From Antony and Cleopatra to Burton and Taylor, history is filled with volatile relationships.

One might expect some circumspection from politicians about their personal ups and downs playing out in the public arena. But in an era of geopolitical instability and terminal online-ness, the rest of us can barely keep up.

Break-ups

Elon Musk and Donald Trump

It was “perhaps the most widely predicted break-up in American political history”, said Fortune. The “bromance” between Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and Donald Trump, one of the most powerful, ended in very public acrimony.

The Tesla and X boss was initially known as the US president’s “first buddy” for his seemingly unparalleled access. Musk helped bankroll Trump’s return to the White House, and claimed after his election victory that he loved Trump “as much as a straight man can love another man”. But after taking a chainsaw to the federal government with his “cost-cutting” initiative, DOGE, Musk left the administration in May. Just days later, he urged Republicans to reject Trump’s “massive, courageous, pork-filled” tax bill, which he called a “disgusting abomination”.

After that, the “speed of the fallout was breathtaking”, said The New York Times, and “every bit as lowdown, vindictive, personal, petty, operatic, childish, consequential, messy and public as many had always expected it would be”.

Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana

After leaving the Labour Party in high dudgeon in July, Zarah Sultana attempted to set up a new left-wing grassroots party with now-independent MP Jeremy Corbyn. But the duo couldn’t even decide on the name, much less anything else.

Corbyn claimed Sultana had set up a paid membership system that collected money and data without proper approval and authorisation. Sultana claimed she had been frozen out by a “sexist boys’ club” of Corbyn and four pro-Gaza independent MPs. The pair had a bitter falling out that saw Sultana claiming she had consulted libel lawyers. She later rescinded the threat, and told Sky News that they were like Liam and Noel Gallagher, the famously feuding Oasis brothers who patched things up for their reunion tour.

However, she neglected to invite Corbyn to a rally due to take place on the eve of the (what is now known as) Your Party conference. Don’t look back in anger, indeed.

Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner

Angela Rayner was once seen as the future of the Labour Party – and possibly its future leader. But this summer she became embroiled in controversy after admitting that she had mistakenly underpaid stamp duty on a flat in Hove. Keir Starmer initially stood by his deputy, but the noise grew louder and she was nicknamed “three pads” Rayner.

Rayner referred herself to the independent ethics adviser, and after being found to have breached the ministerial code, she handed in her resignation, plunging Labour into a chaotic deputy leadership race and cabinet reshuffle. Starmer’s response to her resignation letter was ostensibly warm: “You have been a trusted colleague and a true friend for many years.”

But now the rumour mill is once again stirring that Rayner might be gunning for his job. She declined to rule out running for the party leadership if Starmer finds himself defenestrated, telling the Daily Mirror in her first big post-resignation interview that she had “not gone away”. (Neither has her bill: she has reportedly not yet paid her £40,000 stamp duty as HMRC has not sent the bill out.)

Make-ups

UK and EU

One of the most acrimonious break-ups in recent history must surely be Brexit. But this year, there’s been something of a warming in relations between the EU and its erstwhile member, the UK. (The UK, after all, still benefits from EU funds.)

In May, the government and the bloc held their first joint summit since the UK left the EU, and the word on everyone’s lips was “reset”. The former foes agreed on a new deal; Starmer hailed it a “new era”. Not everyone was on board with this make-up: Tory leader Kemi Badenoch called the deal a “total sell-out”.

This month, Labour announced that a new agreement with Brussels to allows UK students to participate in the EU-wide university scheme Erasmus from 2027.

Emmanuel Macron and Sébastien Lecornu

Speaking of rapprochement, French President Emmanuel Macron asked Sébastien Lecornu to return as prime minister just four days after he stood down.

The Élysée Palace said the president had tasked Lecornu with “forming a government” – no easy task in France, given its grande debt problem – and Macron’s entourage “indicated he had been given ‘carte blanche’ to act”, said the BBC.

Lecornu is now aiming his ire elsewhere, blaming “partisan cynicism and presidential ambitions” for his struggle to get next year’s budget plans approved, said Politico. “Everyone wants to push their own agenda and fly their ideological flag,” he said, in remarks that “bore a distinct similarity to those after his surprise resignation”.

Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping

When Xi Jinping met Narendra Modi in September, the Chinese leader used “his favourite catchphrase for China-India relations”, said the BBC: “The dragon and the elephant should come together.”

The relationship between the two most populous countries has been strained for decades, but the Asian giants have taken huge steps to normalise relations. This year, that thawing was “turbocharged by decisions taken thousands of miles away in Washington DC”, when the Trump administration imposed 50% tariffs on Indian imports: a “stunning onslaught from a trusted ally”.

After the September meeting – Modi’s first trip to China in seven years – direct flights between the “dragon and the elephant” resumed, and the visa process was simplified. Their thousands of miles of shared borders are still tense, bristling with troops from both countries. But what relationship doesn’t have boundary issues?

After 20 years under construction, the Grand Egyptian Museum officially opened to the public last month. Located nine miles from central Cairo, and just a mile from the pyramids at Giza, the complex covers some 5.4 million square feet – making it the largest archaeological museum in the world – and cost an estimated $1.2 billion (£888 million).

Read on for more on the milestone museum, as well as the other big stories in the arts world in 2025.

Gift to the world

At its grand opening (which had been repeatedly delayed owing to revolutions, economic crises and the pandemic), President Sisi described the museum as “a gift from Egypt to the world”. Its 12 galleries hold some 100,000 artefacts covering seven millennia of Egyptian history, from pre-dynastic times to the Roman era.

The showstoppers include a monumental, 30ft-tall statue of Ramesses II (pictured above), dating to around 1200BC, and the entire contents of King Tutankhamun’s tomb, about 5,500 pieces, some of which have never been seen in public before. Of equal interest to many, however, are the exhibits shedding light on the daily lives of ancient Egyptians – from statues of bakers at work to hi-tech displays that bring ancient images of hunters and farmers to life. As an added bonus, the building’s huge windows offer astonishing views of the pyramids.

The museum is expected to attract five million visitors a year, giving Egypt’s tourism industry a much-needed boost; and its opening has already led to renewed calls for the repatriation of Egyptian artefacts held in public collections abroad – including the Rosetta Stone, at the British Museum.

Looted art

An 18th-century portrait stolen by the Nazis 80 years ago was found in Argentina this autumn – thanks to the dogged efforts of a retired Dutch systems specialist. It all started in 2010, when Paul Post read in his father’s wartime diaries about the confiscation of the Netherlands’ diamonds. Intrigued, he started to investigate, and homed in on Friedrich Kadgien – a Nazi official who was also suspected of having looted art.

Working with Dutch reporters, Post discovered that Kadgien had fled to Argentina after the war, and that his daughter still lived there. She did not engage with them, but this year, she put her house on the market – and in the estate agent’s photos, reporters spotted a missing portrait by Giuseppe Ghislandi hanging above her sofa. It is now in the hands of the authorities, pending its likely return to the heirs of the Jewish dealer from whom it was stolen.

Protest art

Banksy confirmed that he had struck again in London in September, after an image (pictured top) of a judge beating a protester with a gavel appeared on an exterior wall at the Royal Courts of Justice.

The stencil was presumed to be referring to the banning of the Palestine Action group, and the arrest of hundreds of its supporters. Security guards swiftly covered up the Banksy, and it was later removed. Officials said they’d had no choice as the building is listed. Legal experts pointed out that British judges don’t make the law, they just interpret it, and that they don’t use gavels.

Sold, at record-breaking prices

Global art sales fell a further 12% in 2024, to $57.5 billion (£42.5 billion), as geopolitical tensions continued to affect the top end of the market. And in the first half of this year, sale results from the leading auction houses were down again, and more major private galleries closed. But in the autumn, there were signs of a rebound.

In September, Pauline Karpidas’ surrealist collection sold for $100 million (£74 million) at Sotheby’s in London, nearly double its estimate; and in November, Sotheby’s New York sold 24 paintings from the collection of the late Leonard Lauder for $527 million (£393 million). The highlight of the sale was Gustav Klimt’s life-size “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer” (pictured below), a young woman who was the daughter of one of Klimt’s most important patrons. The Lederers were Jewish, and to avoid Nazi persecution following the Anschluss, Elisabeth claimed that Klimt, who’d died in 1918, was her biological father.

This tactic saved her life, and also saved the painting: it meant that it was kept in Vienna, to await reclassification as Aryan art (as opposed to degenerate art), when the Nazis sent the rest of her parents’ priceless collection out of the city. Believed to have included at least 10 Klimt paintings, the Lederer collection was held at the Schloss Immendorf – and was destroyed when SS troops set fire to the castle at the war’s end. The surviving portrait sold for $236 million (£176 million), the highest price ever paid at auction for a modern work, and the second-highest for any work.

Leonard Lauder, the son of Estée Lauder and the former CEO of the cosmetics giant, was a great art collector and philanthropist. In the years before his death in June, aged 92, he gave $1 billion (£742 million) worth of cubist art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and millions to the Whitney Museum of American Art. His collection helped Sotheby’s to hit $706 million (£569 million) in sales that night, the biggest haul in its 281-year history. Days later, the auction house notched up another record, when it sold Frida Kahlo’s surrealist self-portrait “The Bed (The Dream)” for $55 million (£41 million), smashing the 2014 record for a female artist at auction ($44 million, around £32 million, set by a Georgia O’Keeffe).

The hammer price, however, was not a surprise: surrealist works by female artists are currently highly sought after, and “Kahlomania” has lately reached new heights, with numerous major exhibitions around the world dedicated to the Mexican artist. Sotheby’s had given the 1940 painting an upper estimate of $60 million (£44 million).

Year of Turner

If 2025 belonged to anyone in the art world, it was J.M.W. Turner. The artist was born in April 1775, and his 250th anniversary was marked by events all over the UK. Most have closed, but in Liverpool the Walker Gallery’s “Turner: Always Contemporary”, exploring Turner’s work and its impact on later artists, runs until February, while Tate Britain’s “Turner & Constable: Rivals & Originals”, which features “The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons”, on loan from a gallery in the US, runs until April. And the Turner Contemporary in Margate has his oil sketch “Waves Breaking on a Lee Shore at Margate” on loan from Tate Britain, also until April.

Forgery factory

Italian police raided a clandestine workshop in the northern outskirts of Rome in February, where paintings falsely attributed to the likes of Picasso, Rembrandt and Jean Cocteau were being churned out, allegedly for sale online.

Officers from a specialist art unit found some 70 paintings in the workshop, as well as hundreds of tubes of paint, brushes, forged stamps from historic private galleries, and a typewriter that appeared to have been used to create fake letters of authenticity.

The property reportedly belonged to an art restorer, who was suspected of being behind the enterprise. Police said the suspect had sold “hundreds” of paintings of dubious authenticity on auction sites such as Catawiki and eBay.

Many Americans are not leaving the house without their passports, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to conduct raids across American cities. Reports of citizens being detained have created a culture of fear, leading them to carry identifying documents wherever they go.

What citizens are being detained?

At least 170 American citizens have been detained by ICE during its raids, according to a ProPublica investigation. This has led some people to carry their passports because of the “threat of mistakenly being taken into ICE detention and potentially disappearing into labyrinthine immigration custody,” said NPR’s KQED-FM. While there is no legal requirement to carry a passport, citizens “may choose to make practical decisions around carrying documentation anyway.”

Reports indicate that the majority of people choosing to do this are people of color, including many Latino U.S. citizens. Walter Cruz Perez, who lives in a New Orleans suburb, has been a U.S. citizen since 2022 and “used to never think twice about only carrying his driver’s license,” said The Guardian. But since the ICE raids in New Orleans ramped up, he’s in the “habit of putting his passport in his cell phone case.” Those in his community “see on the news that people don’t have the chance to identify themselves,” so “you do what you have to do to avoid problems,” he said.

Other people of color are reportedly choosing to carry documentation too. Amid ICE raids targeting Minnesota’s large Somali American population, many of these people “feel they have little choice but to carry their passports to prove they are citizens,” said CBS News. These Somali Americans are “being stopped by ICE and asked to prove citizenship,” Jamal Osman, a Minneapolis City Council member, said to CBS News, saying it “feels like [the] 1930s and ’40s in Germany.”

What can ICE ask for?

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security “vehemently denies that American citizens have been detained, even inadvertently, during its immigrant sweeps,” said Arizona State University’s Cronkite News, with the department calling ICE raids “highly targeted.” Despite this, experts continue to push clarity on what ICE agents can and cannot do when stopping someone.

There is “no legal requirement that U.S. citizens carry papers or have proof of their citizenship on them,” Bree Bernwanger, a senior attorney at ACLU NorCal, said to KQED-FM. There “shouldn’t be a reason to have to carry your papers because immigration agents aren’t supposed to stop people or detain them” unless they have a reasonable suspicion of a crime. But people also “have to make their own decisions about what they are comfortable with in the face of this lawless enforcement.”

Many legal experts say carrying your passport, even if you are an American citizen, is probably a good idea. It is “better to carry your passport — that’s the best,” attorney Layla Suleiman González said in a translated interview with Telemundo Chicago. But even if you are stopped by ICE, you “don’t have to answer their questions, you don’t have to say where you’re from, you don’t have to say whether you are a citizen or not. You don’t have to talk to them.”

So your data was exposed in a breach. What should you do now?

It may seem like the damage is already done by the time you receive one of these notices, but there are actually important steps you can take at this point — both to minimize the damage from the breach that already happened and to help prevent your personal information from getting out there once again. The reality is, “if attackers have your email address and password for one site or app, they may have the keys to much of your life, especially if you’re using the same password for all of your accounts,” said PC Mag.

This could lead to more serious issues, like identity theft or the publicization of private accounts. Follow these tips to stay safe and avoid some more serious consequences.

1. Check all of your accounts — and keep checking them

Especially after being the victim of a data breach, it is essential that you check in on your accounts and make sure nothing looks fishy. But this is good practice to be doing on a regular basis either way. “There are so many ways for hackers and identity thieves to circumvent security measures that you need to regularly check your financial accounts, going line by line and questioning every single charge or debit — no matter how small,” said The Washington Post. Also take a moment to check in on your credit report.

2. Consider a freeze

Another step to consider taking, especially if a breach has already happened, is to place a credit freeze, which makes it so the “credit bureau can’t release any information in your file without your permission,” said the Post. This effectively prevents would-be thieves from opening any new accounts in your name. A freeze is a bit of a pain — you will need to individually make the request at each of the three major credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion — but it is totally free to do, and can offer a reassuring level of protection.

3. Step up your password strength

“Weak passwords are often the bulk of data breach records,” said PC Mag, so once it happens, it is vital to take steps to strengthen yours — especially if you are a repeat user. Some general rules of thumb when choosing new passwords? “Aim for at least 10 to 12 characters” and “avoid common names, places and dictionary words,” opting instead for a “long sentence-like string using a random mixture of uppercase and lowercase letters along with numbers and symbols,” said Ally, an online bank. If you are worried about keeping track, a password manager can make it easy.

4. Think twice before you share

Before signing up for an online account, “consider whether you really need to provide all the requested information: a free gaming account might not need your full name,” said Norton, a cybersafety company. The less you share, the less chances you have of your data getting exposed. This goes for social media as well.

What if overnight, your financial situation meaningfully changed? For some of us, this can and does happen, whether due to an inheritance, a generous gift or a successful investment. When cash like that hits your bank account, it can be hard to stop and think — but it is essential that you do.

While you may assume it’ll be smooth sailing ahead, a “sudden influx of assets can lead to missteps that could undermine your good fortune,” said Fidelity, citing Terri Lyders, the vice president of advanced planning for Fidelity Investments. It is actually common enough that there is a name for it, said Investopedia: “Sudden Wealth Syndrome,” which “can lead recipients to do things that ultimately threaten their good fortune and financial well-being, and may leave them worse off than before they received the money.”

Here are some steps to take so your windfall is a path toward an even brighter financial future, rather than a dead end.

Pause and assess

“While it’s exciting to have cash coming your way, it’s wise to take some time and reflect on how the money would be best spent,” said SoFi. Before you get carried away with treating yourself and others, take a moment to assess your financial situation and notice how you are feeling about the cash influx you just received.

At this point, it is probably best to avoid making any large purchases or otherwise monumental financial decisions. You can, of course, still daydream — just maybe let your new reality sink in before you act. “Take a minimum of six months to a year to get settled in,” said money coach Jennifer Reid to U.S. News & World Report. “Let your emotions cool off, too. Don’t act out irrational behavior and take the time to do your research.”

Consult a professional

Sitting down with a professional, such as a financial advisor or an accountant, can go a long way toward getting things off on the right foot. They can help you go through the various documents and legalese associated with your windfall to ensure you understand everything, including any broader financial implications.

For instance, “depending on the size and source of your windfall, you might owe taxes on it, and it might push you into a different tax bracket,” said SoFi. Rules can get more complicated for retirement accounts or real estate, too. When you inherit a 401(k), for example, “you may be required to take full distribution of the account within a certain amount of time,” said Fidelity.

Take a big-picture view

“If you’ve received a sizable sum, it may be tempting to quit your day job to travel or take on a passion project,” said SoFi. But how realistic is that, really, and will your windfall actually sustain that lifestyle change over the long term?

“Odds are, you’ve got other goals that could use a boost — retirement, college savings and home improvements,” or you might even want to “use your influx of cash to do some catch-up,” whether that is on outstanding debt or an understocked emergency fund, said NerdWallet. While less fun than, say, a brand-new car or a whirlwind vacation, it is likely your future self will thank you for spending that money wisely.

Each new year marks another year closer to retirement. That may feel exciting, but it can also feel daunting — especially if you’re not sure you have enough saved up to stop working.

The sooner you step up your savings, the better your chances of having an adequate nest egg waiting for you by the time you’re ready to hang up your hat. Thanks to compound interest, “your retirement savings can grow by generating earnings on both your original contributions and the accumulated interest over time,” said SmartAsset, a personal finance website. This means that the “earlier you start saving, the more time your money will have to grow.”

