Top story: ‘Sufficient progress has been made’
Hello, it’s Warren Murray with your Friday morning summary of the news – slightly delayed to bring you the latest from Brussels.
In the last few moments, the European commission has announced that sufficient progress has been made on the issue of the Irish border for Brexit negotiations to move to the next phase. We are covering the situation live at this crucial juncture. May and Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, are at the podium and still speaking as we send out today’s briefing.
Theresa May and David Davis arrived in Brussels early this morning after marathon talks overnight. Pictures showed Juncker greeting May and Davis before they sat down to a working breakfast. The European council president, Donald Tusk, has announced that he expects to make a statement around 7.30am GMT.
The key stumbling block in Brexit talks this week has of course been the question of the Irish border, with a near-breakthrough stymied when it turned out Theresa May had not won the backing of her parliamentary partners, the DUP. This morning the DUP leader, Arlene Foster, has indicated her support after being involved in negotiations with May through the night. “No red line down the Irish Sea,” Foster told Sky News, and “very clear confirmation that the entirety of the UK is leaving the single market and the customs union … There are still matters there that we would have liked to see clarified – we ran out of time.”
With a warning from the EU that progress needed to be made on an agreed text by today, and with a meeting of diplomats of the 27 member states scheduled for this evening, the talks with Downing Street attempted to conjure a wording to satisfy the DUP, the government of the Irish republic and the EU.
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Degree of dissatisfaction – Cut senior pay, improve teaching, cut fees, offer a better service. The formula for improving universities is offered by the Labour peer Andrew Adonis as it is revealed that only a third of students think they are getting value for money from degrees that cost them £50,000 on average. The National Audit Office says it amounts to the kind of mis-selling that gets banks in trouble, and warns students from disadvantaged backgrounds are being relegated to lower-performing universities. Adonis says: “There is huge discontent at the level of fees and poor value for money in universities. It is part of the reason why there is so much anger about the astronomic pay of vice-chancellors.”
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Right-to-buy goes wrong – There are calls for an end to right-to-buy as it is revealed that 40% or more of former council homes sold to their tenants are now privately rented out. In Milton Keynes the figure is 70%, making it the “right-to-buy-to-let capital” of England. Unofficial sublets probably add to the figures. Critics say the legacy of the Thatcher-era initiative is that the government pays a huge amount in housing benefit, which ends up going to buy-to-let landlords when it could be building more social housing instead.
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‘She was always smiling’ – There’s a heart-wrenching story this morning from one of Europe’s refugee frontiers. An Afghan family have told how their six-year-old daughter was hit and killed by a train after they were barred from crossing into Croatia from Serbia. It took days for the Hussiny family to get Madina’s body back for a rudimentary burial in a Serbian cemetery – another unbearable heartbreak for the family, who set out from Afghanistan at the start of 2016 and have failed to reach permanent sanctuary in the EU. “Please spread our message as much as you can,” said Madina’s father, Rahmat Shah, “because she came here with all her hopes.”
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‘Coffee is the new racket’ – Italy’s mafia families are making money by forcing owners of espresso bars and restaurant to buy their brand of beans. “It’s hard for the cops to prove the extortion,” explained Antonio Nicaso, an expert on the mafia. “You’re not handing money over – you’re just buying coffee.” Nicola Gratteri, one of Italy’s most respected anti-mafia chief prosecutors, said: “People might think it’s just an espresso, but there are thousands of bars in Calabria. It would be as if the mafia forced every fish and chip shop in London to buy their cod from the bosses.”
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Dumb in the oven – A YouTube prankster has probably cemented himself a 2017 Darwin Award nomination by concreting his head into a microwave oven. Friends poured seven bags of Polyfilla into the appliance, which they were trying to use to make a mould of his head. When it hardened they couldn’t get it off and he was left struggling for breath through a plastic tube.
A fire crew was called to the garage in Fordhouses, Wolverhampton, when he had already been stuck like that for 90 minutes. It took nearly an hour more for them to get him out. “Taking the microwave apart was tricky, because a lot of it was welded,” said watch commander Shaun Dakin. But at least they will know how to do it next time.
Lunchtime read: ‘We believe you harmed your child’
Experts call it “the triad”: a list of supposedly infallible signs that “shaken baby syndrome” (SBS) is behind an infant’s death or injury.
But the line between protecting children and wrongly criminalising their carers is a fraught and thin one, and the reliability of diagnosing SBS is hotly debated. In some cases, with parents going through the trauma of prosecution, a medical condition rather than abuse has been discovered as the cause. One expert doctor who called the science around SBS “rubbish” was temporarily struck off – despite having studied about 3,000 infant brains before reaching her conclusions. Recent science appears to back up her doubts. Will Storr examines the subject.
Sport
Fifa removed the investigator who was on the trail of Russia’s World Cup chief Vitaly Mutko, David Conn reports, while in less contentious football news Cristiano Ronaldo has won a fifth Ballon d’Or, equalling Lionel Messi’s record. In the Europa League, Jack Wilshere and Mathieu Debuchy each ended their goal droughts as Arsenal hit Bate Borisov for six.
Former Australia Test cricketer Jason Gillespie reckons England’s James Vince can look a million bucks with his drives, but he is an enigma. And the BBC’s sports personality of the year awards ceremony will be severely lacking in, well, sport personalities. Chris Froome will be in Mallorca, Mo Farah is moving house, and Lewis Hamilton is also unavailable for the event being held in Liverpool on 17 December.
Business
Asian shares have rallied for a second session running after economic news from China and Japan beat all expectations. Beijing reported exports surged 12.3% in November from a year earlier, more than double the forecast, while imports climbed almost 18%. Japan’s Nikkei rose 1.1% on top of Thursday’s 1.45% bounce to be almost back where it started the week. Revised data showed Japan’s economy growing twice as fast as first thought as business spending jumped. Australian stocks put on 0.3% while the MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.7%.
The pound has been trading at $1.350 and €1.148 overnight.
The papers
Theresa May’s late-night Brexit talks make it to the front of many papers, including our own. But with details lacking as the printing presses rolled, only the Telegraph leads on it, anticipating that the PM will sign a deal today. The Daily Express warns of “chaos to last 10 days”, but is referring to the weather.
The bitcoin surge is the Times splash, while the Guardian leads on a damning report into universities that concludes few students are getting value for money. The i points the finger at vice-chancellors’ rather generous pay packets.
The Financial Times leads on its own analysis of the gender pay gap and concludes that submissions from firms that claimed to have no gap were “highly improbable”.
The Daily Mail reports that defence secretary Gavin Williamson is refusing to back down from his comments that British Isis fighters ought to be killed rather than allowed to return to the UK. Meghan Markle’s father would like to walk her down the aisle at her wedding to Prince Harry, according to the Mirror. And the Sun says a suspect was allowed to escape after police officers decided not to pursue him across a muddy field.
For more news: www.theguardian.com
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