A historic move to change French criminal law would bring its legislation in line with many other European countries
The French parliament has voted to add consent to the country’s rape law in a historic move sparked by the mass rape of Gisèle Pelicot.
The change, which will still need to be signed off by president Emmanuel Macron, will bring French legislation in line with many other European countries.
It’s fair to say Liverpool have filed an experimental teamsheet, with the vast bulk of the regulars given the night off. Milos Kerkez, desperate to play himself into some form, is the only player to retain his starting spot after the 3-2 defeat at Brentford last weekend. Third-choice goalkeeper Freddie Woodman and 18-year-old Northern Ireland winger Kieran Morrison make their club debuts, while the starting XI also includes 17-year-old winger Rio Ngumoha and 18-year-old midfielder Trey Nyoni. Nobody on their bench is over 21; Kaide Gordon is the most experienced sub with nine senior appearances on his resumé.
Crystal Palace by contrast retain six players from the team sent out for the 1-0 defeat at Arsenal on Sunday. Marc Guéhi, Maxence Lacroix, Daniel Muñoz, Ismaïla Sarr, Yéremy Pino and Daichi Kamada all hold onto their shirts. Sarr has five goals against Liverpool in eight appearances for Palace and Watford, while one of the players stepping into the team tonight, Eddie Nketiah, scored the winner when the teams met at Selhurst last month.
Governor tells universities to end use of H-1B visas, though legal experts say states lack authority over federal program
Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is urging the state’s universities to stop hiring international employees through the H-1B visa program.
DeSantis said he wants the Florida board of governors “to pull the plug” on the practice. Nearly 400 foreign nationals are currently employed at Florida’s public universities under the H-1B visa program, reported the Orlando Sentinel.
Residents of Vila Cruzeiro gather bodies after more than 130 were killed in pre-dawn assault
Day had yet to break over Vila Cruzeiro but already dozens of corpses were splayed out along the favela’s main drag after more than 130 people were killed during the deadliest police operation in Rio history: grotesquely disfigured, blood-smeared bodies that had been dragged out of nearby forests and dumped on blue tarpaulins and black plastic sheets covering the street.
“I’ve brought 53 down myself … there must be another 12 or 15 up there in the bush,” said Erivelton Vidal Correia, the head of the local residents’ association, bleary-eyed from a sleepless night spent hauling bullet-riddled local men down from the hills.
There are only a few teams that can probably justify not fielding their best XI for these Carabao Cup fourth-round matches, but for most, there are no real excuses why each side shouldn’t be going full throttle to reach Wembley.
We saw last season with Newcastle United just what a League Cup triumph can do to a football cluband its fanbase, just imagine what a successful defence would mean to the Geordies, or what might mean to the mid-table stalwarts of Brighton (no major honours ever), Crystal Palace (one major honour ever), or the Championship’s Swansea City (one major honour). With relegation heavily unlikely for all these sides, and with only minor European qualification (or a play-off place) to play for, there is no reason why these sides shouldn’t invest in this competition (especially as Europa League qualification comes with the silverware). Win tonight, and they are in the quarter-finals, and nearly within touching distance of Wembley. Woof.
New York museum under fire from heirs of Jewish couple allegedly forced to surrender artwork upon fleeing to US
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is being sued by the heirs of a Jewish couple over a Vincent van Gogh oil painting they say was looted by the Nazis.
The suit alleges the couple, Hedwig and Frederick Stern, bought the painting, Olive Picking, in 1935, the year before they were forced to flee their home in Munich.
Rapid Support Forces, which claimed control of El Fasher on Sunday, reportedly killed at least 460 people ‘in cold blood’
Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces killed hundreds of patients and staff inside a hospital in El Fasher, according to the World Health Organization and the Sudan Doctors Network, after the paramilitary group claimed control of the city on Sunday.
The WHO secretary general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he was “appalled and deeply shocked” at reports that more than 460 people had been killed at the Saudi maternity hospital, without assigning blame, in a post on X.
Tanni Grey-Thompson outlines ‘barriers to participation’
Taboos around women’s bodies are holding girls back from pursuing sport into adulthood and preventing the creation of “a generation of fit and healthy women”, a parliamentary committee has heard.
With surveys showing 64% of girls give up sport by the end of puberty, experts told the women and equalities committee that a complete sea change in understanding around the impact of sport on female bodies is required, but that such a change is possible and “if we get it right we’d be on a winning streak”.
