A Spanish judge has lifted the extradition order on the former Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, and four former cabinet members who fled to Belgium to avoid charges of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds.In a surprise move as campaigning officially began for this month’s Catalan election, supreme court judge Pablo Llarena withdrew European arrest warrants for the five, but national warrants still stand – meaning they would be likely to face arrest if they chose to return to Spain. Puigdemont said after the supreme court decision he would stay in Belgium “for the moment”. Llarena said he had been moved to act after becoming aware of a discrepancy between Belgian and Spanish law that would limit the charges under which the Catalans could be extradited and therefore be charged on their return.(theguardian)…[+]

Dustin Hoffman and John Oliver became embroiled in a heated argument during a public Q&A, after Oliver confronted Hoffman about allegations of sexual harassment made against him. According to a report in the Washington Post, the pair clashed midway through a 20th anniversary panel for the black comedy Wag the Dog that featured Hoffman and co-star Robert De Niro, as well as the film’s director Barry Levinson and producer Jane Rosenthal.

Satirist Oliver, who was hosting the panel, reportedly brought up the subject of sexual misconduct in Hollywood before directly asking Hoffman about historic allegations of harassment made against him by actor Anna Graham Hunter last month. Hunter claims that Hoffman groped her and made inappropriate comments when she was working as a 17-year-old intern on the set of a 1985 TV movie adaptation of Death of a Salesman. At the time Hoffman responded in a statement in which he expressed remorse “that anything I might have done could have put her in an uncomfortable situation. I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am.”(NU.nl)…[+]

Police in Delhi have launched an investigation after a baby that had been pronounced dead by doctors was found to be moving in a body bag as his parents prepared to deliver funeral rites. Two doctors have been sacked from Delhi’s upmarket Max hospital in Shalimar Bagh, where the boy and his twin sister were born prematurely at 22 weeks last week.

The girl was stillborn and the boy was in critical condition; soon afterwards, doctors pronounced him dead. Indian TV showed images of yellow plastic bags in which the bodies were reportedly wrapped by the hospital and returned to the family. “They handed us both bodies wrapped like a courier package from the back door,” the boy’s grandfather Kailash told NDTV. “After we travelled 3km, we felt a movement in one [bag]. We ripped it open, found bits of plastic and the baby inside, breathing.” He said the family had been preparing to perform the last rites in line with Hindu funeral traditions when a relative felt one of the bags wriggling in his lap.(theguardian)…[+]

Police in Malta have arrested 10 suspects over the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the country’s prime minister has said, nearly two months after the anti-corruption journalist was killed by a powerful car bomb. Joseph Muscat told a press conference that eight people – all Maltese nationals, most with criminal records – had been detained in early-morning raids in three different parts of the island. He tweeted later that two more suspects were also in custody.

Muscat said there was a “reasonable suspicion” the suspects were involved in the killing of Caruana Galizia, whose popular blog attacked high-level political corruption, shady business dealings and organised crime on the island. The joint police and military operation was the first breakthrough for the Maltese investigation, which has been helped by experts from the FBI, Europol and the Finnish and Dutch security services. Police now have 48 hours to interrogate the suspects and either charge or release them. Muscat, who was a frequent target of Caruana Galizia’s blog reports along with others in his inner circle, said he could give no further details of the arrests, the suspects or the evidence against them, but offered his “personal commitment” that those responsible for the killing would be found.(theguardian)…[+]

The Yemen civil war took a dramatic new turn on Monday when Houthi rebels backed by Iran killed the former president, punishing him for switching sides and seeking peace with Saudi Arabia.

Pictures of the corpse of Ali Abdullah Saleh appeared on Houthi-run television after the militia claimed it had killed him as he fled the capital, Sana’a. He had ruled Yemen for more than 30 years and was forced to resign in 2011 as part of the Arab spring political revolution. Houthi military officials said Saleh was killed as he and other top party leaders were travelling from Sana’a to his hometown of Sanhan. Houthi fighters followed him in 20 armoured vehicles, then attacked and killed him and almost all those with him. Gruesome video of his blood-spattered body were distributed on social media.  Earlier his house was destroyed in fierce fighting that has erupted in Sana’a in the past two days between Houthi militia and forces loyal to Saleh. Saudi-led coalition warplanes pounded Houthi positions close to the city airport, and the ministry of the interior.(theguardian)…[+]

At least 800 civilians have been killed in strikes in Iraq and Syria by the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State since the campaign began in 2014, according to a report released by the coalition. The estimate in the monthly report, which said coalition strikes had unintentionally killed at least 801 civilians between August 2014 and October 2017, was far lower than figures provided by monitoring groups. The monitoring group Airwars says a total of at least 5,961 civilians have been killed by coalition airstrikes.“We continue to hold ourselves accountable for actions that may have caused unintentional injury or death to civilians,” the coalition said in its report.

