Read the daily news to learn English

Angels and ammo: conflict seeps into everything in north-eastern Ukraine, even a nativity play

The ammunition boxes stacked on the stage opened up to reveal figurines of angels and an infant Jesus lying in his manger. Six actors sang plaintive carols, accompanied by readings of the brooding poetry of Kharkiv writer Serhiy Zhadan. The audience sat, transfixed by the almost unbearable intensity of the spectacle. The nativity play, performed on a recent evening at Kharkiv’s puppet theatre, was a reminder that conflict has seeped into the fabric of almost everything in Ukrainian life over the past four years. “We can’t just put on comedies and escape from reality,” said Oksana Dmitrieva, the nativity play’s 48-year-old director. “The stage is a mirror, and we have to live through our emotions again, but this time from outside ourselves, together with others,” she said. She admitted, however, that dissecting the darker emotions on stage does not always translate to a lighter mind in real life. “Sometimes it’s possible to immerse yourself in the work, but sometimes I also lose my bearings and I wonder, ‘What comes next? What should we talk about? What buttons should we press? I guess that’s what every Ukrainian is living through now.” This winter, the fourth since Russia’s full-scale invasion, threatens to be the bleakest yet for Ukraine. Trump, during his first year in office, has proved much more receptive to Moscow’s talking points than to Kyiv’s, Russian troops continue a slow but grinding advance in the Donbas region and missile attacks on energy infrastructure have left cities without power for hours on end, day after day. There are holes in the budget, a crisis in conscripting new recruits and – perhaps most devastatingly – the absence of a plausible positive outcome on the near-term horizon. The glass-half-full view is that Ukraine’s continued existence as a state is in itself a positive outcome, and that while things are tough, there is no sign of an imminent collapse at the front. Military innovation in spheres such as drone production is booming, and in big cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv, there is still a vibrant metropolitan life, even amid the air alerts and blackouts. Growling generators on every street corner keep supermarkets, restaurants and bars open, and on a recent Friday evening, a 12,000 hryvnia (£212) champagne tasting event in Kyiv was sold out days in advance. But as Donald Trump’s negotiators attempt to push the country towards the peace that so many crave but on terms that terrify them, and with questionable guarantees that Russia won’t simply resume its attacks in future, exhaustion and existential questions are rarely far from people’s minds. “This is one of the most difficult moments in our modern history, when every one of us is living on the edge between exhaustion and strength, between compromise and our principles,” said Sevgil Musaieva, the editor-in-chief of the popular news outlet Ukrainska Pravda, at a recent awards ceremony in Kyiv, honouring the 100 most influential Ukrainians of the year. “We know that this winter will be difficult, we understand that our army lacks people and weapons, we also see that the positions of some of our allies are changing. We are facing questions to which there are no simple answers,” she added. Simple answers are indeed in short supply these days. Ask people what they feel about the continuing peace negotiations and the answer will probably be long, anguished and often contradictory. Most people are ready for compromises, but few are ready for the kind of sacrifices that might persuade Vladimir Putin to stop fighting. Dmitrieva is originally from Kramatorsk, one of the Donbas cities controlled by Ukraine, but which Trump has suggested Kyiv should cede to Russia as part of a peace agreement. “My niece is still in Kramatorsk, she didn’t run away, she’s working there. And what should we say to people like her, ‘Leave, this will be Russia now’? And what will happen to those who stay?” The closer to the frontline, the more tangible are the stakes, given that the Russian army’s mode of advancing has largely been by destroying the towns and cities in its path. One of the places to have already suffered that fate is Vovchansk, north-east of Kharkiv and just across the border from Russia. Vovchansk was occupied in the first months of the war, but Ukraine won it back in September 2022. Oleksiy Kharkivskyi, the head of the town’s police force, raised the Ukrainian flag in the main square that month. Then, last summer, Moscow launched a surprise offensive on the city, attacking it from land and air. Kharkivskyi spent weeks driving towards the frontline in missions to rescue civilians and