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Ukraine’s anti-corruption authorities search properties linked to Zelenskyy’s chief of staff – Europe live

The revelations that anti-corruption police are searching the property of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak will have huge repercussions for the Ukrainian political scene and possibly for peace negotiations as well. It is hard to overstate the significance of Yermak in the Ukrainian political system. He combines multiple roles for Zelenskyy: most trusted sounding board, domestic political enforcer, controller of access to the president, main point of contact for foreign politicians and chief peace negotiator. Yermak is such a powerful chief of staff that people who know how the president’s office operates describe his relationship with Zelenskyy as symbiotic. Those who have dealt with Yermak, both inside and outside Ukraine, describe him as a workaholic and a ruthless operator, who has moved against alternative centres of political influence in the country and has systematically worked to acquire political power. With such influence inevitably comes enemies, and there are few in the Ukrainian elite who have a positive view of Yermak, though many admire his work ethic and political skills. Foreign politicians have often appreciated knowing they can use Yermak as a direct line to the president, but some have found him a frustrating interlocutor, and figures in the Trump White House are known to have expressed a preference for dealing with Rustem Umerov, the current head of Ukraine’s security council, over Yermak. Up to now, Zelenskyy has always resisted calls to fire Yermak or even clip his wings, but if he is now caught up in a corruption scandal, these are likely to get louder. Politically, getting rid of his chief of staff might be Zelenskyy’s smartest move, but those who know both men say the relationship is so close it’s hard to imagine Zelenskyy taking that step. “I suppose it’s theoretically possible that Zelenskyy could function without him but in practice I can’t imagine that ever happening,” one former senior official told me a couple of months ago.

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St Vincent opposition party celebrates historic election win

The New Democratic party (NDP) in the Caribbean country of St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) is celebrating a historic landslide victory, taking 14 of 15 seats, according to preliminary results. The decisive vote was a crushing defeat for the Unity Labour party (ULP), which has been in power since 2001. The outgoing prime minister, Ralph Gonsalves, was the only ULP candidate to hold on to their seat in the elections where there was a severe decline in the party’s previous nine-seat majority. Gonsalves, the Caribbean’s longest-serving prime minister, will hand over the reins to the NDP’s Godwin Friday. “Looks like a giant has fallen in Vincy,” Peter Wickham, a regional political analyst, said on Facebook as it became apparent that Gonsalves, a prominent climate justice and slavery reparations advocate, was going to lose the elections. Other governments in the region congratulated Friday on the result. Jamaica’s prime minister, Andrew Holness, who is dealing with the devastation of Hurricane Melissa, described the election as “an important moment for the Vincentian people”. He said on X: “I wish Dr Friday every success as he undertakes the responsibility of national leadership, and I pray God’s guidance and wisdom upon him in the work ahead. Jamaica values its close friendship with St Vincent and the Grenadines, and we look forward to strengthening our cooperation as we continue to build a more resilient and prosperous Caribbean region together.” Friday, 66, a lawyer, took over leadership of the NDP in 2016 but has been in parliament since 2001. His party had promised to create “more and better-paid jobs”, address rising crime and violence and improve healthcare and infrastructure.It had also pledged to follow other Caribbean countries in allowing individuals to gain citizenship through significant financial contributions to the economy. SVG is the only member of the seven-state Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States not to offer citizenship by investment. Emanuel Quashie, an international relations lecturer at the University of the West Indies, has blamed the defeat on a combination of factors. “There was a lot of anti-Ralph sentiment given that he was in power for so long. Granted, he did do a lot in terms of transforming SVG. “He took us through the global financial crisis. He took us through the global pandemic. He took us through the La Soufrière volcanic eruption, Hurricane Beryl and previous climate change episodic events. But I think that wasn’t a concern for many of the voters either. I also think that the messaging from the ULP was not strong and convincing enough because I did not see them leaning enough on a lot of their wins,” he added. The government’s vaccine mandate during the Covid-19 pandemic also had a serious impact on support for the ULP, Quashie said. The mandate, which required most frontline workers to be jabbed, resulted in some losing their jobs. In 2021, Gonsalves was taken to hospital after being hit on the head with a stone in a demonstration against the vaccine mandate.

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St Vincent prime minister seeks record sixth term in tight election

