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Israel used widely banned cluster munitions in Lebanon, photos of remnants suggest

Israel used widely banned cluster munitions in its recent 13-month war in Lebanon, photos of munition remnants in south Lebanon seen by the Guardian suggest. The images, which have been examined by six different arms experts, appear to show the remnants of two different types of Israeli cluster munitions found in three different locations: south of the Litani River in the forested valleys of Wadi Zibqin, Wadi Barghouz and Wadi Deir Siryan. The evidence is the first indication that Israel has used cluster munitions in nearly two decades since it employed them in the 2006 Lebanon war. It would also be the first time that Israel was known to have used the two new types of cluster munitions found – the 155mm M999 Barak Eitan and 227mm Ra’am Eitan guided missiles. Cluster munitions are container bombs which release many smaller submunitions, small “bomblets”, over a wide area the size of several football fields. The use of cluster munitions is widely banned as up to 40% of submunitions do not explode upon impact, posing a danger to civilians who might later stumble upon them and be killed when they explode. To date, 124 states have joined the convention on cluster munitions, which forbids their use, production and transfer. Israel is not a party to the convention and is not bound by it. “We believe the use of cluster munitions is always in conflict with a military’s duty to respect international humanitarian law because of their indiscriminate nature at time of use and afterwards,” said Tamar Gabelnick, the director of the Cluster Munition Coalition. “Their wide area impact means they cannot distinguish between military and civilian targets and the cluster munition remnants kill and maim civilians for decades after use.” The Israeli military neither confirmed nor denied its use of cluster munitions but said it “uses only lawful weapons, in accordance with international law and while mitigating harm to civilians”. Israel’s war with Hezbollah which started in October 2023 and killed almost 4,000 people in Lebanon and about 120 people in Israel, left the Lebanese militant group devastated. Much of Lebanon’s south remains in ruins and Israel still carries out near-daily airstrikes in the country, despite a ceasefire signed last year. Lebanon in particular has a painful history with cluster munitions. Israel blanketed Lebanon with 4m cluster bombs in the final days of the 2006 war, with an estimated 1m failing to explode. The presence of unexploded cluster bombs continues to make life in south Lebanon dangerous, with more than 400 people killed by unexploded bomblets since 2006. The huge number of unexploded cluster bombs in Lebanon was a main driving factor for the drafting of the cluster convention in 2008. Despite not being a party to the convention, Israeli officials condemned Iran’s use of cluster munitions in Israel during this summer’s 12-day war. “The terror regime seeks to harm civilians and even used weapons with wide dispersal in order to maximise the scope of damage,” said the Israeli military spokesperson, Brig Gen Effie Defrin, after an Iranian strike used cluster munitions in populated areas in southern Israel. Images of the remnants of the first cluster munition, a 155mm M999 Barak Eitan advanced anti-personnel munition produced by the defence contractor Elbit Systems in 2019, were verified by six different arms experts, including Brian Castner, the head of crisis research at Amnesty International, and NR Jenzen-Jones, the director of Armament Research Services, a technical intelligence consultancy specialising in arms and munitions analysis. Elbit Systems did not respond to a request for a comment. Each M999 artillery shell releases nine submunitions which explode into 1,200 tungsten shards, according to a US army primer on the weapon. Photos of the second munition’s remnants were identified as a cluster bomb by five different arms experts, though most were unable to identify the exact model owing to a lack of open-source materials on this specific rocket. Jenzen-Jones and a separate weapons analyst said the weapon was a 227mm Ra’am Eitan guided missile, a new type of cluster munition developed by Elbit Systems. This specific shell was produced in 2017, evidenced by its lot code. Israeli media described the Ra’am Eitan as guided missiles that hold 64 bomblets each, which “scatter in a large radius and kill everyone present”. According to a press release by the IDF in February 2024, Israeli troops operating on the country’s northern border were equipped with the Ra’am Eitan in preparation for a fight with Hezbollah. The legality of cluster munition usage for non-signatory countries is dependent on the circumstances of the strikes they were used in, as well as the intentions of the military personnel involved in their use. The Guardian does not have information about the strikes the shells were used in, as the remnants were found after the fact. The remnants were found in heavily forested valleys in south Lebanon, which Israel accused Hezbollah of exploiting during the war to provide cover from aerial bombing and surveillance. Cluster munitions, due to their wide spread, could be useful against soldiers spread out across large, wooded areas. US forces used cluster munitions in a similar way in Vietnam, carpeting dense jungles where Vietcong soldiers were located. According to Israeli media reports, both of the cluster munitions found had been developed in recent years to leave fewer unexploded munitions behind, with claims that the Ra’am Eitan had a “dud rate” of 0.01%. Israel developed the munitions after its use of cluster bombs in the 2006 Lebanon war triggered outrage abroad and at home – seeking a way to continue using cluster bombs while minimising civilian harm. Gabelnick and other arms experts warned that dud rates advertised by arms companies were often many times higher in the field. Israel Military Industries claimed a 0.06% dud rate for the M85 cluster munition used in the 2006 war; later analysis suggested the rate was about 10%. Human rights groups have said that it is impossible for cluster munitions to be used in a way that minimises harms to civilians. “Cluster munitions are banned internationally for a reason. They are inherently indiscriminate and there is no way to employ them lawfully or responsibly, and civilians bear the brunt of the risk as these weapons stay deadly for decades to come,” said Castner.

