Some businesses still waiting for final EHRC guidance while firms that moved early to exclude trans people show no sign of backtracking

On Monday, a Dundee employment tribunal ruled a narrow win for Sandie Peggie, the nurse who complained about sharing a changing room with a transgender doctor. But the lengthy judgment also takes on the pivotal question that has been challenging employers, lawyers and campaign groups since April – does a supreme court judgment mean that transgender people must now be excluded from same-sex facilities that align with their chosen gender? Does it amount to a bathroom ban or not?

The supreme court ruled earlier this year that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. Interim advice released by the Equality and Human Rights Commission soon after the judgment in effect banned trans people from using facilities according to their lived gender, and its official guidance is expected to closely reflect that advice.

Former chancellor also says Johnson was ‘least well briefed’ of the PMs he had served

Sajid Javid told Boris Johnson he was a “puppet” of Dominic Cummings before he resigned as chancellor rather than accept a Cummings-led takeover of his Treasury, he has said in an interview about his experiences as a minister.

Speaking to the Institute for Government (IfG), Javid also said that his other departure from Johnson’s government, shortly before it collapsed in 2022, was because he had lost confidence in the prime minister after being assured that allegations about lockdown-breaking parties in No 10 were “bullshit”.

Unfettered love for late photographer in France and elsewhere stands in contrast to occasional reservations in UK

The death of Martin Parr, the photographer whose work chronicled the rituals and customs of British life, was front-page news in France and his life and work were celebrated as far afield as the US and Japan.

If his native England had to shake off concerns about the role of class in Parr’s satirical gaze before it could fully embrace him, countries like France have long revered the Epsom-born artist “like a rock or a movie star”, said the curator Quentin Bajac.

More than £3bn that could have been used for UK patients will go to big pharma for its branded products – money for care siphoned off for profit

Of Arthur Scargill it was said that he began each day with two newspapers. The miners’ leader read the Morning Star of course, but only after consulting the Financial Times. Why did a class warrior from Yorkshire accord such importance to the house journal of pinstriped Londoners? Before imbibing views, he told a journalist, he wanted “to get the facts”.

In that spirit, let us parse a deal just struck by the governments of Donald Trump and Keir Starmer. You may not have heard much about this agreement on medicine, but it is huge in both financial and political significance – and Downing Street could not be more proud.

A “world-beating deal,” boasts the science minister, Patrick Vallance. It “paves the way for the UK to become a global hub for life sciences,” claims the business secretary, Peter Kyle, with the government press release adding: “Tens of thousands of NHS patients will benefit.”

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

Every day he broadcasts a marathon Twitch stream, airing his views to his three million subscribers. It has led to fame – and some fear – in a country ever more politically divided

Hasan Piker calls it the bus driver test: “You get on a bus and you have 30 seconds to explain whatever online phenomena took place to the bus driver without them looking at you and going, ‘Get off the fucking bus.’” Most online discourse, no matter how heated, fails the test, he says – not least an incident last weekend, when someone on a Dublin street asked to take a picture with Piker, then held up a picture of his dog and shouted “Free Kaya!” Never mind the bus driver; trying to explain the significance of this particular event might well take the rest of this article, but the wider point is that there is a jarring overlap, or more often disconnect, between the online and offline worlds.

Piker finds himself in this in-between space more and more these days. Until fairly recently, the 34-year-old was familiar only to the very online, especially Americans in their 20s and 30s, largely thanks to his presence on the streaming channel Twitch, where he has three million subscribers. But since Donald Trump’s election, Piker has become an in-demand voice in “the real world” for his views on the beleaguered political left, and especially that inordinately fretted-over demographic, young men.

Crowborough on edge as unconfirmed plan to house asylum seekers in training camp spurs street patrols and pre-emptive protests

Among the crowded shelves of Sacred Heart hardware store in Crowborough, there is a gap on the wall where the kitchen knives used to be displayed.

As the local rumour of recent days goes, that space is linked to the news story of the moment in the East Sussex town: the imminent arrival of hundreds of asylum seekers at a nearby military training camp.

Director of After the Rain, set in animal therapy retreat, says she aimed to portray ‘children as children, not as a statistic’

Sasha Mezhevoy was five years old when she, her older brother and sister were sent to an orphanage in Moscow. They were told they were going to be adopted by a Russian family. But they were not orphans. They were Ukrainian children who had been forcibly removed from their father.