Voters in St Vincent and the Grenadines will go to the polls on Thursday with Ralph Gonsalves seeking a record sixth consecutive term as prime minister. The elections are expected to be a tight contest between the ruling Unity Labour party, which has been in power since 2001, and the opposition New Democratic party. In the last election, ULP won nine of 15 seats, but the NDP won the popular vote. The ULP has been campaigning on the party’s economic development record. According to a recent World Bank assessment, economic growth is expected to remain “robust at 4% in 2025”. The report said that “despite multiple shocks in recent years, economic activity recovered and remained strong in 2025, supported by tourism and infrastructure investment”. In the past decade, the country has suffered setbacks such as the pandemic, the La Soufrière volcanic eruption of 2021 and catastrophic storms such as Hurricane Beryl, which devastated the archipelago last year. Gonsalves has presided over the building of the country’s first international airport, facilitating a tourism boom that has drawn hotel brands such as Sandals and Holiday Inn. The prime minister has been a global champion of climate justice and slavery reparations. He has also prioritised education, allowing people who would not otherwise be able to afford university to get undergraduate and postgraduate degrees through scholarships. But the opposition has accused the ruling party of “failure and broken promises”, citing the rising cost of living and unemployment, especially among young people. The NDP has promised more and better-paid jobs, to address rising crime and violence and to improve healthcare and infrastructure. The opposition has also pledged to follow other Caribbean countries in introducing a programme to allow individuals to gain citizenship through significant financial contributions to the economy. St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) is the only member of the seven-state Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States not to offer citizenship by investment. Some people have questioned Gonsalves’ leadership, said Adrian Fraser, a historian and former head of the University of the West Indies’ global campus in SVG. He added: “You have the leader of that party who is 79. Next year, he would be 80. So there are people who are calling for a change and who are wondering why the leader, the prime minister, would want to continue at this age.” The NDP is led by Godwin Friday who took the reins in 2016 and has been in parliament since 2001. Some of the party’s campaigning focused on the government’s vaccine mandate during the pandemic, which required most frontline workers to be jabbed and resulted in some losing their jobs. In 2021, Gonsalves was taken to hospital after being hit in the head with a stone in a demonstration against the mandate. During this year’s election campaign, questions have surfaced over whether an NDP government would end close diplomatic ties with Taiwan to pursue a relationship with China. The NDP said in 2016 it would align itself to Beijing and adopt a “one China” policy, which is the diplomatic acknowledgement of Beijing’s position that there is only one Chinese government and Taiwan is a breakaway province. Under Gonsalves’ leadership, SVG has continued to cooperate with Taiwan over infrastructure, education and healthcare. The relationship has yielded benefits such as the scholarships, support for the international airport and help with the construction of a state-of-the-art hospital. The latest NDP manifesto does not specify a position on Taiwan. It speaks about “reviewing … international partnerships” but also about broadening and deepening relations with other countries, while only mentioning the UK. Emanuel Quashie, an international relations lecturer at the University of the West Indies, said the NDP should have clarified its position, considering it had once proposed a switch to China. “Switching from Taiwan to China just like that would have serious, not just political, but economic implications for SVG … not least the students who are currently studying in Taiwan and some of the projects that Taiwan is currently funding … such as the modern hospital that we are building,” Quashie said.

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Friday briefing: How will Ukraine fare this winter as Trump pushes for a controversial peace deal? ​