Death toll from Russian attack rises to 25 as Ukraine says it will raise issue at UN – Europe live

Speaking at the same press conference, the Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, Wiesław Kukuła, warned that longer winter nights and upcoming Christmas holidays “may be perceived by our enemies as the most opportune time to strike at our security.” “The night, which provides a natural cover for this type of activity, will be very long in the coming weeks. In just over a month, Christmas holidays will begin – a period when the majority of Poles will be traveling, largely using public transport. This calendar window may be perceived by our enemies as the most opportune time to strike at our security,” he said. “We must not allow this to happen,” he said. He warned that “the intentions of the Russian Federation remain unchanged, and the events of recent weeks outline a broad horizon of potential incidents that may occur.” Kukuła spoke at a press conference at which the Polish government confirmed plans to deploy up to 10,000 soldiers to protect critical infrastructure as part of Operation Horizon after last weekend’s rail sabotage incidents (14:45).

Pope Leo criticises ‘disrespectful’ treatment of immigrants in US

Pope Leo has reiterated his disapproval of Donald Trump’s immigration policies, saying foreigners in the US are being treated in an “extremely disrespectful way”. Leo, the first US pontiff in the history of the Catholic church, made the remarks in response to questions about a statement adopted last week during a special assembly of US bishops that criticised the Trump administration’s mass deportations and lamented the fear and anxiety caused by immigration raids. Leo said the statement was “very important” and urged Catholics to take heed. “I think we have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have,” he told reporters as he left the papal residence in Castel Gandolfo, a hilltop town south of Rome, on Tuesday. “If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that. There are courts; there’s a system of justice.” Leo acknowledged that “every country has a right to determine who and how and when people enter”. “But when people are living good lives, and many of them for 10, 15, 20 years, to treat them in a way that is extremely disrespectful, to say the least – and there’s been some violence, unfortunately – I think that the bishops have been very clear in what they said,” he added. Leo, who was elected in May after the death of Pope Francis, has in recent weeks adopted an increasingly strong tone in his criticism of Trump’s immigration policies. In September, he called the US’s treatment of immigrants “inhuman” and in October he questioned whether Trump’s policies were in line with the Catholic church’s teachings. “Someone who says I am against abortion but I am in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life,” he said. On that occasion, he was also speaking from Castel Gandolfo, to which he usually retreats on Monday afternoons and Tuesdays. The Chicago-born pontiff revived papal holidays in Castel Gandolfo this summer after the tradition was interrupted by Pope Francis, who preferred to spend his time off at a Vatican guesthouse. On Tuesday, Leo also issued a strongly worded video on the climate crisis to bishops participating in the Cop30 summit in Brazil. Criticising the failure of international leaders to summon the political will to tackle the problem, he said: “Creation is crying out in floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat. One in three people live in great vulnerability because of these climate changes.” He referred to the landmark Paris agreement, adopted by the international community in 2015 to address the climate crisis, as the “strongest tool for protecting people and the planet”. “It is not the agreement that is failing; we are failing in our response,” he said. “What is failing is the political will of some. True leadership means service, and support at a scale that will make a difference.”

