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European Union to reveal ratings for candidate countries – Europe live

Italian president Sergio Mattarella warned that “the bloody conflict” triggered by Russia’s invasion on Ukraine “demands greater attention and a significant effort to adapt the military to create a common European defence force” to play a major role within Nato. In a statement issued on the Italian National Unification and Armed Forces’ Day, marking the anniversary of the armistice of Villa Giusti in 1918, he also warned that “new conflicts have emerged in Europe and the Mediterranean, challenging the security framework built in the postwar period and the institutions established to protect it.” The Corriere della Sera newspaper noted that Mattarella has been increasingly vocal about the need to step up Europe’s defence in recent months, issuing a similarly stark warning in May in Portugal, when he joined former Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, in calling for ““for a more competitive, technologically advanced, and therefore more secure Europe.”

‘We don’t have enough to eat, to live’: how Milei’s ‘chainsaw’ cuts are driving homelessness in Argentina

Argentinians and tourists walking the streets of Buenos Aires are used to the large rubbish containers placed beneath the neoclassical and art nouveau buildings of the country’s capital and wealthiest city. A more observant passerby, however, might notice a recent addition: a red warning placed by the city government reading “Danger, do not enter”, accompanied by a pictogram showing a person halfway inside. “Unfortunately, it’s a safety measure,” said Evelyn Bierbrauer, who works with Manos Abiertas, an NGO supporting people experiencing homelessness. “Many people were taking refuge inside the containers – to look for food and even to spend the night there,” she added. The number of people living on the streets of Buenos Aires has been breaking records: there were at least 4,522 in May, according to the latest municipal data – a figure some say is underestimated, but still a 38% increase compared with November 2023. For Juan Nuñez, who works at the NGO Hogar de Cristo, the rise is driven by the country’s economic situation. “As the crisis deepens, poverty increases and so does homelessness,” he said. Since the far-right president, Javier Milei, took office in December 2023 and implemented his “chainsaw” austerity plan, inflation has fallen from more than 200% to about 30% annually – but more than 200,000 formal jobs have been lost, 18,000 businesses have closed, household debt has risen and buying power has collapsed. Despite most socioeconomic indicators showing no improvement in living standards, the libertarian’s party, La Libertad Avanza (LLA), won the recent midterm elections by a wide margin – a result many saw as influenced by Donald Trump, who during the campaign threatened to withdraw a $40bn bailout if Milei lost. LLA will form the largest bloc in the new congress, and organisations working to tackle poverty, as well as other groups hit particularly hard by the libertarian’s zero-deficit policies, fear that things could get even worse. “Day by day, we’re seeing a large number of people ending up on the streets after losing their jobs and being unable to afford rent,” said Nuñez. After Milei assumed office in late 2023, the poverty rate rose to more than 50% before falling back to just over 30%, although many analysts say much of the drop is due to a disputed change in the methodology used to calculate the figures. “We’re preparing ourselves mentally to understand that this [increase in homelessness] will continue in the coming years, with even more economic tightening and measures that, sadly, always hit those with the least the hardest,” added Nuñez. Among those hardest hit by Milei’s cuts so far, pensioners and people with disabilities are particularly worried about the next congress, which takes office on 10 December. Even with only a modest number of seats, the president managed to push through deep cuts that led to a sharp fall in retirees’ real incomes, suspended benefits for people with disabilities and froze payments to providers of essential services such as therapy and transport. It was precisely because the president’s party lacked even a third of the lower house that congress was able to override Milei’s veto of a bill granting higher pensions and an emergency bonus for people with disabilities. Now, although he still falls short of a majority, Milei has formed the largest bloc when his party’s seats are combined with those of the centre-right PRO, which has already supported many of his policies. “We don’t have enough to eat, to live, to think about holidays or free time,” said activist Laura Alcaide, 37, who has a visual impairment. “People with disabilities already struggle to find jobs because no one will hire us – and now many have lost their pensions because Milei took them away,” she said. Hernán Letcher, director of the Centre for Argentine Political Economy, said the cuts affecting people with disabilities “stand out strikingly” because, in terms of their impact on deficit reduction, they are not particularly significant. “I hypothesise that it has more to do with sending a message than with the money itself: that he is willing to do whatever it takes to maintain the fiscal surplus,” said Letcher. There are about 6 million people with disabilities in the country, of whom only 1.2 million receive pensions. Celeste Fernández, from the Civil Association for Equality and Justice NGO, estimates that about 140,000 of those pensions have been suspended. She said the cuts have affected Milei’s popularity, but not “as much as it could have – and the election results are the clearest proof of that”. She argued that support for Milei was largely driven by opposition to Peronism, the populist political movement that has dominated the country’s politics for decades. “There’s a strong anti-Peronist feeling, so people don’t want to go back to that [Peronist governments] … I also get the sense there’s something almost psychological about it – as if people feel that if this [Milei] doesn’t work, it’s like the last chance [for Argentina],” said Fernández. Olga Beatriz González, 89, a retired pensioner, says she cannot understand how, despite so many cuts, Milei still managed to win last Sunday’s election. She said the president “is governing for the rich, not for the most vulnerable”. The owner of a soup kitchen on the outskirts of Buenos Aires that provides free meals for people in need, González joins the protest pensioners hold every Wednesday against Milei’s cuts and said she is not afraid of the new, more conservative congress. “Were the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo ever afraid? No,” she said, referring to the women’s movement that has identified 140 children abducted or disappeared during the brutal 1976–83 military dictatorship. “Just as they weren’t afraid, neither will we be. We’ll keep fighting. I come every Wednesday – I’m old, but I feel young – and I’ll keep coming to represent those who can’t be here,” said González.