A week ago Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Ukrainians that they faced “a very tough choice – either the loss of our dignity, or the risk of losing a key partner”. The warning came as the Trump administration increased pressure on Zelenskyy to accept a peace deal that appears to secure all of Vladimir Putin’s war aims – a proposal European leaders have described as capitulation. With the war about to enter its fourth winter, there seems no sign that either side has the capability to make a significant military breakthrough. Neither the incessant infantry grind on the eastern front, Moscow’s aerial bombardment of Ukrainian cities, nor Kyiv’s long-range strikes on infrastructure inside Russia look likely to shift the equilibrium any time soon. For today’s newsletter I spoke to Shaun Walker, the Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent, about why the US is applying so much pressure on Zelenskyy to make a deal, how the latest diplomatic moves are being received in Moscow, and what any agreement may mean for Ukrainians living through a fourth year of war. Here are today’s main stories. Five big stories Politics | Keir Starmer says Labour “kept to our manifesto” over budget tax rises. The prime minister sought to rebuff claims Labour had broken its tax promises. Workers’ rights | A flagship policy that would have given workers the right to claim unfair dismissal after their first day on the job is to be ditched by the government in favour of a six month-threshold. US news | Donald Trump has said he will “permanently pause migration from all third world countries,” hours after the president announced that one of the two national guard members who were shot in Washington DC had died. Hong Kong | Rescue operations inside the Hong Kong apartment complex that was engulfed by fire on Wednesday are “almost complete”, fire officials have said, as the death toll reached 94 early on Friday with scores more missing. Ukraine | Vladimir Putin has said that the outline of a draft peace plan discussed by the US and Ukraine could serve as a basis for future negotiations to end the war – but insisted Ukraine would have to surrender territory for any deal to be possible. In depth: ‘The prospect of a military victory for either side seems fairly unlikely any time soon’ The 28-point plan outlined by the Trump administration envisages Ukraine giving up the eastern Donbas region – including areas it currently controls – shrinking its army, relinquishing long-range weapons and ruling out Nato membership. It is clearly not the kind of deal that would have been acceptable to the nation a few months into Russia’s invasion, but the reality on the ground has some analysts suggesting that a deal will have to be made sooner or later. With Washington signalling it wants movement, Kyiv is increasingly aware that diplomatic pressure may only intensify in the days and weeks ahead, especially with the US president seemingly dedicated to a tight deadline that may coincide with him getting Fifa’s brand-new peace prize on 5 December. *** Is there a military solution to this conflict? Shaun tells me that Russia still has “the military momentum”, but only in the bleakest sense. “They’ve shown they’re not really capable of taking territory without destroying it first. It’s this kind of slow, miserable advance where they take control of towns which are basically ruins by the time they get them.” While he doesn’t totally rule out a sudden collapse or surprise breakthrough, he says the prospect of either army sweeping across territory now looks unlikely. “The idea that the Russians are suddenly going to storm into big cities and occupy them doesn’t seem possible. Equally, the Ukrainians don’t look as if they’re capable of doing that either. The prospect of something that would look like a military victory for either side seems fairly unlikely any time soon” *** What could be an acceptable peace deal to Ukraine? Ukrainians are now “hugely fatigued” and, at this point, more people may be willing to contemplate a “painful compromise deal”, Shaun says. He could see Ukraine giving up significant territory if there were a sufficient security guarantee. This could look something like a Nato-style guarantee: for example, a wall along the contact line, which, if Russia were to cross in the future, would be defended militarily by the western allies. But there are huge question marks as to how that would work – and whether those western allies would have the appetite for it. “All this talk of the coalition of the willing, whether it is British, French, other troops on the ground … there may be some readiness to put some troops in Ukraine, but there’s clearly not a readiness to fight with Russia,” says Shaun. “What will happen if 10 of these troops get killed in a firefight? Will we enter a war with Russia? The whole western policy up to now has been: do everything you can to help Ukraine, but don’t get into war with Russia. That doesn’t seem like it’s going to change.” Without such a guarantee, Shaun says, Ukraine has no reason to believe that any deal wouldn’t just be broken in a year or two. *** How have the latest developments affected perception of the war in Russia? Shaun says that Russian elites were initially dismayed and reluctant when the war started. But that the feeling turned from disbelief to resigned commitment. State media has relentlessly framed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 as a struggle against western aggression and the expansion of Nato. “Society has been mobilised. I think a lot of ordinary Russians have bought into that. They have bought into the idea that this is a defensive war against the west, not a colonial war against Ukraine.” Economically, Russia is under pressure but nowhere near collapse. “You certainly don’t get the sense that Putin feels he needs to end this or things will get difficult for him domestically,” he says. *** Where does this leave Putin? Shaun suggests that Putin has two bad choices in front of him. Carrying on the war indefinitely continues to put the country’s economy under strain – which could eventually result in unrest. But equally, ending the war when there has been so much loss, and it’s not really clear what has been won, won’t be an easy sacrifice for Putin. “You have all of these traumatised people who are going to be coming home from the front, all these people who are earning quite good money in the army,” says Shaun – “[and in the end] you’ve got a couple of small bits of territory in eastern Ukraine?” *** What does it mean for Zelenskyy? Zelenskyy remains an effective political communicator – but he is navigating his most precarious moment since the invasion. A corruption scandal involving people close to him has raised uncomfortable questions. We’ve seen him in a tight spot before, Shaun says, reminding me of the dressing down the Ukrainian leader got during a White House visit in February. Reading back the full transcript of those terse exchanges makes me recall how shocking an irreversible breach it appeared at the time. “In fact,” Shaun says, “the Americans kind of did him a favour with the timing of this new supposed peace deal, because just at the moment where Zelenskyy was facing major questions, you suddenly had what looked like a kind of existential threat being slapped on the table by the Trump administration. I think that focused minds.” While there is increasing disaffection with Zelenskyy’s style of government, mostly Shaun feels there is not appetite right now for a political mudfight. But there’s a question over how long that will last. “If you were a neutral political strategist, you might advise [Zelenskyy] that the best thing to do is to step down, and you’ll be remembered as the leader who saw off the Russians, rather than a leader who clung on to power amid corruption scandals. But of course, it’s never that easy. There are lots of people around him who depend on him.” The prospect of elections in Ukraine is also hard to fathom. They are a year overdue constitutionally, but the feeling has been you can’t have an election while at war. The 28-point plan calls for elections to be held within 100 days of the end of the war. Shaun has his doubts about this. “How destabilising is that going to be for a society where people are coming home from the front, all these political tensions that have been buried because everyone’s all together for the war effort – how is that all going to bubble to the surface? That also looks