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Highlights

Why restaurant influencers have just ruined your dinner

You can spot them a mile off. They spend more time photographing food than eating it and push to the front of the queue in a hot place in exchange for a #gifted review. Food influencers are the cringiest of them all, says Sam Wilson... and they are ruining it for the rest of us too

<p>Influencers are ‘a threat ... because of how insidious their dishonesty is’ </p>

<p>Marianne Jones had always been short-sighted but, when her eyesight began to fail, she was facing a terrifying choice – pay now or pay with her sight later </p>

‘I could have gone blind if I hadn’t been able to go private’

<p>Girls Aloud’s UK and Ireland tour will take place from May to June 2024 </p>

Girls Aloud are giving us a pop reunion that actually feels right

<p>Survival instinct: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is described as possessing such a persuasive personality that ‘you could parachute him into an island full of cannibals and come back in five years and he’d be the king’ </p>

OpenAI boardroom battle with the man ‘who can see the future’

Voices

<p>Jeremy Hunt is shown an Airbus A350 wing being made at an aircraft plant in Broughton near Chester on Thursday</p>

A general election next year? We could end up with two...

<p>Geert Wilders has been a fixture of Dutch politics for a long time</p>

How scared should we be of the rise of the ‘Dutch Trump’?

<p>Social media ads for the Conservatives are a far cry from the election posters produced for it by Saatchi & Saatchi</p>

Put this on a poster, Rishi: the Tory message isn’t working

The Longer Read

<p>Marianne Jones had always been short-sighted but, when her eyesight began to fail, she was facing a terrifying choice – pay now or pay with her sight later </p>

I could have gone blind if I’d waited for my NHS appointment

<p>The Crown</p>

I was there for Diana & Dodi’s love story – it wasn’t like The Crown

<p>President John F Kennedy and his first lady Jackie, moments before the fatal shot was fired </p>

I was there when JFK was shot – I’ve no time for conspiracy theories

Politics Explained

<p>‘The Alchemist’ </p>

Years of austerity beckon for the next election’s unlucky winner

<p>Turning the screw: Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt visit a training centre in London on Monday</p>

What tax cuts can we expect, and will they make it harder for Labour?

<p>Sir Patrick Vallance, giving evidence </p>

Covid revelations show the value of an honest diary

<p>Rishi Sunak was described as ‘the most persistent’ prime minister Jeremy Hunt has worked with</p>

Is Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda plan finally dead, or merely resting?

Most Commented

Israel-Gaza hostages latest: 24 captives including children released by Hamas

242 comments

Sunak faces growing revolt as senior Tories back crackdown on foreign NHS staff

117 comments

Russia-Ukraine war – live: Putin launches biggest drone attack yet as Kyiv targeted

112 comments

Suella Braverman attacks Sunak over ‘slap in face’ record migration numbers

414 comments

Editorials

<p>A Red Cross vehicle believed to be carrying hostages abducted by Hamas on 7 October arrives at the Rafah border on Friday </p>

The Independent View

The four-day pause between Israel and Hamas offers hope of peace

The Independent View

Boris Johnson’s ‘cakeism’ still plagues the Conservative Party

The Independent View

Hunt has relied on smoke and mirrors – voters will see through it

Culture

<p>Deeply disappointed with himself: Paul Giamatti as curmudgeon Paul Hunham in his Oscar-tipped comedy ‘The Holdovers'</p>

The underdog appeal of Paul Giamatti’s loveable losers

<p>Rambert dancers Jonathan Wade and Angélique Blasco in Ben Duke’s ‘Death Trap'</p>

Rambert’s dance double bill Death Trap is a tragicomic knockout

<p>Katherine Kingsley as Grand High Witch in ‘The Witches’ </p>

The Witches musical warms your heart and chills your bones all at once

Travel

<p>Napoleon, in Roman emperor garb, standing tall in Ajaccio</p>

How Corsica, Napoleon’s birthplace, fell out of love with the dictator

<p>Got you covered: both accreditations have potential benefits for travellers </p>

Atol or Abta – which one offers better protection?