Sasha grew up in Mariupol, the port city that endured more than 80 days of bombardment in one of the bloodiest and most destructive chapters of the early months of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Among the many people I met, there was a pervasive feeling of hopelessness and a sense that resistance is slowly becoming a memory

In November, Israeli flags suddenly appeared beside a highway in the Palestinian West Bank. More than 1,000, placed about 30 yards apart on both sides of the road, stretching for roughly 10 miles. They were planted south of Nablus, close to Palestinian villages regularly targeted by extremist Israeli settlers. I saw the flags on my way to visit those villages, the morning after they were put up. Their message echoed the ubiquitous graffiti painted by settlers across the West Bank: “You have no future in Palestine.”

Compared with the 70,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza and more than 1,000 in the West Bank since October 2023, the flags amount to no more than a minor provocation. But they reflect how dominant Israel has become in the West Bank, land recognised under international law as belonging to the Palestinians. During the second intifada, the Palestinian uprising from 2000 to 2005, Israeli settlers would not have risked planting such flags, for fear of coming under fire from Palestinians. Not now.

Ecologically important Diadema africanum almost eliminated by unknown disease in Canary Islands

A marine pandemic is bringing some species of sea urchin to the brink of extinction, and some populations have disappeared altogether, a study has found.

Since 2021, Diadema africanum urchins in the Canary Island archipelago have almost entirely been killed by an unknown disease. There has been a 99.7% population decrease in Tenerife, and a 90% decrease off the islands of the Madeira archipelago.

Exclusive: Letters with deepfake images of Carmen Lau in UK and targeting of Ted Hui in Australia part of growing harassment

Sexually explicit letters and “lonely housewife” posters about high-profile pro-democracy Hong Kong exiles have been sent to people in the UK and Australia, marking a ratcheting up in the transnational harassment faced by critics of the Chinese Communist party’s rule in the former British colony.

Letters purporting to be from Carmen Lau, an exiled pro-democracy activist and former district councillor, showing digitally faked images of her as a sex worker were sent to her former neighbours in Maidenhead in the UK in recent weeks.

The under-16s ban is a pragmatic first step in trying to reduce the potential harm on young people of addictive products. It is not undermining the democratic process

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A constitutional challenge is pending against the government’s under-16 social media account ban. The case argues that the law contravenes the implied freedom of political communication. It is likely to fail.

Two 15-year-olds, Noah Jones and Macy Neyland, backed by the Digital Freedom Project advocacy group will argue that the law is unconstitutional because it impermissibly burdens the implied freedom of political communication.

Dean Sanderson died of head and chest injuries and his wife, Shannon, suffered broken ribs and a fractured scapula after falling 20-25 metres to the ground

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A man died and his wife was badly injured after a tourist zip line system they were riding on failed because it wasn’t anchored tightly enough, a coronial inquest has heard.

Coroner Wayne Pennell held a pre-inquest hearing on Thursday into the death of Dean Sanderson at Jungle Surfing Canopy Tours at Cape Tribulation, in north Queensland on 22 October 2019.

Cyclones like those in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Malaysia that killed 1,750 are ‘alarming new reality’

The climate crisis supercharged the deadly storms that killed more than 1,750 people in Asia by making downpours more intense and flooding worse, scientists have reported. Monsoon rains often bring some flooding but the scientists were clear: this was “not normal”.

In Sri Lanka, some floods reached the second floor of buildings, while in Sumatra, in Indonesia, the floods were worsened by the destruction of forests, which in the past slowed rainwater running off hillsides.

María Corina Machado climbs over barriers to meet chanting supporters gathered outside the Grand Hotel in early hours of Thursday

Venezuela’s best-known opposition leader, the Nobel peace prize winner María Corina Machado, has made a dramatic appearance in Norway after slipping out of her authoritarian homeland by boat.

The Venezuelan politician and pro-democracy activist stepped out on to the balcony of Oslo’s iconic Grand Hotel at just before 2.30am local time, after spending the past 11 months in hiding in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas.

Commercial in Netherlands depicting festival-season chaos at ‘most terrible time of year’ prompted flurry of criticism online

McDonald’s says it has removed an AI-generated Christmas advertisement in the Netherlands after it was criticised online.

