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Slovenia accused of turning Roma neighbourhoods into ‘security zones’

Slovenia’s government has been accused of turning Roma neighbourhoods into “security zones” after the passing of a law giving police powers to raid and surveil homes in so-called “high-risk” areas. At midnight on Monday, the country’s parliament backed the “Šutar law”, named after Aleš Šutar, who was killed in an altercation with a 21-year-old Romany man after rushing to a nightclub after a distress call from his son. The incident outside the LokalPatriot club in Novo Mesto, in south Slovenia, last month led to huge street protests, police being stationed in Roma neighbourhoods and the resignation of two ministers. The prime minister, Robert Golob from the centre-left Freedom party, responded by promising new security measures, which he described as being “not against any particular ethnic group but against crime itself”. But critics said the changes were discriminatory and “treat[ed] an entire minority as a security threat”. The Act on Urgent Measures to Ensure Public Security, which was first introduced two weeks after Šutar’s death, was watered down before the final vote on Monday, but it retained a series of controversial clauses. The police will, without a court order, be allowed to enter a property or means of transport in a “security-risk area” if “it is unavoidably necessary for the protection of people to immediately seize firearms”. They will also be able to use to use technical means for photography and recording, such as drones or licence plate recognition, if people’s lives or property are deemed at risk. Under the legislation, the “security-risk areas” will be geographically demarcated by the director general of the police or the director of the police administration, based on a security assessment. Mensur Haliti, vice-president of the Roma Foundation for Europe, said the law was discriminatory and called on the European commission to examine its terms. He said: “This law turns entire neighbourhoods into security zones and their residents into security categories. It lowers the political cost of targeting those already excluded from free and fair political participation for political gain. “Slovenia has done something Europe rarely admits happens inside the union: it has passed a law that treats an entire minority as a security threat. “A union that allows fear to become policy at home cannot lecture its neighbours about democracy and the rule of law. If Europe cannot uphold its standards internally, it cannot credibly demand them abroad.” A leftwing coalition of political parties had refused to take part in the parliamentary proceedings, describing the law as repressive. But there is evidence of a high degree of public support for it. Mediana for RTV Slovenia found that more than 60% of respondents to a survey expressed agreement with the government’s response. The Šutar Act was passed ahead of national elections in March, in which Golob’s party faces being unseated by the rightwing-nationalist Slovenian Democratic party led by former prime minister Janez Janša.

