but it faded away. Decades later, as he struggled to get over a double bereavement, it turned out to be a lifeline

When Paul Edwards left school at 15, he headed to the careers office in Salford, Greater Manchester, to speak to the man behind the glass hatch. The careers officer riffled through his little box of cards, and pulled out two. One card advertised a vacancy for a violin-makeras apprentice; the other for a precision grinder, which paid twice as much. Edwardsa mother told him there was no choice. He became a precision grinder.

He must have thought about this fork in the road many times since, because two years ago, at 62, he built a guitar. aAnd the first thing I thought was: Why didnat I do this when I left school?a

Tell us: has your life taken a new direction after the age of 60?

Reinstating the likes of Donald Trump and Kanye West looks likely to turn the social media site into an extremist ghetto

Free speech absolutists are like the cocky audience of a spectator sport a they think they could do better than the players, if they were just allowed a crack at it. To them, speech should be as free as possible, period. Nowhere is their oversimplification of the issue more evident than on social media, where abuse and disinformation have created a new frontier of regulation a and with it a cohort of disingenuous free speech warriors.

These absolutists are so unaccustomed to facing consequences for their actions that they have pushed the idea that a censoring awokea orthodoxy now prevails, and is a threat to freedom of expression. Elon Musk is among them, but since his takeover of Twitter he is having to learn quickly that free speech is not simply about saying whatever you want, unchecked, but about negotiating complicated compromises.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

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.

Despite pledges from governments worldwide, not nearly enough has been done over the past decade to help survivors and deter perpetrators

Almost a decade ago, more than 150 countries joined the global declaration of commitment to end sexual violence in conflict. They promised to bring perpetrators to justice, to put survivorsa needs first, and to take other practical steps to end impunity.

These were lofty goals and there has been some progress, including a few prosecutions at the national level, the adoption of the Murad Code and the establishment of the Global Survivors Fund. But it has not been nearly enough to meet the needs of survivors, or to deter perpetrators from using rape as a weapon of war in almost every new conflict in the past decade.

A new study cuts the traditional public health target down to size. What a relief: itas never pleasant to drink a cold, flavourless glass of nothing

Finally a finally! a the scientific breakthrough Iave been waiting for. Not the incredible recent progress on Alzheimeras or the huge strides towards eliminating HIV, though, sure, that stuff is good, I suppose. Itas the paper suggesting public health guidelines to drink two litres of water a day are probably over the top. aThe current recommendation is not supported scientifically at all,a according to my new hero, Yosuke Yamada of Japanas National Institute of Biomedical Innovation, one of the studyas authors.

Having grown up before Big Hydration got its unpleasantly moist claws into the world, I donat get on with water, never have. Days go by without me feeling compelled to drink any: I find my thirst is adequately quenched by imagining how unpleasant it would be to drink a cold, flavourless glass of nothing.

Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist

Bitcoin and ethereum prices have plummeted, but it is unlikely the US will ban cryptocurrencies soon

The epic collapse of wunderkind Sam Bankman-Friedas $32bn (APS27bn) crypto empire, FTX, looks set to go down as one of the great financial debacles of all time. With a storyline full of celebrities, politicians, sex and drugs, the future looks bright for producers of feature films and documentaries. But, to paraphrase Mark Twain, rumours of the death of crypto itself have been much exaggerated.

True, the loss of confidence in aexchangesa such as FTX a essentially crypto financial intermediaries a almost surely means a sustained steep drop in prices for the underlying assets. The vast majority of bitcoin transactions are done aoff-chaina in exchanges, not in the bitcoin blockchain itself. These financial intermediaries are vastly more convenient, require much less sophistication to use and do not waste nearly as much energy.

Teachers and parents canat detect this new form of plagiarism. Tech companies could step in a if they had the will to do so

Parents and teachers across the world are rejoicing as students have returned to classrooms. But unbeknownst to them, an unexpected insidious academic threat is on the scene: a revolution in artificial intelligence has created powerful new automatic writing tools. These are machines optimised for cheating on school and university papers, a potential siren song for students that is difficult, if not outright impossible, to catch.