Even a little bit more saved this year, then the next, can snowball into a balance that makes you feel confident and ready for retirement. Follow these three steps to step up your retirement savings.

Aim for the updated contribution limits

The maximum amount you can contribute to your 401(k) is inching up next year, thanks to updated contribution limits. For 2026, you can put as much as $24,500 into a tax-advantaged retirement plan — a $1,000 increase over 2025 limits. If you have an IRA, you can contribute up to $7,500 to it in 2026.

“Of course, many workers are nowhere close to reaching the savings max,” with only “some 14%” hitting the upper limit, said The Washington Post, citing data from Vanguard. Still, rather than feel discouraged, think of it as growing room for your savings rate. How much closer can you get to that target next year?

Maximize your employer match

Another incentive to bump up your savings rate if you have an employer-sponsored retirement plan: the employer match, which is where your employer contributes a certain percentage of the amount you put into your plan. This could also offer a more attainable savings target to make sure you are hitting. Assuming your employer offers a match, “try to invest at least enough to get any match,” as “that’s like free money, and it can significantly boost your own saving efforts along the way,” said Fidelity.

Reallocate any ‘extra’ money

While the very concept of extra money may sound far-fetched, if you stop to think about it, you might be surprised by how much excess you find in your monthly spending habits. “To find more room in your budget for saving, look for expenses that could be reduced or eliminated” and then redirect that amount toward your retirement account, said U.S. News & World Report.

You could also commit to putting any little windfalls that come your way during the year toward your retirement. For instance, if you get a tax refund, you could divert those funds. Same goes for “if you receive a bonus, inheritance, prize money or other windfall of cash,” said U.S. News & World Report.

Donald Trump plans to turn the UK into a “potential nuclear launchpad” and put American nuclear missiles on British soil for the first time since 2008, said the Daily Mail.

The return of US nukes to these shores could prove controversial, as was their presence in the past, when they were a divisive and at times dangerous element.

When did they arrive?

US nuclear weapons were housed on UK soil for more than five decades, arriving initially at RAF Lakenheath, Suffolk, in September 1954 as part of NATO's strategy against the Soviet Union.

Two years later, a B-47 bomber on a routine training mission crashed into a storage unit containing nuclear weapons, killing four servicemen. Official US documents said it was a “miracle” none of the bombs had detonated, as it was possible “a part of Eastern England would have become a desert”, said CND. Five years later, in January 1961, an aeroplane loaded with a nuclear bomb caught fire following a pilot error, leaving the bomb “scorched and blistered”.

In 1980, RAF Molesworth in Cambridgeshire was chosen to host more US nuclear missiles. It took six years for the bombs to become operational, but a year later, in 1987, the US and USSR signed a treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear arms, which included those at Molesworth, meaning the project was an “expensive waste of time”, said Cambridgeshire Live.

US cruise missiles arrived at RAF Greenham Common in Berkshire in November 1983 with 96 nuclear warheads based here. The site became synonymous with the Women’s Peace Camp – protesters who first arrived in 1981 and the last of whom left in 2000 when it was decommissioned. Anti-nuclear activists borrowed George Orwell's line from “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and dubbed Britain “airstrip one” for the US.

When were they withdrawn?

The US began removing its nuclear weapons from Britain around 2007, ending a “contentious presence spanning more than half a century”, said The Guardian. The last 110 American nuclear weapons on UK soil had been withdrawn from RAF Lakenheath by June 2008 on the orders of George W Bush as part of a post-Cold War strategic shift.

Are they coming back?

Speculation has grown over the past two years that the US plans to deploy nuclear weapons in the UK again. Reports in July suggesting some nukes had already arrived were neither confirmed nor denied.

But now reports of Pentagon documents indicate a $264 million upgrade of RAF Lakenheath will put US nuclear weapons back on British soil. The bombs would be in place to “face down Putin”, said the Daily Mail.

The plan includes knocking down at least half a dozen buildings, setting up secure intelligence facilities, protecting the surrounding area against enemy electronic pulse attacks, and sending over 200 American personnel, according to Pentagon funding proposals.

Even our domestic nuclear weapons are "really very American", said Scottish CND's Lynn Jamieson in The National, due to “integration with and dependence on” the US.

Some people may be dreaming of a white Christmas when they wake up on Dec. 25, but for many parts of the world, climate change could soon make this a rare event. And snowfall is not the only part of the holiday that could be affected by extreme weather patterns, as everything from Christmas tree affordability to the prevalence of reindeer could be impacted.

How is holiday weather changing?

Climate change is “causing temperatures to rise across the country, and it’s impacting precipitation patterns,” said Time. In the last 75 years, temperatures in December have “warmed three to five degrees” nationwide, David Robinson, a New Jersey climatologist and Rutgers University professor, said to Time.

This small change in the global temperature “could mean the difference between snow and rain” on Christmas Day, said Time. And such a pattern has already been seen for years. From 2003 to 2024, the “average Christmas morning snow cover blanketed just 36% of the contiguous U.S. states,” according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data cited by Time, though this also factors in areas of the country like southern California, where it rarely snows.

A person’s memory of Christmastime may also play into the phenomenon, whether this frosty recollection is accurate or not. People “tend to remember that one snowy Christmas, and they forget that it was surrounded by five Christmases that weren’t,” Robinson said to Time. This could be contributing to some of the skewed memories of past Christmases.

What else is impacted?

While the drive to the store for Christmas gifts may not be covered in snow, once shoppers arrive, they may be even more disappointed. Many of the “most lucrative Christmas commodities are grown” in areas that are being transformed by climate change, said Mother Jones. In African countries over the past few years, plummeting cacao yields altered the production of cocoa, which goes into “all sorts of holiday classics — from yule log cakes to marshmallow-topped cocoa.” This “points to a new normal in a climate-driven shift,” said Harvard University’s Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability.

People’s Christmas trees may look different in future years too, as “modern-day circumstances are slowly transforming the tree-farming industry,” said CBC News. Beyond the weather shifting growing conditions for trees, the “high cost of land is also having an impact on the industry,” Kelsey Leonard, the founder and director of the Christmas Tree Lab at Canada’s University of Waterloo, said to CBC News. People may think plastic trees are the solution, but their environmental repercussions are troublesome. Many “artificial trees are some type of plastic by-product, which is a product of fossil fuel consumption,” said Leonard.

Not even classic Christmas characters like Rudolph will be able to avoid the changing climate; global warming could cause a 50% decline in the global reindeer population by the end of the 21st century, according to a study in the journal Science. Population decline could be particularly bad in North America, where “projected losses are expected to exceed 80%.” This may be catastrophic for the only species of deer “adapted to year-round occupancy of the Arctic.”

Ticket inspections, passport control and further checks at the gate are just three of the barriers that illegitimate plane passengers have to evade, yet some are still managing it. A man boarded a Heathrow flight to Norway without a ticket, boarding pass or passport, in one of the latest cases of sky-high stowaways.

Who has done it?

The unnamed passenger slipped on to a British Airways flight to Oslo on 13 December. Having “tailgated his way through the automatic gates at Terminal 3”, said The Telegraph, he passed through “full security screening” before reaching the gate. There, he pretended to be travelling with a family and boarded the Airbus A320. Once on board, he kept moving seats as the plane filled up. Cabin crew worked out he wasn’t a legitimate passenger and removed him.

In 2023, Craig Sturt, 46, flew on a British Airways flight from London to New York without a ticket or passport after “apparently tailgating another passenger through passport checks at Heathrow’s Terminal 5”, said The Telegraph. He was sent back to the UK, where he was charged with obtaining services by deception, being unlawfully airside and boarding an aircraft without permission.

Last year a Russian national called Svetlana Dali boarded a Delta Airlines flight from New York to Paris without a boarding pass. When she arrived in the French capital she was taken into custody and refused entry but not charged.

Sergey Ochigava flew from Denmark to Los Angeles in 2023 with no ticket, visa or passport, said the Los Angeles Times. He was sentenced to 93 days and ordered to pay $2,174 – the cost of a one-way ticket from Copenhagen to Los Angeles.

An American woman, Marilyn Hartman, was dubbed the “Serial Stowaway” after she allegedly boarded at least 20 commercial flights without a ticket, including a 2018 British Airways flight from Chicago to Heathrow.

How do people do it?

There are “bottlenecks where passenger processing occurs”, Damian Devlin, a University of East London lecturer in aviation management, told The Telegraph. The situation “creates sufficient distraction”, with staff “so focused on a particular task and on maximising passenger throughput”, that they “fail to notice tailgating taking place”.

Speaking to CBS News in 2021, “Serial Stowaway” Hartman said it was “so crazy” to be able to get onto flights without a ticket simply by “following someone”. That person “would be carrying, like, a blue bag” and security would let me through because “they think I’m with the guy with the blue bag”.

In Dali’s case, she tried to go “under the radar” on board by “moving from one bathroom to another without taking a seat”, said The Telegraph, but the cabin crew “eventually realised what she was doing”.

Ultimately, we “don’t always know exactly how it happens”, said USA Today, because if a breach involves “lapses” at security checkpoints, the “relevant agencies” might not want to “broadcast their vulnerabilities”.

Why stowaways do it is even more mysterious. Prosecutors and defence lawyers were “unable to explain” Ochigava’s motives, said the Los Angeles Times.

Will it continue to happen?

As the airport security process becomes more and more linked to advancing technology, “it will be less likely” that this “method of sneaking onto an airplane is possible”, said Thrillist.

“Technology is continuously improving and continuously making it more and more difficult for people that have ill intent to accomplish what they’re trying to do, whether it’s X-ray machines, metal detection, liquid detection, all of the above,” said Rich Davis, from security company International SOS.

Nick Fuentes is a 27-year-old activist and political commentator best known for his Christian nationalist and racist rhetoric. He first attracted attention as a teenager at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Since then, he has built up a large following as a social media influencer, particularly via his “America First” broadcasts, on which he airs white supremacist, antisemitic, misogynistic and authoritarian views.

On an episode of his show in March, he summarised his politics as: “Jews are running society, women need to shut the fuck up, blacks need to be imprisoned for the most part, and we would live in paradise. It’s that simple.” He has also repeatedly described Hitler as “cool”.

Where did Fuentes come from?

Fuentes was born and raised in La Grange Park, Illinois. He describes his childhood, in a largely white suburb near Chicago, with a home-maker mother, a breadwinner father of Mexican heritage, and a strong Catholic ethos, as idyllic. He thinks women should stay at home, and shouldn’t have the right to vote. He told Piers Morgan recently that he had never had sex with a woman; he said he was not gay, “but I will say that women are very difficult to be around.” He studied politics at Boston University, but dropped out after his first year to become an activist.

In some ways, Fuentes’s livestream show harks back to a traditional format: he wears a suit, sits behind a desk, and talks rapidly and fluently about current affairs, in a thick Chicago accent. The difference, says Jay Caspian Kang in The New Yorker, is that he inhabits a post-Trump, “post-woke” world, in which “all norms in political commentary have been destroyed”.

Why is he significant?

Because he has become disturbingly influential. His X/Twitter account, which Elon Musk reinstated in 2024, has 1.2 million followers; this month each of his “America First” livestreams have attracted around a million views each. On 27 October, the former Fox News star Tucker Carlson broadcast a sympathetic two-hour interview, which was watched by more than 6.5 million people. Carlson did not challenge Fuentes’s views, which precipitated a major ruction inside the Republican Party and Donald Trump’s Maga movement. Rod Dreher, a conservative columnist, warned that the party has a neo-Nazi problem: between 30% and 40% of Republican staffers in Washington under the age of 30, Dreher said, are “Groypers”.

What is a Groyper?

Fuentes’s fanbase call themselves Groypers, or the “Groyper Army” after their logo: an unwholesome-looking cartoon toad named Groyper, a variant on the “Pepe the Frog” meme that became popular with far-right activists in 2015. More a loose-knit network of internet trolls than an organised movement, they see themselves as Maga’s edgy youth wing, and like to mock right-wing figures who are (relatively) more moderate.

In 2019, Fuentes started to criticise the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, whom he saw as insufficiently right-wing and in the pay of corporate donors. (“Conservative Inc.” is his name for Kirk’s brand of activism.) Fuentes’s supporters often attended Kirk’s events to heckle, in a conflict later referred to as the “Groyper War”.

Unlike the Maga mainstream, Groypers favour Catholic ultra-traditionalism or Eastern Orthodoxy over Evangelical Protestantism, and they oppose US support for Israel. But they’re so steeped in social media in-jokes, memes and irony that it’s hard to know what they really believe.

So what does Fuentes believe?

Being more outrageous than his competitors while suggesting it’s all a big game is a part of Fuentes’s act. As well as praising Hitler and Stalin, he has coined the slogan “Your body, my choice” to needle women concerned about abortion rights after Trump’s second election victory. His irony gives plausible deniability, and helps confuse mainstream critics – but there’s no reason to think he isn’t sincere about his positions: support for an ethnic and religious hierarchy with white Christian men at the top; a belief that black people are inclined to criminality; opposition to legal as well as illegal immigration; vehement anti-feminism; respect for authoritarianism; disdain for democracy.

A former fan (and, in 2022, dinner guest) of Donald Trump, Fuentes now says that “Trump 2.0 has been a disappointment in literally every way”, while Trump himself is “incompetent, corrupt and compromised”. He sees the vice president, J.D. Vance, as a corporate stooge and “a fat, gay race traitor” (Vance’s wife is of Indian descent). He has particularly criticised the administration for its support of Israel.

What are his views on Israel?

He rails against US backing and funding for Israel, questioning the mainstream rationale for the alliance, and suggesting that it serves the interests of Jewish elites rather than the US itself. His thinking often tips over into conspiratorial antisemitic tropes. Central to Fuentes’s thinking is the belief that “organised Jewry” exerts a disproportionate control over US political, financial and media institutions – in ways that harm “traditional America”. He has also said “Hitler was right. And the Holocaust didn’t happen.” Although he later claimed that this was a mere provocation, Fuentes has repeatedly said that the Holocaust is used to push a liberal, multicultural agenda – to “browbeat” whites and suppress white pride.

How is the Republican Party reacting?

Republican mainstays such as Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz have denounced Fuentes, and Carlson for giving him a platform. Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, made clear his position by declaring: “I’m in the ‘Hitler sucks’ wing of the Republican Party.” Elsewhere, the situation has not been so clearcut. After Carlson’s interview, Kevin Roberts, the director of The Heritage Foundation, a prominent right-wing think-tank, put out a video describing Carlson’s critics as a “venomous coalition” of “the globalist class”. (“Globalists” is often used as code for “Jews”.) This led to resignations at The Heritage Foundation; Roberts eventually had to apologise. However, neither Trump nor Vance has ever condemned Fuentes; presumably because they share some of his beliefs and don’t want to alienate the Groypers.

What does Fuentes want?

Apart from attention and money – his influencing operation is carefully monetised, from paid-for questions to branded merchandise – he has said for years that he wants the Groypers to infiltrate the US establishment and the Republican Party, and to displace traditional conservatism with his brand of far-right white nationalism. “Your job is to get into the Ivy League,” he told his followers. “Your job is to get into these offices and do what you need to do, say what you need to say.” He advises them to hide their views: “Hold it close to the chest.” Fuentes generally demurs when he’s asked if he wants to be president himself. But as the Maga movement begins to contemplate the post-Trump future, there are likely to be opportunities for a white nationalist influencer with a large, fervent online fanbase.

For both the giver and the recipient, a gift card can seem like the perfect present. Neither party has to worry about whether or not their pick is well-received; the beauty of a gift card is that it’s up to the recipient what they procure with the funds.

The problem? All too often, gift cards end up going unused, wasting both people's money. In fact, "over one-third of Americans have lost money on a gift card by letting it expire (20%), losing the card (17%) or seeing a retailer go out of business before they could redeem a card (12%)," said The Wall Street Journal, citing research by Bankrate in 2024.

To make sure your gift card does not suffer the same fate, here are some tips to keep in mind this holiday gift-giving season.

Read up on the fine print

First things first: Check to see whether you have to use your funds by a certain date. "Many cards never expire, but check the packaging or email for confirmation of this," said Investopedia. Note that while "many gift cards, especially bank or credit card-issued cards, have a 'valid thru' date," this marks when the card itself expires, "but not necessarily the balance on it," said the Journal.

Another thing this date may indicate is when the card will start to charge fees for nonactivity. For instance, a Visa Virtual Gift Card "may begin charging a monthly $4.95 maintenance fee after 12 months of inactivity, depending on state laws," which can quickly eat into the card's total balance, said the Journal.

Keep tabs on your balance and fully use it up

Have just a little bit left on your card after making an initial purchase with it? Do not let that money go to waste. You can "keep it on hand for future purchases," or "if you don’t foresee yourself using the card, consider reloading it (if possible) and giving it to someone else for a birthday, holiday or celebration," said Consumer Reports.

Another option, if you have only a small balance still on your card, is to ask for the remainder in cash. Some states "have certain gift card laws that allow gift card holders with an outstanding balance under a certain amount — say, for example, $10 — to just redeem them for cash with the actual retailer," said CNBC Select. You might also consider donating your remaining funds to a nonprofit collecting gift card donations.

Be proactive about avoiding potential scams

If you do not plan to use your gift card immediately, "you should record and register your card," such as by loading your balance onto your account, said the Journal. "This can help you avoid fraud and increase the likelihood you can still use funds if you lose the card."

Finally, be cautious when checking your balance or attempting to resell your gift card, especially through third parties. "They could potentially lead to theft or scams," said Consumer Reports.

The Land of 10,000 Lakes has found itself in the middle of a scandal, with Minnesota at the center of wide-ranging fraud allegations. While the state is hardly the first to become embroiled in such a transgression, prosecutors say the evidence against Minnesota goes back years and may involve the highest levels of state government.

What is the crux of the scandal?

It largely goes back to alleged fraud that took place during the Covid-19 pandemic. Prosecutors have “charged dozens of people with felonies, accusing them of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from a government program meant to keep children fed” during the pandemic, said The New York Times. Federal prosecutors claim that billions of dollars were stolen as part of the schemes, most of which involved Minnesota’s Department of Human Services (DHS). These funds were reportedly used to buy “luxury cars, houses and even real estate projects abroad.”