Ukraine’s energy sector corruption crisis – what we know so far and who was involved

Ukraine’s national anti-corruption bureau, known as Nabu, says it has uncovered a high-level criminal scheme at the heart of government. It involves Ukraine’s nuclear energy body, Energoatom, that runs three nuclear power plants supplying Ukraine with more than half of its electricity. What is the scandal? A group of insiders allegedly received kickbacks of 10-15% from Energoatom’s commercial partners. If these suppliers failed to pay up, they were removed from a list of approved counter-parties or not reimbursed for services already given. About $100m (£760m) was received in this way, Nabu says. The alleged conspiracy had old-school touches. Its beneficiaries used code names for each other, such as “Professor”, “Karlson” and “Sugarman”. They carried blocks of cash around Kyiv in large and unwieldy bags, sometimes delivering it on foot. On one occasion, a plotter allegedly sent his wife to collect a stash of dollars, which she hid in her car. Who was involved? The alleged organiser of the scheme is Timur Mindich, an old friend and business partner of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Mindich co-founded Kvartal 95, the media production company set up by Zelenskyy before he went into politics. Last week he fled his apartment in Kyiv’s government district hours before Nabu investigators came to arrest him, escaping abroad. He is now thought to be hiding in Israel. Other alleged participants include Ukraine’s ex-deputy prime minister Oleksiy Chernyshov, who is already under suspicion in a separate case; the justice minster, Herman Halushchenko, and his protege, the energy minister, Svitlana Hrynchuk, who were both fired. All deny wrongdoing. At least three other backroom figures allegedly took part. How have the public reacted? With fury. Over the autumn, Russia has destroyed much of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, leading to widespread and worsening blackouts. The hum of pavement generators has become a feature of everyday life, with electricity and heating supplies frequently interrupted. Meanwhile, Russian troops are advancing in the south and east after nearly four years of full-scale war. In one conversation collected by Nabu in its 15-month investigation a suspect said it was a “pity” to build a structure to defend power stations from Russian bomb attacks since the money could be stolen instead. Chernyshov allegedly spent some of the illicit cash on four luxury mansions in a new-build riverside plot south of Kyiv. The investigation, which has 1,000 hours of secretly recorded conversations, has been dubbed Operation Midas. The name seemingly refers to Mindich’s apartment, which features a gold toilet in the bathroom. How far does the corruption go? The big unanswered question. Was Mindichgate, as it has been called, a one-off? Or one of many similar insider schemes? Zelenskyy has condemned the scandal, slapped sanctions on Mindich and stripped him of his Ukrainian citizenship. “The president of a country at war cannot have friends,” he said last week after the news broke. He has called for investigations to run their course and for those found guilty to be punished and put behind bars. In July, however – while the Midas investigation was active – Zelenskyy had signed a decree effectively stripping Nabu and the special prosecutor’s office, another anti-corruption agency, of their independence and only backed down after the most serious street protests since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion. Nabu has indicated that the scandal extends to the defence ministry, where Mindich was involved in pursuing lucrative state contracts. And possibly banking, where he also had connections. What happens next? The affair is Ukraine’s biggest corruption scandal since Zelenskyy became president six-and-a-half years ago. Civil society activists, opposition MPs and prominent military veterans have urged him to take decisive action, even if that means the sacking and jailing of people who are personally known to him. The former president Petro Poroshenko has called for the current cabinet to be sacked and for a government of national unity to be formed. This is unlikely to happen. Poroshenko was himself embroiled in a defence procurement scandal, which played a role in his 2019 defeat to Zelenskyy, who promised to clean up public life. Political commentators say corruption is the result of “mono-government”: the fact that Zelenskyy and his allies enjoy sweeping wartime powers under martial law. No elections can be held while fighting continues. The revelations have also dismayed Ukraine’s western partners and emboldened its enemies. Worst of all, there appears to be a connection with Moscow. According to Nabu, the kickbacks were funnelled through a Kyiv back office connected to the family of Andriy Derkach, a former Ukrainian politician who is now a pro-Kremlin Russian senator. Some cash ended up in Russia, the tapes suggest. Is there an upside? Of sorts. Some observers think the fact the scandal emerged at all is proof that Ukraine is slowly moving in the right direction – towards European norms and away from gloomy Soviet-style kleptocracy. Oleksandr Abakumov, the head of Nabu’s investigating team, acknowledged his colleagues had “faced a lot of obstacles” pursuing the Mindich case. But he stressed: “This isn’t a story about corruption in Ukraine. It’s about how the country is struggling with corruption, fighting with corruption.”