As criticism grows, is UAE ready to walk away from Sudan’s RSF militia?

The United Arab Emirates’ diplomatic machine is for the first time admitting to mistakes in its Sudan policy after suffering reputational damage over its support for the Rapid Support Forces, the Sudanese paramilitary group that has carried out mass killings in El Fasher since it captured the city late last month. Speaking in Bahrain on Sunday, Anwar Gargash, the UAE’s senior diplomatic envoy, said the UAE and others had been wrong not to impose sanctions on the instigators of the 2021 coup – led jointly by the RSF and the army – that overthrew Sudan’s transitional civilian government. “We all made a mistake when the two generals who are fighting the civil war today overthrew the civilian government,” Gargash said. “That was, looking back, a critical mistake. We should have put our foot down collectively. We did not call it a coup.” It is a striking reversal. The UAE had actively undermined the idea of a strong civilian democratic government in Sudan in the aftermath of the popular uprising that led to the downfall of the 30-year, Islamist-aligned dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. Throughout 2019, “in the interests of a stable transition”, the UAE and Saudi Arabia tried to enhance the role of the military and marginalise civilian rule, including by promoting the idea that the RSF commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, should be in charge of economic policy. In a piece of bailout diplomacy, Saudi Arabia and the Emiratis quickly agreed a $3bn loan to the transitional military council that initially tried to succeed Bashir. In late 2019, when the civilian side of the government had the upper hand, further payouts from the loan were stopped. Jonas Horner, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote recently that the loss of the loan not only critically undermined the civilian government but also led directly to the coup in 2021, followed by the civil war that broke out between the army and the RSF in 2023. “The fate of the transitional government would likely have been dramatically different had the Gulf backed them with the billions they had pledged to the military,” Horner wrote. Finger of blame Four years on from the coup, the Gargash admission is a sign that in public at least the UAE acknowledges that its Sudan policy has gone wrong and that it must distance itself from the RSF, the force it so nurtured. That the Emiratis covertly armed the RSF is clear from evidence compiled by the UN, independent experts and reporters, even though the UAE denies it. In January, the Biden administration pointed the finger of blame when it imposed sanctions on Hemedti and seven UAE-based companies funding him. Sudanese civilian groups warned for more than 18 months that the RSF would commit ethnically targeted mass killings if it took El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur. That placed a special obligation on the UAE, the country with the greatest ability to restrain Hemedti. Although the UAE has condemned the atrocities in El Fasher, it also put the blame for what happened on the army’s failure to compromise. The UAE’s response to international criticism is to insist that it is being traduced and that it is the victim of a disinformation campaign fuelled by Islamists inside the Sudanese army and by leftwing NGOs long opposed to the Gulf state. It insists it wants a transition back to a civilian-led Sudanese government, and says both the RSF and the army have disqualified themselves from shaping Sudan’s future. Figures such as the UAE foreign affairs minister, Lana Nusseibeh, say the country is not the primary sponsor of the war but rather a neutral party seeking to mediate a return to the civilian, Islamist-free rule that started with the 2019 uprising and ended with the 2021 coup. Yasmine Ahmed, the UK director of Human Rights Watch, said a minimum test of the UAE’s sincerity about breaking with the RSF would be pro-active cooperation with the UN expert panel policing the arms embargo on Sudan. As Cameron Hudson, a former chief of staff to successive US special envoys on Sudan, puts it: “What we see is a complete and total denial by the UAE authorities they have any role or involvement whatsoever in this conflict. Until we can agree on a basic set of facts about what is happening and who is driving it, it is going to be very difficult to resolve.” What happens next will also depend on whether the UAE thinks that the RSF – and its tainting brutality – are still indispensable to its two keys goals in Sudan: accessing resources and deterring the influence of Islamism, the belief that Islam is innately political and that it should influence political systems. The UAE in particular regards the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to security in the region. Natural resources The UAE is just one of the Gulf states to have been drawn to Sudan’s natural resources for decades. Jaafar Nimeiri, Sudan’s president from 1969 to 1985, promised that in return for Gulf investment Sudan could become the breadbasket of the Arab world, as well as a source of a badly needed and sometimes highly educated workforce. Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE all responded, each arriving with different political agendas. Saudi Arabia and the UAE both made multibillion-dollar agricultural investments in Sudan to secure food for their populations, first under Nimieri and then through the authoritarian rule of Bashir, who seized power in 1989 and worked in alliance with Islamists. The fact that Bashir came to be heavily sanctioned by the US proved little constraint as the Gulf states poured money into Sudan. “For these young, wealthy monarchies – which import upwards of 80% of all the food they consume – securing access to Sudan’s agriculture, livestock and mineral resources is a virtually existential concern,” said Horner, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Sudan’s strategic location on the Red Sea made it highly attractive place for the UAE to build ports, and in December 2022 the state-owned Abu Dhabi Ports Group and Invictus Investment signed a $6bn deal to invest in the Abu Amama port, 125 miles north of Port Sudan. The contract has since been cancelled by Sudan’s de factor leader, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, but the UAE will be keen to revive the scheme under any successor. Emirati banks hold stakes in Bank of Khartoum, the largest commercial bank in Sudan, whose digital platform facilitates money transfers for millions of displaced Sudanese and public institutions. However, it is Sudan’s gold reserves that are of particular importance, not just to the RSF and the army, which operate as businesses as much as fighting forces, but also to the UAE. Gold represents about 49% of Sudan’s exports. In February, the state-owned Sudan Mineral Resources Company said gold production in army-controlled areas reached 74 tonnes in 2024, up from 41.8 tonnes in 2022. The Central Bank of Sudan reported that in 2024 almost 97% of official gold exports (from army-held areas) went to the UAE, earning $1.52bn. Official exports are a drop in the ocean, however. An estimated 90% of Sudan’s gold production, amounting to approximately $13.4bn in illicit trade, is smuggled out of the country, often passing through transit routes in Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda and South Sudan before reaching the UAE. In a report last month for Chatham House, Ahmed Soliman and Dr Suliman Baldo wrote: “The UAE continues to benefit from Sudan’s conflict gold, as the enforcement of restrictions on artisanal gold imports from countries where there is war or where gold is controlled by armed groups remains limited.” The UAE’s conduit is Hemedti, with whom they forged a special relationship when he agreed to send RSF troops to Yemen in support of Emirati and Saudi forces fighting the Houthis. He owns many of the mines in Darfur through his family firm Algunade. Politics, as well as profit, also drive the Emirati interest. As with its parallel interventions in eastern Libya and south Yemen, the UAE wants to contest the Islamism with which Bashir was allied. Collective pressure Now that its support for the RSF seems so perilous reputationally, there is an onus on the UAE to contribute to a resolution of the crisis. The US hopes the solution lies in Sudan’s two key external players, the UAE and Egypt, which backs the army and wants keep the conflict within Sudan’s border, finally agreeing they will collectively press their proxies into a ceasefire. The statement agreed by the US, Saudi, Egypt and UAE – four countries engaged in mediation efforts collectively known as the Quad – on 12 September was a breakthrough in that regard in that it set out a course for a three-month humanitarian truce, leading to a permanent ceasefire, and within nine months the establishment of an independent, civilian-led government with broad-based legitimacy and accountability. It added: “Sudan’s future governance is for the Sudanese people to decide through an inclusive and transparent transition process, not controlled by any warring party.” One other passage in the joint statement protected UAE interests: “Sudan’s future cannot be dictated by violent extremist groups part of, or evidently linked to, the Muslim Brotherhood, whose destabilising influence has fuelled violence and instability across the region.” Talks on these proposals in Washington – so far excluding Sudanese civilians – have not yet borne fruit, suggesting it may yet require more senior US officials to engage before the protagonists of Sudan’s civil war and their supporters accept that further fighting offers only more misery.

