China angered by the address, criticising Europe for allowing ‘separatist activities’ to be carried out in parliament building
Taiwan’s vice-president, Bi-Khim Hsiao, urged the EU to boost security and trade ties with the self-governing island and support its democracy in the face of growing threats by China in a rare address to a group of international lawmakers in Brussels.
“Peace in the Taiwan Strait is essential to global stability and economic continuity, and international opposition against unilateral changes to the status quo by force cannot be overstated,” Hsiao told lawmakers assembled for a China-focused conference in the European parliament building.
China launches £5.4bn ship capable of carrying 60 aircraft that Beijing values as much for maintaining its global influence as for its use in warfare
In port, the 80,000-tonne Fujian aircraft carrier would be impossible to miss. More than 300 metres long and capable of carrying about 60 aircraft, the £5.4bn super-vessel places China second among the world’s navies, with three aircraft carriers, though still a long way behind the global leader, the US, which has 11.
Yet for all the great power projection of the new warship, nearly 5,000 miles away from its home port another conflict appears to suggest size may not matter. In the Black Sea, Ukraine achieved an extraordinary military success by inflicting a “functional defeat” on Russia’s naval fleet using swarms of skilfully targeted sea drones.
As protesters outside condemn war, inside the Indo-Pacific International Maritime Exposition the defence minister praises the ‘beautiful, menacing and extremely cool’ technology on show
Inside the heavily guarded, aseptically cool halls of the Indo-Pacific International Maritime Exposition, Australia’s defence minister, Richard Marles, describes it as, for some in the room, “a kind of Disneyland … the happiest place on Earth”.
Standing outside, facing barricades and a broad line of armed police, those protesting the very presence of the arms conference in Sydney view it is anything but.
High court’s order comes after appeals court rejected Trump administration’s request to block November benefits
The supreme court has issued an emergency order temporarily blocking full Snap food aid payments.
The high court’s order came after the Trump administration asked a federal appeals court on Friday to block a judge’s order that it distribute November’s full monthly food stamp benefits amid a US federal government shutdown.
Ukrainian minister says Moscow is ‘massively attacking’ grid; Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russian troops gathering near north-eastern city. What we know on day 1,354
Karin Immergut said earlier she ‘found no credible evidence’ that protests in Oregon city were out of control
A federal judge in Oregon on Friday blocked Donald Trump from deploying national guard troops to Portland, ruling there was no evidence of widespread violence to justify federal intervention.
The US district court judge, Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, delivered her final order in the case on Friday. She found that protests near Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility were “predominately peaceful, with only isolated and sporadic instances of relatively low-level violence”.
Viktor Orbán had a friendly meeting with Donald Trump on Friday to press his case for a reprieve
The United States has granted Hungary a one-year exemption from US sanctions for using Russian oil and gas, a White House official said on Friday, after Viktor Orbán pressed his case for a reprieve during a friendly meeting with Donald Trump in Washington.
Last month, Trump imposed Ukraine-related sanctions on Russian oil companies Lukoil and Rosneft that carried the threat of further sanctions on entities in countries that buy oil from those firms.
The opener is in line for an Australia debut after twice taking time away from cricket to protect his mental health and piling on the runs for Tasmania
Jake Weatherald and Justin Galeotti travelled separately on the short journey from the coffee shop to the nets for their scheduled hit. They trained as usual and with Galeotti oblivious to the fact Weatherald had just fielded a life-altering phone call from Australia’s chair of selectors, George Bailey, telling him his baggy green dream had almost arrived. The uncapped Weatherald was in the 15-player Ashes squad for the first Test.
“It lasted about two minutes,” Weatherald says about the call with Bailey. “I didn’t want to bring it up [with Galeotti] because I felt like it would distract from the net session. I didn’t want to make it all about me. We’d have been talking about it the whole time and not training.”
The Queensland government released private information about the mother of a transgender teenager – information she says potentially “outed” her child – to a stranger.
The revelation came as the state government was accused of “intimidation” and “an invasion of privacy” after demanding confidential medical information from parents of transgender children who are considering a further legal challenge to its controversial ban on puberty blockers.
Officers found Maria Florinda Rios Perez De Velasquez dead after she accidentally went to a wrong property
Authorities in Indiana are considering whether to charge a homeowner who they say shot and killed a woman after she mistakenly went to the wrong address where she thought she was turning up to clean a property.
