Howard Phillips was looking for money when he offered his services to officers who were posing as agents, judge says
A man found guilty of assisting a foreign intelligence service after handing over personal details of the then defence secretary, Grant Shapps, to two undercover officers he believed to be Russian agents has been jailed for seven years.
Howard Phillips, 66, was convicted in July after jurors heard that he had been seeking “easy money” when he offered his services to the undercover officers, known as Dima and Sasha.
The European Commission is considering plans to delay parts of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, after intense pressure from businesses and Donald Trump’s administration.
The commission confirmed that “a reflection” was “still ongoing” on delaying aspects of the regulation, after media reports that Brussels was weighing up changes with the aim of easing demands on companies.
The Celebrity Traitors drew to a magnificent close this week – and proved that these lying double-crossers are of a far finer calibre than our MPs
This article contains spoilers about the final episode of The Celebrity Traitors
The Celebrity Traitors final was so good that the TV moment of the year (Nick revealing he’d written Joe’s name on his slate) only held its crown for six minutes before the actual TV moment of the year (Alan revealing he’d been a traitor all along) completely stole it. Epic congratulations to Alan, a full-spectrum entertainment booking, who from the first minutes of this season catapulted himself to the status of high-value national treasure, while Joe Marler also leapfrogged 27 stardom categories in the public imagination and should now be made Duke of York. And look, it wasn’t all bad for historian and Guardian Scott Trust board member David Olusoga. Thanks to the deputy PM and justice secretary, he was only the second most spectacularly wrong David of the week.
But why am I bringing politics into it? After all, one of the most remarkable shifts I haven’t been able to help noticing during this epic first run of The Celebrity Traitors is that no senior politician has attempted to refer to the show as a way of currying public favour. They’d certainly get short shrift if they tried. But this represents a radical break with the past 20 years, where politicians and prime ministers became transfixed by the popularity of reality TV. In the first twisted heyday of the genre, politicians really thought it was the answer and they could steal its best bits to succeed in their own trade. Now I think that even they realise a show like The Celebrity Traitors is the thing people escape to in an age when none of our leaders have any answers.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar On Tuesday 2 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at another extraordinary year, with special guests, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live
Echoes of Inside Out and Coco in streamer’s engaging enough caper about a brother and sister journeying through their dreams
Once upon a time, Pixar had the kind of winning streak that most companies could only dream of. The studio didn’t just maintain a robust production line that won over both critics and crowds, they also managed to change our concept of what animation could achieve as an art form. Radically expansive visuals were matched with surprising, weighty ideas, conjuring the kind of magic that had been largely absent from Disney’s output in the years prior.
While many blamed the ensuing fade on Covid, in truth it had already started before then. Like the rest of the industry, the company had become overly reliant on sequels, with the four years before 2020 seeing one original versus four follow-ups and as cinemas shuttered, their latest offering Onward was middling enough to suggest that even superfans should be concerned about the future. It’s been a case of ongoing underwhelm ever since, a low point reached by this year’s Elio, a patch-worked mess that had the lowest opening ever for a Pixar film (their only bright spot Inside Out 2 has left their upcoming slate looking predictably sequel-heavy).
Three of Australia’s most acclaimed writers have teamed up to write The Mushroom Tapes, about the weeks they spent at the triple-murder trial, picking apart lies, media ethics and evil
“None of us wants to write about this. And none of us wants to not write about it.”
The profound inner conflict of the three narrators begins on page two of The Mushroom Tapes and never quite resolves, lingering as an ethical tension that colours almost every page.
Sacrifices made to reach final – defying social stigma, lack of resources and juggling jobs between training – makes victory still more extraordinary
Growing up in rural India, Shafali Verma always knew she had a hunger to play cricket. But in her small town of Rohtak, in the north Indian state of Haryana, cricket was not a game for girls. Aged nine, desperate to play, she cut her hair short, entered a tournament disguised as her brother, and went on to win man of the match.
Verma’s determined father, Sanjeev, in the face of refusal from every cricket academy or training centre who would not accept his daughter, enrolled her as a boy. “Luckily, nobody noticed,” he recalled, as Verma made her debut for the national women’s team at 15 years old.
One of the new Paramount ownership’s first acts has been to end the Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto series of Trek movies. But surely they can’t stop making them forever?
There have been many Star Treks over the decades. First up we had a 1960s morality play performed on cardboard sets; then it became a billion-dollar movie saga about space diplomacy. More recently we’ve been gifted an ever-expanding collection of streaming spinoffs, each one more determined than the last to prove itself the true keeper of the sacred flame. Now we have a franchise that no longer has any idea what to do with itself. According to Variety, its producer Paramount has shelved the most recent film trilogy, known unofficially as the “Kelvin-verse”, that starred Chris Pine as Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock. What comes next is anyone’s guess.
