The Top Ten Ways to Stop Procrastinating Now

Police pulled back after attempted dawn raid on Polytechnic University was met with fire

• Full story: Police attempt to storm university after battle with protesters
  

3.08am GMT

Pro-democracy lawmaker Claudia Mo says medics are among those arrested at Poly U.

Hongkong police #arrest #medics who were on PolyU campus to help
This is surely #against #humanitarian law principles
Front: Doctor, Back: Nurse#HongkongProtests pic.twitter.com/prMD5m2uee

2.52am GMT

According to Reuters, a senior US official has condemned the “unjustified use of force” in Hong Kong and encouraged China to “protect Hong Kong’s freedom”.

“We condemn the unjustified use of force and urge all sides to refrain from violence and engage in constructive dialogue,” the official said.

Lawyers for Epstein’s victims say they were ‘almost completely ignored’ in interview

Prince Andrew is facing a transatlantic backlash over his extraordinary defence of his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein after lawyers who represent 10 of the billionaire predator’s victims branded the royal unrepentant and implausible and demanded that he speak to the FBI.

After the royal’s defiant Newsnight interview on Saturday triggered a disbelieving reaction from the public and the media, the prince was under growing pressure from critics in the UK and US on Sunday who demanded an apology for his conduct and said that his defence of his actions was simply not credible.

House speaker pushes back against president’s accusations that process is stacked against him as Schumer echoes her suggestion

Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi has invited PDonald Trump to testify in front of investigators in the House impeachment inquiry ahead of a week that will see several key witnesses appear publicly.

Pushing back against accusations from the president that the process has been stacked against him, Pelosi said Trump is welcome to appear or answer questions in writing, if he chooses.

Even the prime minister has chopped the vegetable out of her official menu after monsoon caused Indian crop failure

Bangladesh has been forced to import planeloads of onions as the price of the cooking staple soared to record highs, an official said, with even the prime minister chopping the bulb from her menu.

The price of onions – a sensitive subject in south Asia where shortages can trigger widespread discontent with political ramifications – has climbed to eye-watering levels in Bangladesh since neighbouring India banned exports in late September after heavy monsoon rains reduced the crop.

Party under pressure on climate crisis as Corbyn says Johnson can not be trusted

• The Tories’ green commitments
• The parties’ climate proposals

The Conservative party’s record on tackling the climate crisis was condemned by leading scientists and former government advisers on Sunday, as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn warned that the forthcoming election was the last chance to halt the escalating emergency.

Experts accused the Conservatives of copying rightwing politicians in the US by deliberately weakening environmental protections. Meanwhile, new analysis by Labour reveals that environmental policies put forward since 2017 and opposed by the Tories would have led to emissions reductions of over 70m tonnes a year by 2030 – more than the annual emissions of Portugal.

US president says potential Democratic rival is ‘somewhat better than that’ and urges North Korean leader to agree nuclear deal

Donald Trump has come to the defence of one of his potential rivals for the presidency, telling North Korea its recent description of Joe Biden as a “rabid dog” that should be “beaten to death” was a little unfair.

Trump’s criticism of Pyongyang – albeit via a half-hearted endorsement of Biden’s character – came amid attempts to resurrect stalled nuclear talks, with Trump imploring North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, to “get the deal done”, and the US and South Korea agreeing to postpone an annual air force drill the North routinely condemns as a rehearsal for an invasion.

Dan McGarry of the Daily Post told at Brisbane airport the Vanuatu immigration service had barred him from flying back to the island country

The media director of a Vanuatu newspaper whose visa renewal was refused this month has been barred from flying home to Vanuatu from Brisbane with his partner.

Dan McGarry, who has lived in Vanuatu for 16 years, applied to have his work permit renewed earlier this year but it was rejected. McGarry believes his visa was refused due to articles he had published about China’s influence in Vanuatu.

