The Texas board of education voted 8-7 on Friday to approve a new Bible-based curriculum in elementary schools.

The curriculum, called “Bluebonnet Learning”, could be implemented as soon as August 2025 and affects English and language arts teaching material for kindergarten through fifth grade public school classes.

Teachers will have a choice to opt into the new faith-based learning curriculum, but the state is offering a financial incentive of $60 a student for participating school districts.

Parents, teachers and rights groups expressed outrage at the move that some say violates the US constitution and will alienate students and teachers of other faiths.

“The Bluebonnet curriculum flagrantly disregards religious freedom, a cornerstone of our nation since its founding. The same politicians censoring what students can read now want to impose state-sponsored religion on to our public schools,” said Caro Achar, engagement coordinator for free speech at the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “We urge districts to reject this optional curriculum and uphold a public school education that honors the religious diversity and constitutional rights of Texas students.”

Examples of Bible references in the curriculum include a kindergarten lesson on “the golden rule”, which teaches the importance of treating others the way one would want to be treated, linked to Jesus’s sermon on the mount, and a third-grade unit about ancient Rome and Jesus’s life:

According to the Christian Bible, on the day Jesus was born, his mother Mary and father Joseph were traveling to the town of Bethlehem to register for the census. The census, ordered by the Roman government, required Roman citizens to be counted and their names registered. This was used in part to help the empire know how many people needed to pay taxes and is a practice continued by governments to this day.

When Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem, they were told there were no rooms available to rent. They took shelter in a nearby stable, a type of barn where animals are kept. When Jesus was born, Mary wrapped him in pieces of cloth and laid him in a manger, which is a long wooden or stone box used for horses and cattle to eat animal feed. This story of Jesus’s birth in a stable is commonly featured as part of displays put on by Christians even today during the Christmas holidays each year.

The Christian Bible explains that throughout his life, Jesus taught about God’s love and forgiveness, and performed many miracles.

In text messages seen by the Guardian between Chancie Davis, a former school teacher from the Katy independent school district who objected to the curriculum, and state education board member Audrey Young, who voted in favor of the curriculum, Young denied any mention of Jesus in the curriculum and doubled down on her vote.

“You think every single person regardless of their beliefs should be learn about the Bible,” Davis wrote to Young.

Young replied: “In order to be able to participate wholly in a literate society.”

Both Young and the Texas board of education did not respond to a request for comment.

Davis said she began texting with Young after finding her cellphone number on the board’s website. She said she was “shocked” to receive a text back from her elected representative, especially in the middle of the board meeting about the vote.

“I think I was most surprised by her non-professionalism in thinking through the matter, like it was a done deal already,” Davis said. “She wasn’t ready to listen to anything.”

Davis said “there’s a clear line between separation of church and state, and I think that this crosses that, and it’s a slippery slope in our public schools, and all students deserve to be represented, not just the Christian sect”.

Bryan Henry, a local Cypress, Texas, parent and public school advocate affiliated with Cypress Families for Public Schools, said the curriculum was “just the latest example of Texas being a laboratory for Christian nationalism”.

Henry added: “What I find particularly insidious about it is the fact that they are going to incentivize school districts to adopt the curriculum in exchange for extra funding at a time when the state government is starving public schools of needed money because they want vouchers for private Christian schools.”

A spokesperson for the Texas State Teachers Association, which is affiliated with the US’s largest labor union, the National Education Association, told the Guardian: “The implementation of this curriculum means grade-school children in schools that adopt the curriculum will receive what amounts to Christian Sunday school lessons in their public schools, something our public education system was not intended to provide and should not provide.

“Students who observe religions other than Christianity, in effect, will be discriminated against because their own religions will be all but ignored.”

Darcy Hirsh, the director of government relations and advocacy at the National Council of Jewish Women, the US’s oldest Jewish feminist civil rights organization, said in an interview with the Guardian: “As a Jewish organization, maintaining the separation of church and state is a key priority for us as it is the cornerstone of our democracy.”

Hirsh added she was “devastated” about “the Texas school board’s decision today to implement a curriculum that is based in the Bible, and even one specific interpretation of the Bible”.

