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British boy stabbed to death in Portugal allegedly by ex-partner of his mother

A 13-year-old British boy has died after being stabbed at his home in Portugal allegedly by the ex-partner of his mother. The boy has been named locally as Alfie Hallett, with tributes paid on social media by the basketball team that he played for. Authorities said the alleged perpetrator, who also died, was the former partner of the boy’s mother. According to reports, after killing the boy the man used the knife to stab himself and caused an explosion with a gas leak. The incident took place in the village of Casais in the municipality of Tomar, about 90 miles north-east of the capital, Lisbon. Police said officers from the National Republican Guard (GNR) responded after receiving an alert about what appeared to be a domestic violence situation. The boy’s mother was found “showing signs of having been restrained and assaulted, and was subsequently taken to the nearest hospital”, police said in a statement. “Both the alleged assailant and the minor presented several injuries caused by a bladed weapon but, despite vital signs still being detectable, death was declared at the scene moments later. “Inside the house, there was a strong smell of gas which, moments later, resulted in an explosion that injured one of the GNR officers. “The alleged perpetrator had already served a prison sentence for aggravated homicide, and the family had been flagged following domestic violence cases registered in 2022 and 2023.” In a post on Facebook the basketball team Alfie played for paid tribute to the teenager. The Tomar-based Sport Club Operario Cem Soldos posted the message alongside a photograph of Alfie, saying the team had “just become poorer today”. “Our athlete Alfie passed away today aged 13. Played his last game Saturday, played so well seemed like he knew it was his last game but far from imagining … We want to tell you how much we love you and that you will always be in our hearts! Rest in peace.” Neighbours told the TV news station SIC Noticias that arguments were frequently heard coming from the family home and that the mother filed a complaint to authorities against her ex-partner in 2023. Luís Freire, president of the parish council of Casais and Alviobeira, told SIC Noticias: “There had already been several episodes of violence and, this time, things went very wrong.” The Foreign Office said: “We are in contact with the local authorities following an incident in Portugal, and stand ready to provide consular support.”

Wednesday briefing: What your Christmas cranberries reveal about the climate crisis