John RentoulThe Independent’s chief political commentator

<p>Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, responding to the Conservatives’ autumn statement </p>

Rachel Reeves supports Tory tax cuts! Pull the other one…

<p>Hunt showed that he knew his history as he made his autumn statement</p>

Tax cut? You must be joking – it’s a tax rise

<p>Rishi Sunak was behind the Eat Out to Help Out scheme, an initiative launched in August 2020 to kickstart restaurants after the lockdown</p>

‘Eat Out to Help Out’ was a good idea

Andrew GricePolitical columnist who keeps his ear to the ground inside Westminster

<p>Sunak might prove less keen on a spring election than some of his advisers</p>

Could Rishi Sunak be gearing up for a spring election?

<p>More than 25,000 people have been detected crossing the Channel in small boats so far in 2023 </p>

Rwanda’s out – so what’s the government’s plan B?

<p>Rishi Sunak with his home secretary Suella Braverman</p>

Look out, Rishi – Suella is coming for your job

Chris Blackhurst

<p>A wildfire rages near Fort McMurray in Alberta in May 2016</p>

Business Comment

Sunak is putting Tory populism above the climate crisis. It’s shameful

<p>Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie in Barbie, which was partly filmed in Watford and contributed £80m to the economy</p>

‘Barbie’ in the autumn statement? Yeah, I’m confused about that, too…

<p>John Lewis deliberately sets out to surprise with its Christmas ads... hence this year’s production centred on, of all things, a mischievous Venus flytrap</p>

Business Comment

The supermarket boss ignoring the Christmas TV ad race

News analysis

<p>Afghan refugees walk through a makeshift camp upon their arrival from Pakistan, near the Afghanistan-Pakistan Torkham border in Nangarhar province</p>

Refugees forced back to Afghanistan face squalid, freezing camps

<p>The families of those being held by Hamas have been calling for their release for weeks</p>

Anatomy of a deal: Why a hostage release has finally got over the line

<p>Terry Gou, the billionaire founder of Foxconn, is running to be Taiwan’s next president</p>

Why a billionaire’s foray into politics is stoking anger in China

<p>Joe Biden with Xi Jinping before a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit last year in Bali </p>

Can Biden and Xi get the US-China relationship back on track?

Sport

<p>Manager Rob Page with stand-in captain Ben Davies at full-time in the Euro qualifier against Turkey</p>

Life after Bale: Page faces key problems trying to reinvent Wales

<p>Andriy Shevchenko visits the ruined centre of Borodyanka, near Kyiv</p>

Shevchenko on Ukraine: ‘Cold is coming. Russia will hit our energy’

Mary DejevskyExpert on foreign affairs, Russian politics and diplomatic relations between the Kremlin and the west

<p>Does Biden’s meeting with Xi Jinping signal a shift in global power?</p>

How two men met to change the world as we were looking the other way

<p>The proliferation of events and the duplication of Armistice Day ceremonial in particular cry out to be given a single sense of purpose</p>

Is it time for the UK to rethink the way it remembers its war heroes?

<p>According to WhatsApp messages from the head of the civil service, which were read out at the Covid inquiry, Boris Johnson’s approach to the pandemic was ‘mad and dangerous’ </p>

Blaming Boris is easy, but would a different PM have fared any better?

America

<p>Joe Biden speaks in Belfast on 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement</p>

Biden says Brexit deal can bring ‘significant’ US investment to NI

<p>Such leaks remind countries like Russia – as well as US allies – of the sheer scale and reach of Washington’s operations</p>

The diplomatic damage done by the Pentagon leak won’t last long

<p>Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley wrote a tweet attacking ‘weak and woke’ ideology the day she declared her candidacy</p>

Republicans are running on ‘wokeism’ – but don’t know what it is