With voting complete, election officials will now certify results before the electoral college meets in December

With voting completed in the US presidential election, election officials across the country will now turn to certifying the results before the electoral college meets in December and Congress certifies the vote in January.

Until the 2020 election, few paid attention to certification, which was seen as a bureaucratic way of officializing the results of the election. But after 2020, Donald Trump and allies, who questioned the election results, targeted the certification process as a way of causing confusion. In advance of the presidential election, there were deep concerns that the former president and allies would try and block certification of the election results, starting at the local level.

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Caesar and I both cheated death. Maybe that was why I became so attached to him

To anyone else, Caesar would have seemed an ordinary goldfish, swimming in his orange, bug-eyed way around his tank. To me, though, he was immortal, thanks to one of those family stories that mean so much when you’re a child.

Dad, a Methodist minister in Bradford, was about to leave for a church meeting when he realised that Caesar had propelled himself out of his water and on to the carpet, his orange colouring fading into the 70s brown pattern. Assuming that Caesar had swum to the great aquarium in the sky, my reverend father conducted the traditional fish funeral by chucking him in the toilet, but on contact with the water, the fish began to move.

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An émigré player’s artistry sings through a London street, rising over many barriers

The Kurdish Musician

She is swaddled in pink, sky-blue and veiled
in a gold hejab that with every chime
of her santoor dangles its fringe where trailed

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The Yorkshire-born standups’s surreal take on a working men’s club has bagged him comedy awards and a BBC radio pilot. But even as he dreams of a Mrs Merton-style talkshow, he’s still insistent on keeping things surreal

The last time I saw Frankie Monroe, the impish, slightly grubby proprietor of Rotherham’s premier fictional working men’s club, The Misty Moon, he was in an Edinburgh basement, delighting festivalgoers with tricks, songs and cheeky characters. Unfortunately, we discovered as the show unfolded, the club was also a portal to hell. The night ended with Frankie – white-faced, in a shiny shirt and ludicrous shoulder pads – sucked into the fiery depths.

It hasn’t done him much harm. Tonight, we’re at Manchester’s Fairfield Social Club, and Frankie is hosting a pub quiz with all the swaggering charm that saw his creator, 26-year-old Joe Kent-Walters, named best newcomer at this year’s Edinburgh comedy awards .

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Khalife pleads guilty part way through trial at Woolwich crown court but continues to deny other charges

Former soldier Daniel Khalife has pleaded guilty part way through his trial at Woolwich crown court to escaping from HMP Wandsworth in September 2023 but continues to deny all other charges.

More details soon …

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Isolated in Brisbane, the Saints released a punk single before the Damned, Sex Pistols and the Clash. As they reform after their singer’s death, they recall their journey from school detention to Top of the Pops

The story of one of the most extraordinary bands in rock history began in the most ordinary of ways, with school kids walking down the street. “It was a Friday or Saturday night, and I was going off to the cinema,” recalls Ivor Hay. “And there was Ed and Chris, and they were going off to a party. They asked if I wanted to come. We’re 15 or 16, and we managed to get a bottle of something. We drank, and we ended up talking and singing. And that’s how we ended up doing things together.”

Ed was Ed Kuepper; Chris was Chris Bailey. And the three of them, kids in Brisbane at the start of the 70s, would become the Saints, the band that kickstarted Australian punk, the band who released their first, thrilling single (I’m) Stranded in September 1976 – before the Damned or the Pistols or the Clash had got anything out – and then arrived in the UK the following year as a fully formed maelstrom of intensity and ambition.

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The government is making welcome moves to overhaul a sector in financial turmoil, but institutions face tough choices

• Philip Augar chaired the May government’s review of post-18 education and funding

One of Britain’s most globally successful industries is under financial pressure. More than a third of higher education institutions are running at a loss, a handful are at risk of government bailout and some have had to shed staff and courses. While Labour’s recent decision to allow a small increase in university tuition fees in England to £9,535 a year is not a complete solution, it sent a signal that the government is listening to the sector.

Universities are part of a delicate post-18 education system, and they cannot be considered in isolation. Encouragingly, this gesture was one of a series of steps in the right direction. It started with the creation of Skills England just weeks after the general election. This new arm’s-length government body will administer the growth and skills fund, a levy on large employers now extended to other forms of training as well as apprenticeships.

Philip Augar is a former banker and the author of several financial history books. He chaired the May government’s review of post-18 education and funding

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The president-elect could spark tension between the culturally open cities staging events and a national government promoting insularity

Very soon after the outcome of the US presidential election was clear, Fifa’s president issued an old photograph of himself shaking hands with a beaming, football-clasping, Donald Trump.

“Congratulations Mr President! We will have a great Fifa World Cup and a great Fifa Club World Cup in the United States of America!” Gianni Infantino wrote on social media. It was the latest example of Infantino’s oleaginous flattery of Trump, whom in 2018 Infantino called “part of the Fifa team” . And vice versa, it seems.

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Putin has no concrete plan to speak to president-elect, says spokesperson, after reports Trump urged him not to escalate Ukraine war

The Kremlin has denied reports that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, spoke to the US president-elect, Donald Trump, calling the media reports “pure fiction”.

The Washington Post first reported that a call had taken place, citing unidentified sources, and said that Trump had told Putin that he should not escalate the Ukraine war. Reuters also reported that a call had happened.

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