Monday briefing: Harry's 'great sadness' at stepping away

Top story: ‘There really was no other option’

Good morning and welcome to this first briefing of the week with me, Alison Rourke.

Prince Harry has broken his silence on stepping away from royal duties, saying he and his wife, Meghan, would continue to “lead a life of service” but had “no other option”. In a speech at his HIV charity Sentebale, in London, he said he had hoped to continue serving the Queen without public funding but that wasn’t possible: “It brings me great sadness that it has come to this.” He said the decision to step back had not been taken lightly and that it came after “so many months of talks after so many years of challenges”.

Appearing to lay the blame at the feet of the press, he said the media was “a powerful force”, adding that the UK was his home “and a place that I love”.

The couple will give up their His and Her Royal Highness titles and return £2.4m to the taxpayer to cover the cost of refurbishing their Windsor home, Frogmore.

Netflix is among global companies already eyeing a relationship with the pair. The streaming giant’s chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, said of working with the couple: “Who wouldn’t be interested? Yes, sure.”

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‘Eliminated altogether’ – Cervical cancer could be eradicated in England through vaccines and screening for HPV, the virus that causes most cases of the disease, according to NHS England. The disease kills 850 women each year in the UK. From the beginning of December, routine screening has been reoriented to test primarily for HPV. Only those who have the virus will have their smear sample checked for abnormal cells that are the precursor of cervical cancer. “Combined with the success of the HPV vaccine for both boys and girls, we hope that cervical cancer can be eliminated altogether by the NHS in England,” said Prof Peter Johnson, the national clinical director for cancer.

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Luanda leaks – A seven-month investigation has revealed for the first time the complex financial schemes that have helped Africa’s richest woman – Angola’s Isabel dos Santos – amass a fortune at vast cost to her country. A huge leak of confidential documents raise questions over preferential deals and lucrative transactions with the Angolan state worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Dos Santos is known as “the princess” in Angola and is the daughter of former president José Eduardo dos Santos. The material reveals an opaque network of about 400 companies, many of them offshore, connected to Dos Santos and her husband, the businessman and art collector Sindika Dokolo, and their associates. The couple has rejected any allegation of wrongdoing and vehemently denied being financed by state money. They say they are the subjects of a politically motivated witch-hunt led by Angola’s new president.

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BBC payout – The former Today program presenter Sarah Montague has won £400,000 in a settlement over “unequal treatment”. Montague, 53, who previously presented alongside Today’s veteran journalist John Humphrys, said the deal came after a “long period of stressful negotiations” which was triggered after discovering a disparity in her pay and conditions. “Last year, after a long period of stressful negotiation, I accepted a settlement of £400,000 subject to tax and an apology from the BBC for paying me unequally for so many years,” Montague tweeted.

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Guantánamo torture – The two psychologists who designed the US “enhanced interrogation” program at Guantánamo Bay that included waterboarding and other forms of torture, will give evidence in open court for the first time this week. James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen will answer questions at a pre-trial hearing on the 9/11 attacks before a military tribunal in Guantánamo Bay. Lawyers for the defendants, who are detained on the Cuban island, say it will be a unique opportunity to demonstrate that both the CIA and FBI were complicit in torture, with significant implications for any future trial of suspected 9/11 plotters.

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Day to night – A huge dust storm has hit drought-stricken Australia. Gusts of nearly 100km/h moved the storm through parts of central NSW turning the sky dark. The Bureau of Meteorology issued a series of severe thunderstorm warnings with the associated winds generating massive dust clouds. The region has been in the grip of a drought while other parts of the state have been ravaged by fire. Many are now seeing severe thunder and hail storms.

Today in Focus podcast: can the BBC win its battle with the government?

The Guardian’s media editor, Jim Waterson, takes stock of a bruising general election campaign for the BBC and subsequent threats to the licence fee from the prime minister. Plus: the BBC’s editorial director, Kamal Ahmed, denies the broadcaster is worried that senior ministers appear to be boycotting flagship shows. Also today: Gabrielle Jackson on endometriosis and the need for modern medicine to catch up with the reality of chronic pain in women.

Lunchtime read: how Gary Beadle’s career survived leaving EastEnders

Albert Square’s bad boy was told leaving the long-running show would end his career. “The test was, ‘Can you do EastEnders and then work again afterwards?’ Apparently, everyone who does it never works again. I liked the odds on that. I thought, ‘Let’s see if I can pull it off.’ ” But, as he tells Bridget Minamore, he has no regrets. Since his exit in 2004, the actor has has worked at the National, Almeida and Royal Court theatres, and had roles on various TV dramas including Patrick Melrose. “There’s times where I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve been doing this most of my life, but I don’t think I can act. I’ve been lying to myself all along.’ So I had to reinvent myself. And I did that through theatre, which is where I started.”

Sport

The British tennis No 1, Dan Evans, is through to the second round of the Australian Open but he had to come from two sets down before seeing off the world No 129 Mackenzie McDonald. Pep Guardiola says Aymeric Laporte cannot alone solve Manchester City’s defensive problems when the centre-back returns from a serious knee injury that has kept him out since the end of August, during which time City’s rearguard have conceded 13 more goals than Liverpool. Lionel Messi got Quique Setién’s Barcelona reign off to a winning start with a second-half goal to beat Granada at Camp Nou. Manchester United’s troubled season took another turn for the worse as they slipped to a 2-0 defeat at Liverpool and faced up to the loss of Marcus Rashford for between two and three months. The Kansas City Chiefs have reached their first Super Bowl since 1970 after Patrick Mahomes tamed the Tennessee Titans. They will meet the San Francisco 49ers, who saw off the Green Bay Packers 37-20. Saracens fans are licking their wounds after a nervy win over Racing 92 took the European champions into the Champions Cup quarter-finals, but the Allianz Park atmosphere was darkened by off-field troubles. Stuart Bingham won the Masters 10-8 but one of the biggest days in the snooker calendar was briefly disrupted by an electronic “whoopee cushion” in the crowd.

Business

UK house prices have risen over the past month at the fastest rate on record for the time of the year. Rightmove says sellers feel more confident about the outlook for the housing market after the general election. The average price of properties coming on to the market jumped by 2.3%, the biggest rise for the period since the property website started its house price index in 2002. Nearly 65,000 UK properties were marketed over the month, with an average asking price of £306,810.

The pound is buying €1.172 and $1.300.

The papers

Prince Harry’s speech about he and his wife’s decision to step back from royal duties saw a number of papers scrambling to update their front pages. “Harry: I had no choice but to go”, says the Telegraph. The Mirror’s final edition headline is: “We did want to serve but had to leave”. The Express has “Devastated Harry: why I had to go”. The Times’ splash is “Harry tells of sadness at giving up royal duties” and the Sun has “Harry & Wills Meg peace”. The Mail’s second edition headline is “Harry: I’m so sad it’s come to this”.

The Guardian splashes on the massive leak of information about the wealth of Angola’s Isobel dos Santos. The i leads reports on “Cervical cancer screening upgrade” and the FT’s main headline is: “Javid’s non-alignment vow sparks alarm from Brussels”.

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