Top story: EU27 may hold back on extension
Hello, I’m Warren Murray and welcome once again to your one-stop shop of non-stop … news.
Jeremy Corbyn appears poised to block Boris Johnson’s offer of a pre-Christmas general election by telling his MPs to abstain in Monday’s vote. The Labour leader underlined his pledge to back an early election when a no-deal Brexit scenario can be firmly ruled out. It is understood Corbyn will make a final decision once the EU27 have confirmed what extension the UK will be offered.
Johnson’s offer is to allow MPs to debate his EU withdrawal bill agreement until 6 November. He will ask them to vote in favour of this option on Monday with a motion under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act for an early election. Channelling Donald Trump, the PM said that if he won “we will then ratify the great new deal that I have negotiated, get Brexit done in January, and the country will move on.”
Because of Johnson’s election gambit, the EU may delay its decision on an extension. Sources have said 26 countries are ready to grant an extension until 31 January but France wants to see the outcome of the vote on a general election first.
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Lorry’s fateful journey – The 39 Chinese nationals found dead in a refrigerated lorry trailer in Essex were already trapped when they arrived at the Belgian coast en route to England, authorities have said. Belgian officials said the eight women and 31 men would have been locked in the trailer at temperatures as low as -25C for at least 10 hours. The Zeebrugge port CEO said the trailer would have been sealed and not interfered with after it arrived, while the mayor of Bruges, Dirk de Fauw, said: “[To] break the seal, bring 39 people onboard and apply a new seal without being noticed, that chance is extremely small.” Chinese migrants hoping to reach the UK can typically pay smugglers anything up to £14,000 and may then find themselves in debt bondage, according to experts who work with them. We have reconstructed the journey of the trailer from Zeebrugge, the tractor unit from Dublin, some of the companies involved in their passage and how they came together in Purfleet before authorities were alerted to the bodies inside. Police secured an additional 24 hours to question the driver and his parents were brought from Northern Ireland to see him.
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End to gazumping? – A scheme requiring a homebuyer or seller to pay compensation for pulling out of a sale without good reason is to be trialled next year. Between a quarter and a third of all house sales fall through, resulting in stress and the losses for parties involved add up to hundreds of millions of pounds. Acceptable reasons, writes Rupert Neate, might include a bereavement, losing your job or an inability to obtain a mortgage. Unacceptable reasons might be a change of mind, the buyer lowering their offer at the last minute or, similarly, the seller accepting a higher offer. Some estate agents are already using the “reservation agreements”.
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Exclusions ‘fuel knife crime’ – All-party MPs and peers have warned the government that being expelled from school can be the tipping point for a young person to take up a knife. One young person told the group that being kicked out meant “I’ve got time on my hands to do more crime, commit more crime … [with my friends] who are also carrying knives”. The parliamentarians’ report calls for schools to be given the funding to support vulnerable children, with a focus on prevention and early intervention. In 2017/18 there were 7,900 permanent exclusions from schools in England – a 70% increase since 2012/13. At the same time, there has been a “worrying” rise in youth knife crime with more than 17,500 boys aged 14 in England and Wales carrying one.
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Trump sows more Syria chaos – In a reversal of Donald Trump’s order to withdraw all troops from Syria, the US is reportedly planning to deploy tanks and other heavy military hardware to protect oilfields in the country’s east. The most likely destination for US armoured units is a Conoco gas plant near the city of Deir Ezzor. Julian Borger writes that it is likely to require more troops than the roughly 1,000 whom the president promised he was “bringing home” by letting Turkey invade Kurdish-held territory. The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is forcing Kurds out of north-eastern Syria and wants to resettle it with Syrian Arab refugees. The mass demographic change – carried out at the barrel of a gun – risks prolonging Syria’s conflict indefinitely, says Jan Egeland, the UN’s former humanitarian chief: “We need to remind all of these people with the power and the guns that this is no chessboard. It is a place where people live.”
