Win for Apple as US appeals court pauses Apple Watch ban

US government commission barred imports and sales of some smartwatches following dispute with medical-tech firm Masimo

Apple scored a victory on Wednesday when a US appeals court paused a government commission’s import ban on some of the company’s popular Apple smartwatches following a patent dispute with a medical-technology firm, Masimo.

The tech giant had filed an emergency request for the US court of appeals for the federal circuit to halt the order, after appealing the US International Trade Commission’s (ITC) decision that it had infringed Masimo’s patents.

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Chinese gaming sector in turmoil as regulators announce new proposals

Measures include spending limits for online games and ban on rewarding players for logging in each day

China’s $45bn (£31.3bn) gaming industry has been dealt a blow by proposals to limit the time and money spent on the sector.

New rules including spending limits for online games, a ban on games from rewarding players for logging in every day and a ban on lucky draw features from being offered to minors were announced by regulators last week, sparking panic among investors.

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Eiffel Tower closed as staff strike on 100th anniversary of creator’s death

Union says operating company is ‘heading for disaster’ with budget based on unrealistic future visitor numbers

The Eiffel Tower was closed to the public on Wednesday after staff went on strike on the 100th anniversary of the death of its creator, Gustave Eiffel.

Disappointed tourists who had booked tickets to access the 134-year-old monument were told it was shut and they would be contacted by email.

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Russia-Ukraine war live: majority of Kherson without electricity due to shelling, says governor – as it happened

Oleksandr Prokudin said that 70% of subscribers’ had been left without electricity

Any fresh European Union aid to Ukraine will not affect the outcome of the conflict, the Kremlin has said.

It added that such spending would only hurt Europe’s economy.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has held talks in Moscow with his Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, and said progress had been made on plans for Russia and India to jointly produce military equipment.

Ukraine’s armed forces commander has said his troops remain in an area of the eastern town of Maryinka despite Russia’s assertions that Moscow is in control of the settlement. Capturing Maryinka would amount to Moscow’s most significant battlefield gain since May.

Russia’s newest howitzers will be deployed “soon” against Ukrainian forces. The head of the state-owned defence conglomerate Rostec, Sergei Chemezov, told the RIA news agency that testing of the new self-propelled artillery units, named Coalition-SV, had been completed and mass production has already started, with the first pilot batch to be delivered by the end of this year.

Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, has warned that a move by Japan to hand over Patriot air defence systems to Ukraine, would have “grave consequences” for Russia-Japan ties.

Russia has lost 355,750 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion, according to data published by the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces on Wednesday. This includes 790 casualties Russian forces suffered over the past day. The Guardian has been unable to verify the figures.

One person was killed after Russian forces sent dozens of attack drones over Ukraine in their latest overnight airstrike, Ukrainian authorities said. Ukraine‘s interior ministry also reported another death from overnight shelling of Kherson.

Russian forces shelled the railway station in Kherson as a train was set to evacuate residents, killing one police officer and injuring four people, said Ukraine’s interior minister, Ihor Klymenko.

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Celebrities’ letter defending Gérard Depardieu causes outrage in France

Signatories of open letter, who include Charlotte Rampling and Carla Bruni, accused of placing actor above the law

An open letter signed by 56 prominent figures defending Gérard Depardieu and suggesting the cinema giant – who has been accused of rape and sexual assault – is the victim of a “lynching” has sparked outrage in France.

Critics have accused signatories – including the British actor Charlotte Rampling, the former French first lady Carla Bruni and Depardieu’s former partner Carole Bouquet – of placing him above the law and attempting to drown out #MeToo voices.

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Illegal mining on rise again in Amazon, says Yanomami leader

Activist Davi Kopenawa says miners are returning after eviction operations were scaled back, and others never left

Thousands of illegal miners are resisting government attempts to evict them from Brazil’s largest Indigenous territory, the renowned activist and shaman Davi Kopenawa has said, nearly a year after operations to displace them began.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made expelling an estimated 20,000 illegal gold and tin ore miners from the Yanomami Indigenous territory one of his top tasks after taking power last January.

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Weather tracker: South Africa flash floods kill six with people still missing

Catastrophic rains on Christmas Eve led to key infrastructure damage in western parts of country

Catastrophic rains and flash floods in South Africa have led to at least six deaths, with more people still missing. The western parts of the country have experienced extremely unsettled weather over the last few days, with frequent spells of heavy rain.