Perhaps the more pertinent question here might be whether this grand old sci-fi saga is now really suited for the big screen at all. The recent films – 2009’s Star Trek, 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness, and 2016’s Star Trek Beyond – won critical plaudits, yet were also criticised by fans for trying to turn a utopian thought experiment about empathy, cooperation and the perils of militarism into a knockabout space opera.
Dispute began with Dutch government takeover of Nexperia and China halting exports, threatening car production
The vital flow of chips from China to the car industry in Europe looks poised to resume as part of the deal struck last week between Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.
The Netherlands has signalled that its standoff with Beijing is close to a resolution amid signs China’s ban on exports of the key car industry components is easing.
If Keir Starmer’s election campaign was carrying a ming vase across an ice rink, then this budget – according to one minister – is like “wrestling a squirrel across a minefield”.
It is an allusion to the biggest risk for Rachel Reeves, not the markets or big business, but Labour MPs. It was those MPs who were the key audience for the chancellor’s highly unusual speech preparing the ground for possible income tax rises.
The keyboard player on his heroin overdose, how Kurt Cobain wanted to be gay and why his memoir will ruin his Christian relatives’ Thanksgiving dinner
When Roddy Bottum began work on his remarkable autobiography The Royal We, the Faith No More keyboard-player knew exactly the book he didn’t want to write. “The kind that has pictures in the middle,” he says, via video-call from Oxnard, California, where he’s completing a new album by his group Imperial Teen. “I’m not a big fan of rock memoirs – they’re the most predictable, name-droppy, sub-literature experiences.”
The Royal We certainly isn’t name-droppy – Bottum doesn’t even use the surnames of his bandmates. And while he outlines the group’s origins and early development, this takes a back seat to his “youth escapades” in San Francisco, “before the internet, before that city got ruined”. Much of the focus is on his sexual awakening, and how the related secrecy and shame have affected his life. “I was having sex with men when I was very young, 13 or 14,” he says. “It was such a taboo, and that set the tone of my life.” In the memoir, episodes involving his cruising public toilets and parks as a teenager are recounted unflinchingly and unapologetically. “I had sex with older men in bushes,” he writes. “Shamefully at first, proudly later. Fuck off.”
Ahead of the hit show’s final chapter, Netflix has unexpectedly dropped a clip of the opening episode – and a surprise flashback will send chills up spines
The fifth and final series of Netflix’s supernatural smash hit Stranger Things is set to be one of the biggest shows of the year. The first part airs on 27 November, but a clip of the chilling opening five minutes has been shared online.
The episode, The Crawl, takes fans back to the start of the series in 1983, after the disappearance of Will Byers (Noah Schnapp).
The 28-year-old’s platform, Hidden, offers a Tumblr-like sensibility in an industry roiled by slop and lets adult content creators earn without burning out
Stella Barey has an hour for lunch. At 1.30pm, she loads her banged-up Tacoma with her three Belgian malinois and drives to a secret Los Angeles hiking trail. There, she gulps down a tapioca pudding and laces up her sneakers. After checking over her shoulder for foot traffic, she pulls down her brown sweatpants and jiggles her bare ass for the camera. Then come the undies. Her coiffed landing strip hovers above the rocks as a rush of urine floods the trail. Every mile she walks, she films another video: a flash, a moon, a finger up the ass.
When Barey decided in 2020 to pursue porn full-time, she did not imagine that at 28 she would spend more time hunched over a desk – not in the fun way – making flow charts, scheduling Zoom calls, and sending pitch decks. “I’m at my happiest when I’m making a video like putting a strawberry in my butt and pushing it out,” she says. “Now I’m on calls all day and I have tech neck.” Known online as the “Anal Princess”, with large, blinking Shelley Duvall eyes and an American Girl doll pout, she will try anything once – even the title “tech founder”.
Exclusive: Research shows oil, gas and coal firms’ unprecedented access to Cop26-29, blocking urgent climate action
More than 5,000 fossil fuel lobbyists were given access to the UN climate summits over the past four years, a period marked by a rise in catastrophic extreme weather, inadequate climate action and record oil and gas expansion, new research reveals.
Lobbyists representing the interests of the oil, gas and coal industries – which are mostly responsible for climate breakdown – have been allowed to participate in the annual climate negotiations where states are meant to come in good faith and commit to ambitious policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Guerrilla groups have seized control of mining areas, exploiting Indigenous people and fuelling environmental ruin on the border with Colombia
For months, Brig Gen Rafael Olaya Quintero, commander of the Orinoco naval force, has been chasing tin and coltan traffickers across the waterways at Colombia’s border with Venezuela.