Vladimir Putin has vowed to launch more strikes using an experimental intermediate-range ballistic missile as Ukraine decried the testing of the nuclear-capable weapon on its territory as an “international crime”.

Speaking at a defence conference on Friday, Putin contested US claims that Russia possessed only a “handful” of the high-speed ballistic missiles, saying that the military had enough to continue to test them in “combat conditions”.

“The tests [of the missile system] have passed successfully, and I congratulate you all on that,” Putin said, according to the Interfax news agency. “As has been said already, we’ll be continuing these tests, including in combat conditions, depending on the situation and nature of threats being posed to Russia’s security, especially considering that we have enough of such items, such systems ready for use in stock.”

At the same conference, the Russian strategic missile forces commander Sergei Karakayev said that the missiles could strike targets throughout Europe.

“Depending on the objectives and the range of this weapon, it can strike targets on the entire territory of Europe, which sets it apart from other types of long-range precision-guided weapons,” Karakayev said.

Russia launched the experimental missile, which US officials described as a modified design based on Russia’s longer-range RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile, against a rocket factory in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Both Vladimir Putin and US officials have said the missile is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

US officials have decried Putin’s use of a nuclear-capable warhead but denied that it is a “gamechanger” in the war between Russia and Ukraine, adding that Russia possessed just a handful of the missiles, which its military has named Oreshnik, or Hazel.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Russia’s use of an experimental ballistic missile in a strike on Ukraine an “international crime” as he appealed on Friday to countries around the world including the global south to condemn Russia’s latest escalation.

In an address on social media, Zelenskyy said he had already directed his defence minister to hold consultations with allies to secure new air defence systems that could “protect lives from the new risks” of the intermediate-range missiles.

“Using another country not just for terror but also to test new weapons for terror is clearly an international crime,” the Ukrainian president said.

Nato and Ukraine will hold emergency talks on Tuesday to discuss the attack.

The conflict is “entering a decisive phase”, the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, said on Friday, and “taking on very dramatic dimensions”.

Ukraine’s parliament cancelled a session as security was tightened after Thursday’s Russian strike on the military facility in Dnipro.

Aside from western partners, Zelenskyy called on China and members of the global south, to condemn the strike, saying that the leaders “call for restraint every time, and in response they invariably receive some new escalation from Moscow”.

China and Brazil have proposed a joint “peace plan” that Ukraine has said only emboldens Russia by providing diplomatic cover for the continued assault on Ukraine.

Developing countries were being urged by civil society groups to reject “a bad deal” at the UN climate talks on Friday night, after rich nations refused to increase an “insulting” offer of finance to help them tackle the climate crisis.

The stage is set for a bitter row on Saturday over how much money poor countries should receive from the governments of the rich world, which have offered $250bn a year by 2035 to help the poor shift to a low-carbon economy and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather.

That is “nowhere near enough” according to poor country groupings and campaigners at the talks. “This is unacceptable,” said the Alliance of Small Island States in a statement. Climate finance at this level would not enable countries to green their economies to the extent needed to limit global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, they warned. “The proposed $250bn a year by 2035 is no floor, but a cap that will severely stagnate climate action efforts.”

The Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice said there were growing calls for a walkout, and that “no deal is better than a bad deal”, as the Cop29 UN climate summit dragged on through Friday night. There is still no end in sight to the talks, which were scheduled to finish on Friday at 6pm Baku time.

Wafa Misrar, the campaigns and policy lead of Climate Action Network Africa, said: “[This is] a profound disrespect to the people on the frontlines of the climate crisis – those losing their lives, homes and livelihoods every day. It is disheartening to witness the lack of commitment from global north countries, who seem willing to disregard our realities.”

Safa’ Al Jayoussi, the climate justice lead at Oxfam International, said: “This is a shameful failure of leadership. No deal would be better than a bad deal, but let’s be clear – there is only one option for those grappling with the harshest impacts of climate collapse: trillions, not billions, in public and grants-based finance.”

