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Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, proposed in his speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet to treat China with ‘robust pragmatism’. The Chinese ambassador to Britain was summoned to the Foreign Office following the arrest and beating of a BBC journalist, Ed Lawrence, in Shanghai. Net migration reached 504,000 in the year to June – the highest recorded, the Office for National Statistics estimated. A man was arrested in Gloucestershire over the deaths of at least 27 people who drowned in the Channel in a dinghy last year. Migrants with symptoms of diphtheria would be put into isolation, ministers said, as more than 50 cases were detected. The Online Safety Bill retained a clause obliging the removal of ‘legal, but harmful’ material, if only for those under 18; some feared it could bring in censorship. The former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss supported an amendment to the Levelling Up Bill to allow construction of onshore wind farms.

Jaguar Land Rover reduced output in Solihull and Halewood until the spring, because of a shortage in supplies of computer chips. The Royal College of Nursing announced strikes on 15 and 20 December; Great Ormond Street children’s hospital and the Royal Marsden Hospital specialising in cancer would be among those affected. Ambulance drivers planned strikes. The RMT union would hold rail strikes in December and January; regional strikes were also planned. Postmen continued with their strikes. Driving test examiners would go on strike. BT prevented strikes by offering workers another £1,500. The Conservative MPs Dehenna Davison, 29, William Wragg, 34, and Chloe Smith, 40, would not stand at the next election. Half the 1.3 million free-range turkeys produced for Christmas in Britain had been culled or had died because of avian influenza.

The census of 2021 had only 46.2 per cent of people saying they were Christian, compared with 59.3 per cent in 2011. Those identifying as Muslim rose from 4.9 per cent in 2011 to 6.5 per cent. Only 89 per cent of households in Scotland had returned the census form. A 16-year-old boy was arrested after two 16-year-old boys were fatally stabbed a mile apart in Abbey Wood and Thamesmead in south-east London. One in four 17- to 19-year-olds in England had some probable mental disorder in 2022, according to an NHS Digital report. National Grid decided not to put into effect this week a scheme offering discounts on bills to households that cut peak-time use. Revolutionary activists calling themselves Just Stop Oil began a campaign of disrupting traffic in London. Norway’s annual gift of a Christmas tree, 68ft tall this year, went up in Trafalgar Square.

Abroad

Demonstrations against Covid restrictions spread across China, with large crowds gathering in Beijing and Shanghai. Some called on Xi Jinping to resign. The protests followed a fire at Urumqi in Xinjiang in which ten died. Police clamped down on the protests. Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers militia, was found guilty of seditious conspiracy in trying to stop President Joe Biden from taking office. Avian flu has killed 50.54 million birds in the US this year, the deadliest outbreak ever, according to the US Department of Agriculture. The World Health Organisation said monkeypox would be known as mpox, as a way of somehow countering racism.

Russia continued attacks with missiles and drones on Ukraine’s energy network. At a meeting of Nato foreign ministers, Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of Nato, accused Russia of using winter as a weapon of war. ‘We share your pain,’ President Vladimir Putin of Russia told a group of mothers of Russian soldiers who had been fighting in Ukraine. ‘Nothing can replace the loss of a son.’ Meta, which owns Facebook, was fined £228 million by the Irish Data Protection Commission after the phone numbers and email addresses of up to 533 million Facebook users appeared on an online hacking forum. The US threatened Mexico with legal action if it persisted with a ban on imports of genetically modified maize. In Hawaii, the world’s largest active volcano, Mauna Loa, erupted for the first time since 1984.

Europol said that a drug cartel that controlled about a third of Europe’s cocaine supply has been dismantled after 49 people were arrested in six countries. England beat Wales 3-0 in the football World Cup in Qatar. Zimbabwe suspended power generation from its main source of electricity, the Kariba Dam, because water levels were too low. In Australia, white ibises were found to have discovered how to eat toxic cane toads by washing them first.     CSH

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