Good morning. Have you done your Christmas food shop yet? If so, you probably felt the sting before you reached the checkout. From turkeys to trees, much of what makes Christmas feel like, well, Christmas, now comes with a noticeably higher price tag. The prices of ingredients for a traditional Christmas meal and festive treats have risen sharply this year, piling pressure on Britons still deep in the grip of a tough cost of living crisis. It comes as polling repeatedly shows that the economy and day-to-day living costs remain at the top of the public’s most pressing concerns. To understand what is really driving these price increases, I have taken an unusual route. Rather than starting with an economist, I spoke to climate scientist Sarah Bridle. I picked one familiar Christmas ingredient, and we traced its journey from field to festive table. That single thread leads through volatile weather, fragile global supply chains and fierce supermarket competition to tell a bigger story of just why everything is so damn expensive. That’s after the headlines. In depth: The era of UK supermarket abundance has ended When I told colleagues I was writing about cranberries, there was a strong reaction. Apparently cranberry sauce at the Christmas table divides the nation (or the Guardian newsroom) like Marmite. But loved or loathed, cranberry is still a fixture on many Christmas tables. Sarah Bridle, professor of food, climate and society at the University of York, is not a huge fan of cranberries, but she does think the berry tells us a lot about the world. She worked as an astrophysicist for 20 years, but was brought back down to earth by the climate catastrophe. “Ten years ago, I started to really think about my kid’s future, and what they would ask me about what I did about climate change,” Bridle says. Since then, she has looked at our recent era of near-permanent abundance in the UK, where we go to the supermarket and find almost anything all year round. That era is starting to come to an end. “We are going to have shortages of things more frequently in the future,” she warns. Her latest research surveyed 58 leading UK food experts on their perceptions of risk to the food system. The findings paint a sobering picture. She says: “80% of them thought there was likely to be civil unrest due to food crises in the UK in the next 50 years.” *** The cost of cranberries Almost all the cranberries eaten in the UK are imported, mainly from the United States and Canada. Though in Guardian fashion, we did manage to interview the one cranberry farmer operating in the UK – in 2013. A 2022 Guardian analysis found that own-brand cranberry sauce prices rose 37% in a year, increasing from 64p a jar to an average of 87p. The analysis put this down to the war in Ukraine, rising energy costs and supply chain issues, which were widely seen as the main drivers of food inflation at the time. This year’s reporting shows cranberry sauce prices rising by about 25% compared with the previous year. While earlier increases were likely driven by the UK’s reliance on imported cranberries and broader geopolitical pressures, Bridle believes this year’s jump merely reflects a correction after supermarkets artificially lowered prices last year to compete with Aldi. While it’s difficult to pin recent increases in the price of cranberries to specific weather events, cranberry farmers have historically been affected by the climate crisis. Cranberries are sensitive to their environmental conditions: they need cold weather and access to abundant water. They are harvested in flooded fields in autumn, then almost entirely processed into juice and sauce. A small number of cranberries go on to be sold fresh in our supermarkets for those who love their sour taste. Heatwaves during the summer can also damage the fruit, while drought can force growers to rely on intensive irrigation. But Bridle tells me farmers are adapting fast to the climate crisis. She points to a recently published study in PLOS Climate, which found that in the Massachusetts cranberry bogs, growers are experimenting with new sanding techniques, rolling out smarter automatic irrigation, and planting varieties that promise bigger harvests. *** The staple ingredient So, when considering how the climate crisis threatens our food supplies, perhaps the ingredient to worry most about isn’t the cranberries on your Christmas table, but the wheat in everything from Christmas cake to the bread we pile cheese on. “In the UK, we have had big problems with the wheat harvest,” Bridle says, with government figures showing total output decreased by 20% between 2023 and 2024. “We’d had the wettest 18 months on record previous to that. You could see the crops weren’t germinating because they rotted in the fields. And also that farmers couldn’t get out in the autumn – at the time they normally would have done – because the fields were waterlogged.” Wheat, like this First Edition writer, is very fussy. Bridle points out that grains depend on the weather in one short pollination window. If that week turns out to be a washout, and the insects are unable to get out to pollinate, the crop can falter. And this year has proven no better for British farmers – or for the prospects of wheat prices. By 2025, relentless heat and drought had slashed more than £800m from production, delivering one of the worst harvests on record. In fact, three of the five worst harvests on record have now occurred since 2020. For shoppers, this reduction in wheat output means a future where this staple ingredient is less easily available, and more expensive. An average branded bread loaf weighing 800g now costs £1.43, up almost a third from £1.10 on average in the year to April 2021. *** The end of decadence For Bridle, food offers the clearest lens through which to grasp the profound impact the climate crisis is already having on our lives. “Food is such a personal experience, it is a cultural experience. There are many factors that come into food that go beyond the numbers to do with price or climate impacts and health,” she says. “So it becomes quite a visceral topic to bring up with people.” Which puts the shocking statistic at the beginning of this newsletter – that 80% of food system experts believe the UK could face civil unrest over food crises within the next 50 years – into perspective. For those who remember supermarket shelves stripped bare during Covid, the point of just how central food security is to social stability will ring clear. Bridle’s other research suggests that in the next decade the greater risk is not an overall shortage of food, but a breakdown in distribution. The UK may have enough to feed everyone, she says, but not necessarily the systems to transport it to everyone. Her research also raises bigger questions about how we eat. Should we expect strawberries in winter? Bridle agrees there is a certain decadence to the modern British diet, built on the assumption that everything can be grown somewhere, at any time. But she is also clear that responsibility cannot rest with individual shoppers alone. She calls for a wholesale change in the food environment. “We can’t just expect everybody to go into the shop every single day and make good choices because there are many factors working against us in practice; such as where stuff is on the shelves, the availability and tastiness of different food options,” she says. “So the focus needs to be on creating lots of good options that are easy to access. But sometimes doing that requires changes in policy.” She points to the sugary drinks tax as a model for how public understanding can make regulation possible. “Years of trying to educate people on the impact of sugar on their health didn’t change what we ate, but it did create that awareness, which led to an acceptance of that new policy,” Bridle says. She now sits on a Defra advisory group working on climate impact labelling for food. The aim is to standardise how environmental costs are measured, a first step before any pricing or taxation can be considered. “We’ve become quite disconnected from where our food comes from. And that causes several problems, most notably food waste,” Bridle says. For now at least, wasting less food is one climate action most people agree on, she adds. So on a positive note before Christmas: eat up! If you are reading this on the app, over the Christmas period the headlines and sport will not appear. To get the full First Edition experience in your inbox every morning please sign up here.

