A chance planting 30 years ago produced an avocado three times the size of other varieties. From March, Jala trees will be sold nationallyMore summer essentialsGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastThirty years ago, Ken Spackman cut down an avocado tree planted by his father on the family’s Palmwoods property on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. He planted a seed from the tree in a different spot on the farm, with no expectation it would flourish.“That seed did it pretty tough – no water, no fertiliser,” recalls neighbour John Mongan. “But a tree grew from nothing, alone and out of the way, so it must have been lucky.” Continue reading...

Politics

Presenter has been in hot seat alongside Ben Shepherd since Holly Willoughby’s departure

Economics

Doug Harless, 61, was fatally shot by police who showed up at his door to serve a search warrant

Events

Institutions in and around the city combine great works with humdrum relics of local life, to fantastic effectI’ve been living partly in Sheffield for the past month or so, which has given me the chance to catch up on some of the great monuments of industry and power in and near the city – the model miners’ village and the fantastical Jacobean castle in Bolsover, the stately home of Wentworth Woodhouse with its battleship-length Palladian facade, the buildings of the subtle modernist Peter Womersley in Huddersfield.Also the Weston Park Museum in Sheffield and the Derby Museum and Art Gallery, both of which combine world-class art with humdrum relics of local life. In one, a large John Singer Sargent portrait of three young Yorkshire women shares the premises with the plastic car roof sign of a 1970s driving school. In the other, there is a gallery full of the illuminated tableaux of science and humanity by Joseph Wright of Derby and another room with a collection of stuffed animals,...

Culture

An alleged extra terrestrial living on earth, Bashar, who connected to his human host through meditation, feels a duty to 'service' our world with knowledge about life beyond our stars

Science

The Oscar-winning actress died in hospital aged 89 in September.

Politics

In the Kent commuter town of Dartford, locals say the town has slipped into a decline since the introduction of the sprawling Bluewater Shopping Centre in 1999.

Economics

Exclusive: The British government refused to allow IPP prisoners to progress to an open prison in 61 per cent of cases over the past 12 months, figures show

Events

British-Canadian computer scientist Professor Geoffrey Hinton has shortened the odds of AI wiping out humans over the next 30 years, warning the technology could one day 'take control'.

Science

Large language models have changed how big corporations function, and the arrival of AI ‘agents’ – essentially automated Moneypennys – could prove irresistibleIf 2024 was the year of large language models (LLMs), then 2025 looks like the year of AI “agents”. These are quasi-intelligent systems that harness LLMs to go beyond their usual tricks of generating plausible text or responding to prompts. The idea is that an agent can be given a high-level – possibly even vague – goal and break it down into a series of actionable steps. Once it “understands” the goal, it can devise a plan to achieve it, much as a human would.OpenAI’s chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, recently explained it thus to the Financial Times: “It could be a researcher, a helpful assistant for everyday people, working moms like me. In 2025, we will see the first very successful agents deployed that help people in their day to day.” Or it’s like having a digital assistant “that doesn’t just respond to your instruct...

Politics

Cat Deeley's future on This Morning has been confirmed just nine months after she made her debut.

Events

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed some troubling information in his nightly address to the nation, which claimed a wave of North Korean soldiers are being supposedly sacrificed

Politics

I do not ask you to like Graham Phillips, or even to sympathise with him. But you shouldn't approve of what our Government is doing to him. He is living in a bombed-out, unheated block of flats in Mariupol.

Events

Replacing Williams with a CGI ape in an otherwise human cast pays off enormously in Michael Gracey’s warts-and-all tale of the pop phenomenonIt was a throwaway comment: Robbie Williams, Take That’s cheeky chappie-turned-tabloid fodder solo phenomenon, described himself as a performing monkey, prancing and preening in front of the cameras and seeking the approval of the audience (or at least a banana or two). But for director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman), it was the key to unlocking Williams’s conflicted relationship with his celebrity and his compulsion to perform. In a creative gamble to rival Piece by Piece director Morgan Neville’s decision to tell the Pharell Williams story with Lego animation recently, Gracey replaces Williams in this warts-and-all biopic with a CGI chimpanzee in an otherwise human cast. It’s a gamble that not only pays off – it’s arguably the main reason the film works as well as it does.Narrated by Williams (Jonno Davies delivers a motion-captured pe...

Politics

Bird flu could be mutating to become more transmissible to humans, scientists have warned, as the US reported its first severe case that left a woman in Louisiana hospitalised.

Events

A technology expert has warned of accelerating progressions in AI development that could be putting humanity in danger, raising the alarm about the threat of 'AIs that are smarter than people'

Politics

The survivor of Lawrence Hecker’s abuse said he feels ‘vindicated’ by the former priest’s death

Events

Patrick Egan then tackled the reporter then put him in a headlock and “began to strangle him” according to an affidavit

Politics

Whether it's tying your shoelaces or doing up your tie, many of us use knots on a daily basis. Despite this, research has shown that humans are 'terrible' at judging knots.

Events

Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard were brought in to replace Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield on This Morning – and now her future on the popular ITV daytime show has been revealed

Politics

Gaza health officials said the IDF detained the director of a hospital, which the WHO said was put out of service by an Israeli raidNearly one in five of the world’s children live in areas affected by conflicts, with more than 473 million children suffering from the worst levels of violence since the second world war, according to figures published by the UN.The UN humanitarian aid organisation for children, Unicef, said on Saturday that the percentage of children living in conflict zones around the world has doubled from about 10% in the 1990s to almost 19%, and warned that this dramatic increase in harm to children should not become the “new normal”. Continue reading...