Though there were several major fraud networks, officials claim they all had “three common threads: The state was billed for services that were never provided, DHS has failed to provide sufficient oversight, and many of those implicated are from Minnesota’s Somali community,” said The Minnesota Star Tribune. One of the most notable cases involved the DHS children’s hunger program Feeding Our Future, and prosecutors have “filed charges against 59 entities that operated meal sites under Feeding Our Future’s sponsorship that amounted to more than $128 million.”

The scandal has “widely been viewed as a by-product of the Covid-19 pandemic,” said CBS News, with former Attorney General Merrick Garland previously calling it the “largest pandemic relief fraud scheme” in the country. Critics of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), who took office in 2019, claim that the “fraud persisted partly because state officials were fearful of alienating the Somali community in Minnesota,” said the Times. Walz, who has not been accused of wrongdoing, has “defended his administration’s actions.”

What happens next?

Additional people are being charged with fraud as the cases continue and more evidence comes out. One notable update from prosecutors alleges that “half or more of the roughly $18 billion in federal funds that supported 14 Minnesota-run programs since 2018 may have been stolen,” said The Associated Press. This would go back to the year before Walz’s administration took over.

The “magnitude cannot be overstated,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson said during a press conference. “What we see in Minnesota is not a handful of bad actors committing crimes. It’s staggering industrial-scale fraud.” The continuing investigations may also “bolster President Donald Trump in his claims” against Minnesota and Walz, said the AP. Trump has garnered pushback after using the fraud cases to “target the Somalia diaspora in Minnesota,” calling them “garbage” and saying “their country stinks.”

Walz has harshly criticized Trump for his anti-Somali rhetoric and has also appointed a statewide director for integrity to oversee his state’s federal agencies. The charges being brought are the “type of strong action we need from prosecutors to ensure fraudsters are put behind bars,” Walz said in a statement. Minnesota “will not tolerate fraud, and we will continue to work with federal partners to ensure fraud is stopped and fraudsters are caught.”

Police in London and Manchester will take a “more assertive” approach to protesters who call for intifada, according to a joint statement from the two forces following antisemitic attacks in Australia and in the UK. Officers have arrested two people for racially aggravated public order offences after they allegedly chanted “globalise the intifada” at a pro-Palestinian protest in London.

What is an intifada?

Intifada is an Arabic word derived from a verb meaning “to shake off”. It’s used to describe “two major uprisings” against the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1987-1993 and 2000-2005, said the Institute for Middle East Understanding.

Both periods of intifada saw Palestinians participate in peaceful protest and acts of civil disobedience, but were also marked by violent clashes with the Israeli security forces and deadly terrorist attacks within Israel. More than 1,000 Israelis and about 5,000 Palestinians died in such incidents between the start of the first intifada in 1987 and the 2005 Sharm El Sheikh summit that brought the second intifada to an end.

How did ‘globalise the intifada’ become a rallying cry?

“Globalise the intifada” is a slogan that has been used to advocate for international support of Palestinian resistance against Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories.

First popularised at solidarity rallies around the world during the second intifada, it has become a common rallying cry at pro-Palestine demonstrations since Israel launched its military operations in Gaza following the 7 October attacks.

The global intifada is the “‘shaking off’ of colonial dynamics of racism, violence, dehumanisation and division”, said Chloe Skinner for the Institute of Development Studies. The violence in Gaza and the West Bank is rooted in “global systems of power”, and so the struggle against them must be “globalised”.

Why do some people consider it antisemitic? 

As the “most prominent expressions” of intifada have involved “violence”, said the American Jewish Committee, “globalising the intifada” is often understood to mean “encouraging violence” against Israelis and Jews more broadly, even if the “intent of the person saying this phrase may be different”.

It’s “helpful to possess a lexicon of what is typically intended” behind the “vocabularies” used in support of the Palestinian cause, said David Frum in The Atlantic. “Globalise the intifada means shooting or bombing people in Sydney, London, Paris, Toronto, Los Angeles and New York City”, as well as in Israel.

The BBC recently corrected an article on its website that defined intifada as “largely unarmed and popular”. After complaints, the corporation amended the article, saying that the word intifada was regarded by some as a “call for violence against Jewish people”.

But Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal said the Met Police and Greater Manchester Police joint statement marked “another low in the political repression of protest for Palestinian rights”. Intifada is about “uprising against injustice”, he said, and the “implication” that language used to “support the liberation of the Palestinian people” is “only open to interpretation” by pro-Israel groups is “deeply problematic”.

Continuing your education is already a decision that entails financial planning. Now, with the Trump administration’s updated limits on federal student loans for professional and graduate students, there are some new considerations to factor into the equation.

Beginning for loans disbursed on or after July 1, 2026, “graduate and professional students will see new limits of up to $20,500 per year ($100,000 total) for graduate studies and $50,000 a year ($200,000 total) for professional programs,” said CNBC Make It. Further complicating these limits is what types of programs are and are not considered professional — not to mention the elimination of graduate PLUS loans, which used to let students borrow up to the full cost of attendance.

How will the new student loan limits work?

The newly imposed limits apply specifically to unsubsidized student loans for graduate borrowers (as mentioned, PLUS loans will no longer be available to graduate students). The limits vary depending on what category a student pursuing an advanced degree falls into: “‘non-professional’ graduate students, who include those in nursing, engineering and social work, among others,” or “‘professional’ students, like those in medicine and law,” said Investopedia.

“Non-professional” graduate students can take out up to $20,500 per year, and up to $100,000 in total.

“Professional” students can borrow double this amount, with limits of up to $50,000 per year and up to $200,000 in total.

Which fields are eligible for higher loan limits?

While the loan limits may seem clear-cut enough, the reality of what programs fall into what category is less intuitive. “According to the proposed regulation, a professional degree ‘signifies both completion of the academic requirements for beginning practice in a given profession and a level of professional skill beyond that normally required for a bachelor’s degree,’” said CNBC Make It. The Department of Education, however, has explicitly stated that the “term does not determine the importance of a program and ‘has no bearing on whether a program is professional in nature or not,’” said NBC News.

As of November, there are 11 degree fields eligible for the higher “professional” student loan limits, said CNBC Make It:

• Chiropractic (D.C. or D.C.M.)
• Clinical psychology (Psy.D. or Ph.D.)
• Dentistry doctorate (D.D.S. or D.M.S.)
• Law (L.L.B. or J.D.)
• Medicine (M.D.)
• Clinical psychology (Psy.D. or Ph.D.)
• Pharmacy (Pharm. D.)
• Podiatry (D.P.M., D.P., or Pod.D.)
• Clinical psychology (Psy.D. or Ph.D.)
• Theology (M.Div., or M.H.L.)
• Veterinary medicine (D.V.M.)

Are there any notable exclusions under the new requirements?

One omission from the list of “professional” programs that has drawn attention is nursing. Some have “argued that health care workers, such as nurses, might choose to leave the industry because they lack sufficient funding for their programs,” said Business Insider. Other professions not on the list include “architects, accountants, educators and social workers,” and reportedly “engineering, a business master's, counseling or therapy and speech pathology,” said Newsweek.

However, it is worth noting that the “loan limit regulation is not final.” The Department of Education is poised to “publish the regulation in its current form in the federal register in the coming months, where the public will have the opportunity to give feedback before it becomes final,” said NBC News.

SiriusXM’s subscriber base has been shrinking over the past few years, but the satellite radio corporation thinks it has found a solution: Howard Stern. The self-described King of All Media has been one of the company’s mainstays since his show joined SiriusXM in 2006. The brand is hoping that a new three-year deal Stern signed on Dec. 16 can keep new listeners tuning in.

What is the situation at SiriusXM?

In the third quarter of 2025, SiriusXM had 33 million subscribers nationwide, the company said in its earnings report. But this is “some 100,000 fewer than the year before,” according to The Associated Press. SiriusXM’s self-pay net subscribers — those who pay directly for the satellite subscription — also fell by 40,000 in the third quarter.

These figures show that it has been a challenging year for SiriusXM, which started 2025 by losing 303,000 self-pay subscribers in the first quarter. But not all was gloom for SiriusXM, as it also “reported third-quarter revenue of $2.16 billion, above analyst expectations but down 1% from the prior-year period,” said The Hollywood Reporter. This period additionally saw SiriusXM take in a “net income of $297 million, after reporting a net loss of $2.96 billion a year ago.”

How could Stern’s new contract help?

Stern announced that he re-upped his contract for three years, keeping him on the SiriusXM airwaves through 2028. “I’m happy to announce that I’ve figured out a way to have it all: more free time and continuing to be on the radio,” Stern said in a statement. Stern had previously pranked listeners by announcing his retirement, causing some to wonder if the 71-year-old would finally leave the airwaves.

Stern will be “continuing his radio reign despite commanding an audience that is far smaller than what he drew during his heyday,” said MarketWatch. Since Stern’s last contract, SiriusXM, and satellite radio in general, have seen a “slow but steady erosion of its subscriber base as listeners have switched to streaming-music platforms” like Spotify.

And while Stern’s listenership has been decreasing along with SiriusXM as a whole, he still commands a large chunk of the company’s platform: Stern’s show currently has a “mid-single-digit percentage of what he drew at his peak, which would put it somewhere around 1 million listeners per broadcast,” said MarketWatch, making him a valuable commodity. A 2020 report from Credit Suisse estimated that 15% of SiriusXM listeners would cancel their subscription if Stern ended his show, which at the time represented a “potential subscriber loss of 2.7 million.”

This all comes as competition for SiriusXM increases. Many audio companies have begun a television ad push as the businesses “seek new audiences and ad dollars and more creators embrace video,” said Axios. Two of the biggest players in the industry, Spotify and iHeartMedia, recently “signed deals to distribute some of their podcasts on Netflix.” But SiriusXM also still has other big properties under contract, including Alex Cooper of the Call Her Daddy podcast and the SmartLess podcast hosted by Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes.

“Donald Trump loves a fight”, said Chris Blackhurst in The Independent. Despite having received an apology from the BBC over what he claims was a defamatory edit in an episode of the broadcaster’s “Panorama” series, the US president “can smell money”.

After much speculation, on Monday in Florida Trump filed a $10 billion (£7.5 billion) lawsuit against the BBC. The two counts, the first for defamation and the second for violating the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, are each worth $5 billion (£3.75 billion).

What is the lawsuit about?

A leaked BBC memo earlier this year raised questions over the editing of an October 2024 “Panorama” documentary entitled “Trump: a Second Chance?”, which took two sections of a speech he made prior to the insurrection on 6 January 2021 – and spliced them together. The two snippets: “we’re going to walk down to the Capitol”, followed by a promise to “fight like hell”, arguably gave the impression of Trump inciting his followers to create the scenes of disorder that followed.

A spokesperson for the president claimed that the episode, broadcast when Trump was on the campaign trail, was “intentionally, maliciously and deceptively” edited in a “brazen attempt to interfere with the 2024 presidential election”. The “formerly respected and now disgraced BBC”, they alleged in a statement, has a “long pattern of deceiving its audience”, particularly in its coverage of Trump, “in service of its own Leftist political agenda”.

What are the key points of contention?

The question of jurisdiction is “at the core of the case”, said the Financial Times. Trump has filed the lawsuit in his home state of Florida, because there defamation claims must be made within two years of the incident; in the UK the time limit is one year. But BBC lawyers have argued that because the documentary was not aired in the US, US citizens could not have been affected by the content.

Trump’s lawyers claim, however, that BritBox subscribers, or those with a VPN, could have access to the material. They also assert that the BBC “had an agreement with Blue Ant Media”, a Canadian company, to “distribute the documentary in North America”, said Tom Witherow in The Times.

The president’s team needs to prove the BBC acted with “actual malice”, meaning they “knew the depiction was false, or acted with reckless disregard for the truth”, said the FT. To prove defamation also requires evidence of “extensive harm”. Trump claims the edit damaged his “brand value” and caused “injury to his future financial prospects”. Against this notion, the BBC is likely to “point out that he won the election” and that he was “acquitted in impeachment proceedings for alleged insurrection”, said The Times.

How has Trump handled such lawsuits before?

“Up until this year, it was unheard of for a sitting American president to sue a news outlet,” said Brian Stelter on CNN. “In just a few months, President Donald Trump has managed to make it seem normal.”

This is the first time Trump has tried to sue a UK media organisation, but he has “had some success in securing settlements” in legal action against US outlets, said the FT.

This year, CBS, owned by Paramount, paid the president $16 million (£11.9 million) to settle a suit against the editing of an interview on “60 Minutes”. In 2024, ABC paid $15 million (£11.2 million) in a defamation lawsuit, following comments by news anchor George Stephanopoulos that Trump had been found “liable for rape”, when in fact he had been determined liable for “sexual abuse” under New York law.

He also has a pending lawsuit against The New York Times for $15 billion (£11.2 billion), after refiling a defamation case in October. Trump also sued the newspaper in 2021 and in 2020: both claims were dismissed. A case against The Wall Street Journal relating to evidence released from the Jeffrey Epstein files, is also ongoing.

How could this one play out?

“BBC executives can be fairly confident of winning a court battle with President Trump”, said Jonathan Ames in The Times. However, its financial position is “considerably weaker”: the organisation will need to have “difficult pragmatic discussions” regarding legal fees that could rise to between $50 million (£37.2 million) and $100 million (£74.8 million) .

Even if a settlement is reached, that payout could be in the region of $10 million (£7.5 million), said Colin Freeman in The Telegraph. Indeed, compensation “may be the greatest humiliation of all” outcomes. Whatever the sum, “the prospect of the BBC helping fill the Trump coffers is unlikely to go down well with licence payers”. For supporters of the broadcaster, this will be seen as yet another “vendetta” by Trump against the media; to its critics, “it may signal time to end the licence fee system altogether”.

Whatever the result, Trump can spin a positive outcome, said CNN. If he wins, or the BBC settles, the financial benefits are evident. But even if he loses, the president “wins headlines” that, to his supporters, will look like he is taking “bold action” to “combat media misdeeds”.

Regulation of cryptocurrency investments are set to be toughened up in a move to boost protections for investors.

The Treasury has revealed that platforms where users buy and sell cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin will be “backed to innovate and grow” as the government seeks to make the UK a “global destination for digital assets”.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is consulting on new rules to be introduced from 2027. A spokesperson for the City watchdog said “our goal is to have a regime that protects consumers, supports innovation, and promotes trust”.

Millions of people throughout the UK now own cryptocurrency, said ThisIsMoney, with numbers having “surged over the past year”.

How will new rules change how crypto is regulated?

Cryptocurrencies have become a popular alternative investment in recent years, helped by the bitcoin price hitting record highs.

Currently, crypto platforms have to register with the FCA only for money-laundering prevention purposes but the new rules will mean companies are “regulated in the same way as other financial products”, said The Guardian.

This creates a “shift from the current system”, said CoinCentral, and aligns the UK approach “more closely” with the US, while the EU has totally separate rules specifically for crypto.

The FCA said its changes could include new rules on what firms must tell investors “so people have the facts before they invest”, as well as new standards for exchanges to “keep trading safe and reliable”.

Some plans from earlier this year have been “diluted”, said the Financial Times. The regulator will no longer ban trading platforms from offering their own tokens, for example.

How will crypto regulation protect consumers?

Regulation could mean crypto firms are held to account more effectively, “so if you lose your money to a scam then you should be able to get help”, said The Sun.

New rules should also “make it easier for the government to find and address suspicious activity”, said ThisIsMoney.

Regulators will also be able to “impose sanctions or hold firms to account”, said The Independent.

But some areas of the new rules “remain undecided”, added the Financial Times.

The FCA said it would consult early in 2026 regarding whether the market should be covered by its consumer duty rules. These rules require regulated firms to ensure clients receive a good outcome.

Is cryptocurrency a safe investment?

More rules may be coming, but regulators continue to warn about the risks of cryptocurrency investing, said Reuters, especially that investors “should be prepared to lose all of their money”.

Commentators are describing the regulatory shift as a “watershed moment”, with David Heffron, expert in financial services regulation at Pinsent Masons, explaining it would help in “building trust and giving firms certainty”.

The consultation ends in February 2026 and the changes mean it will “likely only get easier” to invest in crypto, said MoneyToTheMasses. But crypto is still a “fundamentally risky investment” and will not be fully regulated in the UK until 2027.

The growing ubiquity of artificial intelligence remains a divisive topic among the public, but the White House is fully leaning into the AI boom. President Donald Trump has announced the creation of a new AI-based ‘United States Tech Force’ that will seek to poach employees from the private sector to lure them to government jobs. But this initiative follows a year in which the Trump administration cut thousands of federal employees.

How will this program work?

The U.S. Tech Force will be a two-year program intended to “tackle the most complex and large-scale civic and defense challenges of our era,” according to the Tech Force website. The program will involve on-the-job training in the areas of “software engineering, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data analytics or technical project management.”

The program is set to partner with 28 major tech companies to accomplish this. Some of the most notable brands include Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Dell, Google, Nvidia, OpenAI and Oracle. It will aim to hire about 1,000 people to start, with salaries ranging from $130,000 to $195,000, said Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor to reporters, though the Tech Force website states salaries will range from $150,000 to $200,000.

What “sets the Tech Force apart from most federal positions is its accessibility,” said Fortune. Unlike most other jobs in the U.S. government, candidates for the Tech Force “need not hold traditional degrees or meet minimum experience thresholds,” though they must “demonstrate strong technical skills through work experience.” This differs from many other federal jobs, which “require a college degree with a certain major field of study or specific academic courses,” said the federal government’s employment website, USAJobs.

What next?

It is unclear how successful this program will be, given that the “government has long needed more tech workers, but that deficit most likely worsened this year, when an unknown number departed,” said The New York Times. This is largely due to players like Elon Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) sought to hire tech workers but “made sweeping job cuts as well — including senior technologists in the Digital Service.” DOGE slashed about 260,000 total federal jobs through firings, buyouts or early retirement, according to Reuters.