Three killed in Moscow car explosion, say Russian authorities

Two traffic police officers and a third person have been killed in a car explosion in Moscow, Russia’s investigative committee has said. The committee, which investigates major crimes, said in a statement on Wednesday that an explosive device had been triggered when the officers approached a “suspicious person” near their police vehicle on Yeletskaya Street in the south of the capital. A crime scene has been established and CCTV footage is being reviewed, said officials. Images broadcast on Russian television showed an area cordoned off and a large police presence. Witnesses described an explosion that occurred at about 1.30am local time. Russian Telegram channels close to the security services said the third person who died was believed to have been planting the explosive device. The blast occurred less than half a mile from where a senior Russian military officer, Lt Gen Fanil Sarvarov, was killed this week when a bomb exploded under his car. It was not immediately clear whether the two incidents were connected. Russian investigators described the death of Sarvarov, the head of the operational training directorate of the Russian military’s general staff, as a probable assassination carried out by Ukrainian intelligence services. His car exploded as he was driving along Yaseneva Street at about 7am on Monday. Russian officials and prominent pro-war voices have called for swift retribution for the attack – the third bombing in Moscow in the past year to claim the life of a senior Russian officer linked to the invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the attack on Sarvarov. Ukrainian intelligence agencies have targeted dozens of Russian military officers and Russian-installed officials since the start of the war, accusing them of involvement in war crimes. Little is known about the clandestine Ukrainian resistance cells believed to be behind assassinations and attacks on military infrastructure inside Russia and in Russian-controlled territories. With Reuters

In Berlin, I took an evening class on fascism – and found out how to stop the AfD | Tania Roettger

