Top economists call for halt to Sri Lanka debt repayments after Cyclone Ditwah

A group of the world’s top economists – including the Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz – have called for Sri Lanka’s debt payments to be suspended as it tackles the devastation caused by Cyclone Ditwah.More than 600 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed across the island, in what Sri Lanka’s president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, called the “largest and most challenging natural disaster in our history”.The country’s $9bn (£6.8bn) national debt was restructured last year, after lengthy negotiations with creditors after the government defaulted on repayments in 2022. But development campaigners warned at the time that the burden on Sri Lankan taxpayers remained unsustainable

There are reasons to be cheerful about UK plc in 2026. Here are four | Heather Stewart

Stalling growth, sticky inflation and fragile bond markets, the UK’s economic record in 2025 has hardly been one to inspire cheer. But in the spirit of the festive season, here are a few reasons to hope for a happier new year.The first is that, barring external forces, 2026 should not involve a repeat of this year’s fiscal drama.Rachel Reeves more than doubled the margin of error, or headroom, against her fiscal rules at last month’s budget, and that should gift the Treasury a quieter 2026.The chancellor’s spring statement should be a non-event for another reason, too: she announced that while the Office for Budget Responsibility will still carry out a forecast, it will not formally assess her against the rules

Extremists are using AI voice cloning to supercharge propaganda. Experts say it’s helping them grow

While the artificial intelligence boom is upending sections of the music industry, voice generating bots are also becoming a boon to another unlikely corner of the internet: extremist movements that are using them to recreate the voices and speeches of major figures in their milieu, and experts say it is helping them grow.“The adoption of AI-enabled translation by terrorists and extremists marks a significant evolution in digital propaganda strategies,” said Lucas Webber, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism and a research fellow at the Soufan Center. Webber specializes in monitoring the online tools of terrorist groups and extremists around the world.“Earlier methods relied on human translators or rudimentary machine translation, often limited by language fidelity and stylistic nuance,” he said. “Now, with the rise of advanced generative AI tools, these groups are able to produce seamless, contextually accurate translations that preserve tone, emotion, and ideological intensity across multiple languages

A tape measure, a metal detector and a spirit level: 25 surprisingly useful things you can do with your phone

While many use our phones predominantly to doomscroll, smartphones have a range of little-known functions that could make life better and easier – from heart monitoring to even developing camera filmOur smartphones are magical things – far more than dopamine drip providers and a way to keep in touch with friends and family. Using the built-in features and easily available additional apps, there are plenty of clever things you can do with your smartphone.The iPhone’s Measure app uses augmented reality and the device’s camera to calculate everything from ceiling heights to room dimensions – handy for those DIY tasks that require a quick decision. And, good news for parents, Apple also points out that you can use it to measure a person’s height: the digital equivalent of etched markings on the wall.Metal detectors cost a pretty penny, but many modern devices have built-in magnetometers designed to help improve the accuracy of GPS within apps

My surf addiction didn’t need more fuel. Then I found the WSL third-tier live stream | Kieran Pender

At first, it seemed like a natural progression. I have long been a surf fan, I regularly write about the World Surf League (WSL) Championship Tour, and once even tried my hand in a local surf competition. And so in recent years, during breaks between top-tier WSL events, I found myself glued to live streams for the second tier, the Challenger Series.Only this year, the WSL wrapped up in September, and the Challenger Series had major gaps in its schedule. And that was how I found myself addicted to third-tier surfing, the WSL Qualifying Series (QS)

Arrogant England’s cricket machine collapses like a castle of dust in 11 days | Barney Ronay

So this is Christmas. And what have we done? The Ashes is over. With two Tests still to comeWhen the moment finally came the visuals were perfect: clean lines, neat angles, figures picked out in crisp afternoon sun against the almost satirical splendour of Adelaide Oval.Scott Boland took the final wicket to seal Australia’s unassailable 3-0 Ashes series lead, the 74th time this moment has been played out down the centuries, and immediately the white shapes converged to form a bobbing huddle. England’s batters stood in an attitude of formal deflation