Of course, cheats have always existed, and there is an eternal and familiar cat-and-mouse dynamic between students and teachers. But where once the cheat had to pay someone to write an essay for them, or download an essay from the web that was easily detectable by plagiarism software, new AI language-generation technologies make it easy to produce high-quality essays.

Millennial parents can frantically search online, but ancient wisdom states the reason is almost always aprobably winda

The longer I spend as a parent, the more I realise that itas a bit like being a detective, and not only because I look strung out, wear a trenchcoat and am full of droll maxims such as: aYou can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from a baby.a

Having a baby who canat tell you whatas going on with it means having to solve a mystery every single day. Say the baby is whingeing. First, you run through the usual checklist. Is the baby hungry? Is his nappy full? Is he sleepy? Does he have wind? Once youave ascertained which one it is, you go back to the start, because itas probably something else by now.

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist

Semi-automated offside, augmented reality and CGI replays are all part of the match-day experience at this World Cup

The camera slowly zooms in on Lionel Messias face. And keeps zooming. And keeps zooming. The lens is steady, the focus deep and dramatic, blurring everything but the sole object of its attention. The camera keeps zooming.

Soon Messias shoulders are no longer visible. Then his neck disappears, then his chin. The camera keeps zooming. It is moments before Argentina and Mexico are about to step out in Lusail and the greatest player in the world is being subjected to the photographic equivalent of a nasal swab.

The World Cup favourites showed enough in their win against Serbia to suggest they can perform well against Switzerland even without their star player

Brazil had a decent start to their 2022 World Cup. The first game of the tournament is always a little bit more difficult. An early wrong turn, a miscontrolled ball or a badly placed pass can dictate the story of the game. A team that wants to go on to win the tournament need to realise that and manage the raw emotions and the overall energy of those first minutes. Brazil did that in their 2-0 win against Serbia. But letas be careful. The three points does not guarantee anything, not even progress to the knockout stage. The players need to know that humility and respect is key here and you can never have too much of that.

Now comes a game against another European competitor, Switzerland. Football is exciting because we will never be able to fully understand it, but a win on Monday and early qualification for the second round is what the coach, Tite, is after. Then he could use the third game to rotate the squad somewhat and try a few different tactical things for the battles ahead.

Countryas reforms meant there were as many women in green shirts at Education City as there were supporting Poland

Saudi Arabia have been bringing the noise in Qatar. Fans have travelled in numbers greater than any other country, with only Argentina coming close. The emerald green shirt is a common sight across Doha. Theyare on the corniche and in the metro and, in their first two Group C fixtures, they have generated a fearsome atmosphere within the ground.

It may seem an observation that ought not to have to be made, but the Saudi fanbase in Qatar is made up of both men and women. At Education City on Saturday afternoon, perhaps one in 20 of those making their way into the stadium were female, making them equivalent to the number of women there to support Poland. This is a first.

Both head coaches may need to replace ageing superstars with emerging talent if their teams are to go far in Qatar

Commiserations, friends: today marks our final Tetris, the sole remaining quadruple-consecutive-match extravaganza which has made the start of this World Cup so immersive and compelling. Thatas the sad news. The joyous news is that today is also the day that things get really serious a most particularly in Group H.

Mike White was superb for New York on Sunday. But after the shambles that had gone on before, things could only improve

New York Jets coach Robert Saleh sounded as if he did not want to make too big of a deal of the nice things he saw Sunday from Mike White, the quarterback whom Saleh tapped last week to step in for the struggling Zach Wilson, who was drafted last year to be the teamas latest savior.