evacuate them to safety. Ukraine halted the Russian advance, but Vovchansk lies abandoned and in ruins. A few months ago, drone footage suggested three or four people may be still eking out a living in a house in one suburb of the city – a few remaining residents in a town that was recently home to 20,000 people. Kharkivskyi compared his home town to Pripyat, the abandoned town near Chernobyl that was evacuated after the 1986 nuclear disaster. “The difference is that you can at least walk around Pripyat now. I don’t think anyone will be walking in Vovchansk for years. There are a huge number of corpses, dead livestock, all the unexploded shells and mortars. Half the Mendeleev [periodic] table lying around on the ground. It would take years to clean up,” he said. Now, as villages south of Vovchansk come under intense Russian drone attacks, Kharkivskyi is again spending his days driving towards the frontline to evacuate civilians. Some of those are people he evacuated last year, who went back home and now want to leave again. It feels a bit like the film Groundhog Day, he conceded, as his mud-spattered police car slalomed along a cratered dirt track on another visit towards danger. A drone detector on his lap beeped to let him know that, somewhere nearby, a drone was flying. If a drone gets within a mile, the handheld device intercepts its camera signal and relays it on to a small screen. “Once you see a picture on the screen, it’s better to turn around and drive away quickly. If you see yourself on there, then you’re in real trouble,” he said. He laughed, but darkly: last year, a drone hit the car behind him during an evacuation. His friend and colleague was killed. Several others have been injured during evacuations. He admitted that he was exhausted by the continuing struggle, but said he was in no mood to surrender: “I think everyone would be ready to stop the war on the current contact line. But to just give away territory, how can we do that? What have we been fighting for for four years, then?” Kharkivskyi’s base since his home was destroyed is in the town of Staryi Saltiv, south of Vovchansk. Staryi Saltiv has not seen active conflict since Ukraine regained control in September 2022, but war damage is everywhere. The school building, reduced to rubble in 2022, had been under reconstruction for nearly two years, but was completely destroyed again in a missile strike last spring, just as it was almost finished. Now, an underground school is being constructed next to the ruins of the building. “Some people say, ‘Why do you bother building anything here when you’re so close to Russia?’ But without a school, people who work and pay taxes won’t come back,” said Konstiatyn Gordienko, who works in the local administration and went to the same school, in the 1980s when it was newly opened. Gordienko railed against what he described as Europe’s indifference to Ukraine’s fate and blindness to the danger posed by Russia, but then relented, conceding that he too had not taken the threat seriously after the annexation of Crimea. “To be honest, I don’t blame the Europeans. When 2014 happened, I also didn’t understand the war in the way I understand it now,” he said. “When you have your tooth pulled out, you can’t explain the pain to someone who’s never had toothache.” There are few buildings in Staryi Saltiv that do not bear signs of war damage, and many are completely destroyed. Mykola Spivak and his wife Halyna, both 87, live in a temporary container home, provided by a Christian charity. From the window, they can see the remains of their old house, where Halyna was born in 1938 and from which the Nazis deported her as an infant in 1942. Spivak gave a mournful tour of the ruins, pointing with his walking stick at piles of rubble and cracked tiles, announcing what they had once been: “The bathroom … the summer kitchen … the living room … here there was parquet flooring.” A worried relative bought them a small apartment in Kharkiv, but after trying it for a few months they decided it was better to be back in Staryi Saltiv, where both had spent their entire lives, whatever the conditions. “Birds migrate home, and so do we, it’s only natural,” said Spivak. Each evening, the couple walk a few hundred metres down the road to stay the night at a friend’s house, where the noise from drones and air bombs is a little quieter and the heating works better. Every day, they listen to the radio. They don’t care much for geopolitics, but hope to hear that a peace deal has been struck that would make the nights quieter and the last years of their lives a little more bearable. “Peace, peace, peace, we are just waiting for peace,” said Spivak. “Maybe they’ll all sit at the table, have a shot of vodka and finally hammer it all out.”

