Five natural disaster zones have been declared in New South Wales as police found a woman’s body on a flood-affected property in the north of the state.

The woman disappeared on Thursday night in floodwaters at a rural property at Upper Burringbar, 20km south of Murwillumbah, and her body was found by a family member at about 8am on Friday, police said in a statement. About 20,000 people have been ordered to evacuate northern NSW as flooding continued to hit the area. On Friday, NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian said the Tweed, Lismore, Byron, Richmond Valley, and Kyogle and Ballina local government areas were natural disaster areas, meaning residents can access disaster assistance funding.(guardian)…[+]

US intelligence officials had serious concerns about Michael Flynn’s appointment as the White House national security adviser because of his history of contacts with Moscow and his encounter with a woman who had trusted access to Russian spy agency records, the Guardian has learned.

US and British intelligence officers discussed Flynn’s “worrisome” behaviour well before his appointment last year by Donald Trump, multiple sources have said.

They raised concerns about Flynn’s ties to Russia and his perceived obsession with Iran. They were also anxious about his capacity for “linear thought” and some actions that were regarded as highly unusual for a three-star general.Flynn was forced to quit in February, after 24 days in the job. He resigned when it emerged he had lied to the vice-president, Mike Pence. Flynn said he had not discussed lifting US sanctions on Russia with Sergei Kislyak, Moscow’s US ambassador, but later admitted this was untrue.On Thursday, Flynn indicated he was willing to testify before the FBI and congressional committees about potential links between the Trump campaign and Russia in exchange for immunity. In a statement released by his lawyer, Flynn said he had a story to tell but was seeking “assurances against unfair prosecution”.(guardian)…[+]

The EU has put the future of Gibraltar at stake in the coming Brexit negotiations, effectively backing Spain in its centuries-old dispute with the UK over the British overseas territory.

After lobbying from Spanish diplomats, a clause has been inserted in the EU’s draft Brexit negotiating guidelines that appears to allow Spain to exclude Gibraltar from any transitional single market access arrangement or future trade deal with the UK if it is not satisfied with the status of the territory. This suggests that unless Britain is willing to let its citizens on “the rock” be subject to an inferior economic future than those in the UK, the EU has effectively handed the Spanish government a veto on Britain’s entire future relationship with the bloc.

“The union will stick up for its members, and that means Spain now,” a senior EU official said. The news is likely to infuriate London, which has insisted that its longstanding refusal to entertain Spain’s ambitions of reclaiming sovereignty over Gibraltar, which was ceded to Britain in 1713, will not be affected by Brexit.(guardian)…[+]

Eduardo Cunha the former head of Brazil’s lower house of congress has been sentenced to more than 15 years in prison for his role in the massive Car Wash corruption scandal.

Cunha’s conviction is one of the stiffest penalties handed down to such a senior politician since the end of the dictatorship era in 1985, but public satisfaction with the judgement will be mixed with concern that he could yet win an appeal and many other powerful figures accused of similar crimes remain unpunished. Curitiba lower court judge Sergio Moro found Cunha – a rightwing evangelical Christian – guilty of corruption, money laundering and currency law evasion in connection with a $1.6m bribe he received from a deal by state-run oil firm Petrobras to buy exploration rights in Benin. The judgement also noted a pending case in Switzerland related to $2.3m stashed in a secret bank account in the European country.(the guardian)…[+]