Top story: ‘Please do not waste this time’

Good morning, this is Alison Rourke welcoming you to a most Brexity of briefings.

If you thought by this morning you may have had a better idea of if or when Brexit will actually happen, think again. After marathon late-night talks in Brussels, Theresa May told a press conference just a few hours ago that she still wants Britain out of Europe ASAP, while the EU has set a new cliff-edge date of 31 October. The freshly minted deal includes a provision for Britain to exit before Halloween if the UK ratifies the withdrawal agreement. May says she wants parliamentary sign-off on it in the first three weeks of next month, with the intention of bringing the drawbridge up in June. If she can’t get it, the UK will take part in European elections on 23 May – potentially kryptonite for her and the Tories.

In his late-night press conference the European Commission president, Jean-Claude Junker, adopted a different tone, not ruling out the possibility of being able to push the cliff-edge out even further than October if needed, leaving open the prospect of a zombie Brexit that never dies. The European Council president, Donald Tusk, implored Britain to get on with it: “Please do not waste this time,” he said, adding “our wish and our hope is the UK will be ready with the final solution by the end of October”.

Play Video 2:45 UK granted Brexit extension but warned not to ‘waste this time’ - video

During a night of high-stakes negotiations, France enraged its European partners by standing alone against a longer Brexit extension. Emmanuel Macron said leaders had found “the best possible compromise” because 31 October preserved EU unity, allowed the British more time and held together “the good functioning of the European Union” – a thinly veiled reference to the prospect of the UK acting as a spoiler on EU decisions if it stayed in for too long.

The new six-month extension is politically explosive for May because she had promised that “as prime minister” she would not countenance any delay beyond 30 June. John Crace writes that May pleaded that the new predicament was not her fault as she had voted three times for the withdrawal agreement. It will be unlikely to win favour with remainers in her party or those calling for a people’s vote or general election. Or, for that matter, Eurosceptics, who will be furious that six months is not enough time to replace her as Conservative leader.

You can read Jennifer Rankin’s analysis of how the night unfolded and stay up to date on all the latest news with our live blog.

Asthma alert – Four million children develop asthma every year globally as a result of air pollution from cars and trucks, equivalent to 11,000 new cases a day, a landmark study published in Lancet Planetary Health has found. It’s not just China and India that’s affected; the report found the UK had the 29th highest rate of new childhood asthma cases due to traffic pollution. Canada was ranked third. “This landmark study shows the massive global burden of asthma in children caused by traffic pollution,” said Prof Chris Griffiths at Queen Mary University of London and the co-director of the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research.

‘Abuse of authority’ – The US Treasury will not comply with a deadline set by Democrats to hand over Donald Trump’s tax returns. Steve Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, cited concerns over “an abuse of authority” and said the law referred to by Democrats as the basis of handing over the information could not be used “for purposes of embarrassing or attacking political figures of another party”. Trump has consistently refused to hand over his returns, saying they are under audit. Tax and legal experts have said, however, that this should not prevent their public release, a practice presidents have followed for decades. Meanwhile, the US attorney general, William Barr, has said “spying did occur” on the Trump campaign during the Obama era. Barr’s remarks, which echoed wild claims by Trump that he was wiretapped by Obama, dismayed senior Democrats. Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, said the Trump appointee had gone “off the rails” and was serving the president rather than the public.

School admissions – Appeals and waiting lists in England are reinforcing the gap between rich and poor in education, a new study by the Education Policy Institute says. It found families in the most affluent areas were twice as likely to secure their child a place at their first choice of secondary school on appeal as those in the poorest. It also found that only 10% of black pupils and 12% of Asian pupils get their first choice via these routes, compared with 21% of white British pupils and 17% of Chinese pupils.

Sudan – The army is expected to make an “important statement soon”, state TV and radio announced this morning, as thousands of protesters camped outside the military headquarters in Khartoum demanding the resignation of President Omar al-Bashir. State media offered no further details, as the rally outside the army complex entered its sixth day. The news of an announcement from the army came as analysts warned Sudan could descend into anarchy if its political crisis is not resolved peacefully and rival factions within the security establishment fight for power.

India elections – The world’s largest-ever election has begun in India’s marathon six-week poll, with 900 million people eligible to take part. It’s being seen as a referendum on the prime minister, Narendra Modi, a staunch Hindu nationalist who rode a wave of popularity five years ago to become the first leader of a majority government in decades. You can read our guide to what’s at stake here, including the logistics of organising one-eighth of humanity to cast their vote.