Brussels bike ban plan for pedestrian zone ‘dangerous and absurd’

On an unseasonably mild winter’s day, people are gathering at Le Piétonnier, the pedestrian zone in the heart of Brussels. Tourists buy mulled wine and churros at the Christmas market outside the Bourse, the old stock exchange, now repurposed as a beer museum. A few people drink coffee on cafe terraces. Up and down the length of the 650-metre-long space, people come and go, bikes and scooters weaving in and out of the crowds. Next year, this scene will look somewhat different: bikes and scooters will be banned from this 18,000-sq-metre pedestrian zone for most of the day. People on two wheels will be allowed to ride only between 4am and 11am. At all other times, they must dismount and push their vehicle up the street, or face a fine. Anaïs Maes, the city counsellor in charge of urban planning and mobility, suggested not all cyclists obeyed the existing 6km speed limit. “In everyday reality, people do not respect that rule or don’t know it, and so it creates conflicts.” Maes, a member of the Dutch-speaking socialist Vooruit party, is aware of “small accidents” and complaints from pedestrians. “I’ve heard multiple persons say, especially older persons or persons with little kids, or persons with reduced mobility, [that] they don’t feel safe, because they live in fear of not being able to step aside quickly enough or being hit.” Brussels officials have not decided exactly when the change will enter into force, as negotiations within the council over implementation are ongoing. In a sense, the Brussels Piétonnier is a victim of its own success. Extended a decade ago to make the city greener, calmer and cleaner, it transformed a swathe of the centre from a traffic-clogged, four-lane road into a place for walkers, strollers and cyclists, revitalising cafe terraces and open-air gatherings. It was a transformative shift for a city that had long suffered from its mid-20th-century love affair with the car. For instance, the Grand-Place, the magnificent central square, with intricate, gold-leaf-adorned guildhalls and gothic city hall, was effectively a car park until 1972 and traffic was not banned entirely from the square and its cobbled environs until 1991. The decision to extend the pedestrian zone in 2015, by banning cars from a large shopping area around Place de La Bourse was controversial initially. Maes, who was not on the council at the time, said idealistic planners believed that pedestrians and cyclists could share the space. “The city of Brussels had this idea: we were creating a space that’s multimodal and everyone will find their place; I think it is sad but in reality it doesn’t always work and then you have to find solutions.” Danielle Peeters, a cyclist, who works at a Dutch-language association, thinks the ban is a shame. “I think it is a little radical,” she says, having just parked her bike outside a ramen bar. “When there are a lot of people, obviously I slow down, but there are some people who cycle very, very quickly.” “Alex”, a 43-year old mountain climbing guide from Ukraine, who works as a takeaway courier and gave a pseudonym, says it will cause him difficulties because he will not be able to pick up deliveries, although referencing war in Ukraine, he said there were bigger problems. “For me it’s not a big issue, but they could have done a better job painting pathways for bikes.” That is the point for local cycling safety groups. The conflict between cyclists and pedestrians, some say, was a story foretold in the decision not to create a dedicated bike lane. An open letter by a dozen cyclist and road-safety groups published in December denounced the ban as “dangerous and absurd”, arguing that the city’s proposed alternative route for cyclists – three streets running parallel to the pedestrian zone – was not safe. On this alternative route, bikes share the busy roads with cars, buses and coaches; cycle groups say there are many blind spots and drivers, who flout the ban on overtaking cyclists. Bernards Heymans, the president of Heroes for Zero, a grassroots road safety movement, said the proposed alternative route was “not comfortable” and even dangerous, especially for child cyclists. “If cyclists are banned on the Piétonnier, then we would really like a real second way to access the city centre for cyclists,” he said. “If we find a second way that is totally secure, of course, everybody will go through the second way.” Maes does not think a separate bike lane in the pedestrian zone is the answer. “It doesn’t increase safety, because when every mode has its own designated space [cyclists] go faster,” which can also create conflicts with pedestrians crossing that lane, she said. She was working hard, she said, to create a safe alternative route: “We are trying to solve a mobility-safety issue, but what I do not want to do is to create a bigger problem.”

The volunteers putting their bodies between Israel settlers and a Palestinian village