Four ‘active club’ members sentenced to prison in Sweden for racist assaults

Four men from the Swedish branch of the international far-right “active club” network have been sentenced to prison after they were found guilty of several racially motivated assaults in Stockholm. In a verdict handed down on Tuesday, Stockholm district court said the three violent attacks, which targeted three men in quick succession on the night of 27 August, constituted hate crimes. The case, which is the first of its kind in Sweden, represents a landmark moment for how the active club movement is viewed in the Nordic country. In a statement, the court said Aktivklubb Sverige (AKS) was “considered a far-right organisation with clear racist elements and which engages in martial arts”. Within a 30-minute period, the four men, who were out on a bar crawl, attacked three different men who, the prosecutor said, were selected based on their ethnicity. At least two of the men were seen making Nazi salutes. The men, who are aged between 21 and 23, were jailed for between six months and three years and will have to pay damages. The prosecutor described the acts as unprovoked acts of violence. One of the men was also convicted of vandalism, including for drawing a far-right symbol on a shop window. “At least two of the men made Hitler salutes during the night in question,” Stockholm district court said in a statement. “All of the plaintiffs have a different ethnic background than the defendants. According to the verdict, all of the crimes for which the men are convicted have hate crime motives, with the exception of the vandalism.” District attorney Gustav Andersson said that investigators performing house searches found “material and symbols that show that all four [men] have connections to a right-wing extremist movement”. Among the victims were Mohammad Aluaudt Allah, a Syrian refugee, who was kicked unconscious on Birger Jarlsgatan, a street in central Stockholm. The court ruled that this attack was an aggravated assault. The investigation found that the four men laughed while they kicked him, after punching him in the back of the head. The attack left the 42-year-old with concussion and tooth damage. Aluaudt Allah has said he saw Sweden as a “land of peace” when he fled Syria. Last month, he said in an interview that he could no longer go outside without feeling panic and had left Sweden. “I am proud to be a Swedish citizen – but right now it feels hard to be in Sweden,” he told Dagens Nyheter newspaper. “I love Sweden, but I don’t know if Sweden loves me.” The political climate in Sweden, where the centre-right government depends on the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots, had “created a sense of impunity for violent Nazi groups”, he added. “They may feel that they are being given permission to exercise their hatred and attack us.” The men are also convicted of assaulting a 43-year-old man during which they shouted a racial expletive at him. Since the attack he has suffered from headaches and problems with his vision. Later, three of the men attacked a 27-year-old man, punching and kicking him before attempting to drag him on to a train platform. During the trial, one of the victims broke down and said the attack was the “lowest moment” of his life. The accused had denied the charges against them, save for the final assault, which was caught on security cameras. They claimed they acted in self-defence. The victims’ lawyer, Elias Bulale, said all three men had suffered gravely as a result of the attacks and the process of bringing their assailants to justice. One of the men could not work after the attack and all three were made to “feel unsafe and scared as a result of what happened to them,” said Bulale. CVE, the Swedish centre for preventing violent extremism, said there were believed to be about 10 active clubs in Sweden carrying out regular activities, with the most influential known as the “White Boys” and “Gym XIV” in Värmland, county near the border with Norway. They have also been found to have close connections with groups in Europe and the US. “The Aktivklubb supporters are engaging in activities such as mixed martial arts in order to build a strong physical capacity to use violence; the active clubs also place emphasis on a strong social media presence as a way to recruit new members,” said CVE’s acting deputy director, Maria Öhman. In order to counter the work, she said, there needed to be “close cooperation and strong coordination” between municipalities, local police and schools. Schools, she said, needed to focus on “democracy-strengthening issues” and identify individuals who show far-right sympathies early on.

Two Ukrainian men believed to be working with Russia identified as suspects in Polish rail sabotage attacks – Europe live

Two Ukrainian men have been identified as main suspects behind the rail sabotage incidents in Poland over the weekend, Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk said (13:34). The perpetrators are believed to be working for Russian intelligence services, who had crossed into Poland from Belarus this autumn and fled to Belarus following the attacks. One of the suspects was previously convicted of sabotage in Ukraine. The main incident in the village of Mika involved the use of a military-type C-4 explosive intended to blow up a train, it is believed (13:40). Speaking in the Polish parliament, Tusk said the two incidents were “unprecedented” and “perhaps the most serious, when it comes to the security of the Polish state, incidents since the beginning of the full-scale invasion on Ukraine” (13:46). He further warned that “these acts of sabotage and actions of Russian services across … Europe, not only in Poland, are unfortunately gaining momentum,” calling it “an escalation” and an attempt to sow chaos and anti-Ukrainian sentiment (13:58). In response, Poland will raise the threat level to protect selected rail routes, but it will stay unchanged in the rest of the country, Tusk said (13:56).

Saudi leader’s entourage for US visit includes official implicated in Twitter spy plot