Torture in Israeli prisons rose sharply during war, says freed Palestinian author

A celebrated Palestinian author who was freed last month after more than 32 years in Israeli prisons has said the use of torture increased dramatically during his last two years of captivity as Israel came to treat its jails as another front in the Gaza war. Nasser Abu Srour, whose prison memoir has been translated into seven languages and is tipped to win a major international literary prize this month, was among more than 150 Palestinians serving life sentences who were freed as part of the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire and then immediately exiled to Egypt, where most remain in limbo. Abu Srour, 56, recounted a sharp increase in the use of beatings and the deprivation of food and warmth after the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023. “The prison guards uniform changed, with a tag on the chest written on it the word ‘fighters’, or ‘warriors’, and they started acting like they were in a war and this was another front, and they started beating, torturing, killing like warriors,” he said. A UN commission listed 75 deaths of Palestinians in Israeli custody between 7 October 2023 and 31 August 2025. The Israeli prison service has repeatedly denied the use of torture in its jails. Speaking by phone from Egypt, Abu Srour also described the “dizzying shock” of being driven straight from the brutal conditions of Israeli incarceration to a five-star hotel in Cairo as guests of the Egyptian authorities. As a young man, Abu Srour took part in the first intifada, the Palestinian uprising between 1987 and 1993, when he was charged as an accomplice in the death of an Israeli Shin Bet security police officer who had been trying to press Abu Srour’s cousin into becoming a collaborator. On the basis of a confession he made under torture, Abu Srour was sentenced in 1993 to life in prison without parole. During decades marked by extended periods of solitary confinement, he gained a bachelor’s degree and then a master’s in political science and began to publish poetry and other writings that were smuggled out of prison. His prison memoir, The Tale of a Wall: Reflections on Hope and Freedom, was mostly dictated in phone conversations with a relative over more than two years. It has been translated from Arabic for publication in seven languages and is a finalist for the Arab literature prize awarded each year by the Institute of the Arab World in Paris. Appeals for his release went unheeded over the decades, so when officials came to the prison after the 10 October ceasefire with a list of prisoners to be freed, Abu Srour tried to ignore them. “They were calling out cell numbers and I was sitting on my bed in room No 6 feeling like I am not part of it,” he said. “There were so many times when I should have been part of it over all those years. But the whole thing is so huge and so painful, I didn’t want to interact. It was a defence mechanism. I was saying it has nothing to do with me. “But then they came to my cell and they said: ‘Nasser, prepare yourself.’ God’s grace finally reached me. My friends were hugging and kissing me and I was in disbelief.” Abu Srour said that after the outbreak of the Gaza war, triggered by the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, the treatment of long-term Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails worsened significantly. “Any place where there are no cameras was a place for brutality,” he said. “They would tie our hands behind our heads and throw us on the floor and then they would start trampling on us with their feet.” Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has boasted that under his control Israeli prisons are no longer “holiday camps”. Abu Srour said all reading and writing materials were withdrawn under the regime. “All cultural life in the prison ended in the last two years, so there was only biological life. Everyone tried to survive in their own way. And we were always hungry,” he said. Daily rations were maintained at the level of bare survival and he said he lost 12kg in weight. Prisoners were allowed only one set of thin clothes, so they were always cold on winter nights. “Our bodies were weak. We couldn’t handle even a medium temperature,” he said. “Whenever someone was leaving prison, everyone would try to become their friends so they would get their T-shirt or underwear, or anything.” Abu Srour said that in the 24 hours before the prisoners to be freed under the ceasefire were named and boarded buses to leave, they were subjected to a particularly intense final round of beatings. On the 48-hour journey that followed, they were not allowed to open the curtains on the buses that crossed Israel and then drove along the southern edge of Gaza to the Rafah crossing with Egypt. It was only after entering Egypt that he saw the sky for the first time outside prison confines. The buses deposited the 154 freed prisoners at a luxury Cairo hotel, which brought shocks of its own. “I’d never been to a hotel before. I did everything for the first time like a child, to get in and out of a lift, to learn about room service, how to perceive or use a shower,” Abu Srour said. Part of the shock was meeting four of his sisters and a brother for the first time in decades. “This was another reason for stress for me … We’ve been apart for like 33 years. It felt cruel because it had been denied for so long,” he said. He remembers thinking: “Is it OK to hug them?” The freed prisoners were watched by Egyptian security officials as they mingled with tourists, and took their cues from them on how to act. “In the morning we saw the buffet and we saw all that food. So the guys all put 2kg of food on their plate. It was a surreal scene. We were embarrassed. We did not know what to do with our knife and fork,” Abu Srour said. “All my feelings were mixed and tense. I was embarrassed. I am at a loss with my language, unable to give meanings for things around me.” On Saturday, after the Daily Mail published a story revealing the presence of freed Palestinian prisoners among western tourists in what it called the “Hotel Hamas”, the group were given two hours to pack their things before being bussed to another hotel in the desert, an hour’s drive from the capital. That abrupt move, of being ordered on to buses to be taken to an unknown location chosen by others, was a reminder for Abu Srour that they were not yet free. He has been offered several options of third countries willing to accept him on a longer-term basis and is trying to decide where to go on the grounds of accessibility for his family, and whether he will be able to continue writing. “I don’t want a comfortable country,” he said. “I don’t want a country without questions or a country without a cause.”

