Soon-to-be-axed 7am Manchester-London train will still run – but without passengers

The good news for rail travel between Manchester and London is that a morning train will continue to link the two cities in under two hours. The bad news: passengers will no longer be able to get onboard.The rail regulator has axed one of Britain’s fastest and most lucrative intercity services, the 7am Avanti West Coast from Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston, as part of a timetable shake-up that will take effect in mid-December.What will heap on frustration for passengers, as well as the operator, is that the exact same train service will continue to run between the stations from 7am each weekday: crewed, fast and empty.The train and staff still need to travel from Manchester as they are rostered to operate subsequent services out of Euston on the new December timetable, under rail’s complex planning

Jetstar cancels 90 domestic flights across Australia after global Airbus A320 recall

Jetstar has grounded some of its Airbus fleet in Australia and cancelled domestic and international flights after the aerospace manufacturer ordered software changes to thousands of its A320 planes following a mid-air incident.Ninety Jetstar flights were affected on Saturday with disruption expected to continue until Sunday, the airline’s head of flying operations, Tyrone Simes, told reporters at Melbourne airport.Airbus said on Friday it was ordering an immediate software change on a “significant number” of its bestselling A320 family of aircraft, a narrow-body plane which is also used by Virgin Australia and Qantas.Simes said on Saturday Airbus had issued Jetstar with a maintenance directive to reverse a software upgrade that had been installed on some planes and resulted in a malfunction.He said 34 of Jetstar’s 85 Airbus fleet were affected, but engineers could complete the software update on the ground in Australia, which would take about two to three hours for each plane

After a teddy bear talked about kink, AI watchdogs are warning parents against smart toys

As the holiday season looms into view with Black Friday, one category on people’s gift lists is causing increasing concern: products with artificial intelligence.The development has raised new concerns about the dangers smart toys could pose to children, as consumer advocacy groups say AI could harm kids’ safety and development. The trend has prompted calls for increased testing of such products and governmental oversight.“If we look into how these toys are marketed and how they perform and the fact that there is little to no research that shows that they are beneficial for children – and no regulation of AI toys – it raises a really big red flag,” said Rachel Franz, director of Young Children Thrive Offline, an initiative from Fairplay, which works to protect children from big tech.Last week, those fears were given brutal justification when an AI-equipped teddy bear started discussing sexually explicit topics

One in 10 UK parents say their child has been blackmailed online, NSPCC finds

Nearly one in 10 UK parents say their child has been blackmailed online, with harms ranging from threatening to release intimate pictures to revealing details about someone’s personal life.The NSPCC child protection charity also found that one in five parents know a child who has experienced online blackmail, while two in five said they rarely or never talked to their children about the subject.The National Crime Agency has said that it is receiving more than 110 reports a month of child sextortion attempts, where criminal gangs trick teenagers into sending intimate pictures of themselves and then blackmail them.Agencies across the UK, US and Australia have confirmed a rising number of sextortion cases involving teenage boys and young adult males being targeted by cyber-criminal gangs based in west Africa or south-east Asia, some of which have ended in tragedy. Murray Dowey, a 16-year-old from Dunblane, Scotland, killed himself in 2023 after becoming a victim of sextortion on Instagram and Dinal De Alwis, 16, killed himself in Sutton, south London, in October 2022 after being blackmailed over nude photographs

Constitution Hill falls again as Golden Ace storms to Fighting Fifth Hurdle win

Golden Ace, the reigning champion over hurdles, but dismissed in the betting as a 22-1 outsider, won a dramatic Fighting Fifth Hurdle here on Saturday.Constitution Hill, the 2023 Champion Hurdle winner, suffered a third fall in four starts at the second while The New Lion fell when leading the field two out. Golden Ace, the only mare in the race, then held off the challenge of Anzadam to claim the spoils.The result was a vindication for the willingness of Jeremy Scott, Golden Ace’s trainer, to take on the best hurdlers with his seven-year-old. It was a near facsimile of her win in a similarly dramatic Champion Hurdle in March, when Constitution Hill was again an early faller and State Man came down when clear at the last

‘I could have been a better captain’: Stokes admits errors as England seek Ashes reset

The sheer number of Australian voices triumphantly telling England to show some humility this past week has been slightly ironic. The first Test finished as an eight-wicket thumping, done inside 48 hours and worthy of criticism, but it was not without a genuine wobble from the hosts en route.Either way, Ben Stokes looked to do so when his players resumed training at Allan Border Field on Saturday morning before next week’s day-night second Test at the Gabba. Gone was the “shell-shocked” captain seen during the immediate aftermath of going 1-0 down and in his place, having reflected during the past few days, a far more conciliatory figure.Performances can only truly change perceptions of this England side, but there was an acceptance from Stokes that some of the blowback has been valid