‘I’m not tearing down the system,’ Bernie Sanders says in response to former president’s message

Democratic 2020 presidential candidates have rejected criticism from former president Barack Obama, after he warned the field of White House hopefuls not to veer too far to the left because it would alienate voters.

Though Obama did not mention anyone by name, the message he delivered before a room of Democratic donors in Washington on Friday was a clear word of caution about the candidacies of Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who are seen as two of the top-tier candidates in the crowded field.

Italian city suffers worst series of high tides since 1872, with an estimated cost of €1bn

Venice has closed St Mark’s Square as the city suffered a third major flooding in less than a week, while rain lashed the rest of Italy and warnings were issued in Florence and Pisa.

Venice was hit with an “acqua alta”, or high water, of 150cm (5ft) on Sunday, lower than Tuesday’s 187cm – the highest level in half a century – but still dangerous.

Former Wallabies player’s comments in sermon follow controversy over his sacking for social media posts

Scott Morrison has labelled comments by sacked rugby union star Israel Folau linking devastating bushfires to Australia passing laws to legalise abortion and same-sex marriage “appallingly insensitive”.

Although both the prime minister and the Labor leader Anthony Albanese defended Folau’s right to express the view, condemnation on Monday was swift and bipartisan.

Three decades after the Berlin Wall fell, the crossing is a mess of souvenir shops and fast-food restaurants – and time is running out to change things

It was the most famous border crossing in the Berlin Wall, the official gateway for allied diplomats, military personnel and foreigners to enter communist East Berlin by road.

And in 1961, Checkpoint Charlie seized the world’s attention when a diplomatic spat about allied forces’ freedom to travel in East Berlin quickly escalated and saw Soviet and American tanks squaring up to one another. The world watched aghast, fearful of a third world war, as a formidable flock of superpower tanks rolled towards the border, standing just 100 yards apart.

Restaurants offering fixed-price three-course menús have been a cornerstone of the country’s urban life for decades, but tourism, shorter lunch breaks and gentrification have put them under threat. What will it take to fight back?

Food is at the heart of Spanish culture. From social life to business deals, everything revolves around food – above all, lunch. How did Mariano Rajoy, then prime minister, react last year when faced with an unprecedented vote of no confidence? He went to lunch. For eight hours.

The three-course menú del día has been the cornerstone of Spanish cuisine and social life for generations. Consequently, the restaurants serving these menús – generally low on aesthetics and high on value for money – have been a feature of the urban landscape. Now, though, their existence is threatened by a combination of rising rents, changing tastes and working hours, tourism and gentrification.

A bureaucratic loophole has left Kafr Aqab as a district where Palestinians can keep a foot in both Jerusalem and the West Bank – and be with their loved ones

For some Palestinian sweethearts, there’s only one place to live.

It’s an unremarkable suburb, crisscrossed by thin muddy streets and dotted with high-rise apartment blocks that cling to the steep hills on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

While hi-tech cosmopolitan centres like Milan flourish financially and culturally, former industrial towns continue to decline

Night-time haunts go in and out of fashion, but the Bar Basso in Milan, which opened in 1967, remains one of the city’s most venerable social institutions. Embodying a very Milanese combination of stylish prosperity and tasteful design, it is a favourite destination for the area’s creative elite and the discreetly wealthy.

Tucked away in a corner, Pierluigi Dialuce is explaining why, if a political nightmare unfolds in the rest of Italy, the city he has made his home will be able to cope.

Appearance was secured after six months of negotiations and royal’s team referred decision upwards

As television interviews go, it was one of the most excruciating – and most sought-after – in British history. But when Prince Andrew’s painstakingly negotiated head-to-head with Emily Maitlis in Buckingham Palace finished, the royal appeared oblivious to the damage that had been done. In fact, he was so pleased with how things had gone that he gave the Newsnight team a tour of the palace afterwards.