Tuesday briefing: Why Labour won’t press the ‘big red button’ to lift 450,000 children out of poverty

Good morning. The two-child benefit cap has been described as “the worst social security policy ever”. It affects about 1.7 million children in the UK. Scrapping it would lift about 330,000 children out of poverty overnight, and another 150,000 by 2030. It has failed in its stated objectives: of supporting people into work, or discouraging them from having larger families. Keir Starmer himself was once committed to scrapping it. Still it clings on, driving 109 more children into poverty every day. Ahead of the budget, pressure has been growing on Starmer and Rachel Reeves to make a change to reassure left-leaning voters that a Labour government can make a meaningful difference in people’s lives. Eliminating the two-child cap could have been that: only a few weeks ago, education secretary Bridget Phillipson said the cap has had a “devastating impact”, which many understood as a sign the policy might soon be reversed. But against an ugly fiscal backdrop, Reeves will give a speech this morning with a “candid” assessment of the choices ahead – likely to mean laying the groundwork for the tax rises that now appear inevitable. And in that context, it now appears that the chancellor will stop short of abolishing the cap. Today’s newsletter with Alex Clegg, an economist at the Resolution Foundation, is about the case that she should think again. Here are the headlines. Five big stories UK news | Police investigating the mass stabbing on a high-speed train in Cambridgeshire are examining four knife incidents alleged to have taken place hours before passengers fled in terror on Saturday evening. Pornography | Porn featuring strangulation or suffocation – often referred to as “choking” – is due to be criminalised, with a legal requirement placed on tech platforms to prevent UK users from seeing such material. UK politics | Keir Starmer was briefed on details of Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein before he decided to make him US ambassador, senior civil servants have said. The prime minister received a report that contained “a summary of reputational risks” including Mandelson’s “prior relationship with Jeffrey Epstein”. Israel | Police have arrested and detained the military’s top legal officer after she admitted leaking footage of soldiers allegedly attacking a Palestinian detainee. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi said she authorised publication of the video to defuse attacks on military investigators and prosecutors working on the case. Reform UK | Nigel Farage rowed back from the £90bn tax cut promise of his 2024 election “contract”, instead suggesting it had only ever been an “aspiration”. He also backtracked on the party’s pledge of a £20,000 tax-free threshold and refused to guarantee the pensions triple lock. In depth: ‘It isn’t credible to have a strategy to reduce child poverty that doesn’t touch the cap’ The two-child benefit cap was brought in by the Conservatives in 2017, and stands as one of the best-known examples of the strictures of the austerity era. The policy, introduced by George Osborne when he was chancellor, prevents parents from claiming child tax credit or universal credit for any third or subsequent child born after April 2017. That is worth about £3,500 a year for each child. According to the Resolution Foundation, removing it would cost about £3.5bn. Around the same time as the budget, the government is expected to publish its child poverty strategy. Bridget Phillipson, who is leading the taskforce producing it, seemed to drop a heavy hint that the cap might be abandoned in an interview with the Guardian last month. “I’ve been clear in public and in conversations with colleagues about what the evidence tells us and what needs to happen,” said Phillipson (pictured above left, with Rachel Reeves). “Every year that passes, because of the two-child limit, more children move into poverty and the evidence is there for all to see.” But the definition of “sorting it” now looks a bit more malleable. On Friday, the Financial Times reported that people who had been briefed on Reeves’s plans did not expect her to fully scrap the policy, but said she was more likely to adopt smaller measures that would go some way to blunting its impact. That is a shortsighted approach, said Alex Clegg, who co-authored a recent Resolution Foundation report on the subject. “We have a big red button that says, ‘reduce child poverty by 450,000’. It isn’t very credible to have a strategy to reduce child poverty that doesn’t touch the cap.” *** How do we measure child poverty? The child poverty rate is about 31% of all children, or 4.5 million, in the UK. Even after changes the government has already made – such as extending the availability of free school meals, and increasing universal credit above inflation for the next four years – it is expected to hit 34% by 2030. Because of the way benefits are increased in line with prices rather than incomes, Clegg said, “the poverty line naturally rises. That’s because earnings tend to grow faster than prices, so people in the bottom third of the income distribution, who get more of their income from benefits, fall further behind.” Crucially, that 31% is a measure of relative poverty: living in a family where income is below 60% of that in the median household. “The idea behind it is that where you are in relation to the rest of society matters,” Clegg said. “We tend to agree that living standards should improve over time. And if a family is living on an income that doesn’t improve, while everyone else around them can afford to do more things, that is materially felt. The lives of people at the bottom end should be improving, too.” *** How bad is it in the UK? An almost impossible question: what is the right amount of child poverty for a society to accept? One answer is 0%; in Scotland, a 10% target is enshrined in law, and has driven improvements (to 23%) – even if that goal is still very far away; the lowest rate in England and Wales since comparable data started to be collected was 27%, the figure the Conservatives inherited in 2010. International comparisons are hard, because many countries with a lower relative poverty rate may have a less wealthy cohort at the top of the income distribution, which changes the maths. At any rate, few would argue that more than one-third of children living in poverty by 2030 would be an acceptable outcome. “The government hasn’t said if it will have a target,” Clegg said. “But it’s worth saying that, while some of the things that might affect it may sound radical, a lot of it is reversing things that were introduced relatively recently. You could see it as extra spending, but you could also see it as going back to a system that we had not long ago.” *** How much of an impact would lifting the two-child cap have? In this excellent piece for the Comment Is Freed Substack, Ruth Patrick, a professor in social and public policy at the University of Glasgow, describes the policy as “one of the most pernicious of the long list of the Conservative’s austerity welfare ‘reforms’”, and echoes Phillipson in noting that because it is applied to children born after April 2017, the proportion of children affected naturally increases all of the time. “The key reason it’s such a big driver of poverty is the disconnect between a family’s needs and entitlement levels,” Clegg said: “Families keep growing and they don’t get any more money, and that opens up a gap quite quickly. By the time you have four or five children, it’s