It is a daily onslaught. Every morning, teenage Israeli settlers drive a herd of goats from their outpost in the hills down into the valley towards the Palestinian village of Ras Ein al-Auja. The local men, women and children retreat inside their huts and tents. Any hint of resistance from a Palestinian is likely to bring in the Israeli army or the border police, confiscation of property and disappearance into the maw of “administrative” detention without trial, for months or years. Instead, a small group of volunteers step forward each morning to face the descending settlers whose stated aim is to overrun and trample the village with their livestock, and drive Palestinians out. On this particular Saturday, the defenders of Ras Ein al-Auja are four Israeli Jews, a Hungarian and an American, who make a screen around Palestinian homes to shoo away the encroaching animals. “The settlers are trying to provoke the local people into protecting themselves, but if they do the army and police will storm the community and arrest everyone,” said one of the Israeli volunteers, Amir Pansky, a retired Israeli army major. “We are a protective presence because we are putting our bodies between the Jewish settlers and the Palestinians.” For every defensive move they make, the teenage settler goatherds respond with an offensive counter-move to outflank the village guardians. The boys walk right up to the volunteers until their faces are inches apart, and the latter try to stand their ground, waving their arms and shouting. The goatherds hold up their phones to record the scene, and give a running commentary, while each defender wears a body-cam, an insurance policy against any false claims of assault. It is a tense battle of wits. Chess, but played with goats. Just when the face-off is at its peak, the settlers in the outpost half a kilometre uphill unleash a surprise move – driving a herd of about 50 camels down towards the other end of the village, like a cavalry charge ordered by some unseen hilltop Napoleon, forcing the defenders to split up to confront the new threat. For all its outward absurdities, the game is played in deadly earnest. The goatherd boys carry sticks and clubs and have shown themselves ready to use them in tussles with volunteer defenders. There are older settlers waiting in the wings with other weapons. On 3 December, assailants on all-terrain vehicles raided the compound where international volunteers stay in Ras Ein al-Auja, and aimed pepper spray in the face of several of them. On the day of the camel charge, a man with a light brown uniform and assault rifle slung around his shoulder arrived at the scene in a white pickup truck and walked alongside the goatherd boys in a show of support. Israeli activists identified the newcomer as Gabriel Kalish, the local security coordinator from Me’vo’ot Yericho, about 9km farther down the Jordan valley. Kalish refused to give an interview to the Guardian, suggesting that he happened to be passing by. However he added: “This land belongs to the Jews.” Activists have photographed many times, in a variety of different uniforms, at the site of settler incursions on Palestinian villages. As a security coordinator in a settlement, Kalish’s wages and gun are paid for by the government, and his presence at the daily campaign of intimidation against Palestinians is a link between the teenagers herding goats and camels and the extremists currently in cabinet positions, who are bent on the annexation of the West Bank. Lev Taor, a young settler whose turn it was a few days earlier to drive a goat herd through Ras Ein al-Auja, made no secret of the overall objective. “I came with my flock to protect the land. The goal is to expel these people,” Taor said, referring to the local Palestinians. The lives of the people of Ras Ein al-Auja have been increasingly hemmed in over recent years. They can no longer graze their herds on the western slopes of the Jordan valley, as previous generations had done. Since the beginning of the Gaza war, and the radical acceleration of an Israeli land grab across the West Bank, the 700 local people have largely been confined to the village, a string of huts, tents and animal shelters along a creek running east from a spring towards the River Jordan. They have cut down their flocks and bought feed for them, but refused so far to give up Ras Ein al-Auja altogether. “It was very quiet here before. You could graze your flock east, west, north, south and there was no problem,” Naef Ja’alin, one of the villagers, said. “The settlers started harassing us years ago, when we were grazing our flock, but that was some distance from the village. But since 7 October [2023], they have come closer and closer, to the point that today nobody takes their herd outside the village.” He said his son slept in his shoes so he is ready to run if the family is attacked at night. Settler outposts have sprung up on two sides of the village, and the Palestinians have been stopped from using the local spring, one of the most renowned in the Jordan valley. The Ja’alin family were moved to the area from southern Israel after the 1967 war, which began the occupation. Naef Ja’alin says they have nowhere else to go but credits their remaining tenuous grip on the hillside to the thin line of volunteer defenders. “Without these people, we would have been gone a long time ago,” he said. “Nobody helps us. Only these people protect us.” The volunteers are a mix of young and old. Both Israelis and foreigners are seeking to make a difference, to compensate for what they see as the complicity of their governments in the victimisation of Palestinian civilians. The Israeli volunteers are part of an organisation called Looking the Occupation in the Eye, a pithy description of what they set out to do. “The main thing that motivated me is what I’m going to tell my grandsons about what I was doing during the disaster the government of Israel has made in this area,” one senior volunteer, Doron Meinrath, said. “I want to be able to look in the mirror and be able to say I did all I could do.” Like Pansky and many other elder members of the organisation, Meinrath was a senior officer in the Israeli army who feels that the force has changed out of all recognition in recent years, from one focused on Israel’s defence to an aggressive accomplice in the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. “For young children here, it is the first time they have seen a Jewish guy who is not attacking them, and who they are not afraid of. It’s important to show not all Jewish people are the same.” The international volunteers at Ras Ein al-Auja have come through an organisation called Unarmed Civilian Protection in Palestine, one of several volunteer groups seeking to protect West Bank Palestinians from attack. Josie, one of the volunteers, who preferred not to give her full name for her own safety, said it was impossible for her to stay safe and comfortable at her home in north Wales in the face of such obvious oppression. “I don’t like injustice anywhere. I don’t like it in the UK, in my everyday life. Equality, human rights and justice matter to me,” Josie said. “Families are being driven away from their homes and there’s no one to call. There’s no one on their side. If they ring the police, they get taken to jail. And it saddens me that the whole world, the international community, is failing to stand up for Palestinians and their defence and independence in the same way it is standing up for Ukraine.” Josie sees the recent pepper-spray attack on the volunteers’ compound as an uncomfortable but ultimately encouraging sign. “It shows we are interfering with the plan,” she said. “We’re making it harder for the settlers to take what they want.” Settler attacks on international volunteers are on the rise, as they become more of an obstacle to the seizure of Palestinian land. At the end of November, three Italians and a Canadian were attacked and robbed in the nearby village Ein al-Duyuk, close to Jericho. On 7 December, a gang of eight masked Israeli settlers armed with clubs raided a Palestinian family home on a hillside outside the village of al-Mughayyir, north-east of Ramallah, injuring a 13-year-old Palestinian boy, his 59-year-old grandmother and international volunteers with the International Solidarity Movement from Colombia, the US, France and the UK. Phoebe Smith, the 31-year-old British volunteer, suffered extensive bruising, and a gash in her arm. She was recovering last week but determined to go back to help defend the Abu Hamam family, the Palestinians the volunteers have been trying to shield. “I want to support the family in any way that I can and just show them that we can’t be pushed away. They have to remain there. Their livelihood is tied to being at the home and that is their life,” Smith said. “I was a charity worker in the UK working closely with refugees and had come across a lot people who’ve been forcibly displaced from their homes,” she said. “Coming to Palestine felt like one small way of something that was not just watching from the sidelines.”