DOGE also oversaw the elimination of key programs like 18F, a “digital services agency created in 2014 that developed software and technology products for various federal agencies and employed nearly 100 people,” said the Times. Trump’s new Tech Force is likely just an “effort to replace the more senior tech talent that DOGE had fired,” said Mathias Rechtzigel, a former government employee with the U.S. Digital Corps, to the Times. It is a “reaction to DOGE not going well.”

The administration has seemingly admitted that the purpose of Tech Force is to “address a technical and early career talent gap across the government,” said CNN. The government is looking to lure engineers away from private AI companies, which often offer “sizable salaries and other perks to attract top engineers and researchers.” Earlier in 2025, Trump also signed a set of “initiatives and policy recommendations that centered on growing U.S. AI infrastructure and scaling back regulation.”

The sticker price alone of a car can feel like a lot. But the cost of having your own set of wheels does not stop there. If you’re trying to figure out how car ownership can fit into your budget, you will also need to factor in the myriad of maintenance and upkeep costs involved. And these costs keep on climbing.

From January 2020 to August 2025, “ownership costs surged by 41%,” said Kiplinger, citing an index from Navy Federal Credit Union. A variety of factors are to blame, including “steep increases in auto insurance premiums following the Covid-19 pandemic” and rising costs for auto repairs, in part because “tariffs of 25% on imported car parts are driving up repair costs.”

While there is not much individual drivers can do to change these factors, there are steps you can take to make the cost of car ownership feel a bit more manageable.

1. Research before you buy

Competitive pricing is top of mind for many Americans when they are evaluating car brands, said YouGov, citing its recent The Road Ahead: U.S. next-gen car outlook 2025. But sticker price alone can be misleading, which is why it’s important to broaden your considerations when buying a car.

Given how costly filling up the tank can be, “picking a vehicle with solid fuel economy rather than a gas guzzler could save you hundreds of dollars a year,” said Kiplinger. Similarly, weighing the “reliability ratings of car brands can help you determine the likelihood of a car needing frequent repairs.”

2. Keep up with routine maintenance

While it may feel like yet another item on your miles-long to-do list, staying on top of car maintenance tasks like getting your oil changed or your brakes inspected can go a long way toward avoiding a steep surprise bill later. “If you miss scheduled maintenance, you can wind up spending more than you need to on avoidable repairs or void your car’s warranty,” said GoBankingRates, a personal finance website.

Set reminders or plan to check in on your vehicle on a monthly basis. If you do end up needing a repair, “this can help you plan ahead, research auto shops and get the best quote for the work you need to have done,” said NerdWallet.

3. Find the best rate on auto insurance

Given the rapid rate at which insurance rates have increased post-pandemic, it is worth checking to ensure you are actually getting the best deal, especially if you have a great driving record. One way to get a better rate may be to switch providers — it is actually recommended that you “call around and compare quotes from auto insurance companies at least once per year,” said Experian.

But you might be able to score savings by staying with the same insurer, too. For instance, some insurance companies offer discounts if you take a defensive driving course or bundle your other insurance policies, such as homeowners, with them.

Gen Z protests have been sweeping the world’s countries, and they have just toppled their first European government. Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov announced his resignation on Dec. 11, making him the latest in a slew of Bulgarian heads of government to step down in recent years. The protests were largely held over perceived corruption in the country, and now politicians are looking to form a new government.

Why are Bulgarians protesting?

The demonstrations were largely “mass protests against government corruption in recent weeks,” precipitated by anger toward a proposed tax increase for the private sector, said The New York Times. Thousands of Bulgarians took to the streets, mostly in the nation’s capital city, Sofia, but also “across the country in a rare show of nationwide solidarity.” A large swath of the protesters were young people and Gen Zers, representing a “demographic not typically associated with active political engagement in Bulgaria.”

This adds Bulgaria to the list of countries where Gen Zers have been holding mass protests, including Madagascar, Morocco and Nepal. But while the protests started over corruption, the “real driving force behind the demonstrations has been broader dissatisfaction with the government itself,” said Politico. Bulgaria, a member of the European Union, is set to adopt the euro on Jan. 1, which has also led to “fears of inflation” amid a disinformation campaign by Russia “aimed at undermining public support for the single currency.”

The government’s “desire is to rise to the level of what society expects,” the now-former Prime Minister Zhelyazkov told reporters. They have “heard the voice of the people who have been protesting. We need to meet their demands, and what they are demanding at the moment is the resignation of the government.” His resignation came just prior to a scheduled no-confidence vote against his cabinet.

What happens now?

Following the prime minister’s resignation, “another election is all but guaranteed,” said Bloomberg. But there has been a pattern of problematic elections in recent Bulgarian history, and the government’s collapse comes “following seven votes in four years, none of which has resulted in a stable governing majority.” There are now several ways the next election could go.

Many eyes have turned to Boyko Boríssov, a former Bulgarian prime minister who “has dominated the country’s political scene for nearly two decades,” said Bloomberg. Bulgarian President Rumen Radev has said he will give Borissov, who “leads the largest party, Gerb, the chance to propose a new administration.” Borissov could also end up ceding power to other factions in parliament.

If this happens, it “could create an opening for Radev,” said Bloomberg, who is the “country’s most popular politician” despite often echoing Russian talking points. The Bulgarian presidency is mostly a ceremonial role, but Radev has “recently suggested he may start his own political party and enter the race but didn’t elaborate further.” No matter who forms the next government, issues in Bulgaria are likely to remain, as “corruption in the Balkan nation of some 6.5 million has long been pervasive, even after having joined the EU,” said The Wall Street Journal. Bulgaria has “consistently ranked as one of the bloc’s most corrupt member states.”

Move over, tech bros: Swaths of younger Black men are reclaiming the preppy pullover sweater in a trend dubbed the quarter-zip movement. While some praise the young men for abandoning their Nike Tech sweatsuits for more professional attire, critics say the trend reeks of respectability politics and exposes racial biases in fashion, particularly for young men of color.

How did the movement start?

The trend kicked off after a TikTok video of two young Black men “bespectacled and sporting navy blue quarter-zip pullovers” with iced matcha in hand went viral. “We don’t do Nike Tech, we don’t do coffee,” said Jason Gyamfi, one of the men in the video, proclaiming it’s “straight quarter-zips and matchas around here.”

As Gen Z matures and begins to “lean into business casual,” the “often ribbed, always square quarter-zip sweater seems to be their garment of choice,” said The New York Times. The “shift from the Nike Tech fleece sweatsuit” to the classic quarter-zip “signifies an aesthetic pivot toward professional expectations.” More than just a fashion statement, the trend has become a “cultural moment” alongside the current revival of Black dandyism, said the Chicago Sun Times.

The movement has inspired multiple large-scale meetups, where young men gather while wearing the versatile pullover. The movement is “bigger than just about what you’re wearing,” Corey Dooley Johnson, who helped organize the Chicago meetup, said to the Chicago Sun-Times. It is about “how you’re living” and “community service and brotherhood.” What we want to do is “bring that holistic community feeling back.”

The movement also signals a cultural shift, particularly among young Black men who have popularized it. Many associated Nike Techs with Black culture and, unfortunately, with corresponding negative stereotypes. The movement is fueled by a younger generation trying to leave those associations behind, TikToker Tamu Atemie said to Newsweek. Despite their comfortable fit, Nike techs have earned a “bad reputation.” There have been instances when “individuals are caught doing crimes,” such as stealing and burglary. “What are they wearing? A Nike tech.”

Is it about conforming, or does it symbolize more?

All movements are to “some degree, political,” said GQ. This one, “dressed as a finance bro, arrives smack dab in the middle of the purported crisis of masculinity.” Loneliness, “directionlessness, perceived powerlessness, physical and mental health issues” and a “decline in college enrollment rates” are all “pieces of that puzzle.” However, due to the “current social climate,” it is tempting to “not to see this viral trend as anything other than cookie-cutter conservatism propped up as elegance.” Still, “outright dismissing it feels rather cynical.”

Online, critics have dismissed the trend as a “form of respectability politics,” claiming participants are “making themselves more acceptable for white, mainstream society,” said the Chicago Sun-Times. But the “quarter-zip enthusiasts push back on that critique,” saying their intention is to “be fashionable, build self-confidence, foster community and show Black men doing positive things while having fun.” Respectability politics often “puts the burden on marginalized communities instead of addressing prejudices.”

“I think respectability politics is only half the story,” Chicago Fashion Coalition President Marquan Jones said to the Chicago Sun-Times. How you are dressed is “how you are addressed,” but that should “never determine the dignity that you’re owed.” No outfit has “ever protected a Black man from racism.”

For all his “talk of personal reinvention,” Gyamfi said to the Times, it would be “unwise to read too much into any pivot.” There is not necessarily a difference between “wearing a Nike Tech or a quarter-zip” because “clothes don’t make the man, the man makes the clothes.”

There is growing pressure on the government to formally name an MI5 spy who operated at the heart of the IRA for decades.

Freddie Scappaticci, known by his codename “Stakeknife”, was outed in an investigation into the actions of Britain’s security services during the Troubles.

Scappaticci was recruited by the British Army in the 1970s, working until the 1990s as a mole within the IRA’s internal security unit tasked with identifying and killing informers. The West Belfast man, long suspected of being a British agent, was unmasked by the media in 2003, although he denied the allegations and went into hiding. He died in 2023.

Why is this coming out now?

Scappaticci’s alleged activities and the efforts of MI5 to protect his identity have been set out in the damning 160-page Kenova Final Report. It details the findings of a nine-year, £47.5 million investigation into Stakeknife’s alleged crimes.

The investigation revealed evidence of Stakeknife’s involvement in “serious and unjustifiable criminality, including kidnap, interrogation and murder”, said Kenova. He has been implicated in 14 murders and 15 abductions, while working in a notorious IRA unit known as the “nutting squad”, whose aim, ironically, was to flush out spies within its ranks.

An interim report last year found that Stakeknife’s actions probably “resulted in more lives being lost than saved”. Now the full report says he was “improperly protected by the British security services because they believed him to be a more valuable asset than he was”, said Max Jeffery in The Spectator.

It is “one of the Troubles’ most macabre twists that Scappaticci was secretly working for British security services and that his handlers allowed him to act as executioner to preserve his cover”, said The Guardian.

What did MI5 know?

In the past, MI5 has said its involvement with him was “peripheral” but the report clearly states the security services were “closely involved in his handling”.

“Everything done in respect of Stakeknife was done with MI5’s knowledge and consent; and MI5 had an influential role”, a member of the Army’s agent-handling unit told investigators. They concluded that “MI5 had automatic sight of all Stakeknife intelligence and therefore was aware of his involvement in serious criminality”.

Stakeknife submitted 3,517 intelligence reports during his time under cover. He was paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for his services and even had a dedicated phone line he could call at any time to contact his handlers. Senior Army figures treated him as the “crown jewel” of British intelligence, and he had a reputation as “the goose that laid the golden eggs”.

Yet the report says protecting his identity became “more important than protecting those who could and should have been saved”.

What have MI5 and the government said?

Despite Scappaticci being outed by the press in 2003 and even telling his family his true identity, the government has “stuck to its routine practice not to identify agents, a principle known as NCND, an acronym for Neither Confirm Nor Deny”, said the BBC.

Iain Livingstone, head of Operation Kenova, has said that Stakeknife should now be named. Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn told the Commons that he would respond to Livingstone’s call at the conclusion of an ongoing case in the Supreme Court, which, Benn said, had implications for NCND. “The government’s first duty is, of course, to protect national security and identifying agents risks jeopardising this.”

This stance was backed by Benn’s Tory counterpart Alex Burghart, who said guarantees would be needed that the naming of Stakeknife would not impact on current security operations.

While Burghart admitted “people within” MI5 and the Army had “absolutely crossed the line in a way that wasn’t acceptable”, ultimately, the murders carried out by Stakeknife would have been signed off by the IRA Army Council. “If one is going to start pointing fingers, the first finger should be pointed in that direction.”

There’s money to be made in the business of extending lifespans, and this so-called longevity economy has become a flourishing part of the financial system. While humans have always looked for ways to live longer, recent health advancements alongside shifting demographics mean people are investing in the longevity economy like never before.

How much money is in the longevity economy?

Trillions of dollars are flowing into this economy. In 2020, just as the Covid-19 pandemic was surging, the longevity sector was valued at $15 trillion globally, according to market research from Data Bridge. It has been growing at a steady rate every year and is expected to have a value of $27 trillion by 2030, and some analyses have the longevity economy possibly reaching this mark by 2026.

This is due to several factors, most notably a shift “toward health span — the years we spend in peak physical and mental condition,” said Entrepreneur. Customer demand also plays a large role, as by 2034 the “U.S. will have more people over 65 than 18,” and one in six people globally will be over 60 by 2030. This is “not just demographics — that’s a new consumer majority.” Increasing health care costs also factor into the money being pumped into the economy, as “chronic diseases and mental health conditions already account for 90% of U.S. health care spending.”

What other factors make up the longevity economy?

There may be more to the longevity economy than many people realize. As “elders live longer and healthier lives and continue to actively participate in the global economy, possibilities open to potentially turn longevity into an asset for society,” said BBC News. In the U.S., it is estimated that by 2030, people over 55 “will have accounted for half of all domestic consumer spending growth since the global financial crisis.” In Japan, this figure will be 67%; in Germany, it will be 86%.

Demographics also play a large role. For the first time in history, the longevity economy “includes four generations of age 50 and older: the GI Generation (1901-1926); the Silent Generation (1927-1945); the Baby Boomers (1946-1964) and Generation X (1965-1980),” said the Los Angeles Daily News. But even though “populations may be aging in significant numbers, we can’t let the idea of ‘oldness’ and its implications stifle the way we think about economic opportunity,” Dr. Joseph Coughlin, the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AgeLab, said to BBC News.

Even though “millennial demands are linked to the rise of the on-demand economy, older adults benefit immensely from its convenience,” Coughlin told BBC News. This has resulted in a slew of products and services surrounding the longevity economy. Most notable are tech entrepreneurs like Bryan Johnson, who is at the “forefront of the movement looking for new ways to reverse aging and extend health span, and live to age 150,” said Fortune. Also emerging is the invention of technologies like wearable aging clocks and more devices designed to keep you younger longer.

When the Taliban swept across Afghanistan and retook power in 2021, most countries severed diplomatic ties, but now India is leading a change of heart around the world.

Despite claims that its second iteration – what some termed “Taliban 2.0” – would be more moderate, the group reintroduced its draconian restrictions on women and girls to international condemnation. The UN Security Council imposed strict sanctions and froze large assets, saying the regime was enacting a “gender apartheid”.

This year, Russia became the first country to formally recognise the Taliban government. Over the past few months, said the Financial Times, the regime “has begun to emerge from diplomatic isolation”, as countries see a potential ally in trade, counterterrorism and the deportation of migrants.

What has happened recently?

India used to see the Taliban as a threat, given its extremist ideology and its closeness with arch-enemy Pakistan. But New Delhi has been trying to improve engagement. In October, it hosted foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi: the first diplomatic trip abroad by a senior Taliban official since the group’s return to power. Although he required a visa waiver due to UN sanctions, the “rapturous reception” he received is “one of the most striking signs of how the world is warming up to the Taliban”, said the FT.

After the visit, New Delhi announced that it would be “upgrading its technical mission” in Kabul to “a full-fledged embassy”, said Al Jazeera. “Closer cooperation between us contributes to your national development, as well as regional stability and resilience,” said Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Speaking to reporters, Muttaqi said: “We want good relations; we keep our doors open for talks – for all!”

Why is India normalising relations?

For India, the Taliban “represents a ‘lesser evil’” compared with terrorist groups such as al-Qaida and Isis-K, said Chietigj Bajpaee of Chatham House’s South Asia, Asia-Pacific Programme. India wants to stop Afghanistan from “re-emerging as a hub for militancy and terrorism”.

Unlike during the 1990s, when India, Iran and Russia backed forces that opposed the Taliban, now there is almost no armed opposition in Afghanistan. “The Indians are being very pragmatic, having realised that the Taliban is the only game in Kabul and that they are not going anywhere”, a senior Pakistani diplomat told the FT. They see it as: “the enemy of my enemy could be my friend’ and the Taliban is clearly taking advantage of that”.

What about the rest of the world?

When Russia formally recognised the Taliban government in July, its foreign ministry said it saw potential for “commercial and economic” cooperation, said the BBC. Russia also wants to cooperate with Afghanistan on counterterrorism, after the deadly Islamic State attack on a concert hall in Moscow in 2024, and to increase trade.

China was the first country to accredit an ambassador from the Taliban, and has pursued what analysts describe as “durable de facto recognition”, eyeing Afghanistan’s reserves of critical minerals and resources.

In the West, the US has praised the Taliban for its crackdown on Isis-K. Sebastian Gorka, a counterterrorism adviser to Donald Trump, revealed in August that Washington and the Taliban were “working together” to fight Islamist militancy. European countries have lauded the Taliban’s destruction of fields of opium poppies, a key ingredient in heroin production, and are also increasingly keen to engage with Afghanistan on the repatriation of migrants. Germany, Switzerland and Austria have all recently sent delegations or welcomed Taliban officials; Germany says it wants to work with the group directly to resume deportations of convicted Afghans.

What’s in it for the Taliban?

Afghanistan is battling endemic poverty and the fallout from natural disasters like the earthquake in August, exacerbated by devastating US aid cuts. Iran and Pakistan have also forcibly returned more than four million Afghans in two years, said the International Organization for Migration, causing chaos at the border and further strain on resources. The Taliban hopes its increased international engagement will “translate into much-needed economic aid and investments”, said the FT. But there is “little sign of this taking place yet”. The oppression of women and girls is the “primary issue facing Afghanistan’s economic future”, said UN Assistant Secretary-General Kanni Wignaraja.

“The Taliban still presides over a pariah state, shunned by most of the world,” said Modern Diplomacy. Its “partial diplomatic thaw” has brought no “real economic relief”; it “remains locked in a dangerous cross-border dispute with Pakistan and trapped by financial isolation”.