A senior official in Mohammed bin Salman’s entourage, who is understood to be accompanying the crown prince on his first trip back to the US in over a decade, has previously been accused by US prosecutors of playing a central role in a conspiracy to infiltrate Twitter and identify users who were posting critically about the Saudi regime. Bader al-Asaker, who has headed Prince Mohammed’s private office since before he became crown prince, has never been formally charged by the US government for his role in the 2014-15 scheme, but was named in court in 2022 by a US government lawyer as having led the campaign to find a “mole” who would be able to extract sensitive information from the social media company, which is now known as X. The infiltration ultimately led to the forced disappearance of at least one Saudi man – Abdulrahman al-Sadhan – who was later sentenced to 20 years in jail for using a satirical and anonymous Twitter account to mock the Riyadh government. The extraordinary campaign to send spies into the heart of a major US company was seen as a key example of how the Saudi state has been able to use a variety of methods to conduct transnational repression, silencing and intimidating critics of Prince Mohammed’s rule all over the world. Prince Mohammed has been recognised by the US legal system as having sovereign immunity protection since he was named prime minister of Saudi Arabia in 2022. The decision meant that legal cases against the crown prince, including a wrongful death civil case brought against him by the wife of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist who was murdered by Saudi agents, were dismissed. A US intelligence assessment, which was published by the Biden administration in 2021, concluded that Prince Mohammed had ordered the hit. But even as Prince Mohammed returns to the US after more than a decade – without any fear of legal accountability – his chief of staff is entering the country having faced scrutiny by the Department of Justice. A superseding indictment states that Asaker met two of the men who were at the heart of the Twitter scheme and later charged with being illegal Saudi agents – Ali Alzabarah and Ahmed Almutairi – while he and Prince Mohammed were on an official delegation to Washington in 2015. Ahmad Abouammo, a dual US-Lebanese national, was also charged and later arrested and convicted of acting as an unregistered agent of the Saudi government. Prosecutors alleged that Asaker promised Abouammo and Alzabarah gifts, cash, and future employment in exchange for non-public information about the Twitter users who were of interest to the Saudi government. Both men are on the FBI’s most-wanted list after they fled to Saudi Arabia before they could be arrested. Asaker was not charged by prosecutors but a superseding indictment filed in July 2020 states that the aide – who is identified 53 times in the document as “Foreign-Official-1” and was named during Abouammo’s trial – was at the heart of the conspiracy. The Saudi embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. Asaker has also been named in a separate civil suit involving Saad al-Jabri, a former senior Saudi intelligence official who had close ties to western intelligence agencies and fled the kingdom in 2017. Jabri has accused Prince Mohammed of plotting to kill him, according to a US lawsuit, including a plot that was thwarted by Canadian officials in 2018. Canadian authorities have previously declined to comment on the specific claims, but have not denied the allegations. A US court is expected to conduct a hearing later this year in the long-running case, after a US appeals court ruling that allowed discovery to proceed in the civil case, in which both Asaker and another key aide to Prince Mohammed, Saud al-Qahtani – who was separately subjected to US sanctions for his role in the murder of Khashoggi – stand accused of “directing US residents in the US to locate and murder al-Jabri”. Jabri’s lawyers said in a recent filing that neither Saudi defendants had cooperated with the discovery process. Asaker’s lawyers have denied the allegations in the civil case, saying in legal filings that Prince Mohammed’s chief of staff has complied with court orders, and have claimed that he had “no communications or meetings with US-based Saudis, did not issue any directives or instructions to them, and did not discuss with them Mr al-Jabri, a search for Mr al-Jabri, or any other topic”.

MI5 issues alert to MPs and peers over Chinese espionage

MI5 has issued an espionage alert to MPs and peers warning that two people linked to the Chinese intelligence service are actively seeking to recruit parliamentarians. The two, who operate as headhunters on the LinkedIn professional networking website aiming to obtain “non-public and insider insights”, MI5 said, are also targeting economists, thinktank staff and civil servants for their access to politicians. The spy agency sent its warning about the two to Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker of the Commons, and his Lords equivalent, Lord McFall, on Tuesday morning, both of whom relayed its contents to MPs with a cover message. In an email to peers, McFall said the individuals, linked to China’s ministry of state security spy agency (MSS), are “actively reaching out to individuals in our community”. Their “aim is to collect information and lay the groundwork for long-term relationships, using professional networking sites, recruitment agents and consultants acting on their behalf”, he added. Dan Jarvis, the security minister, confirmed that the alert has been sent out in a lunchtime Commons statement. “This activity involves a covert and calculated attempt by a foreign power to interfere with our sovereign affairs in favour of its own interests, and this government will not tolerate it,” he told MPs. Jarvis said MI5 had warned that the espionage campaign was “being carried out by a group of Chinese intelligence officers, often masked through the use of cover companies or external headhunters”. MI5 has previously warned about Chinese spies seeking to obtain information by using LinkedIn to recruit Britons working in sensitive areas. Posing as recruitment consultants, the agents, normally women, have sought to lure at least 10,000 Britons with potential job offers. More details soon …

