‘Sunshine Saturday’: UK firms expect 5% January rise in holiday bookings

UK travel companies are bracing for one of their busiest periods for bookings as winter-wearied consumers plan sunny breaks, with package holiday bookings forecast to be up 5% this January.The Civil Aviation Authority, the regulator that administers the Atol travel financial protection scheme, has forecast that 200,000 more holidaymakers will book trips this month compared with the 4.3 million who did so in the same period last year.January is well known as a boom time for holiday planning as households crave something to look forward to after Christmas, with demand peaking at the weekends, particularly the first one – known in the industry as Sunshine Saturday for its bumper number of bookings.However, booking patterns are forecast to shift this year towards quieter destinations, such as Malta’s sister island, Gozo, and long-haul locations, according to TravelSupermarket

China’s BYD overtakes Tesla as world’s biggest electric car seller

China’s BYD overtook Tesla as the world’s largest electric carmaker in 2025, after the US company run by Elon Musk reported a slump in deliveries at the end of the year.BYD sold 2.26m battery electric cars during the year, easily outstripping the 1.63m deliveries reported on Friday by Tesla for the same period.The switch is a symbolic moment in the rise of China’s car companies, which have used the transition to electric cars to try to dominate the global automotive industry

Reddit overtakes TikTok in UK thanks to search algorithms and gen z

Reddit, the online discussion platform, has overtaken TikTok as Britain’s fourth most visited social media service, as search algorithms and gen Z have dramatically transformed its prominence.The platform has undergone huge growth over the last two years, with an 88% increase in the proportion of UK internet users it reaches. Three in five Brits online now encounter the site, up from a third in 2023, according to Ofcom.Its popularity is rising fastest with younger internet users. It is now the sixth most visited organisation of any kind by UK users aged between 18 and 24, up from 10th a year earlier

Elon Musk’s Grok AI generates images of ‘minors in minimal clothing’

Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok posted on Friday that lapses in safeguards had led it to generate “images depicting minors in minimal clothing” on social media platform X. The chatbot, a product of Musk’s company xAI, has been generating a wave of sexualized images throughout the week in response to user prompts.Screenshots shared by users on X showed Grok’s public media tab filled with such images. xAI said it was working to improve its systems to prevent future incidents.“There are isolated cases where users prompted for and received AI images depicting minors in minimal clothing,” Grok said in a post on X in response to a user

Green shoots no laughing matter as Ben Stokes insists fifth Ashes Test is ‘big game’

“I don’t think a groundsman has ever been under as much pressure as the guy here this week.”Ben Stokes had a smile on his face during his final pre-match press conference of this Ashes series at the Sydney Cricket Ground, as he responded to a question about the likely nature of the pitch for the fifth Test, which starts on Sunday morning.This is no laughing matter, however, for Adam Lewis, curator of the SCG, who has already been moved to defend the greenish tinge at the edge of the strip a day before a single ball has been bowled.In a surprising twist to Australia’s obsession with grass lengths in the week since England’s two-day victory in Melbourne, Lewis also described how he “shuts out the noise” while rolling, mowing and watering the SCG strip.“I don’t scroll, I don’t have social media, so I try and keep all that negative energy away from me

Australia have been blessed by England’s disarray but can put own stamp on Ashes triumph | Geoff Lemon

If you had told Australian observers six months ago that their Test team in Sydney would involve Travis Head opening the batting with Jake Weatherald, Usman Khawaja at five, no Cameron Green, and some bowling combination of Michael Neser, Jhye Richardson, Todd Murphy and Brendan Doggett, they would have assumed disaster. Fifth Ashes Tests are the land of Scott Borthwick, of Boyd Rankin and Mason Crane: fringe players getting a glimpse at the wreckage after a series has crashed and burned.Khawaja was one such, in the debut reflected upon so much this week after his retirement announcement: the game when he replaced an injured Ricky Ponting after two Australian defeats by an innings, only to play in a third.Instead the Australians won this series comfortably before Christmas, despite a run of injury and health issues that should have made their campaign shambolic. Three of the Big Four bowlers are on the rehab list, replacement captain Steve Smith missed the series decider, Khawaja’s absence tipped the batting order upside down, and two key fit players in Green and Marnus Labuschagne have underdelivered