Terminally ill adults with less than six months to live will be given right to die under proposed legislation

Grant Shapps, the former Conservative cabinet minister, has complained the BBC is not giving enough prominence to the Louise Haigh resignation. He posted this on social media.

NEWS ALERT gone missing?

Whenever a Conservative minister resigned there was always a BBC news alert. Yet Starmer loses his first Cabinet Minister and somehow the BBC doesn’t think it’s relevant enough to send out an alert!

Where did you learn that everything is your fault? If your marriage fails, you both have to take responsibility for it
Every week Annalisa Barbieri addresses a problem sent in by a reader

I am in my late 40s, married for 20 years with two teenagers, and I feel trapped. For several years I have known that I no longer love my husband. On the surface we cooperate well as parents, and get on most of the time. However, over the years we have had bitter arguments and things have been said that have left me feeling drained of love for him. There is no abuse, mainly just complacency and criticism, and a deep feeling that I am not living my life the way I need to; I feel stifled, “hemmed in” and unable to be fully myself.

I have tried to raise my feelings with my husband but he refuses to take them seriously and has vetoed couples counselling. In a few years’ time, our children may have left home and the thought of it being just the two of us fills me with dread. The voice in my head telling me to leave is getting louder, but I feel completely stuck.

Maximiliano Dávila Pérez, arrested in Bolivia in 2022, was accused of using his position to help transport cocaine

Bolivia’s highest court on Wednesday approved the extradition of the country’s former top anti-narcotics official to the US to face charges of trafficking narcotics.

Maximiliano Dávila Pérez briefly served as Bolivia’s top counter-narcotics official in 2019, before then president Evo Morales resigned. He later served as a police commander in Bolivia under the government of the current president, Luis Arce.

Islamist militants recapture dozens of towns and villages, with fierce fighting on outskirts of Syria’s second city

Islamist militants based in north-western Syria have launched a major offensive that has led to fierce fighting on the outskirts of Aleppo, with insurgents capturing territory for the first time in four years as Syrian government forces pummelled rebel-held areas.

Fighters from the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) began the attack earlier this week from their base in the Idlib countryside, a slim strip of land in Syria’s north-west that formed a base of rebel-held territory.

Up to 2,700 jobs worldwide likely to be cut at London-listed company, including at its base in Oxford

• Business live – latest updates

The car parts maker TI Fluid Systems has become the latest London-listed firm to succumb to an overseas takeover, in a £1bn deal.

The takeover by Canada’s ABC Technologies includes cutting as many as 2,700 staff globally, 10% of its workforce, and staff levels at its headquarters in Oxford will be reduced by a third.

As one of Australia’s worst paedophiles is sentenced to life in prison for 307 sexual offences, parents and victims demand answers

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In 2021, the serial paedophile Ashley Paul Griffith wrote a letter to parents of children at a Brisbane childcare centre, where he was employed as the director, addressing claims on social media the centre was “involved in a pedophile ring”.

“We want to reassure families that the wellbeing and safety of you and your family are of paramount importance,” wrote Griffith, who had set up a tripod camera inside the centre so he could film his sexual abuse of young girls from two different angles.

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In the bars of the bustling Laos tourist town, visitors are nervous and information on the investigation into the deaths is scarce

The music is still playing and the alcohol is still flowing at the bars along one of the party streets in Vang Vieng. Inside a popular venue, a voice over the speaker announces a special offer on beers, as disco lights flicker on the floor. Small paper flags from nations across the world – from Britain to Gabon – hang from the ceiling.

Young people travel from all corners of the globe to party in the small town nestled in the Laos countryside. But Vang Vieng is under a global spotlight, following a suspected mass methanol poisoning that killed six foreign tourists, including two teenagers from Australia, two Danish citizens, a Briton and an American.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Studies suggest children are having their self-esteem harmed by filters that ape the effects of cosmetic surgery

Just one click on the “glossy babe” filter and the teenager’s face was subtly elongated, her nose made neater and a dusting of freckles sprinkled across her cheeks. Next, a “glow makeup” filter erased skin blemishes, puffed her lips into a rosebud and extended her eyelashes far beyond what makeup could achieve. With a third click her face was back to reality.

Hundreds of millions of people now use beauty filters to alter their appearance on apps including Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok. This week TikTok announced new worldwide restrictions on children’s access to those that ape the effects of cosmetic surgery.

Presenter denies allegations of harassment, including claim he made ‘lesbian jokes constantly’ and discussed spanking

Gregg Wallace has been accused of “highly inappropriate” behaviour including making “lesbian jokes constantly”, regularly discussing spanking and threesomes, and making sexually explicit comments while filming programmes, multiple sources have said.