a huge amount of money.” While it is expensive to abolish the two-child cap, it is also a very efficient way to make a difference – costing about £7,280 per child lifted out of poverty, less than other levers available to the government. There are cascading benefits, too. “It’s hard to quantify, but people have found evidence of improving health and education outcomes,” Clegg said. “And at the more extreme end of the spectrum, the costs of deprivation show up in bills to local authorities – whether that’s temporary accommodation or crisis support. Generally, cutting the resources people get doesn’t make the need go away – it just pops up somewhere else in the system.” At the same time, he said, repealing the two-child limit on its own would be much less effective at driving down poverty than making a change in concert with other measures. His Resolution Foundation paper proposes simultaneously lifting the benefit cap, which currently limits all families on benefits (with a few exceptions, like those in which someone has a disability) to £487 a week in London and £423 a week elsewhere, no matter their circumstances; and reintroducing the link between local housing allowance and local rents, so that a greater proportion of housing costs are covered. Taken together, these measures would reduce child poverty by 1.5%, down from 31% to an estimated 29.5%. This may sound small, but against the current trajectory, that would mean 660,000 fewer children growing up in poverty. *** What is the government most likely to do? The government is very likely to announce some measures to reduce child poverty. Some of those reportedly under discussion: raising the cap from two children to three; exempting families with a disabled child from the cap; delaying the cap until the youngest child turns five; or exempting families where an adult is working. Those would provide some sort of mitigation, but still leave child poverty rising over the course of this parliament, Clegg said. Some Labour MPs are nervous about scrapping the cap at the same time as increasing taxes, arguing it will feed into their opponents’ arguments that Labour is the party of “scroungers”. But even if some voters might take that view, there is evidence that, overall, voters are more willing to endure higher taxes than major increases in child poverty. And, as Ruth Patrick argues, Labour might be better off making a bold demonstration of its commitment to improving the lives of vulnerable children than they would by quietly enacting a few measures that will still make them politically vulnerable without any of the credit. If Labour did take that step, the credit would be deserved. Beyond knock-on effects for councils and long-term education outcomes, there is a simpler calculus of whether reducing the number of children living in poverty is fundamentally the right thing to do. In a Guardian documentary last month, the journalist and poverty campaigner Terri White heard from some of those facing the impact of the policy, like a mother of two with a third on the way in Sheffield who lives in a one-bedroom home, even though her husband works full-time. “When my little girl arrives, there is no space for a basket to put her in,” she explained, her voice breaking as she spoke. “We need to eat, and we pay for fuel, working full-time, trying our best. But their policy doesn’t have a soul.” What else we’ve been reading Until Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 drew wider attention, Transnistria was mostly known as one of those obscure quiz answers – a country in Europe that doesn’t officially exist. Pjotr Sauer and photographer Didier Bizet take us inside this breakaway state seemingly frozen in its post-Soviet past in this picture essay (pictured above). Martin Belam, newsletters team A six-week-long game of Traitors in the office: not the explanation for the UK’s productivity crisis, but the subject of Ed Campbell’s enjoyable column on a kind of workplace stress I am very glad to have avoided. Archie In 1965 the BBC commissioned – then banned – Peter Watkins’s anti-nuclear film The War Game. In a glowing tribute to the Oscar-winning director, who died last week aged 90, Peter Bradshaw recalls seeing the documentary as a teenager in the 1980s, when “it seemed as if I had entered a new era of disillusioned adulthood”. Martin Jonathan Liew’s column, he writes, comes from “the jaws of hell”: London. What emerges is a blazing defence of the values of cities against the demagogues who claim they are the armpits of the universe. Archie With the first men’s Ashes Test set for 21 November, Donald McRae talks to England fast bowler Mark Wood about managing anxiety – and why pretending to ride an imaginary horse in the outfield helps relax those around him. Martin Sport Football | Granit Xhaka’s leveller at the start of the second half secured a 1-1 draw for Sunderland after Iliman Ndiaye’s early opener for Everton at the Stadium of Light (pictured above). Rugby | A hand injury to the full-back Freddie Steward could present Marcus Smith with a fresh chance to start for England when they face Fiji at Twickenham on Saturday. Steve Borthwick’s team will meet the Pacific Islanders in the second of four November internationals after a comfortable opening victory against Australia Football | Former England boss Gareth Southgate said after the “higher calling” of leading his nation he is not looking to return to football management, and wants to focus on working with young people. The front pages “Reeves paves way for tax-raising budget with ‘tough choices’ talk,” is the splash on the Guardian today, while the i has: “Reeves bids to win over voters on big tax hikes as make-or-break Budget looms.” “Starmer signals ‘tough but fair’ Budget will opt for higher taxes over austerity,” is the highlight at the FT as the Mail runs with: “Reeves softens us up for tax betrayal.” “Heroes of the train horror,” says the Mirror. “Police failed to catch rail suspect a day earlier,” is the lead story on the Times, while the Metro has “‘Three missed chances to stop train knife man’” and the Star: “I grabbed his knife.” “BBC’s Trump bias exposed in memo leak,” is the headline at the Telegraph, as the Record leads with “A spike in attempted murders by kids has been linked to the gang turf war in Scotland.” Today in Focus How Zohran Mamdani charmed New York Guardian US writer Adam Gabbatt and columnist Mehdi Hasan explore how Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani came from nowhere to the brink of becoming mayor of New York City. Cartoon of the day | Pete Songi The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Mahnoor Omer (pictured above) is aiming to upend what she describes as the “dishertening” status quo in Pakistan, where her legal challenge over the tax status of sanitary pads is making headlines. The government there exempts from tax what it calls essential goods, a category including such items as cattle semen, milk and cheese – but not an essential such as pads. Omer’s challenge aims to boost access; one study found only 16.2% of women in rural areas use sanitary goods due to their cost. “It is disheartening,” said the 25-year-old, “that despite women serving as ministers, lawmakers and public representatives, gender-blind policies continue to pass without question.” She hopes the campaign will make pads affordable and shift how Pakistani society perceives menstruation. “The problem isn’t the periods themselves, but rather the silence about them.” 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 – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