Chinese travellers cancel hundreds of thousands of trips to Japan amid rising tensions

Chinese travellers are estimated to have cancelled hundreds of thousands of tickets to fly to Japan amid reports of suspended visa processing and cultural exchanges as a diplomatic dispute over Japan’s stance on Taiwan continues. Under pressure from business groups, Japan has sent a senior diplomat to Beijing in an attempt to calm tensions after Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, said her country could get involved militarily if China attempted to invade Taiwan. Her comments prompted fury from China’s government, which issued warnings against Chinese travellers and students going to Japan. At least seven Chinese airlines, including the three state carriers, said they would offer free cancellations to travellers with flights booked to the country. One air travel analyst, Hanming Li, said departure data suggested about 500,000 flight tickets to Japan had been cancelled between 15 and 17 November. The Chinese outlet Jimu News reported that Sichuan Airlines had cancelled all flights between Chengdu and Sapporo from January until late March, and the budget carrier Spring Airlines had cancelled “multiple” Japan flights. Both airlines cited “company planning reasons”. China is the second largest source of tourists to Japan, and its students form the bulk of Japan’s international student cohort. Shares in Japanese retail and travel companies slumped on Monday in response to the measures. Li told the Guardian it was the largest mass cancellation of flights he had seen since early in the Covid pandemic but would probably have little impact on China’s domestic industry. “It is not a huge loss for airlines because the Sino-Japan market is small when comparing to the whole domestic and international market,” Li said. The travel cancellations are among a growing list of economic countermeasures after what had until Sunday been mostly a rhetorical reaction. An operator at one Chinese travel agency said it had stopped processing individual visa applications for Chinese people travelling to Japan, and other reports noted some local-level Japan-China cross-cultural events had been cancelled. The release of an annual Japan-China survey was cancelled at the request of Beijing. The Chinese polling partner told the Guardian that the questions were asked before the dispute began and the results “do not represent the current state of China-Japan relations” and would not be published. “They hold no practical relevance or reference value,” the staff member said. Last year’s survey found that more than 50% of respondents from both countries regarded each other as important economic and trade partners. Film distributors have postponed indefinitely the screening of at least two Japanese films in China, and state media have claimed that box office sales for an already released Japanese film, Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, have slumped in recent days. The turn away from the initially popular animation was due to “strong dissatisfaction from Chinese audiences” with Takaichi, the state broadcaster CCTV said. The row has rattled Japanese business groups, with industry leaders meeting Takaichi on Monday and urging her to calm the tensions. “Political stability is a prerequisite for economic exchange,” Yoshinobu Tsutsui, the chair of Japan’s biggest business lobby, Keidanren, told reporters. On Monday, Tokyo dispatched a top foreign ministry official, Masaaki Kanai, to Beijing where he was expected to meet his Chinese counterpart, Liu Jinsong, Japanese reports said. Takaichi has refused to withdraw her remarks – the primary demand from Beijing – although the Japanese government said its policy on Taiwan was unchanged. She had said an attack on Taiwan could signify an existential threat to Japan, permitting it to exercise “self-defence”. Japan’s postwar constitution forbids it from using force as a means of settling international disputes. The prospect of Japanese involvement in the event of an attack on Taiwan is alarming for Beijing. The US is Taiwan’s biggest backer in its resistance to China’s annexation plans but is not obliged to defend it, and as policy it refuses to confirm whether it would. A US-Japan security treaty commits both countries to defend each other if one is attacked in Japanese territory, and so Japanese involvement in a Taiwan conflict would almost guarantee US involvement. China’s state media have given the spat blanket coverage, including in Japanese- and English-language outlets and social media accounts, and the campaign has fuelled anger and nationalism online. Japan has warned its citizens in China to take extra safety precautions and reminded expats to respect local customs and exercise caution in their interactions with local people. Just over 100,000 Japanese were living in China in 2023, according to Japan’s foreign ministry. Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Minoru Kihara, said Tuesday’s advice – which included avoiding crowded places – was in response to a surge in anti-Japanese sentiment in the Chinese media. “We have made judgments based on comprehensive consideration of the security situation in the country or region, as well as its political and social conditions,” Kihara said. Japan’s embassy in Beijing also advised Japanese citizens to be aware of their surroundings, to not travel alone and to take extra caution when travelling with children. China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday it “always and will continue to protect the safety of foreign citizens in China in accordance with the law”. Additional reporting by Lillian Yang