On Sunday, as the prince’s team picked up the pieces from an interview widely perceived to have been disastrous for his reputation, the remarkable story of how it came about emerged – from the departure of a key aide to drawn-out discussions and a last-minute message to the Queen.

Planned changes would be biggest shakeup to country’s electoral system for 50 years

A bill is being introduced that would give the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds in many elections in Wales and empower local authorities to decide which voting system they use.

The Labour-led Welsh government said the planned changes would be the biggest in the Welsh electoral system since the voting age was reduced to 18 in the UK half a century ago. They come as a bill to reduce the voting age to 16 for Welsh assembly elections nears the end of its journey through the Senedd.

The country’s traditional powerhouses on the centre-left and the centre-right face a moment of reckoning

Postwar German politics has a reputation for being moderate, consensual and a touch on the dull side. But there have been moments of high drama. In November 1959, for example, the Social Democratic party (SPD) abandoned its historic ambition to replace capitalism with socialism, dropped the Marxist account of class struggle and began to pitch itself as a broad-based Volkspartei (people’s party). History vindicated the decision. For the next 50 years or so, the SPD vied for power with the country’s other great political force, the CDU (and its CSU Bavarian ally), as both parties regularly achieved a vote share of over 40%.

Famed for their practice of big-tent politics, what the CDU and SPD would give for such numbers now. The agonies of Brexit and the rise of rightwing populism have claimed the political limelight around Europe. But those looking for clues to the continent’s future would do well to watch Germany closely over the coming weeks.

Alleged evidence implicates UK troops in murder of children in Afghanistan and Iraq

The UK government and the British army have been accused of covering up the killing of children in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Leaked documents allegedly contain evidence implicating troops in killing children and the torture of civilians.

Illegal fishing by Chinese-owned trawlers is costing the country millions – and one of the officials trying to stop it has now been missing for months

In his cramped living room in an Accra backstreet, Bernard Essien pulls out a sheet of paper – a statement signed by his elder brother Emmanuel and addressed to the Ghanaian police. Two weeks before 28-year-old Emmanuel vanished at sea, his handwritten account and accompanying video footage alleged illegal fishing by a trawler he had been working on. If the allegation was proved true, the ship’s captain faced a minimum fine of $1m.

Emmanuel Essien was a fishing observer, one of Ghana’s frontline defenders against an overfishing crisis that is among the worst in west Africa. Illegal and destructive practices by foreign-owned trawlers are draining the Ghanaian economy of an estimated £50m a year. Along its 350-mile coastline, overfishing has driven small pelagic species known as “people’s fish”, the staple diet, to the verge of collapse.

Prominent activists express skepticism after ex-New York mayor apologizes for program that disproportionately affected minorities

Potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg has apologized for his longstanding support of the controversial “stop-and-frisk” police strategy, a practice that he embraced as New York’s mayor and continued to defend despite its disproportionate impact on people of color.

The apology, however, was received skeptically by many prominent activists who noted that it was made as he is taking steps to enter the presidential race ahead of the 2020 US election.

Campaigners hail Alberto Fernández’s pledge to oversee U-turn in official policy

Argentina’s president-elect, Alberto Fernández, has promised he will move to legalise abortion after taking office on 10 December.

He will send a bill to congress which, if approved, would make Argentina the first major Latin American nation with legalised abortion. The ruling in the 45 million-strong country would follow decisions by its much smaller neighbour Uruguay, which legalised the practice in 2012, and Cuba, in 1965.

Australia can’t go on downplaying the largest economic shift in world history. Read the former PM’s speech in full

Taking some longer view of the strategic scenery, I have come to some key beliefs about the changes that are taking place globally.

The international system is fundamentally anarchic in structure. Two world wars in a century and Vietnam, Iraq, Syria gives the evidence of that. We should not confuse the relative peace of the last 30 years with the anarchy which lies latent.