Backlash after New Zealand government scraps rules on incorporating Māori culture in classrooms

A plan by New Zealand’s government to scrap a legal requirement on schools to incorporate local Māori culture in classrooms has been condemned by teachers, principals and school boards. Since 2020, school boards have been obligated to “give effect” to the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s founding document signed in 1840 between Māori tribes and the British Crown and instrumental in upholding Māori rights. That treaty requirement includes ensuring school policies, plans and local curriculums reflect local Māori customs, knowledge and world views. But in an unexpected move on Tuesday, the education minister, Erica Stanford, said the treaty requirement would be removed. Teachers, principals and school boards have said the change risks sidelining Indigenous children and damaging social cohesion. In a statement provided to the Guardian, Stanford said the treaty obligation “made no difference to raising the achievement of Māori [children]” and that it was unfair to place the obligation on school boards. School boards are made up of elected representatives including teachers, parents and sometimes students. “Parents who are effectively volunteers, already responsible for the governance of their local school, were suddenly expected to interpret and implement a treaty obligation that rightfully sits with the Crown,” Stanford said. School boards would now be required to “seek to achieve equitable outcomes for Māori students”, take steps to provide for teaching and learning in Māori language (te reo Māori) to students whose parents and caregivers request it, and take steps to ensure the school reflects cultural diversity. But teachers, principals and school boards say that while they might still choose to include Māori culture in their schools, removing the legal requirement for it risked making Indigenous culture, education and language less visible. “The suggestion that this clause makes no difference simply isn’t true,” the president of the school boards association, Meredith Kennett, said in a statement. The treaty clause helped school boards implement policies that reflected the needs of Māori and all New Zealanders, she said. It had been a unifying influence in schools, not a divisive one, Kennett said. “It causes no harm to have it there, but causes plenty of harm – including to social cohesion – by removing it.” The president of the principals’ federation, Leanne Otene, said school boards had embraced the treaty obligation and it had helped to create school cultures where Māori children felt reflected, and where their language and culture was valued and respected. Examples included schools learning about their local history from iwi (tribes), singing and performing traditional song and dance, and incorporating Māori language in signs and greetings, Otene told the Guardian. “There is rich historic knowledge that is passed down from generation to generation which builds a culture and a uniqueness about why our land … is different from any other country,” Otene said. Other countries looked up to New Zealand for reviving Indigenous language and culture and the change would put the country “completely out of step as global leaders”, she said. Since taking office, the coalition government has said it wants to end “race-based policies”. It has ushered in sweeping rollbacks to policies that are designed to improve health, wellbeing and representation outcomes for Māori. The Labour leader, Chris Hipkins, described the move as a “step backwards”, saying on Tuesday: “[The government] would far rather have culture wars than focus on the mess they are making with the economy.”