According to the draft text of a deal circulated on Thursday, developing countries would receive at least $1.3tn a year in climate finance by 2035, which is in line with the demands most submitted in advance of this two-week conference.

But poor nations wanted much more of that headline finance to come directly from rich countries, preferably in the form of grants rather than loans. They said the offer of $250bn coming from rich countries, with few safeguards over how much would come without strings attached, was much too little.

On Friday evening Greta Thunberg called the current draft “a complete disaster”. “The people in power are yet again about to agree to a death sentence to the countless people whose lives have been or will be ruined by the climate crisis,” she posted on X. “The current text is full of false solutions and empty promises. The money from the global north countries needed to pay back their climate debt is still nowhere to be seen.”

The offer from developed countries is supposed to form the inner core of a “layered” finance settlement, accompanied by a middle layer of new forms of finance such as new taxes on fossil fuels and high-carbon activities, carbon trading and “innovative” forms of finance; and an outermost layer of investment from the private sector, into projects such as solar and windfarms.

These layers would add up to $1.3tn a year, which is the amount that leading economists have calculated is needed in external finance for developing countries to tackle the climate crisis. Many activists have demanded more – figures of $5tn or $7tn a year have been put forward by some groups, based on the historic responsibilities of developed countries for causing the climate crisis.

But rich countries are facing their own budgetary crises, with rampant inflation, wars including the one in Ukraine, the aftermath of the Covid pandemic and threats from rightwing parties to weaponise the climate crisis as an issue.

Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s climate minister and a former green activist, said: “Countries like Canada are not denying what the needs are. We have made it clear that we cannot get to trillions with public dollars. It’s simply not possible.”

Most countries – and campaigners – know this, he added. “Some people are being disingenuous. They have known from the beginning that we would get to trillions with public money. Our public would not allow that to happen, but we can mobilise more than we have so far and that’s exactly what we are doing.”

Azerbaijan, which holds the presidency of the talks, also came in for criticism on Friday as countries complained that draft texts of an agreement left out and played down a key commitment to “transition away from fossil fuels”.

That commitment was made a year ago at the Cop28 talks in Dubai, but some countries want to unpick it. Saudi Arabia has been widely accused of taking the commitment out of drafts at every opportunity, to the fury of developed countries that want to build on the commitment to force a global shift away from high-carbon energy.

Yalchin Rafiyev, the chief negotiator for Azerbaijan, responded by accusing rich countries of failing to come up with an adequate offer of climate finance. “It [the $250bn] doesn’t correspond to a fair and ambitious goal,” he said.

Delegates expect a further draft text on Saturday morning. That will also be subject to fierce negotiations and potentially further iterations.

A jury at a civil trial at Ireland’s high court has found that the Irish martial arts fighter Conor McGregor assaulted a woman who had accused him of raping her at a hotel in Dublin in December 2018.

McGregor was ordered pay nearly €250,000 (£210,000) in damages to Nikita Hand, who is also known as Nikita Ní Laimhín.

Lawyers for Hand had accused 36-year-old McGregor of brutally raping and battering her after she invited him to join her and a friend at a work Christmas party in the Beacon Hotel in Dublin in December 2018.

Hand also alleged that another man, James Lawrence, who joined the party, sexually assaulted her. The jury found that Lawrence did not assault Hand.

Speaking outside the court after the verdict, Hand, 35, told reporters that she was “overwhelmed” by the support she had received. She thanked her family and a staff member from a rape crisis centre who had sat beside her throughout “this entire period”, including the two-week trial.

“I want to show [her daughter] Freya and every other girl and boy that you can stand up for yourself if something happens to you, no matter who the person, is and justice will be served,” Hand said.

“To all the victims of sexual assault, I hope my story is a reminder that no matter how afraid you might be, speak up, you have a voice and keep on fighting for justice.”

She added that she hoped to rebuild her life now that the six-year ordeal was over.

Hand, who grew up in the same area of Dublin as McGregor, took the civil court case primarily to be vindicated, her barrister had told the court, after the director of public prosecutions decided not to pursue a criminal case on the grounds that there was no reasonable prospect of a conviction.