like a pretty tricky moment for Ukraine,” he says. *** So what next? The mood in Ukraine this winter is more despondent than at any point since the invasion began. “There have been increasing voices in Ukrainian society saying this has to end somehow,” Shaun tells me. “This winter is harder than ever.” The past two winters carried at least some sliver of hope. In late 2023, Ukrainians still believed the long-planned counteroffensive might turn the tide. In late 2024, there was a belief in some quarters that a Trump election victory might bring a “magical solution” that would suddenly transform Ukraine’s fortunes. “Going into this winter, there doesn’t seem to be any hope,” says Shaun. “There’s no plausible medium-term positive outcome for Ukraine.” For now, the best-case scenario looks like a continuation of the status quo: a grinding, attritional conflict in which Ukraine holds on to its sovereignty and prevents further territorial collapse. “In some ways that is a positive outcome – and there are definitely many worse outcomes than that,” Shaun says. “But it’s not much to motivate people to keep going.” What else we’ve been reading Jack Seale’s lively review of the fifth and final season of Stranger Things acknowledges that, as grownups, the show’s stars don’t have the same appeal, but the gang still set traps, crawl through tunnels and recruit spies, all the way to a thrilling, bullet-dodging, joyful finale. Karen Alan Martin writes that if your phone, laptop or TV is on its last legs, Black Friday is a sensible time to replace it. But if you’re hoping to limit the ecological impact, it is worth considering refurbished options. Martin The grit, determination and sheer spirit of Karen Carney shines through Emine Saner’s interview with the former England footballer, as she reveals how online trolls nearly broke her and how Strictly gave her back her spark. Karen It is possibly a case of nominative determinism that Katharine Gammon got the gig for Nautilus to write about the “carbon hoofprint” of meat consumption in US cities, which is larger than the total carbon emissions of the UK. Martin The number of women being incarcerated is rising at three times the rate of men globally, in what experts say is a crisis driven by poverty, abuse and discriminatory laws. Karen Sport Football | Nottingham Forest beat Malmö 3-1 to enhance their hopes of qualifying for the Europa League knockout phase, while a Donyell Malen brace led Aston Villa to the verge of automatic qualification for the last 16 against a backdrop of crowd violence from Young Boys supporters. Crystal Palace went down 2-1 to Strasbourg. Football | Martin O’Neill wrote a memorable final postscript in his history with Celtic in Europe as the interim manager led his team to a 3-1 win over Feyenoord, while Rangers earned their first Europa League point of the season with a 1-1 draw to 10-man Braga. Formula One | Lando Norris insisted nothing has changed in terms of his focus on sealing his first Formula One world championship after both he and his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri were disqualified in Las Vegas. Something for the weekend Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read, play and listen to right now TV Poison Water | ★★★★★ In the summer of 1988, residents in north Cornwall noticed their tap water was either blue or black and gelatinous or sticky. Because of a treatment facility error, it had been laced with toxic amounts of aluminium sulphate, but it would take more than two weeks for those in power to admit there was a problem. Residents were told to keep drinking, despite an outbreak of ill health. This damning one-off relies heavily on a BBC Horizon episode from the time and other archive material, but taking a four-decade step back from events casts them in a different light. And there are enough new interviews here – with residents, experts and politicians – to bring the whole thing discomfitingly into the present. Hannah J Davies Music The Durutti Column: The Return of the Durutti Column | ★★★★★ When the band whose name this record bears split acrimoniously just before they were supposed to record it, a Factory Records boss suggested their guitarist Vini Reilly, poleaxed by depression, try an experimental session with producer Martin Hannett. Unaware that he was making an album, Reilly “absolutely hated” the finished product, but took solace in his sense that it would never find a wider audience. Forty-five years on, it has been given the classic album deluxe treatment. From the moment Reilly’s guitar appears on the opener, you feel drawn into a secret world, filled with private feelings. It rarely sounds anguished, but you wonder if Reilly’s desperate circumstances have some bearing on music that, for all its lush melodiousness, feels emotionally raw. Exquisite. Alexis Petridis Film Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery | ★★★★☆ Daniel Craig returns as private detective Benoit Blanc. This time, he’s in upstate New York investigating the murder of a Catholic priest, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, a ferocious alpha male played by Josh Brolin. Prime suspect is the sweet-natured junior priest Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor). But the situation is complicated by a close-knit group of troubled parishioners played by the likes of Andrew Scott, Kerry Washington and Glenn Close – all at the top of their game. By the end, there’s a motive for each. The enjoyment is, for me, most intense before the actual murder itself, when the characters joust unencumbered by suspicion. After the murder, it’s still thoroughly enjoyable but should probably be considered more of a deadpan-absurdist ensemble comedy than a whodunnit. Peter Bradshaw Art Tala Madani: Daughter BWASM | ★★★★☆ For years now the Iranian-born US artist has been painting Shit Mom, a fetid smear of a human figure intended as a subversion of feminine, maternal ideals. And in the painter’s latest show, Shit Mom has adopted an AI daughter. As they interact across the canvases, the gleaming mechanical perfection of the daughter – born motherless, hence the show’s title “Daughter BWASM”, or Born Without a Shit Mom – gets streaked with smudges of filthy brown. The more the mum cares for her daughter, the more she taints her. Madani makes big, clever points in the most intentionally childish, confrontational way. I don’t think these are intended to be beautiful, decorative images; they’re funny, satirical takedowns of societal norms. Eddy Frankel The front pages “Ministers ditch manifesto pledge for job protection from day one” is the Guardian’s lead story. The i paper splashes on “Labour U-turn on worker rights – as PM denies Budget tax rises break promise”, the Times says “‘Day one’ protection of workers abandoned” and the FT has “Labour dilutes flagship worker rights bill following pressure from business”. “Starmer rips up Rayner’s rights bill” is the Telegraph splash, while the Sun runs with “Tax Grab Fallout” and the Mail says “The brain drain from Starmer’s socialist chaos”. “Dando cop’s Serbian hitman probe” is the Mirror on Jill Dando’s 1999 murder. Today in Focus The NGO worker on trial for people-smuggling in Lesbos In 2018, Seán Binder was 23 and a volunteer with a search and rescue organisation working with asylum seekers in Lesbos, Greece. After months of successful operations, one night turned out very differently and he was arrested. Katy Fallon looks at how the criminalisation of asylum is changing Europe. Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Romania, a country which has stubbornly been the lowest in the European Union for its recycling rates for more than a decade, has turned its reputation around with a winning deposit return scheme said to be used by 90% of its population The residents of the village of Pianu De Jos collect and return bags of bottles, cans and glass every week, in exchange for a few Romanian leus and to better enjoy a stroll in the countryside with rivers free of such rubbish. One villager, Dana Chitucescu makes 40 leu (about £6.87), enough to feed her seven cats every week, for returning used empty vessels to a collection point near her home. It is a “zero to hero story” said Gemma Webb, the chief executive of RetuRO, the company running the system. About 7.5bn beverage containers have been returned between the system’s launch in November 2023 and the end of September 2025, she said. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

