Justin Trudeau on how Canada is bucking the populist trend

Globalization “doesn’t seem to be working for the middle class, for ordinary people”, Justin Trudeau told the Guardian, as he sought to explain a turbulent year marked by the election of Donald Trump, Brexit and the rise of anti-establishment, nation-first parties around the world. Elected last year, the Canadian prime minister is under pressure to show the world that his government has found an alternative means of tackling the concerns of those who feel they have been left behind.

Justin Trudeau: ‘Globalisation isn’t working for ordinary people’

Evacuation begins in Aleppo

Wounded civilians in east Aleppo are being loaded on to ambulances as a long-awaited evacuation of the besieged districts of the city gets under way. The movement came almost five hours after the evacuation was due to begin, when the process appeared stalled while medical teams waited amid reports of gunfire. The evacuation is being overseen by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which said it would include the wounded and all civilians. The first convoy of 10 vehicles is expected to transport 200-250 wounded people in its first rotation and there will be multiple crossings throughout the day. The evacuation deal was agreed late on Wednesday, and under its terms, a ceasefire went into effect at 2.30am local time on Thursday, two rebel officials confirmed.



Syria: ambulances on the move as Aleppo evacuation operation begins

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Breitbart’s ‘fake news’ attack on Guardian refuted

Breitbart News has “accused the Guardian of disseminating false information for reporting a fundamental and demonstrably provable fact: that the number of undocumented border crossers is near a historic low”, Rory Carroll writes, after the rightwing site claimed to have “fact-checked” a Guardian profile of a Border Patrol agent, which they blasted as “fake news”. We set out the facts and refute Breitbart’s claims.

How Breitbart and the conservative right opened a new front in the war over fake news

Trump could put intelligence agencies in peril, says former CIA chief



Trump’s public disparagement of US intelligence agencies would undermine the moral authority of their leaders to send them “into harm’s way”, Michael Hayden, who served as director of the NSA and then the CIA during the George W Bush administration, said. It would be “discouraging” if Trump were to reject or not use information from the agencies. “That information is sometimes bought at great price,” Hayden said.

Donald Trump risks damaging intelligence agencies, warns former CIA chief

Chinese state media call for taking Taiwan by force

Following Trump’s breaking of diplomatic protocol by speaking with the president of Taiwan, the Global Times, a Communist party-controlled newspaper, has said that China should plan to take Taiwan by force and make swift preparations for a military incursion. The president-elect has called into question the longstanding US foreign policy of maintaining formal relations with Beijing instead of Taiwan, which China considers a breakaway province. The tabloid said on Thursday that China should rebalance its stance towards Taiwan to “make the use of force as a main option and carefully prepare for it”.

China should plan to take Taiwan by force after Trump call, state media say

One billion Yahoo accounts compromised in hack

Yahoo said on Wednesday it had discovered another major cyber-attack, saying data from more than 1bn user accounts was compromised in August 2013, making it the largest such breach in history. “An unauthorised party” broke into the accounts, a statement on Yahoo’s website said. The number of users affected in this hack was double the number implicated in a 2014 breach which the company disclosed in September.

Yahoo hack: 1bn accounts compromised by biggest data breach in history

Impeach Duterte over killing confession, say Philippine senators

The admission of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte that he used to personally kill suspected criminals when mayor of Davao city is grounds for impeachment, two of the nation’s senators said. A move to impeach Duterte is unlikely to succeed, as he has allies in congress and domestic support for his bloody war on drugs, in which police have reported killing 2,086 people. The justice minister, Vitaliano Aguirre, dismissed Duterte’s comments as “hyperbole”.

Philippine senators call for Duterte to be impeached over killing confession

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And finally … kids pitch their film ideas



A four-year-old came up with the idea for a new film called Monster Trucks, which looks set to be a financial disaster. Inspired by this, the Guardian assembled its own team of kids to try to pitch some ideas – like The Laser Monster from Not Space – with feedback from an Oscar-nominated producer.

Casting creche: meet the four-year-olds pitching ideas for blockbusters