In 1932, the Berlin-born writer Gabriele Tergit set out to memorialise what she saw as a disappearing world: the lives and fates of the city’s Jews. By 1945, after fleeing the Nazis first to Czechoslovakia, then Palestine, then Britain, Tergit had finished her novel, but it took until 1951 for The Effingers to be published. Even then, only a few German booksellers wanted it in their shops. It was too strange a piece of work for a German public that had watched, if not participated, in the Holocaust. Though overlooked at the time, it has been rediscovered as a classic in Germany, and has now been published in English for the first time. It is a chronicle of three affluent Jewish families in Berlin between 1878 and 1942, with an epilogue set in 1948, based on Tergit’s return visit to her destroyed city. Tergit understood how dangerous the Nazis were. She was a court reporter and covered Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels on trial in the 1920s – this also made her a target, and she fled Berlin after narrowly escaping an SA (“Brownshirts”) raid in March 1933. It is eerie, reading The Effingers in 2025, that the Nazis’ rise to power is something that happens largely on the periphery of the protagonists’ lives. There is a sense that while they recognise them as bad actors, they nevertheless feel themselves insulated from the Nazis in their extravagant villas in Tiergarten, with their good dresses and connections. A similar atmosphere of overhanging political danger is apparent in Cabaret, the 1972 film based on the Berlin novels of Christopher Isherwood. The Weimar republic is portrayed as a hedonistic time, and the Nazis only emerge slowly from the background. One character even says: “The Nazis are just a gang of stupid hooligans – but they do serve a purpose: let them get rid of the communists and later we’ll be able to control them.” The sense of looming but underappreciated danger struck me as something contemporary. Discourse on fascism is ubiquitous at the moment. Here in Germany it is being debated in articles, books, exhibitions and public lecture series. There are arguments about whether the politics of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) can be called fascism, or whether this 21st-century form of rightwing authoritarianism is qualitatively different. In an attempt to better understand these historical precedents and our own times, I enrolled in an evening seminar on fascism entitled “Monsters” of Fascism Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, at the leftwing Berthold Brecht Literary Forum in Berlin. The central idea was, the lecturer explained, that being able to define fascism is the first step in increasing our resilience to it. Despite some challenges in determining a definition, we arrived at a few markers we could agree on: some attempt to create an ethnically “pure” nation, the engagement of a paramilitary force and use of excessive violence, anti-liberal and anti-democratic sentiments, and the involvement of wealthy backers from the economic elite. When the discussion turned to the AfD, and where we might position them on the spectrum, a depressing air hung over the seminar room. We were moving from the theoretical realm to the political reality of Germany in 2025, and, while the AfD does not have its own paramilitary force or use excessive violence, there are reasonable concerns about the other criteria. This is a party for whom well over 30% of blue-collar workers and unemployed Germans voted in February’s federal elections. The AfD came in second overall nationally, winning 20.8% of the vote, with the CDU taking 28.5%. The latest polling has the AfD leading by 26% to the CDU’s 24%. The AfD is a party that has been deemed “rightwing extremist” by our own Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. One delusion from history that Germany’s establishment is in danger of repeating is the idea that the old elites can maintain control over newly emerging powers on the extreme right. A few weeks before the 2025 election, the Christian Democrat (CDU) chancellor, Friedrich Merz, broke the so-called firewall – the agreement among all democratic parties not to partner with the AfD in parliamentary votes. Merz got a proposal to crack down on illegal migration through parliament with the support of the AfD. Since then, several CDU members have called on Merz to end the firewall altogether. When Germany commemorated the victims of the Nazi pogroms of November 1938 last month, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, our symbolic head of state, gave a speech in which he warned about the AfD in all but name. He called on Merz’s government to maintain the firewall, and even urged that legal options to ban anti-democratic political parties be considered. The prospect of banning the AfD has been debated extensively, but seems unlikely to happen; it also sidesteps tackling the roots of its support. For people wanting to resist rightwing extremism, one of the first priorities is to show solidarity with those who are under threat. In Germany in 2025, this means mostly asylum seekers, specifically Syrians, Afghans and Ukrainians, but generally young men with migration histories. And there have been some public displays of such solidarity. In January 2024, millions of people went out into the freezing streets across Germany to protest against the notorious secret “remigration” conference in Potsdam, attended by neo-Nazis and AfD members, and exposed by the investigative platform Correctiv. But neither this outrage nor concerns about the weakening parliamentary firewall seem to have made a lasting impact on Merz’s government. The bitter moral lesson of Tergit’s novel comes in the final letter, written by the elder Effinger on the way to the concentration camp: “I believed in the good in people – that was the gravest error of my misguided life.” We shouldn’t stop believing in the good in people, but we should also heed the warnings of history. What The Effingers teaches us is not to underestimate the danger of the fascist menace, and to fight on all fronts against it, before it is no longer possible. Tania Roettger is a journalist based in Berlin Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