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‘Is this doable?’: why political paralysis threatens an ambitious Brussels arts complex

A year before its scheduled opening on 28 November 2026, building works at Kanal, a new contemporary art museum in Brussels, are running on time. Housed in a remodelled former Citroën garage on the north-western edge of the city centre, the centre is 95% complete. Curators are putting the finishing touches to an opening show that will feature works by Matisse, Picasso and Giacometti on loan from the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Trilingual wall texts in English, Dutch and French have already been signed off. With 12,500 sq metres of exhibition space over five floors, an architecture centre, restaurants and live performance venues, the museumwill be bigger than Tate Modern in London, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and the Guggenheim Bilbao. The investment reflects a will to turn the administrative capital of Europe into a cultural destination in its own right. But in recent weeks, the conversation around Kanal’s opening has moved from “when” to “if”. A year and a half on from Belgian regional elections, a functioning government for the semi-autonomous Brussels-Capital region is still nowhere in sight. The only certainty seems to be the predicted austerity measures and mooted plans to slash Kanal’s budget by more than half. “We never anticipated that 12 months before opening, and 18 months after the election, there would be no government,” said the museum’s director, Kasia Redzisz. “If there isn’t a decision on the budget, we risk having to stop construction, threatening the entire project’s future.” Plans to equip the Belgian capital with a museum that doesn’t just showcase but also collects contemporary art go back at least a quarter of a century. Neither Brussels’ modern art gallery Wiels nor the more classical Bozar Centre for Fine Arts have their own collections. In the absence of such an institution, collections by significant Belgian artists such as Marcel Broodthaers have been bought by MoMA in New York and shipped to the US. In 2001, the American curator Michael Tarantino was recruited to head up an arts centre but the project was hampered by political infighting and shelved after Tarantino’s death in 2003. Thirteen years later, under the watch of the governing socialist PS party, a compromise was reached to transform the 1934-built former Citroën garage on the Place de l’Yser into Kanal. The sheer scale of the plans drew criticism from the outset. “It’s a nation state-sized project done by a regional government, a technocratic decision that has been amplified out of all proportion by consultants and advisers,” said Dirk Snauwaert, the director of Wiels, which does not receive structural financial support from the Brussels region. “Who thinks this is doable?” The formalised partnership with the Centre Pompidou, limited to five years after Kanal’s opening, will cost Brussels €2m (£1.75m) a year. The connection with the Paris arts complex has been greeted with scepticism by some Flemish speakers, who make up 60% of Belgium’s population but who are a minority in the capital, raising suspicions of French colonial attitudes. “Kanal is a really significant project, but the relationship with the Pompidou was complicated and confusing from the outset,” said Chris Dercon, the Belgian former director of Tate Modern who now runs Fondation Cartier in Paris. “Why do we need the Pompidou collection in Brussels when we have some of the best private collections in Europe right here in Belgium?” Kanal’s supporters say such controversies are inevitable for a project with global ambitions and that similar objections were levelled at arts centres now seen as indispensable to the fabric of their cities such as Tate Modern and Paris’s own Centre Pompidou. Redzisz said that Kanal, under her leadership, would focus on championing contemporary artists who were either bornin or who live in Belgium, and said the museum would create 780 direct and indirect jobs and inject €144.4m into the Brussels economy every year. The arts complex includes 20,000 sq metres of public space and a playground designed by the Turner prize-winning collective Assemble. Kanal has also organised workshops to prepare children from 27 nearby schools for the opening. “It’s absolutely essential for Brussels to have this space,” said Ann Demeester, a Belgian art historian who is the director of the Kunsthaus Zürich in Switzerland. “This is the symbolic heart of Europe, a city full of artists that is as edgy as Berlin used to be.” The deadlock in the Brussels-Capital region has been running for 537 days and could surpass the previous record. “We must find €1bn in savings out of a total budget of €7bn,” said a spokesperson for the Francophone centrist party Les Engagés, one of six parties at the negotiating table. “All departments and projects will have to contribute to this collective effort and the Kanal project will not be exempt.” A spokesperson for the Flemish Green party said: “The current ambitions of Kanal, a project that falls outside the core competencies [of the Brussels regional government], will have to be severely curtailed. We will have to see what is possible with a smaller budget.” According to reports in the newspaper L’Echo, the liberal party MR has proposed reducing Kanal’s €35m annual operating budget by 60%, though it has not made this proposal official. Wiels’s Snauwaert is urging officials to find savings in the costly tie-in with the Pompidou. “We all hope our money won’t be wasted,” he said. “But the wise decision would be to cut ties with the Pompidou and invest the money in culture instead.” Redzisz said: “There is a new fiscal reality, which we understand, and we are prepared to take a cut like everyone else. “I still believe that politicians will realise the huge potential of this project as a destination, as a landmark for Brussels. Abandoning Kanal now would amount to cultural suicide.”

