The scientific community has long warned about the potential effect of further mutations in the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. And analysis has identified a new variant, described by one scientist as "the worst one we've seen so far", with more than 50 mutations. Only 59 cases have been identified so far - in South Africa, Hong Kong and Botswana, with none in the UK - but concerns it might have the potential to evade immunity have prompted the suspension of all England-bound flights from South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini, from 12:00 GMT.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid says scientists are "deeply concerned" but that more needed to be learned. So adding the six countries to the UK's travel red list was about "being cautious". It means British or Irish residents arriving in the UK from those six countries must self-isolate, with mandatory hotel quarantine in England from 04:00 on Sunday, and 24 hours earlier in Scotland. Up to 700 people a day have been travelling to the UK from South Africa. Our health correspondent James Gallagher says this variant is radically different from the form that emerged in China. "That means vaccines, designed using the original, may not be as effective." But, he adds, there have been many variants that looked bad on paper before. Read his analysis.

With UK officials due for talks in Calais later, Boris Johnson is calling on France to agree to "take back" people who cross the English Channel to the UK. It's one of five steps the prime minister says could help avoid a repeat of Wednesday's tragedy in which 27 people died. In a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron, he suggests joint patrols on French beaches, using more advanced technology, reciprocal marine patrols in each other's waters and deepening the work of the countries' joint intelligence cell. The ideas will, however, "be hard for France to swallow", says the BBC's Paris correspondent Lucy Williamson. Calais MP Pierre-Henri Dumont has already dismissed the idea of joint patrols as "crazy".

Black Friday has always divided opinion and, this year, Covid's side-effects on global supply chains mean shortages of some products, with less generous discounts expected on others. But analysts PWC nonetheless predict Britons will spend £8.7bn during the annual event, which started as a post-Thanksgiving sale in the US and has become a global weeks-long shopping frenzy. That outlay would be up from £7.8bn in 2019 and about twice as much as last year, when the UK was in lockdown. Even so, some big brands are joining many independent shops in shunning the sale and questions have been raised about the quality of the deals offered. Our report explains how retailers have adapted to this year's unusual circumstances.

The ban on travel from six southern African nations, after the discovery of a new coronavirus variant, leads some papers. But others focus on the migrants continuing to risk their lives to cross the English Channel, despite the deaths of 27 people on Wednesday, with the Metro quoting one Iraqi man saying: "We just want to live like you." The Daily Mirror pictures "DIY death boats" found in Kent which, it says, are of the type provided by people-smuggling gangs. And the Daily Telegraph quotes the "anguish" of the husband of an Iraqi-Kurdish woman he fears drowned on Wednesday. Read the review.

When Jim Irvine spotted some "unusual pottery" during a lockdown walk across his dad's field, in Rutland, he could never have known the importance of what he found. But he reported his find to archeologists - and the Roman mosaic they subsequently unearthed has been described as "one of the most remarkable and significant" ever found in Britain. Here's why. And we don't normally give away any clues but if you read that story, it might just help with our quiz of the week's news. Try it here.

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