Since the start of the campaign against Isis militants, the coalition has carried out more than 28,000 strikes and has received 1,790 reports of potential civilian casualties, the report said. It was still assessing 695 reports of civilian casualties from strikes it carried out in Iraq and in Syria. The coalition says it goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties.(theguardian)…[+]

The leader of Iceland’s Left-Green movement has become the country’s new prime minister at the head of a broad three-party coalition that could restore a measure of political stability after a succession of scandals.

Katrín Jakobsdóttir, 41, a popular former education minister who is considered to be Iceland’s most trusted politician, took office on Wednesday after formally signing a new government accord with the centre-right Independence and Progressive parties.

She told local media the administration’s focus would be on greater investment in healthcare, education and transport infrastructure, sustaining Iceland’s economic recovery from the 2008 financial crash, and improving gender equality and LGBT rights. The outgoing prime minister, Bjarni Benediktsson’s Independence party narrowly won the 28 October election – the country’s second snap poll in less than a year – but lost a quarter of its seats, paving the way for Jakobsdóttir to form a left-led coalition.(theguardian)…[+]

Dutch police have launched a criminal investigation into the death of the Bosnian Croat commander Slobodan Praljak, who swallowed poison as his appeal was being streamed live around the world. The international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has invited local police officers to conduct the inquiry into how the chemical was smuggled into the high security courtroom in The Hague.

A spokeswoman for the war crimes court told the Guardian: “An independent investigation is ongoing which has been initiated by the Dutch authorities at the request of the ICTY. We will cooperate fully.”  She did not reveal whether anybody had yet been arrested or what type of poison Praljak drank.

A Dutch prosecutor, Marilyn Fikenscher, confirmed that the phial that the convicted Croat general hid in his jacket held a deadly poison. “There was a preliminary test of the substance in the container and all I can say for now is that there was a chemical substance in that container that can cause death,” Fikenscher said. An autopsy will be carried out shortly, a prosecution spokesman said. Praljak stunned the ICTY on Wednesday when he gulped down liquid from a small bottle seconds after a UN appeals judge confirmed a 20-year sentence against him.(theguardian)…[+]

With 3,000 customers a day, a restaurant, ample parking and turnover of €26m (£23m) a year, Checkpoint cafe, the largest cannabis-selling coffee shop in the Netherlands, was a fabulous commercial success. That was until it was closed down in 2009 for testing to the limits what the Dutch describe as their gedogenbeleid (tolerance policy) under which prosecutors turn a blind eye to the breaking of certain laws, including in the business of selling cannabis.

The latest and most likely final appeal hearing of criminal charges against the cafe’s owner, Meddie Willemsen, has highlighted what the president of a court in Den Bosch described as “paradoxes” in the Dutch approach to so-called soft drugs. Licensed coffee shops are allowed to sell cannabis from their premises, but can keep only 500g on site at any time. Production of the drug is illegal.

When Checkpoint was at its peak, Willemsen, 66, was regularly keeping about 200kg of cannabis on his large premises in Terneuzen, near the Belgian border. The size of the enterprise could have led to fairly reasonable assumptions that those providing the drugs would be large criminal gangs.(theguardian)…[+]

Voluntary assisted dying will be legal in Victoria from 2019, after a landmark bill successfully passed through state parliament. The government-led, amended bill passed the Legislative Assembly after more than 100 hours of debate across both houses, including several overnight sittings.

It will make the state the first Australian jurisdiction to legalise assisted dying since the Northern Territory’s short-lived Rights of the Terminally Ill Act was overturned by federal parliament in 1997. Since then the Victorian legislation marks the first time in the world that a parliament has gone through an extensive process to introduce voluntary assisted dying. Other countries have introduced laws through referendum or a court process.

Upper house MP Fiona Patten,one of the key proponents of the legislation, told Guardian Australia she was overwhelmed that it had passed. While the upper house passed the legislation one week ago 22 votes to 18 after a marathon debate, a number of amendments were made which had to pass the lower house. “It’s very clear the vast majority of Victorians are happy the parliament has done this work,” she said.(theguardian)…[+]