Police should have helped Shamima Begum return to UK, court told

Tribunal hears there were grounds to suspect the then 15-year-old had been groomed as a child bride

Police should have helped Shamima Begum return to Britain after she joined Islamic State in Syria because there were grounds to suspect she had been groomed as a child bride, a court has heard.

Samantha Knights KC told a tribunal that the police had an obligation to investigate whether Begum, who was 15 when she left the UK, was a victim of human trafficking, and then help her return if she was.

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Saudi Arabia declares public holiday to mark World Cup win over Argentina

Region rejoices as Saudi team ‘writes history’ against South American powerhouse in group stage

Saudi Arabia has said Wednesday will be a national holiday as, on the Jeddah Corniche by the Red Sea, in the heart of the capital Riyadh and in towns and villages across the country, its seismic 2-1 World Cup win over Lionel Messi’s Argentina was celebrated as a coming of age.

The national football side’s remarkable victory was being seen as both a triumph on the pitch and a huge moment on the global sports stage, where the regional power has long sought a place in the spotlight.

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South African president makes first UK state visit of King Charles’s reign

Tory government eager to focus on trade rather than Cyril Ramaphosa’s refusal to put sanctions on Russia

The South African president has started a two-day state visit to the UK, the first since King Charles took the throne, with the Conservative government eager to focus on trade rather than challenge South Africa’s refusal to impose sanctions on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.

Cyril Ramaphosa’s trip has been much delayed due to Covid and only by chance became the first state visit of the king’s reign.

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Pablo Milanés, legendary Cuban singer-songwriter, dies aged 79

Internationally famous musician known for hits such as Yolanda, was a supporter of Cuban revolution

The Grammy-winning Cuban singer-songwriter and guitarist Pablo Milanés, known for pioneering the Nueva Trova movement and for hits such as Yolanda and Amo Esta Isla, has died of cancer in Madrid. He was 79.

One of the most internationally famous Cuban musicians, Milanés recorded dozens of albums and toured the world during a career that lasted more than five decades.

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Fears grow Iran players may face reprisals for not singing national anthem

Politician says no one will be allowed to ‘insult our anthem and flag’ as loyalist media vent fury over protests during England game

Iran’s footballers could face reprisals if they fail to sing the national anthem in their remaining World Cup group games, after a politician said the country “will never allow anyone to insult our anthem”.

The football team stayed silent while the anthem was played before their 6-2 defeat to England on Monday, in a symbolic show of support for the protest movement that has roiled Iran since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody in September.

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Dutch court sides with squatters of sanctions-hit Russian’s mansion

Ruling against Arkady Volozh in Amsterdam could set awkward precedent in Europe for rich Russians

Perched as it is in an upmarket neighbourhood overlooking the scenic Vondelpark, it is not hard to imagine why a Russian billionaire would have been interested in the 1879 five-storey Amsterdam property with a lush private garden.

That billionaire was Arkady Volozh, a co-founder of Russia’s biggest search engine, Yandex. He bought the £3m house in 2019, becoming one of the dozens of wealthy Russians who have invested in property in the Dutch capital.

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Ukraine’s power grid destroyed on a ‘colossal’ scale after Russian strikes, says energy chief – as it happened

Head of Ukraine’s power grid operator says almost no thermal or hydroelectric stations left unscathed by Russian attacks. This live blog is now closed

Russia has reiterated that it is not seeking a change of government in Ukraine.

The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said his country “does not intend the ‘special operation’ to change the government in Ukraine”, Sky News reports.

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Ukraine’s security service raids Russian-backed monastery in Kyiv

SBU and police swoop on suspected ‘subversive activities by Russian special services’

Ukraine’s SBU security service and police have raided a 1,000-year-old Orthodox Christian monastery in Kyiv as part of operations to counter suspected “subversive activities by Russian special services”.

Located south of the city centre, the sprawling Kyiv Pechersk Lavra complex – or Kyiv Monastery of the Caves – is the headquarters of the Russian-backed wing of the Ukrainian Orthodox church that falls under the Moscow patriarchate, as well as being a Ukrainian cultural treasure and a Unesco World Heritage site.

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UK to be second weakest performer of world’s big economies next year – OECD

Most countries’ forecasts cut as Ukraine war prompts ‘largest energy crisis since the 1970s’

The UK will be the second weakest performer of the world’s big economies next year as the global economy continues to suffer the knock-on effects of the biggest energy shock in four decades, a leading international institution has warned.

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said only Russia of the members of the G20 group of leading developed and developing nations would suffer a bigger contraction than Britain in 2023.

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Indonesia earthquake: many of those killed were schoolchildren, says official

Death toll of Java quake rises to 268, with dozens of schools affected, as rescuers race against time to find survivors

The death toll from the earthquake that struck Indonesia’s main island of Java on Monday has risen to 268, and many of the dead are schoolchildren, officials have said as rescuers raced against time to find survivors.

The quake, centred in the Cianjur region of West Java province, struck at a shallow depth of 6.2 miles (10km), triggering landslides and damaging buildings, including tens of thousands of homes and dozens of schools.

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Greta Thunberg’s charity donates £158,000 to Sami campaign

Indigenous people in Sweden are battling UK firm over plans for iron-ore mine on reindeer-herding lands

The charity founded in Greta Thunberg’s name has donated £158,000 to cover the legal costs of Indigenous people in Sweden’s Arctic north as they battle a British mining company over plans for an iron-ore mine on reindeer-herding lands.