Disease fears as Argentina child vaccination rates hit historic lows

Argentina’s childhood and adolescent vaccination rates have collapsed to a historic lows according to a new analysis, prompting warnings that once-eliminated diseases may resurge. The study of health ministry data by the Argentinian Paediatric Society (SAP) found that fewer than half of children aged five and six received several of their essential doses in 2024. All vaccines analysed were below the 95% level needed to reach herd immunity. The data marks a dramatic reversal for a country long regarded as having one of Latin America’s most robust immunisation systems. While coverage has been slipping since 2015, public health specialists say the speed and scale of the drop in 2024 is without precedent – a collapse deepened by Javier Milei’s sweeping austerity programme, which has slashed the national health budget and strained the outreach networks that once underpinned Argentina’s vaccination successes. “The decline is serious. Coverage continues to fall. It has never been this low,” said Dr Alejandra Gaiano, a paediatric infectious disease specialist at SAP. “The re-emergence of diseases that have been eliminated or controlled is the most serious issue and the greatest concern.” Only 46% of five-year-olds received the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine in 2024, compared with about 90% in the 2015-2019 period, SAP’s analysis found. The percentage of five-year-olds receiving the polio vaccine booster also fell from 88% to 47% in the same period, while the vaccine against whooping cough, diphtheria and tetanus dropped from 88% to just 46%. “We are facing a scenario of collective immunological fragility. The current figures not only compromise individual immunity, but also put public health as a whole at risk,” Gaiano said. SAP cautioned that changes in how some municipalities recorded immunisations in 2023 would have contributed in part to the decrease, but said this would not have had a “substantial impact” and that coverage levels remained “critically low”. While low coverage was seen across all ages, experts warned that the situation was particularly alarming in children under 18 months. SAP estimated that coverage of the third dose of the pentavalent vaccine and the inactivated polio vaccine, administered at six months old, fell by an average of 10 points from pre-pandemic levels. This would mean more than 115,000 infants did not complete the schedules needed to protect them from diphtheria, hepatitis B, polio and whooping cough. According to Elizabeth Bogdanowicz, an SAP infectious disease specialist, it is now common for less than 70% of children to have received their mandatory vaccines. Access barriers were the primary driver of the decline, worsened by Argentina’s deepening economic crisis and sharp cuts in public spending under libertarian Milei. Since taking office in December 2023, Milei has slashed Argentina’s healthcare budget by 48% in real terms. Gaiano said difficulties ranged from reduced clinic hours and fewer media campaigns, to the cutting back of outreach work that once underpinned Argentina’s historically strong immunisation system. “At one time, outreach activities were carried out. Vaccinators would go door to door to vaccinate people, but these activities are decreasing. Activities used to be carried out in schools, but with the cutbacks this has become difficult,” Gaiano said. Parents struggling to pay for travel or to get time off work have also played a role, she added. This strain on services also coincides with a post-pandemic rise in vaccine mistrust. Gaiano said Argentina previously had “almost no anti-vaccine groups” but that the pandemic “generated some mistrust of the Covid vaccine” which had “spread to other vaccines”. Experts warned that the low coverage could lead to the re-emergence of eliminated diseases such as hepatitis A, whooping cough, measles and polio. Argentina has already reported high cases of hepatitis A this year and has seen an uptick in measles. It is currently battling a whooping cough outbreak – cases are three times higher in 2025 than the year previous, while five children have died, SAP said. The Argentina ministry of health was approached for comment.

What happened to Jamal Khashoggi? Trump resurfaces memories of journalist’s brutal murder