Politics

Biofeedback devices promised a whole new world of mental and physical harmony. They did change my life, but not in the way I’d hopedI love to run, but ask me about my running times or distances and I will have no idea. For me, running is about squeezing exercise into a busy schedule, clearing my head and being in nature. I don’t need to measure it.But unfortunately I am not immune to the oh-so-pleasing dopamine injection of unboxing a new bit of wearable tech, personalising the app for hours and thinking this might just change my life – the new, calmer, fitter, stronger, smarter me dangling tantalisingly within reach. One such scenario occurred after researching the importance of human connection on mental and physical health: less stress, less inflammation, less illness. Human connection, I learned, can stimulate and be facilitated by the vagus nerve – a primitive part of the nervous system. Continue reading...

Events

The Inter and Denmark player wins the award for her climate activism and being behind an open letter to Fifa regarding Saudi Arabia’s human rights issuesThe Guardian Footballer of the Year is an award given to a player who has done something remarkable, whether by overcoming adversity, helping others or setting a sporting example by acting with exceptional honesty.If the football had not worked out, perhaps Sofie Junge Pedersen could have run away to the circus. When her after-school youth club in Aarhus put on its annual week of performances there was one challenge that struck her in particular: the chance to juggle with fire torches and mock knives. “It was quite serious,” she laughs. “We practised a lot beforehand and I thought it would be fun. I just wanted to be the best.” So it proved and there is no evidence that anyone has beaten the time she set, aged 13, for keeping the two airborne simultaneously. Continue reading...

Politics

Two tankers were hit by a storm in the Kerch strait near Crimea on 15 December, causing one to sink and another to run agroundRussia has warned of severe environmental damage from a huge oil spill in the Black Sea caused when two tankers were hit by a storm near Crimea, which has declared a state of emergency.One tanker sank and another ran aground on 15 December in the Kerch strait between Russia and the illegally annexed Crimean peninsula. Continue reading...

Events

A shy man leads a solitary existence until a young girl – and a cat – inveigle their way into his apparently contented life in this big-hearted taleAll Jack Paton ever wanted was to be a famous country singer, but somehow it never happened. Certainly, the odds were stacked against him: cripplingly shy, no self-confidence. And although he considers it “a landscape of country music”, it can’t have helped matters that he was born in one of the more windswept corners of Shetland, far from Texas or Tennessee, and has remained there ever since, keeping his dreams to himself.That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz, Malachy Tallack’s second novel, follows Jack, now approaching his 63rd birthday, as he spends his days pottering about in the cottage he has lived in since he was a child, listening to music, playing guitar and thinking of the past. The narrative flicks between Jack in the present, as he begins to question his life choices, and his parents, Sonny and Kathleen, decades earli...

Politics

Every year, countless Brits find themselves on the wrong end of the law whilst on their holidays, and for some of them the consequences can be life changing in the extreme.

Events

Put your eyes to the test with this baffling optical illusion and see how sharp your eyesight really is - all you need to do is spot the mouse in under seven seconds

Politics

A timelapse video from the Weizmann Institute of Science has revealed that when ants work in groups as one 'super-organism' they have the power to even outsmart humans

Events

Politicians need to take a more moral and humane stance on Israel’s military campaign in Gaza

Politics

Academic Danilo Brozović says studies of failed civilisations all point in one direction – today’s society needs radical transformation to surviveFor someone who has examined 361 studies and 73 books on societal collapses, Danilo Brozović’s conclusion on what must happen to avoid today’s world imploding is both disarmingly simple and a daunting challenge: “We need dramatic social and technological changes.”The collapse of past civilisations, from the mighty Mayan empire to Rapa Nui (Easter Island), has long fascinated people and for obvious reasons – how stable is our own society? Does ever-growing complexity in societies or human hubris inevitably lead to oblivion? In the face of the climate crisis, rampant destruction of the natural world, rising geopolitical tensions and more, the question is more urgent than ever. Continue reading...

Events

TV presenter Cat Deeley took to Instagram to share a rare video of her two sons, Milo and James, as they enjoyed a festive day out to Lapland UK ahead of Christmas

Politics

Minister says request regarding welder arrested in 2005 on drugs charges will be discussed in January amid spate of transfer of high-profile detaineesIndonesia has received an official request from France to transfer a French death row inmate imprisoned on drugs charges since 2005, a senior Indonesian minister said on Saturday.“We have received a formal letter requesting the transfer of Serge Atlaoui on 19 December 2024. The letter was sent on behalf of the French minister of justice,” senior Indonesian law and human rights minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra told Agence France-Presse. Continue reading...

Events

Many of us will be looking for the perfect time to take down our Christmas tree - but you might be surprised to hear that there could be bad luck if you leave it up for too long

Politics

Kyiv reports heavy casualties among Pyongyang’s soldiers in Russia while Washington accuses generals of seeing the troops as ‘expendable’. What we know on day 1,039See all our Ukraine war coverageNorth Korean troops deployed in Russia’s Kursk region are suffering heavy losses and being left unprotected by the Russian forces they are fighting alongside, according to Ukraine, while the US says Russian and North Korean generals see the soldiers as “expendable”. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday that said Russian troops were sending the North Koreans into battle with minimal protection and that the North Koreans were taking extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner. “Their losses are significant, very significant,” the Ukrainian president said in his nightly video address. “We see that neither the Russian military nor their North Korean overseers have any interest in ensuring the survival of these North Koreans.” Zelenskyy said “several” wounded North Korean soldiers had died afte...

Events

Local councils are to be given sweeping powers to issue on-the-spot fines for minor misdemeanours such as climbing trees in parks.

Events

Cat Deeley's future on This Morning has been confirmed just nine months after she made her debut.

Events

Jazwell Brown, of Santa Cruz Avenue, Bletchley, will appear at High Wycombe Magistrates’ Court on Saturday.

Events