How to end the year right: come up with your own personal rituals

Rituals are different from routines – they elevate everyday life. Here’s how to create meaning beyond the festive season

How do you celebrate the end of the year?

Office parties can be a drag, but if you’re self-employed, it can be easy to roll without ceremony from one year into the next. Three years ago, two friends and I were bemoaning the lack of festivities and decided to make up for it by organising our own end-of-year lunch.

I’m an adult. Why do I regress under my parents’ roof?

I like my own company. But do I spend too much time alone?

People say you’ll know – but will I regret not having children?

I Can Fit That In: How Rituals Transform Your Life by Erin Coupe is out now

Published: December 24, 2025, 5:00 pm

Fresh ‘manty’ and cheap figs: a post-Soviet supermarket becomes a must-visit spot in NYC

Tashkent Supermarket’s new West Village location offers staples like plov and samsas hot and fresh – a taste of Central Asia for everyone

When I first stepped into the Tashkent Supermarket in Brighton Beach, I could barely get around. The store was bustling, packed with the familiar unsmiling faces of post-Soviet people eager to get their hands on foods like manty – intricately shaped dumplings filled with minced beef, onion and, depending on where you’re from, pumpkin for the subtle sweetness. Or chak-chak, a dessert made of small pieces of fried golden dough held together by honey syrup. Kompot, too, a drink made by simmering seasonal or dried fruits.

Growing up in Kazakhstan, these were staples in school cafeterias and at home. Manty was one of the first dishes my mom taught me to make – I thought she was a magician, the way she rolled the stretchy dough out so wide and thin, yet thick enough to hold the filling without tearing. I was rarely allowed to have soda or sugary drinks, but homemade kompot with fruits and berries from our garden was an exception. And though I never mastered chak-chak, the store-bought version was always a treat. As I got older and traveled across other former Soviet republics, I found comfort in knowing I would always find plov and samsas at eateries in Moscow, Baku and Tbilisi.

Published: December 24, 2025, 3:00 pm

Truth in fantasy: what Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials taught us over its 30-year run

The ‘religious atheist’ author held a reputation as CS Lewis’s opposite. But his two trilogies – which came to a close this year – were a celebration of humanity and imagination

Twenty years ago, I visited the Botanic Garden in Oxford for the first time. Among the winding pathways lined with flowers, about halfway back, stood a bench under a tree, largely identical to the others throughout the park. Was this the one? I wondered.

I didn’t have to question it for long. A closer look revealed words and images etched along its wooden slats, all along similar lines: “Lyra + Will”, they said. Or: “Pantalaimon” and “Kirjava”. Tucked between the bench’s arm and seat was a folded-up scrap of paper with a handwritten message of thanks.

Published: December 24, 2025, 2:00 pm

Dancing! Fighting! Impregnating! The best movie moments of 2025

From Sinners to F1 to Highest 2 Lowest, Guardian writers pick the scenes that stuck with them the most this year

Spoilers ahead

Disclosure: I covered auto racing for years and still follow Formula One skeptically. I definitely went into F1: The Movie knowing what I was in for, an answer to the hypothetical: what if the bougiest sport on God’s green earth was turned into a western? But you can’t help going along for the ride once Brad Pitt starts filling the frame with his blue-eyed winks, wry smiles and Butch Cassidy swagger. I should’ve been more indignant about this martinet sport making a literal hero out of the biggest rogue on the grid. But I left disbelief in parc fermé as Pitt’s Sonny Hayes bumped and nicked his way to the season finale at Abu Dhabi to much consternation before his wingman (Damson Idris) takes up the ticky tactics at Yas Marina circuit and winds up sacrificing himself and producer Lewis Hamilton (not again!) to help Sonny win his first race and thwart a hostile takeover of their fragile team. And when the lights went up at my desolate midday screening, it was just me still on the edge of my seat and my disbelief still firmly off track. Andrew Lawrence

Published: December 24, 2025, 11:01 am

My weirdest Christmas: I insisted, through gritted teeth, that it would be fun to eat outside

It was 2020, and I hired a gazebo and heaters so we could have a festive feast with my mum in the garden. What could possibly go wrong?

We called it “diffmas”, because it was going to be a different kind of Christmas. Our son was five, so we were trying to package it appealingly for him. But we might have done that anyway, given the kind of year we’d had – and by “we” I don’t just mean my family, I mean the world.

It was 2020. When the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, had announced, in March, that we “must stay at home”, it left my mum, who had lived on her own since my dad died in 2012, completely alone, like many people, for months on end. Her work had involved travelling all over the country, having meetings, organising events, networking. Then, in lockdown, everything stopped. She was Zooming with the best of them, but it was clearly extremely difficult.

Published: December 24, 2025, 5:00 am

The hill I will die on: Being late can be the height of good manners and decorum, actually | Rachel Connolly

Instead of seeing etiquette as a set of categorical rules, we should recognise that poor form can actually have good consequences

Many people are out there labouring under the impression that lateness is always terribly rude. I am here to tell you this is totally wrong. There are situations when, yes, it is rude. There are situations when it basically doesn’t matter. But there are also situations when being late is actually the height of good manners and decorum.

If you are invited to dinner, especially by a person who you can sense is an inexperienced cook or host, you should endeavour to be late. By at least 10 minutes I would say. But, honestly, if your host is a 25-year-old who has sent you a message saying, “I’m going to try making this :)” and then attached a picture of an elaborate recipe with two separate kinds of molasses, then I would say half an hour is probably best.