‘Warning to others’: murky death of militia leader as Kremlin reasserts control

Beneath the frescoed ceilings and golden icons of Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, hundreds of men packed tightly into the lower hall as priests intoned prayers for the dead. Dressed in dark winter jackets, the mourners on Monday filled one of Russia’s most sacred spaces – a church usually reserved for moments of state ritual and national commemoration. Later, near his grave, the crowd lit bright flares and shouted: “One for all, and all for one.” They had gathered to bid farewell to Stanislav Orlov, better known by his callsign “Spaniard”, the founder of the far-right Española unit – a formation of football hooligans and neo-Nazi volunteers who fought as a paramilitary force on Russia’s side in Ukraine. Russian pro-war Telegram channels framed the funeral as an act of consecration: a battlefield commander laid to rest at the heart of Moscow’s spiritual and political establishment. Yet amid the solemnity, one detail was conspicuously absent. No official cause of death was mentioned – a silence that only underscored the unease surrounding Orlov’s final days. For more than two weeks, Orlov’s death, first rumoured online on 9 December, was the subject of intense speculation and debate. Kremlin-linked Russian news websites and independent outlets soon reported that Orlov was not killed on the battlefield in Ukraine, but was ambushed and shot at his home in Russian-annexed Crimea by Moscow’s own security services. On Monday, Astra, an anti-war outlet operating in exile, published CCTV footage that it said showed the moments before Orlov was killed, with a group of armed Russian servicemen arriving outside his house, followed by the sound of gunshots. Astra reported that an ambulance only arrived to collect Orlov’s body six hours later. Analysts say Orlov’s death reflects a broader, increasingly visible crackdown by the Kremlin on renegade ultranationalist figures and semi-autonomous armed groups as a result of the Wagner mutiny. For much of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion, the Russian state tolerated – and at times encouraged – radical formations that could mobilise fighters quickly and project uncompromising zeal. Units such as Española were useful militarily and ideologically, embodying a raw, street-level patriotism that complemented official propaganda. Española – which has been sanctioned by the UK and the EU – took part in some of Russia’s bloodiest assaults on Ukrainian cities, including the battles for Mariupol and Bakhmut. But it also served its purpose away from the frontlines. Española, which brought together football hooligans from Russia’s biggest football clubs, ran a particularly effective publicity campaign and managed to intersect with Russian sports culture and broader social life. The group attracted prominent former athletes as poster children, including the ex-Russian football international Andrei Solomatin, who enlisted with the unit in 2022. The group’s imagery also surfaced at major sporting events: during a popular CSKA Moscow ice hockey match, Española symbols were displayed, and patches linked to the unit were worn. But tolerance for irregular units operating outside the main chain of command, such as Española, narrowed sharply after June 2023, when Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary group rebelled, briefly seizing a military headquarters and sending an armed column towards Moscow. Although the rebellion collapsed within hours, it marked the most serious challenge to Putin’s rule in decades. Two months later, Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash widely seen by western officials as a Kremlin-ordered reprisal. Since then, Russia’s security apparatus has moved systematically to reassert control. Independent armed formations have been dismantled or absorbed into the regular military. Prominent ultranationalist critics have been silenced: Igor Girkin, a former commander, was jailed last year on extremism charges after attacking Russia’s military leadership and mocking the war effort. The same fate awaited Española, which in October abruptly announced that it was disbanding and that its units would be absorbed into Russia’s regular army. Two months later, its founder was dead. “Orlov’s death is yet another demonstrative elimination of radicals who have slipped out of control, following the same logic as the removal of Prigozhin,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a Moscow-based political analyst. Kolesnikov said the apparent killing was intended to serve as “a warning meant to discourage others from pursuing an independent path”, particularly with the prospect of large numbers of embittered and armed men returning from the front if ongoing peace talks open the way to an end to the war. The message appears to have landed. Few of the hundreds of influential pro-war bloggers have commented publicly on the circumstances of Orlov’s death, with most remaining silent. Española itself issued a carefully worded statement on Telegram, saying: “We cannot fail to note that many people are interested in the reasons for Spaniard’s death – and we are no less so.” The group urged supporters, however, to wait for the results of an official investigation. Still, the decision to allow Orlov to be buried at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour captures one of the central paradoxes of wartime Russia, Kolesnikov noted. “Radical zealots are celebrated, sanctified and mourned in the most sacred of spaces,” Kolesnikov said. “But when they step beyond the narrow boundaries set by the state, they can be eliminated.” Kolesnikov argued that the Kremlin had applied the same logic to Prigozhin. While the Russian president has disowned Prigozhin for his treachery, he has also been careful not to diminish the warlord or his fighters’ role in the war in Ukraine, wary of antagonising their many admirers. Prigozhin’s memorial, just 300 metres from Red Square in one of Moscow’s most tourist-heavy areas, has been left untouched. “Russians are free to keep the memory of men like Prigozhin alive, by all means” Kolesnikov said. “But the message is clear: do not lay claim to power – not even a small share of it.”