Discrimination against girls is still entrenched in the laws of many African countries. Shocking examples are easy to find

I love my job, but it can be pretty depressing. I’ve spent the past year researching and writing the first-ever continental report of the routine, blatant discrimination suffered by African girls.

The fact that girls and women are treated as inferior citizens is hardly news, except that this report reveals the extent to which gender discrimination is frequently state-sanctioned – embedded into the laws, policies and practices of many African nations. We’re talking about legal, institutional discrimination with its roots in a deeply gendered and patriarchal society. We are also talking about the denial of respect for the dignity of the African girl.

New research raises hopes of oral vaccine for dogs, the chief source of transmission to humans

Researchers have discovered a way to stop rabies from shutting down critical responses in the immune system, a breakthrough that could pave the way for new tools to fight the deadly disease.

Rabies kills almost 60,000 people each year, mostly affecting poor and rural communities.

Study of chicken egg samples reveals presence of dangerous chemical compounds around areas where waste is dumped

Plastic waste exports to south-east Asia have been implicated in extreme levels of toxins entering the human food chain in Indonesia.

A new study that sampled chicken eggs around sites in the country where plastic waste accumulates identified alarming levels of dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls long recognised as extremely injurious to human health.

Campaigners urge global action on reproductive rights as US comments embolden anti-choice groups at Nairobi summit

The US will only support family planning programmes that offer alternatives to abortions, a senior policy adviser has told a conference in Nairobi.

In a statement that has emboldened anti-choice groups in the city, Valerie Huber, the US special representative for global women’s health, also told a summit on population and development that her country sought to combat gender-based violence by investing in programmes that respected the rights of women and girls, but didn’t compromise “the inherent value of every human life – born and unborn”.

Easy to catch but hard to diagnose, TB is almost as deadly today as it was 150 years ago. Better, cheaper drugs are a priority

Tuberculosis has killed more people than any other disease in history. Last year, 1.5 million people died from TB and 10 million more acquired it. A shocking one-quarter of the world’s population is infected. That’s not much better than 1993, when one-third of the world was infected and the World Health Organization declared TB a global emergency. We are losing the battle.

Earlier this month, experts gathered in Hyderabad for the 50^th Union World Conference on fighting the disease. When the first such gathering was held in 1867, TB was the leading cause of death in industrialised nations. Today, it still ranks in the top 10 worldwide. Why, despite all the progress in medicine and public health over the past 150 years, is TB still the most common and lethal of all infectious diseases?

Toppling of Bolivian president reignites movement to remove leftist ally Nicolás Maduro

Venezuela’s flagging opposition movement has hit the streets for its first major protests in months, as leaders sought to reignite their campaign to force Nicolás Maduro from power after his leftist ally Evo Morales was toppled in Bolivia.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets on Saturday morning in towns and cities across the crisis-stricken south American country, hoping the dramatic sea change in Bolivian politics might portend similar change in Venezuela.

How poignant that Behrouz was freed from Australia’s grip and welcomed by Christchurch, a city that knows prejudice only too well

Today our world is a little freer, a little fairer, and a little more hopeful. Today, one less innocent man is incarcerated in Australia’s detention camp on Manus Island, guilty only of seeking refuge from persecution. Behrouz Boochani was no ordinary detainee. The Iranian Kurdish journalist and author became the voice of Manus detainees, and with it the persistent conscience of us all as we learned of the atrocities committed by the Australian government on its remote Pacific island detention camps.

How poignant that he was finally freed to visit Christchurch, a city that knows only too well the violence and suffering borne of prejudice. A city that wrapped its arms so warmly around its refugee community after a terror attack just seven months ago, to heal their wounds and stand for inclusion. Behrouz has said that Christchurch has taught the world about kindness this year. He is also quick to note that the prejudice that leads to violence against refugees is the same that underpins policies allowing cruel treatment of them by governments such as Australia’s. For him, the plight of refugees and displaced persons across the globe right now is connected to the fear-mongering politics of Donald Trump and Scott Morrison.

