Christmas dinner and festive treats up to 70% more expensive, reports Which?

Shoppers are paying up to 70% more for Christmas chocolate treats compared with last year, while the price of a turkey has jumped by as much as £15, according to the consumer champion Which?The group analysed a range of ingredients for a typical Christmas dinner, as well as other typical festive treats including mince pies, sparkling wine and chocolates.Festive chocolate had the steepest mark-up this year. Among the biggest risers was a Lindt Lindor milk chocolate truffles treat box at Asda up 72% to £1.98 compared with £1.15 last year

Rate hikes, rising inflation and difficult decisions: key takeaways from Jim Chalmers’ budget update

Jim Chalmers has claimed “the most responsible mid-year update on record”, unveiling a multibillion-dollar improvement in the budget bottom line alongside extra money for mental health, CSIRO, and training for tradies.Here are the three key takeaways from the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook.As expected, this is a mid-year budget that’s all about the savings. Chalmers warned of “difficult decisions” ahead of today, but there’s no big shock.Instead, the treasurer is making a virtue of small improvements in the bottom line, made harder by some cost blow-outs in areas like disaster relief, which will cost $6

Water levels across the Great Lakes are falling – just as US data centers move in

The sign outside Tom Hermes’s farmyard in Perkins Township in Ohio, a short drive south of the shores of Lake Erie, proudly claims that his family have farmed the land here since 1900. Today, he raises 130 head of cattle and grows corn, wheat, grass and soybeans on 1,200 acres of land.For his family, his animals and wider business, water is life.So when, in May 2024, the Texas-based Aligned Data Centers broke ground on its NEO-01, four-building, 200,000 sq ft data center on a brownfield site that abuts farmland that Hermes rents, he was concerned.“We have city water here

Boost for artists in AI copyright battle as only 3% back UK active opt-out plan

A campaign fronted by popstars including Elton John and Dua Lipa to protect artists’ works from being mined to train AI models without consent has received a boost after almost every respondent to a government consultation backed their case.Ninety-five per cent of the more than 10,000 people who had their say over how music, novels, films and other works should be protected from copyright infringements by tech companies called for copyright to be strengthened and a requirement for licensing in all cases or no change to copyright law.By contrast, only 3% of people backed the government’s initial preferred tech company-friendly option, which was to require artists and copyright holders to actively opt out of having their material fed into data-hungry AI systems.Ministers subsequently dropped that preference in the face of a backlash. Artists who have opposed any dilution of their copyright include Sam Fender, Kate Bush and the Pet Shop Boys

The Anti-Sports Personality of the Year awards 2025

On Thursday night the BBC will honour the heroes. But here are the year’s best dark, devious and downright dumb sporting storiesAnother year, another raft of sporting cheating scandals for our annual anti‑Spoty awards. Where the BBC Sports Personality ceremony this week rewards the cream of athletic endeavour, the Guardian instead shines a light on the darkest corners of sporting skulduggery.After the troubles last year with Xiangqi (AKA Chinese chess), in 2025 it was the turn of Weiqi (known in the west as Go), whose sedate world was rocked first by news that the 19-year-old Chinese prodigy Qin Siyue had been rumbled in the ninth round of the Chinese Team Championship – actually played last December, though for a couple of months Go managed to (ironically) stop the news emerging – for using AI and a hidden phone to plot her moves.Then in January a diplomatic storm erupted over the final of the Baduk world championship (baduk being the Korean name for weiqi), in which Korea’s Byun Sang-il beat China’s Ke Jie thanks to the confusing and controversial mid-tournament introduction of new scoring rules

No guarantee Grand Slam Track will be allowed back, warns World Athletics

The Michael Johnson-led Grand Slam Track has been warned by World ­Athletics that it may not be ­permitted to return in 2026 even if it pays off its huge debts.Court documents released on ­Monday showed that the league, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week, still owes some of the biggest names in track and field hundreds of thousands of dollars and creditors between $10m and $50m (£7.5m and £37.3m).In October the athletes received 50% of what they were owed by GST for competing in Kingston, Miami and Philadelphia before financial difficulties forced it to cancel its final event in Los Angeles