Tuesday briefing: What Labour hopes to learn from Denmark’s hardline asylum stance

Good morning. In September, Nigel Farage floated a Reform UK policy of ending indefinite leave to remain that critics said would eject hundreds of thousands of people from the country. In October, the Conservatives began talking about deporting large numbers of people previously considered legally settled. Now, the Labour government is preparing to impose radical new limits on whether asylum seekers can ever gain settled status. The Overton window on immigration keeps marching implacably rightwards. In a document published by the government yesterday afternoon, the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, described the plans as “the most sweeping asylum reforms in modern times”. The prime minister, Keir Starmer, said that having an asylum system at all depends on “social confidence” that it is “fair, effective and humane”. A lot of Labour MPs look set to disagree with the approach, causing yet another political headache for No 10. I spoke to Miranda Bryant, the Guardian’s Nordic correspondent, about the Danish model that appears to have inspired Mahmood’s new approach. This newsletter looks at how effective Denmark’s policy has been – and whether the political fallout there offers any lessons for Labour. First, the headlines. Five big stories Society | More than two in five sexually active under-18s in the UK have either been strangled or strangled someone during sex, research has found, despite the serious dangers of the practice. Jeffrey Epstein | The Harvard professor and economist Larry Summers said he would step back from public life after documents released by the House oversight committee revealed email exchanges between him and Jeffrey Epstein, who called himself Summers’ “wing man”. Cop30 | Jamaica has led calls from vulnerable nations at the Cop30 climate summit to urge immediate action on climate breakdown as the conference entered its second week. Gaza | The UN security council has endorsed proposals put forward by Donald Trump for a lasting peace in Gaza, including the deployment of an international stabilisation force and a possible path to a sovereign Palestinian state. Poland | Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk has described an explosion along a section of railway line used for deliveries to Ukraine as an “unprecedented act of sabotage” that could have led to disaster. In depth: ‘Performatively cruel’? “Everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution,” according to Article 14 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Almost 80 years on, some countries seem increasingly focused on making themselves less attractive as a possible destination – including, now, the UK. “The rhetoric in Denmark has had a big impact,” Miranda Bryant told me. “Even when policies can’t be fully implemented, they create huge uncertainty and vulnerability for people seeking asylum. And that can deter people from entering Denmark, regardless of what is legally possible for the state to do in response.” *** What has the UK government announced? Currently, refugees are given protection for five years, after which they can apply for indefinite leave to remain (ILR), which offers a pathway to British citizenship. This will change. The government will introduce “core protection” status, under which refugees get 30 months’ leave at a time, renewable only while they are judged to still need protection, with no prospect of permanent settlement for 20 years. Automatic family reunion will end, benefits will be harder to access and more closely tied to economic contribution, and a new appeals body will handle a single, faster appeal process, with tighter limits on repeated human rights and modern slavery claims. The duty to support asylum seekers will become a discretionary power, with support withdrawn from those deemed able to work, “intentionally destitute” or non-compliant. The government also says it will restart enforced returns to countries it has largely avoided until now – specifically including Syria. In an olive branch to potential Labour rebels, it is also promising as part of the measures a capped expansion of “safe and legal” routes, making community sponsorship the norm so that, it says: “The pace and scale of change does not exceed what a local area is willing to accept.” It will offer specific routes for refugee students and refugee skilled workers. *** How have some Labour MPs reacted? It is fair to say that the new policy proposal is not going down well across the whole of the Labour parliamentary party. Folkestone and Hythe MP Tony Vaughan said on Monday that the government proposal risked creating a kind of “perpetual limbo and alienation, which doesn’t help the refugees and it doesn’t help society”. Walthamstow MP Stella Creasy wrote for the Guardian, saying the idea was “not just performatively cruel” but also economically