Police officers found Maria Florinda Rios Perez De Velasquez, 32, dead just before 7am Wednesday on the front porch of a home in Whitestown, an Indianapolis suburb of about 10,000 people.
My job and my disordered eating have long fed each other. Talking publicly about my experience helps lift the veil of secrecy surrounding it
Nothing in my life sparks greater joy and deeper shame than food. Publicly, I live and love to eat. As a food writer my livelihood depends on it. But privately, I live with a binge-eating disorder, and it can feel like what I’m devouring is actually devouring me.
My family is Italian, and their love language is food, so food is also the portal to all my memories, good and bad. Nonna’s lasagne at Easter, her zeppole at Christmas, were the best of times. The worst: foil trays piled with fried food at funerals, the liquorice allsorts I ate – and now hate – after my infant brother choked and paramedics rushed him to hospital. Emotional eating has always been so normal for me.
Administration has long accused South Africa of allowing white Afrikaner farmers to be persecuted and attacked
Donald Trump said Friday that no US government officials would be attending the Group of 20 summit this year in South Africa, citing the country’s treatment of white farmers.
The US president had already announced he would not attend the annual summit for heads of state from the globe’s leading and emerging economies. JD Vance had been scheduled to attend in Trump’s place, but a person familiar with Vance’s plans who was granted anonymity to talk about his schedule said Vance would no longer travel there for the summit.
Arne Slot: ‘Florian needs time to adapt to teammates’
Head coach hopes to have Isak available for City clash
Arne Slot has rejected Arsène Wenger’s theory that playing Florian Wirtz as a No 10 has “destroyed Liverpool’s midfield” and insisted the £116m signing will prove a special talent wherever he operates for the Premier League champions.
Wirtz impressed when playing off the left in the Champions League defeat of Real Madrid on Tuesday, having previously struggled to make an impact in a central attacking role. The Germany international’s difficult start in the Premier League – where he is yet to score or assist before Sunday’s visit to Manchester City – prompted a withering assessment by Wenger before the visit of Real.
Manager: striker ‘works so hard and wants to succeed’
Amorim will rotate Fernandes if United return to Europe
Ruben Amorim has conceded Benjamin Sesko is struggling for form at Manchester United and wants the striker to learn to accept criticism so it becomes like a “normal Monday”.
Sesko has scored only twice in 11 appearances for United since joining the club from RB Leipzig for £73.7m in August. That has brought inevitable pressure on to the 22-year-old’s shoulders with Amorim revealing that while he is relaxed about the situation, the player himself is not. “I understand how things are in football, and he’s going to struggle,” said the head coach. “He has no experience here, and when everyone says that you are the next big thing, you hear that. If you don’t perform every week, you are going to hear from club legends, from pundits, the media, and sometimes they are right.
World No 1 triumphs 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 in epic semi-final
Rybakina battles back to defeat Pegula 4-6, 6-4, 6-3
Aryna Sabalenka will attempt to close out one of the greatest seasons of her career by winning the WTA Finals for the first time as she rekindles her rivalry with Elena Rybakina in the final of the season-ending championships.
In the final stages of a tournament that has spectacularly produced both drama and quality, semi-final day in Riyadh further underscored the fierce competition at the top of women’s tennis today with two excellent three-set contests.
President asks justice department to open an investigation but provides no proof to support his allegations
Donald Trump on Friday accused foreign-owned meat packers of driving up the price of beef in the US and asked the Department of Justice to open an investigation.
The Republican president announced the move on social media days after his party suffered losses in key elections in which the winning Democratic candidates focused relentlessly on the public’s concerns about the cost of living.
This extraordinarily tight child kidnap drama knits all its threads together brilliantly – and the mighty Snook of Succession fame shines as a mother whose son is missing
Look, I am a mother, a neurotic and – if one of my HRT patches sloughs off without me noticing – very quickly a clinical paranoiac. But even if that were not true, this latest tale of a playdate gone unthinkably wrong would have me firmly in its grip. All Her Fault, an adaptation of bestselling thriller writer Andrea Mara’s 2021 book of the same name, braids a number of popular TV trends together, interrogating White Lotus-style the phenomenon of middle-class US affluence and the protections it offers and corruptions it encourages, a missing child narrative and an examination of the penalty women pay for motherhood. It is rare that all these things are held in balance, without at least one element becoming preachy or the thriller part becoming baggy or preposterous, but All Her Fault manages it brilliantly.