Islamabad historically supported the Taliban and saw Afghanistan as a “source of ‘strategic depth’ in its rivalry with India”, said Bajpaee. Now, it is accusing the Afghan Taliban of hosting and sponsoring the militant Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP or Pakistani Taliban), which aims to “overthrow the Pakistani state” and has “stepped up its attacks inside Pakistan”. Pakistan increasingly sees its neighbour as a “liability”.

Grocery shopping is an unavoidable line in your budget. But that does not mean you have to allocate as much of your budget to your weekly food shop as you currently are, especially if you are hoping to trim back to tackle other financial priorities, whether it be paying down high-interest debt or bumping up your retirement account contributions.

A stricter budget at the grocery store does not have to mean a menu of bland meals, either. Rather, like with any area of spending, it is about putting a bit more thought into your expenditures and getting strategic and savvy, as opposed to pushing your cart down the aisles on autopilot.

Understand your current spending habits

If you want to make a change, it first helps to gain an understanding of what your existing habits look like. “You need to know how much you’re spending to begin with before you even start reining it in,” said Beth Moncel of the blog Budget Bytes to The New York Times.

While paying closer attention to the total cost of one week’s worth of groceries can be a start, you’ll get a more complete and accurate picture if you analyze a wider window. “Start by opening up your bank account,” and “go through your spending history and add up how much you spent on groceries each month for the last several months,” said Ramsey Solutions, a personal finance blog. You can then “use the monthly average as your baseline grocery budget amount.”

Give yourself a reasonable spending target

Once you know how much you currently spend, get realistic about how much you could actually get by with spending. “Knowing what factors influence your grocery budget can help you make more informed decisions,” said NerdWallet. For instance, it is key to take into consideration the size of your household, as “larger families tend to spend more on groceries each month” — though they also “can take advantage of buying in bulk to lower per-person costs.” Your location also makes a big difference in what size of budget will make sense, given that “prices and product selection can vary widely by ZIP code.”

Let your pantry guide your meal planning

Using what you already have can go a long way toward saving at the store — not to mention cutting down on food waste. Maybe on a quick sweep it does not seem like you have anything to eat, but most likely, you have at least some ingredients that could play a part in other meals; if you take your pantry items into account, you can lower the total amount you have to shell out on your next grocery store trip.

Consider carving out a time to keep a running list of items you have on hand, then meal plan around those. There are even some “online recipe blogs or sites that offer recipe ideas based off a few ingredients you input,” said Ramsey Solutions, which makes the brainstorming process that much easier.

Cases of the new “subclade K” super-flu are “ballooning” in the UK, said NHS England. Its latest figures show that the number of flu patients admitted to hospital is up 50% on the same period last year, and an “incredible” 10 times higher than in 2023.

This “troublesome mutant” flu virus is a variant of influenza A H3N2, said London’s The Standard. And H3N2 generally tends to cause more severe illness and hospital admissions than influenza A H1N1, which has been more dominant in the UK in recent years. Subclade K of H3N2 is now the predominant flu virus in the UK and Japan, and samples taken in the US and Canada seem to show a similar trend.

What exactly is subclade K?

It’s part of the H3N2 flu virus “family” but it has undergone several mutations that have caused a distinct “genetic drift”. This means it’s “differentiated” from the reference strain of H3N2 chosen for use in this season’s flu vaccine – and could have “changed sufficiently to escape the immunity that has been built up from previous infections and vaccinations”, said Antonia Ho, a consultant in infectious diseases at the University of Glasgow, on VaccinesWork.

“The good news” is that, this subclade K variant “does not seem to be more virulent or cause more severe disease” than other H3N2 strains, said microbiologist Ignacio López-Goñi on The Conversation.

So why the rise in cases?

H3N2 flu waves are “always hotter and nastier” than those caused by other strains, said The Telegraph’s science correspondent Joe Pinkstone. H3N2 is “inherently more severe and infectious than other types of flu, owing to more potent genes and a bigger ‘R rate’ – the number of people one infected person will pass the virus on to, on average”.

And then, as subclade K of H3N2 is different from previous strains and from the strain in the flu vaccine, people may be more “susceptible” to it, Giuseppe Aragona, a GP and medical adviser for an online pharmacy, told The Independent. In other words, our herd immunity and the NHS vaccine may offer us less protection than usual against this new flu strain.

Other factors that have contributed to the spike in UK cases include the flu season starting earlier this year, giving the virus more time to spread, and the fact that “fewer people have been exposed to flu in recent years, especially children, which leaves more people vulnerable”.

What should you do?

NHS bosses, warning of “a tidal wave of flu” in the run-up to Christmas, are encouraging everyone who is eligible to get the free NHS flu vaccine – including children (who can take it in the form of a nasal spray). You can also pay to get the vaccine privately at most pharmacies.

Data published by the UK Health Security Agency shows that the current vaccine is 70%-75% effective at preventing hospital attendance in children aged two to 17 years, and 30%-40% in adults. However well-matched to subclave K of H3N2 or not, it’s still “the best form of defence”, said Thomas Waite, UKHSA deputy chief medical officer.

There are three times as many people hospitalised with flu in London than at this time last year, said NHS England – and yet fewer than half of Londoners who are eligible for the flu vaccine have taken it up.

Thinking about buying or selling a house in 2026? If so, you are likely wondering how the housing market will shape up in the new year — and whether it will offer more favorable conditions than this year did.

The news is good, but not great. In 2026, “it won’t be a quick price correction, and it won’t be a recession,” said real estate company Redfin in its annual predictions. Instead, the “Great Housing Reset will be a yearslong period of gradual increases in home sales and normalization of prices as affordability gradually improves.”

Will mortgage rates come down?

Most experts expect mortgage rates to “stay elevated and relatively steady” in 2026, said Experian. There are two dueling forces at work here keeping rates roughly where they are: the first is persistent inflation, which could prevent “borrowing costs from falling much next year,” and the second is a “weakening job market and geopolitical tensions,” which “may make it less likely that mortgage rates will skyrocket again.”

To get more specific, one economist estimates that mortgage rates will “average around 6% in 2026, down from a roughly 6.7% overall average for this year,” said Realtor.com. Buyers looking for a better decrease than that should note that mortgage rates are “unlikely to return to the 3% level seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Where will home prices head?

In 2026, home prices will probably continue to inch up overall, though at a slower pace than in previous years, when homebuyers experienced an affordability crunch. While exact projections vary depending on the source, per Redfin’s estimates, “prices are expected to increase around 1% year-over-year in 2026, compared to a 2% increase in 2025,” said Business Insider.

It is also worth noting that the “level of improvement really depends on where you live,” said NerdWallet. Some markets are likely to see prices dropping off at a more accelerated rate, while others will experience a faster pickup in prices.

Could inventory improve?

Due to “persistently high mortgage rates and home prices, inventory still hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels,” said Experian, citing data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Still, inventory has been slowly but steadily improving — and it may “continue to grow modestly in 2026, with growth predictions ranging from 5% to 10%.”

Home sales may tick up as well, but “only slightly, because affordability will improve just enough to lure some on-the-fence buyers,” said Redfin. Meanwhile, “many house hunters will remain priced out and/or limited by a stalled labor market.”

Using popular weight-loss drugs like Ozempic during pregnancy is not recommended. But stopping the medications just before conception or in the early stages of pregnancy may come with some risks, according to a new study. And without further research, say experts, the data paints a complicated picture of the relationship between GLP-1s and pregnancy.

What did the study find?

Discontinuing GLP-1s before or during pregnancy is associated with more gestational weight gain when compared to not taking them, according to the observational study published in JAMA. It also results in a higher risk of preterm delivery, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, and gestational diabetes, which is linked to a greater risk of developing Type 2 diabetes later in life.

Researchers from Boston’s Mass General Brigham reviewed medical records from almost 150,000 pregnancies between June 2016 and March 2025. Among the 448 who had taken GLP-1s, 65% were more likely to gain more weight than recommended during pregnancy, compared with 49% of 1,344 pregnancies that did not take GLP-1s.

But the analysis has “key limitations,” said Live Science. Women who did and did not take the drugs “may not have been completely comparable,” and the study was “not designed to capture potential benefits of taking Ozempic or a similar drug before pregnancy.”

Due to the documented weight gain associated with discontinuing the drugs outside of pregnancy, the increases shown in the study are not surprising, pediatric endocrinologist and lead study author Jacqueline Maya said to Medscape Medical News. The team was “reassured that there were no changes in infant birth weight,” but they were “concerned that there were increases in the risk of obstetric outcomes,” said Maya. Still, given the limitations of observational studies, they could not determine whether stopping the medications directly caused the adverse outcomes.

What remains unanswered?

According to Maya, the study points out potential risks that need closer monitoring and “underscores the need for new strategies to support patients during the transition off these medications,” said The Washington Post. The findings highlight critical gaps in care and can help influence future studies, clinical counseling and approaches to weight management during pregnancy.

Some experts believe the study should clarify who actually used the medication, since the study relies on medical records of people who were prescribed the drug but does not “confirm whether they took the medications,” said the Post. Another limitation noted in the study is that researchers measured the degree of obesity among the women based on their weight after GLP-1-related weight loss rather than at their initial higher weight.

This approach of comparing different cohorts of patients is “not matching apples to apples” and may underestimate the benefits of reducing obesity before pregnancy, Taraneh Soleymani, an associate professor of medicine and the director of obesity medicine at Penn State College of Medicine, who was not involved in the study, said to the Post. While safety concerns based on animal studies mean GLP-1 drugs must be stopped before pregnancy, that does not diminish the benefits they have on obesity before conception, she added.

One question that still needs to be answered is the optimal timing for discontinuing GLP-1s to ensure optimal pregnancy outcomes, said Maya to Medscape Medical News. Experts should “exclude any potential long-term impact on childhood metabolic health,” she added. These medications are known to be “beneficial for weight, blood sugar and cardiovascular health,” so the focus must be on “finding ways to support women who come off these medications for pregnancy.”

There's emerging evidence that a compound called choline could play an under-appreciated role in our health – and particularly in the functioning of our brain.

New research suggests low blood levels of choline in obese people could contribute to brain ageing and potentially trigger the kind of neurodegenerative changes that can lead to Alzheimer’s disease.

This study finding, along with others looking at choline’s role in preserving memory and bone health, and avoiding depression and anxiety, has led some scientists to class choline as a “wonder nutrient” that “has been hugely overlooked”, said BBC Future.

What is choline?

Choline is a nutrient that essential to our health. It’s not a vitamin or a mineral but an organic compound that’s closely related to the B-vitamin group.

We need it for “numerous functions in our bodies”, says BBC Future. These include liver function, synthesising phospholipids (key components of cell membranes), and producing acetylcholine, a brain chemical that plays a major role in memory, thinking and learning processes. Scientists have also linked good levels of choline to higher bone density and better mental health.

We produce small amounts of choline in our liver but, to get enough, we also need to consume it in food. The most common dietary sources of choline are eggs, red meat, chicken, potatoes, yoghurt, fish, leafy green vegetables, peanuts, kidney beans and mushrooms. Of these, animal-based foods tend to contain more choline than plant-based ones.

What did the recent study find?

Researchers from Arizona State University recruited 15 people with obesity, analysed key chemical levels and biomarkers in their systems and then compared them to those of 15 people of a healthy weight. The results, published in Aging and Disease, show that the people with obesity had less circulating choline, more biomarkers associated with inflammation and higher levels of blood proteins indicating neuron damage.

It is only a small study, and it didn’t prove cause and effect, but the “big picture” is that obesity, choline, and the accelerated brain ageing that could lead to dementia “could all be connected”, said Science Alert. And that means low circulating levels of choline could be an “early warning sign” of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, and that maybe a “boost” in choline levels could be an effective “preventive measure”.

What about other studies? 

Low levels of choline have been identified as having “a significant link” with anxiety disorders, according to a meta-analysis published last month in Molecular Psychiatry.

University of California researchers analysed data from 25 studies and found that levels of choline were 8% lower in the brains of people with anxiety disorders. An “8% lower amount doesn’t sound like that much, but, in the brain, it’s significant”, senior author Richard Maddock told New Atlas.

Other studies have shown that people with higher choline intakes from their diets tend to have a higher bone density – “an indicator of strong, healthy bones with a lower risk of being fractured”, said BBC Future. There has also been a large study suggesting that people with a higher choline intake tend to have better memories.

How can you make sure you get enough choline?

Choline is very easily absorbed into our blood from foods containing it but there has been some research, published in the British Medical Journal, suggesting that some people aren’t getting enough.

We need about 425mg of choline a day, which is the equivalent of about three eggs or seven potatoes. Pregnant women need 450mg and breastfeeding women need 550mg. It’s “particularly important” for pregnant and lactating women to get enough choline because it “plays a key role” in building and maintaining a baby’s healthy brain, said The Telegraph.

Choline supplements are generally considered to be safe, as long as they’re made by a trusted brand and don’t contain more than the recommended daily amount. The NHS does not currently specifically recommended choline supplements during pregnancy or lactation, so if you’re expecting or breastfeeding a baby, you should always seek advice from a healthcare practitioner before taking them.

A man has been declared HIV-free, in a case that “upends our understanding of what’s required” for a cure, according to The New Scientist. He was the seventh patient found to be clear of the virus after receiving a stem cell transplant – and, significantly, the second of the seven to receive stem cells that were not actually HIV-resistant. If HIV-resistant cells aren’t necessary to destroy the virus, then scientists have greater options in their search for an effective but less risky cure.

And yet, just as medics make such leaps forward in HIV/Aids treatment, access to both preventive care and medicine for infected patients “remains far from universal”, said The Guardian. Foreign aid cuts have shaken “to its core” the “complex eco-system that sustains HIV services in dozens of low to middle-income countries”.

How close are we to a cure?

The signs are increasingly positive. In addition to the stem-cell study, research released this week highlights another of “the paths scientists are pursuing towards finding an HIV cure”, said The Washington Post. The study, published in Nature, “shows a glimmer of hope” for controlling HIV without the current daily regimen of pills. A small group of patients were given a “experimental immunotherapies” and then taken off their pills; the majority were able to keep the virus “at a low level for months” afterwards.

The standard daily antiretroviral therapy has had a “transformative” effect on managing HIV since its nadir of the 1980s. It works by preventing the virus from multiplying in the body. For many people with HIV, their “viral load” becomes so low as to be undetectable, hugely lowering the risk of them transmitting the virus to somebody else. But, although antiretrovirals can keep the disease in check, it is not a cure.

How have aid cuts impacted HIV/Aids treatment?

Multiple nations are cutting foreign aid funding, on which many lower-income countries depend to deliver health services. For 2025, “external health aid” is expected to have dropped by 30% to 40%, compared with 2023, said the World Health Organisation. “The impact of a sudden acceleration of cuts” to international HIV funding has had a “devastating” impact in the fight against the disease, said a UNAids report published, to mark World Aids Day, on 1 December.

The drop in access to PrEP, a medication that reduces the risk of getting HIV when taken by people at high risk of exposure to the virus, has been “substantial”, said the report: 2.5 million people who used PrEP in 2024 lost access to it in 2025. The number of people treated with PrEP has fallen by 64% in Burundi, 31% in Uganda and 21% in Vietnam. Such failure to meet 2030 global HIV targets could see an additional 3.3 million new HIV infections between 2025 and 2030.

The massive cuts to global health spending made by the US, in particular, has “disrupted HIV/Aids care in many parts of the world”, said NPR. Since Donald Trump began his second presidential term and took an “America First approach”, his administration has slashed international aid programmes. This year was the first year that the US did not formally commemorate World Aids Day.

Inflation may have fallen from its double-digit highs but is still expected to remain above the Bank of England’s 2% target into 2026, which will impact household bills.

Forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) suggested wage growth and energy price volatility could keep inflation, which measures the cost of living, “higher for longer”.

Inflation was measured at 3.6% in October, said MoneyWeek, suggesting it “may have peaked in 2025”.

But lower inflation doesn’t mean prices are falling, said Big Issue, and many people are still “feeling the impact of the cost of living crisis”. Announcements in the Autumn Budget may also impact individual household finances.

Wages

Household budgets could get a boost from pay rises in 2026. The government has confirmed a 4.1% rise in the minimum wage for over-21s to £12.71 per hour from April 2026. It will benefit 2.4 million workers but, while positive, the higher wage will still “fall short of the voluntary real living wage”, said Katherine Chapman, director of the Living Wage Foundation. This is set at £13.45 per hour in the UK, and £14.80 in London.

Meanwhile, employers have raised concerns the wage hike will push up prices, with worries about a hiring freeze among businesses.

Pensioners are likely to be satisfied with a boost to their state pension payments, set to rise by 4.8% to £12,548 per year from April 2026.

But frozen thresholds mean the higher state pension payments and wage growth could see more people “dragged into higher tax bands”, said The Guardian, ultimately hitting your household budget.

Weekly shop

Food prices made the “largest upward contribution” to October’s inflation data, according to the Office for National Statistics, and there are fears that costs may rise further.

A “combination of pressures” is pushing the cost of a weekly shop up, said Saga, including higher costs for fertiliser and animal feed as well as for food, fuel, labour and transport.

The British Retail Consortium has forecast that food price inflation will remain above 5% in 2026, especially as a new sugar tax announced in the Budget “does little to mitigate the rising cost of food and essentials”.

Petrol prices

Drivers were boosted by a freeze in fuel duty in the Budget, with a temporary 5p cut kept in place. But the “sting in the tail”, said This Is Money, is that the 5p cut will gradually be reduced from September 2026.

Motorists, however, may be helped by the launch of a new government-backed Fuel Finder scheme in February 2026. The programme will mandate petrol forecourts to “share real-time price rises in a bid to call out rip-off retailers”.

Energy bills

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said in her Autumn Budget that she would remove £150 from household energy bills by ending the Energy Company Obligation scheme from March 2026.

The ECO previously provided energy efficiency support for households, funded by suppliers through bills, and it would be “unthinkable”, said MoneySavingExpert founder Martin Lewis, if it is not passed on.