misjudged: “If you can’t stabilise your status, you will always struggle to get a job, a bank account or a mortgage, making it more likely you will be dependent on state or charity support.” On Monday, Rotherham MP Sarah Champion said: “My biggest concern is that refugees, asylum seekers and migrants become conflated, to the detriment of our reputation as a principled country that stands by the most vulnerable.” That (small) boat may very well have already sailed. *** Why has Labour decided to take inspiration from Denmark? There are about 100,000 people receiving asylum support in the UK, of whom about 8,500 are eligible to work. The rest are supported by the state. The Home Office says it has removed or deported 48,560 people from the UK since Labour came to power – a 23% increase on the 16 months before last year’s general election. But that hasn’t dampened the noise from Reform and the rightwing press, leading Labour to look abroad for inspiration. “Denmark’s asylum system has gradually become harsher over the past decade,” Miranda said; there was a turning point in 2015, after an increase in migration into Europe from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, among others. Denmark – with a population of around six million – had a centre-right government at the time, and there was significant political and public concern about the 14,792 asylum seekers who arrived in 2014. The far-right Danish People’s Party was also influential, with a supporting role in Venstre’s minority government. The system began to change in reaction to these numbers and to wider political pressure around immigration. “Until then, refugee status in Denmark wasn’t technically permanent,” Miranda said, “but people were usually granted residence permits of five to seven years, which then became permanent as a matter of course. That gave people who arrived in the country with nothing the security they needed to start again – to learn Danish, get qualifications, find work, build a life.” “After 2015, residents’ permits were reduced to just one or two years at a time, and there was no guarantee of ever securing permanent status. And then a second big shift – known as the ‘paradigm shift’ – came in 2019. It marked a move away from integration towards repatriation, and ushered in a series of very tough policies.” *** Has the Danish policy ended debate on asylum seekers? In 2019, the Social Democrat leader Mette Frederiksen campaigned to be prime minister on a platform explicitly tough on immigration, going as far as to say she wanted zero asylum seekers arriving. “The Social Democrats retained progressive positions on many issues, but became right-wing on immigration. That helped them take votes from the far right, and support for the Danish People’s Party fell away sharply,” Miranda said. “But now the far right is climbing in popularity again, making even more extreme demands, including so-called ‘remigration’ – the mass deportation of people with immigrant backgrounds living in Denmark. Given that, it doesn’t look as if the Social Democrats’ shift to the right has ‘solved’ immigration as a political issue for them. If anything, there are concerns that the party will move further right again.” *** Has the Danish system faced legal hurdles? If you ask Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives or Reform, they will tell you that one reason successive administrations have struggled to deport people is the UK’s membership of the European convention on human rights (ECHR) and the Strasbourg court that enforces it. Denmark is also an ECHR signatory, and I asked Miranda if there had been legal obstacles to enacting the asylum seeker policy there. She told me: “A lot of the hardline rhetoric hasn’t translated into action.” Denmark’s own legal system has blocked some of the most controversial measures. Miranda said that hundreds of Syrian refugees had their residence permits revoked and were told they had to return to Syria as it was now deemed safe by the Danish state – but the country’s appeals court prevented anyone actually being forced back. “So while the rhetoric seems to have helped bring down the number of asylum seekers choosing to attempt to settle in Denmark, much of the policy hasn’t been enforceable.” *** What lessons might Labour take from Denmark? The border security and asylum minister, Alex Norris, was fooling absolutely nobody when he said on BBC Breakfast on Monday morning: “The one thing I can assure you is that political considerations don’t come into this.” As Miranda said: “It’s interesting that Labour is looking at the Danish Social Democrats as a model. They’re a centre-left party that has adopted a harsh immigration stance, but it’s not clear if it has worked politically – the government is very unpopular for a range of reasons, and the full electoral impact won’t play out until next year’s election. “It’s also worth remembering that Denmark has a coalition-based