‘I felt violated’: the Italian women taking on pornography sites over doctored images

As she reeled from the discovery of a pornographic website featuring AI-generated images of herself naked, the prominent Italian journalist and writer Francesca Barra said the question that struck her the most came from her young daughter. “She asked me: ‘how do you feel?’,” Barra, 47, said. “But what I heard was another more subtle question that my pre-adolescent daughter perhaps didn’t have the courage to ask, and that was: ‘If it happened to me, how would I handle it?’.” Social Media Girls, which has more than 7 million worldwide subscribers and includes a section dedicated to “Italian nude VIPs”, is the latest in a series of sexist online forums to have surfaced in Italy’s public domain in recent months. It follows Mia Moglie (My Wife), a now-shuttered Facebook group where men exchanged intimate photos of their wives, and a website called Phica, a misspelt play on a slang word for vagina in Italian, where doctored images accompanied by obscene comments of dozens of high-profile women, including the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, were published. Phica has since been removed by Italian prosecutors and the man who operated the site is under investigation, while Social Media Girls is being investigated amid calls to close it down. In a reaction reminiscent of #MeToo, dozens of journalists, actors, influencers and female politicians targeted on the sites have spoken out against what has been collectively described as “virtual rape”. Italy has long grappled with profound misogyny but the rapid spread of sexist forums, especially those using AI, is presenting an additional and hugely complex challenge. Barra, who hosts a political TV show on the Rete 4 channel was the first well-known Italian woman to publicly denounce and submit a legal complaint against Social Media Girls, which has been active for 11 years and featured “nudified” images of several personalities, including the actor Sophia Loren. The mother of four was informed her image was on the site by a man who visited it. “When I first saw it, I felt violated and mortified,” Barra said. “Then I became angry and told myself: ‘I will not allow anyone to violate me twice’. Possibly the only consolation is that it was pointed out by a man, who obviously frequents porn sites but who seemed to understand that this is not just a game of sexual perversion between men, but a real crime against the inviolable principle of consent.” Barra said it was her duty to speak out on behalf of the women who do not share the same level of public prominence or who are too afraid to come forward because they fear being judged. This is the challenge facing a team at the law firm Annamaria Bernardini de Pace, which is working to bring together a class action lawsuit against the sexist forums. One of the lawyers, Daniela Caputo, said it was mainly the younger women who were reluctant to join the legal action. “A 21-year-old was totally shocked when she found her photos on Phica but is unsure about whether to participate,” she added. “Compared to older, more accomplished women, she fears that over-exposing herself will affect her reputation, her job prospects and, ultimately, the rest of her life.” Another hindrance is that the vast majority of the women affected do not have the economic capacity to pursue their cases legally, especially with many financially entwined with the men responsible for sharing the images, for example the husbands who contributed to Mia Moglie. There is also frustration among the ordinary women who for years reported the forums to police but whose complaints were not taken seriously. Agata Vee, one of the promoters of a petition on Change.org this summer which called for Phica to be closed down, said she regularly contacted the site’s moderators to get images removed. “Some of its pages dated back to 2006,” she said. “Sometimes the moderators would delete the photos but then more would appear. About 80% of the material was of women who did not consent.” In September, Italy became the first country in the EU to approve a comprehensive law regulating the use of artificial intelligence, including prison terms for those convicted of illegally spreading AI-generated or manipulated content if it causes harm. Caputo said a major challenge was identifying those behind the platforms where the such harmful images land, especially as many originate from abroad. “Then when one site gets closed down, another one appears,” she added. “But this problem is not unique to Italy – it is a global phenomenon that is becoming so important there needs to be an international synergy in tackling it.” Barra said politicians from all sides need to come together to form a “plan of attack” because “the situation is only going to get worse”. She said part of that plan needed to be raising awareness that “such crimes can be fatal”. She cited Carolina Picchio, who in 2013 became Italy’s first cyberbullying victim when she killed herself, aged 14, over video footage of her posted on social media. “She couldn’t bear the pain and the shame of the images circulating without her consent and didn’t know how to react or ask for help,” said Barra. Barra also warned against plans by the government to restrict sex and relationship education in schools. Italy is one of the few EU countries that doesn’t have compulsory sex education. “I hope they will rethink this as there is a cultural urgency to tackle this issue as well as a legislative one,” added Barra.

‘Judges doing politics’: can Spanish PM survive corruption cases against family and allies?