Beyond the tussle between Democrat Adam Schiff and Republican Devin Nunes is the big question – will party interest reign supreme?

The battle for American hearts and minds in the unfolding impeachment drama is, at its core, a battle between two very different California congressmen.

In the red corner is Devin Nunes, a Republican former dairy farmer from the state’s agricultural Central Valley, who long ago threw his lot in with Fox News talking-point orthodoxy and has never hesitated to defend Donald Trump, no matter how much the rest of the political establishment – and the factual record – was arrayed against him.

The mosque attacks rocked New Zealand but good deeds and generosity will help keep us together

The day of 15 March 2019 will stay with me forever. I was working in my bedroom, listening to radio and drawing. The on-air chat and music was interrupted as news of a shooting at a mosque in Christchurch began to filter through. How could this possibly be happening in our quiet little island tucked away at the bottom of the world?

I brushed it off as some sort of mistake, until news of a shooting at a second mosque emerged minutes later. While witnesses and locals reported the horror that had just unfolded, I scrolled online looking for some sort of explanation, a way to make sense of it – and found everyone was lost for words as I was.

Police deployed water cannon against protesters in Hong Kong on Sunday, in some cases using blue-dyed water laced with pepper spray. Teargas was also fired in an attempt to drive people away from the streets outside Polytechnic University. Protesters who occupied several university campuses last week have largely retreated, but hardliners have fortified themselves inside the campus and are refusing to leave

• Fire, rocks and teargas fly in day of battle at Hong Kong university
  

Chinese soldiers stationed in Hong Kong came out to clear streets on Saturday, which protesters had strewn with debris to slow down any police advances while they had been on the campus. People's Liberation Army soldiers joined the cleanup outside Hong Kong Baptist University, the site of clashes earlier in the week. They can only be deployed to help with disaster relief or to maintain public order if requested by the local government. The controversial move threatens to escalate already high tensions in the Chinese territory

• Hong Kong: Chinese troops deployed to help clear roadblocks
  

Thirty years ago, Czech photographer Bohumil Eichler was working for a dissident student-run news agency when the Velvet Revolution began. His work from Prague has rarely been seen, until now.

The second day of impeachment hearings featured compelling testimony from Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine who was sacked by Trump. Yovanovitch evidence drew links between corrupt elements in Ukraine and the Trump administration's push to force her from her post. She said she was 'shocked and devastated' by Trump's personal attacks on her. As she spoke, Donald Trump attacked her on Twitter, prompting the Democrat chair of the hearing, Adam Schiff, to read the tweets to Yovanovitch in real time. 'The effect is intimidating,' she said, as Democrats accused the president of witness intimidation on a day of high political drama 

• Trump smears and witness drama: key Marie Yovanovitch takeaways

The US president has denied that attacks directed at the former US ambassador to Ukraine, as she testified in the second day of impeachment hearings, amounted to witness intimidation. ‘Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,’ Trump wrote in tweets which were dramatically read aloud to Yovanovitch at the hearing. Democrats immediately accused Trump of attempting to intimidate a witness.

• Ukraine ambassador describes Trump’s ‘shocking’ smear campaign against her

Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House intelligence committee, read out a tweet by Donald Trump disparaging Marie Yovanovitch as the former US ambassador to Ukraine testified to the president's impeachment hearing. When Schiff asked whether she thought the tweet was intended to intimidate her, Yovanovitch replied: 'I can’t speak to what the president is trying to do, but I think the effect is to be intimidating.'

Schiff replied: 'I want to let you know, ambassador, that some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously.'

• Democrats to consider Trump Twitter smear in articles of impeachment – live

At least two people have died and several more have been injured in a shooting at Saugus high school in Santa Clarita, California, on Thursday. Footage showed sheriff's deputies swarming the school and lines of students being escorted away

• Santa Clarita: two dead and more hurt in high school shooting, authorities say