At one point in his postgame news conference, Saleh said of White: aHeall make good decisions with the football, and heall make them quick.a Then he added: aJust my take on it.a

Ahead of Decemberas conference our writers select titles that explain the issues at stake, from animal extinction to marine degradation and loss of habitat

Chosen by Patrick Barkham

Siberian cold front forecast to push into China, Mongolia and then UK by Wednesday

A large area of high pressure covering the whole of eastern Europe is bringing severely low temperatures across Siberia. In a part of the world where temperatures are often below freezing at this time of year, the mercury has been 20C to 25C below average in areas over the weekend, with central and eastern Russia experiencing temperatures widely of -25C to -45C.

Over the next couple of days, westerly winds will result in temperatures rising above average in northern Russia but temperatures will remain 10C to 20C below normal in southern Russia. The orientation of the high-pressure system will allow northerly winds to send the cold air southwards across central and eastern Asia over the next few days. Temperatures will fall widely below average here too, with northern and eastern parts of China and Mongolia particularly affected. Temperatures here will fall 10C to 20C below normal by midweek as the same area of high pressure builds in and traps the cold air with temperatures struggling to rise above freezing by day.

Clubs also advised to limit heading training after research showing link with brain disease

Professional footballers in Scotland will be banned from heading the ball the day before and the day after matches after studies showing how it can affect the brain.

Clubs are also being advised to limit heading balls in training to one session a week because of the links between repetitive heading of a football and brain damage.

Introduction of new timetable could lead to crisis, says Northern Powerhouse Partnership

Business leaders have warned that rail services across the north of England could acollapse into utter chaosa unless the government pushes urgently for a resolution to months of disruption.

Rail services are already recording historic levels of cancellations, and the imminent introduction of a new timetable could lead to a acrisisa, the Northern Powerhouse Partnership (NPP), which represents industry in the north of England, has warned in a letter to the UK transport secretary, Mark Harper.

16th-century work Epifania is one of only two existing cartoons by the Italian master

One of only two surviving Michelangelo cartoons is undergoing delicate and highly technical conservation work at the British Museum in an attempt to stabilise the fragile work for the coming decades.

Epifania, created by the Italian master artist around 1550, has degraded and been subject to repeated repairs over its almost 500-year history. Now it is laid out in the museumas state-of-the-art conservation studios as specialists consider how best to preserve the complex structure and black chalk lines.

UK government-backed Heal-Covid trial finds Apixaban can cause dangerous bleeding and does not improve prognosis

A blood-thinning drug given as a potential life-saver to many patients recovering from severe Covid does not work and can cause major bleeding, research shows.

The findings have led to calls for doctors to stop advising people to take Apixaban, because it does not stop them from dying or ending up back in hospital and also can have serious side-effects.

Those from deprived backgrounds are particularly at risk of dying from cancer of the lungs, liver, bladder and oesophagus

Poorer women in Britain have some of the highest death rates from cancer in Europe, an in-depth new World Health Organization study has found.

They are much more likely to die from the disease compared with better-off women in the UK and women in poverty in many other European countries.

Two men and a woman arrested on suspicion of concealing birth of a child after bodies found in Bridgend

Three people have been arrested after the bodies of two babies were found in a house in south Wales.

Officers were called to the house in Wildmill, Bridgend, shortly before 8pm on Saturday.

Property website data shows housing market is slowing, with 44% less demand for homes and sellers accepting 3% below asking price

People selling their homes have typically had to settle for below the asking price in recent weeks, according to Zoopla, which is predicting house prices will fall by about 5% next year.

The average price achieved in recent weeks has been 3% below a selleras asking price, when for much of 2021 and the first half of this year it matched the asking price, the property website said. Zoopla said it expects discounts to increase further in 2023.

Exclusive: Report finds struggling families are having on average 10% of monthly income deducted to cover debt

Low-income families in Scotland are having on average 10% of their monthly income deducted by the Department for Work and Pensions to cover debts such as universal credit advances or school meals payments, according to research.

