Canadian expert David Vigneault warns of China’s ‘industrial-strength’ attempts to steal new technologies
Hostile spy agencies are now as focused on infiltrating western universities and companies as they are on doing so to governments, according to the former head of Canada’s intelligence service.
David Vigneault warned that a recent “industrial-scale” attempt by China to steal new technologies showed the need for increased vigilance from academics.
Church leaders respond to far-right appropriation of Christian symbols with ‘Outsiders welcome’ message
The Church of England is to launch a poster campaign aimed at challenging the anti-migrant message of Tommy Robinson, whose “Unite the Kingdom” movement has urged its supporters to join a carols event next weekend to “put the Christ back into Christmas”.
The posters, which will go on display at bus stops, say “Christ has always been in Christmas” and “Outsiders welcome”. They will also be available for local churches to download and display over the festive period.
The DJ, producer and singer likes the kind of dancehall her dad disapproves of, and her funk to be electronic. But whose songs make her feel bougie?
The first single I ever bought
Aaliyah, Rock the Boat. My nan sent me and my cousin to pick up some bits in Dalston and there was some change left over so I went into HMV and bought this CD for £1.99. I shouldn’t have been stealing my nan’s change but I felt so grownup. If my Jamaican dad had found out, he wouldn’t have been happy. I would have got a couple of licks.
The song I inexplicably know every lyric to
Mambo No 5 (A Little Bit of …) by Lou Bega. I was working on my album recently and realised I knew every word. I was so impressed because I barely remember my own lyrics.
The war against Ukraine has hit ordinary Russians hard, and the deteriorating situation is likely to inflame tensions
People in Britain who think they are governed by fools should take a closer look at the Russian and US presidents. Vladimir Putin is systematically ruining his country. His war of choice in Ukraine is an economic, financial, geopolitical and human calamity for Russia that worsens by the day. For his own murky reasons, Donald Trump, another national menace, offered him a lifeline last week. Yet Putin spurned it. These two fools deserve each other.
On the table in Moscow was a “peace” deal that, broadly speaking, rewarded Russia’s aggression by handing over large chunks of Ukrainian land, compromised Kyiv’s independence and weakened its defences against any future attack. The Trump deal, if forced through, would have split the US and Europe; ruptured Nato, perhaps fatally; reprieved Russia’s pariah economy; and probably toppled Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government.
Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator
Dane makes stunning up-and-down on final hole to beat Australian
Rory McIlroy finishes 14th but says it has been an ‘amazing week’
Cameron Smith has come up just short in his bid for a coveted maiden Australian Open title as Denmark’s Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen made an up-and-down for the ages on the final hole at Royal Melbourne.
The pair were tied at 15-under coming to the par four-18th on Sunday and it looked as though Smith was in the box seat when he landed his second shot on the green.
Easy-to-guess words and figures still dominate, alarming cysbersecurity experts and delighting hackers
It is a hacker’s dream. Even in the face of repeated warnings to protect online accounts, a new study reveals that “admin” is the most commonly used password in the UK.
The second most popular, “123456”, is also unlikely to keep hackers at bay.
David Lammy’s plans to cut the the number of jury trials in England and Wales. A defendant, a victim, a barrister, a KC, a judge and a juror have concerns
This week the justice secretary, David Lammy, announced sweeping changes to the criminal justice system that will significantly reduce the number of jury trials in England and Wales. Under the radical plans, jury trials will be reserved for cases in “indictable-only” offences such as murder or rape, and “either-way” offences (those where the defendant can currently decide whether they will be tried by a jury or magistrates), with a likely sentence of more than three years in prison.
While Lammy backed down on plans to remove jury trials for all cases involving a maximum jail term of five years, the move has led to an outcry from MPs, lawyers and campaigners. The Guardian spoke to a range of people who have seen juries’ work close up about their experiences and the proposals.
Italian sweets, Irish smoked fish, honey cakes in Belgium … travel writers choose the stores and local delicacies they make a beeline for when travelling
I fell in love with Belgian snacks when cycling the amateur version of the Tour of Flanders some years ago. The feed stations along the route were crammed with packets of Meli honey waffles and Meli honey cake. I ate so many that I suffered withdrawal symptoms after finishing the last of them at the end of the 167-mile route.
Kildunne is known for her startling speed and audacious tries, but there’s more to the talented full-back than rugby, from a passion for photography to a sideline in DIY tattooing
Ellie Kildunne says it’s not quite sunk in yet. A couple of months on from winning the Rugby Union World Cup with her England teammates, she’s still on a high. I ask if she slept with her winner’s medal by her bed the night they won. “That night?” She gives me a look. “It’s still by my bed. Every day. I wake up and the medal’s next to my bed. And it’s, like, as if!”
But Kildunne is not resting on her laurels. She says the medal is also a reminder of what’s left to achieve – for her, and for women’s rugby in general. “Your heart’s telling you that you’ve done it, but I need to refocus. So it’s about how can we win the prem, how can we win another Six Nations, more World Cups? How can we keep fans coming to games? We’ve sold out Twickenham, so how do we do it again?”
Cameras capture lone creature collecting materials for its lodge in riverside nature reserve
A wild beaver has been spotted in Norfolk for the first time since beavers were hunted to extinction in England at the beginning of the 16th century.
It was filmed dragging logs and establishing a lodge in a “perfect beaver habitat” on the River Wensum at Pensthorpe, a nature reserve near Fakenham in Norfolk.
As peace hopes falter, infantry soldiers face more long deployments risking their lives against Russian attacks
For almost all of their 62-day deployment on the frontline west of Pokrovske, Bohdan and Ivan hid – first in a village shop, then, after a deadly firefight with Russian soldiers, in a tiny basement where the infantrymen from Ukraine’s 31st Brigade had to survive seven more weeks.