Further details of the allegations facing the MasterChef host have emerged since the announcement on Thursday that he was stepping away from his role after the BBC received complaints about alleged misconduct.

A man who worked on Big Weekends and other travel shows between 2019 and 2022 said Wallace talked about threesomes with sex workers and said he “loves spanking” multiple times a day.

A woman who worked on MasterChef in 2019 said Wallace talked about his sex life and had asked if her boyfriend had a nice bottom.

A woman on the BBC Good Food Show in 2010 said Wallace stared at her chest.

A woman on Eat Well for Less in 2019 said Wallace told her he wasn’t wearing any boxer shorts under his jeans.

A man who worked on MasterChef in 2005-06 said Wallace regularly made sexually explicit comments on set. He said Wallace once said a dish tasted like his aunt’s vagina, and on another occasion had asked a female runner if she put her finger up her boyfriend’s bottom.

Juneau’s residents are divided over whether to embrace the economic benefits of millions of visitors, or reclaim their town from an industry that has reshaped it

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“The noise never stops,” says Karla Hart, her voice competing with the hum of approaching helicopters. “I can feel them before I see them.” She looks at her phone to check a website that monitors air traffic and identifies operators. Hart wants to know whether the pilots are adhering to legal flight routes.

A few minutes later, five helicopters, flying in formation, crisscross the grey October skies above Hart’s home in Juneau, Alaska’s capital. “I get groups of two to five helicopters flying over my house every 20 minutes. On any given day, that adds up to 50 to 75 flights. It’s impossible to enjoy my garden or concentrate on work.”

Cruise passengers disembark to explore Juneau, Alaska, in September. Vessels like the Ovation of the Seas can carry more than 4,000 passengers. Photograph: Ed Ou/The Guardian

Blood, bullets, bad Santas – Black Doves will guarantee you a raucous holiday season. The stars talk rage, raising kids and what their show has in common with East 17

It has happened almost by stealth, and so incrementally that it might easily have passed without comment, but at last the truth can be revealed: Keira Knightley is out to monopolise Christmas. “Yes, I am planning to take it over,” she confirms primly.

Love Actually, in which her husband’s best friend declares his love for her (creepily, if we’re being honest) via cue cards as fairy lights twinkle around them, is the most overt part of the campaign so far. But don’t forget, too, her roles in the 2018 version of The Nutcracker and the apocalyptic 2021 comedy Silent Night. Now, the new six-part Netflix comedy thriller Black Doves finds her gunning – literally, this time – for the Christmas audience. Knightley plays Helen, a spy recruited years earlier by the M-style boss (Sarah Lancashire) of a shady international intelligence outfit. As the series begins, Helen’s cover as the wife of a prominent MP is about to be blown, endangering the lives of her oblivious husband and children. Enter her protector, Sam, played by Ben Whishaw, whose arrival heralds a family-size helping of Christmas carnage.

As the MasterChef host ‘steps away’ from the show amid claims of inappropriate sexual banter, might he reflect on his approach to women and work?

One of Gregg Wallace’s wives used to be charged with compiling his daily to-do list. As the MasterChef host once explained, in words he somehow said out loud: “It starts off every morning with ‘yoghurt’, then ‘leg band’, then it’ll be ‘teeth’, then it’ll say ‘tablets’ because I’ve got to take my cholesterol tablets and vitamin C, then ‘check BBC News’. Those are all the things I must do before I leave the flat. Then it’ll say ‘Twitter’ because I want to tweet twice a day, then it’ll say ‘H’ for Heidi because of all the things I need to discuss with her.”

As you can see, at no stage does this list say “remove all clothes and walk around workplace with sock over penis” – so it’s a mystery why, in a period possibly contemporaneous with this list running his life, Gregg is alleged to have done that. And indeed, alleged to have joshed in a whole host of other inappropriate ways, over a period of 17 years, presumably under the aegis of other lists. Certainly while married to other wives. I’m sure Gregg would say that the idea that any list could schedule and micromanage his critically acclaimed banter would be absolutely ludicrous – and yet, I’m looking at the words “check BBC News” and thinking that perhaps he would not be the best arbiter of what is ludicrous.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

French president tours medieval cathedral in Paris to view restoration after devastating 2019 fire

The restoration of Paris’s Notre Dame after its partial destruction by fire five years ago will give the world a “shock of hope”, Emmanuel Macron has said as he marked the medieval cathedral’s imminent reopening with a televised walking tour.

Alongside his wife, Brigitte, and the archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, the French president was shown around the rebuilt medieval cathedral on Friday morning by Philippe Villeneuve, the chief architect of France’s national monuments.

