It's a truism at this point to say that Americans own a lot of guns. Case in point: This week, a fire chief in rural Alabama stopped to help a driver who had just hit a deer . The two men walked up the driveway of a nearby home. For reasons that remain unclear, a man came out of the house with a gun and started shooting. This was a bad idea on many levels, but most practically because both the fire chief and the driver were also armed . Between the three of them, everyone got shot, the fire chief died, and the man who lived in the home was charged with murder.

But despite the ease of acquiring legal weapons, a robust black market still exists to traffic in things like "ghost guns" (no serial numbers) and machine gun converters (which make a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic). According to a major new report released this month by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, there was a 1,600 percent increase in the use of privately made "ghost guns" during crimes between 2017 and 2023. Between 2019 and 2023, the seizure of machine gun converters also increased by 784 percent.

Ars Technica has covered these issues for years , since both "ghost guns" and machine gun converters can be produced using 3D-printed parts, the schematics for which are now widely available online. But you can know about an issue and still be surprised when local prosecutors start talking about black market trafficking rings, inept burglary schemes, murder—and 3D printing operations being run out of a local apartment.

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At points, this year’s show has been repetitive, ropey, even blood vessel burstingly annoying – but it pulled it out of the bag with those blazing final showdowns

If you’ve been following The Traitors, you will already be aware that it hasn’t exactly been a vintage series. What felt fresh and exciting last year has now become slightly rote; something not helped by an intake of contestants who seemed to have been chosen based on their innate annoyingness.

One problem is that they all kept saying ‘yourself’ instead of ‘you’, which is a harrowing thing to have to hear over and over again for a month. But the bigger problem is that everyone is wise to the game now. Almost every contestant rocked up to Andross Castle with a honking great sense of self-interested superiority. And maybe that would have been fine, if it hadn’t made them all atomically insufferable.

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A recently dismissed contractor shut down several systems before being arrested, the museum said

The British Museum was forced to partly close on Friday after its IT infrastructure was allegedly attacked by a former employee.

The contractor, who was recently dismissed, was able to get back into the building and shut down several systems including its ticketing platform, the museum said.

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Will Frankie’s ‘Seer’ power win it for the Faithfuls? Or can treacherous Charlotte connive her way to victory? All will be revealed in the killer climax…

• SPOILER WARNING: by its nature this liveblog will contain spoilers for anyone not watching live

Traitors-mania has gripped the nation more than ever this year, with episodes being watched by more than 10m faithful viewers . Tonight’s final is expected to hit new heights, with the audience predicted to climb towards 12m. Who needs Gavin, Stacey, Wallace or Gromit? Let alone Feathers McGraw.

It’s just 15 minutes until the turret bell tolls…

“Why am I still here? I must be close to a Traitor who’s keeping me in”

Cutaway shot of an owl/eagle/grouse/peacock

Nervous sipping of glass goblet and licking of lips at Round Table

Frankie wears something with a signature sleeve or puffy shoulder

“I love you” or heart-hands before a banishment

An amusingly on-the-nose song strikes up on the soundtrack

Someone says they’re “100% Faithful” or “Going with their gut”

Claudia gets amusingly cross at Round Table and tells them off

Misspelling on slate at Round Table, even though there’s only four other names to learn and they’ve had weeks to do so

One last reappearance for the horror clowns/creepy dolls

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Almost all the shortlisted movies this year can be seen as a critique of the incoming president. Accident or design?

• Oscars nominations 2025: the full list

When reacting to Oscar nominations, actors traditionally err on the side of hyperbole. This year was no exception. “I don’t know if I’m quite in my body,” said Demi Moore, on learning she was shortlisted for The Substance. “I looked at my phone and fell on the floor,” said Monica Barbaro, who plays Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown. “I actually haven’t stopped sobbing,” offered Ariana (Wicked) Grande.

Karla Sofía Gascón, however, bucked the trend. The first out trans actor ever nominated for an Oscar took the opportunity to address the executive order signed by Donald Trump earlier this week, restricting US government recognition to only biological sex.

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Sundance film festival: Australian director Sophie Hyde’s earnest, semi-autobiographical film moves before it starts to meander

More so than other film festivals, Sundance can be a kingmaking force, shining light on an unknown film-maker and then entering into a mutually beneficial relationship with them. Directors return, shifted from smaller to larger venues, off-peak to primetime slots, and watching this steady climb can be a gratifying reward.

The Australian director Sophie Hyde has earned this more than most. Her first film, 52 Tuesdays , a thoughtful drama about a transitioning parent’s relationship with their daughter, won her the festival’s best director prize before she returned five years later with Animals , a sharp and spiky adaptation of Emma Jane Unsworth’s painfully perceptive novel of a fracturing friendship. She returned three years later with Good Luck to You, Leo Grande , an unusually frank and explicit comedy drama with a standout Emma Thompson (who, along with Animals’ Holliday Grainger deserved far more serious awards attention). In just over a decade, Hyde had established herself as someone whose name had become an instant sign of a certain top-tier Sundance quality, a skilled actors’ director whose films burrowed deeper than most.

Jimpa is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution

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Oscar-winning film-maker behind 20 Days in Mariupol returns to festival with bruising, on-the-ground look at ongoing conflict

A harrowing new documentary from Mstyslav Chernov on Ukraine’s ailing counteroffensive against the Russian invasion brought tears and a standing ovation to the Sundance film festival, two years after the film-maker premiered 20 Days in Mariupol , his Oscar-winning account of the siege’s first weeks.

In 2000 Meters from Andriivka, Chernov is once again beside fellow Ukrainians amid Russian attacks. But whereas 20 Days in Mariupol focused primarily on civilians killed, maimed or mourning during the initial Russian invasion in 2022, Andriivka embeds with Ukrainian soldiers during the military’s counteroffensive in the east throughout 2023, at a time when there was no other independent reporting from the war’s frontlines.

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Trump’s inauguration, fires in California, the hostage release in Israel and Storm Éowyn: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

• Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing

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Students of literature in future will have far less to go on if handwriting becomes obsolete, writes Dr Claire Nicholson . Plus letters from Michael Daley, Alan Sekers, Alan Gough, Dr Emile de Sousa and Marie Paterson

The loss of handwriting skills has far-reaching implications beyond the ability to guide a pen across paper ( Signature moves: are we losing the ability to write by hand?, 21 January ). I have been privileged to introduce students to the manuscript of Virginia Woolf’s essay Women and Fiction, which was later revised and expanded to become the celebrated text A Room of One’s Own. The impact of seeing her hastily scrawled words in purple ink with crossings-out as she sought the perfect word is a joy to witness and something that will never be matched by the typewritten word. What will a literary archive look like to the students of the future, if it only exists as typed words on a screen? I doubt it could ever reach the same level of excitement.
Dr Claire Nicholson
Chair, Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain

• The disappearance of handwriting is alarming for all the reasons given by Christine Rosen – but while hand-forming letters certainly increases cognitive skills, so too can tracing them. An elderly art school colleague once explained how he’d been trained to draw capital Roman letters as a student at the then South Kensington art school (later the Royal College of Art). Students had been required to trace a large sample Roman capital letter on arrival every morning – until they no longer needed to do so, having internalised all its properties, at which point daily tracings of the next letter began. Every student left the school able to draw Roman letters freehand. It would seem that even a thing drawn, even “mechanically”, is a thing better remembered and understood.
Michael Daley
Director, ArtWatch UK

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