An extra £4bn a year will be poured into defence over the next four years, funding space and cyber-defence projects such as an artificial intelligence agency. The government says the investment - the biggest for 30 years and a 10% increase on the annual defence budget - could create 40,000 new jobs. "The defence of the realm must come first," says Boris Johnson, adding that the international situation is "more perilous and more intensely competitive than at any time since the Cold War". The prime minister will set out details of the funding later. Coming in addition to previous commitments, it could mean the Ministry of Defence getting a total increase of about £24.1bn over four years, forecasts suggest.
Our defence correspondent Jonathan Beale says despite "palpable relief" inside the Ministry of Defence, there remain "difficult decisions about cutting old equipment to fund the new" within a department which "doesn't have a strong track record of balancing its books". And it could mean bad news for other departments, with speculation international aid could be cut below the 0.7% of national income enshrined in law. Labour is calling for highly trained troops to be "at the heart" of the "long-overdue" upgrade, above high-tech weapons systems.

Researchers at Oxford say there are "encouraging" signs their coronavirus vaccine is showing a strong immune response in adults in their 60s and 70s. Older people's weaker immune systems mean vaccines do not tend to function as well as they do in younger people. But the trial results, based on 560 healthy adult volunteers, suggest those in the 56-69 and over-70 age groups had a similar response to younger adults. "We hope that this means our vaccine will help to protect some of the most vulnerable people in society, but further research will be needed before we can be sure," says Dr Maheshi Ramasamy. Results of larger studies looking at the vaccine's overall efficiency are expected within weeks.

As the popularity of gender-reveal parties grows, many women choose to visit one of the more than 200 private baby scan studios across the UK to pick up confetti cannons and balloons along with a souvenir photograph. And while many have positive experiences, BBC News has found evidence of some not being told about serious abnormalities. In one case, a sonographer failed to tell a woman her baby could not survive, instead claiming the head was not fully visible. The expectant mother was advised to book an NHS anomaly scan, and given a gender-reveal cannon and teddy bear containing a recording of the baby's heartbeat. Read the full story of our investigation, which one academic describes as revealing practices ranging "from incredibly dangerous to anxiety inducing to false reassurance".

While some papers ponder the government's plan to boost spending on the military, others are firmly focused on Christmas. Ministers are considering allowing three households to meet to allow relatives to spend five days together over the festive season, says the Daily Telegraph. According to the Daily Mail, four households will be able to form a "bubble". "The cost of Christmas," as the Daily Mirror describes it, will be five days of extreme lockdown for every day of fun. Or, as the i puts it: "On the fifth day of Christmas the government said to me, lockdown for most of January." Read the review.

We have a wide-ranging interview with Keith Richards, touching on the US election, being punched by Chuck Berry and marking the Rolling Stones' 60th anniversary with a new wheelchair. And we ask businesswomen if there is a "female playbook" when it comes to leadership - and whether it's proved particularly effective during the pandemic .

From elsewhere