Rachel Connolly is the author of the novel Lazy City

Published: December 24, 2025, 7:00 am

Trump’s claims to Venezuelan oil are part of broader ‘resource imperialism’, experts say

Critics compare offensive to Iraq war, citing familiar mix of regime-change rhetoric, security pretexts and oil interests

Donald Trump’s recent claims that the US should keep Venezuelan oil from seized tankers are part of a broader belief in rightwing “resource imperialism”, experts say.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has escalated pressure on Venezuela, invoking drug-trafficking claims. This month, the US intercepted two tankers carrying Venezuelan oil and began pursuing a third, while intensifying its campaign against the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro.

Published: December 24, 2025, 3:00 pm

US justice department says it may need ‘a few more weeks’ to process 1m more Epstein documents for release

DoJ says more documents have been uncovered amid criticisms for missing 19 December deadline for full release

The US justice department said on Wednesday that it has been told by federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the FBI that they have uncovered more than a million more documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case and processing these for release could take “a few more weeks”.

In a post on X, the justice department said it had received the documents from the US attorney for the southern district of New York and the FBI in “compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, existing statutes, and judicial orders”.

Published: December 24, 2025, 7:32 pm

UK, Canada and Germany condemn Israel for 19 new West Bank settlements

Fourteen countries, also including France, Italy, Ireland and Spain, say actions ‘violate international law and risk fuelling instability’

Fourteen countries, including Britain, Canada and Germany, have condemned the Israeli security cabinet’s approval of 19 new settlements in the occupied West Bank, saying they violate international law and risk fuelling instability.

Israel approved a proposal last Sunday for the new Jewish settlements, which brings the recent total to 69, according to the far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich.

Published: December 24, 2025, 10:09 pm

Federal judge blocks White House’s reductions of homeland security funding to states

Judge said cuts were ‘another example’ of Trump administration tying state assistance to its immigration crackdown

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce federal homeland security funding, including for disasters, for states that do not comply with immigration enforcement policies.

US district judge Mary McElroy of Rhode Island, a 2018 Trump appointee, ruled on Monday that the latest case was “another example” of the Trump administration tying state and local government assistance to its immigration crackdown.

Published: December 24, 2025, 5:16 pm

Trump-backed candidate Asfura declared new president of Honduras

Winning margin of 28,000 votes announced a month late but before review of all ‘inconsistent’ ballots was completed

Donald Trump-backed candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura has been declared the winner of Honduras’s presidential election after a vote count that dragged on for almost a month and was marred by fraud allegations and criticism of interference by the US president.

The rightwing Asfura, 67, a construction magnate and former mayor of the capital, Tegucigalpa, secured 40.27% of the vote, against 39.53% for the centre-right Salvador Nasralla, a margin of just 28,000 votes.

Published: December 24, 2025, 11:42 pm

European leaders condemn US visa bans as row over ‘censorship’ escalates

Washington accused of ‘coercion and intimidation’ after five leading figures behind digital safety law campaign targeted

European leaders including Emmanuel Macron have accused Washington of “coercion and intimidation”, after the US imposed a visa ban on five prominent European figures who have been at heart of the campaign to introduce laws regulating American tech companies.

The visa bans were imposed on Tuesday on Thierry Breton, the former EU commissioner and one of the architects of the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), and four anti-disinformation campaigners, including two in Germany and two in the UK.

Published: December 24, 2025, 12:36 pm

Southern California braces as powerful winter storms threaten up to 8in of rain

Governor declared emergency in several counties, with near white-out snow conditions in parts of the Sierra Nevada

A powerful winter storm swept across California on Wednesday, with heavy rain and gusty winds leading to evacuation warnings for mudslides in parts of the southern part of the state, bringing near white-out snow conditions in the mountains and hazardous travel for millions of holiday drivers.

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, declared a state of emergency in several counties, including Los Angeles.

Published: December 24, 2025, 8:38 pm

Tiny Pacific nation of Palau to take migrants from US in return for aid

The island nation will take up to 75 migrants, months after lawmakers rejected a previous request from Washington

Palau will take up to 75 migrants from the US in return for additional aid, after the tiny Pacific Island nation signed a memorandum of understanding with Washington on transfer of third-country nationals.

US deputy secretary of state Christopher Landau spoke to Palau president Surangel Whipps in a call on Tuesday about transferring third-country nationals to Palau, the two sides said in separate statements, after Palau’s lawmakers rejected a previous request from Washington on the matter earlier this year.

Published: December 25, 2025, 2:08 am

Pope Leo calls for kindness to strangers and the poor in Christmas message

Refusing to help those in need is tantamount to rejecting God himself, says pontiff during Christmas Eve mass

Pope Leo has told Christians that the Christmas story should remind them of their duty to help the poor and strangers.

In his Christmas Eve sermon, the pope said the story of Jesus being born in a stable because there was no room at an inn showed followers that refusing to help those in need was tantamount to rejecting God himself.

Published: December 24, 2025, 10:29 pm

No pain, no game: how South Korea turned itself into a gaming powerhouse

Gaming was once compared to drugs, gambling and alcohol in South Korea. Now its gaming academies offer a chance to earn a six-figure salary – if you make the grade

Son Si-woo remembers the moment his mother turned off his computer. He was midway through an interview to become a professional gamer.

“She said when I played computer games, my personality got worse, that I was addicted to games,” the 27-year-old recalls.

