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Plug-in hybrids pollute more than their manufacturers claim – and delay the real shift to electric and shared mobility
“Why the future is hybrid,” the Economist in 2004. While electric vehicles (EVs) looked like science fiction, that prediction looked prescient. Fast‑forward 20 years and battery technology has improved dramatically; EVs are affordable. Last week it emerged that plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) aren’t very green. The sales pitch had been that motorists could use “clean” battery power for city jaunts and dirty petrol for longer trips. This promised sustainable travel without the anxiety of a limited range. But real‑world tests, by the European non-profit Transport and Environment, that PHEVs emit just 19% less carbon dioxide than petrol and diesel cars – far short of the 75% claimed in the lab.
Hybrid vehicles are, however, very profitable. Carmakers can charge top dollar for what are essentially re-engineered petrol cars with a battery bolted on. They also remain attractive to policymakers keen for industry sops. By electric vehicle targets, the UK government risks a scandal in pushing hybrids that emit more CO2 than claimed.

Exclusive: If Keir Starmer made promises to China it could constitute ‘predetermination’, Lord Banner legal opinion concludes
Approving a Chinese super-embassy in east London could be unlawful if ministers gave Beijing assurances about the project in advance, one of the UK’s top planning lawyers has concluded.
If Keir Starmer or his team made promises to the Chinese government , it could constitute “actual or apparent predetermination” of the planning application, according to the legal opinion by Lord Banner.

Beijing has realised that reckless America First policies are alienating old and new friends alike, creating a vacuum it can fill
Holding court for the cameras in last week, a manically self-congratulatory Donald Trump, Gaza’s make-believe saviour, hailed his fellow “tough guys” – tame tyrants, such as Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, who helped fabricate his flimsy Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal.
Yet later this month, the American pharaoh-president is due to face a far less biddable tough guy: China’s leader, . Bookmakers may withhold odds on the outcome. In the US-China race for 21st-century primacy, Xi is sprinting ahead, assisted by spur-heeled Trump’s many missteps.
Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

His televised address as prime minister, delivered 50 years to the day after Japan announced its surrender, set a marker for his country’s “deep remorse” over wartime atrocities.

Shutting out China’s best minds will only push them into a homegrown Chinese research ecosystem that is eclipsing American universities.

A parade of scandals tarnished the prince’s reputation, long before he gave up using his title as Duke of York on Friday.

The battery spontaneously combusted while stored in a luggage in the overhead bin. The airline said there were no injuries.

Only a genius like Boris Johnson’s former right-hand man would have had the wisdom to keep stumm until now
And … relax. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Super Dom! At a time of heightened worries about national security, who better than Dominic Cummings to shine a light on the murky world of spying?
The man who turned a drive to Barnard Castle into an advert for SpecSavers. The man who gave us Brexit. Which one of us didn’t vote for a 4% hit to GDP? The man who gave us Boris Johnson. Truly, Dom has enriched us all over the past 10 years.
. On Tuesday 2 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back with special guests at another extraordinary year, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally.
The Bonfire of the Insanities by John Crace (Guardian Faber Publishing, £16.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at . Delivery charges may apply.

Renowned 1957 Nobel prize winner worked on statistical mechanics and symmetry principles in elementary particle physics
Chen Ning Yang, one of the world’s most renowned physicists and a Nobel prize winner, died on Saturday in Beijing at the age of 103 after an illness, state media outlet Xinhua has reported.
Born in eastern China’s Hefei in Anhui province in 1922, Yang was a Chinese-American physicist who worked on statistical mechanics and symmetry principles in elementary particle physics.

Yang, one of the world's most influential scientists, earned global recognition for his work in theoretical physics.

The Met’s elite SO15 unit alleged a parliamentary researcher helped his friend create 34 reports for a shadowy front
For Christopher Cash it was а job he adored. The young parliamentary researcher, then in his late 20s, was a China specialist working successively for two influential backbenchers, Tom Tugendhat and Alicia Kearns. He had a parliamentary pass and was plugged into Westminster’s gossip network during 2022, a year of Conservative turmoil in Westminster, three prime ministers and future policy uncertainty.
At the same time, Cash was in close contact with a friend, Christopher Berry, a teacher based in Hangzhou, eastern China, where the Britons had first met five years earlier. They discussed politics constantly, using an encrypted app. At one point, on 18 July, Berry allegedly told him he had met a senior Chinese Communist party leader (though he now denies meeting anybody of that rank). In a reply the next day, Cash said: “You’re in spy territory now.”

Yang is one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, having made revolutionary contributions to the development of modern physics,” Tsinghua University, where he studied and served as a ...