India’s doctors sound alarm over boom in availability of weight loss jabs

India’s leading doctors have warned of the dangers of an unregulated boom in weight loss injections, and emphasised they are not a magic pill to solve the country’s growing epidemic of diabetes and obesity. Demand for appetite-suppressing drugs such as Mounjaro, Wegovy and Ozempic has surged since they were introduced into the Indian market this year. In the eight months since it was approved for sale, Mounjaro – a jab that regulates blood sugar and suppresses appetite to help with diabetes and obesity – is now India’s highest-selling drug, overtaking antibiotics. Its commercial success has led its producer, the drug company Eli Lilly, to begin trials on a similar drug that works on suppressing appetite, and could be released in India in pill form by next year. An Eli Lilly spokesperson said: “Rising urbanisation, sedentary lifestyles, and changing diets have made weight management a growing public health priority. This convergence of high unmet need, growing awareness and improving access to innovative therapies makes India a significant market for weight loss drugs.” The drug company Novo Nordisk is also pushing for a share of the market. It launched Ozempic this month at the competitively low price of 8,800 rupees (£73) for four jabs a month, compared with the 14,000 rupees (£115) monthly cost of Mounjaro – prices beyond the reach of the average Indian household. But by March next year, the drug company patents on many of these semaglutide drugs is due to expire in India. This will open the market to domestic companies who are developing their own cheaper versions, which are expected to flood the market and make prices more affordable. Experts predict the market for weight loss drugs in India will hit $150bn (£112bn) a year by the end of the decade. Many medical professionals and patients have hailed the wide access to these jabs as a long-overdue necessity for India, which is in the grips of a surge in obesity and diabetes that threatens to overwhelm the country’s already underfunded and overburdened healthcare system. According to experts, diabetes and obesity are likely to become the biggest killers in India by 2030. A recent global analysis found that India had roughly 212 million adults with diabetes, accounting for more than a quarter of the global total. A study by the Lancet found India had about 180 million adults who were overweight or obese in 2021 – and by 2050, this could increase to 450 million, equating to almost a third of India’spredicted adult population. Mohit Bhandari, one of India’s leading bariatric surgeons, said he believed that the official numbers of people with diabetes and obesity in India were a “significant undercount due to poor data collection” and estimated they were more than 10% higher than government records. However, Bhandari is among those urging caution at the widespread and unregulated use of weight loss drugs, which he said were already being abused and mis-prescribed with possible long-term consequences. “The GLP-1 drugs already very important for India, they’re more than welcome,” he said. “However, there are very significant problems and caveats to this. These jabs should be properly controlled by the government.” Bhandari warned of the risks of allowing the drugs to be prescribed by pharmacists and GPs, many of whom are connected to certain chemist shops and benefit financially from putting patients on these jabs. The jabs are also increasingly available in gyms and beauty clinics. “There needs to be rigorous screening and check-ups of patients being put on these drugs,” Bhandari said. “They cause a lot of muscle loss, they can cause pancreatitis, gallstones, even blindness in some patients with certain conditions, so this regulation is crucial.” He called on the government to limit who can prescribe the drugs to a board of specialist doctors who would put patients on a long-term programme. “No other country will have people taking these drugs on the same scale as in India,” he said. “It means the scale of complications could get very high if there’s no strict discipline in how they are given out to patients. The drugs are good but only in safe hands.” Vidhi Dua, 36, has diabetes and had struggled with obesity for most of her life. She was prescribed Mounjaro and began taking it in September when her weight reached 95kg (14st). “I’ve tried so many things before this but I’ve never been able to get my weight down,” she said. “I’m hopeful this will work and I can finally get off insulin but it’s not easy, there are very difficult side effects on the stomach and the muscles. I think it’s worrying this has become the latest fad just for cosmetic weight loss. I don’t think people understand the impact they have on the body.” Anoop Misra, one of India’s most prominent endocrinologists working at Fortis hospital in Delhi, echoed the warnings. Misra said that poor dietary habits, sedentary lifestyles and environmental pollution were likely to be the key drivers of the surge in diabetes and obesity in India, which is evident in the affluent urban elite and poorer rural communities. Misra said he was seeing an unparalleled demand for the drugs and was now prescribing them to three to seven patients a day, after thorough counselling. He predicted that once the non-patented versions are approved for sale next year, India will become one of the world’s biggest and cheapest markets for GLP-1 drugs. Nonetheless, he emphasised that treating the “nationwide epidemic” of obesity and diabetes required widespread lifestyle changes and education, and weight loss jabs were only part of the solution. “These drugs can help, but they can not solve India’s obesity and diabetes crisis,” he said. “For most people, the foundation must remain nutrition education, healthier diets, exercise, and affordable weight loss medications when necessary. “A worrying trend is people seeking these drugs simply because they repeatedly default on diet and exercise. Medication cannot replace lifestyle change.” Misra said that there were still significant challenges ahead for India in its battle with obesity and diabetes, many of them cultural. “Many women tell me that if they stop preparing the calorie-dense, oil-laden dishes their husbands prefer, it leads to anger and conflict,” he said. “This shows how difficult it is to change dietary patterns in Indian households – even when families know the health risks.”

