China has forcibly detained an estimated million Uighurs, Kazakhs and others

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as the Conservative party extends its lead over Labour to 14 pointsIntroduction: Sterling hits €1.19Survation poll give solid Tory leadPound hits $1.318 against US dollar - a seven-month highPolitics Live: Labour sets out plan for first 100 days in office 9.39am GMT Some stocks could rally if the Conservatives win Thursday’s election, given Labour’s commitment to nationalise parts of the utilities sector.But Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, says Brexit uncertainty could still hold the market back:The pound nudged ahead to $1.3162 as the latest polls showed the Conservative Party extending its lead ahead of the General Election later this week. “The key question for investors is by how much UK shares could bounce on a Tory majority win. This scenario would remove various negative factors which have been weighing on markets such as Labour renationalising transport companies. Yet there is still Brexit to tackle which sustains some level of uncertainty among investors.” 9.18am GMT Elsewhere in the City, shares in oil producer Tullow are in freefall after announcing its CEO and exploration director had both resigned. Continue reading...

PM gives interview to radio station as general election campaign enters its final daysSign up for the Guardian’s morning briefingCorbyn launches final election push to deny Tories a majority 9.31am GMT On the subject of whether or not there will be checks on goods going from Britain to Northern Ireland under Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan (see 9.23am), it is worth pointing out that the briefing issued by the Conservative party press office on Friday, in response to the document leaked by Labour on this subject, specifically said there would be checks. It said (bold type inserted by me):The deal ensures that there will not be any tariffs in either direction between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, and allows for ‘unfettered access’ between Great Britain and Northern Ireland (Article 6, link). We will ensure no change to trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. There will be checks as goods head into Northern Ireland, but the only goods that will pay tariffs will be goods that are destined for the Republic. Boris Johnson has also managed to ensure that, if the UK Government believes that someone has paid a customs fee who shouldn’t have, we have the unilateral power to reimburse or waive any tariff. This means that, if we have a majority Conservative government, we can ensure that goods headed to Northern Ireland never pay tariffs. 9.23am GMT When Boris Johnson was running for the Conservative party leadership, he had the enthusiastic backing of DUP MPs. That changed abruptly when Johnson unveiled his plan for a new withdrawal agreement that involved a de facto customs border down the Irish Sea - something he insisted “no British Conservative government” would accept when he gave a speech to the DUP annual conference in November 2018. Despite effectively being betrayed, the DUP does not want Jeremy Corbyn to win the election, and during the campaign it is been relatively reluctant to criticise Johnson in personal terms. But this morning Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, did let slip her true fee

1/ELECTION NIGHT FEVER
More than three years after Britons narrowly voted to leave the
European Union, the Dec. 12 general election will effectively
offer them another vote on how they want Brexit to proceed and
if they still think it should go ahead.

A U.S. bill supporting protests in Hong Kong has increased tensions with China

The scandal surrounding Der Spiegel journalist Claas Relotius is back, with a book by the colleague who exposed himFiction and non-fiction can feed off each other in unusual ways. In the winter of 2018, Germany was shaken by the biggest media scandal since the forged Hitler diaries, after it emerged that the country’s bastion of investigative journalism had published stories by a reporter who had “fictionalised” his prize-winning articles with armies of invented characters. Now the “Relotius scandal” has gone into its second round, with the publication of a non-fiction book by the journalist who exposed his fraudulent colleague: a detective story about the search for truth in the era of fake news that makes a more gripping read than most novelists could have managed.The plot of Juan Moreno’s Tausend Zeilen Lüge (A Thousand Lines of Lies) resembles that of the 2003 film Shattered Glass, about New Republic reporter Stephen Glass – a film that the young Der Spiegel journalist Claas Relotius was shown as a cautionary tale as part of his journalism degree. Claas Relotius was regarded as a likable colleague with a great talent for unearthing incredible stories from across the globe: a vivid inside account from a high-security prison in California; the tale of how a boy’s graffiti started the war in Syria; an exclusive interview with the parents of American football star Colin Kaepernick. Continue reading...

People held in controversial training camps in Xinjiang have "graduated" and new students will have the "freedom to come and go", the government of China's far western region said on Monday, slamming foreign estimates of the numbers detained.

Your guide to the BBC Question Time special debate with a young audience.

Much has changed since the start of Hong Kong's anti-government movement half a year ago.

Your morning briefing for 9 December 2019.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson will travel to the heartlands of Brexit Britain in a final campaign blitz ahead of Thursday's election, as he seeks to secure the parliamentary majority he needs to take the country out of the European Union.

Here’s what you need to know.

A note-perfect portrait of division and dysfunction, it was the TV show for our times – and its finale was earth-shattering This article contains spoilers for the final episodeSee our unfolding top 50 listMore on the best culture of 2019What. A. Finale. Catastrophe’s climax was always going to come closer to explosive than orgasmic, but it hurt like only 2019 could. Deeply: because even after four seasons of watching those frighteningly appealing monsters Sharon and Rob love-hate each other till death (or, perhaps worse, survival) did them part, we still cared. Shockingly: because it turned out we weren’t made entirely of Brexit-era cynicism and brutal laughs about Rob shagging in a neck brace, and we still wanted them to make it. Endlessly: because I haven’t stopped rewatching it since.Every time I return to that scene on a Boston beach, which is among the finest five minutes in sitcom history, it plays out differently, rising or falling with my own sea-levels of hope and despair. Sometimes they make it back to shore. Sometimes they don’t. It’s the exercise in human faith we need in a catastrophically faithless year. Continue reading...

As Britain braces itself for the Brexit endgame, leading poets – from Carol Ann Duffy to Andrew McMillan – take the pulse of our fragmenting worldFrom the collection Kin, Cinnamon Press, 2018 Continue reading...

A Boris Johnson victory would do nothing to hide the growing gap between Conservatism and the country at largeWhere are the Tories? Boris Johnson appears on TV from time to time, and his party machine is said to be in the midst of a social media blitz. But wherever I have been over the past month, the supposed likely winners in this election have been all but invisible. I have encountered Labour, Liberal Democrat and Brexit party activists, but no teams of Conservatives. The party and its leader come up in conversation, and plenty of people say the Tories will get their vote, but there is a strange, almost ghostly aspect to the story: amid the noise, there is a party trying to creep back into power while making as little impression as possible. Related: The gloves are off in Uxbridge, but Johnson is nowhere to be found Continue reading...