But while this "may take the sting out of energy bills right now", costs will need to be picked up elsewhere, said Dr Craig Lowrey, from energy consultancy Cornwall Insight. This may result in higher taxes.

Childcare

The two-child benefit cap for those on universal credit is set to be scrapped from April 2026 in a “huge boost for families”, said The Sun.

Universal credit claimants can currently get up to 85% of their childcare costs repaid up to £1,031.88 for one child and £1,768.94 for two or more.

The payments were previously capped at two children, but parents will get an extra £736.06 for each child above the two-person limit from April 2026.

Labour MPs and charities, said the BBC, have argued that this is the “most cost-effective way to reduce child poverty”.

It comes as data shows it now costs £166,000 for a couple and £220,000 for a single parent to raise a child to age 18, said Moneyfarm. It means “financial planning before becoming a parent is so important”.

Cost of borrowing

With the Autumn Budget out of the way and inflation slowing, the Bank of England is “expected to cut interest rates before Christmas", said This Is Money. This would be positive for those looking to remortgage or climb on to or up the property ladder next year. But while mortgage rates are expected to fall in 2026, said the HomeOwners Alliance it is not necessarily going to be a “sharp drop”.

The Gen Z workforce has long been called entitled or lazy, but the generation’s method of career movement may be a response to the unfavorable job market. Younger workers are embracing career minimalism, in which they move between job opportunities rather than strive for upward mobility. The method could provide more security, flexibility and fulfillment.

What is career minimalism?

We have “traded the rigid career ladder for the career lily pad,” said Morgan Sanner, a Gen Z career expert and the founder of Resume Official, at Glassdoor. Instead of climbing the rungs of a ladder, people are “moving toward opportunities that fit their needs in the moment rather than staying in one organization for decades,” said Forbes. This is especially the case among younger workers. Instead of having ambitions to move their way up in the workplace, 68% of Gen Z workers “wouldn’t pursue management if it weren’t for the paycheck or title,” said a survey by Glassdoor. With career minimalism, workers are “prioritizing security and expansion over elevation,” as a result of a “landscape of mass layoffs, AI disruption and widespread burnout.”

This flexibility is “more sustainable, more realistic and better suited to today’s workplace realities,” said Fortune. Career minimalism is also a “conscious shift away from overreliance on a single employer, toward firmer boundaries, alternative definitions of professional fulfillment and a portfolio of potential income streams for financial stability,” said Chris Martin, a lead researcher at Glassdoor, to Fast Company. “It’s not that Gen Z are rejecting work. They are rejecting an outdated version of work that has been sold to them.”

Several factors have encouraged the shift toward career minimalism, but the largest is the volatility of the job market. “The traditional career ladder promised workers pensions, stability and prestige markers as a reward for their long-term commitment,” said Martin. “The past few generations of workers have seen these promises broken or hollowed out, and Gen Z’s views have changed accordingly.” Increasing the breadth of work rather than focusing on moving up allows for “less dependence on geography,” plus it also “encourages diversification,” said Forbes. It additionally combats skill obsolescence, as industries are rapidly changing due to technological advances.

How is it changing the workplace?

Gen Z has also embraced the side hustle. Having a secondary job allows people to “diversify income streams without abandoning job security,” said Glassdoor. These gigs are no longer “viewed as distractions or fallback options,” and have become “central to Gen Z’s identity, offering creative, entrepreneurial or activist outlets that main jobs cannot supply,” said Fortune. Success “no longer demands that work eclipse every other aspect of life,” and many have “stable jobs for security, side hustles for passion and strict boundaries for sustainability.”

While Gen Z has become a kind of poster child for career minimalism, “millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers are adopting it for their own reasons,” said Forbes. Many are “rethinking what motivates them,” as “titles and promotions have lost some of their power, especially when they bring longer hours and more stress.” However, that does not mean that Gen Z is not seeking management positions at all. The Glassdoor survey found that Gen Z managers “understand that work-life balance isn’t a perk, it’s a necessity for sustainable performance.” Many workers expect flexibility from Gen Z managers as well.

Career minimalism “addresses challenges that affect professionals in every generation,” including “broken advancement systems, burnout, shifting career paths and the desire for autonomy,” said Forbes. “The future of work is becoming less about relentless climbing and more about choosing roles that reflect a person’s values, energy and goals.”

Last week’s military takeover in Guinea-Bissau is the latest in a series of coups that has engulfed west Africa in recent years. Almost all have taken place in the Sahel, the semi-arid belt below the Sahara that bisects the continent.

The latest coup in Guinea-Bissau “doesn’t follow the regional script led by Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger”, said Tomi Oladipo on Semafor. And each of the coups in west Africa has had “unique triggers”, said researcher Salah Ben Hammou on The Conversation. But neither are they isolated events: this is a “coup cascade” in the Sahel.

How did it begin?

When Libya’s Gaddafi regime collapsed in 2011, an “abundance of weaponry” was looted and spread across the Sahel, said world news newsletter Proximities. Members of Mali’s Tuareg group who had fought in Libya returned with fighting experience, seeking an autonomous state in northern Mali. The rebels aligned themselves with multiple Islamist jihadist groups and began capturing territory.

The conflict quickly spread from Mali into neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger. Their tri-border region in the western Sahel, known as the Liptako-Gourma, “allows the biggest of the rebel groups to engage in a war with three governments at once”.

When Malian soldiers ousted Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta in 2020, it “marked the beginning of a broader wave of military takeovers”, said The Conversation. Soldiers “toppled governments” in Chad and Guinea in 2021, Burkina Faso in 2022 (twice), and Gabon and Niger in 2023. At the eastern end of the Sahel, Sudan “descended into a devastating civil war” after its coup in 2021.

What connects the coups?

Analysts point to weak governance and corruption, growing Islamist terrorist insurgencies and the destabilising effects of the climate crisis, as well as rising anti-Western (particularly French) sentiment, fanned by Russia.

Military governments in the former French colonies Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have “played up” this populist “resentment of France” and accusations of “neocolonial tendencies”, said Al Jazeera. They pressured Western forces to leave and have turned towards Russia for “strategic support”. Hundreds of mercenaries from the Wagner group (“rebranded as Africa Corps, and operating as a part of the Russian government”) are now “on the front lines”.

“Sahelian countries are in danger of swapping one kind of imperialism for another”, said the Financial Times. In Mali, Russian mercenaries promised protection for the military junta and “defeat of a dogged Islamist insurgency”. Today, with al-Qaida-affiliated fighters encircling the capital with a “crushing fuel blockade”, and with talk of another coup, “it is clear the Russians have brought neither peace nor stability”.

Experts also blame the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas). They say the regional bloc “was not firm enough after the first coup in Mali and did not immediately react with punishment strong enough to deter others”, said Al Jazeera. “The lack of coherent and consistent response by Ecowas emboldened the coup-makers to act with impunity,” Festus Kofi Aubyn, a Ghana-based researcher with the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding, told the news platform.

What happens next?

“Almost without the world noticing, the Sahel has become the epicentre of global terrorism,” said the Financial Times. More than half of all terrorism-related deaths last year occurred there, according to the Global Terrorism Index. “The fear among more prosperous coastal states is that militant Islam will spread south.”

Countries including Benin, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Ghana are “rightly jittery”. Nigeria, also troubled by Islamist militants, is also “fearful of infection” from neighbouring Niger. In Burkina Faso, “the regime itself is not yet teetering”, but the government “controls less than half the country’s territory”, with an al-Qaida affiliated group controlling “much of the rest”.

“The final lesson is clear”, said Hammou on The Conversation. When coups are “treated as isolated rather than interconnected”, and when the international community offers responses that are “weak, delayed or inconsistent”, more will likely follow.

Labour has been accused of breaking another manifesto pledge after a last-minute U-turn watering down a key protection in its flagship Employment Rights Bill.

Changes to the proposed legislation included the government ditching plans to give workers the right to claim unfair dismissal from day one of a new job. The decision has been described as a “complete betrayal” by one Labour MP and leaves the bill as a “shell of its former self”, according to Unite general secretary Sharon Graham. But it is hoped the compromise will be enough to win over sceptical peers in the House of Lords and get the bill passed into law by next April.

What protections does the bill offer now?

Protection against unfair dismissal, which currently only comes into effect after two years in a job, will now kick in after six months – in line with most European countries. A compensation cap on successful unfair dismissal claims imposed by the Tories will also be lifted.

Other rights, such as the right to claim sick pay and paternity leave, and to apply for flexible working, will be enshrined from day one, and zero-hours contracts will be banned. The threshold for calling a strike will also be lowered, with a union requiring only a simple majority of members who voted rather than at least 40% of those eligible to vote as the current law dictates.

The enforcement of employment rights will be overseen by a new Fair Work Agency, which will have the right to inspect workplaces, issue fines and bring legal action on behalf of employees.

What has the reaction been?

The TUC’s general secretary Paul Nowak said the bill is “essential to better quality, more secure jobs for millions of workers across the economy”. But opposition politicians and business leaders have warned the new provisions are likely to have the opposite effect.

With unemployment already at a near five-year high, “employers have stopped hiring, in part because a rising living wage and steep rises in their national insurance charges have made it too expensive, but also because the looming legislation makes it too risky”, said Matthew Lynn in The Telegraph.

“The measures could cost firms £5 billion a year and risk being passed on to staff through smaller pay rises and hidden taxes which reduce wages over time,” said The Sun.

“No company can plan, invest or hire with this level of uncertainty hanging over them,” Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said. Even the tweaked legislation is still “terrible for economic growth” – a key mission of the Labour government.

What happens next?

Despite anger in some parts of the party over the changes, the focus among Labour MPs is “keeping the rest of the package intact”, particularly the end of zero-hours contracts, said The New Statesman.

Former deputy leader Angela Rayner, who led the passage of the bill through Parliament before she was forced to resign, reportedly plans to lay an amendment tomorrow to speed up the bill so it can be implemented as early as next year.

Several Labour MPs told The Guardian that they “fear that the climbdown by the government will embolden peers and critics of the bill to push for further changes”. “This can’t be the thin of the wedge and we won’t let it be,” said one.

In line with his claim that there could be a link between vaccines (and other medications) and autism, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has turned his attention to a class of drugs he believes could be linked to acts of mass violence. He intends to study antidepressant medications, including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

Why is Kennedy scrutinizing antidepressants?

In November, Kennedy said that he would direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the “long-taboo question of whether SSRIs and other psychoactive drugs contribute to mass violence,” in a post on X. It was not the first time he insinuated a connection between antidepressants and violence. In late August, following a mass shooting at a school in Minnesota that led to the death of two students and dozens of injuries, Kennedy evoked this purported link. He promised to launch studies on the “potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs, and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence,” he said on Fox News. He also made similar claims during a conference announcing his “Make America Healthy Again” report on children, saying the National Institutes of Health would oversee the planned research.

Health officials have “long monitored the side effects of such drugs, which millions of people use,” said Politifact. While new research could supply fresh findings, “existing data points don’t reflect that SSRIs cause mass violence.”

The idea that psychiatric medications can “set off mass shooters certainly isn’t new,” said Gizmodo. While Kennedy has claimed “scientists are afraid to study the topic,” several studies have “tried to look for a possible association between the use of these drugs and mass violence.” While none of the existing data support a causative link between the drugs and violence, suicidal ideation does appear to be a “substantial mental health factor.”

That could explain why some research has found a potential link between antidepressant use and violence in general, said Ragy Girgis, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, to Gizmodo. They find a close relationship because “people who are suicidal or violent also have much worse depression.” People with worse depression are “more likely to be treated with antidepressant medications,” Girgis said. “But it’s not causative.”

What do experts think of RFK Jr.’s claims?

SSRIs are “generally safe and effective medications,” and there is “no overwhelming evidence that these drugs alone would cause patients who are taking them to commit acts of violence,” said Gregory Scott Brown, the chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Communications, to Gizmodo. The California State Association of Psychiatrists issued a rebuttal of RFK Jr.’s attempt to link SSRIs to mass shootings after he made remarks in September. “This is simply not true,” the CSAP said in a statement. What’s most worrying is that “such statements can scare people away from getting the care they need and deserve.”

Sensationalism may lead people to try to blame SSRIs for mass shootings, Girgis said to Gizmodo. Reports of shooters taking psychiatric medication “tend to make the event more of a headline and more attention-grabbing.” That’s “one reason there’s this attention bias to it.”

Equating SSRI users with violence risks unnecessarily stigmatizing mental health conditions, said Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, to Axios. There are “depressed people, people with schizophrenia, anxious people in every other country,” but they cannot “get guns as easily as you can get them here,” he said. It’s a “distraction from the real issue.”

Your Party has established its foundations, with members voting on the party’s name, leadership structure, membership status and a party constitution at its inaugural conference in Liverpool. But by the end of the weekend cracks were already beginning to show.

The group was established by Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn to present a “full-blooded left-wing challenge” to Labour, said Politico. However, if the antics at the conference were anything to go by, it is “mixing deep idealism with the kind of factional splits that would make Monty Python blush”.

What happened at the launch?

Members of Your Party confirmed its formal name will remain the same. Just over 37% voted to make the placeholder name permanent, with other shortlisted options Popular Alliance (25%), For the Many (23%) and Our Party (14%) being overlooked. Sultana had complained that her preferred option of “Left Party” was not included in the options.

Members also voted in favour of dual membership – where individuals can hold active membership of two parties – by 69.2% to 30.8%. Another takeaway from the conference was the introduction of a collective leadership model by a narrow margin of 51.6% to 48.4% of votes. Sultana had previously championed the move as enabling “maximum member democracy”, whereas Corbyn called for a party structured on sole leadership.

On the eve of the conference, Sultana and Corbyn held separate rallies. Sultana’s comprised of two events at a Holiday Inn in Bristol, and welcomed speakers from Bristol Apartheid Free Zone, Stand up to Racism, the National Education Union and refugee charity Borderlands. Meanwhile at Corbyn’s rally, “there were squabbles and four people were evicted”, said Tanya Gold on UnHerd.

Co-founder Sultana had boycotted the first day of the conference in protest against an expulsion of members from the Socialist Workers Party. She described the decision as a “witch-hunt”. Party officials had said that entry was contingent on attendees not being members of other parties.

The left-wing party had aimed to attract around 13,000 people to the event, said the BBC. This was revised down to around 2,500, “which made the cavernous halls of the conference centre feel much emptier”.

Who won between Corbyn and Sultana?

The two co-founders have been at loggerheads since the party was launched in July, but their relationship hit new lows at the conference. “There would have been more chance of Ted Heath and Maggie deciding to be co-leaders of the Conservative Party than of this pair even being in the same room together,” said Stephen Pollard in The Spectator

Leadership disagreements aside, Sultana undoubtedly came out on top, said The New Statesman. Her “fiery remarks” about the exclusion of the Socialist Workers Party members on day one were well supported, and she “appears to have triumphed in every major debate about Your Party’s future except its name”.

But perhaps neither Corbyn nor Sultana emerged as the true leader of the political left, said James Heale in The Spectator. “Zack Polanski is the real winner of the Your Party conference”, as the “acrimonious affair” in Liverpool was on “display for all to see”. Polanski’s Green Party has seen membership rise sharply since he took over as leader in September. The frustrations within Your Party “are likely to only intensify” as it seems “it is Polanski, not Corbyn or Sultana, who is likely to dominate the British left for the near future.”

Will collective leadership work?

Your Party will be run by an executive committee of 11 elected members. This will include a chair, deputy chair and spokesperson to provide “public political leadership”. However, the collective model will exclude MPs from the top roles on the executive committee. Regional elections will take place in February, geared to choose the executive. Until then a “caretaker” committee of members will take on the leadership.

By establishing a collective leadership style, and also allowing members of rival parties to join, Your Party has “paved the way for maximum infighting in the months and years ahead”, said Heale in The Spectator. And it “runs the risk of repelling enthused members, who do not wish to partake in rancour and recriminations”.

Donald Trump has repeatedly flirted with the idea that he could run for a third term in 2028. “There are methods which you could do it,” the president said in an interview with NBC News earlier in the year. He declined to elaborate further, but last month, during his Asia tour, he told reporters it was “too bad” he was not allowed to seek a third term, adding cryptically: "We'll see what happens”.

While mainstream Republican politicians have generally shied away from the idea of a third Trump term, several leading Maga figures have jumped on the bandwagon. Steve Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist turned influential podcaster, insisted: “Trump is going to be president in ’28, and people ought to just get accommodated with that. At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is. But there is a plan.”

What does the constitution say?

The original text does not impose any limits on how long a president can remain in office, but the notion that the presidency should be limited to two terms dates back to the Founding Fathers. George Washington, the first US president, set the pattern by stepping aside after two terms despite clear popular support for him to continue to serve. Thomas Jefferson, who saw “little distinction between a long-serving executive in an elective position and a hereditary monarch”, followed suit, said political scientist and term-limit scholar Michael J. Korzi, so cementing the tradition.

Since 1951, however, presidents have been limited to two terms by the 22nd amendment of the constitution, which states: “no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice”.

Why was the amendment adopted?

Successive presidents continued to observe the two-term convention until Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected to a third term in 1940 and had recently begun a fourth when he died in office in 1945.

When Congress convened for its 1947 session, imposing a constitutional term limit was high on the agenda. The debate was driven by the same “major concern” that motivated Jefferson: “to prevent a president from becoming a king”, said Mark Satta, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Law, Wayne State University, on The Conversation. But the then-recent experience of the Second World War, which had made Americans acutely aware of the dangers of allowing a leader to concentrate their power over a long period, had turned the issue into a priority. One representative said that a presidential term limit would assure the electorate that “we shall never have a dictator in this land”.

Could it be changed?

Not without an extraordinary legislative effort. Amending the constitution would need the approval of two-thirds of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, followed by ratification by at least three-quarters of state legislatures. It is almost impossible to imagine a plan to scrap the two-term limit getting the necessary levels of support, particularly to facilitate a president as divisive as Trump.