We are plunged straight into the thick of things as wealthy wealth manager Marissa Irvine (Succession’s mighty Sarah Snook) arrives to pick up her five-year-old son Milo from a playdate at the home of another school mum, Jenny (Dakota Fanning). But when she reaches the supposed address, the woman who answers the door is not Jenny, has never heard of her, or Jenny’s nanny Carrie (Sophia Lillis) who was in charge of the playdate, or Milo. It soon becomes clear that no one has seen Milo since Carrie picked him up from school. He’s gone, his online tracker found smashed to bits in the school car park, and he stays gone even after the time a ransom demand would usually have been received.
Economic concerns felt by Americans of different ages, incomes and political affiliations, survey finds
The federal government shutdown dragged consumer sentiment in the US to a near record low in November, according to a monthly survey conducted by the University of Michigan.
Consumer sentiment fell about 6% in November, with the consumer sentiment index for November 2025 at 50.3, down from 53.6 in October, nearly three points below expectations. Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal expected a 53.0 index reading.
Nobel prize winner shaped medicine, crimefighting and genealogy, but later years marred by racist remarks
James Dewey Watson, whose co-discovery of the twisted-ladder structure of DNA in 1953 helped light the long fuse on a revolution in medicine, crimefighting, genealogy and ethics, has died, according to his former research lab. He was 97.
The breakthrough – made when the brash, Chicago-born Watson was just 24 – turned him into a hallowed figure in the world of science for decades. But near the end of his life, he faced condemnation and professional censure for offensive remarks, including saying Black people were less intelligent than white people.
Ticket sales at about 40% unsold compared with before president made himself chair of US performing arts center
The Washington National Opera (WNO) is considering moving out of the Kennedy Center, the company’s home since the US’s national performing arts center opened in 1971.
The possibility has been forced on the company as a result of the “takeover” of the center by Donald Trump, according to WNO’s artistic director, Francesca Zambello. The president declared himself chair of the institution in February, sacking and replacing its board and leadership.
Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen battle for the title, just as Juan Manuel Fangio, Nino Farina and Luigi Fagioli did 75 years ago
With no little pleasing symmetry, 75 years on from a three-way fight for the inaugural Formula One title, the championship is entering its decisive phase once more with three protagonists in the running and the promise of an enthralling denouement of the kind that has graced some of the sport’s greatest seasons.
Heading into this weekend’s São Paulo Grand Prix, McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen all remain in the hunt. Norris leads Piastri by one point, with the defending champion, Verstappen, 36 points back, after a late-season resurgence.
Strawberry hit 335 HRs and was eight-time All-Star
US president cites faith, sobriety, ministry work
Donald Trump has pardoned former New York Mets great Darryl Strawberry on past tax evasion and drug charges, citing the 1983 National League Rookie of the Year’s post-career embrace of his Christian faith and longtime sobriety.
Strawberry was an outfielder and eight-time All-Star, including seven with the Mets from 1983 through 1990. He hit 335 homers and had 1,000 RBIs and 221 stolen bases in 17 seasons.
Team’s participation in Vuelta was dogged by protests
The main sponsor of the Israel-Premier Tech (IPT) team of the four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome has pulled out of funding the team, despite a pledge to rebrand and distance itself from its Israeli identity. The Canadian company Premier Tech, in a statement issued on Friday, said that it had decided to “step down as co-title sponsor of the team, taking effect immediately”.
“Although we took notice of the team’s decision to change its name for the 2026 season,” the statement said, “the core reason for Premier Tech to sponsor the team has been overshadowed to a point where it has become untenable for us to continue as a sponsor.”
Student, national and local groups across US organized day of action to condemn Trump’s assault on academic freedom
Students, faculty and staff at more than 100 campuses across the US rallied against the Trump administration’s assault on higher education on Friday – the first in a planned series of nationwide, coordinated protests that organizers hope will culminate in large-scale students’ and workers’ strikes next May Day and a nationwide general strike in May 2028.
The day of action was organized under the banner of Students Rise Up, a network of students including both local groups and national organizations such as Sunrise Movement and Campus Climate Network. Students were joined by faculty and educational workers’ unions like the American Association of University Professors and Higher Education Labor United.
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