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‘A constant fear’: Myanmar nationals face imprisonment back home as US ends protected status

Aung* was finishing his studies in New York when Myanmar’s junta tried to conscript him into the civil war raging in his homeland. Terrified by the idea, Aung applied for Temporary Protective Status (TPS) in the United States, hoping that by the time he finished his degree the conflict might have calmed. Instead, the war has only escalated. Now, as the country’s ruling junta plans to hold what are widely seen as sham elections this December, the US government has revoked temporary legal status for citizens of Myanmar – a decision that has put the lives of 4,000 nationals like Aung in jeopardy, all while lending legitimacy to the country’s military government. Myanmar’s military seized power in a February 2021 coup, overthrowing the elected government and violently suppressing dissent. A patchwork of armed resistance has emerged since, with some fighters joining longstanding ethnic armies as the junta increasingly uses airstrikes and fresh conscripts to counter opposition. But the Trump administration says the junta’s planned election, and successful ceasefire agreements, show progress in the south-east Asian nation. “The situation in Burma has improved enough that it is safe for Burmese citizens to return home, so we are terminating the Temporary Protected Status,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced this week. The regime welcomed the decision, with spokesperson Major-General Zaw Min Tun telling media that Myanmar nationals in the US can return home to vote, extending “a welcoming hand” for them to participate in “building a modern, developed, and progressive nation”. ‘I’m in limbo’ The US Temporary Protective Status is short-term protection that shields foreign nationals from deportation to disaster zones and allows them the right to work. It will be revoked for Myanmar nationals on 26 January, in a move that has filled the diaspora community in the US with panic and fear. “We are some of the grateful few that had the chance to escape, but there’s still a constant fear that looms over us about having to go back,” says Aung, one of three Myanmar nationals who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity. Aung has a student visa until 2026, but worries that once it expires he might be deported. After this week’s announcement, he has already started on an asylum claim. Asylum provides a pathway to permanent residency, but it is granted to people who can show they face persecution on specific grounds. The TPS, by contrast, is short-term protection to people from countries hit by disaster, allowing them to work in the US while conditions at home remain unsafe. “I’m not sure if I’ll have a future here,” he says, “I’m in limbo.” In 2019 Su Htet* arrived in Washington DC on a student visa and graduated in 2023. Although she is authorised to work she says the city feels increasingly “scary” with regular news of immigration raids. After the 2021 coup, she organised virtual demonstrations and fundraisers for Myanmar’s striking civil servants. In June this year, officials visited her family home in Myanmar looking for her and her brothers. “My friend and his siblings were arrested, beaten and tortured by the regime,” she says. “He was finally released, but he’s no longer involved in anything.” Given her activism and her faith – she is Muslim in a country where ethnic and religious minorities have long borne the brunt of state violence – she fears that returning home is a real danger. “Just by appearance alone I’d assume they’d question me. Googling my name, they’ll see I’ve spoken out against them,” she says. “I’m pretty scared. I’m alone here; I don’t have any family with me.” Lungpi*, a Christian from an ethnic minority, secured a scholarship to study in the US. Soon afterwards, soldiers torched his town, leaving it in ruins, forcing his relatives to flee across the border. “You can imagine, all their houses are burned,” he says. Lungpi was granted temporary protection and an education sponsorship, but once that expires, he says, “there’s a lot of anxiety”. “Myanmar is far from being safe,” he says. “I’d definitely be arrested if I had to return.” International Crisis Group senior Myanmar adviser Richard Horsey says Myanmar remains “deeply unsafe with no meaningful improvements in security or governance”. Elections planned for the coming weeks are “provoking further repression”, he says, adding that those who returned would “almost certainly come under scrutiny and face serious risk of detention or mistreatment”. By framing these developments as justification for ending temporary protection, Washington “risks reinforcing the regime’s narrative” and could signal to other governments that they can restart ties based on elections, rather than real improvements, he warns. Aung, who has built a life in New York, is determined not to fall into the junta’s hands. “Their aim is to oppress,” he says. “As long as you’re young and educated in Myanmar, you’re always an enemy of the state.” *Names have been changed