Ukraine war briefing: Pope Leo expresses ‘great sadness’ at Russian rejection of truce calls

Pope Leo XIV has called for a global truce on Christmas Day, expressing “great sadness” that “apparently Russia rejected a request” for one. “I am renewing my request to all people of good will to respect a day of peace – at least on the feast of the birth of our saviour,” Leo told reporters at his residence near Rome on Tuesday. Russia has repeatedly rejected calls for a ceasefire in its war on Ukraine, saying that would only give a military advantage to Kyiv. The pope said: “Among the things that cause me great sadness is the fact that Russia has apparently rejected a request for a truce.” Referring to conflicts in general, Leo said: “I hope they will listen and there will be 24 hours of peace in the whole world.” Two police officers were injured in an “incident” in Moscow near where a senior Russian general was killed this week, authorities said on Wednesday, with local media reporting that an explosion occurred. Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said it was “establishing the circumstances of an incident in southern Moscow that injured two traffic police officers”, adding that “medical and explosive examinations” were being carried out. The area was cordoned off and had a large police presence, according to images broadcast on Russian television, which quoted witnesses describing an explosion that occurred at around 1.30am local time. Lt Gen Fanil Sarvarov was killed on Monday when a bomb exploded under his car in southern Moscow, Russian investigators said, adding they were looking at possible involvement by Ukrainian special services. A massive Russian drone and missile attack on Ukraine has killed three people and cut power to several Ukrainian regions two days before Christmas and as the country enters a period of very cold weather, report Shaun Walker and Pjotr Sauer. Russia sent more than 650 drones and more than 30 missiles into Ukraine in the attack, which began overnight and continued into Tuesday morning, local officials said. At least three people were killed, including a four-year-old child. Poland scrambled fighter jets to protect its airspace during the strike, the country’s army said. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram: “A strike before Christmas, when people want to be with their families, at home, in safety … Putin cannot accept the fact that we must stop killing.” Ukraine struck Russian oil and gas infrastructure, hitting a petrochemical plant in southern Russia’s Stavropol region. Regional governor Vladimir Vladimirov said a fire had engulfed the industrial area, while footage on Russian media channels showed towering flames there. The attacks came after weekend talks in Miami involving Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian and Ukrainian representatives in separate meetings, which Witkoff called “constructive” but that showed no apparent breakthroughs. Zelenskyy said he was briefed on the state of the talks on Tuesday and that “several draft documents have now been prepared”, including an outline for ending the war, options for Ukraine’s future security guarantees and plans for the country’s postwar reconstruction. Ukraine pulled out troops from a town in the east after fierce battles, the military said on Tuesday. Kyiv had to withdraw the forces from Siversk, a town in the embattled Donetsk region on the way to two last strongholds held by Ukraine. Russia announced the capture of Siversk almost two weeks ago. The Ukrainian army said that “to preserve the lives of our soldiers and the combat capability of our units, Ukrainian defenders have withdrawn from the settlement” of Siversk, adding that fighting was still ongoing on the outskirts. A Russian strike could collapse the internal radiation shelter at the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine, the plant’s director has said. Sergiy Tarakanov told Agence France-Presse that fully restoring the shelter could take three to four years and warned that another Russian strike could cause the inner shell to collapse. “If a missile or drone hits it directly, or even falls somewhere nearby – for example, an Iskander [short-range ballistic missile], God forbid – it will cause a mini-earthquake in the area,” he said in an interview conducted last week. “No one can guarantee that the shelter facility will remain standing after that. That is the main threat.”

