The Nigerian government has denied claims by a US senator that a “mass murder” of Christians is taking place in the West African nation.

In posts on social media, Ted Cruz alleged that 50,000 Christians have been killed there since 2009 and that 2,000 schools and 18,000 churches have been destroyed by “Islamist” armed groups. President Bola Tinubu’s special adviser Sunday Dare said that Cruz “would do well to engage with the facts before amplifying falsehoods that embolden extremists and malign an entire nation”.

What has been alleged?
The Republican senator’s claims have been “amplified” by “celebrities and commentators”, said The Associated Press, and some have even alleged that a “Christian genocide” is taking place in Nigeria.

US talk show host Bill Maher has claimed that Nigerian terror group Boko Haram has killed more than 100,000 Christians since mounting an insurgency in 2009 and is “literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country”. It’s “unclear where Maher got his figures”, said Al Jazeera, and they have been widely disputed.

Is there any truth to the claims?
Nigeria’s population of 220 million is split almost equally between Christians and Muslims. According to independent conflict monitor Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, there were 20,409 deaths from 11,862 attacks against civilians in Nigeria between January 2020 and September 2025. A total of 385 of those attacks were categorised as “targeted events” in which the “Christian identity of the victim was a reported factor”, and resulted in 317 deaths. But in the same period, 417 Muslim deaths were recorded in 196 attacks.

There are “varying motives” for the violence in Nigeria, said The Associated Press. As well as “religiously motivated” attacks targeting both Christians and Muslims, there are “clashes between farmers and herders over dwindling resources, communal rivalries, secessionist groups and ethnic clashes”.

What does Nigeria say?
Denying Cruz’s claims, Information Minister Mohammed Idris Malagi said that “portraying Nigeria’s security challenges as a targeted campaign against a single religious group is a gross misrepresentation of reality”.

The Christian Association of Nigeria also denied that only Christians were being targeted, and accused foreign groups of seeking to “exploit domestic crises”, said Al Jazeera.

Paris is reeling from one of the “most spectacular” but “brazenly simple” heists of the past century, said the BBC, following the theft of  Napoleonic-era jewellery and other valuables from the Louvre. Museums and art collections are “increasingly being targeted by criminal gangs”, inspired by some of this era’s most daring, and peculiar, robberies.

‘History’s biggest art heist’
The Louvre, the world’s most-visited museum, has a “long history of thefts and attempted robberies”, said The Associated Press. One of the most famous was the theft of the “Mona Lisa” in 1911, when a former Louvre employee “walked out with the painting under his coat”. The drama surrounding the heist arguably “helped make Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait the world’s best-known artwork”.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the robbery of 13 artworks from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990 shocked the world. It remains “history’s biggest art heist”, with more than “half a billion dollars” of art vanishing into thin air, said CNN.  Despite the value of the loot, “not a single motion detector was set off”, triggering talk of “ghost robbers”, or perhaps more likely, “an inside job”. None of the art has been recovered.

‘The takeaway Rembrandt’ and a golden toilet
A painting being stolen once is shocking enough, but four times borders on comical. “Jacob de Gheyn III” by Rembrandt, housed at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, was stolen in 1966, 1973, 1981 and 1983, amounting to “one of the more bizarre cases of art theft” ever recorded, said Euronews. The painting has been nicknamed the “takeaway Rembrandt”, but was recovered “after every theft” and is still on display at the south London gallery.

More recently, the theft of a £4.75 million golden toilet from Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire in 2019 captured the imagination of the British public. The loo had been on display “for just under a week before it was taken”, said The Telegraph, and was “probably melted down” afterwards. 

A priest walks among lit earthen lamps on the banks of the Saryu river in the Indian city of Ayodhya, on the eve of Diwali. Millions of Hindus, Jains and Sikhs are celebrating the festival of lights, which symbolises the victory of good over evil. 

Ritesh Shukla / Getty Images

Relaxing with a glass of sherry and bowl of “briny olives” during these autumn months is a “deeply satisfying pleasure”, said Victoria Moore in The Telegraph. And it “remains relatively inexpensive”, even if you choose a more premium bottle.

“Long seen as old-fashioned, sherry is undergoing a quiet revolution,” said Sophie Arundel in The Drinks Business. For years, the fortified wine had a reputation for being “sticky, sweet, and destined only for certain aunts at Christmas”. In reality, it can range from dry to intensely sweet, and everything in between.

“In my book, the idea of a modest sherry before Sunday lunch is maybe not such a bad one,” said Fiona Beckett in The Guardian. Some of the nuttier, darker styles work especially “brilliantly” at this time of year.

Most sherries are best served chilled alongside olives and chorizo, to bring out the salty flavours. Drier versions such as manzanilla and the more traditional fino pair well with salted almonds, tomato bread and manchego cheese. The darker, “more intense and nutty” oloroso works better with “heavier” food like oxtail stew to complement the richer flavour, said Moore in The Telegraph.

If you’re looking for something dry and strongly flavoured at the lower end of the price scale, Morrisons’ The Best Palo Cortado NV (£7.50) fits the bill. Or for something a little smoother, try Gonzalez Byass Tio Pepe Fino Sherry NV (£13.50). 

Britain needs to see the bigger picture on China
Kerry Brown in The New Statesman
The claim that “two Brits spied” for China “makes people feel uneasy”, writes Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese Studies at King’s College London.Yet China is not Soviet Russia but rather our “third largest trading partner”. And, on issues “from environment, to AI, to public health, the default of the UK and China is to co-operate”. Our country “needs to convince itself that its relations with China are manageable”, or “it will continue to be buffeted by fear”.

Why I love England - and I don’t need to wave a flag to show it
Caitlin Moran in The Times
England has “vanished”, according to “JD Vance (who does not live here)”, writes Caitlin Moran. The land of “cricket, pop, queues, jokes and brogues has been replaced by a feral sea of immigrants”, apparently. Yet during my train travels, I see “a fine, fine country”. At King’s Cross, a “teenage girl sings Back to Black with a Jamaican twang, at the piano, next to M&S – and there’s England, right there”. The US vice president is simply “blind” to it.

AI is killing the magic
Jemima Kelly in the Financial Times
As my cousin “gave a wonderful speech” at “his father’s 60th” recently, I wondered if he’d “had some artificially generated assistance”, writes Jemima Kelly. Such help is “only the tip of the AI-ceberg”. Can I still enjoy comedians’ jokes, rappers’ lyrics and friends’ messages if I’m uncertain that “these words originated in their heart and not some data centre in northern Virginia”. Using AI to “bypass” such “effortful activity” limits the “sheer joy” of human creativity.