'Tube attack punches through comforting illusions about when women are safe'

If a woman can be raped in broad daylight on a train, there are tough questions for all of us

Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian

Ryan Johnston was sentenced to nine years in prison for raping a 20-year-old woman on the Tube in front of a horrified French tourist and his young son, a "horrific crime" that "shatters any illusions we may still have about when, where and how such things can happen", writes Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. It "punches through all women's comforting illusions about when and how we are safe".

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US should join the world's nations in demanding a Gaza cease-fire

Los Angeles Times editorial board

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Hamas atrocities, "no matter how evil", do not justify Israel's "casual conflation of legitimate militant targets and Palestinian civilians", says the Los Angeles Times. Since a brief ceasefire last month, Israel's bombing of Gaza has been – "difficult as it is to fathom – even more brutal". The United States "should choose a path that might make peace in the future still possible. It should reverse its position against a cease-fire."

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Britain is paying the deadly price for telling the public to 'protect the NHS'

Fraser Nelson in The Telegraph

"Thousands of people" are dying from preventable causes and missed diagnoses, writes Fraser Nelson in The Telegraph, and "too few are willing to ask why". So far this year, he notes, an "astonishing" 32,000 more have died in the UK than would be expected from the five-year average. The Covid inquiry should look at "excess deaths" and "consider it a pandemic in its own right", but "this will never happen". 

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Here's some Christmas cheer: Trump may fail

Gerard Baker in The Times

"Let me end 2023 with an exercise in the audacity of hope and make the case that there is just – just – a chance that [Donald] Trump loses the Republican primary," writes Gerard Baker in The Times. "History tells us" the former president's lead in the race for his party's nomination could "crumble" once the primaries start. "Is it possible? Barely. Is it conceivable? Yes. It is conceivable. Happy Christmas!"

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