That has left Trump supporters pinning their hopes on what they see as a loophole. Under the constitution, the vice-president automatically accedes to the top job in the event an incumbent president dies, resigns or becomes incapacitated.

Some have suggested that Trump could join the 2028 election ticket as the running partner to a presidential candidate, who would then immediately resign after being sworn in. Trump would then automatically step into the role of president.

Legal experts dispute this argument, however. Derek Muller, an election law professor at the University of Notre Dame, told the BBC that the 12th amendment, which states “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of president shall be eligible to that of vice-president of the United States”, closed off that technicality. “I don’t think there’s any ‘one weird trick’ to getting around presidential term limits,” he said.

Would Trump likely try?

If the Supreme Court ruled that the wording of the 12th amendment did not preclude a two-time president serving as vice president, Trump could, in theory, “be president for life”, said Paul Gowder, Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, on FactCheck.org. It would just be a case of “finding people to occupy the top of the ticket”.

But Trump has downplayed the idea of acceding to the presidency by the back door, saying: “I think people wouldn’t like that. It’s too cute. It wouldn't be right”.

A more likely avenue for Trump to retain his power and influence – if not legally his office and title as president – would be to get one of his family members to get elected in their own name, “and then serve as a figurehead president while Mr Trump makes the key decisions”, said The Telegraph.

The Italian parliament has voted unanimously to introduce the crime of femicide – distinct from murder and punished with a life sentence.

Previous attempts to pass a law that specifically criminalised the murder of a woman motivated by her sex had failed to gather enough support. Then the headline-dominating murder of Giulia Cecchettin by her ex-boyfriend in November 2023 “shocked the country into action”, said the BBC.

Over 90% of the 116 women murdered in Italy last year were killed because of their sex, according to the national statistics agency. After this week’s parliamentary debate, during which many MPs wore red ribbons in memory of the female victims of male violence, Italy becomes one of the few countries in the world – and only the fourth in the EU – to categorise femicide as a distinct crime.

How widespread is femicide?

Every 10 minutes, a woman or girl somewhere in the world is killed because she is female, according to a newly published UN Women report on femicide. Last year, an estimated 83,000 women and girls were killed deliberately – with nearly 60% murdered at the hands of an intimate partner or family member. By contrast, only 11% of male homicides that year were carried out by an intimate partner or family member.

There is no real sign of global progress in addressing the issue, said the UN, with few countries even recording and reporting their femicide statistics. We “need better prevention strategies and criminal justice responses to femicide”, said John Brandolino of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

Why has Italy made the change now?

In Italy recently, there has been a series of killings and other violence targeting women. “High-profile cases”, such as Cecchettin’s murder, “have been key in widespread public outcry and debate about the causes of violence against women in Italy’s patriarchal culture”, said The Associated Press.

Cecchettin’s sister, Elena, attracted widespread media attention with her view on Giulia’s murder. She said the perpetrator was not a monster but merely the “healthy son” of a patriarchal society. “They were words that brought crowds out across Italy demanding change,” said the BBC.

What will the new Italian law change?

“In a symbolic move”, the bill was passed on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, said the BBC. The femicide law will apply to murders which are “an act of hatred, discrimination, domination, control, or subjugation of a woman as a woman” or that occur when she breaks off a relationship or to “limit her individual freedoms”.

The law does have its critics, who think the definitions of femicide are too vague and will be hard to prove. And even its backers agree that Italy still needs broader measures to counter sex-based violence and abuse. A separate measure to define sex without consent as rape, also “expected to get final approval” this week, “has been unexpectedly stalled” by the far-right League, said The Guardian. It would leave “room for women and men to use a vague law for personal vendettas without any abuse taking place”, said League leader and deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini. Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, his coalition ally, criticised the delay, saying it is “women paying the price”.

Life already throws enough costs your way. The last thing you want is to pay extra money for the place you are keeping your money safe, whether you use that bank account to cover daily transactions or to build up your savings.

Not only are fees an inconvenience, they can also take a big bite out of your available funds. A 2024 banking survey by Ernst & Young “found that bank fees have reached nearly $82 billion a year, or about $311 for every adult in the U.S.,” said CNBC Select. But if you are strategic, you stand a solid chance of steering clear of the most common costs that hit account holders.

Make sure to meet any minimum balance or other requirements

A common fee you will run into at banks is a monthly service fee, which is a cost simply for having your account up and running. The good news is that “banks that have these fees usually waive them if you maintain your balance above a specified amount, have a direct deposit set up or make a certain number of transactions with your debit card,” said Bankrate. If these requirements apply, make sure you know what you have to do to meet them, so you do not end up paying the fee instead.

Keep regular tabs on your account balance

Potentially costly fees could apply if you overdraft your account. While you can avoid this cost by signing up for overdraft protection, “unfortunately, this protection also comes at a cost,” said Investopedia. A fee-free way to avoid running into this scenario is to commit to regularly checking in on your account balance. That way, you always know exactly how much you have in your account and do not spend beyond that. As a bonus, it is also a useful budgeting exercise.

Do the legwork to find in-network ATMs

Average total ATM fees, “including both the charge from your own bank as well as from the ATM’s operator, are at a record high of $4.86,” said Kiplinger, citing a recent Bankrate survey. As such, even if it feels like a bit of a hassle, it can quite literally pay off to search for an in-network ATM to use, where these fees will not apply. Some banks, particularly online-only banks, are “members of large networks, such as Allpoint or MoneyPass, that allow customers to withdraw money fee-free from tens of thousands of ATMs around the country,” said Kiplinger.

Sign up for paperless statements

If you are still getting paper account statements in the mail, there is a chance you are paying for them. “In an effort to encourage customers to take advantage of online banking services, many banks are now charging a fee for requesting paper statements,” said SmartAsset, a personal finance blog. Although it “may not seem like much to pay $2 or $3 a month for this service,” those charges “can add up over time”

Your to-do list likely does not need another item added to it. But when it comes to home maintenance, putting off those seemingly small, annoying tasks — think trimming your trees or vacuuming behind your refrigerator — can lead to that much more of your time and money getting taken up later.

Consider the less-than-fun task of cleaning out your gutters. If done yourself, it could take 30 minutes to an hour, maybe a little longer depending on the size of your home, or you could shell out “$100 to $200 for a pro to do the job,” said AARP. But skipping that chore can lead to a backup in rainwater, which can get under your roof or into your walls; the consequent home repairs are likely to cost you “around $3,800.”

Here are four home maintenance tasks that may cost you big — unless you get ahead of them. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

1. Clearing out your gutters

It’s a recommendation worth repeating: Clean out your gutters. “Gutters and downspouts divert water from your home during a storm, preventing erosion, mildew damage and foundation problems,” said Zebra, an insurance comparison platform. All of these are issues you probably want to avoid with your home. By checking the gutters to ensure proper drainage and clearing out any debris like leaves or bird nests that may be preventing it, you can avoid the chance of those much more costly, involved repairs.

2. Trimming your trees

Tree trimming is another task that can be easy to put off, especially since it is not always easy to reach branches yourself, and the cost of hiring someone is not necessarily that small. The “national average cost of tree trimming services is $550,” with more trees leading to a bigger bill, said personal finance website GOBankingRates, citing data from HomeGuide. However, doing so can “prolong the life of your roof (a nearly $9,500 replacement job on average) and gutters (typically about $1,200 to replace), while also slowing the growth of the tree’s roots, which could save you $5,000 or more in foundation damage,” said AARP.

3. Getting your heating and cooling systems serviced

Unfortunately, “many people don’t consider having a professional maintain their HVAC equipment until it’s too late and a breakdown has already occurred,” said Ben Baca, an implementation manager at SmartAC.com, to U.S. News & World Report. But regular check-ins are essential not only for ensuring interruption-free heating and cooling for your home, but for some types of systems’ safety, too. Routine servicing can also help make sure your system is running as efficiently as possible, which can in turn save you money on bills.

4. Cleaning your dryer vent and fridge coils

Your dryer and refrigerator are two large home appliances you probably do not think much about, until, one day, they stop working so well. But regular cleanings will help keep both humming along. A clogged dryer vent “can make your dryer less efficient and can start a fire,” which is why it is essential to clean out at least once a year, said Ramsey Solutions, a personal finance site. Similarly, you should “gently brush and vacuum” the coils on the back of your fridge “once a year to stop the fridge from needlessly working overtime.”

A small but growing number of pregnant women are choosing to give birth without any assistance from a midwife or doctor, trusting instead in influencers’ tales of the “euphoria” of a “free birth”.

A year-long investigation into the Free Birth Society by The Guardian has uncovered a multimillion-pound organisation that encourages pregnant women to give birth alone or only with a doula (a non-medical birth companion) – sometimes with dangerous or deadly results.

What is the Free Birth Society?

Founded by former doula Emilee Saldaya, the FBS promotes an “extreme” version of home birth that dispenses with all medical support, said The Guardian. Calling itself a “birth liberation movement”, it presents “free births” to expectant mothers as “returning something sacred that had been stolen from them”. It talks of the “violence” of modern obstetrics, “downplays” serious pregnancy complications and even advises expectant mothers to avoid all prenatal checks and care, including ultrasound scans, which it falsely claims can harm unborn babies.

Most women find out about the FBS through its popular podcast, its Instagram account or its YouTube channel (which has nearly 25 million views). A bestselling video course called “The Complete Guide to Freebirth”, co-created by Saldaya and fellow ex-doula Yolande Norris-Clarke, can be downloaded from the “slick” company website. Saldaya – who, like Norris-Clarke, is not a midwife and has no medical qualifications – has become the “apex influencer of the freebirth world”, appearing in glossy marketing materials “half-naked”, wearing a crown and “posing in a meadow”.

How common are free births?

Free births are not usual but “they are increasing across the UK”, according to the Nursing and Midwifery Council. Several NHS trusts were reporting it as a “growing trend” in 2023 and 2024, said The Health Services Journal, with “several” in their area each year.

No official figures are collected on free births but the percentage of UK home births (which includes free births) has increased from to 2.1% in 2016-19 to 2.5% in 2021 (the most recent available figures) – that’s about 17,400 births. Around 6% of queries received by the AIMS birth charity in 2023 were about free births, said The Health Services Journal – before then, it only “a handful a year”.

Amid multiple recent NHS maternity care scandals, interest in free births has risen as “women lose trust in professional maternity services”, Soo Downe, a midwife and professor at the University of Lancashire, told The Guardian. Some will already have experienced trauma or inadequate maternity care during a previous birth. The suspension of home birth services during the pandemic may also have encouraged some, determined to avoid giving birth in hospital, to opt for a free birth.

What do the medical professionals say?

During its investigation, The Guardian identified 48 cases of late-term stillbirths, neonatal deaths or other forms of “serious harm” involving births that appeared to be linked to the FBS. In 18 of those cases, evidence has emerged to show that “FBS played a significant role in the mother or birth attendant’s decision-making, leading to potentially avoidable tragedies”.

When free births go wrong, it is “impossible to say whether the outcome would have been different with medical support” but experts who reviewed the FBS material concluded that the content was “medically illiterate, misleading or dangerous”, said the paper in a follow-up report.

One of the factors that worries obstetric experts most about free births is the rejection of antenatal care. This can mean that “risk factors, such as twins and breech presentations (the baby presenting bottom first) aren’t detected beforehand”, said Hannah Dahlen, a professor of midwifery, on The Conversation. This can lead to unforeseen complications during the birth and, even if a doula is present, they “don’t have the training, regulation or medical equipment and skills needed to manage emergencies”.

A senior obstetrician told the BBC’s health correspondent she was “terrified” by the idea of women giving birth “in medically unsupervised environments” without a midwife. “I think it’s reversing back to the Middle Ages.”

But Saldaya is defiant in her defence of free birth. Following publication of The Guardian’s investigation, she posted a message to her 133,000 Instagram followers: “They will try to discredit you. They will lie about you. They will attempt to silence what they don’t understand.”

If you have a great rate on your mortgage, it may feel tough to give that up to move houses — especially if current mortgage rates are significantly higher. But what if you could move your mortgage with you? This is, effectively, what portable mortgages make possible: they allow existing homeowners to take their existing rate with them to a new property.

As of now, this type of mortgage is primarily available abroad. But the Trump administration has floated the idea of making it possible in the U.S. Those in favor “argue that portability could loosen up inventory by making it more affordable for current homeowners to move,” said Kiplinger. However, others contend that it may “introduce significant complications,” not to mention “offer little benefit to renters or first-time buyers struggling with today’s prices.”

How do portable mortgages work?

While “selling your home usually means saying goodbye to that loan and the rates and terms attached, a portable mortgage allows you to move with it,” said Realtor.com. Say, for example, there is a “homeowner selling their house for $400,000 with half of that paid off on a 3% mortgage,” said CNN Business. If they had a portable mortgage, they “could sell their home and transfer the $200,000 left on the loan to the new house, keeping the 3% rate.”

The math can get more complicated if the new home costs more than the last one did. In that case, it would be necessary to cover the difference in cost between the two properties, “either in cash or through a second, smaller loan likely issued at the current higher interest rate,” said CNN.

Why are portable mortgages not already available in the US?

In the U.K. and Canada, it is already possible to get a portable mortgage. But the concept has not made its way to the U.S. yet. This is largely due to a vast difference in the usual lengths of mortgage terms. While in the U.S., mortgage terms are typically 15 or 30 years, in the U.K. and Canada, terms are usually only two to five years. These shorter loan terms “lend themselves to portability because borrowers can’t lock in an interest rate for decades,” said Yahoo Finance.

An additional complication is the central role of mortgage-backed securities in the U.S. housing market. Those are “essentially bundles of mortgages that banks or lenders sell to investors, which gives the banks the cash they need to issue new loans and keep the mortgage market flowing,” said CNN Business.

Could portable mortgages help with home affordability?

In short, “while there’s a clear upside to portable mortgages for homeowners with low interest rates, there’s little benefit to everyone else,” said Realtor.com. First-time homebuyers, for instance, who do not already have a competitive mortgage rate locked in, would still have to contend with whatever current mortgage rates are.

There is also the possibility that the practice, if implemented, could backfire — and not just due to complications around mortgage-backed securities. The “favorable financing of some” might in turn “push home prices up for all by increasing buying power, much like what happened during the pandemic housing boom,” said Realtor.com, citing senior economist Jake Krimmel.

The end of the year is a common time to retire, but how do you know if it is the right time for you? Technically, you can start withdrawing funds from your retirement accounts at age 65 without penalty. But that age may or may not feel like the right time for you to exit the workplace.

Ultimately, the decision to retire is personal, and is one that depends on your financial situation and other life circumstances — not to mention how you are feeling about the drastic transition. If you are starting to notice some of the following signs, you may be about ready to hang up your hat.

Minimal debt

While debt is never ideal to have at any point, it can become a real burden during your retirement years, when you are no longer actively bringing in income and instead have to rely on what you have socked away. “If you are already debt-free, you might be ready to live on a fixed income,” said Investopedia. But if you still have outstanding debt, particularly high-interest debt like credit card debt, then you may have an easier time managing on a fixed income if you have that paid down prior to retiring.

Confidence in your retirement savings

A major determinant in whether or not you are ready to retire is whether you have enough saved up to cover your needs and sustain the retirement lifestyle you have envisioned. To gauge this, “identify all of your sources of retirement income, tally your budget requirements, consider hobbies, travel and unexpected medical expenses and see if your savings, factoring in inflation, are enough to achieve your retirement goals,” said Kiplinger, citing Scott Bishop, the managing director at Presidio Wealth Partners. A financial advisor can also help you run the numbers.

No more enthusiasm for your career

While “from time to time, it’s normal to feel numb to your job,” if you are experiencing these feelings regularly, say, “more than once or twice a week, it might be time to pack it up,” said The Wall Street Journal, citing David Conti, a retirement coach at consulting firm RetireMentors. Other signs it might be a time to retire include lost interest in career advancement, such as if you “shrink from learning new tech tools” or actively “avoid promotions,” or do not even see any prospects on your horizon, said the outlet.

Vision for what lies ahead

A successful retirement also hinges on having a plan for what is to come — otherwise, you may risk feeling lost without the structure of your working life. “If you don’t have any activities you’d like to pursue outside of work, that may be a sign you aren’t ready to retire,” said U.S. News & World Report. But if you have big plans for travel or potential hobbies you are longing to try, alongside a clear budget and a plan for tackling realities like inflation and health care costs, then you very well may be ready to sail off into your golden years.

A bonus can be a cherry on top of the salary you are already earning. But just because it is extra money outside of your expected income does not mean you should skip giving some extra thought to how you spend it. Used mindfully, a bonus can actually make a meaningful difference to your financial situation.

Think about it this way: On average, a bonus is about “2.8% of total compensation,” which “means an employee earning $80,000 might receive roughly $2,240, while someone making $120,000 could see closer to $3,360,” said Kiplinger, citing data from Northwestern Mutual. That could mean an extra couple thousand knocked off your credit card balance or deposited into your emergency fund — money you will be glad to have next time you inevitably need a car repair or something breaks around the house.

To help better assess your potential options, here are some savvy ways to make use of that added cash you worked hard for all year.

1. Paying down any high-interest debt

Before you get carried away with thoughts of tropical vacations or lavish dinners out, take a look at the balances on any debt you have, particularly high-interest debt like credit card debt. Applying your bonus toward it offers a one-two punch, said Yahoo Finance: “Not only does this clear your balance faster, but it also saves you money in interest over time.” Given that the average credit card APR is around 25%, on even just a smaller balance, that could translate to hundreds of dollars in savings over time.

2. Topping off your emergency fund

The rule of thumb when it comes to emergency savings is to have at least three to six months’ worth of your living expenses stashed away. That way, if the worst happens, such as a layoff or an unanticipated slew of medical bills, you can come out on the other side still standing.

“Dedicating 25-50% of your bonus to emergency savings can make a huge difference. For example, if you get a $3,000 bonus and put $1,500 toward your emergency fund, you’ve potentially just added a month of financial security without changing your day-to-day lifestyle,” said Hanna Horvath, CFP and Bankrate managing editor, to Bankrate. Ideally, you will put that money into a high-yield savings account, so it is earning interest while it sits there waiting for whenever you may need it.