Published: December 25, 2025, 12:05 am

Boston taps into ‘spirit of rebellion’ as it resists ICE’s immigration crackdown

The city is responding with ‘strategized resistance’ as masked men roam the streets carrying out immigration raids at traffic stops, supermarkets and courthouses

Any Lucia López Belloza will not be home for Christmas. The 19-year-old freshman was on a business scholarship at Babson College near Boston, when she decided to take a surprise flight home to Austin, Texas, to spend Thanksgiving with her parents and sisters.

Just before she boarded her flight at Logan airport on 20 November, she was arrested by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and within 48 hours was deported back to Honduras, a country she left aged seven seeking asylum, with chains on her waist, ankles and wrists.

Published: December 24, 2025, 3:00 pm

The 12 days of Trump-mas

What has Donald Trump given us in his second term? We look at some of the numbers

• This was originally published in This Week in Trumpland; sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday

Happy holidays! Across the 12 days of Christmas one very keen individual once gifted their lover a partridge in a pear tree, two turtle doves, three French hens, four calling birds, five gold rings, six geese a-laying, seven swans a-swimming, eight maids a-milking, nine ladies dancing, 10 lords a-leaping, 11 pipers piping and 12 drummers drumming.

An extravagant expression of what was allegedly “true love”, the spree amounted to a total of 364 presents – more if you include the eggs that the geese a-laid.

Published: December 24, 2025, 4:00 pm

From Lily Allen to six-seven: it’s the 2025 bumper pop culture quiz of the year

Did you watch KPop Demon Hunters? Have you listened to Rosalía? And do you know who ‘fedora guy’ is? If you answered yes to all these, this is the quiz for you

Published: December 24, 2025, 7:00 pm

How the Guardian reported 2025, with editor-in-chief Katharine Viner

It has been a year dominated by Donald Trump. It has not yet even been 12 full months since his return to the White House in January but already the changes he has wrought – both in the US and around the world – seemed scarcely conceivable in 2024.
Katharine Viner, the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, tells Annie Kelly what it has looked like from the editor’s chair: from the deployment of the national guard on American streets, to the humiliation of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, to the erosion of the rules that once governed peace and war.

In the UK, she describes a Labour government failing to tell its story and missing chance after chance to tackle the rise of Reform and the far right. ‘Politics is about timing,’ she says of the government’s notable silence over the summer, ‘and I think a lot of those opportunities were missed.’
It has not been a year without hope, from the unexpected success of leftwing figures such as Zohran Mamdani and Zack Polanski, to the Guardian’s decisive victories in court defending its reporting, in a case described as a landmark ruling for #MeToo journalism.
Support the Guardian today: theguardian.com/todayinfocuspod

• This is our last episode of 2025. Thank you to everyone who has listened and watched this year. We will return with new episodes on 5 January 2026.

Published: December 24, 2025, 7:09 am

‘Freedom is a city where you can breathe’: four experts on Europe’s most liveable capitals

From Copenhagen’s cycle lanes and Vienna’s shared parks to Barcelona and London’s unfulfilled potential, better living is close at hand

The angry rumble of a speeding SUV. The metallic smog of backlogged traffic. The aching heat of sun-dried neighbourhoods baking in an oven of concrete and asphalt.

For most people, the mundane threats that plague our environments are likely to annoy more than they spark dread. But for scientists who know just how dangerous our surroundings can be, the burden of knowledge weighs heavy each day. Across Europe, environmental risks cause 18% of deaths from cardiovascular disease and 10% of deaths from cancer. Traffic crashes in the EU kill five times more people than murders.

Published: December 24, 2025, 3:23 pm

Cracker jokes and custard chemistry: ways to smuggle science into Christmas

Researchers share the easy ways to uncover moments of festive discovery, proving you don’t need a lab coat to experiment this Christmas

Christmas may seem like a time for switching off and suspending disbelief but there are plenty of ways to introduce a little science into the celebrations.

We asked experts for their top home experiments to challenge friends and family.

Published: December 24, 2025, 9:00 am

‘I plugged in Zelda and everything changed’: developers share their fondest Christmas gaming memories

From a family showdown on Guitar Hero III to the winter levels in Diddy Kong Racing, the designers of some of today’s top titles recall the gifts and moments that lit up their childhoods

There is a viral video that tends to get passed around at this time of year. It’s an old home movie showing a boy and a girl on Christmas morning eagerly unwrapping a present that turns out to be an N64 console – the boy is, to put it mildly, extremely pleased. It’s a scene a lot of us who play games will recognise: the excitement and anticipation provided by that big console-sized parcel, or the little DVD-shaped package that could be the latest Super Mario adventure. Although I never got a games machine at Christmas, I remember one year being given Trivial Pursuit on the Commodore 64 and the whole family gathered around the TV to play. It was one of the few times my mum and my sisters showed any interest in the computer, and I loved getting them involved.

Veteran designer Rhod Broadbent of Dakko Dakko recalls the Christmas of 1992, when his father, a programmer who had previously looked down on games consoles, bought him Mario Kart and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. “Zelda was completely unknown to me at the time,” he recalls. “I think Dad was probably expecting me to be more excited. But after I had spent the morning in Mario Kart, I plugged in Zelda and everything changed. From the title music, through the intro and into that beautiful initial thunderstorm, everything was so polished and smooth and unlike the video games I’d played before. It didn’t leave the cartridge slot for weeks. I remember that Christmas morning like it was yesterday …”

Published: December 24, 2025, 10:00 am

My big night out: I spent the evening with Ant and Dec – and it sparked an audacious new ambition

I was a chemistry student, my days spent boiling, titrating and stirring. But after that night, I formed a double act with a friend, writing jokes and making a radio show, before heading off to Australia …

Although I loved my time at Nottingham University, I didn’t go there with much intention of doing anything with my degree in chemistry afterwards. Not only was it full-on, I wasn’t particularly good at it. In an experiment to examine the incubation of goat’s blood, I accidentally added 10 times too much hydrogen peroxide. Blood shot out of the flask and splattered all over my face like a scene from The Sopranos. I can still hear my professor’s screams.

