Top story: Middle class ‘fuelling organised crime’
Good morning. I’m Warren Murray with the news you have come to trust – and that’s official.
Everyone who comes into contact with potentially dirty money – from estate agents, high street solicitors and accountants to public schools, football clubs and luxury car garages – will risk consequences if they do not report it, the government has warned.
The security minister, Ben Wallace, has announced a crackdown on the £100bn of criminal money-laundering that takes place in the UK. A national economic crime centre will be launched today to target major offenders, but Wallace says the public also has a responsibility – singling out bootleg cigarettes, nail bars and car washes as havens for organised crime.
“The ‘wink, wink, nudge, nudge’ guy might push 10 packs of fags in that bar but he is [also] pushing a container and actually next week he doesn’t bring in a container of drugs, he trafficks some children,” Wallace said. “Those middle class people taking themselves into the nail bar in the local high street who don’t think they’re really fuelling organised crime, well they are.”
Raab caught in headlines – The Brexit secretary has made news for the wrong reasons after suggesting a deal with Brussels would be concluded in three weeks’ time. Dominic Raab sent the pound higher by writing to the Commons Brexit committee saying he would be “happy to give evidence when a deal is finalised, and currently expect November 21 to be suitable”. No 10 was caught by surprise and a reverse ferret came three hours later from Raab who clarified there was “no set date for the negotiations to conclude”. In a significant sign of possible progress, though, the Times has reported overnight that Theresa May has reached a deal with Brussels to maintain UK financial services companies’ continued access to European markets. The EU will reportedly accept that the UK has “equivalent” regulations to Brussels. Brussels and the UK would reportedly have to consult each other before changing or setting new financial regulations that could affect equivalence.
Khashoggi ‘killed straight away’ – Jamal Khashoggi was strangled in a premeditated killing as soon as he entered Saudi Arabia’s consulate, Turkish prosecutors have said. It sweeps aside Saudi explanations that he died accidentally in some sort of botched rogue rendition attempt. “The victim’s body was dismembered and destroyed following his death by suffocation,” said Istanbul’s chief prosecutor, Irfan Fidan. The Saudi prosecutor has been in Istanbul but tensions are apparent in what is supposed to be a joint investigation – Fidan said their discussions had yielded “no concrete result”. Turkey is believed to be keeping to itself damning audio and video evidence related to Khashoggi’s death.
Brave steps – Two men paralysed more than six years ago can stand and walk short distances with crutches or other support after their spinal cords were treated with electrical stimulation. “When you stimulate the nerves like this it triggers plasticity in the cells,” explained Swiss neuroscientist Grégoire Courtine. “The brain is trying to stimulate, and we stimulate at same time, and we think that triggers the growth of new nerve connections.”
The stimulation is timed to coincide with movement signals still being sent from the brain, and has to be kept up while the patient attempts to walk. “The big challenge is whether it can really change their life,” Courtine said. “This is an important first step, but the key now is to apply this very early after an injury when the potential for recovery is much larger.” His next trial will include patients whose injuries are no more than a month old. Meanwhile there is growing evidence that removing the appendix might help prevent or delay Parkinson’s disease. Medical researchers think proteins held in the appendix might be escaping via a major nerve and reaching the brain where they cause damage.
Last of wild nature mapped – Just five countries hold 70% of the world’s remaining untouched wilderness areas and urgent international action is needed to protect them, according to new research. Researchers have produced a global map that sets out which countries are custodians for nature that is devoid of heavy industrial activity.
The study, published in the journal Nature, identifies Australia, the US, Brazil, Russia and Canada as the five countries that hold the vast majority of the world’s remaining wilderness. The authors are calling for an international target that protects 100% of all remaining intact ecosystems. “It’s achievable to have a target of 100%,” said lead author James Watson. “All nations need to do is stop industry from going into those places.”
