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James Bond Fantasist Jailed for 7 Years in UK for Trying to Spy for Russia

Actor Daniel Craig poses for photographers on the red carpet at the German premiere of the new James Bond 007 film "Spectre" in Berlin, Germany, October 28, 2015. (Reuters)
Actor Daniel Craig poses for photographers on the red carpet at the German premiere of the new James Bond 007 film "Spectre" in Berlin, Germany, October 28, 2015. (Reuters)
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James Bond Fantasist Jailed for 7 Years in UK for Trying to Spy for Russia

Actor Daniel Craig poses for photographers on the red carpet at the German premiere of the new James Bond 007 film "Spectre" in Berlin, Germany, October 28, 2015. (Reuters)
Actor Daniel Craig poses for photographers on the red carpet at the German premiere of the new James Bond 007 film "Spectre" in Berlin, Germany, October 28, 2015. (Reuters)

A British man who would "dream about being like James Bond" was jailed Friday for seven years after trying to spy for Russia.

Howard Phillips, 65, was found guilty in July for trying to pass information about former Defense Secretary Grant Shapps, who he knew, to two men who he believed were Russian intelligence agents. However, the ‘agents’ were undercover British intelligence agents, The AP news reported.

“You were prepared to betray your country for money,” Justice Bobbie Cheema-Grubb told Phillips at his sentencing hearing at Winchester Crown Court, in the south of England.

The judge said that Phillips had “a personality with narcissistic tendencies and an overblown sense of his own importance."

The trial heard that Phillips intended to assist Russian agents between the end of 2023 and May 2024 — Shapps was defense secretary between August 2023 and July 2024 when his Conservative Party was ousted from power and he lost his seat in Parliament at the general election.

Specifically, the trial heard how Phillips had tried to hand over Shapps’ contact details as well as the location where he kept his private plane to “facilitate the Russians in listening on British defense plans.”

The defendant’s ex-wife told the court that Phillips “would dream about being like James Bond,” and watched films about the British secret services because he was “infatuated with it.”

In a victim impact statement read to the court, Shapps expressed his shock at learning of Phillips’ activities. He recalled going to dinner at Phillips' home in 2002.

“What is unacceptable is one individual’s reckless behavior exposing my entire family to the extremely serious risks that come from a foreign intelligence service’s activities," he said.

Bethan David, head of the Crown Prosecution Service’s Counter Terrorism Division, said the conviction sends “a clear message to anyone considering spying for or assisting Russia.”

 

 

 

 

 

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Varieties

Glasgow Building Fire Closes Scotland’s Busiest Train Station and Disrupts Rail Services

Floors collapse inside the building as fire fighters work at the site of a large fire in Glasgow City center on March 8, 2026. (AFP)
Floors collapse inside the building as fire fighters work at the site of a large fire in Glasgow City center on March 8, 2026. (AFP)
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Glasgow Building Fire Closes Scotland’s Busiest Train Station and Disrupts Rail Services

Floors collapse inside the building as fire fighters work at the site of a large fire in Glasgow City center on March 8, 2026. (AFP)
Floors collapse inside the building as fire fighters work at the site of a large fire in Glasgow City center on March 8, 2026. (AFP)

A major fire in the heart of Glasgow crippled Scottish train services Monday as firefighters worked to douse the blaze that destroyed a four-story building near Scotland's busiest railway station.

Glasgow Central Station was closed and all travel to, from and through the station was expected to be disrupted, National Rail said. There was no estimate when the station would reopen.

The fire broke out Sunday in a vape shop on Union Street, next to the station. It burned through the night and part of the building that dates back to 1851 collapsed.

Overnight footage of the blaze showed the building and its dome-like roofing structure completely engulfed in flames. That section of roofing later appears to have collapsed.

There were no reported casualties, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service said.

Varieties

World’s Oldest Icebergs is Nearly at an End

 A drone captured the spectacular caves and arches of A23a in 2023 (British Antarctic Survey) 
 A drone captured the spectacular caves and arches of A23a in 2023 (British Antarctic Survey) 
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World’s Oldest Icebergs is Nearly at an End

 A drone captured the spectacular caves and arches of A23a in 2023 (British Antarctic Survey) 
 A drone captured the spectacular caves and arches of A23a in 2023 (British Antarctic Survey) 

The story of one of the world’s oldest icebergs is nearly at an end, after a breathtaking 40-year journey that has captivated scientists.

The iceberg, known as A23a, was once the largest on Earth, covering an area more than twice the size of Greater London, according to BBC.

But after a path full of twists and turns, A23a has melted, fractured and spectacularly disintegrated over the past year.

Now, far from the icy seas of Antarctica, what’s left of A23a is being eaten away by warmer waters. It’s in its death throes, not expected to last more than a matter of weeks.

All icebergs melt eventually, but scientists have been looking at how it's disintegrated for clues about how other parts of Antarctica might respond as the climate changes.

“It’s been an extraordinary journey,” said Prof Mike Meredith of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. “But it is on its last legs now.”

This is the story of A23a’s final months.

But first we have to go back to 1986. That year, a nuclear reactor exploded at the Chernobyl power plant in what is now northern Ukraine, Gary Lineker won the golden boot at the Fifa World Cup in Mexico, and Whitney Houston received her first Grammy award.

