Donald Trump promised a new ‘golden age’ for the US economy. Where is it?

Most Americans have yet to see this boom – but they’ve certainly heard a lot about it from the presidentMoments into his second term, opening his inaugural address, Donald Trump was unequivocal. “The golden age of America begins right now,” he declared.At a White House reception last weekend, a little over 10 months later, the US president appeared to acknowledge just how far his timeline had shifted.“We’re going to have … I say it’s the golden age of America,” Trump told his audience. “We have an age that’s coming up, the likes of which … this country has never seen

Retailers hope ‘panic weekend’ will bring Christmas cheer to UK sales

Retailers are hoping for a last-minute dash for the shops this weekend after a lacklustre run-up to Christmas, with UK households forecast to spend £3.4bn, up more than 12% on the same weekend in 2024.Almost 50m shopping trips will be made by last-minute Father Christmases over the weekend, according to research by analysts GlobalData for Vouchercodes.co.uk, the vast majority of which will be to retail destinations including high streets and shopping malls

‘A black hole’: families and police say tech giants delay investigations in child abuse and drug cases

Max Osterman was 18 when he connected with a drug dealer on Snapchat who used the handle skyhigh.303. Max would message him whenever he wanted to buy Percocet, and they would meet. After about a year, and just days after their last exchange, Max collapsed. The pills he ordered had been laced with fentanyl

The Com: the growing cybercrime network behind recent Pornhub hack

Ransomware hacks, data theft, crypto scams and sextortion cover a broad range of cybercrimes carried out by an equally varied list of assailants.But there is also an English-speaking criminal ecosystem carrying out these activities that defies conventional categorisation. Nonetheless, it does have a name: the Com.Short for community, the Com is a loose affiliation of cybercriminals, largely native English language speakers typically aged from 16 to 25. Its activities run from crippling the IT systems of British retailers to phoning in bomb threats to schools and encouraging teenage girls to harm themselves

Harry Brook’s moment of madness a fitting epitaph for England’s flawed cult of Baz | Barney Ronay

Tough on Harry Brook, yes. But we must also be tough on the causes of Harry Brook. No child is born playing performative reverse-hoicks with a Test match to be saved, just as most acts of cult-like behaviour have their roots in a smooth-talking cult-like instructor.For England the beginning of the end of the age of Baz started when the disciples of Baz began to deny such a thing even existed; to insist that the buckle-up-and-enjoy-the-ride stuff didn’t actually exist at all, but was instead a creation of another, much worse cult, also known in this world as “the outside”.With this in mind, Brook’s dismissal in Adelaide was at least a tell, a moment of anti-gaslighting

Pat Cummins primed to pop the corks after bursting England’s fragile bubble | Geoff Lemon

On a redundancy scale, attending the Adelaide Test and noting that Pat Cummins was good is in the realm of noting that the Torrens was wet or the cathedral was spiky. Still, on day four, any one of those obvious things might justifiably have caught an observer’s eye.Perhaps it’s more notable just how natural, how inevitable, it felt that Cummins was indeed bowling at his best in his first match back after a stress fracture cost him the first two Tests of this Ashes series and any match preparation before that.England supporters will spend four years until their team’s next visit pondering explanations for this poor showing, inevitably including much examination of the lack of chances for their bowlers to adjust to Australian conditions. Cummins spent five months in the gym and the nets without once seeing the middle of a ground, latterly powering through what might have been a few months of rehab in the space of a few weeks, then hit the pitch for a Test match like he had never been away