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Millions in China cram for civil service exam and the hope of a job for life

A record number of people are set to take China’s notoriously gruelling national civil service exam this weekend, reflecting the increasing desire of Chinese workers to find employment in the public rather than private sector. Around 3.7 million people have registered for the tests on Saturday and Sunday, which will be the first since the government increased the age limit for certain positions. The age limit for general candidates has increased from 35 to 38, while the age limit for those with postgraduate degrees has been raised from 40 to 43. The millions of applicants will be competing for 38,100 civil service vacancies across the country, the equivalent of an average of 97 people per job. Some jobs are particularly in demand. According to data published in Chinese media, the vacancy that received the most applicants was an immigration officer role in Ruili, a city in south-west Yunnan province that borders Myanmar. For the one job, 6,470 people have been approved to apply. Beijing announced in October that the age limit for the civil service exams would be increased in line with recent increases to China’s retirement age. China’s ageing population and dwindling pension budget has forced a reckoning with its relatively low retirement ages. Last year, the government approved plans to gradually increase the retirement age for the first time since the 1950s. The statutory retirement age for women will increase from 50 to 55 for those in blue-collar jobs, and from 55 to 58 for women in white-collar jobs. For men, the retirement age will increase from 60 to 63. Although public sector jobs generally have lower wages – and in recent years some debt-ridden local authorities have struggled to pay wages at all – the jobs are increasingly coveted for their security in an increasingly challenging economy. Harking back to the Maoist era, civil services jobs are known as providing the “iron rice bowl” – an idiom that refers to having a job for life. In China’s years of reform and opening up, plunging into the risks and rewards of commercial enterprises was known as xiahai, or “jumping into the sea”. Now people talk of shangan, or “landing ashore”, to describe successfully passing the exams into the stable public sector. “The occupational structure of China’s job market has shifted markedly over the last decade or so away [from] high-pay, high-skill jobs in [manufacturing] and construction towards low-pay, low-skill in the gig and informal sectors. In the latter, benefits and pensions tend to be absent or uncertain, and formal contractual obligations are weak,” said George Magnus, a research associate at Oxford University’s China Centre. “With 12 million grads coming on to the market each year … the preference for secure government sector jobs isn’t hard to understand.” China’s unemployment rate is 5.1% for the general workforce, and 17.3% for 16- to 24-year-olds excluding college students. In 2023 the government temporarily stopped publishing youth unemployment figures, which had reached a record 21.3%, resuming publication after a few months with a new methodology that excludes students. The trade war and weak consumer demand after the Covid-19 pandemic have battered China’s economy, with many young people choosing to “lie flat”, i.e. do nothing, rather than seek employment in jobs which they feel do not match their level of education or provide sufficient benefits. And next year, China is bracing itself for a record 12.7 million graduates. The raising of the age limit for the exams has generally been welcomed, especially as it could help workers avoid the well-documented “curse of 35”, where companies refuse to higher people past their mid-30s. But some have also spoken of the challenges of juggling exam prep with looking after young families, a balance that fresh graduates are less likely to have to worry about. The civil service exam is notoriously gruelling, with questions on law, physics, biology, politics and reasoning. Since last year, there has also been a section on political theory, which “focuses on candidates’ ability to analyse and solve problems using the Party’s innovative theories,” according to an official announcement. Questions from last year covered Xi Jinping’s major speeches of the past 12 months and Communist party plenums. One 35-year-old mother shared her daily routine on Xiaohongshu as she prepared for this year’s tests. It involved pre-dawn starts and cramming in study sessions around childcare, with the result being four to five hours of sleep a night. “Days are for Powerpoint presentations, nights are for formulas and picture books, waking up at 4am is the time to prepare for the exam”. Additional research by Lillian Yang

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Palestinian Australian assaulted and abused on Sydney train ‘shocked’ police charged assailant with assault but not hate speech