But that’s OK, because I hadn’t really gone to university to win the Nobel prize, I’d gone to experience the culture of the mid 90s. British dance music – through acts such as Orbital, Leftfield, Underworld, Faithless and the Chemical Brothers – was exploding. Britpop was happening around me: (What’s the Story?) Morning Glory was released the week I went to uni. My entry to this smorgasbord of cool happened when, in our second year, Ant and Dec announced a live show up in town.

Published: December 24, 2025, 1:00 pm

Why are drug prices so high in America? Trump doesn’t have the right answer | Susi Geiger and Théo Bourgeron

Americans are not paying high prices because of other western countries. Pharmaceutical companies are to blame

When Donald Trump spoke about drug prices on 19 December, he struck a familiar note. Americans, he said, were paying far too much for medicines – and it was everyone else’s fault.

There would be no talk of reining in private insurers or pharmaceutical profits. Instead, Trump blamed foreign governments for getting a better deal. Countries like France, Germany and Japan, he argued, were piggybacking on the United States by keeping their drug prices low.

Susi Geiger and Théo Bourgeron are the authors of Peak Pharma: Toward a New Political Economy of Health (Oxford University Press)

Published: December 24, 2025, 11:00 am

In Berlin, I took an evening class on fascism – and found out how to stop the AfD | Tania Roettger

With the far-right party ahead in the polls, I discovered that a novel set during the rise of the Nazis provides a timely warning

In 1932, the Berlin-born writer Gabriele Tergit set out to memorialise what she saw as a disappearing world: the lives and fates of the city’s Jews. By 1945, after fleeing the Nazis first to Czechoslovakia, then Palestine, then Britain, Tergit had finished her novel, but it took until 1951 for The Effingers to be published. Even then, only a few German booksellers wanted it in their shops. It was too strange a piece of work for a German public that had watched, if not participated, in the Holocaust.

Though overlooked at the time, it has been rediscovered as a classic in Germany, and has now been published in English for the first time. It is a chronicle of three affluent Jewish families in Berlin between 1878 and 1942, with an epilogue set in 1948, based on Tergit’s return visit to her destroyed city. Tergit understood how dangerous the Nazis were. She was a court reporter and covered Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels on trial in the 1920s – this also made her a target, and she fled Berlin after narrowly escaping an SA (“Brownshirts”) raid in March 1933.

Tania Roettger is a journalist based in Berlin

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Published: December 24, 2025, 5:00 am

A key question for every believer: does God approve of Santa Claus? I hope so, or I’m in trouble | Ravi Holy

The great Santa deception arguably breaches the ninth commandment (‘Thou shalt not bear false witness’). I think God would cut us some slack

When I was first ordained, an older priest gave me three commandments for a successful ministry: one, try not to upset the flower ladies; two, don’t preach pacifism on Remembrance Sunday; and, three – and most important – never tell children that Santa isn’t real.

If only someone had had that talk with RevDr Paul Chamberlain, who last Christmas reduced a classroom full of year 6 children to tears by telling them the truth: “It’s your mum and dad.” (I hope that doesn’t come as a shock to any of you.)

Ravi Holy is rector of the United Wye Benefice in Canterbury, Kent, and a standup comedian

Published: December 24, 2025, 12:00 pm

No bickering around the Christmas tree! If your family are trapped by their algorithms, here’s the way out | Dr Kaitlyn Regehr

My research on social media shows high levels of misinformation and disconnect. Here’s how to talk to kith and kin this week without tears and tantrums

• Dr Kaitlyn Regehr is the programme director of digital humanities at University College London

December: a time of cultural rituals around food, gathering and taking to TikTok to bemoan bigoted relatives. Indeed, this new cultural ritual is now a social media staple that sweeps across our feeds over the festive period. We post about intergenerational debates on politics; stomaching “wokeness” jokes; and the now near-mythical “uncle” character – the older male holding court at the table – exemplified by tweets that go something like: “My uncle just went on a 10-minute rant about [insert topic]. The turkey is dry and so is his take.”

In these situations, many of us are torn between the impulse to call out harmful speech and our (or more often, our mother’s) longing for family harmony. These micro-yuletide tensions are played out at dinner tables across the country and are indicative of broader cultural and political polarisation. Polarisation is amplified by the social media-driven information silos in which we all now live.

Be proactive, not reactive. Start conversations organically, rather than in reaction to a comment or event. This will set an objective tone. Make conversations short and often, rather than one big event.

Think “big picture”. Focus the conversation on the overarching structures at play, perpetuated by the attention economy. Where possible, inspire agency around these topics by offering information about online processes and then let them do the critical thinking.

Focus on the positive. For young people in particular, focus on positive examples, role models and narratives. This is often much more powerful than talking about the negative examples. Talk to older children and teens about what they can be rather than what they can’t.