The report for Aberlour Childrenas Charity, seen by the Guardian, found that families in receipt of universal credit (UC) are having their monthly income reduced on average by APS80 to cover spiralling debt.

The UN special envoy bemoaned a lack of progress in deterring perpetrators from using rape as a weapon of war and for failing to meet the needs of survivors

Angelina Jolie has decried the lack of action by governments to support survivors of wartime rape as adeeply painful and frustratinga.

The actor and UN special envoy for refugees, who launched the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI) with the then foreign secretary William Hague in 2012, said there had not been anearly enougha progress on bringing perpetrators to justice, prioritising survivorsa needs or ending impunity.

Advisers wanted ex-president to distance himself from white supremacist with whom he dined but Trump feared alienating supporters a insiders

Donald Trump repeatedly refused to disavow the outspoken antisemite and white supremacist Nick Fuentes after they spoke over dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort, rejecting the advice from advisers over fears he might alienate a section of his base, two people familiar with the situation said.a

The former US president was urged publicly and privately to denounce Fuentes in the aftermath of the dinner, which included the performer Ye, previously known as Kanye West, who has also recently been propagating antisemitic remarks.

Crude oil prices hit lowest levels since January as street protests against strict Covid-19 curbs in China heightened concerns about demand

• Clashes in Shanghai as protests over zero-Covid policy grip China

The aunprecedented waves of protest in Chinaa have caused ripples of unease across financial markets, explains Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.

Worries are mounting about the repercussions for the worldas second-largest economy, she explains:

As demonstrations spread across the country from Beijing to Xinjiang and Shanghai, reflecting rising anger about the zero-Covid policy, a sustained recovery in demand across the vast country appears even further away.

This has piled fresh downwards pressure on the oil price, with Brent Crude dropping to $81 a barrel, the lowest level since early January.

Weare really looking at the government response to whatas happening ... the government response is so unpredictable, and of course that just means derisking.

The death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak from exposure to mould has shown the consequences of uninhabitable homes. But how many people are living in similarly unhealthy conditions and what can be done to protect their health?

Toddler Awaab Ishak was said to be a happy, smiling little boy. And his parents say it is their home, where he should have been safe and cared for, that led to his death. The little boy fell ill after exposure to mould that blighted the familyas flat a and the coroner at his inquest said his tragic death must be a adefining momenta for the housing sector.

Yet grim though the conditions in the familyas flat were, they were not as uncommon as they should have been. Rob Booth, the Guardianas social affairs correspondent, tells Nosheen Iqbal that mould is a widespread issue that, for some, can cause terrible health problems. One of them is Jane, whose lung condition may be terminal if she does not get a transplant a and has been caused, she says, by living in a home beset by mould. She is now taking legal action to try to protect others like her.

As Essential Logic release their second album 43 years after their first, their founder talks squats, scary gigs and her tempestuous relationship with her X-Ray Spex bandmate

It was the summer of 1977 when Lora Logic discovered she was no longer the saxophonist with X-Ray Spex. aI called our manager, Falcon, to find out when our next rehearsal was,a she says. aHe said, aOh, didnat you know? We found a new sax player.aa

Only months earlier, Logic had blown an anarchic storm on the groupas debut single, Oh Bondage Up Yours! But the 16-year-old had sensed tension brewing with frontwoman Poly Styrene, ever since a notorious Sounds review suggested that Logic was astealing the showa and that aher tenor sax sound is X-Ray Spexa.

As the BBC prepares to air her hard-hitting Reith Lecture, the celebrated author of Half of a Yellow Sun talks about truth, trans rights and our amisogyny-drencheda planet. Plus: read an extract

I meet Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie the day after she delivers and records her Reith Lecture for the BBC. She is a commanding presence: flawless to look at, serene in her confidence, vivid and trenchant in her quest to smash every point and win every argument. We meet at Broadcasting House a few hours before she leaves London for Lagos: the writer now splits her time between Nigeria and the US. In the former, she says, alife is louder, more raucous, more joyful, my cousins are there. People come into the house all the time. In the US, I have silence and I need silence as well.a Itas a neat, fleeting snapshot of who she is, troublemaker and thinker, with enough self-awareness to make space for both.

