Reform UK’s leader refuses to answer questions about his abusive behaviour, claiming there’s ‘no evidence’. We talk to victims and witnesses

Nigel Farage has denied – albeit through a spokesperson – that he ever said anything racist or antisemitic when he was a teenager.

The Guardian has spoken to 20 of his contemporaries while at Dulwich College in south London who say otherwise – more than half of them on the record.

A moment of peril demands a new approach – on everything from funding to the BBC charter

• Pat Younge is the chair of the British Broadcasting Challenge

We have not been here before. The BBC is used to coming under pressure from political parties, well-funded pressure groups and powerful newspaper publishers. But the threat of a lawsuit from the US president is unprecedented.

This latest furore is dangerous because it comes at a time when democracy faces an information crisis. The foundations of informed democratic debate are under attack across the globe from a combination of AI-generated deepfakes, hostile state propaganda and algorithms that amplify divisions through social media. We have already seen how Elon Musk, the wealthiest man on the planet, is prepared to use his own social media platform, X, to interfere in the affairs of other countries and exert a chilling influence on democracies.

Pat Younge is the chair of the British Broadcasting Challenge, whose recommendations are contained in the report Renewing The BBC

When the people making AI seem trustworthy are the ones who trust it the least, it shows that incentives for speed are overtaking safety, experts say

Krista Pawloski remembers the single defining moment that shaped her opinion on the ethics of artificial intelligence. As an AI worker on Amazon Mechanical Turk – a marketplace that allows companies to hire workers to perform tasks like entering data or matching an AI prompt with its output – Pawloski spends her time moderating and assessing the quality of AI-generated text, images and videos, as well as some factchecking.

Roughly two years ago, while working from home at her dining room table, she took up a job designating tweets as racist or not. When she was presented with a tweet that read “Listen to that mooncricket sing”, she almost clicked on the “no” button before deciding to check the meaning of the word “mooncricket”, which, to her surprise, was a racial slur against Black Americans.

From the outside, the run-up to Rachel Reeves’s announcement has looked chaotic, and many see the future of the chancellor and PM in the balance

Every budget could be described, to a greater or lesser extent, as a high-stakes moment. Things can easily go badly wrong, as Gordon Brown discovered when he abolished the 10p tax rate in 2007, or George Osborne when his 2012 ‘omnishambles’ budget fell apart over pasties, and especially Kwasi Kwarteng, whose disastrous mini-budget of 2022 sent the Conservatives spiralling towards electoral defeat.

Rachel Reeves appears to have come perilously close to the turmoil of previous budgets, and that’s before she has even delivered it.

Team refuse on a point of principle to rein themselves in but latest batting collapse lays bare glaring weaknesses

It is the UK that is living through a cold snap, but in balmy Perth they were playing in a snow globe. The scenery was static, solid, but everything else was constantly getting shaken up, bits flying in unpredictable directions. The crowd roared, commentators gibbered, the glitter never settled.

Unlike the first day England were not batting at the start, though they were not long delayed. At which point a pattern quickly emerged, one that almost perfectly repeated that established on the previous day, while also being completely different. The bowler who was useless was good, the marginal, unconvincing snickometer-based review that was not out was now given. Some things were precisely the same (Australia’s tactics against England’s tail, how the tail reacted to Australia’s tactics) and, at the same time, completely the opposite (the outcome).

Advent enthusiast Georgina Hayden rounds up her whole family to determine which chocolate calendars hold festive joy behind every door

• The best advent calendars for 2025, tested

When it comes to Christmas, I unashamedly go all out. I love to kickstart December with Advent calendars for all the family, so it seemed only fair to taste test this lot with them in tow. And, despite an age range spanning 60-plus years, we were all pretty much on the same page with our expectations: we were looking for a bit of variety behind the doors, some Christmas sparkle and a hint of nostalgia. Packaging that looked the part when displayed on our mantelpiece was also an important consideration.

Despite the obvious biases (the kids being attracted to the calendars aimed at them v the adults preferring the slightly more elegant offerings), the results were pretty consistent. We all loved the calendars where there was something extra: a picture behind a door or a foil barrier to break through, a variation in the chocolates and so forth. Ultimately, that just goes to show that we’re all big kids at heart – and that every day should start with a miniature chocolate treat.

Wealthy countries agree to triple funds for countries to tackle climate impacts, but deforestation and critical minerals blocked from final deal

The world edged a small step closer to the end of the fossil fuel era on Saturday, but not by nearly enough to stave off the ravages of climate breakdown.

Countries meeting in Brazil for two weeks could manage only a voluntary agreement to begin discussions on a roadmap to an eventual phase out of fossil fuels, and they achieved this incremental progress only in the teeth of implacable opposition from oil-producing countries.

Files show then PM was walking dog, riding motorbike and hosting guests as pandemic planning stalled in ‘lost month’

Boris Johnson took four days off from official government business during a key period in the UK’s Covid preparation when the NHS was bracing to be “overwhelmed” by the virus.

Official disclosure for the period in February 2020 – described by the Covid inquiry as a “lost month” in the country’s crisis response – reveal Johnson enjoyed an extended break during the half-term holidays at Chevening, a governmental estate in Kent, where he spent time walking his dog and taking motorcycle rides.

A year-long investigation reveals how mothers lost children after being radicalised by uplifting podcast tales of births without midwives or doctors

As Esau Lopez was asphyxiated for the first 17 minutes of his life on Earth, the atmosphere in the room remained serene, even ecstatic. Acoustic music crooned from a speaker in a modest two-bedroom apartment in a suburb of Pennsylvania. “You are a queen,” murmured one of three friends in the room.

Only Esau’s mother, Gabrielle Lopez, felt something was wrong. She was pushing hard, but her son would not be born. “Can you help [him] out?” she asked, as Esau crowned. “Baby is coming,” the friend replied. Four minutes later, Lopez asked again, “Can you grab [him]?” Another friend murmured, “Baby is safe.” Six minutes passed. Again, Lopez asked, “Can you grab [him]?”

US army secretary briefs ambassadors at ‘nightmare meeting’ in Kyiv on Friday after talks with Ukrainian leader

US officials have told Nato allies they expect to push president Volodymyr Zelenskyy into agreeing to a peace deal in the coming days, under the threat that if Kyiv does not sign, it will face a much worse deal in future.

The US army secretary, Dan Driscoll, briefed ambassadors from Nato nations at a meeting in Kyiv late on Friday, after talks with Zelenskyy and taking a phone call from the White House. “No deal is perfect, but it must be done sooner rather than later,” he told them, according to one person who was present.