Dr Kaitlyn Regehr is programme director of digital humanities at University College London, lecturing on digital literacy and the ethical implications of social media and AI. She is also the author of Smartphone Nation: Why We’re All Addicted to Screens and What You Can Do About It

Published: December 24, 2025, 8:00 am

Trump loomed over sport like never before in 2025. Next year he will take even more

From the Super Bowl to UFC cards to the US Open to the Ryder Cup, the US president has turned sport into his own personal stage. There’s more to come

Considering he’s the self-declared hardest working president to ever hold the office, Donald Trump has spent a remarkable amount of the past year away from it. In 2025, he loomed over sports like no American politician before him, his visits to stadiums and arenas and golf courses and race tracks so frequent they began to feel like part of the job description. But if Trump’s presence on the sporting scene has seemed hard to escape, gird yourselves for 2026, when the American presidency no longer merely intersects with sport but threatens to subsume it. The World Cup is on the way, the Olympics are right behind it, a UFC card is coming to the White House lawn (not a joke) and the commander-in-chief’s well-documented fondness for jumbotrons is becoming less of a habit than a dependency.

Trump’s grand tour sportif began less than three weeks after his second inauguration, when he become the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl. One week later he was at the Daytona 500, where Air Force One buzzed the speedway on arrival before his armored limousine, “The Beast”, paced the field for a couple of ceremonial laps.

Published: December 24, 2025, 5:00 am

Venus Williams marries actor and model Andrea Preti in Palm Beach ceremony

• Wedding follows five-day celebration in Florida

• Preti is a Danish-born Italian actor and model

• Williams plans to return for 33rd WTA season

Venus Williams married actor and model Andrea Preti over the weekend, the tennis great announced Tuesday on social media.

Williams, 45, and Preti were married in Palm Beach, Florida, following a five-day celebration that included family and close friends. The couple also held a non-official ceremony in Italy earlier this year.

Published: December 24, 2025, 12:19 pm

Alex Sarama: how a 30-year-old Englishman became an WNBA head coach

Portland Fire are set for their debut season in the WNBA. Their coach has completed an unlikely journey to the top of his sport

As an aspiring basketball coach in his teens and early 20s, Alex Sarama was often met with snickers when he talked about the game he loved. For the British-born Sarama, who on 28 October was named the head coach of the WNBA’s newest expansion team, the Portland Fire, people doubted him before he even put two sentences together.

“There was a lot of skepticism,” he tells the Guardian. “A lot of coaches heard the accent and they’d say straight away this Alex guy can’t coach!”

Published: December 24, 2025, 5:00 am

Martha Stewart becomes latest celebrity to invest in Swansea City FC

US lifestyle entrepreneur joins Snoop Dogg and Luka Modric by making minority investment in the Welsh club

The American lifestyle personality Martha Stewart has become the latest celebrity to become a co-owner of Swansea City football club.

Stewart will join the rapper Snoop Dogg and the footballer Luka Modric as a minority owner of the Welsh club, which plays in the second tier of England’s football pyramid. The announcement was made in a post on the club’s website by two of its owners, Brett Cravatt and Jason Cohen. The post did not disclose the size of the investment.

Published: December 24, 2025, 11:36 am

Koepka’s departure is a blow for LIV but also raises questions for PGA Tour | Ewan Murray

Five-time major champion looks poised to become a fascinating test case for golf’s future after exiting Saudi-funded breakaway tour

It was portrayed as amicable when it felt so inevitable. News that Brooks Koepka will step away from LIV Golf in 2026 comes as no shock. This never felt a particularly sensible alliance; an individual who craves glory at the top level and a disruption regime that has grasped for relevance with only varying degrees of success.

Koepka has looked unhappy in his professional domain for some time. He has all but admitted he would never have joined LIV but for fears over a potentially career-threatening injury. Golf’s ultimate alpha male was the captain of LIV’s Smash GC team. The whole thing always seemed preposterous.

Published: December 24, 2025, 11:22 am

Enticing Salah would be a coup for Saudi league searching for an identity

Egypt forward could change face of a league so far mostly reliant on ageing stars and alter perception of football in the Arab world

Mohamed Salah has made an impact in Morocco with an injury-time winner to spare Egypt’s blushes in their Africa Cup of Nations opener against Zimbabwe but his future intervention in Saudi Arabia could be more meaningful. A Saudi Pro League (SPL) that had been moving away from signing big-name veterans is tempted by a player who will be 34 just as this season ends.

Although players such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema have been successes on and off the pitch, albeit incredibly expensive ones, the powers that be don’t want the SPL to be regarded as a retirement league in the sun for stars whose powers are waning. But Salah is different, the attraction intensified by the fact that he is the biggest-name player in the Arab world.

Published: December 24, 2025, 12:00 pm

Sivert Guttorm Bakken, Winter Olympics hopeful, dies at training camp aged 27

• Norwegian biathlete found dead in hotel room in Italy

• Bakken, 27, was 13th in this season’s overall standings

Norwegian biathlete Sivert Guttorm Bakken has been found dead in his hotel room in Lavaze, Italy. The Norwegian Biathlon Association said the cause of the 27-year-old’s death was unknown.

The International Biathlon Union, the sport’s governing body, said the athlete’s death had been confirmed by Italian authorities.

Published: December 24, 2025, 12:43 am

Car with ‘Happy Chanukah’ sign firebombed in suspected antisemitic attack in Melbourne

Police say the vehicle was set alight in the driveway of a property in St Kilda East in the early hours of Christmas Day

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A car with a “Happy Chanukah” sign has been firebombed in a Melbourne suburb in the early hours of Christmas morning.

The suspected antisemitic incident comes less than two weeks after the terror attack that targeted Jews celebrating the holiday of Hanukah at Sydney’s Bondi beach and claimed 15 lives.