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Wind could power world – Wind turbines on the world’s best offshore sites could provide more than enough clean energy to meet global electricity demand, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has calculated. The detailed analysis says that if windfarms are built across all useable sites no further than 37 miles off the coast, and where coastal waters are no deeper than 60 metres, they could generate 36,000 terrawatt hours of renewable electricity a year. Current global demand is 23,000 terrawatt hours. Offshore wind would not only contribute to generating clean electricity, but that electricity could also be used to produce hydrogen to replace fossil fuels. In the North Sea, energy companies are already planning to use electricity from giant offshore windfarms to turn seawater into hydrogen and pump it to shore.
Today in Focus podcast: Brothers torn apart
Among the refugees from the nine-year war in Syria were five brothers from the south-western city of Dara’a, where the uprising against the Assad regime began. They are now dispersed across five countries – Michael Safi tells Anushka Asthana how he set out to track them down. And as Boris Johnson pushes for an election, the Labour MP Lisa Nandy argues it is time for her colleagues to put aside their differences and vote for an amended version of the PM’s Brexit deal.
Lunchtime read: Why do people hate vegans so much?
One vegan-baiter ate a squirrel and, later, a pig’s head in front of them, while brandishing the slogan “Veganism = Malnutrition”. A NatWest customer seeking a loan was told “all vegans should be punched in the face”. A charge commonly laid against vegans is that they relish their status as victims, but research suggests they have earned it.
In 2015 a study observed that vegetarians and vegans in western society – and vegans in particular – experience discrimination and bias on a par with ethnic and religious minorities. George Reynolds writes that recent displays of enmity towards vegans represent a “puzzling escalation in hostilities, just as a consensus is starting to form that eating less meat would almost certainly be better for everyone – and the Earth”.
Sport
Eddie Jones has urged England to knock New Zealand off their perch and replace them as the dominant force in world rugby, calling on his players to “change history” in Saturday’s World Cup semi-final. Liam Williams has been ruled out of the tournament and will miss Wales’s clash with South Africa after the full-back picked up an ankle injury in training. Two goals from Pépé gave Arsenal a 3-2 Europa League victory after they had trailed 2-1 at home to Vitória Guimarães. Elsewhere, Manchester United beat Partizan Belgrade 1-0 thanks to Anthony Martial’s first-half penalty and Celtic beat Lazio 2-1 but had to wait until the 89th minute for Christopher Jullien to score the winner.
Anfield will host a Women’s Super League game for the first time next month – and making the occasion particularly special, the fixture will be the Merseyside derby. Lewis Hamilton has robustly defended his environmental concerns, having received strident criticism for recent posts on Instagram. Kane Williamson’s reunion with England has been delayed after the New Zealand captain was ruled out of the Twenty20 series with a hip problem. And the Houston Astros have fired assistant general manager Brandon Taubman following an investigation into a clubhouse outburst directed toward a group of female reporters.
Business
Asian shares have been mixed, after Wall Street indexes posted modest gains, cheered by solid profits and forecasts from US technology companies. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 inched up less than 0.1% in morning trading to 22,747.98. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.6% to 6,734.40. South Korea’s Kospi was little changed, inching down to 2,085.45. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dipped 0.5% to 26,674.40, while the Shanghai Composite slipped 0.5% to 2,925.55. The FTSE is a shade higher ahead of the opening and a pound is worth $1.284 or €1.156 at time of writing.
The papers
Election speculation hangs in the air and on the front pages of most of the papers, including the Guardian: “Johnson tells MPs: back my December 12 election bid”, the Telegraph: “End this nightmare, Johnson tells Corbyn”, the FT: “Johnson challenges Corbyn to end deadlock with December election”, the Times: “Labour in chaos over election bid by Johnson” and the i: “Christmas election stand-off”.
The Mirror has: “Snakehead gang hunted”, with a report that Chinese gangsters are feared to be behind the death of the 39 people found dead in a lorry in Essex. The Express has: “Thank you for saving our lives”, with the news that NHS England has agreed a deal with producer of a drug for cystic fibrosis after a long campaign.
The Mail is also celebrating victorious results of campaigns, a new MMR vaccine plan and the climbdown from Barclays over its plans to stop letting customers withdraw cash at post offices, with the headline: “The day you made your voice heard”.
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