What happened
Two Cleveland Police officers have been remembered as devoted family men after dying in a collision on the A66 near Middlesbrough. PC Tom Clough (pictured above left) and PC Matthew Blades (above right) were killed early on Saturday when a Volkswagen Passat entered the carriageway against the flow of traffic and struck their armed response vehicle. Five people inside the Passat also died in the collision.

Who said what
PC Blades’ wife described him as a “beloved husband” and devoted father to their two sons, saying his courage and commitment to others would remain part of his legacy.

Police had engaged in a chase after receiving “intelligence regarding numerous incidents” linked to the Passat, which was suspected of having cloned number plates. However, the pursuit was abandoned when the suspected vehicle entered the A66 in the wrong direction. It then struck Blades and Clough’s oncoming police vehicle – which was not involved in the chase – just 10 seconds later.

What next?
The Independent Office for Police Conduct is examining the circumstances surrounding the incident. A fundraising appeal for the officers’ families had raised more than £180,000 by Sunday evening.

What happened
A humanoid robot has apparently surpassed Usain Bolt’s 100-metre world record at a robotics competition in Beijing. Lightning Bolt, an X-Humanoid machine, covered the distance in 9.39 seconds, beating the Jamaican’s 9.58-second mark from 2009. But its victory was somewhat less graceful than Bolt’s: the robot slammed into a wall immediately after crossing the finish line and had to be carried away on a stretcher. Another robot had reportedly gone even faster in a pre-event trial, recording 9.32 seconds.

Who said what
The five-day World Humanoid Robot Games features more than 2,000 machines competing across 51 disciplines.

“Humanoids are seen as the future of AI and there’s a wide range of potential uses,” said Jennifer Pak on NPR. “Right now, research is the main purpose, but also industrial factories, also inside the home, like cleaning, cooking, even folding your shirts.”

What next?
The competition will continue with events including football, table tennis, weightlifting, tug of war and jumping. The event is also showcasing China’s growing dominance in the humanoid robotic field as it somewhat overshadows competitors from 15 other countries, including the US, Germany and Japan.

The city of Dakhla – on a “peninsula where the Sahara meets the Atlantic” – is advertised to holidaymakers as “Morocco’s hidden gem”, according to the BBC. But tourists flying to this part of Western Sahara might not know that they’ll “be landing in one of the world’s longest ongoing territorial disputes”.

A former Spanish colony, Western Sahara was annexed by Morocco in 1975. Since then it has been the subject of a dispute between Morocco and its indigenous Sahrawi people, led by the Polisario Front and its government-in-exile in Algeria. Now classified by the United Nations as a “non-self-governing territory”, about 80% of the country is occupied and administered by Morocco. Numerous UN-brokered talks to resolve Western Sahara’s future have failed.

Morocco has been pouring considerable resources into Western Sahara. Since 2015 it has spent £7 billion trying to “level it up”,  said The Spectator. There are now water desalination plants, 620 miles of motorways and plans for eight “green hydrogen plants” and a “centrepiece” £1 billion Dakhla Atlantic Port.

But Morocco’s annexation has created “one of the world’s most enduring yet overlooked refugee crises”, said Metro. For the past 50 years the indigenous Sahrawi people have been “forced to live under occupation or go into exile”: 173,000 Sahrawi refugees live in camps in Algeria, in the “harshest part of the desert”.

In recent years the international consensus has shifted and consolidated in favour of Morocco’s “autonomy plan” for Western Sahara. Spain has endorsed the framework and both France and the US have recognised Morocco’s sovereignty over the region. In October the UN Security Council approved a resolution that gave the “strongest backing yet” to Moroccan control, “while making no mention of the independence referendum” sought by the Polisaro Front, said Bloomberg.