The theme for the four Reith Lectures this year is freedom, and Ngozi Adichieas contribution, which will launch the series this Wednesday on Radio 4, is on freedom of speech. The word was that it would be a cat-among-the-pigeons moment, making all the liberals in the incredibly curated audience clutch their pearls. The stated intention is, as youad expect from Reithas mission, to educate and entertain. But the subtext, I think, is to set a grenade off under some issue of the day.

The Slow Horses actor became a Prince convert through Purple Rain and would love a Ghanian musical funeral, but which slice of Greek cheese is her favourite song?

My karaoke go-to
Wannabe by the Spice Girls, but mainly because we would always do it at school, when we did dress-up or a skit. And I would always play Scary Spice a for obvious reasons. I was telling my boyfriend about this and I found out that he thinks the next line in that song is: aIf you wanna be my lover / Sex is 50pa. I was like: aWhat?! Where did you get that?a He said: aIs that not the line?a The Spice Girls were for kids! Who would come up with a line like that?

The song that made my best ever gig experience
Purple Rain by Prince. I went to see him at the O2, it must have been 15 years ago. I liked Prince, but I wasnat a hardcore fan a my friend got me tickets a but when that song came on, there was just utter silence. It was meant to be played in an arena, with the bass and your whole body feeling the music. I had goosebumps, I was just so moved by that song and how he performed it.

From the aristocratic boutiques of 18th-century Paris to a zombified consumerist dystopia, our culture critics help you shop till you drop

George A Romeroas 1968 horror film Night of the Living Dead is one of the most inspired critiques of consumerism in movie history. It is about a zombie uprising caused by a virus from outer space, causing dead people to rise from the grave, driven by a hunger for living human flesh. The film satirises 1960s Americaas consumerism: people existing in a catatonic state of hunger and thirst and hostility; a metaphor made explicit in the later Dawn of the Dead (1978), set in a shopping mall. Now, in the era of social media, itas even more relevant. All of us scrolling endlessly through our phones, looking dully through material covertly curated by commercial algorithms. People do it on public transport and even walking on the streets a| like zombies. Peter Bradshaw

Matt Hancockas interminable 21 days in the jungle is over a and he was intolerable to the last. Who was voting for this self-serving rodent?

aOh my God!a shouted footballer Jill Scott halfway through her last bushtucker trial. aIave got a rat on my face!a On the plus side, the rat wasnat the one who quit the sinking ship of the Conservative party before jumping on board a 20-year-old TV franchise that, if not sinking, then like Matt Hancockas political career has a negligible future.

In the end, the slimiest thing in the jungle did not win. The disgraced former health secretary and MP who opted to be covered in toads, spiders and eels, rather than do the well-remunerated job he was elected to do, was not crowned king of the jungle but only came third in the final of Iam a Celebrity a| Get Me Out of Here!

Broadcasteras festive schedule also includes Sir Cliff Richard speaking to Sara Cox at Abbey Road studios

The life of Bernard Cribbins will be celebrated by the BBC over the Christmas period.

The veteran actor, who starred in the Carry On films, Doctor Who and the 1970 film The Railway Children, died in July aged 93.

Woman who was conned out of APS32,000 after she came to Britain was initially refused compensation because she used a debit card to transfer money from her account

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Alina Bondaranko* agreed to safeguard her brotheras savings. She had arrived in the UK before war broke out; her brother, who is of fighting age, was banned from leaving his homeland. Fearing Ukraineas banks might collapse, he transferred his money to his sisteras bank account.

Within weeks it was stolen in an online scam, along with Bondarankoas own funds, and a loophole in consumer protection means she was ineligible for a refund from her bank.