His mission has become more urgent since the global shift towards clean energy has generated an unprecedented rush for rare earth elements and critical minerals. These materials are vital components in electric vehicle batteries, wind turbines, fighter jets and guided missiles, with demand also driven by increased defence budgets in the EU, US and China, and throughout the world.
Attacks on mosques in the UK have soared in recent months, the government’s Islamophobia monitoring partner has said, with more than 40% of incidents featuring British or English flags and Christian nationalist symbols or slogans.
In the past three months, a mosque was set alight in East Sussex; in Merseyside the windows of a mosque were shot with an air gun while children were inside; in Greater Manchester, a paving slab was thrown at a window; and in Glasgow, a window was smashed with a metal pole.
Julia Wandelt faces deportation to her home country of Poland since she has already served more than the six-month sentence available for harassment
A Polish woman who claimed to be Madeleine McCann is facing deportation after being found guilty of harassing the missing girl’s family.
Julia Wandelt, 24, from Lubin in south-west Poland, waged an extensive campaign, including making calls, leaving messages and turning up at the home of the family of Madeleine, who disappeared in the Portuguese holiday resort of Praia da Luz in 2007, Leicester crown court heard.
While promoting new film Eternity, the actor outlined a specific end-of-life scenario that should be cold, wet and include one cheese shop
Over the last few years, the promotional circuit for movie stars has transformed entirely. Where once you could expect sit-down interviews and hagiographic magazine profiles, now any time an actor makes a film they have to be subjected to a flurry of YouTube parlour games; eating weird sweets and trying to remember lines from their old films or, in the case of Hot Ones, willingly giving themselves diarrhoea.
Now the goalposts have shifted again. Elizabeth Olsen was recently at the premiere of her new movie Eternity, about a woman who has to pick a partner for the afterlife. And rather than hitting the usual circuit, Olsen has decided to promote the film by expressing her belief that she’s going to die alone.
When I was in high school, I dreamt of being a very old lady on the coast of England, alone actually. I might have had an animal, and it would be like foggy and wet and kind of cold, and I would go on long walks and I would be in a small town that had like one of each thing you need like one bakery, one coffee shop, one fishmonger, one cheese shop, one like community centre, one theatre. It was always just me because I like meeting new people and I like being a part of a community, and I always imagined I would die alone.
A US government order to make drastic cuts in commercial air traffic amid the government shutdown has taken effect, with major airports across the country experiencing a significant reduction in schedules and leaving travellers scrambling to adjust their plans.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has said the move is necessary to maintain air traffic control safety during a federal government shutdown, now the longest recorded and with no sign of a resolution, where air traffic controllers have gone without pay.
Experts say hi-tech Fujian will help expand country’s military influence and reach farther beyond its own waters
China’s newest and most advanced aircraft carrier officially entered service this week, signalling a new era in Chinese military expansion after a ceremony overseen by the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, state media has confirmed.
The Fujian is China’s first domestically designed and built aircraft carrier, and the third for China’s rapidly expanding navy, which is already the world’s biggest by ship count.
Hundreds from New York City, across the US and beyond share their optimism, joy and more on the mayoral election
Zohran Mamdani was elected the next mayor of New York City this week and Guardian readers had a lot of feelings to share about the news.
Winning with more than 50% of the vote, the 34-year-old democratic socialist and state assembly member from Queens defeated the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and the Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.
If this stretches to Thanksgiving, we’ll be facing a nightmare. The obvious solution: move back in with your parents
In our modern age, the only thing worse than flying – cramped seats, bad food, someone potentially calling you a racial slur – is not flying at all. I will suffer all manner of indignity, up to and including a drunk puking up Jersey Mike’s on to my trousers, but if you dare say that I might not be able to board the Flying Nightmare Tube at the scheduled date and time, I will throw the kind of fit you only see in YouTube videos of people that are actually on airplanes.
This is why the United States Federal Aviation Administration potentially cancelling 10% of air traffic at 40 airports chills me to the bone. Whether I like it or not, I have to be in Pittsburgh this month. Would you keep me from enjoying the epic sights and sounds of Pittsburgh? Maybe so, if the alternative is a sleep-deprived air traffic controller suggesting my pilot take a nosedive into the Grand Tetons.
Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist
Turkish prosecutors said on Friday they had ordered the detention of 21 people, including 17 referees and the chairman of an unnamed Super Lig club as part of an investigation into alleged betting on football matches.
Maybe I was a bit unfair with that comment (about downing tools). Maybe I was a bit unfair because I don’t know him that well as a person.
From a performance point of view I think I was speaking what I felt and what I was seeing and I felt I was right.
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