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Closing funding loopholes and re-empowering the watchdog would go some way to tackling an urgent issue

Russia has been attempting to meddle with western democracy for years, but successive governments led by Boris Johnson and others have insisted that the UK’s electoral system can withstand its influence.
That argument was recently blown apart by the conviction of former Reform politician Nathan Gill, .

An underground network of agencies gathers and funnels immigrants that enter the U.S. without legal papers to work at Chinese restaurants around the country.

Jimmy Lai spent decades criticizing China’s rulers. He faces up to life in prison after a court found him guilty of national security crimes.

Trump says he has asked China's Xi to "consider" releasing the Hong Kong pro-democracy tycoon.

US president says he feels ‘so badly’ about Lai’s conviction and has spoken to the Chinese leader about it
Donald Trump has said he wants Chinese leader Xi Jinping to release Jimmy Lai as he voiced sadness over the Hong Kong on national security charges.
“I feel so badly. I spoke to President Xi about it, and I asked to consider his release,” Trump told reporters on Monday, without specifying when he asked Xi.

Guan Heng, who filmed at sites in China of alleged rights violations against Muslim group, detained by ICE in August
A Chinese man who left his country after filming at sites of alleged human rights violations against now faces the risk of removal from the United States, according to his lawyer and mother.
Guan Heng, 38, underwent an immigration hearing in New York on Monday after being detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement () in August, his mother said in an interview.

As EU countries face multiple challenges in a new era, they must fight to preserve the continent’s social model. That means a new economic approach
More than a year after the election that handed Donald Trump a decisive comeback victory, the Democratic party has still not released its postmortem analysis. But last week, an influential progressive lobby group its own. Kamala Harris’s campaign, its authors argued, failed to connect with core constituencies because it did not focus enough on addressing basic economic anxieties. By prioritising the menace to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, progressives neglected the bread-and-butter issues that were uppermost in many people’s minds.
As the EU braces for a tumultuous period of politics between now and the end of the decade, that is a lesson that needs to be fully absorbed in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy makes clear, is hopeful that “ in Europe will soon replicate Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’s Franco-German engine room, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) the polls, backed by large swaths of blue-collar voters. But among mainstream leaders and parties, it is hard to discern a response that is adequate to troubling times.

UK, EU and Australia say guilty verdict against 78-year-old is further blow to democracy and press freedom in territory
Governments, institutions and rights groups across the world have condemned the of the former pro-democracy media tycoon and British citizen in Hong Kong on national security charges.
The 78-year-old was found guilty in West Kowloon district court on Monday of one count of conspiracy to publish seditious publications and two counts of conspiracy to foreign collusion. The charges were brought under the city’s , introduced in 2020, and a British colonial-era sedition law that has been used in recent years by authorities.

Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong publisher and democracy campaigner, was convicted of national security charges in a city where even minor dissent is now whispered.

Rights groups dismiss ‘sham conviction’ of media tycoon on national security offences in city’s most closely watched rulings in decades

Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong pro-democracy media tycoon, is facing life in prison after being found guilty of national security and sedition offences, in one of the most closely watched rulings since the city’s return to Chinese rule in 1997.
Soon after the ruling was delivered, rights and press groups decried the verdict as a “sham conviction” and an attack on press freedom.

The 78-year-old UK citizen was convicted of lobbying foreign governments to impose sanctions on HK and China.

Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong pro-democracy media tycoon, is facing life in prison after being found guilty of national security and sedition offences in one of the most closely watched rulings since the city’s return to Chinese rule in 1997.

The Guardian's correspondent Helen Davidson explains what happened