Beowulf Mining, which has its headquarters in the City of London, was given approval in March by the Swedish government for excavation on an area used by the Sami community.

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How airstrikes by Israel, Turkey and Russia denote a new era in Syrian war

Regional interests remain very much at stake in conflict neither isolated, nor solely Syrian – though often forgotten

Over the plains of northern Syria, an approaching warplane usually makes a distinctive roar, allowing those on the ground to determine who it belongs to and whether there’s a need to hide.

But the past few days have been more onerous than ever for plane-spotters as the air forces of three countries have crisscrossed Syrian skies, bombing targets from the Mediterranean coast to the deserts of the east in the most comprehensive airstrikes in the past three years.

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Colombian government and leftist ELN guerrillas begin new peace talks

Negotiations in Caracas are part of President Gustavo Petro’s promise to bring ‘total peace’ and end nearly 60 years of civil war

Negotiators from the Colombian government and the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group have begun fresh peace talks, the first major step in President Gustavo Petro’s efforts to end nearly 60 years of war.

Petro, a former member of the M-19 insurgency who took office in August, has promised to bring “total peace” to Colombia by negotiating with rebels and crime factions involved in drug trafficking and illegal mining.

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Weather tracker: a week of unusual highs and lows for Europe

While Mediterranean countries basked in unseasonal warmth, parts of northern Europe were in the grip of premature cold

There were strong temperature contrasts across Europe over the past few days, with parts of the Mediterranean basking in unusual warmth while a blast of cold air from Siberia brought freezing conditions to northern parts of mainland Europe.

Greece and southern Italy saw temperatures peaking at 25C or 26C on Friday, around 7 degrees above the November average. Meanwhile, Poland, the Czech Republic and parts of Germany were up to 10 degrees colder than average over the weekend, with the temperatures remaining widely below zero through the day and dropping below -10C in places overnight. The warmth experienced by the Mediterranean transferred north-eastwards later in the weekend, across the Black Sea into southern and eastern Ukraine and south-west Russia. Temperatures across these regions have reached the low 20s Celsius in places, while northern and western parts of Ukraine are under the influence of the colder airmass, which had meant that they saw temperatures widely remaining below freezing.

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Malta drafts law allowing abortion if mother’s life or health at risk

Proposal follows outrage after pregnant US tourist was denied abortion despite partial miscarriage and threat to her health

Malta’s government has published a draft law that would ease the country’s strict abortion laws by allowing the termination of pregnancies if the mother’s life or health are at serious risk.

The proposed change in the law follows an outcry over the treatment of a pregnant American tourist in June, a case that sparked headlines worldwide.

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Trump in apparent Twitter snub after Musk lifts ban – as it happened

Speaking of Trump and lawyers, another of his former top White House officials is going to South Carolina’s high court to stop a subpoena from a Georgia prosecutor looking into meddling in the state’s 2020 election, Politico reports:

The appeal to South Carolina’s supreme court by Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff for his final months in the White House, is the latest development in his lengthy battle to resist the summons from Fanni Willis. She’s the district attorney in Fulton county, which contains most of Atlanta, and has empaneled a special grand jury to look into attempts by Trump’s allies to interfere in Joe Biden’s election victory in the state.

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Elon Musk rules out conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s return to Twitter

Twitter boss says he has ‘no mercy’ for those who capitalise on deaths of children, citing loss of son in 2002

Elon Musk has said he will not reinstate the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Twitter, saying he has “no mercy” for people who capitalize on the deaths of children for personal fame.

Twitter permanently suspended the accounts of Jones and his Infowars website in September 2018 for violating the platform’s abusive behavior policy.

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Ukraine to begin evacuations in Kherson and Mykolaiv regions as winter sets in

Move comes amid fears war damage to infrastructure too severe for civilians in newly liberated areas to survive

Ukraine is to evacuate civilians from recently liberated areas of the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions, amid fears that the damage to infrastructure caused by the war is too severe for people to endure the winter.

Residents of the two southern regions, which were shelled regularly by Russian forces in the past months, have been advised to move to safer areas in the central and western parts of the country, said Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk.

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Zelenskiy urges Nato to protect nuclear sites from ‘sabotage’ as Russia warns of risk of accident – as it happened

Ukrainian president makes appeal to Nato members; Russia’s state-run atomic energy agency warns of risk of nuclear accident. This live blog is now closed

Ukrainian soldiers fire an artillery at Russian positions near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine.

Italy’s government will ask parliament to pass a new law on military and civilian supplies to Ukraine throughout 2023, defence minister Guido Crosetto said in an interview.

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South African court paroles killer of anti-apartheid leader Chris Hani

Janusz Waluś murdered head of communist party in 1993, risking outbreak of political violence before first multiracial elections

South Africa’s top court has ordered the release on parole of the man convicted of assassinating anti-apartheid leader Chris Hani, a murder that threatened to plunge the country into political violence before its transition to democracy.

Janusz Waluś, 69, killed Hani, a hugely popular leader of the Communist party, a year before South Africa’s first multiracial elections. He was sentenced to life in prison and his applications to be released on parole have been rejected by several justice ministers.

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