Published: December 25, 2025, 3:14 am

US and Ukraine edge closer to joint plan to end war – with Moscow’s response uncertain

Ukraine accepts principle of demilitarised zone in east, while insisting Russia make similar concessions in pulling back forces

Washington and Kyiv have edged closer to a jointly agreed formula to end the war in Ukraine amid continuing uncertainty over Moscow’s response and a number of unresolved issues.

Revealing the latest status of the peace talks, brokered by Washington, Ukraine’s president, Volodmyr Zelenskyy, appeared to have secured several important concessions from earlier versions of the now-slimmed-down plan after intense talks with the US negotiating team.

Published: December 24, 2025, 1:37 pm

‘There’s no going back’: Iran’s women on why they won’t stop flouting dress code laws

Despite fresh attempts to make women cover up, many believe the regime wouldn’t risk mass arrests for fear of sparking a wave of popular unrest last seen after the killing of Mahsa Amini

On the streets of Iran’s capital, Tehran, young women are increasingly flouting the compulsory hijab laws, posting videos online that show them walking the streets unveiled. Their defiance comes more than three years after the killing of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman taken into custody by the “morality police” for allegedly breaching the dress code rules. Her death led to the largest wave of popular unrest for years in Iran and a crackdown by security services in response, with hundreds of protesters killed and thousands injured.

Under Iran’s “hijab and chastity” law, which came into force in 2024, women caught “promoting nudity, indecency, unveiling or improper dressing” face severe penalties, including fines of up to £12,500, flogging and prison sentences ranging from five to 15 years for repeat offenders.

Two young female friends meet up in Laleh park to rest and drink tea together after a long working day. They used to be classmates studying English

Published: December 24, 2025, 4:00 pm

Israel strikes southern Lebanon as deadline to disarm Hezbollah nears

Strikes were latest violation of year-long ceasefire and targeted what Israel said were Hezbollah sites

Israel has carried out several airstrikes in southern Lebanon on what it said was Hezbollah infrastructure, as a new year’s deadline for the Lebanese state to disarm the group in the south of the country loomed.

Israeli warplanes bombed the valleys of Houmin, Wadi Azza and Nimeiriya in the southern Nabatieh area on Wednesday morning. Residents reported that Israeli drones continued to hover over the area and other areas of south Lebanon and its eastern Bekaa valley after the strikes.

Published: December 24, 2025, 3:08 pm

Rob and Michele Reiner died minutes after attack, says death certificate, as children announce memorial

Two of the couple’s children have said they are planning a memorial service for their parents, as further details are released about their cause of death earlier this month

New details have emerged about the deaths of Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner, whose bodies were discovered on Sunday 14 December in their home in Brentwood, Los Angeles.

Their death certificates have been released by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, obtained by TMZ and reported by multiple US outlets. They record that Rob Reiner’s body was found at 15.45, and Singer Reiner’s at 15.46. The cause of death for both is given as “multiple sharp force injuries” with the circumstances described as “homicide” and “with knife, by another”.

Published: December 24, 2025, 11:17 am

Woman deported before she could see dying husband in ICE custody: ‘I never saw him again’

Francisco Gaspar-Andrés died in El Paso hospital after being detained at Fort Bliss – his wife was deported to Guatemala without a chance to see him

A Guatemalan man has become the first person to die in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the Fort Bliss army base in Texas. His wife of 25 years was deported from the same camp without a chance to see her dying husband.

Francisco Gaspar-Andrés, 48, died on 3 December at a hospital in El Paso, as Democratic lawmakers and immigration advocates were ramping up demands that the camp be closed down amid allegations of inhumane conditions there. The DHS has said such allegations are “categorically false”.

Published: December 24, 2025, 12:00 pm

North Carolina Christmas tree farmers are optimistic after Hurricane Helene

More than a year after the storm ripped apart families and farms, growers are bullish about strength of their industry

Christmas tree farmers in western North Carolina are still rebuilding from last year’s devastating Hurricane Helene, but growers are optimistic about business and the overall strength of their industry in the region.

“There’s still a lot of recovery that needs to happen, but we’re in much better shape than we were this time last year … sales are good,” Kevin Gray, owner of Hickory Creek Farm Christmas Trees in Greensboro, said earlier this month, while the buying season was in full swing.

Published: December 24, 2025, 4:00 pm

‘You sneak in and hope you make it back’: the Sudanese volunteers risking it all to bring care to millions

Members of Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms network tell Guardian they didn’t mind missing out on the Nobel peace prize because ‘we only want to help’

Doing good gets you killed in Sudan. It was why Amira did not tell her mother when she joined a volunteer group that felt like the only thing stopping her country sliding deeper into dystopia.

Each morningshe secretly crossed the shifting frontline of Sudan’s North Kordofan state. Amira was entering territory held by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), paramilitaries who have committed countless war crimes, including genocide, during the country’s cataclysmic war.

Published: December 24, 2025, 1:00 pm

Thailand and Cambodia begin talks to end deadly clashes after venue row

Negotiations expected to last four days as each side calls on the other to show sincerity in words and actions

Cambodian and Thai officials began four days of talks at a border checkpoint on Wednesday intended to negotiate an end to the deadly clashes between the two countries, Phnom Penh said.

The meeting in Thailand’s Chanthaburi province had been at risk after Phnom Penh demanded a switch to a neutral venue.

