LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said it would launch the largest overhaul of policy on asylum seekers in modern times, drawing inspiration from Denmark’s approach, one of the toughest in Europe. The Labour government has been hardening its immigration policies, particularly on illegal small-boat crossings from France, as it seeks to stem the surging popularity of the populist Reform UK party, which has driven the immigration agenda and forced Labour to adopt a tougher line. As part of the changes, the statutory duty to provide support to certain asylum seekers, including housing and weekly allowances, will be revoked, the Home Office (interior ministry) said in a statement.

 

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TOKYO (Reuters) - The Japanese public is divided on whether Japan should exercise its right to collective self-defense if China attacks Taiwan, a Kyodo news agency poll found on Sunday. The survey found 48.8 percent in favor and 44.2 percent against, while 60.4 percent backed Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s plan to beef up the country’s defense spending. The opinion poll comes at a time when a diplomatic spat between Tokyo and Beijing has intensified following Takaichi’s remarks related to Taiwan. The Japanese premier said on November 7 that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could amount to a “survival-threatening situation” and trigger a potential military response from Tokyo.

 

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LONDON (AFP) - An MP has withdrawn from the new left-wing political movement in the UK called Your Party over “infighting” and “veiled prejudice” against Muslim men. Adnan Hussain, an MP from Blackburn in northern England, made the announcement less than two weeks ahead of the party’s founding conference in Liverpool, amid internal fights over finance and its leadership. Hussain said he was drawn to Your Party, headed by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Coventry MP Zarah Sultana, to build “a political home with mass appeal” and “a force capable of challenging the rise of far-right rhetoric.”

 

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Sunday that its forces had moved forward sharply in Ukraine’s south-eastern Zaporizhzhia region, taking two settlements as part of a major push aimed at taking control of the entire Zaporizhzhia region. With a smaller army than Russia’s, Ukraine has been grappling with how to bolster defenses in the Donetsk region while keeping the rest of the front stable under intense artillery and drone attack from highly mobile Russian units. Since advancing into the Dnipropetrovsk region in late June, Russian forces have been pushing there and, in the neighboring, Zaporizhzhia region where its forces have moved forward along a relatively broad front by at least 30 km (19 miles) over the past six weeks, according to pro-Ukrainian maps. Russia controls about 19% of Ukraine, or 115,476 square km, up just one percentage point from two years ago. Moscow wants to gain control of all of the Donbas, which includes Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as the whole of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

 

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene accused U.S. President Donald Trump  of putting her life in danger, saying his online criticism has triggered a wave of threats against her. Greene, once a longtime Trump loyalist who has more recently taken positions at odds with the president, said she has been contacted by private security firms warning about her safety. “Aggressive rhetoric attacking me has historically led to death threats and multiple convictions of men who were radicalized by the same type (of) rhetoric being directed at me right now,” Greene, a U.S. House of Representatives member from Georgia, wrote in a post on X. “This time by the President of the United States.” Trump broke with Greene on Friday night in a withering social media post in which he referred to Greene as “Wacky” and a “ranting lunatic” who complained he would not take her calls.  

 

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MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos gathered Sunday in the capital in the largest rally so far to demand accountability for a flood-control corruption scandal that has implicated powerful members of Congress and top government officials. Various groups have protested in recent months following the discovery that thousands of flood defense projects across one of the world’s most typhoon-prone countries were substandard, incomplete or simply did not exist. Government engineers, public works officials and construction company executives have testified under oath in hearings by the Senate and a fact-finding commission that members of Congress and officials at the Department of Public Works and Highways took kickbacks from construction companies to help them win lucrative contracts and avoid accountability. Most denied the allegations.