Rare footage from trial of Chinese general who defied Tiananmen crackdown order leaked online

Rare footage of a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) general who defied orders to lead his troops into Tiananmen Square and crush the 1989 student protesters has been leaked online, offering a highly unusual glimpse into the upper echelons of the military at one of the most fraught moments in modern Chinese history. General Xu Qinxian’s refusal to take his troops from the PLA’s prestigious 38th Group Army, a unit based on the outskirts of Beijing, into the capital has been the stuff of Tiananmen lore for decades. The six-hour video recording of Gen Xu’s court martial hearing the next year sheds light on the rare act of defiance. In the video, Xu said he refused because he did not want to become “a sinner in history”. The video “confirms the legend about Xu Qinxian”, said Zhou Fengsuo, a leader of the Tiananmen demonstrations who now lives in exile in the US. “This is the first time that we have a clear first-person view of this period,” he added. The source of the video is unknown. It was first posted online last month and has more than 1.2m views on one YouTube account alone. Wu Renhua, a historian of the Tiananmen movement who took part in the protests, was one of the first people to share it online. He said it was provided to him on one condition: that he keep his source secret. Wu said the video was “perhaps the most important piece of data that I have gathered in my three decades of research”. He believes it is genuine as many of the details are corroborated by his separate research. The demonstrations that gripped Beijing for weeks in the spring of 1989 ended with a bloody massacre in the early hours of 4 June, when PLA troops opened fire on civilians around Tiananmen Square, the 21.1 hectare (53 acre) central plaza of China’s capital. Hundreds, potentially thousands, of people were killed and the event remains one of the most sensitive in the Chinese Communist party’s rule over China. Discussion of the massacre is censored and there has never been any open or official reckoning with the events or the aftermath. At the time, there were widespread rumours about dissent within the military. Zhou said many uniformed soldiers came to Tiananmen Square before 4 June to show their support for the protesters. When the demonstrations started, Xu, who came from a working-class family of fruit and vegetable vendors, was in hospital recovering from kidney stones. But on 18 May, he received orders to deploy his 15,000 troops to Beijing and impose martial law. In the video of his court martial, Xu explained his reservations. In a gruff, plain-spoken accent he said: “I said I had a different opinion on this matter. I said this was a mass political incident, and it should primarily be resolved through political means.” He ultimately refused to carry out the order, although he did pass on the message. He said he told his superiors that if martial law was a failure, the commander who imposed it “might become a sinner in history”. Joseph Torigian, an associate professor at American University and a historian of Chinese elite politics, said that the video showed the extent to which senior figures in China “exist in fundamentally ambiguous political environments”. Xu’s testimony shows him grappling with what it means to be a loyal military general in a CCP-ruled system. He said he “worried about the potential for large-scale conflict or bloodshed”. He said that, even if he had made a mistake, “whether a person is loyal to the party should be judged by their implementation of the party’s ideological and political line”, and that Chairman Mao and Deng Xiaoping had spoken about the importance of the party hearing differing opinions. Xu “seems to be struggling with himself about when exactly the right answer was”, Torigian said. Tiananmen experts say one of the most important aspects of Xu’s testimony was that he questioned whether the decision to impose martial law could come from the Central Military Commission, which gave him the order. He said that such a serious matter should be discussed by China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress. In the years since the massacre, the CCP has tightened its grip on the PLA and made it clear that the army serves the party, not any other authority. Torigian said: “The party knows and understands that its last line of defence for regime security and survival is the PLA.” Loyalty in the PLA remains a preoccupation for the CCP. In recent months, Xi Jinping, China’s leader and commander-in-chief of the military, has purged several senior military leaders for alleged corruption violations. Xu was expelled from the CCP and sentenced to five years in prison. He lived the rest of his life exiled from Beijing and died in 2021 at the age of 85. Additional research by Jason Tzu Kuan Lu

After more than a decade of tragedy, Christchurch emerges as New Zealand’s most ‘vibrant city’