McGregor doubled over with his head in his hands and shook his head as the jury returned their verdict and awarded Hand damages of €248,603.

There were tense scenes in court as McGregor arrived with a large supporter and family contingent including his partner, Dee Devlin, his mother, Margaret McGregor, and sister Aoife McGregor, along with his boxing coach, Philip Sutcliffe, standing at the back just feet away from Hand.

McGregor had denied the allegations, saying that he had “fully consensual sex” with Hand. He also denied causing bruising to her. He told the court that Hand’s accusations against him were “full of lies” verging on “fantasy”.

Hand had told the court that she and a friend made contact with McGregor, whom she knew, after a work Christmas party. She said they were driven by McGregor to a party in a penthouse room of a south Dublin hotel, where drugs and alcohol were consumed. She said McGregor took her to a bedroom in the penthouse and sexually assaulted her. Hand’s lawyer, John Gordon, said Hand was on antidepressants and “full of drugs” at the time of the alleged assault.

The verdict is likely to renew questions about the difficulty in bringing rape cases to court. Hand’s barrister told the court this week that whatever the outcome she would “always be a marked woman” because she had the “courage” to stand up to the fighter.

Hand had told the jury that she was “absolutely devastated and let down” when the director of public prosecutions told her they would not be progressing her file.

Over the two weeks of the trial, the jury heard harrowing accounts of the incident including a 45-minute recording of a conversation in which a deeply distressed Hand told her then boyfriend about the alleged rape.

The court heard Hand saying McGregor had pinned her down on the bed with all his body weight, and claiming he had put her head in a headlock, mock-choking her three times in a “terrifying” episode.

Oil runs deep in Azerbaijan, the host country of this year’s UN climate summit. Just 30 minutes south-west of the Cop29 conference centre lies the site of the world’s first industrially drilled oil well, opened in 1846.

Just metres away sit a handful of operating oil wells, nodding away. The Guardian spoke to an employee of Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company, Socar, who was working on one of the wells. Asked what oil meant for Azerbaijan, the 47-year-old worker said: “Too much!”

“It’s our future,” he said through an interpreter. “And our green future.”

Can oil be green? The worker said Socar had made efforts to clean up its oil supply, which he described as a “good thing”. Asked what he made of efforts to reduce fossil fuel usage, he said that in 100 years he imagined the world would be far less reliant on oil.

The worker, who has been at Socar for 15 years, said he had seen the impacts of the climate crisis first-hand. Baku’s winters had warmed considerably, he said, and snow was arriving later in winter across the country.

Azerbaijan’s economy has long been dependent on its oil reserves. Nothing makes this clearer than the Villa Petrolea. The compound, named for the Latin for “oil estate”, is where the Nobel brothers once lived and worked. In the late 1800s, Baku produced half of the world’s petroleum, and the Nobel brothers’ company, Branobel Oil, was responsible for most of that supply.

One of the Nobel brothers, Alfred, was also the inventor of dynamite, earning him the nickname “Merchant of Death”. To restore his legacy, he used his fortune from his shares in the oil company to create the Nobel prize. It is estimated that about 25% of the funds used to start the Nobel Foundation came from Branobel money.

Today, the Nobel brothers’ home is a museum – but a “living” one, since oil companies still hold events in its meeting room, a Villa Petrolea tour guide said.

The Nobels are not the only historical figures whose petroleum fortunes powered Azerbaijan. Oil money looms large over Baku. Towering over the city is the House of Hajinski, a striking five-storey building that was once the residence of the oil baron Isa Bey Hajinski. The oil magnate and philanthropist also owned a paraffin refinery in the sector of Baku known as Black City. The first owner of an automobile in Baku, Hajinski paid to build the nearby boulevard in 1901.

Other petroleum bosses also shaped Baku. The “coolest oil baron” was Zeynalabdin Taghiyev, said the Guardian’s tour guide, who is the tourism manager for Baku’s old city. Taghiyev paid to have the Middle East’s first secular Muslim school for girls built in the late 1800s.

