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

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.

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.

Many liberal Russians shelter in states once part of the Soviet Union. It’s time that they learned to respect the cultures and languages their nation has so long suppressed

One day in the 1990s, I was playing with my cousin in a local park in Chișinău, the capital of Romanian-speaking Moldova, when two little girls from the Russian-speaking minority asked us what our names were. We told them: Mihai and Maria Paula. They immediately rebaptised us: “ Misha i Masha! ” To them, we were all Russians after all.

In 2024, such expressions of cultural imperialism are still rife in Putin’s Russia, but you wouldn’t expect to find them among Russian liberals, an estimated million of whom left their country after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago.

Archbishop of Canterbury urged to quit over failure to pursue John Smyth, who is believed to have abused about 130 boys

The archbishop of Canterbury is under growing pressure to resign over failures to pursue a sadistic abuser of children when allegations were brought to his attention.

Members of the Church of England’s ruling body, the General Synod, have launched a petition calling on Justin Welby to quit, “given his role in allowing abuse to continue”.

Singer describes recent meeting where Simon said he was offended by an old interview, and pair reconciled

Art Garfunkel has described a recent tearful reunion with Paul Simon, in which the pair moved past old enmities.

Speaking to the Times , Garfunkel said: “I actually had lunch with Paul a couple of weeks back. First time we’d been together in many years. I looked at Paul and said, ‘What happened? Why haven’t we seen each other?’ Paul mentioned an old interview where I said some stuff. I cried when he told me how much I had hurt him. Looking back, I guess I wanted to shake up the nice guy image of Simon & Garfunkel. Y’know what? I was a fool!

The so-called corpse plant takes a decade to flower – and when it does, the blossom lasts just 24-48 hours and smells of rotting flesh

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I’ve never smelt the rotting decay of a corpse, but I’m told it would smell something like the slightly phallic endangered flower on display at Geelong’s botanic gardens.

The smell of the so-called corpse plant, or amorphophallus titanum , for those playing at home, hits you like a punch in the face – even from 20 metres away.

Comments by John Healey come as Starmer is in Paris to meet Macron and discuss implications of Trump’s victory

Good morning. Keir Starmer is in Paris this morning for talks with the French president, Emmanuel Macron. The prime minister is visiting to attend the French Armistice Day service, but the real interest will lie in what the leaders of Europe’s two biggest military powers have to say as they discuss the implications of Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election.

Here is Jessica Elgot ’s overnight preview story.

Donald Trump spoke on the phone with Vladimir Putin on Thursday and discussed the war in Ukraine, the Washington Post reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The US president-elect advised the Russian president not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of “Washington’s sizeable military presence in Europe”, the Post reported.

Ukraine is certainly under pressure. Russia is certainly escalating, and President Trump has reportedly told Putin and warned him against further escalation. If he’s done that, he’s right to do so.

Russia is escalating with massing North Korean troops on their territory. It’s escalating with more than 2,000 one-way attack kamikaze drones aimed at Kyiv and the rest of the Ukrainian cities in the last month alone. And one person is responsible for that escalation, and that’s Putin.

A journey across the US in a convertible that holds some secrets – like a coffin welded into the boot – as a teenager seeks out his father

TJ (Finn Haney) has just turned 18 when a mysterious stranger turns up with a present from his absentee father. The gift turns out to be the keys to a 1968 convertible; a lovely surprise, but perhaps lovelier if it wasn’t falling apart and didn’t have a coffin-like box welded to the floor of the boot. He’s also given a time and an address hundreds of miles away, of when and where he will meet his father after many years. This is the setup for a sentimental and fairly low-key road trip following a fairly classic call-to-adventure odyssey structure, of the sort made in their dozens during the US indie film-making boom of the 1990s.

There’s something refreshing (or passe, depending on personal preference) about seeing a film made today starring a teenage lead character who is so unashamedly earnest. TJ, with his wide-eyed optimism tempered with the pain of parental rejection, recalls the likes of Dawson, he of the eponymous creek. Like Dawson, he’s an aspiring film-maker, and lines like, “Everyone has their own path to follow and mine is wherever PTA says it is,” are of course pretty cringe. But you know what? So are teenagers; not enough onscreen teens are authentically naff. It wouldn’t work however, if it wasn’t balanced with the emotional truth of TJ’s feelings about his dad, which aren’t embarrassing but raw and painful: “He didn’t even call me. He just didn’t want me.”