From 2010, New Zealand’s second-largest city, Christchurch, became inextricably linked with crises. The city, which had been known for its gardens, gothic architecture and monochromatic culture was rocked by a decade of tragedy – devastating and fatal earthquakes, wildfires and a terrorist attack on two mosques that killed more than 50 people. But in recent years, the city of crises has taken a surprising turn – shrugging off its once-conservative reputation and rebuilding from tragedy to become one of New Zealand’s most appealing cities. Christchurch is now at the centre of the country’s fastest-growing region as people from the North Island and further afield flock to the revitalised city. Business growth outpaces the national average and the cultural scene is thriving, as experts say affordability and job prospects entice people to the city. Christchurch mayor Phil Mauger claims the city is “the capital of cool”. “We’ve been named New Zealand’s most vibrant city as well as ranking highest in the 2024 Happy City Index,” he says, citing affordability and quality of life as key attractions. The shift in Christchurch’s desirability would have been difficult to imagine just over a decade ago. In February 2011, a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch, killing 185 people, disrupting tens of thousands of lives and reducing 80% of the city centre to rubble. Tens of thousands of people left the city following the quakes. In 2017, destructive fires in the Port Hills, claimed one life, razed homes and forced more than 1,000 people to evacuate. Then, two years later, the world looked on in horror as news broke that a white supremacist terrorist had gunned down more than 50 Muslim worshipers at two of the city’s mosques. In the wake of those attacks, attention turned towards how Christchurch could have become the target of such terror. “When the ground literally shifted beneath us, when hatred struck at the heart of our community, and when our Port Hills caught on fire, we chose … unity and hope to see us through,” says Mauger. Resilience and a slow but measured post-earthquake rebuild has transformed the city. New buildings have sprung up, there are splashes of colourful street art everywhere and striking public artworks are dotted around the city. “The community is at the heart of everything we do. Amazing things can be born out of disaster when a community refuses to be defined by such devastating events,” says Mauger. ‘I was struggling in Auckland’ Provisional data from Stats NZ released in October shows Canterbury’s population grew by 1.1%, the result of Christchurch’s provisional net migration gain of 5,300. The average house value in Christchurch is around NZ$751,000 ($439,000), compared with about NZ$1.2m in Auckland. Musician Amelia Murray says when she saw the price of a Christchurch house on a social media listing, her “jaw dropped”. She moved to the city from Auckland in 2022. “I could actually afford to buy a house in Christchurch,” Murray says. “I was struggling to live in Auckland while trying to do my art. I just felt like I was battling the city, it was draining me.” Murray, who performs as Fazerdaze, has seen her career accelerate since moving to the city. Her record Soft Power just won album of the year at the Aotearoa Music Awards, where she was also named best solo artist. She says as a single woman and an artist, being able to afford her own home has given her “a sense of dignity and pride”. Still, some costs are higher. Christchurch residential rates are generally above those in Auckland and Wellington as the city continues to undergo post-earthquake recovery. Murray says the money appears to be translating into infrastructure. “I’m happy to pay my rates. The gardens and cycle tracks are so well-maintained, I love Tūranga [the library] and the outdoor facilities. I’m so much more outdoorsy here than I was in Auckland.” Chief executive of ChristchurchNZ, Ali Adams, describes Christchurch as a “Goldilocks city”, saying: “It’s 20 minutes to get anywhere, it’s big enough for global business and small enough to have a career and balanced lifestyle.” Data from ChristchurchNZ shows in the year to August 2025, the number of business locations in Canterbury increased 2.4%, more than double the rate of national business growth and the highest in the country, it said. Among the new business owners is Liam Kelleher, who grew up in Christchurch. He recently returned to his home town after from living in London where he worked in the wine sector. Kelleher opened Christchurch’s first urban cidery and restaurant, Lillies, last year with co-owner Will Lyons-Bowman. Despite the nationwide cost of living crisis, he says the venture didn’t feel like a risk as “Christchurch was ready for something a bit different.” In May, The Press reported Christchurch’s 15-24-year-old population has increased by 6%, and that the University of Canterbury Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha has the second-fastest university growth in the country. Adams says she’s seeing growth in industries like health tech and aerospace, and that is attracting younger people to Christchurch. “They want to do work that makes change in the world,” says Adams. Mauger is hopeful that Christchurch can also become a draw for sporting and events, with the NZ$683m One New Zealand Stadium at Te Kaha due to open in the city centre in 2026. The biggest indoor sports and aquatics facility in the country, the NZ$300m Parakiore Recreation and Sports Centre, opens in December. But he says it’s “not just about bricks and mortar”. “The city’s resurgence has been built on the courage, compassion [of] … its people. From tragedy has come positivity and resilience,” Mauger says.