Scientists have long said the swift phase-out of fossil fuels is necessary to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis. Though Baku’s economy runs on oil, many residents were excited to see Cop29 held in their city.

One shopkeeper in the old city of Baku said he was “of course” familiar with the climate summit, and added that he has been told that this summit was meant to help climate-vulnerable countries. He said there was a need to protect nature “without human interference”.

Nearby, two young men sat smoking outside a coffee shop. “It’s really an honour for us to be hosting the event on climate change in our country,” said Azadil Eyvazob, 21.

Fakhri Hasanov, 22, agreed but said the summit should really have taken place in a part of Azerbaijan that is less familiar with the green transition.

“Here in Baku, they are already making progress with bringing in more bikes and electric cars,” he said. “Other people need to hear the message more.”

Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, has written in a book that he could imagine a scenario in which the US armed forces would be used violently in American domestic politics.

Hegseth, a former elite soldier turned rightwing Fox television personality, is Trump’s choice to lead the Pentagon which controls the gigantic American military – by far the largest armed force in the world.

In one of his five published books he wrote that in the event of a Democratic election victory in the US there would be a “national divorce” in which “The military and police… will be forced to make a choice” and “Yes, there will be some form of civil war.”

Hegseth’s 2020 book exhorts conservatives to undertake “an AMERICAN CRUSADE”, to “mock, humiliate, intimidate, and crush our leftist opponents”, to “attack first” in response to a left he identifies with “sedition”, and he writes that the book “lays out the strategy we must employ in order to defeat America’s internal enemies”.

Hegseth’s rhetoric about perceived “internal” or “domestic enemies”, along with media reports highlighting his tattoo of the crusader motto “Deus Vult”, may ring alarm bells for those concerned by Donald Trump’s repeated threats to unleash the US military, which Hegseth would directly control, on those he has described as “the enemy within”.

The Guardian contacted the Trump transition team seeking comment from Hegseth.

John Whitehouse, news director at Media Matters for America (MMFA) which tracked Hegseth’s Fox career, said that Hegseth has “always given off a proto-fascist vibe”, and that “the thing that appealed to him was going into Iraq as a crusader, and when that went wrong he started looking at America through the same lens”.

Throughout his work, and especially in 2020’s American Crusade (AC), Hegseth paints an apocalyptic picture of American politics, and encourages his fellow rightwingers to see their opponents as an existential threat.

At various points in that book, he describes leftists, progressives and Democrats as “enemies” of freedom, the US constitution, and America, and counts Israel among the “international allies” who can help defeat such “domestic enemies”.

Addressing his conservative audience in a chapter of American Crusade entitled Make the Crusade Great Again, he writes: “Whether you like it or not, you are an ‘infidel’– an unbeliever – according to the false religion of leftism”. He added: “You can submit now or later; or you can fight.”

Later in the book, he writes, “Build the wall. Raise tariffs. Learn English. Buy American. Fight back.”

Elsewhere in American Crusade, he writes, “The hour is late for America. Beyond political success, her fate relies on exorcising the leftist specter dominating education, religion, and culture–a 360-degree holy war for the righteous cause of human freedom”.

In fighting, Hegseth wrote, “our weapon is American nationalism”, adding that “The Left has tried… to intimidate us into thinking that nationalism is a relic of a bygone era.”

Hegseth has followed his own advice in this respect: his tattoos include the words “We the People”, quoted from the constitution, and a “stylized American flag with its bottom stripe replaced by an AR-15 assault rifle” according to snopes.com reporting.

In relation to the media, “almost all” politicians, and credentialled experts, Hegseth advises readers to “Disdain, despise, detest, distrust–pick your d-words. But all of this must lead to action.”

Some actions he recommends resemble forms of disruption and harassment that Trump-aligned activists have brought to nonpartisan local government bodies.

Hegseth tells readers: “The next time conservative views are squelched in your local school, host a free-speech sit-in in your kids’ school lobby and make your case”, and “When local businesses declare ‘gun free zones,’ remember the Second Amendment, carry your legally owned firearm, and dare them to tell you it’s not allowed.”