Parliament’s spending watchdog asks Treasury and crown estate to explain rationale for arrangement
Politicians are demanding clarity over Prince Andrew’s “peppercorn” rent at Royal Lodge, as the parliamentary spending watchdog writes to the Treasury and crown estate asking for an explanation.
Keir Starmer had indicated that he was open to MPs questioning Andrew in person about his home in Windsor Great Park, where he has lived for more than 20 years.
Police are no closer to recovering the gems, despite the arrest of two men last week
Two men arrested on suspicion of stealing crown jewels worth an estimated €88m (£76m) from the Louvre in Paris have “partially admitted” their role in the heist, the prosecutor has said, but police are no closer to recovering the gems.
Laure Beccuau said the pair, arrested on Sunday, would be brought before magistrates “with a view to being charged with organised theft, which carries a 15-year prison sentence, and criminal conspiracy, punishable by 10 years”.
A $40bn rescue may have helped Javier Milei scrape through midterms, but it leaves Argentina’s democracy and economy more dependent than ever on Washington
Argentina’s rightwing president, Javier Milei, his party and its allies claimed victory this week in key congressional elections. But it was Donald Trump who emerged the biggest winner. A $40bn lifeline from the US president gave Mr Milei’s beleaguered government just enough credibility – and apparent firepower – to halt the Argentinian peso’s slide. Crucially, this helped to stabilise consumer prices in the final weeks of the campaign. The US rescue engendered a short-lived aura of competence that allowed Mr Milei to shift the blame for rising prices back to the opposition, despite his own role in accelerating inflation by devaluing the currency when he took office.
Mr Milei’s wasn’t a decisive triumph. His rightwing coalition got 40% of the midterms vote thanks largely to a low turnout and a fragmented opposition. His “chainsaw” programme of privatisation and public spending cuts has not been popular. Polls suggest that six in 10 voters disapprove. Unsurprising, perhaps: since Mr Milei took office in December 2023, Argentinians’ purchasing power has fallen sharply, real wages have declined and more than 200,000 jobs have been lost.
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Federal agency also estimates country’s GDP will reduce by one to two percentage points over shrinking demand
The US is set to lose between $7bn and $14bn as a result of the ongoing federal government shutdown, according to the congressional budget office.
On Wednesday, the nonpartisan federal agency released its estimates in a new report to the House budget committee as the government shutdown reaches four weeks.
Army says 2nd Infantry Brigade combat team of 101st Airborne to redeploy to Kentucky ‘without replacement’
The US military is reducing the number of troops it has stationed in Romania, scaling back Nato’s deployment to countries along Europe’s eastern border with Ukraine, US and Romanian officials have announced.
In a statement on Wednesday, the US army said that the 2nd Infantry Brigade combat team of the 101st Airborne division would redeploy to its home-based unit in Kentucky “without replacement” as part of a plan to “ensure a balanced US military force posture”.
Steve Borthwick has opted for the Northampton centre, his ‘glue’ player, over an array of talented England backs
Even Steve Borthwick admits that picking his team to face Australia on Saturday was tricky. And even after he had made his mind up, there was a training ground snapshot which underlined the slim margins involved. “There was a piece of play where the skill showed by the team not starting was absolutely incredible,” said Borthwick. “I couldn’t praise them highly enough for the way they tested the team that is starting.”
Which neatly sums up England’s intensifying backline debate. Ollie Lawrence, Marcus Smith, Henry Arundell, Henry Slade, Cadan Murley and Max Ojomoh are all fit and can’t even make the matchday 23. Not to mention the up-and-coming Noah Caluori. Nor Owen Farrell. Let alone the injured Elliot Daly, George Furbank, Seb Atkinson, Ollie Sleightholme and Will Muir.
I was sued over my film that gave a voice to the committed ‘amateur’ whose pivotal role in the search for the remains of Richard III was drowned out by louder voices in academia
About 15 years ago, Philippa Langley set out on a mission to find the remains of King Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England. Almost everyone regarded this as an impossible task. His remains had gone undiscovered for more than 500 years. It was a folly, a fool’s errand. She was out of her depth, an amateur. No letters after her name.
But Philippa diligently did the work and did her research. She had an inner conviction that she would find him, and she did. It was a staggering achievement, and yet when the news broke of this startling discovery, and it was beamed round the world, there was little to no mention of her.
