Australian authorities will review the country’s gun laws after two gunmen killed 15 people in a suspected terror attack targeting Jews at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach. The father-son attackers have been named as 50-year-old Sajid Akram, who died at the scene, and 24-year-old Naveed Akram, who had previously been investigated for his close ties to a Sydney-based Islamic State group. Jimmy Lai, the former Hong Kong newspaper owner and democracy campaigner, has been convicted of violating the controversial national security law imposed by the government in mainland China. The 78-year-old faces potential life imprisonment after being found guilty on two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign powers and a third count of conspiracy to publish seditious information. The Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele have been found dead at their Los Angeles home, with police believed to be questioning a family member over the incident. The acclaimed filmmaker was known for classics including This is Spinal Tap, When Harry Met Sally and A Few Good Men.

At last, the young are ditching their screens

For all the doom and gloom about phone-addled youths, says John Harris in The Guardian, the “defining cultural theme” of 2025 has been the dawning realisation that a life beholden to screens is “no life at all”. Millions are cutting the time they spend on social media: according to research by the FT, hours spent on Facebook, Instagram and the like peaked in 2022 and had fallen by almost 10% by the end of 2024. The decline, gratifyingly, is most pronounced among people in their teens and 20s. Other data shows that, since 2014, the proportion of people who use such platforms to “stay in touch with friends, express themselves or meet new people” is down by over a quarter. Perhaps Australia’s new social media ban for under 16s is like smoking bans – merely accelerating a trend that was “quietly kicking in anyway”.

Pleasingly, people also seem to be ditching dating apps – the ultimate attempt to replace the “magical and often random” nature of human interaction with “cold digital logic”. Between 2023 and 2024, Tinder lost 594,000 users, while Hinge dropped by 131,000 and Bumble by 368,000. Shares in Match Group, which owns Tinder and Hinge, are down nearly 80% since their lockdown peak, while Bumble stocks have lost 92%. In a letter to shareholders, Match said younger folk were seeking a “lower-pressure, more authentic” way to connect. With all this great data, I can’t resist a “dreamy, utopian” conclusion: perhaps some of the people whose chronic internet use has left them isolated, introverted and paranoid will “dance and socialise themselves into something better”. You never know.

A year after Bashar al-Assad and his family fled Syria to Russia, say William Christou and Pjotr Sauer in The Guardian, the deposed dictator has returned to his professional roots: ophthalmology. The London-trained eye doctor is apparently back in the classroom brushing up on his skills and hopes to build a client base among Moscow’s wealthy elite. “He obviously doesn’t need the money,” says a friend. “It’s a passion of his.” He may also just be looking for something to do: the 60-year-old is forbidden from any media or political activity, and among Russia’s elite he is “no longer seen as a figure of influence or even an interesting guest to invite to dinner”.

The website My Breed Match helps would-be dog owners find their perfect pooch with an enjoyable quiz, including basic questions about how big or small you’d like the hound to be, as well as more important stuff about the chaos level of your household, your tolerance for hair and willingness to groom, and crucially how much barking you’re prepared to put up with/inflict on the neighbours. Find your mutt match here.

Is Badenoch the Cassandra we need?

There’s no way to sugarcoat Britain’s economic situation, says Matthew Parris in The Times: “we’re in a hole and, if the recent budget is any guide, still digging”. Yet we’re cursed with seven political parties incapable of thinking about this. The SNP, Plaid Cymru and Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionists are too “suckered on to the Treasury teat” to look at the bigger picture. The Greens are “away with the fairies”; the Lib Dems are bogged down in local politics; Reform are big-state boosters in right-wing clothes. Labour is at least a “serious party”, but its MPs have demonstrated that they’ll never confront the welfarism slowly bankrupting the country.

The eighth party is, of course, the Conservatives. And to her credit, Kemi Badenoch is taking on the role of the prophetess Cassandra. She won’t be thanked for her “grim tidings” – Labour will prattle about “austerity” – but more voters are ready to hear the truth than our lily-livered political class may think. Granted, Badenoch needs to improve her messaging. Her much-vaunted “golden economic rule” – that at least half of every pound saved through spending cuts would be used to reduce the deficit – is sensible stuff but will prompt “puzzled frowns” on most doorsteps. She should try something simpler: “We’re heading for the rocks. We can’t carry on like this, public spending must be cut and it will hurt.” No, it won’t be a popular message in the short term, especially when the other parties are making such lofty promises. But when a reckoning for our unsustainable debt levels does eventually come, people will remember that it was the Tory leader who first gave it to them straight. “Cassandra was not believed. In the end, Badenoch will be.”

Elon Musk’s prediction that his Optimus robots will help eliminate all jobs and one day “outnumber the human race” took a bump this week, says James Titcomb in The Daily Telegraph, when one of them went haywire at a Tesla showroom. The android was handing out bottles of water when it hit the table, reached up as if to take off a headset, then promptly went kaput. Techies say the robot, which is meant to be fully autonomous, was probably being remotely controlled by a human operator using virtual reality goggles. Naughty Elon.

Here’s a fantastic cocktail that brings “all the sparkle and cheer of the season”, says the actor Matthew McConaughey and his wife Camila in The Spectator. Rim the edge of a tumbler with a lime wedge then dip the rim in sugar to coat it. Add a shot of tequila, a shot of cranberry juice and a large squeeze of lime juice to a shaker, then shake with ice until well chilled, strain into the tumbler (with a little fresh ice) and top with ginger beer. If you want to be really fancy, garnish with a sprig of rosemary. Merry Christmas.

It’s a spanking new post box, says Helen Burchell on BBC News, which has been given as a present by King Charles to the staff of a remote Antarctic research station. The Royal Mail lamp post box will now sit on the wall in the British Antarctic Survey’s Rothera research station, replacing a wooden post box that was previously fashioned by staff and bore the late Queen’s cypher. The box isn’t just for show. Letters are flown more than a thousand miles north to the Falkland Islands, then on to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, where they’re handed to a normal postie.