Talks held in Geneva as Iran looks to avoid potential snapback of UN sanctions over nuclear programme

Iran is holdings talks in Geneva with Britain, France, Germany and the EU in an attempt to find a way out of an impasse over its nuclear programme, in what may be the last chance of a breakthrough before Donald Trump takes up the US presidency again.

Trump, who pursued a policy of “maximum economic pressure” against Iran during his first term, returns to the White House on 20 January.

Young people are admitting that going out is awful. Plus, is it the end for Gwyneth Paltrow’s vaginal maintenance empire Goop?

Today I begin three days of being locked in a tiny, soundproofed, windowless room, alone except for a book. In so many ways, it is the dream. The only flaw is that the book is one I wrote and I have to read it aloud into a microphone so that it may be recorded and turned into an audiobook. So really, it’s three days of continuous talking and of periodically hearing your voice played back to you so that you can hear where you went wrong. In other words, the nightmare.

Leaders from Los Angeles to Chicago organize in preparation of a vengeance-filled Trump agenda

Mike Johnston, the mayor of Denver, joined a drumbeat of local leaders in left-leaning cities across the country earlier this month to say he’s willing to protest the incoming Trump administration’s expected mass deportation efforts.

He told local outlet Denverite that Denver police would be “stationed at the county line” to keep federal authorities out. “It’s like the Tiananmen Square moment with the rose and the gun, right?” he said. He then walked back the comments about using local police, but still said he would protest deportations – even being willing to go to jail for it.

No amount of joining the Christmas supermarket scrum will recreate the sight of my mam’s hands on the trolley

My partner, Charles, being of French stock, has campaigned for a swankier Sud de la France yuletide for some years. Or, to be precise, ever since he ate his first spoon of Paxo sage and onion stuffing and gasped: “Qu’est-ce que c’est?!” Truth be told, it was a tough question to answer. Flavoured gravel that reminds me of Santa bringing a Sindy caravan set? The taste of Silent Night played on a recorder?

Certainly, it was the taste of Christmas when my parents were both still alive, but since they left, I’ve felt increasingly like Miss Havisham each Christmas season. You will recall her in Great Expectations, in her tattered gown, by a dusty wedding buffet, suspended in time and waiting for a party that will never happen. That’s me, but in novelty antlers with a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, and trying to keep the dream alive. Look, I’ve bought Bailey’s and a marzipan stollen, and I’m putting a layer of swiss roll in the sherry trifle. If I go through the motions of putting rum butter in the fridge and Quality Street on the sideboard, then it’s business as usual, isn’t it?

Boris Epshteyn, Susie Wiles and JD Vance hold outsized influence in the president-elect’s administration selections

Donald Trump’s picks for the incoming administration are being shaped by a combination of different power centers including one-man influences like top Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn and combined groups led by chief of staff Susie Wiles and vice-president-elect JD Vance.

The president-elect appears to have settled on a number of cabinet nominees himself without being aggressively pushed by advisers, including Pete Hegseth for defense secretary, Marco Rubio for secretary of state and Russ Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget.

Dong Yuyu was detained in 2022 after meeting Japanese diplomats named agents of ‘espionage organisation’

A veteran Chinese state media journalist has been sentenced by a Beijing court to seven years in prison on espionage charges, his family has said.

Dong Yuyu, a senior columnist at the Communist party newspaper Guangming Daily, was detained in February 2022 along with a Japanese diplomat at a Beijing restaurant.

• ‘If I was batting at three, I’d have played the same way’
• Batter grateful for advice at Surrey from Alec Stewart

Ollie Pope enjoys wicketkeeping and batting down the order. This much was clear after the first two days in Christchurch, where his glove work went unnoticed for the right reasons and his precious 77 with the bat helped swing matters England’s way.

But even if England’s vice-captain continues the dual role for the remainder of this New Zealand tour – Durham’s Ollie Robinson is flying out as an alternative option following Jordan Cox’s broken thumb – there remains a desire to resume his spot at No 3. This despite Pope leaving the 2-1 series defeat in Pakistan with only 59 runs to his name and questions swirling about his suitability for the role’s demands.

• Halep was given four-year ban in 2022, later reduced
• World No 2 Swiatek given one-month ban for violation

Simona Halep questioned the “big difference” in how doping cases are treated after world No 2 Iga Swiatek was handed a one-month drugs ban while the Romanian was out of action for more than 18 months following two separate anti-doping violations.

The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) said on Thursday that Swiatek had accepted a one-month suspension after testing positive for the banned substance trimetazidine (TMZ).