‘From her pen sprang unforgettable females’: 16th-century Spanish author’s knight’s tale given reboot

Sixty years before a gaunt and deluded nobleman from La Mancha was overdosing on tales of derring-do, visiting his madness on those around him – and single-handedly rewriting the rules of fiction – the deeds of another heroic knight had already made literary history. Though completely eclipsed by Don Quixote, Cristalián de España, which was first published in 1545, has a unique claim to fame. Its 800 pages, bristling with swords, sorcerers, dragons and damsels, make up the earliest known work by a female Spanish novelist. But while Miguel de Cervantes and his fatal skewering of chivalric romance have long permeated western culture, the life and work of Beatriz Bernal have been largely relegated to the sphere of academic research. A new, illustrated adaptation of her novel, called Las aventuras del caballero Cristalián (The Adventures of Cristalián the Knight), aims to redress the balance and introduce Bernal’s work to younger readers. Its adapter, the children’s author Diego Arboleda, first heard Bernal’s name while studying Spanish literature at university. “She’s one of those writers who are studied a lot but who haven’t managed to break out of the cage of academic studies,” said Arboleda. “It’s ironic because the kind of chivalric romance that Beatriz Bernal wrote did have a big audience back then – even though a lot of people couldn’t read.” Bernal, who was born to a well-to-do family in northern Spain at the beginning of the 16th century, published Cristalián when she was in her early 40s. The first edition did not bear her name and was attributed to “a noble and native lady of the most loyal town of Valladolid”. But the second edition, published posthumously in 1587, named her as the book’s author. Although she is unfamiliar to today’s readers, Bernal made her mark in her own time and her eponymous knight was namechecked in a verse by the Spanish Golden Age poet Luis de Góngora. Arboleda’s interest in Bernal was rekindled a few years ago and he found himself taking advantage of Spain’s lengthy Covid lockdown to read and transcribe a digital version of Cristalián that the University of Valencia’s historical library had uploaded to the web. “I love the text itself but I also love her as an author,” he said. “There was this woman in the 16th century who was writing a book that was full of fantasy and imagination.” Arboleda was so taken with Bernal that he introduced her as a character in his recent book, Una librería en el bosque (A bookshop in the wood). “I saw that a lot of the people who were reading that book couldn’t read Beatriz’s Cristalián … because the transcriptions aren’t accessible.” The writer’s proposal for an adaptation of Cristalián – based on two episodes from the second edition of the novel – was accepted by his publisher, Anaya. Arboleda said he had chosen those particular adventures because of what they reveal about Bernal’s mind and her creations. “She has this female vision within a genre that was very masculine,” he said. “Her female characters aren’t passive, they’re strong and active.” Although female sorcerers abound in chivalric literature, Bernal’s character Membrina is described as being so wise “that she never wanted to take a husband in order that no one should order her about”. Similarly, the female errant knight Minerva is, in Arboleda’s words, “a really good warrior who’s very powerful and very brave”. “Bernal is moving away from these archetypal female characters that are passive,” he said. “And instead of a princess who has to be saved by a knight, you have Minerva the knight saving people.” But, above all, Cristalián is a massively fun read. “There’s this female giant who flies a dragon that you don’t sit on,” said Arboleda. “There’s a door in its side and you open it and get in. It’s like a plane or like the bus from [Hayao] Miyazaki’s My Neighbour Totoro. There are so many details like that.” Donatella Gagliardi, an associate professor of Spanish literature at the Orientale University in Naples and the author of a 2010 work on Bernal, said the writer’s pioneering work had “legitimised the female voice” in a very male literary world. “Beatriz preferred weaving chivalric plots in her Cristalián to weaving wool and linen, and she chose a literary genre against which contemporary moralists and self-righteous individuals constantly launched invectives,” said Gagliardi. “From her pen sprang unforgettable female characters.” For Arboleda, the text is as irresistible as the figure of its half-forgotten author. “Historically speaking, everything was against Beatriz Bernal,” he said. “She was a woman and she was choosing not to write a ‘virtuous’ book about religion or offering advice to other women. Instead, she wrote in this chivalric genre that was so successful but which then disappeared.” He hopes his adaptation, with pictures by Eugenia Ábalos, will end up in the hands of young readers who will discover that it is not so different from more familiar sagas such as the Arthurian legends and The Lord of the Rings. “That makes me smile because now that the book is reaching readers, there’s some small satisfaction there for Beatriz Bernal. It’s not revenge, it’s just seeing that after such a long time, people are enjoying her text, even if they don’t know it was written by a woman.”