Today in Focus podcast: The parent protests that stopped LGBT equality lessons

A bitter row between a Birmingham primary school and its mostly Muslim parents over the teaching of LGBT equality has led to street protests and the suspension of the lessons. The Guardian’s Nazia Parveen traces the origins of the dispute and where it has led. Plus: Hannah Devlin on the first ever image of the silhouette of a black hole.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Parents, children and protestors demonstrate against the ‘No Outsiders’ programme, which teaches children about LGBT rights, at Parkfield Community school in Birmingham. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Lunchtime read: China’s high-tech war on its Muslim minority

Beijing’s crackdown in its western Xinjiang province has seen more than a million Muslims subjected to arbitrary detention, part of what the government calls its “people’s war on terror”. Often there’s no real evidence of any crime, but increasingly digital footprints are being used to crack down on so-called “violations”. A blacklist maintained by the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (Ijop), a regional data system, uses AI to monitor countless checkpoints. Any attempt to enter public institutions such as hospitals, banks, parks or shopping centres, or to cross beyond the boundaries of a local police precinct, can trigger police.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Police on patrol in Kashgar, in the Xinjiang region. Photograph: Tom Phillips/The Guardian

As Darren Byler writes, facial recognition software and machine learning algorithms are the vanguard of the crackdown. Its targets are not foreigners but domestic minority populations who appear to threaten the Chinese Communist party’s authoritarian rule. In Xinjiang, the web of surveillance reaches from cameras on buildings to the chips inside mobile devices, and to Uighurs’ very physiognomy. Face scanners and biometric checkpoints track their movements almost everywhere. Other programmes scan Uighurs’ digital communications, looking for suspect patterns, and flagging religious speech or even a lack of fervour in using Mandarin. Deep-learning systems search in real time through video feeds capturing millions of faces, building an archive that can supposedly help identify suspicious behaviour in order to predict who will become an “unsafe” actor. Actions that can trigger these “computer vision” technologies include dressing in an Islamic fashion and failing to attend nationalistic flag-raising ceremonies. All of these technological systems are brought together in the Ijop, which is constantly learning from the behaviours of the Uighurs it watches.

Sport

Ole Gunnar Solskjær pointed to Manchester United’s famous 1999 Champions League triumph as evidence they can score the goals needed to knock Lionel Messi’s Barcelona out in next week’s quarter-final second leg after losing Wednesday night’s opening game 1-0 at Old Trafford. In the night’s other game, David Neres equalised Cristiano Ronaldo’s opener to give Ajax a 1-1 draw with Juventus at the Johan Cruyff Arena. Rory McIlroy, the world No 3, goes chasing a career grand slam at this week’s Masters on the back of winning the Players Championship and with an altered mindset. Any lingering prospect of a Women’s Masters has been dismissed by the chairman of Augusta National, Fred Ridley, who has reiterated that its efforts to improve the female element of golf will focus on the amateur game. The most exciting young racehorse in Britain is to miss his first planned run of the new Flat season as it has emerged that Too Darn Hot has sustained what is hopefully only a mild leg injury. Saracens will be further investigated by Premiership Rugby for a potential breach of salary cap regulations relating to the club’s co-investment arrangements with a number of their high-profile players. And the Welsh footballer Ched Evans has agreed an out-of-court settlement with lawyers, understood to be around £800,000, over their handling of a rape case in which he was imprisoned.

Business

House prices are likely to keep falling for another six months in the UK and for the whole of 2019 for London, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. It reported the eighth successive month of falling inquiries from buyers.

The pound has strengthened against the euro versus this time yesterday, buying €1.16160. And it’s buying $1.309

The papers

Photograph: The Guardian

Most of the papers went to print too late to get in the new Brexit deadline on to their front pages. The Guardian managed to get it onto its late edition with: “Europe listens to May and says no. Britain told leave by October 31st”. The Metro’s front page features a photograph of the black hole and the headline: “What Brexit looks like from space”. Several front pages focus on reports that May will remain prime minister until the deal is delivered. The i has: “May: I’ll stay on for a year”, the Express has “May tells critics: I’ll finish the job”, the Times reports: “May defies Tory rebels with pledge to stay on”. The Daily Telegraph reports that Tories plan to move against May soon: “May given a month after EU showdown”. The FT says: “May scraps latest Commons push as Brexit talks with Labour falter”

In other news, the Mirror has: “The great MPs’ rent scandal”, the Mail continues to report on the speedboat killer: “The killer smiling all the way back to a British jail” and the Sun reports on Darcey Bussell’s exit from Strictly Come Dancing: “Darcey’s strictly quit-step”.

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