Despite spending the past 18 months variously defending his wife, his brother, his party, his attorney general and his government against a relentless slew of corruption allegations, Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has not entirely lost his sense of humour. Three weeks ago, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the opposition conservative People’s party (PP), rattled off the familiar litany of accusations and concluded by suggesting the man sitting opposite him in congress was neither “a decent or worthy prime minister” but rather a seasoned enabler of corruption. After the giddy applause that greeted Feijóo’s speech from the PP benches had died down, Sánchez rose to his feet and uttered two words. “Ánimo, Alberto,” he said. “Chin up, Alberto.” The prime minister’s retort would appear to have been carefully chosen to remind Feijóo’s party of its own problems. Seven years ago, Sánchez became prime minister by using a vote of no confidence to topple the PP government of one of Feijóo’s predecessors, Mariano Rajoy. By then, the conservative party was so mired in scandals that Sánchez accused it of turning Spanish politics into a “corruption thriller”. In a series of leaked text messages, Rajoy told his close ally, the former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas, to “be strong” and to keep his chin up as the net closed around him – hence the “Ánimo, Alberto” dig. In May 2018, Bárcenas was jailed for 33 years for fraud and money laundering, and the PP itself was found to have profited from an illegal kickbacks-for-contracts scheme. A week later, the PP was out of government and Sánchez was Spain’s new prime minister. Given what happened to Rajoy and his government, some may see Sánchez’s taunt as tempting fate. But the prime minister has insisted he has worked to tackle corruption and is adamant the cases against his family are politically motivated vendettas waged by his right and far-right opponents and their media supporters. More controversially, he has also cast doubts on the independence of some members of the Spanish judiciary, claiming in an interview at the beginning of September “there’s no doubt that there are judges doing politics and there are politicians trying to do justice”. That accusation was put to the test on Monday, when Spain’s attorney general, Álvaro García Ortiz, appeared at the supreme court to face trial for allegedly disclosing confidential information. García Ortiz – who told the court he was not guilty of the charges he faces – is accused of leaking details of a case concerning Alberto González Amador, a businessman under investigation for alleged tax fraud, to a media outlet. González Amador is the boyfriend of the populist PP regional president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who is one of Sánchez’s loudest and most unrestrained critics. The two-week trial will hear from 40 witnesses, including prosecutors, press officers, journalists, police officers, politicians, lawyers and Amador himself. Although the landmark proceedings are the first time that a serving Spanish attorney general has gone on trial, by far the most headline-grabbing allegations around Sánchez’s rule have been those surrounding his wife. At the end of April last year, the prime minister stunned Spain by announcing that he was calling a temporary halt to his public duties and considering his political future after a court launched an investigation into Begoña Gómez for alleged influence-peddling and corruption. The investigation was triggered by a complaint from Manos Limpias (Clean Hands), a self-styled trade union with far-right links that has a long history of using the courts to pursue those it deems to pose a threat to Spain’s democratic interests. Gómez has been accused of using her influence as the wife of the prime minister to secure sponsors for a university master’s degree course she ran and of using state funds to pay her assistant for help with personal matters. Sánchez’s younger brother, David, is also under investigation over allegations of influence-peddling. According to another complaint from Manos Limpias, David Sánchez was handed a bespoke job by the socialist-led council of the south-western city of Badajoz in July 2017, when his brother was the national leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE). Gómez and David Sánchez have denied any wrongdoing. The prime minister – who has said his family has been the victim of a “harassment and bullying operation” – has insisted that neither has committed any offence. “The truth will come out in the end,” he said in September. “My brother and my wife are innocent.” There are, however, additional judicial fronts. In June, Sánchez ordered Santos Cerdán, the PSOE’s organisational secretary and his righthand man, to resign after a supreme court judge found “firm evidence” of his possible involvement in taking kickbacks on public construction contracts. His case is tied to those of two other men, the former transport minister José Luis Ábalos – who was Cerdán’s predecessor as the PSOE’s organisational secretary – and Ábalos’s former aide Koldo García. Ábalos was sacked from Sánchez’s cabinet in 2021 and suspended by the PSOE in February last year after refusing to resign when García was accused of taking bribes to facilitate mask contracts during the Covid crisis. Both men have denied any wrongdoing. The Cerdán investigation came as a body blow to Sánchez, who looked uncharacteristically shaken during a hastily convened press conference in which he apologised to Spanish voters and PSOE supporters – but ruled out a snap general election. “We acted firmly and now it will be up to the judicial authorities to establish Mr Cerdán’s responsibility,” he said at the time. The prime minister was on more pugnacious form when called to testify before the senate last Thursday over the so-called “Koldo case”. After dismissing the committee probing the matter as a “circus” and a “committee of defamation”, Sánchez insisted the PSOE’s finances were “absolutely clean”, adding that there was no “systemic corruption” in his government – unlike in its PP predecessors. If the prime minister’s opponents are used to the bluntness and excesses of much of Spain’s political discourse, many of the country’s judges have not been amused by the aspersions he has cast on their impartiality. Alejandro González Mariscal de Gante, a spokesperson for the largest professional judges’ group, the conservative Asociación Profesional de la Magistratura, rejected the notion that Spanish justice had succumbed to “lawfare”, saying its judges were independent professionals who all too often found themselves dragged into party politics. “If we do investigate, we’re bad and we play politics,” he said. “But if we don’t investigate, and we shelve cases or acquit, we’re good … But we’re not governed by political criteria. We investigate independently and we judge independently – and it’s a good thing we carry on working despite all the political questions and despite who’s in government. That’s the way it should be.” Others have been more circumspect. The day after Sánchez accused a minority of judges of playing politics, the progressive Judges for Democracy (JJpD) group said that, while such pronouncements perhaps ought not to come from the prime minister, there was no doubt that “some judicial proceedings” were being used to clearly partisan ends. “For a while now, our association has been condemning the judicialisation of politics – and that’s why we urge courts to act as vigorously as possible in order to avoid it,” said JJpD spokesperson Edmundo Rodríguez. In spite of the sprawling judicial entanglements that threaten to suffocate the legacy of one of Europe’s few remaining socialist leaders, Sánchez insists his focus remains on governing – even if that may be easier said than done. His minority coalition government will struggle to get legislation passed after the Catalan separatist party Junts, which helped Sánchez back into office in return for a controversial amnesty law, announced it would end its support for the government because it has failed to deliver on the deal struck two years ago. Bleak though the outlook may be, the great survivor of Spanish politics may take comfort from a recent poll that suggested the PSOE could be bouncing back from its summer of scandal and pain. The survey, from Spain’s state Sociological Research Centre, put the socialists first with 34.8% – 15 percentage points ahead of the PP. Such a lead, not seen for six years, may fuel hopes in Sánchez’s circle that PSOE voters are rallying behind the party in the face of what they see as a series of politically driven court cases. Much, however, will depend on what reaches court – and what comes out in court – over the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, Sánchez is, as usual, trying to battle on. “Of course these corruption scandals were very difficult for us to accept, but the political project is broader,” he said at the beginning of September. “And I think the most important message that I’d like to explain to my citizens is that the direction of the country that we started seven years ago is the correct one, and it’s not an abstract one.”