Away from the world’s gaze, the Filchner Ice Shelf - a massive floating tongue of ice extending from the Antarctic continent and into the Weddell Sea - was changing dramatically. One of the icebergs to break off - or calve - was A23a, then about 4,000 sq km.

It soon became anchored in the muds of the Weddell Sea, where it remained stuck for more than 30 years. It wasn’t until 2020 that scientists noticed signs that A23a was on the move again.

While it’s likely icebergs have lived longer in the Earth’s distant past, A23a is thought to be the oldest iceberg in the world today, at least among those picked up by satellites and tracked by scientists.

“Its journey is really pretty impressive, just for sheer longevity,” said Dr Christopher Shuman, a retired scientist formerly with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in the US. He likens tracking its path to watching a TV drama “where you don't know what you're going to see next.”

As A23a moves across the vast South Atlantic Ocean, it can be hard to grasp its scale - but if you could drop it into the English Channel its size would be much more striking.

At the start of 2025 - even after 39 years - A23a was still a collosus. It would have almost stretched between the Isle of Wight and Normandy in France. Now, it wouldn’t even reach halfway from Dover to Calais.

“To watch it be so stable for so long, and then just disintegrate over one year, has been fascinating,” said Dr Catherine Walker of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US, who was born the same year as A23a.

Over the past two weeks A23a has been carried by ocean currents in a near-complete clockwise loop. This could be its final dance.

Recent satellite images suggest further hydrofracturing of what was left of it - “tantalizing evidence of sudden disintegration”, according to Prof Adrian Luckman of Swansea University.

While other icebergs have travelled further in the past, A23a is the furthest north of any Antarctic iceberg being tracked by scientists today. It’s closer to the equator than London.

The prolonged exposure to sea warmth means the berg’s remains will inevitably fragment and eventually melt away, even though the Southern Hemisphere winter is on the horizon.

By 5 March, A23a had shrunk to approximately 180 square km, although estimates can vary slightly.

Once it gets to roughly 70 square km, scientists will stop tracking it. That moment’s not far away, according to Luckman.

“All traces will probably have disappeared in a matter of weeks now, at most,” Luckman said.

 

 

 

Varieties

Digital Reconstruction Reveals Face of ‘Little Foot,’ A 4 Million-Year-Old Human Ancestor

The Sterkfontein caves have yielded many hominin fossil discoveries. Emmanuel Croset/AFP/Getty Images 
The Sterkfontein caves have yielded many hominin fossil discoveries. Emmanuel Croset/AFP/Getty Images 
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Digital Reconstruction Reveals Face of ‘Little Foot,’ A 4 Million-Year-Old Human Ancestor

The Sterkfontein caves have yielded many hominin fossil discoveries. Emmanuel Croset/AFP/Getty Images 
The Sterkfontein caves have yielded many hominin fossil discoveries. Emmanuel Croset/AFP/Getty Images 

Scientists can now come face to face with an early human ancestor nicknamed Little Foot who lived 3.67 million years ago, thanks to digital reconstruction technology, according to CNN.

Renowned paleoanthropologist Ronald Clarke identified four tiny bones in the University of the Witwatersrand’s museum collection and went on to discover Little Foot’s nearly pristine fossil in the 1990s in the Sterkfontein Caves northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Full excavation of the remains took a painstaking 20 years, but it was worth it.

At 90% intact, the specimen is the most complete known skeleton belonging to Australopithecus, chimpanzee-like ancestors who were able to walk upright on two feet but also adept at climbing trees to escape from predators like saber-toothed cats.

The skeleton represents the oldest evidence of human evolution in southern Africa, said Dr. Amélie Beaudet, an honorary researcher in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, who has studied the fossil unearthed from the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site for years.

However, Little Foot’s skull, which became crushed as surrounding cave sediment grew heavier and shifted over time, has been difficult to study. The skull distortion was so extensive that physical reconstruction wasn’t possible.

Now, Beaudet and her colleagues have digitally rearranged the facial bones to their rightful places, providing a clearer look at Little Foot’s face — and hinting at features that may be shared across the human family tree.

“Only a handful of Australopithecus fossils preserve an almost complete face, making Little Foot a rare and valuable reference point,” said Beaudet, lead author of the study published Monday in the journal Comptes Rendus Palevol, in a statement. “Little Foot’s face preserves key anatomical regions involved in vision, breathing and feeding, and its skull will offer further key elements for understanding our evolutionary history.”

Little Foot’s fossilized remains left South Africa for the first time so researchers could capture precise images of the inner structures of her face, which had never been seen.

The skull was shipped to England so it could go through high-resolution scanning at the Diamond Light Source synchrotron, located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.

The size of Little Foot’s face fell between that of a gorilla and an orangutan, while the shape was closer to what is seen in orangutans and bonobos.

The team was surprised to find that the face size, as well as the shape and measurements of her eye sockets, were also more similar to the East African Australopithecus fossils, despite the fact that Little Foot was found in South Africa.

Little Foot’s skeleton is 50% more complete than the famed Lucy fossil, found in Ethiopia in 1974 by paleoanthropologists Donald Johanson and Tom Gray.

Next, the team wants to use digital reconstruction methods to correct deformation on other parts of the skull, such as the braincase, to reveal insights about the brain size of Little Foot — and potentially unlock clues about the cognitive abilities of our early human ancestors.