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The head of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum, used his annual speech to warn about the threat artificial intelligence poses to the UK, saying terrorists could seek to use it to improve reconnaissance and attack methods, including AI-enabled drones, and that there was concern they might try to enhance or invent new pathogens, though this had not happened. He named Russia as the number one aggressor and said hostile states were fuelling political violence, dividing communities and turning people against one another, while MI5 now devoted more resources to state threats than during the Cold War and had seen its state threats caseload quadruple over the last decade. He also pointed to terrorism and far-right extremism targeting synagogues, mosques and immigration centres, and said MI5 had set up an AI threat assessment centre. The man killed by a tiger after entering its enclosure at a South Yorkshire wildlife park was named as William Chapman; he had filmed himself walking into the enclosure and posted it on social media, the tiger, Altai, was said to be safe and well and would not be put down, and the park remained closed with investigations and an inquest to follow. A report by the Independent Football Regulator said English football clubs were living on the edge of financial disaster, with many at risk of collapse if their owners walked away despite billions of pounds of international investment; it found 94% of clubs in the top five leagues made a loss last season and that some clubs were operating on only 30 days' cash, and the regulator's head said he would resign if he encountered political interference over Manchester City's future.

The International Monetary Fund said the UK economy would grow more this year than previously expected, but warned British consumers faced a sharper rise in inflation than initially forecast, against a backdrop of an energy crisis due to the prolonged war in the Gulf, US-China trade conflicts and the AI tech boom. It said UK growth for 2026 had been upgraded and was joint second fastest in the G7, though it was trimmed back next year, and that annual UK borrowing was forecast to fall by nearly four percentage points of the size of the economy between last year and 2031. The government said it would tighten rules on home heating oil, used by more than one and a half million UK homes, after prices almost doubled in a year and customers did not benefit from the gas and electricity price cap; Ofgem was likely to regulate heating oil in Britain, with a tighter industry code in Northern Ireland and changes to allow smaller top-ups, but no price cap for heating oil was discussed. Hundreds of thousands of children were reported to be doing almost all of their school lessons on screens, prompting dozens of medical staff to warn of a crisis in children's developmental health, with short-sightedness more than doubling since the 1960s and more than two million children struggling with speech and language; the government said well-used technology could be a powerful tool and would consult on its safety.

About 650 more offenders were leaving jails in England and Wales in the second phase of the early release scheme, including those sentenced to up to two and a half years who had served a third of their sentence. Protests continued in France over poor school conditions, with around 200 schools closed, far fewer than the 2,000 shut the previous week, and university students joining teachers and union leaders; around 7,000 people had been detained since the protests began in late September. Recordings emerged of emergency calls in Tennessee showing confusion after the failed execution of death row inmate Christa Pike, a 50-year-old given two doses of lethal injection last month who survived, was discharged from hospital and returned to prison; she was taken to hospital almost an hour after the first call for an ambulance and eventually regained consciousness. The Pope was admitted to hospital in Rome for surgery on a lung; the 71-year-old had announced on Sunday that he needed treatment on a lung nodule found in a routine check, the Vatican said he had no symptoms and was not sick, and Catholics waited for news of the operation. Rwanda signed a 10-year deal with Formula One to host races in Africa from the early 2030s, called the African Grand Prix, on a newly built circuit 25 miles south of the capital, the first F1 race in Africa since 1993. The American actor RJ Mitte, best known for Breaking Bad, died at 34; he had cerebral palsy, drew on his own experience for his role and campaigned for disability rights, and police said there were no suspicious circumstances.