Donald Trump on Tuesday said that Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, had nothing to do with the murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, whose assassination in 2018 left the Saudi leader an international pariah. But Trump’s own intelligence services, as well as a 2019 UN investigation, have painted a very different picture. The assassination took place inside a Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where a 15-person team led by a close associate of Prince Mohammed was said to have drugged, murdered and dismembered Khashoggi in order to hide evidence of the crime. “Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen,” Trump said when asked about the killing by a reporter during an Oval Office appearance with Prince Mohammed on Tuesday. “But [Prince Mohammed] knew nothing about it,” continued Trump. “And we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.” That is not what the US Office of the director of national intelligence concluded in 2021, when a report by the agency laid the blame for Khashoggi’s death directly on Prince Mohammed, who on Tuesday made his first visit to the US since the assassination. “We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey, to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” the 2021 report read. The crown prince denied ordering the operation but acknowledged responsibility as the kingdom’s de facto ruler. The motive for Khashoggi’s murder was clear: the journalist was a leading critic of Prince Mohammed, who had amassed power under his ailing father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, as he sought to succeed him after his death. When Khashoggi entered a Saudi consulate in Turkey in order to certify divorce papers, he was not aware that a 15-person team including members of Prince Mohammed’s elite personal bodyguard, as well as his close adviser Saud al-Qahtani, had been dispatched to capture or kill him. Inside, one of the men asked whether the “sacrificial animal” had arrived. “He has,” another answered. What happened next became public only because Turkish spies had bugged the premises, allowing them to listen in as the hit squad prepared and then carried out the gruesome murder. Inside the embassy, Khashoggi was told by Saudi officials that there was an Interpol warrant for his arrest and that he would be taken back to Saudi Arabia. Khashoggi protested before a struggle began in which he was overpowered. “Assessments of the recordings by intelligence officers in Turkey and other countries suggest that Mr Khashoggi could have been injected with a sedative and then suffocated using a plastic bag,” read a report prepared by Agnès Callamard, who was the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Before Khashoggi entered the consulate, a Saudi doctor was said to be describing an operation by which he would dismember Khashoggi’s body so it could be secretly transported out of the premises. The process would “be easy”, the doctor said. “Joints will be separated. It is not a problem. The body is heavy. First time I cut on the ground. If we take plastic bags and cut it into pieces, it will be finished. We will wrap each of them.” That is what took place next. “Sounds of movement and heavy panting could be heard in the remainder of the recordings,” the UN report continued. “The sound of plastic sheets (wrapping) could also be heard.” “The Turkish intelligence assessment identified the sound of a saw,” the report added. Minutes later, CCTV cameras captured three men carrying plastic bin bags and at least one rolling suitcase carrying what investigators believed to be Khashoggi’s dismembered corpse. The killing, which took place during Trump’s first term, caused a diplomatic crisis, but the US president is now seeking to boost the US’s relationship with the Saudis. Prince Mohammed said it had been “painful” to hear about Khashoggi’s death, but that his government “did all the right steps of investigation”. “We’ve improved our system to be sure that nothing happened like that. And it’s painful and it’s a huge mistake,” he told reporters. Trump’s comments prompted a rebuke from Khashoggi’s widow. “Nothing [can] justify just a horrible crime,” Hanan Elatr told Reuters in an interview, adding that she wished the US president would meet her so that she could introduce him to the “real Jamal”. Khashoggi’s widow also told US media that she still had not recovered her husband’s remains. • This article was amended on 19 November 2025. An earlier version incorrectly said King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was deceased.

Social Democrats in Denmark suffer sweeping election losses

Mette Frederiksen has admitted that a fall in support for the Social Democrats was “greater than we had expected” after her party suffered sweeping defeats across Denmark and lost control of Copenhagen for the first time in more than 100 years. While the Social Democrats remain the largest municipal party in Denmark, the prime minister’s centre-left party lost more than five percentage points across the country in Tuesday night’s municipal and regional elections, dropping from 28.4% in 2021 to 23.2%. Support for the far-right Danish People’s party, meanwhile, rose slightly from 4.09% to 5.9%. In Copenhagen, Frederiksen’s close personal friend, Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil, who is understood to have been handpicked by the prime minister to run for lord mayor in the Danish capital, failed to get the votes she needed. The position of lord mayor, it was announced, will be held by Sisse Marie Welling from the Green Left (Socialistisk Folkeparti, known as SF), which won 17.9% of the vote. “We have written history at city hall,” she said. The Red-Green Alliance (Enhedslisten) remained the capital’s biggest party with 22.1% of the vote. Looking disconsolate after the historic defeat, Frederiksen said: “We had expected to go back, but it seems that the decline is greater than we had expected. We will consider what is behind this.” Frederiksen cited rising food prices, and an imbalance between rural and urban areas, for her party’s decline in popularity. She also pointed to crime committed by “people coming from outside”, reinforcing her hardline stance on immigration. As well as Copenhagen, the Social Democrats also took hits in the former dependable municipalities of Frederikshavn, Køge, Fredericia, Gladsaxe and Holstebro. While the left did not do as well as expected in Copenhagen – there were hopes of a landslide – the results mean that for the first time since 1938, when the current system was introduced, the city will not have a Social Democrat lord mayor. Conceding defeat on Wednesday morning, Rosenkrantz-Theil, who co-owns a summer house with the prime minister, said she would not be lord mayor after support for her party dropped from 17.2% of the vote in 2021 to 12.7%. “I gave it the chance we needed,” she said. “Copenhagen is worth fighting for, and I knew from the start that I was taking a big risk. I wasn’t invited and wasn’t allowed in.” Among the reasons cited by analysts for the Social Democrats’ decline in Copenhagen were voter fatigue over the prime minister’s hardline policies on issues such as integration and immigration, which have partly inspired a newly unveiled asylum and migration policy in Britain. Nationally, Peter Thisted Dinesen, a political science professor at the University of Copenhagen, said it was a “big loss for the Social Democrats across the whole party”. He added: “This is very hurtful for the party losing several key bastions including Copenhagen. Frederiksen is unlikely to be threatened while being prime minister, but it will clearly prompt analyses and discussions of the causes. “Otherwise: wins for the Socialist People’s party (SF) and Liberal Alliance (LA) and the Denmark Democrats (the Dd, first time running in local elections). Venstre (V) and Conservatives lost votes but gained in terms of mayorships.”