On Christmas Eve the city of Ladysmith to the north-east of Lesotho experienced flash flooding after a sudden deluge during the evening. Amateur weather stations in the area suggested about 60mm of rain fell within an hour, while in a three-hour period there was about 80mm of rainfall. The average rainfall in Ladysmith for the whole of December is just over 100mm.

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Wednesday briefing: Can there be any winners in the Israel-Hamas war?

In today’s newsletter: The Hamas attack on Israel, and the country’s overwhelming armed response, have destabilised the region and caused unfathomable suffering

Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First Edition

Good morning. For more than 80 days, a bloody conflict has been raging in Israel and Gaza. On 7 October Hamas launched thousands of rockets into Israel, and gunmen broke through security barriers in the worst breach of the country’s defences in five decades – 1,200 Israelis were killed and more than 200 were taken hostage. Harrowing reports have emerged of sexual violence against women, of torture and abuse of adults and children.

The response from Israel was swift and brutal, with the government promising a “mighty vengeance” against Hamas, vowing to destroy the militant group altogether. In the months since the attack, the Israeli military has unleashed one of the heaviest conventional bombing campaigns in history, according to one expert. More than 20,400 people have been killed, including nearly 8,000 children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, in the two and a half months since the bombardment began. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced; entire neighbourhoods have been reduced to rubble. The UN has described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as “apocalyptic” and the World Food Programme has said that there is a “catastrophic hunger crisis”. Safe drinking water is desperately scarce, raising the risk of disease outbreaks.

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At least 20% of NHS suppliers at ‘high risk’ of modern slavery use, review says

Many makers of PPE and surgical instruments are based in China, where about 100,000 people may be trapped in forced labour

Over a fifth of NHS suppliers providing items including surgical instruments, gloves, gowns and face masks are at “high risk” of using modern slavery, according to a government review.

Nearly half of all NHS suppliers of gowns and uniforms are based in China, which also provides the bulk of all masks.

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Gaza war puts US’s extensive weapons stockpile in Israel under scrutiny

Israel appears to be receiving munitions from stockpile, but there has been little transparency

Their precise location is classified, but somewhere in Israel there are multiple closely guarded warehouses that contain billions of dollars’ worth of weapons owned by the US government.

Long shrouded in secrecy, the warehouses are part of an extensive but previously little-known stockpile now facing scrutiny as pressure mounts on the Biden administration over its support for Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

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Wave of drug-carrying drones flying into India from Pakistan, officials say

Border officers say most drones carry opium and heroin, fuelling a drugs crisis in Punjab, while others drop weapons

Indian border security have said they are battling an unprecedented “drone menace” infiltrating the border with Pakistan, fuelling the drugs crisis in the state of Punjab and raising serious security issues.

Officials from India’s border security force (BSF) in the border state of Punjab told the Guardian they had intercepted 90 drones from Pakistan so far in 2023, the highest on record. They said the number was “increasing every month”.

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Alexei Navalny: ‘I’m fine’ says Kremlin critic from remote Arctic penal colony

Writing on X, jailed Russian opposition leader said he was ‘still in a good mood’ after an exhausting transfer to the ‘Polar Wolf’ prison

The jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said he was “fine” after a “pretty exhausting” 20-day transfer to a penal colony beyond the Arctic Circle.

The Kremlin critic’s whereabouts had been unknown for more than two weeks, but he is in a penal colony in Russia’s far north and has been visited by his lawyer, his supporters have said.

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Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 672

Russian shelling of Kherson train station kills policeman during evacuation effort; Turkey takes another step towards letting Sweden into Nato

Russian forces shelled the railway station in Kherson as a train was set to evacuate residents, killing one policeman and injuring four people, said Ukraine’s interior minister, Ihor Klymenko.

The commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said his troops remained in part of Maryinka despite Russia’s defence minister saying Russian troops were in total control. Little remains of the town.

The Turkish parliament’s foreign affairs committee has approved Sweden’s bid for Nato membership but it still needs to pass a full vote of the parliament.

The Ukrainian air force said it struck Russia’s Novocherkassk navy ship during an air attack on Feodosia in Crimea, controlled by Russia. Ukraine said the ship was destroyed while Russia said it was damaged. Footage and photographs showed powerful explosions, fires over a port area, and burnt wreckage.