3. Putting a little more toward retirement

Already have your debts settled and your savings well-stocked? Consider topping up your retirement account if you have not already maxed out contributions for the year. Leveraging your bonus in this way can be extra beneficial, as with retirement accounts like 401(k) plans and IRAs, “you can contribute pre-tax dollars, which allows you to lower your tax bill in April (or get a bigger refund), as well as defer taxes until you make withdrawals,” said Yahoo Finance.

The Department of Education’s decision to exclude several professions from being considered professional degree programs, most notably nursing, has drawn outcry from nurses and nursing groups. The declassification, which restricts funding for students seeking graduate education, is a part of the department’s implementation of various student loan-related measures. Experts and nurse advocacy groups note that the industry is already suffering from a nursing shortage.

Why will nursing be excluded?

As part of the Trump administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” the Grad PLUS program, which helped graduate and professional students secure funding for educational costs, is being eliminated. The bill also creates a new Repayment Assistance Plan, under which new annual loans for new borrowers are capped at $20,500 annually for graduate-level students and $50,000 a year for professional students. Once the new measures are implemented on July 1, 2026, students enrolled in professional degree programs will be restricted to a $200,000 lifetime cap, while non-professional students will be subject to a lifetime limit of $100,000.

To clarify who had access to that money, the Department of Education determined the following programs as professional: medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, optometry, law, veterinary medicine, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, chiropractic, theology and clinical psychology. Nurse practitioners, along with physician assistants, audiologists and physical therapists, were omitted from that list. The goal of the changes is to ensure that borrowers will not face “insurmountable debt to finance degrees that do not pay off,” said Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent in a statement.

What could this mean for the future of nursing?

The changes have prompted pushback from nursing professionals and organizations, who say the funding cut will negatively impact an already strained industry. The proposed cap on federal student loans is “undermining efforts to grow and sustain the nursing workforce,” the American Nurses Association (ANA) said in a press release.

Nurses are the “largest segment of the health care workforce and the backbone of our nation’s health system,” said Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, the president of the ANA. At a time when the country “faces a historic nurse shortage and rising demands,” limiting access to funding for graduate education “threatens the very foundation of patient care.” For many underserved communities across the country, “advanced practice registered nurses ensure access to essential, high-quality care that would otherwise be unavailable.”

This is a “gut punch for nursing,” said Patricia Pittman, a professor of health policy and management and director of the Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity at George Washington University, to Newsweek. Education is the “single best way to retain nurses, especially in rural and underserved communities.” Symbolically, the move is also “deeply insulting to nurses who have fought so hard to be recognized for their critical contributions to health care.”

The reaction to the declassification is “fake news at its finest,” said Department of Education Press Secretary for Higher Education Ellen Keast to Newsweek. The department has had a “consistent definition of what constitutes a professional degree for decades,” and the “consensus-based language aligns with this historical precedent.” It is not surprising that “some institutions are crying wolf over regulations that never existed because their unlimited tuition ride on the taxpayer dime is over.”

As the Trump administration sets its plans in motion to reallocate the responsibilities of the Education Department, the initial steps are illuminating how President Donald Trump could fulfill his campaign pledge to bulldoze the department entirely. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has launched a public campaign to argue that states and other federal agencies could better handle the department’s work.

How does the administration plan to break up the department?

American schools are funded mainly by state and local money. Still, the Education Department “serves as a conduit for billions of dollars of federal aid going to state and local education agencies,” said The Associated Press. Agency officials said the money will continue to be distributed as outlined by Congress, but under the newly signed agreements, much of it will come from a different agency.

The Department of Labor will take over some of the largest federal funding sources for schools and colleges, including Title I money for schools serving low-income communities. Adult education programs were already moved to Labor in June. Another agreement puts the Health and Human Services in charge of a grant program for parents attending college. The State Department will oversee foreign language programs, and the Interior will take on programs supporting Native American education.

Some of the department's roles remain unchanged, such as managing the $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio. While student aid is unaffected, both McMahon and Trump have suggested a different federal department could better handle it. Pell Grants and federal loans will continue to be disbursed, and student loan borrowers will continue making payments. The Department of Education will also continue to oversee the accreditation process, which allows colleges to accept federal financial aid.

Money for providing educational support for students with disabilities will continue to come from the department as well. However, McMahon has suggested it could be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. Investigations into schools and universities that have violated disability rights law and civil rights violations will also remain untouched, though McMahon has pointed out that the Department of Justice could take those over.

Is this the end of the Department of Education?​​

Not necessarily. McMahon has acknowledged that “only Congress can eliminate the department,” but she has “vowed to work to dismantle it from within,” said The Washington Post. The Trump administration is “taking bold action to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” McMahon said in a statement. “Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission.”

Shifting the responsibilities of the department to other agencies “will not by itself remove red tape or alter the power that Washington exerts over states and school districts,” said the Post. States and school boards already control most decisions related to education, but the department “enforces rules embedded in federal programs, such as grant requirements.”

The proposed disbanding of the department has elicited pushback from education experts and politicians. It is “difficult to see how transferring cornerstone programs” out of the department will “result in streamlined operations, especially for the nation’s small, rural and low-capacity districts,” said David Schuler, executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association, in a statement.

The administration is acting as if the constitutional separation of powers is a “mere suggestion,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) in a statement. This is an “outright illegal effort to continue dismantling the Department of Education.” Students and families will “suffer the consequences as key programs that help students learn to read or that strengthen ties between schools and families are spun off to agencies with little to no relevant expertise.”

Others praised the administration’s decision to move forward with its plans to try to shut down the department. The shutdown of the federal government “made one thing clear: Students and teachers can go to class without heavy-handed federal intervention,” said House Education and Workforce Chair Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) in a statement, per Politico. The administration is “making good on its promise to fix the nation’s broken system by right-sizing the Department of Education to improve student outcomes.”

“Responsible Child”, the ripped-from-the-headlines story of a 12-year-old boy who stands trial for murder, is top of the Netflix film charts.

The TV movie, which first aired on the BBC in 2019, “explores the nuanced issue of what age children ought to be responsible for their actions in a legal context”, said Cosmopolitan. It is loosely based on the real-life story of Jerome and Joshua Ellis, who were 14 and 23 when they killed their stepfather in 2013.

Filmmaker Nick Holt had “started asking more questions about the age at which people can stand trial in front of a jury”, he told Radio Times in 2019, after witnessing the trial of a young boy first hand. “When it turned out it was 10, and I saw how it compared to other countries, I was even more surprised. It’s substantially out of kilter with the rest of the world.”

What is the age of responsibility in the UK?

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the age of criminal responsibility – defined as the minimum age a person can be held legally responsible for a crime – is 10 years old. This means children under 10 cannot be arrested or charged with a crime, although they can be given a local child curfew, child safety order, or – in extreme cases of repeated offending – taken into care. In Scotland, the age of criminal responsibility was raised to 12 in 2019.

Since 1963, when the law first recognised a minimum age of criminal responsibility and set it at 10, “our understanding of how the adolescent brain develops – and how that affects decision-making – has increased”, said the BBC.

Nicholas Mackintosh, who chaired a Royal Society study on brain development in 2011, told the BBC at the time that there was “incontrovertible evidence that the brain continues to develop throughout adolescence”. Some regions responsible for decision-making and impulse control do not fully mature “until at least the age of 20”.

The Royal Society’s report cited concern among some neuroscientists that the age of criminal responsibility in the UK was set too low. The age has not changed since then.

How are children handled differently?

Under the current law, children in England and Wales aged between 10 and 17 “can be arrested and taken to court if they commit a crime”, but are still “treated differently from adults”, said the UK government.

Most will have their cases heard in youth courts, which have “specific rules in place to safeguard the child’s welfare and maintain anonymity”, said Lawtons Solicitors. Sentences are “less severe”, with imprisonment “only being imposed as a last resort for the most serious offences”. Those found guilty are sent to special secure centres for young people rather than adult prisons, with a greater emphasis on rehabilitation and preventing reoffending.

However, for very serious offences, or crimes in which a child is charged alongside an adult, cases can be heard by a crown court. Between 1995 and 2020, it is estimated that more than 7,000 children aged 10-14 have been tried at crown courts in England and Wales.

How does the UK compare to other countries?

The United Nations has repeatedly called for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised to at least 12 by all member nations, with 14 the most common age around the world, said the National Youth Justice Network.

This means England and Wales are outliers, with the current age of 10 being lower than any other European country. Portugal, at 16, has the highest age of criminal responsibility in Europe.

Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson went against the grain last month by announcing plans to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 14. This came after an “increase in cases of crime gangs recruiting children via social media and using them as hitmen”, said Reuters.

Generation Alpha kids, born between 2010 and 2024, are more cognizant of news events than adults might assume, and many of them have concerns about the future, according to the latest Junior Voices survey from The Week Junior and YouGov.

The Week Junior’s annual survey of about 700 American children ages 8-14 found that most hear about the news often: 67% say they hear about the news and current events at least every few days, and 33% say they hear about it every day. Kids also discuss the news with others just as often, with 68% having those conversations at least once a week. When asked to assess the frequency of their news consumption, 63% say they hear about it just enough, 27% say it’s too much, and 9% say it’s not enough.

When asked how they feel when they hear the news, 52% are concerned about the future. That is an increase of 37% compared to the 2024 survey. Many children also say hearing about current events makes them curious to learn more about what is happening in the world, with 38% saying they are interested in learning more, 15% saying they are confident they know what’s happening, and 14% saying they are inspired to take action to make a difference. Only 13% say hearing about the news makes them feel hopeful about the future.

Despite these concerns, many children still want to be informed, even when the news is negative. More than 7 in 10 respondents believe kids should hear about difficult or upsetting news. More specifically, 47% say they should only receive a big picture overview, while 24% say kids should listen to all the details.

This year’s survey shows that Gen Alpha kids “want to be informed, engaged, and aware of what’s happening in the world,” said Andrea Barbalich, Editorial Director of The Week Junior. They still need adults to “help them make sense of information and events that can change quickly and be upsetting at times.” They look to parents for “guidance, advice, and reassurance,” so it is vital to “engage kids in conversation and answer their questions clearly, honestly, directly, and age-appropriately.”

The top current news sources for kids include family members, friends, TV, school, social media apps, and YouTube. Family is the leading source, with 62% saying they get their updates from family.

Family and friends also play a key role in helping kids process distressing information. When asked what they do after hearing difficult or upsetting news, 65% say they talk about it with family or friends. In addition, 25% say they think about how they can help, and 7% report taking action by raising money, donating supplies, or contributing in other ways. About one in five say they listen to or read about good news or do something else that makes them feel better.

YouGov surveyed 708 children ages 8 to 14 from Sept. 9 to Sept. 18, 2025. The survey was conducted online via their parents. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all U.S. children ages 8 to 14.

In March, the World Meteorological Organisation reported that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere had reached its highest level in the past 800,000 years – and continues to build.

The world has already warmed approximately 1.1-1.3°C above pre-industrial levels (i.e. from 1850 to 1900), and is on track for around 2.5-3°C of warming by 2100. Given that we don’t know what level of future emissions the world will produce, predicting future effects is very difficult.

What do we know about how Britain’s climate will change?

Subject to the uncertainties above, the Met Office’s latest projections show the UK getting substantially warmer and wetter overall, but with stark seasonal contrasts – wetter winters and significantly drier summers – and more extreme weather events.

Under a “medium emissions” scenario, Britain will warm by a couple of degrees by the end of the century against 1990 temperatures. The changes are regionally variable. London’s annual average temperature is likely to increase by 2-3°C. In summer, very hot days (30-35°C) will occur more often, and extreme days (35-40°C) will become increasingly commonplace. There will be an increase in average winter rainfall, and summers will be drier, but punctuated by intense storms.

What effects will this have?

In its 2025 report, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) lists five key risk areas for the UK. First, the threat from extreme weather to food production and nature (i.e. biodiversity and the ability of land, such as peat bogs, to sequester carbon). Second, the risk of infrastructure disruption: drought putting pressure on water supplies, extreme heat buckling railway lines, and so on. Third, the risk to properties from flooding and overheating. Fourth, the risk of heat-related deaths. Finally, the risk to economic prosperity from climate change. The CCC predicts that economic output could be reduced by up to 7% by 2050 (the Office for Budget Responsibility recently put this figure even higher).

Will food production be affected?

The effects are already being seen. In 2024, flooding followed by very dry weather damaged crops and drove up the price of animal feed. This year’s very low rainfall also affected yields. A study this year found that 86% of farmers had experienced extreme rainfall in the past five years, while drought had affected 78%.

Warming won’t be altogether negative: warmer weather will extend the growing season, and make some crops – chickpeas, oranges, grapes – viable. But dry summers will reduce yields of many staple crops, and of grass-fed livestock. Farmers may need to invest more in irrigation systems. Pollinators may be wiped out. Higher temperatures will allow pests and diseases to thrive. There are also the threats posed by flooding.

What effects will flooding have?

Since 1900, global sea levels have risen by around 16.5cm. Depending on emissions levels, the Met Office anticipates a sea level rise of between 0.3m and 1.15m by 2100, relative to 1990 levels, though around 0.5m is more probable. Rising sea levels cause coastal erosion, destroying homes and habitats, and increasing the likelihood of coastal flooding, which is a particular risk on the east coast. The Environment Agency assesses that 13% of agricultural land is already at risk of river or coastal flooding. The Government thinks more than half of the UK’s prime “Grade 1” agricultural land is at risk. According to the think-tank Climate Central, one-third of Lincolnshire – one of Britain’s most productive agricultural regions – is at risk of being below the annual flood level by 2050.

How will floods affect property?

The Environment Agency estimates that 6.3 million properties across England are now at risk from flooding from rivers, seas and surface water, and that this could rise to eight million by 2050 – one out of every four properties. One concern is that some areas will become uninsurable and thus uninhabitable; a government-backed scheme to provide insurance to vulnerable properties ends in 2039. In Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire, hit by floods in 2019, 2020, 2023 and 2024, some properties are already uninsurable.

How will public health be affected?

As summers heat up, the CCC estimates heat-related deaths could exceed 10,000 a year by 2050 (the long-term average for England and Wales is 634, but the hot summer of 2022 caused more than 4,500 heat-related deaths). A warming climate will also change disease patterns, creating a welcoming environment for food-borne bacterial infections such as salmonella and campylobacter, and for insect-borne diseases such as malaria and Lyme’s.

How can Britain adapt?

For the period to 2030, Labour has allocated more than £59 billion to achieving net-zero emissions. It spends far less on adaptation, though significant pledges have been made. Nine new industrial-scale reservoirs will be built by 2050 to address water shortages; and a £2.7 billion boost given to the £1 billion spent on flood defences annually. In 2022, the government identified 56 climate risks, from loss of native species to political instability abroad, and 12 opportunities (notably, the potential benefits of higher winter temperatures, and the growth of tourism). More than half of the risks were judged as needing “more action” in the near term.

More deaths can likely be attributed to opioids than previously thought, and that is largely thanks to a substance called nitazene. The synthetic drug can be five to nine times stronger than fentanyl, which is already approximately 25 to 50 times stronger than heroin. Nitazene is often hidden in other products and difficult to test for, so it often goes undetected.

How prevalent is nitazene?

Nitazene was first developed in the 1950s as an analgesic, but was never approved for medical use. Instead, it was “limited to those researching opioid pharmacology,” said Rolling Stone. Nitazene’s presence mostly remained that way until 2019, when the drug emerged on the street market in Europe and the U.S. From there, its presence accelerated. In 2023, 20 different nitazenes were reported by 28 countries to the UN, according to the World Drug Report 2025. Then in 2024, “more new nitazenes than new fentanyl analogs were being reported,” accounting for “almost 50% of all reported opioid NPS (novel psychoactive substances).”

In the U.S., 320 overdose deaths in 2023 reportedly involved nitazenes, according to the World Drug Report. However, this number is likely understated. The country still mostly “relies on toxicology panels built for yesterday’s drug supply,” said Time. The antiquated panels can “reliably identify heroin, oxycodone and fentanyl,” but they “fail to catch nitazenes, brorphine or other new synthetic analogs.” Without proper identification, “policymakers and public health professionals chase outdated trends.” A “person who dies with both cocaine and a nitazene in their system might still be coded as a ‘cocaine death.’”

Fentanyl is still considered the number one cause of opioid deaths, accounting for 48,422 deaths in the U.S. in 2024. But there have been “reported signs of a declining fentanyl market” within the country, with “declining purity and a smaller number of seizures of fentanyl pills.” The rise in nitazenes “may be a response to efforts to reduce the supply of other opioids,” said Ryan Marino, a toxicologist and expert in addiction medicine at University Hospitals in Cleveland, to Rolling Stone. “In almost every case where nitazenes are found, they are added to other drugs, primarily fentanyl, and not advertised as containing nitazenes when sold.”

How dangerous is it?

Even very small doses of nitazene can be deadly. The lethality of fentanyl is “anywhere between 10 and 20 grains of salt,” said Frank Tarentino, the special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York lab, to CBS News. With nitazene, “we're talking about anywhere from one grain or less.” Much of the exposure to nitazene comes inadvertently. It has been found in “vapes sold as containing cannabis, in pills shaped as teddy bears supposed to be MDMA, in powder trafficked as cocaine, in counterfeit pain medication,” said The Guardian.

Synthetic opioids are so dangerous that first responders have to avoid inhalation when addressing an overdose situation. The drugs “slow down the part of your brain that tells you to breathe,” said Dimitri Gerostamoulos, an associate professor and the chief toxicologist at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, to The Guardian. “This is what causes respiratory depression. We sometimes refer to this as the ‘sleepy death.'” It can also cause paralysis and seizures. Luckily, nitazene is an “opioid, and naloxone blocks opioids,” said Chinazo Cunningham, the commissioner of the New York State Office of Addiction, Services and Supports, to CBS News. “If it's a very powerful opioid, it may take a couple of doses.”