In the wake of Trump’s defeat in 2020, media reports noted an uptick in rightwing activists open-carrying firearms at political protests, and there was a wave of anti-LGBTQ and anti-“critical race theory” protests at school board meetings, with some groups such as Moms for Liberty coordinating efforts to carry out partisan takeovers of school boards.

Hegseth further advises readers: “You know what local politicians fear the most? A cell phone camera in their face.”

In January, the Brennan Center for Justice reported that in the three years since the January 6 2021 insurrection, local and state elected officials had experienced “a barrage of intimidating abuse”. Their nationwide survey showed that over 40% of state elected officials and 18% of local officeholders had experienced threats or attacks. The numbers balloon to 89% of state legislators and 52% of local officeholders when less severe forms of abuse – insults or harassment such as stalking – are included.

Hegseth explicitly rejects democracy in American Crusade, characterizing it as a leftist demand: “For leftists, calls for “democracy” represent a complete rejection of our system. Watch how often they use the word”, adding: “They hate America, so they hate the Constitution and want to quickly amass 51 percent of the votes to change it.”

He explicitly supports forms of election-rigging via gerrymandering. Fair electoral boundaries, he writes, amount to “Playing nice to placate the so-called middle,” which “has been a losing strategy for patriots for decades”. Since “the other side is stacked with enemies of freedom”, Hegseth argues, “Republican legislatures should draw congressional lines that advantage pro-freedom candidates – and screw Democrats.”

Hegseth addresses the then-looming election repeatedly in the book, at one point writing that “The clash of 2020 is going to focus on the re-election of Donald Trump; but the real clash – underneath it all – is for the soul of America”. He writes: “Yes, the leftist media and machine hate President Trump – but they hate you just as much, if not more.”

And in entertaining the prospect of Trump’s defeat, Hegseth claims that a Biden victory will shatter the US and lead to civil war.

In the first chapter, Our American Crusade, he claims that “The fate of freedom is what is at stake in the 2020 election. The immediate years that follow will, once and for all, determine whether the American experiment in human freedom – the America of our founding – will die, get a national divorce based on irreconcilable cultural and political divisions, or return to its founding principles.”

Later in the book he defines a national divorce as “irreconcilable differences between the Left and the Right in America leading to perpetual conflict that cannot be resolved through the political process”.

The idea of separating America according to ideology has been a rightwing refrain during the Trump era. In recent days, Marjorie Taylor Greene renewed her calls for a “national divorce” that would separate blue and red states, in response to Democratic governors vowing to oppose aspects of Donald Trump’s agenda in his second term after he won the 2024 election.

For Hegseth, such a move would necessarily involve violence.

Among the consequences should Biden win, he predicted, would be that “America will decline and die. A national divorce will ensue. Outnumbered freedom lovers will fight back.”

Continuing, Hegseth writes: “The military and police, both bastions of freedom-loving patriots, will be forced to make a choice. It will not be good. Yes, there will be some form of civil war.”

Hegseth concedes that “It’s a horrific scenario that nobody wants but would be difficult to avoid.”

Additionally, he writes, “If America is split, freedom will no longer have an army.”

The end of the US military – which he elsewhere calls “the only powerful, pro-freedom, pro-Christian, pro-Israel army in the world”– will in turn mean that “Communist China will rise – and rule the globe. Europe will formally surrender. Islamists will get nuclear weapons and seek to wipe America and Israel off the map.”

Victory, however, will mean the defeat of the allied forces of “globalism”, “socialism”, “secularism”, “environmentalism”, “Islamism”, “genderism” and “leftism” according to Hegseth.

Hegseth expresses an unstinting loyalty to Trump the man.

At one point in the book, he describes a conversation between the two after Trump, at Hegseth’s urging, in 2019 pardoned three service members who had been charged or convicted with alleged war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On Hegseth’s account, Trump called him ahead of the pardon, and the call “ended with a compliment to me that I’ll never forget and might put on my tombstone: ‘You’re a fucking warrior, Pete. A fucking warrior.’ I thanked him for his courage, and he hung up.”

