Democrats have long trod carefully around the “I” word. But as the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump’s election victory approaches, a prominent donor is pressuring lawmakers and candidates on the left to make impeachment a central message of their campaigns in 2018. In October, Tom Steyer, a billionaire hedge fund manager turned environmental activist, launched a “eight-figure” ad campaign demanding that elected officials and candidates in his party “take a stand” on removing Trump from office.

“The fact of the matter is that we believe he is dangerous to the American people now,” Steyer told the Guardian. “We believe that waiting is a mistake and we believe the events that will occur over the next year will show that we are right.” Steyer – who said he is “not ruling out” running for office himself in 2018 – has a list of reasons why he believes Trump should be impeached, which he has also outlined in a letter to congressional lawmakers.(theguardian)…[+]

The highest profile arrest in Saudi Arabia’s anti-corruption purge is Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, a multibillionaire with huge investments in western firms.

Prince Al-Waleed, 62 and one of the world’s richest men, has become one of the most familiar – and progressive – faces of Saudi in western media. While he has the lifestyle, jets, yacht and palace of a stereotypical Saudi billionaire, he has burnished a different image with interventions such as backing rights for Saudi women and denouncing President Trump on Twitter.

The prince, a grandson of Saudi’s first ruler and son of a Saudi finance minister, has an estimated net worth of $17bn (£13bn), according to Forbes magazine – although he has sued them for underestimating his wealth. He came to prominence internationally as a major backer of Citigroup in the 1990s, and more so when continuing to back the firm as its value evaporated during the financial crisis.(theguardian)…[+]

The ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and four associates have turned themselves in to Belgian police, the Brussels prosecutor’s office has said. Puigdemont is in custody awaiting a decision by the Belgian federal prosecutor on whether to execute Spain’s European arrest warrant and send him back home to face charges of sedition and embezzlement. A spokesman for the prosecutor said in a press conference in Brussels that the five men would be questioned on Sunday afternoon.

The investigating judge has 24 hours to make a decision on whether to execute the European arrest warrant issued by the Spanish government and start the process of deportation or dismiss it, most likely on the grounds that the Belgian state does not recognise similar charges. The judge could also execute the warrant but free Puigdemont who has the right to appeal, a process that could take 30 days to complete. The judge must make a decision by 9.17am on Monday morning, 24 hours after the former Catalan leader handed himself in. Puigdemont has been in Brussels since Monday having declared Spain’s courts as politicised.(theguardian)…[+]

The funeral of an investigative journalist killed in a car bomb near her home in Malta has been held without the presence of top government and opposition leaders, after her family objected to their attendance. No group or individual has so far come forward to claim responsibility for the attack on 16 October on Daphne Caruana Galizia, who led an investigation into corruption in Malta using the Panama Papers that implicated the government and the opposition.

Mourners included her husband, three adult sons and the European parliament president, Antonio Tajani, but President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca and the prime minister, Joseph Muscat, were told they were not welcome. A spokesman for Muscat said: “The family has made it widely known that it does not wish the state authorities to attend.” The government declared a national day of mourning and flags have flown at half mast.(theguardian)…[+]

British police are investigating an allegation of sexual assault made against the Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey, the Guardian understands. Officers from Scotland Yard’s child abuse and sexual offences team are looking into claims a man was sexually assaulted in London in 2008, while Spacey was working in the UK capital as the artistic director of the Old Vic theatre.

“On 1 November, City of London police referred an allegation of sexual assault to the Metropolitan police service,” a Scotland Yard spokesman said on Friday. “It is alleged a man assaulted another man in 2008 in Lambeth. Officers from the child abuse and sexual offences command are investigating.”

The Met declined to confirm the identity of the alleged perpetrator, but it is believed to be 58-year-old Spacey. A spokesman said it had no record of any arrests having been made in connection with the investigation and police declined to comment on a report from the Sun that the complainant had been interviewed by police.(theguardian)…[+]

The hackers who upended the US presidential election had ambitions well beyond Hillary Clinton’s campaign, targeting the emails of Ukrainian officers, Russian opposition figures, US defense contractors and thousands of others of interest to the Kremlin, according to a previously unpublished digital hitlist obtained by the Associated Press. The news comes as US prosecutors are reportedly considering charges against six members of the Russian government accused of hacking into the Democratic national committee’s computers.

The list obtained by the AP provides the most detailed forensic evidence yet of the close alignment between the hackers and the Russian government, exposing an operation that stretched back years and tried to break into the inboxes of 4,700 Gmail users across the globe – from the pope’s representative in Kiev to the punk band Pussy Riot in Moscow.

“It’s a wishlist of who you’d want to target to further Russian interests,” said Keir Giles, director of the Conflict Studies Research Center in Cambridge, England, and one of five outside experts who reviewed the AP’s findings. He said the data was “a master list of individuals whom Russia would like to spy on, embarrass, discredit or silence”.

The AP findings draw on a database of 19,000 malicious links collected by cybersecurity firm Secureworks, dozens of rogue emails, and interviews with more than 100 hacking targets.(theguardian)…[+]

The heads of eight of the world’s largest news organisations have called for the European commission to investigate the murder of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and the independence of the media in Malta. The editors and directors have written a letter to Frans Timmermans, the first vice-president of the commission, which describes the murder of Caruana Galizia as “shocking” and an “appalling reminder” of the dangers that journalists and citizens practising journalism face as they try to uncover corruption and criminal behaviour.

The signatories include Katharine Viner, the editor-in-chief of the Guardian, Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, Jérôme Fenoglio, director of Le Monde, and James Harding, the director of news and current affairs at the BBC.

Caruana Galizia was killed last month by a car bomb near her home. She had led an investigation into corruption in Malta using the Panama Papers – with the government and the opposition implicated – and the readership for her blogposts often exceeded the circulation of the country’s newspapers.(theguardian)…[+]

Archaeologists have uncovered a mysterious enclosure hidden deep inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, the oldest of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

The massive cavity stretches for at least 30 metres and lies above the grand gallery, an impressive ascending corridor that connects the Queen’s chamber to the King’s in the heart of the historic monument. It is the first major structure found in the pyramid since the 19th century. It is unclear whether the void is a chamber or a corridor, or whether it played any more than a structural role in the pyramid’s construction – such as relieving weight on the grand gallery below. But measurements show that it has similar dimensions to the grand gallery, which is nearly 50 metres long, eight metres high and more than a metre wide.(theguardian)…[+]

Protesters have crashed a tongue-in-cheek “street party” organised by the artist Banksy outside his Walled Off hotel in the West Bank city of Bethlehem to mark the 100th anniversary of the Balfour declaration, which promised a national Jewish homeland in Palestine.

People from the nearby Aida refugee camp said afterwards they objected to the way the event had “used” Palestinian children as the centrepiece of the performance. “We came because we didn’t like the use of the British flags or the way they were using Palestinian children,” said Munther Amira, a prominent activist from Aida who planted a large Palestinian flag in the middle of a cake. The intervention came amid heightened sensitivities over the centenary of the Balfour declaration, which will be marked on Thursday with a formal dinner in London.(theguardian)…[+]