Food, water, cigarettes and other supplies were airlifted in by a friendly drone, their toilet was their 3 sq metre room, their nearest comrades 200 metres or so away. Their only hope was to remain underground, because they knew if they were detected a Russian drone could kill them all.
Bureaucratic delays and funding shortages stall plans to carve out a forest reserve for the uncontacted Indigenous group on the southern fringe of the Brazilian Amazon
In 2024, agents of the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (Funai) walked more than 60 miles through rainforest on the southern fringe of the Brazilian Amazon on a mission to monitor and help protect a group of Indigenous people who had no contact with the modern world.
What they found was a small basket freshly woven from leaves, a child’s footprints on the bank of a creek, and tree trunks hacked open hours before to extract honey. There were huts abandoned a year before that were sinking into the forest floor, and brazil nut pods discarded around old campfires. They were all signs that the Pardo River Kawahiva people were there.
The royal couple chose their 20th wedding anniversary portrait taken in Rome this year for their official holiday greeting card
King Charles and Queen Camilla have chosen their 20th wedding anniversary portrait for their official Christmas card this year.
Charles and Camilla are pictured standing side by side, with the queen’s arm linking the king’s, in the grounds of Villa Wolkonsky, the British ambassador’s residence in Rome, earlier this year.
The Duchess of Sussex is back and suddenly her show makes sense. It is cringingly ultra-extra, of course, but isn’t that what Christmas is all about?
No matter the time of year, ’tis always open season on the Duchess of Sussex’s televisual offering, With Love, Meghan. Critics, professional and armchair, have rarely been so united as when gleefully ripping series one and two of the lifestyle show to shreds. The consensus was that there has never been a greater royal outrage than when she took some pretzels out of a labelled bag, put them in a different bag, then labelled it. And she didn’t even attempt to explain herself to Emily Maitlis afterwards.
Now, like a merry renegade master, she is back once again with a “Holiday Celebration” (aka a Christmas special). But this time, it’s different. There are still the usual elements we’ve come to expect – psychobabble word salads, extreme hosting – but in the context of a yuletide episode, suddenly it all makes sense. The pieces have fallen into place; it’s a perfect snow storm.
The US president has seized on the dehumanizing tactic since an Afghan man shot two national guard troops
Donald Trump and senior members of his administration have dramatically escalated their hostile language towards immigrants in the US after anAfghan man was named a suspect in last week’s shooting of two national guard members in Washington DC.
In recent days, the US president has made sweeping statements, claiming that there were “a lot of problems with Afghans”, and went on a tirade against Somali immigrants, calling them “garbage” whose country of origin “stinks”.
“As I reach the end of another working week, I am once again reminded of the cruelty of cricketing disappointment. It’s hard enough being an Englishman living in Brisbane at the moment, but no cricket on my weekend seems excessively cruelty...”
There’s cricket on today, Phil Withington. It might not last very long, that’s all.
At event in California, US defense secretary says Trump has power to take military action ‘as he sees fit’
Pete Hegseth on Saturday doubled down on his defense of US military strikes on alleged drug cartel boats in the Caribbean, arguing that Donald Trump has the power to take military action “as he sees fit” and dismissing concerns that the strikes violate international law.
Hegseth spoke on Saturday at the Ronald Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, California, amid growing scrutiny over the legality of the attacks and his leadership of the Pentagon.
George Strait, ‘Sly’ Stallone and Kiss accept medals from president, who says he was ‘98% involved’ in choosing them
Donald Trump on Saturday evening hosted the 2025 Kennedy Center honorees in the Oval Office for a medal-presentation ceremony, celebrating country music singer George Strait, actor-singer Michael Crawford, actor Sylvester “Sly” Stallone and the members of the rock band Kiss.
“This is a great evening, it’s a great honor,” Trump said. “And I’m delighted to welcome to the Oval Office – the world-famous, most famous office in the world, most powerful office in the world – our truly exceptional 2025 Kennedy Center honorees.”
Although people reported ‘things falling off shelves and walls’, no injuries or structural damage were reported
A powerful, magnitude-7.0 earthquake struck a remote area near the border between Alaska and the Canadian territory of Yukon on Saturday. There was no tsunami warning, and officials said there were no immediate reports of damage or injury.
The US Geological Survey said the quake struck about 230 miles (370km) north-west of Juneau, Alaska, and 155 miles (250) west of Whitehorse, Yukon.
Fire broke out at midnight in Arpora, North Goa district, according to reports, with victims mostly kitchen workers according to chief minister
At least 25 people have been killed in a fire at a nightclub in Goa, an Indian state popular for its nightlife and tourism.
Several tourists were among the 25 dead in the fire, which broke out at about midnight at Birch by Romeo Lane, a popular restaurant, cocktail bar and club in Arpora, a district north Goa.
Many years ago, I was encouraged to put my name forward to chair a significant government board. It seemed like a long shot to me, I wasn’t in anyone’s club, but my supporters were insistent. I agreed to let my name go into the mix.
It was a surprise then when the chair of the selection committee called a few weeks later and said with an apologetic tone: “Sorry Julianne, it’s just not your turn.”
Julianne Schultz is deputy chair of the Sydney writers’ festival board
Mediators of delicate truce say troop removal and deployment of international force crucial to second phase
Qatar and Egypt, the guarantors of the Gaza ceasefire, called on Saturday for the withdrawal of Israeli troops and the deployment of an international stabilisation force as the necessary next steps in fully implementing the fragile agreement.
The measures were spelt out in the US- and UN-backed peace plan that has largely halted fighting, though the warring parties have yet to agree on how to move forward from the deal’s first phase.
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