Published: December 24, 2025, 12:53 pm

How hope is fading: the mobs bringing violence back to the streets of Bangladesh

As crowds attack newspaper offices and violence has killed 184 people, the optimism around Sheikh Hasina’s overthrow has dimmed

The sounds of a mob were already audible when Zyma Islam hit send on her article for Friday’s edition of Bangladesh’s Daily Star newspaper. She quickly headed out, hoping to avoid the crowd that had already burned down the offices of Prothom Alo, another of Bangladesh’s most prestigious newspapers. But when she reached the door, they were already there.

The rioters were angered by the assassination of Sharif Osman Hadi, a prominent leader from the pro-democracy movement that unseated the former prime minister Sheikh Hasina in August 2024. Hadi’s killers were Hasina loyalists who had escaped to India, according to the authorities. The crowd that had rapidly gathered on the night of 18 December was ready to lash out at anyone they saw as linked to the previous government.

Published: December 24, 2025, 9:45 am

Algeria passes law declaring French colonisation a crime

France’s rule over Algeria from 1830 to 1962 is marked by mass killings and large-scale deportation

Algeria’s parliament has unanimously approved a law declaring France’s colonisation of the country a crime and demanded an apology and reparations.

Lawmakers, standing in the chamber wearing scarves in the colours of the national flag, chanted “long live Algeria” on Wednesday as they applauded the passage of the bill, which states that France holds “legal responsibility for its colonial past in Algeria and the tragedies it caused”.

Published: December 24, 2025, 3:02 pm

Song Sung Blue review – Neil Diamond tribute act gets sweet treat of movie thanks to Jackman and Hudson

Film that follows a Milwaukee married couple as they rise to fame with a real-life band called Lightning and Thunder is undeniably entertaining

Here is a startlingly strange, undeniably entertaining true-life story from the heartland of American showbusiness; a lovable crowdpleaser whose feelgood flavour won’t prepare you for the way the plot repeatedly and savagely twists like an unsafe fairground ride. I actually had my eyes closed and mouth open at certain key points, and was grabbing the seat in front of me with both fists. It also may yet prove that, yes, Hugh Jackman really is the greatest showman (his role here is much more interesting than his bland impersonation of PT Barnum) and his co-star Kate Hudson brings just the same performance megawattage.

Mike and Claire Sardina, terrifically played by Jackman and Hudson, were a Milwaukee married couple with kids from previous relationships who in the 90s formed a cheesy Neil Diamond tribute act called Lightning and Thunder; they became a cult hit in their home state and even opened for Pearl Jam whose guitarist Eddie Vedder good-naturedly joined them on stage for an encore. But things were not easy for them, and this film broods on how tough it is when the lightning of ill fortune strikes more than once.

Published: December 24, 2025, 9:00 am

The 20 best podcasts of 2025

Can Bill Nighy solve your life problems? Why are comedians moonlighting as detectives? And what happens when an AI steals your heart? This year’s most addictive podcasts …

20

Published: December 24, 2025, 11:00 am

The 10 best folk albums of 2025

Jennifer Reid sang workers’ songs, Malmin plumbed gnarly Norwegian hinterlands and Quinie rode across Argyll on a horse
• The 50 best albums of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025

Inspired by Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden and the quivering soundscapes of early Bon Iver, Tomorrow Held is the beautiful second album by fiddler Owen Spafford and guitarist Louis Campbell, their first on Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records. Mingling traditional tunes with influences from minimalism, post-rock and jazz, they shift moods exquisitely: from the reflectiveness of 26, a track in which drumbeats echo in the distance like heartbeats, to the trip-hop-like grooves of All Your Tiny Bones and the feverish panic of the full-throttle final track, Four.

Published: December 24, 2025, 7:00 am

Killing the Dead by John Blair review – a gloriously gruesome history of vampires

Shroud-chewers, lip-smackers and suckers populate this fascinating study of ‘the unquiet dead’ across the centuries

The word “vampire” first appears in English in sensational accounts of a revenant panic in Serbia in the early 18th century. One case in 1725 concerned a recently deceased peasant farmer, Peter Blagojević, who rose from the grave, visited his wife to demand his shoes, and then murdered nine people in the night. When his body was disinterred, his mouth was found full of fresh blood. The villagers staked the corpse and then burned it. In 1745, the clergyman John Swinton published an anonymous pamphlet, The Travels of Three English Gentlemen, from Venice to Hamburgh, in which it is written: “These Vampyres are supposed to be the Bodies of deceased Persons, animated by evil Spirits, which come out of the Graves, in the Night-time, suck the Blood of many of the Living, and thereby destroy them.” And so a modern myth was born.

But it is not so modern, or exclusively European, as this extraordinary survey shows. Instead, the author, a historian and archeologist, argues that belief in the unquiet dead is found in many cultures and periods, where it can lay dormant for centuries before erupting in an “epidemic”, as in Serbia. Where there is no written source, John Blair makes persuasive use of archeological finds in which bodies are found to have been decapitated or nailed down. In 16th-century Poland, a buried woman “had a sickle placed upright across her throat and a padlock on the big toe of her left foot”. Someone, our author infers reasonably, wanted to keep these people in their coffins.

Published: December 24, 2025, 7:00 am

Converts by Melanie McDonagh review – roads to Rome

A thought-provoking examination of the literary stars who became Catholic – from Evelyn Waugh to Muriel Spark

In the five decades between 1910 and 1960, more than half a million people in England and Wales became Catholics. Among them were a clutch of literary stars: Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark and Graham Greene. But there was a whole host of poets, artists and public intellectuals less known to us today, whose “going over to Rome” provoked envy and dismay.