political system. That makes its politics very different from the UK. It’s not obvious that some of Denmark’s system can be straightforwardly replicated in the UK.” There may be one lesson of caution for Labour about to emerge from the state of Denmark, though. In today’s municipal elections, the Social Democrats appear likely to lose the Copenhagen mayoralty for the first time ever, partly because of discontent with Frederiksen’s immigration policies. “Copenhagen is a super cosmopolitan city that doesn’t reflect her views when it comes to immigration.” “Voters are turning to left-wing and green parties instead,” she said. That might be music to Zack Polanski’s ears, the recently installed leader of the Green party in England and Wales, who last month came out to declare “migration is Britain’s superpower.” Badenoch has also spotted a political opportunity. She said her party will support the plans as “steps in the right direction”, adding: “We can see that their Labour backbenchers don’t like this, so I have offered that we will support the government.” What else we’ve been reading In this deeply reported piece, Diane Taylor spoke to several asylum seekers returned to France from Britain, two for the second time, under the “one in, one out” system aimed at deterring migrants. One, now in a UK detention centre, said he returned after feeling “terrified” and unsafe in France. Karen While it lends itself to the punchline “best thing he’s recorded in years”, Robert Booth reports Paul McCartney is adding a silent bonus track to a project to protests against the use of AI in music. Martin In an essay about luck, Julian Richer of Richer Sounds and the Fairness Foundation examines Britain’s myth of meritocracy. Successful people could help shift the dial on inequality, he argues, by acknowledging they have benefited from factors outside their control. Karen Fifa’s endless expansion means more countries than ever can make World Cup 2026 qualification. Haiti are one, but as Jon Arnold explains for ESPN, they play in exile, as the Haitian federation has lost control of the national stadium. Martin Emma Graham-Harrison and Yuval Abraham report that at least 98 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since October 2023, according to a human rights group that has tracked deaths from physical violence medical neglect and malnutrition. Karen Sport Cricket | Mental skills coach Gilbert Enoka, famous for his “no dickheads” policy during his time with the All Blacks, says he wants to “be in the trenches” with England as they battle for the Ashes. Football | Germany secured a place at next year’s World Cup by crushing Slovakia 6-0 in their final qualifier, pummelling them into submission with four goals in the first half and sending their opponents into a playoff in March. Boxing | The unsurprising confirmation of “a colossal global showdown” between Jake Paul and Anthony Joshua arrived with a dull thud. The so-called Judgment Day bout will generate millions of dollars and attract huge ratings, but it will also leave boxing a little more broken, writes Donald McRae. The front pages “Starmer faces Labour revolt over hardline asylum plans” says the Guardian, while the Mirror has the prime minister saying “I’ll lead Labour at the next election”. The Times splashes with “Families face deportation in asylum law shake-up”, the Telegraph has “Mahmood turns air blue in blast at liberals” and the i paper leads on “Tories pledge to help the Home Secretary get her migration crackdown past angry Labour rebels”. On Shabana Mahmood’s plans, the Mail says “Racist abuse that means I know broken asylum system must be fixed” and the Sun has “It just doesn’t add up”. The FT’s top story says “Ban on resale of tickets over face value in crackdown on industrial-scale touts”. Today in Focus Trump’s U-turn on the Epstein files Donald Trump’s call for Republicans to back the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files is a rare instance of the president being unable to tame his Maga base. Jonathan Freedland unpacks Trump’s latest U-turn over the Epstein files – the one scandal the president just can’t seem to shake. Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad With more than half of all bird species in decline globally, some heartwarming news from France: insect-eating bird populations are showing tentative signs of recovery, after a ban on bee-harming pesticides. Phoebe Weston spoke to researchers who reported a 2-3% increase in France’s population of insect-eating birds, including chaffinches and blackbirds (above), in 2022. The increase was noted four years after the EU ban on the most common class of insecticide, neonicotinoids, which are used in agriculture and to control fleas in pets. Researchers said even such a small increase shows the impact of the ban as an effective conservation measure for such species. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