Palestinian Australian film-maker Shamikh Badra, who alleged to police that he was assaulted and racially abused on a Sydney train after an anti-immigration march, is “shocked” that police charged his assailant with common assault but not hate speech. The August assault, which was filmed by Shamikh’s brother, Majed Badra, on his phone and also captured on CCTV, has raised questions about the NSW government’s controversial attempt to criminalise racial vilification – and the lack of prosecutions. The Badra brothers – who had family members killed during the Gaza war and were recently reunited with their elderly mother – were verbally abused after a March for Australia rally. They allege the confrontation began when Majed was told to take off a Palestinian scarf. A 46-year-old man, Nicholas Haskal, was charged in October with common assault against Shamikh. Haskal pleaded guilty in mid-November and received a 12-month conditional release order. No criminal conviction was recorded. Shamikh said this week he was “shocked” to discover police had not pursued additional charges. “They did not include the racist insults or the targeting of me and my brother as Palestinians.” The agreed facts state that Shamikh and Majed entered a train at Sydney’s Town Hall station at about 2.43 pm on Sunday 31 August, after attending a separate pro-Palestine rally in the city. Sign up: AU Breaking News email Police say Haskal boarded the train at Central station “after participating in the March for Australia rally”, sitting down a few metres away. About two minutes later, “an argument” occurred. The facts state that as it became “more heated”, Haskal got up from his seat and approached the brothers while “continuing to yell at them”. Shamikh stood up to position himself between the accused and Majed. The facts state that “due to the escalation of the interaction”, Majed took out his mobile phone and began to film. Police say Haskal lashed out at Majed “due to not wanting to be filmed”, trying to grab the mobile phone, and “in doing so has struck the victim [Shamikh] in his right arm”. The facts state that “a short physical confrontation” ensued before the parties separated after the train stopped at Macdonaldtown. A second verbal altercation began, during which Haskal pushed Shamikh, “with the victim [Shamikh] kicking out at the accused to keep him back”, the document states. The three men then exited the train. The agreed facts do not reference any of the men’s allegations of racist abuse or what the Badras say was the cause of the argument – Majed being told to remove his keffiyeh. Shamikh alleges Majed was told: “If you want to fight for Palestine, go back there.” This comment was not captured in the mobile phone footage. The facts reference that the incident was captured on mobile phones and CCTV. In Majed’s footage, which Guardian Australia has seen, the verbal abuse appears to escalate as the brothers are confronted by a group of several people. “Get the fuck out of here. We don’t like you in our country. We don’t want you in our country,” Haskal says. “We don’t want you here. Fuck off.” Haskal, in another clip, says, “This is Australia, you love getting free money, you fucking loser cunt,” as Shamikh shouts “Racists” and “Free Palestine” while the brothers retreat towards the train doors. Shamikh said he and his brother went to Canterbury police station that day and provided a statement. Majed later provided mobile phone footage. The agreed facts state that Haskal attended Cabramatta police station on 24 September and provided a version of the incident in a recorded interview. Shamikh said police later contacted him to tell him a man had been charged with common assault. He was advised that the matter would be heard “in November” and he would be updated “once this occurs”. He said police called him after Haskal’s only court appearance to advise him that the 46-year-old had pleaded guilty. He said requests to be put in touch with the police prosecutor went unanswered. The brothers’ lawyer, Nick Hanna, said police communication had been “unsatisfactory”. The fact that the Badras weren’t told why charges in relation to the alleged racial abuse hadn’t been laid added to their distress. “We do not know all of the evidence that the police obtained in the course of their investigation,” Hanna told Guardian Australia. “It might be that there’s a reasonable explanation for this, but both the Badras and the public deserve to know what it is.” Hanna said police had told him they had sought legal advice on whether additional charges could be laid. University of Sydney law expert Prof Simon Rice said the relevant provisions of NSW’s Crimes Act – section 93Z covering inciting violence on the grounds of race, and section 93ZAA, which covers inciting hatred – had to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Rice said 93ZAA didn’t necessarily cover conduct that was itself hateful. Critics of the offence, which came into effect just before the train assault, have accused the Minns government of ignoring its own 2024 review into hate speech. That report argued such laws would “introduce imprecision and subjectivity into the criminal law”. In the absence of a stated intention to incite hatred, “it has to be inferred from what is said and done”, Rice said this week. It was not clear from Majed’s video that the accused had such an intention, the academic added. Rice said attending an anti-immigration march could be considered by a court during any discussion of intention. “What we really need is a court decision that decides how this provision works,” he said. “We’ll only get that case if the police charge someone. [But] I can understand why they thought this was not the best case to try it.” Asked why hate speech charges were not laid in Shamikh’s case, a NSW police spokesperson said section 93Z required the threat of violence to be directly linked to a protected attribute, including a person’s race or religion. “In relation to this matter, the racial/religious element required by section 93Z could not be proven,” they said. NSW police did not address why charges weren’t pursued under 93ZAA. “Police have continued to communicate with the complainant and his legal representative throughout the court process,” a police spokesperson said. Haskal’s defence lawyer, Declan Quinn, said: “It is up to the police as to how they frame their facts sheet and what allegations they put in there.” Quinn said his client pleaded guilty “at the earliest opportunity and the police facts sheet was not negotiated in any way”. “He pleaded guilty to it as the arresting officers had framed it,” the defence lawyer said. The NSW attorney general, Michael Daley, said the incident had been dealt with independently by the courts. He added: “This kind of conduct is unacceptable and has no place in NSW.” The NSW Greens justice spokesperson, Sue Higginson, said she was concerned police appeared to have decided that the alleged racial abuse “somehow wasn’t a relevant fact”. “I just can’t understand how a cop could have looked at the video evidence … and decide that racism doesn’t rate a mention in the fact sheet detailing this assault.”