A convicted child sex offender mistakenly released from prison after arriving in the UK in a small boat was given £500 of public money as he was deported back to Ethiopia.
Hadush Kebatu was flown back to his home country on Tuesday night with the discretionary payment after raising the possibility of challenging his removal shortly before he was due to be placed on a plane.
Victoria is holding an inquiry to try and understand why more people are falling prey to cults and whether the current laws are strong enough to help vulnerable people who might be lured in.
Victoria correspondent Benita Kolovos speaks to Reged Ahmad about why more ‘modern’ cults are using new methods to recruit and promising ‘simple answers to complex problems’
After seven riotous seasons packed with stellar cameos and exhilarating farce, Joseph Gilgun’s chaotic comedy goes out on a high. It will be sorely missed
Blame Brassic on Dominic West. While filming Pride, the rousing 2014 film about gay Londoners finding solidarity with a hardscrabble Welsh community during the miners’ strike, West was acting alongside lanky live wire Joseph Gilgun, who would regale him with wild tales of growing up in Chorley in Lancashire. Tickled by anecdotes like the theft of a shetland pony, West encouraged Gilgun to mine his formative years for material that could become a TV show.
Gilgun teamed up with screenwriter Danny Brocklehurst, no stranger to authentic northern humour after working on Channel 4’s Shameless. The result was Brassic, a headlong comedy about a rowdy gang of scallywags, chancers and wheeler-dealers trying to stay one step ahead of the law and local heavies in the fictional northern town of Hawley. As well as repurposing the ducking and diving of his youth, the autobiographical elements extended to Gilgun’s likable ringleader Vinnie O’Neill coping with being bipolar. That key character detail also meant a recurring role for the plummy West as Vinnie’s relentlessly inappropriate GP Dr Chris.
Patrick Greenfield hikes up the Virunga mountains in east Africa to trace the remarkable comeback of the mountain gorilla
Along the borders of Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC lies the Virunga national park – the home of mountain gorillas. Back in 1970s there were only a few hundred of these gorillas left. Yet today the community is thriving with more than 1,000.
Patrick Greenfield, the Guardian’s biodiversity reporter, headed up into the Virunga mountains, guided by wildlife vets, to find out how they achieved this rare and extraordinary conservation success. He tells Annie Kelly how the gorillas have been protected in such a volatile area.
Lib Dems say ECHR protects ‘our elderly and most vulnerable…the very people who need it most’
Mark Sedwill, the former cabinet secretary and former national security adviser, goes next. He is now a peer, and a member of the committee.
He says the deputy national security adviser, Matthew Collins, thought there was enough evidence for the case to go ahead. But the CPS did not agree. Who was right?
In 2017, the Law Commission flagged that the term enemy [in the legislation] was deeply problematic and it would give rise to difficulties in future prosecutions.
And I think what has played out, during this prosecution exemplifies and highlights the difficulties with that.
Retirement of billionaire, 84, leaves Rupert Murdoch as last of that generation to be actively involved in media business
Billionaire media mogul John Malone, the so-called “Cable Cowboy”, is stepping down as chair of his powerful empire.
Malone will stand aside in January from his roles overseeing Liberty Media, owner of Formula One, and Liberty Global, the firm behind telecommunications operator Virgin Media O2, it was announced today.
Why has an ad quoting Ronald Reagan’s criticism of tariffs triggered such a reaction from the president?
One difficulty of a presidency as volatile as Donald Trump’s is separating what makes him angry (almost everything) from what genuinely, revealingly enrages him – what sends him round the bend at the mineral level. For instance, he hates Letitia James, the New York attorney general who in 2022 successfully brought a civil fraud case against him and whom he has since urged the justice department to pursue for mortgage fraud. But that’s just basic revenge – see also his pursuit of ex-FBI director James Comey. More interesting are the fleeting, trivial things that set Trump off, including his meltdown last week over a TV commercial from Canada.
On the surface it didn’t seem like a particularly big deal: a TV ad airing on US television, paid for by the Canadian province of Ontario, in which an audio clip of Ronald Reagan denouncing tariffs ran over inspiring footage of the American west and industry. In a folksy voice Reagan explains: “When someone says: ‘Let’s impose tariffs on foreign imports’, it looks like they’re doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes for a short while it works – but only for a short time.” He then demolishes the premise of tariffs as anything but an instrument that “hurts every American worker”.
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