Ukraine war briefing: Russian missiles strike port near Odesa, killing seven, officials say

A Russian missile attack late on Friday on infrastructure around Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Pivdennyi in the Odesa region killed seven people and injured 15, Ukrainian officials said. It comes after Ukraine said it had attacked a Russian “shadow fleet” tanker with aerial drones off the coast of Libya on Friday, in the first such strike in the Mediterranean since Moscow’s full-scale invasion. Odesa, a focal point of Ukrainian grain and other exports, has been a frequent target of Russian attacks. Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Oleksiy Kuleba said Ukraine was talking to Moldovan authorities to find alternative routes away from the affected area so trucks and passengers could cross the border. In Moldova, authorities set up temporary camps at border crossings to provide shelter and food for travellers making their way to Ukraine. Zelenskyy said a €90bn loan from the EU to Ukraine that was secured on Friday to meet urgent financial needs amounted to “significant support that truly strengthens our resilience”, adding: “It is important that Russian assets remain immobilised and that Ukraine has received a financial security guarantee for the coming years.” The loan will last for two years and Kyiv would only repay it if and when Russia paid war reparations. Putin intends to capture all of Ukraine and reclaim parts of Europe that belonged to the former Soviet empire, according to six sources familiar with US intelligence. The reports present a starkly different picture from that painted by Donald Trump and his Ukraine peace negotiators, who have said Putin wants to end the conflict. The most recent of the reports dates from late September, according to one of the sources. The intelligence also contradicts the Russian leader’s denials that he is a threat to Europe, and comes as Putin says “the ball is now fully and completely” in the court of Kyiv and its western allies regarding an end to the war. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Friday promised not to force Ukraine into any agreement to end Russia’s invasion as European allies joined fresh talks in Miami. The weekend talks come as Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, in an annual news conference vowed to press ahead with his military offensive in Ukraine. Donald Trump’s envoys have pressed a plan in which the US would offer security guarantees to Ukraine, but Kyiv would likely be expected to surrender some territory. Rubio said both sides had to agree: “We can’t force Ukraine to make a deal. We can’t force Russia to make a deal. They have to want to make a deal.” Rubio said he may join the talks in Miami on Saturday, which are being led by Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and will include top Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov and officials from Britain, France and Germany. Umerov said he would be “acting clearly in line with the priorities defined by the [Ukrainian] president: security must be guaranteed reliably and in the long term.” Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev is also heading to Miami to meet Witkoff and Kushner, a Russian source told Reuters. The source said that any meeting between Dmitriev and the Ukrainian negotiators had been ruled out. Witkoff and Kushner have been working with EU and Ukrainian negotiators on an amended version of a peace plan, earlier drafts of which were criticised by the EU and Ukraine as being slanted toward Russia.

Gaza no longer in famine but hunger levels remain critical, UN says

The famine in Gaza has ended as a result of increased humanitarian aid deliveries into the territory, the UN said on Friday, though it warned that levels of hunger and the humanitarian situation remained critical. Almost one in eight people in Gaza still faced food shortages, the UN said, adding that persistent hunger had been made worse by winter flooding and the colder weather. Most people in Gaza live in tents or other substandard accommodation as Israel destroyed much of the housing and civilian infrastructure during its two-year war. Israel has partly eased restrictions on the entry of aid since an October ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, but delivery was still limited and inconsistent, the UN said. “No areas are classified in famine,” said the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) initiative, used by the UN to monitor food crises. The IPC first declared a famine in parts of Gaza in August after Israeli restrictions of food aid into the territory led to mass starvation, with at least 450 people starving to death, according to the Gaza ministry of health. The monitor said that despite the end of the famine classification, the situation in Gaza still remained dire, with “the entire Gaza Strip classified in emergency”. According to the IPC’s five-phase classification system, the emergency stage is just a step below famine and occurs when households have “very high acute malnutrition and excess mortality” due to lack of food. Before the ceasefire, Israel maintained a severe blockade on the entry of aid into Gaza, described as “systematic obstruction by Israel” by the UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, Tom Fletcher, in August. After the US-mediated ceasefire took effect in October, Israel began to allow more aid from the UN and its partners to enter. “Following the ceasefire … the latest IPC analysis indicates notable improvements in food security and nutrition compared to the August 2025 analysis, which detected famine,” the IPC said. Aid workers have said that the deal remains fragile, however, with Israel carrying out near-daily strikes in the territory and both sides trading accusations of ceasefire violations. About 1.6 million people were expected to face “crisis” levels of hunger in the next four months, the IPC said, warning that if the ceasefire broke down, the strip could slip back into famine. Israel has vehemently denied the accusations that there is famine in Gaza and that it is restricting the entry of aid. Israel’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Oren Marmorstein, said in a post on X on Friday that in the face of “overwhelming and unequivocal evidence, even the IPC had to admit that there is no famine in Gaza”. Cogat, the Israeli body in charge of humanitarian affairs in Gaza, said the IPC report “portrays a distorted, biased, and unfounded picture of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip”. The humanitarian community and the UN have widely acknowledged famine in Gaza, and the IPC is considered the global authority on food crises. Oxfam said hunger in Gaza remained at an “appalling” level and accused Israel of blocking humanitarian groups from bringing aid into the territory. “Oxfam alone has $2.5m worth of aid including 4,000 food parcels, sitting in warehouses just across the border. Israeli authorities refuse it all,” Nicolas Vercken, the campaigns and advocacy director at Oxfam France, said in a statement. Hundreds of thousands of people are still enduring torrential rains and the cold in frayed tents. Pictures of flooded encampments at the start of winter have circulated on social media. The threat of disease outbreaks remains high as hygiene conditions are subpar in the crowded tent settlements. On Wednesday, a 29-day-old baby died of hypothermia, according to Gaza’s ministry of health. “Children are losing their lives because they lack the most basic items for survival,” said Bilal Abu Saada, the nursing team supervisor at Nasser hospital, which received the baby before it died. The ceasefire remains fragile, with negotiators still unable to bridge the differences necessary to move to the second phase of the deal – meant to lead to a permanent peace. The US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, is due to meet senior Qatari, Egyptian and Turkish officials in Miami on Friday to discuss how to move to the second part of the ceasefire deal, Israeli media reported. Under the second phase, Israel is supposed to withdraw from the 53% of Gaza it still controls, while a transitional authority will replace Hamas as the governing power, and an international stabilisation force is to be deployed in the territory. The Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani, warned on Thursday that delays in moving to the second phase of the deal, as well as ceasefire violations, “endanger the entire process”.