One of the oddest UN resolutions in history seeks to solidify shaky Gaza ceasefire into an enduring peace

The resolution passed by the UN security council on Tuesday evening, aimed at turning the precarious Gaza ceasefire into a real peace plan, is one of the oddest in United Nations history. It puts Donald Trump in supreme control of Gaza, perhaps with Tony Blair as his immediate subordinate in a “board of peace”, which will oversee multinational peacekeeping troops, a committee of Palestinian technocrats and a local police force, for a period of two years. No one knows who else will be on the “board of peace” – only that it will, as Trump declared on social media, “be chaired by me, and include the most powerful and respected Leaders throughout the World”. The board will report to the security council but will not be subordinate to the UN, or subject to past UN resolutions. It will supervise an International Stabilisation Force (ISF), whose membership is also undetermined, but which the US wants to deploy by January. The countries who the US has approached – including Egypt, Indonesia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates – are tentative. The resolution says the ISF will “ensure the process of demilitarising” Gaza – suggesting it will have to take weapons away from Hamas, which insisted immediately after the UN vote it will not disarm. There is little appetite among the would-be troop contributors for a direct confrontation with its battle-hardened fighters. The ISF would meanwhile be supposed to take over security in territory now occupied by Israeli forces, but that too could be a recipe for clashes, especially if the Israelis are reluctant to leave. There is no greater clarity over the Palestinian committee of technocrats who will be tasked with the day-to-day running of the Gaza Strip, under the guidance of Trump and his fellow leaders. It will be hard, to say the least, to find any such technocrats, prepared to work for Trump, who would hold any sway with the 2.2 million surviving Palestinians in Gaza. The same goes for the putative police force. Despite the miasma of vagueness, UN security council Resolution 2803 invested all these aspirational bodies with the force of international law, in an effort to turn Trump’s 20-point peace proposal into some sort of plan and solidify last month’s shaky US-brokered ceasefire into an enduring peace. The fact that the resolution passed 13-0 with Russia and China abstaining, is testament to its calculated haziness as well as the global exhaustion and desperation over Gaza after two years of Israeli bombardment, which has left over 70,000 dead, some 70% of the buildings on the coastal territory razed to the ground, and a finding by a UN commission that Israel has committed genocide. After the vote, the US envoy, Mike Waltz, described the resolution as transformative – “a new course in the Middle East, for Israelis and Palestinians and all the people of the region alike”. When it was the turn for the other council members to speak, they were altogether more cautious, framing their support or acquiescence more in terms of what might follow from the resolution, rather than what was actually in the text. This was especially true when it came to Palestinian statehood. On the insistence of the Arab and Islamic states, the resolution had been revised in recent days to at least mention a future Palestine. It did so however, not by referring to the fundamental right of Palestinians to self-determination and the international commitment to a two-state commitment, but in the language of a distant, conditional and elusive offer. If the Palestinian Authority reformed itself satisfactorily and Gaza’s rebuilding advances, it said “conditions may be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”. Mealy mouthed as it sounds, European diplomats saw a significant victory in getting a Trump administration envoy to say the words “Palestinian self-determination and statehood” out loud, whatever the caveats. The veteran US negotiator and Middle East expert, Aaron David Miller, also saw the resolution as a step towards a future Palestine. “Whether the UNSC resolution can be implemented is unclear. But it reflects two new realities – Trump has internationalized the Gaza component of Palestinian issue and supported a two state solution as an end state,” Miller wrote on social media. The wording of resolution 2803 was certainly too much for the extreme right end of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, who reacted with fury, forcing the prime minister to restate his own visceral objections to any suggestion of Palestinian sovereignty. Those governments who held their noses and supported the resolution have drawn some solace from the discomfort of the Israeli hard right. In the view of the European and the Islamic states the passage of the resolution will keep Trump engaged, hopefully increasing the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza in the immediate future, while holding a door wedged ajar to the prospects of lasting peace and Palestinian statehood. The more the international community is represented on the “board of peace” and the more Arab and Islamic countries take part in the ISF, so the optimists in these capitals argue, the harder it will be for Israel to maintain its exclusive, US-approved control over the occupied territory. In going along with the “Trump plan”, they hope to emulate and ultimately outdo Israel at its own game, riding the tiger of the American president’s ego, in the hope of eventually steering him in their desired direction.