Whitehouse, the MMFA news director, said that while Hegseth has long advocated for policy changes in defense, such as an end to women in combat roles, Trump has picked him due to “knowing and trusting that they have a similar connection to the conservative media audience”.

“Trump, Hegseth, and even JD Vance know that when push comes to shove they’ll align with what that rightwing audience wants”, he added. “Will he dissent on an order to have the military attack protesters? It probably depends on what they think that audience wants at the time.”

For Hegseth’s part, he leaves his readers with the promise to “See you on the battlefield. Together, with God’s help, we will save America. Deus vult!”

Premier League clubs approved changes to associated party transaction (APT) rules on Friday in the face of opposition led by Manchester City.

The alterations were swiftly approved by 16 votes to four, with Aston Villa, Newcastle and Nottingham Forest standing with City. Clubs were asked at a shareholder meeting in central London to pass modest changes to rules relating to deals when they generate income from sources related to their ownership.

The proposed changes follow criticisms brought by an arbitration tribunal last month. The tribunal found that rules which allowed owners to extend interest-free loans to clubs should have been treated as APT deals, and clubs were found to have been denied timely access to a database of prior deals when trying to strike APT arrangements. Criticisms over the timeliness of the league’s adjudications on such deals were also made.

City have argued that the tribunal’s criticisms have undermined the league’s entire APT apparatus. The league says the tribunal was an endorsement of its broader rules and that, given the changes, they remain robust.

The league said in a statement on Friday: “At a Premier League shareholders’ meeting today, clubs approved changes to the league’s associated party transaction (APT) rules. The Premier League has conducted a detailed consultation with clubs – informed by multiple opinions from expert, independent leading counsel – to draft rule changes that address amendments required to the system.

“This relates to integrating the assessment of shareholder loans, the removal of some of the amendments made to APT rules earlier this year and changes to the process by which relevant information from the League’s ‘databank’ is shared with a club’s advisors.

“The purpose of the APT rules is to ensure clubs are not able to benefit from commercial deals or reductions in costs that are not at fair market value (FMV) by virtue of relationships with associated parties. These rules were introduced to provide a robust mechanism to safeguard the financial stability, integrity and competitive balance of the League.”

The world must stand behind a historic resolution made last year to “transition away from fossil fuels”, the United Arab Emirates has said, in a powerful intervention into a damaging row over climate action.

The petrostate’s stance came as a sharp rebuke to its neighbour and close ally Saudi Arabia, which had been trying to unpick the global commitment at UN climate talks in Azerbaijan this week.

Last year, the UAE hosted a vital summit on the climate, Cop28, of which the commitment to transition away from fossil fuels was a key outcome. It marked the first time in 30 years of near-annual climate meetings that the issue had been directly addressed.

The requirement was contained in a document called the UAE Consensus. A UAE spokesperson told the Guardian: “The UAE Consensus is the culmination of an intense set of negotiations that proved the value of multilateralism.

“As a Cop decision, it is by definition unanimous. All parties must honour what they agreed. They must now focus on implementation by providing the means to take it forward with a robust NCQG [new collective quantified goal on climate finance]. We urge all parties to focus on this outcome.”

At this year’s talks, Cop29, Saudi Arabia and its allies have been attempting to roll back this commitment. They tried to sideline the discussion of the phaseout of fossil fuels into a separate track of the talks, under finance, and refused to allow the commitment to be included in crucial texts.

Experts on the talks told the Guardian privately that the UAE intervention against its close ally and “brother nation” Saudi Arabia was highly significant.

After Cop28, UAE instituted a “troika” system for UN Cops, whereby the three countries that were the current, immediate past and next hosts agreed to cooperate to try to ensure the talks run smoothly.

Saudi Arabia has been highly obstructive at these talks, according to insiders in the negotiating rooms. A spokesperson for the country told a plenary session of the Cop – which stands for “conference of the parties” under the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – that Saudi Arabia would “not accept any text that targets any specific sectors, including fossil fuels”.