The Ukrainian army chief, Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said he was not satisfied with the work of military draft offices responsible for mobilising troops. His comments came a day after Ukraine’s parliament published the text of a draft law including lowering the age of men who can be mobilised to 25 from 27.

Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s defence minister, said he wanted “to express deep gratitude” to the British government “for providing basic training to Ukraine’s combat air pilots”.

Taiwan’s economy ministry said it expanded a list of sanctioned goods for Russia and Belarus. The list includes equipment for making semiconductors, where Taiwan is a world leader, as well as certain chemicals and medicines.

Japan’s Mitsui & Co has decided to pull its employees out of Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 liquefied natural gas (LNG) project. The decision is yet another blow for the project. Fearing the backlash from US sanctions targeting the project, foreign shareholders have suspended their participation.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, will hold talks with his Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, in Moscow on Wednesday, Russia’s foreign ministry has said. The ministers plan to discuss bilateral ties as well as the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.

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Alex Murdaugh trial: court clerk accused of plagiarism

Becky Hill, who Murdaugh’s lawyers accuse of jury-tampering, alleged to have plagiarized passages in memoir from BBC article

The court clerk who helped steer the murder trial of South Carolina’s Alex Murdaugh and has since been hit with accusations of jury-tampering – potentially leading to a retrial – is now embroiled in a plagiarism controversy.

Soon after the trial, in which Murdaugh was convicted of killing his wife and son near a dog kennel at their Low Country home, Becky Hill published a book named Behind the Doors of Justice: the Murdaugh Murders.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Moscow confirms large warship hit in Crimean port – as it happened

This live blog is now closed but you can read more on this story here

Here is a video of the large explosion in Crimea as a Ukrainian airstrike hit a Russian warship during an overnight attack on the Crimean port city of Feodosia, Russia’s defence ministry and officials said.

The Interfax news agency cited the Russian defence ministry as saying that Ukraine had used guided missiles launched by aircraft to attack Feodosia.

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AstraZeneca buys Chinese cancer therapy firm Gracell for $1.2bn

Gracell Biotechnologies acquisition marks China’s growing importance to the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker

AstraZeneca has struck a deal to buy a Chinese cancer therapy company for up to $1.2bn (£950m), as Britain’s biggest drugmaker expands its footprint in its second-largest market.

The Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical firm announced on Tuesday it would acquire Gracell Biotechnologies, which is focused on a type of cancer therapy known as CAR-T that modifies a patient’s cells to fight the disease.

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Hackers steal customer data from Europe’s largest parking app operator

Owner of RingGo and ParkMobile says data including parts of credit card numbers taken in cyber-attack

Europe’s largest parking app operator has reported itself to information regulators in the EU and UK after hackers stole customer data.

EasyPark Group, the owner of brands including RingGo and ParkMobile, said customer names, phone numbers, addresses, email addresses and parts of credit card numbers had been taken but said parking data had not been compromised in the cyber-attack.

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‘Vandalism’: outcry over plans to replace Notre Dame Cathedral’s chapel windows

Thousands sign petition challenging Macron-backed restoration that would add contemporary design to building

A plan backed by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to replace stained-glass windows in Notre Dame Cathedral’s side chapels with contemporary creations has been criticised as “vandalism”.

A petition has been signed by more than 120,000 people to retain the original windows. Critics say the change would destroy the architectural harmony of the historical building that was ravaged by fire in April 2019.

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Italian woman facing removal from UK despite ‘permanent residency’ card

Silvana one of potentially thousands who were unaware of need to apply for post-Brexit EU settlement scheme

An Italian environmental technology investor who has lived in the UK for 14 years has discovered she could be removed despite getting a “permanent residency” card after Brexit.

She is one of potentially tens of thousands of EU citizens who were unaware the Home Office changed the rules in 2019 requiring them to apply for a different scheme, called EU settlement.

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Ukraine says it has destroyed Russian warship in Crimean port

Air force claims to have struck Novocherkassk landing ship as footage shows fires in city of Feodosia

Ukraine’s military has said it has destroyed a Russian landing ship stationed in the Crimean port city of Feodosia, with video footage showing an extensive fire in the port area.

The air force said it struck the Novocherkassk navy ship, which was stationed in Crimean waters controlled by Russia.

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