Pints revoked – Round-the-clock drinking at UK airports could become a thing of the past under a Home Office review. Airlines have been calling for a crackdown on alcohol sales before flights following a spike in incidents involving drunken behaviour – they have warned that intoxicated passengers can expect to face fines of up to £80,000 if a plane has to be diverted because of disruptive behaviour. In September a Ryanair flight to Ibiza had to return to Manchester airport because of a “disruptive passenger” who was later arrested for drunkenness on board an aircraft.
Today in Focus podcast: Trump of the tropics – meeting Jair Bolsonaro
How did a far-right, pro-torture, dictatorship-praising populist become Brazil’s president-elect? The Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips, describes his run-in with Jair Bolsonaro and the fallout from his election.
Plus: Polly Toynbee talks about her Newsnight confrontation with former chancellor George Osborne, which went viral.
Lunchtime read: ‘Migrants are not a threat’
“Under both international and US law, anyone who claims a fear of persecution in their home country has a right to apply for asylum,” says Robert Painter from American Gateways, a Texas legal aid service for migrants. Donald Trump, though, has made it clear he doesn’t want to hear the migrants’ stories – threatening to cut aid to Central America, close the border and send as many as 15,000 soldiers to guard the frontier.
The midterms are a few days away, and the Trump administration has been whipping up fervour about the “migrant caravan” – keen to turn the national conversation away from domestic terrorism and an antisemitic mass shooting. “There is no doubt they view this as an opportunity to ramp up and bring back some of the cruellest policies they’ve implemented,” says Shaw Drake from the American Civil Liberties Union. “The US is fully capable of processing and receiving migrants; our reaction will say more about who we are and who we want to be.”
Sport
Frank Lampard conducted a post-match lap of the pitch to applaud those supporters who will always count him as one of their own after his Derby side scored two own goals and went down battling in a 3-2 Carabao Cup win for Chelsea. Arsenal will face Tottenham in the pick of the quarter-final ties after the Gunners squeezed past Blackpool. In the Women’s Champions League, Chelsea stormed into the quarter‑finals after a 6-0 win at Fiorentina, with Fran Kirby scoring a hat-trick for the away side to secure a 7-0 aggregate victory. The Hibernian head coach, Neil Lennon, and the Hearts goalkeeper Zdeněk Zlámal were both floored by incidents involving spectators during a chaotic and goalless Edinburgh derby.
The World Anti-Doping Agency has been accused of failing clean athletes, being soft on Russian doping and “bullying and disheartening” those arguing for reform in an extraordinary emergency summit at the White House. And plenty of pre-match stats will follow the England rugby union team back to the UK from Portugal today but the most eye-catching is that the co-captain Dylan Hartley has more caps than the rest of his pack combined.
Business
Dominic Raab’s possibly premature view of the Brexit negotiations gave the pound a boost with sterling rallying 0.5% on the prospect of Britain’s financial services industry being given continued access to European markets. The pound is buying $1.285 and €1.132, while the FTSE 100 is set to fall 0.4% despite a strong showing from Asian shares overnight. Meanwhile, in Australia the once red-hot Sydney housing market is seeing its biggest falls for nearly 30 years after a crackdown on lax lending standards.
The papers
The Guardian’s lead story is “Money-laundering crackdown on public schools and law firms”. Also on the front page is news that one in eight Brits are now vegan or vegetarian, as well as comments by chair of the National Police Chiefs Council that police should “refocus on core policing” rather than spending their time reporting misogyny.
Sara Thornton’s comments are the top story on the front page of the Mail: “At last, a police chief who wants to catch criminals” and the Times: “PC brigade wasting our time, warns top officer”. The Sun leads with news of a Home Office review into stopping airports from serving alcohol until 10am: “Departy’s over”. The Telegraph reports “Health risks to children of older fathers”, the i says: “Three unis on brink of bankruptcy” and the Mirror has “Insurance con costs families £350 a year”. The splash in the Express is “Brexit deal in 21 days” after Dominic Raab – prematurely, as it turned out – predicted an agreement about the UK’s departure from the EU would be finalised by 21 November. The FT reports “Jaguar Land Rover staff face fresh job fears in £2.5bn recovery drive”.
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