The ad, titled “the most terrible time of the year”, depicts scenes of Christmas chaos, with Santa caught in a traffic jam and a gift-laden Dutch cyclist slipping in the snow. And the message? Retreat to a McDonald’s restaurant until January and ride out the festive season.

At least 15 people killed, while more than 500,000 people have fled border areas near where jets, tanks and drones were waging battle

Half a million evacuees in Cambodia and Thailand were sheltering in pagodas, schools and other safe havens on Wednesday after fleeing fresh border clashes while US president Donald Trump vowed to intercede to stop the fighting.

At least 15 people, including Thai soldiers and Cambodian civilians, have been killed in the latest hostilities, officials said, while more than 500,000 people have fled border areas near where jets, tanks and drones were waging battle.

Figures for England and Wales show there were 51,672 offences for child sexual exploitation and abuse online in 2024

Online child sexual abuse in England and Wales has surged by a quarter within a year, figures show, prompting police to call for social media platforms to do more to protect young people.

Becky Riggs, the acting chief constable of Staffordshire police, called for tech companies to use AI tools to automatically prevent indecent pictures from being uploaded and shared on their sites.

Qualifications watchdog launches consultation amid complaints from pupils about writing fatigue in exams

Students could be sitting some of their GCSEs and A-levels on a laptop by the end of the decade, according to England’s qualifications watchdog.

Amid complaints from pupils of writing fatigue in exams because their hand muscles “are not strong enough”, Ofqual is launching a three-month public consultation about the introduction of onscreen assessments.

PwC warns that future of a generation is at risk and that jobs crisis is costing UK economy up to £26bn a year

Britain is slipping down the global league table for youth employment amid a dramatic rise in worklessness that is putting a generation’s future at risk, research has warned.

Sounding the alarm over a worsening youth jobs crisis, the report from the accountancy firm PwC said Britain’s economy was missing out on £26bn a year because of sharp regional divisions in youth joblessness.

Ally claims former Mas president ‘illegally kidnapped’ and suggests arrest linked to fund for Indigenous Bolivians

Bolivia’s former president Luis Arce was reportedly detained and taken to police headquarters on Wednesday.

His former presidency minister, María Nela Prada Tejada, posted a video on social media saying she had received information from “unofficial sources” that Arce had been “illegally kidnapped” by police.

Marc Skinner, the Manchester United manager, defended his decision to make five changes after his side were outplayed in the Champions League.

Melchie Dumornay’s two sumptuous late goals produced a margin of victory that was no less than OL Lyonnes deserved when United failed to lay a glove on their opponents.

Eighty-eight minutes had passed and Newcastle fans were already in party mode when Alejandro Grimaldo collected Ibrahim Maza’s pass and concluded a move he had initiated courtesy of a glorious run and dummy.

As the Spain left wing-back’s shot slid beneath Aaron Ramsdale’s body and his Bayer Leverkusen teammates celebrated an arguably deserved equaliser, North Rhine-Westphalia suddenly felt a much colder place for Eddie Howe’s players.

Transport infrastructure in the US is a hot mess – and the guy in charge thinks ‘wellness spaces’ are going to solve the problem

Sean “Dog” Duffy is a legend in the lumberjack world: a three-time world champion in the 90ft lumberjack speed climb who is renowned for his prowess in mounting and rolling big bits of wood. Not just a lumberjack, Duffy also made waves on late-90s reality TV shows The Real World: Boston and Road Rules: All Stars. And now Duffy is parlaying his experience on Road Rules into his role as US transportation secretary.

Duffy has got a lot on his big lumberjack hands: transport infrastructure in the US is, to use the technical term, a hot mess. More than a third of the country’s bridges need major repair work or replacement. There has been little historical investment in railways and the country lags behind the rest of the industrialized world when it comes to high-speed trains. Meanwhile, there’s a chronic air-traffic-controller shortage, which was exacerbated by the recent government shutdown when a number of controllers, fed up with the dysfunctional system, took early retirement.

For Xabi Alonso, the slide towards the abyss has looked sudden from the outside. Everything was fine at the beginning of November, results for Real Madrid excellent. Since when precious little has gone his way. The manager desperately needed something here. When this latest game eluded him, it was easy to fear the worst. Time is not a commodity afforded to men in his position.

Alonso has now won twice in eight matches in all competitions and the pain was deep, the frustration given an extra twist by the reality that his players did put it in for him. They were unable to bend the occasion to their will. The margins were against them.