That comment prompted Catherine McKenna, a former climate minister for Canada and chair of the UN group on net zero emissions commitments, to write on social media: “I am so sick of Saudi Arabia’s opposition to any suggestion of a transition away from fossil fuels. We are in a fossil fuel climate crisis. Please go hard everyone at #Cop29 and get it done.”

Cop29 in Azerbaijan is entering its final hours. As well as reaffirming the transition away from fossil fuels, the summit is supposed to produce a new global settlement on climate finance, to channel funds of at least $1tn a year to developing countries, to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the impact of extreme weather.

But the conference has been mired in bitter rows. Developed countries have yet to confirm how much climate finance they will contribute to the “new collective quantified goal” from their own budgets, and how much of the remainder of the expected $1tn or more would have to be made up from private sector investment.

Developing countries want most of the money to come from public funds, and to take the form of grants rather than loans.

Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, who was also twice a UN climate envoy, told the Guardian poor countries might have to compromise on a figure of $300bn that was likely to be offered from the budgets of developed countries and from multilateral development banks such as the World Bank.

The United States believes Russia fired a never-before-fielded intermediate-range ballistic missile on Thursday in its attack on Ukraine, an escalation that analysts say could have implications for European missile defences.

Here’s what we know so far about the missile.

What kind of ballistic missile is it?

The US military said the Russian missile’s design was based on the design of Russia’s longer-range RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

The new missile was experimental and Russia likely possessed only a handful of them, officials said.

The Pentagon said the missile was fired with a conventional warhead but that Moscow could modify it if it wanted.

“It could be refitted to certainly carry different types of conventional or nuclear warheads,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said.

Jeffrey Lewis, a non-proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California, said the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, had earlier hinted that Russia would complete the development of an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) system after Washington and Berlin agreed to deploy long-range US missiles in Germany from 2026.

“The RS-26 was always [a] prime candidate,” Lewis said.

Singh said the new variant of the missile was considered “experimental” by the Pentagon. “It’s the first time that we’ve seen it employed on the battlefield … So that’s why we consider it experimental.”

US and UK sources indicated that they believed the missile fired on Dnipro was an experimental nuclear-capable, intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), which has a theoretical range of below 3,420 miles (5,500km). That is enough to reach Europe from where it was fired in south-western Russia, but not the US.

Ukraine’s air force initially said the missile was an ICBM. While launching an IRBM sent a less threatening signal, the incident could still set off alarms and Moscow notified Washington briefly ahead of the launch, according to US officials.

Will Russia’s missile strike affect Nato?

Timothy Wright, at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Russia’s development of new missiles might influence decisions in Nato countries regarding what air defence systems to purchase as well as which offensive capabilities to pursue.

A new US ballistic missile defence base in northern Poland has already drawn angry reactions from Moscow. The US base at Redzikowo is part of a broader Nato missile shield and is designed to intercept short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

Still, Putin said Thursday’s launch of the new IRBM was not a response to the base in Poland but instead to recent Ukrainian long-range strikes inside Russian territory with western weapons.

After approval from the administration of President Joe Biden, Ukraine struck Russia with US-made Atacms on 19 November and with British Storm Shadow missiles and US-made Himars on 21 November, Putin said.

What has Vladimir Putin said about the new missile?

The Russian president acknowledged in a television address to the nation that Moscow had struck a Ukrainian military facility with a new ballistic missile and said it was called “Oreshnik” (the hazel).

He said its deployment “was a response to US plans to produce and deploy intermediate and short-range missiles”, and that Russia would “respond decisively and symmetrically” in the event of an escalation.

Moscow said it targeted a missile and defence firm in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, where missile and space rocket company Pivdenmash, known as Yuzhmash by Russians, is based.

Putin said Russia was developing short- and medium0range missiles in response to the planned production and then deployment by the US of medium- and shorter-range missiles in Europe and Asia.

“I believe that the United States made a mistake by unilaterally destroying the treaty on the elimination of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles in 2019 under a far-fetched pretext,” the Russian president said, referring to the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty.

The US formally withdrew from the 1987 (INF) treaty with Russia in 2019 after saying that Moscow was violating the accord, an accusation the Kremlin denied.