Watch out for online contact with Chinese spies, UK defence minister warns public

Ordinary UK citizens need to watch out for online contact with Chinese spies, the defence minister has said, after MI5 issued an espionage alert to parliament. Luke Pollard said a warning given to parliamentarians on Tuesday that China was attempting to recruit individuals with access to sensitive information should also be heeded by the public at large. Security services took the unusual step of advising MPs, Lords and their staff to be alert to contact from spies, revealing two LinkedIn accounts that had been used to try to recruit those with access to non-public information. “That’s advice that should be heeded by the rest of the public as well,” he told Sophy Ridge on Sky News. “Because as we become more online as a community, the ability for people that wish us harm or wish us to gain access to information they shouldn’t have access to becomes more plentiful.” The security services identified two accounts on LinkedIn going by the names Amanda Qiu and Shirly Shen, both purporting to be headhunters, which were thought to be linked to espionage. The security minister, Dan Jarvis, said in parliament on Tuesday it was “a covert and calculated” attempt by the Chinese government to recruit people close to power. In response, Beijing accused the UK spy agency of “groundlessly hyping up” the issue, and said it was not interested in “so-called intelligence” from the UK parliament. The Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, told a press briefing on Wednesday: “China never interferes in other countries’ internal affairs and has no interest in collecting so-called intelligence from the UK parliament.” One parliamentary worker who had been contacted by Shirly Shen told the BBC he had ignored the message but was concerned that less experienced staff might have responded to it. He said: “The message wasn’t written in very good English, it was a message to say there was a job opportunity and was I interested, and to get in touch if I was. “I’ve worked around parliament for about 10 years now so I’m kind of used to this. But if you were more junior, you don’t know what you’re looking for. You might think it’s a genuine offer that’s made to you on LinkedIn, they might accept.” He said he believed this kind of contact was becoming more common. “They have realised the way to get to parliamentarians is through their staff … it’s deeply worrying,” he said. It comes not long after the collapse of a trial into alleged spying by two British people for China. Christopher Cash, a parliamentary researcher, and Christopher Berry, his China-based friend, were accused of espionage but the charges were dropped a month before the court case was due to begin. The Crown Prosecution Service said it had been forced to abandon the case after the government failed to provide reassurance that China was “a current threat to national security”, a threshold that needed to be met to go ahead with the prosecution. The wording of the 1911 law around espionage refers to gathering information “directly or indirectly useful to an enemy”, a definition that could have strained the UK’s already fragile relationship with the superpower. Pollard, who was doing the rounds on breakfast television and radio, said: “China poses a number of threats to the UK, but they also present a number of opportunities for the UK. It’s a complex picture with China, as I’m sure you’ve heard from government ministers over many weeks on this.” Appearing on the LBC radio breakfast show with Nick Ferrari, Pollard was challenged on the government’s purchase of Chinese technology, including vehicles used by the military that could contain listening devices. Pollard told Ferrari the government was “looking carefully at what the options are with Chinese technology”.