Disabled people in England ‘betrayed’ by cuts to new-build accessibility targets

Government plans to make huge cuts to targets for accessible new-build homes in England have been labelled a “monumental reversal” by campaigners, who say disabled people have been left feeling “betrayed and excluded”. In its proposals for changes to the country’s planning system, the government said a minimum of 40% of new-build homes would be built to improved accessibility standards – M4(2) – which include step-free access and wider doorways and corridors. The proposals set no minimum target for the proportion of wheelchair accessible – M4(3) – new-build homes, which disability campaigners believe should be at least 10%. The move is a big climbdown from the previous Conservative government’s commitment to making all new homes meet the M4(2) standard as part of a push for better accessibility throughout the housebuilding industry. Mikey Erhardt, policy and campaigns officer at Disability Rights UK, said it was “absolutely incredible to witness the government’s lack of principle” on the issue. “This is a monumental reversal of existing policy. We had been awaiting the plans to implement a previous 100% figure and this decision leaves disabled people feeling betrayed and excluded, and questioning the government’s commitment to disability equality,” he said. “Requiring 100% of all new-build homes to be built to improved accessibility standards, with 10% to wheelchair user standards, would have been the right thing to do, creating a level playing field for developers and sending a strong signal that our housing stock must change to meet the needs of our older and disabled citizens. “The government’s failure of resolve and watered down proposal leaves a bitter taste, raising questions about whose interests are being served.” Millie Brown, deputy director for homes at the Centre for Ageing Better, said the 40% target was an “important step in the right direction”, although she acknowledged it was a “step back” from the Conservative government’s previous plans. “Of course, the announcement could have gone further,” she said. “We would hope that local authorities are encouraged to view 40% as the minimum to achieve and exceed.” The government’s proposed changes to the planning system say that 40% of new homes should meet the M4(2) standard, but that councils should “set requirements for M4(2) that meet or exceed their locally assessed need for this housing”. This category of home accessibility requires step-free access, wider doors and entrance-level toilets to make them adaptable for people with limited mobility and older people. Homes built to the M4(3) standard must be fully accessible for full-time wheelchair users, with ample turning spaces and accessible bathrooms and kitchens. Many local authorities set their own targets on this – since 2015, in London the standard has been 90% of homes at M4(2) and 10% at M4(3). But rates fluctuate sharply across the country – analysis by the Centre for Ageing Better found that people living in the East Midlands or north-east of England were six times less likely to be living in a fully accessible home compared with people living in London. Just 13% of homes in England were fully accessible, the research found. The housing secretary, Steve Reed, said the changes to the planning system were part of his plan to “get Britain building” and that “we owe it to the people of this country to do everything within our power to build the homes they deserve”. Mark Gale, policy manager at the disability charity Sense, said he wanted the government reconsider the accessibility targets. “We’re disappointed to hear the government is cutting back on accessibility targets for new homes,” he said. “Inaccessible housing can be a huge barrier to independence for disabled people with complex needs. Sadly, there is often far too little suitable housing stock available, meaning some people have no choice but to live in homes that don’t meet their needs.” The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has been contacted for comment.