In this thoughtful though brisk book, Melanie McDonagh, a columnist for The Tablet, gives us 16 case histories of Britons who went “Poping” during the scariest decades of the 20th century. At a time when reason and decency appeared to have been chased out by political extremism and global warfare, it was only natural to long for something solid. Writing in 1925, Greene confided to his fiancee “one does want fearfully hard for something firm and hard and certain, however uncomfortable, to catch hold of in the general flux”.

Published: December 24, 2025, 9:00 am

Cillian Murphy meets Barry Keoghan in first look at Peaky Blinders film

Two stars of Irish acting unite in eagerly anticipated film about Birmingham gangster Tommy Shelby

Two stars of Irish acting are united as Cillian Murphy meets Barry Keoghan in the first look at the eagerly anticipated Peaky Blinders film.

Murphy questions his identity as “famous gypsy gangster” Tommy Shelby in the 70-second teaser released by Netflix on Christmas Eve.

Published: December 24, 2025, 8:32 pm

‘That’s a rare find!’ The casting genius who plucked this year’s biggest TV star out of 600 auditions

From Peaky Blinders to Sherwood, Shaheen Baig has cast some of the best shows on screen. But she struck gold with Owen Cooper for Adolescence – and won an Emmy. How does she spot such game-changing talent?

At the Emmys in September, Adolescence all but swept the board. It won best limited series. It won awards for writing, for directing, for cinematography. Three of its actors – Stephen Graham, Erin Doherty and Owen Cooper – all took home awards. But Adolescence also earned another Emmy for a craft that often goes overlooked: best casting.

Shaheen Baig was the woman responsible for casting Adolescence, and her Emmy is tucked away in the top right corner of the screen as we chat about her year over Zoom. She is mortified as soon as she realises this, immediately re-angling her webcam to keep it out of sight, lest anyone mistakes it for a boast.

Published: December 24, 2025, 1:00 pm

James Ransone obituary

American actor known for playing Ziggy in the TV crime drama series The Wire and his many roles in modern horror films

Anthem magazine called James Ransone “the perennial cool guy”, though it wasn’t quite that simple. Ransone, who has taken his own life aged 46, was a coiled, wiry actor whose remorseless stare and brooding good looks were complicated by a jangling vulnerability.

He was a stalwart of modern horror, cropping up in a string of lucrative shockers. The most successful, with a box-office gross of more than $450m, was It Chapter Two (2019), which completed a two-part adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a group of friends terrorised since childhood by a murderous clown.

Published: December 24, 2025, 4:04 pm

‘It’s the story of my life’: how a retired teacher transformed his memories into a miniature world

From postcards to 3D models of nativity scenes, Ken Bonham has spent decades crafting the vast collection of dioramas that fill his home in Birmingham

A miniature world can be found hidden inside a one-bedroom flat in Birmingham. For decades, Ken Bonham, a retired teacher, has made memory boxes of places he has visited with his dressmaker wife of 54 years, Maggie, each made up of items they have collected on their travels or Bonham has made.

Models of barns, castles and churches are also crammed into the property – made from cork, balsa wood, styrofoam – or 3D card elevations from Bonham’s photos. Each Christmas, Bonham delights his neighbours by crafting nativity scenes from items he has collected and crafted.

Published: December 24, 2025, 3:00 pm

How we eat and gather is central to who we are: the diaspora at Christmas

Our personal and shared communal traditions across food and drink play a dominant role in festive celebrations

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For us, what makes the Christmas period so special is how the nature of our celebrations and observances can be profoundly personal and widely shared at the same time. And nothing symbolises this better than the food and drink that fill our tables. In today’s newsletter we explore Christmas food traditions across the diaspora and how they represent our familial identities and wider communal histories.

There isn’t a single route to crafting a Nigerian Christmas table. Traditions vary from family to family, but there are a few staples that you will find at any large, celebratory gathering, regardless of the time of year: mountains of plantain; coleslaw smothered in salad cream or mayonnaise; an array of starters (spring rolls, chicken wings, savoury donut-style puff puff balls, samosas) endearingly known collectively as “small chops”; two types of rice: fried, and the regional favourite jollof. In our home, we have inherited the coloniser’s turkey, but most people choose chicken or beef, either roasted or prepared in a stew.

Published: December 24, 2025, 12:30 pm

Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: when it comes to lace, it’s all about the trimmings

Head-to-toe can be too much, but a lace trim on a skirt, a camisole under a blazer, lace tights? Now you’re talking

Sometimes a little goes a long way. This is true for Tabasco on eggs, for fragrance in an elevator, for confidence in the karaoke booth, and it is also, I have belatedly realised, the secret of how to wear lace.

All these years, I’ve been getting lace wrong by wearing too much of it. Killing it with overenthusiasm. Lace is beautiful stuff: delicate and romantic. Look closely at it and you will see tiny motifs and patterns, flowers and symbols, crafted in miniature like secret messages. Lace has drama: it is the fabric of marriages, funerals and christenings, after all. And it can switch vibes: white is chaste, red is raunchy, black is sophisticated. Lace has it all going on.

Published: December 24, 2025, 2:00 pm

How to turn an excess of herbs into a showstopping sauce for just about anything – recipe | Waste not

This make-ahead, easy green sauce is suitable for to almost any main dish and a great way to use up hang-about herbs

Whenever I want to cook something special, my first thought is always salsa verde, and Christmas is no exception. This vibrant sauce is so forgiving and endlessly versatile – a last-minute showstopper that can be whipped up with a few store-cupboard ingredients and some herbs. It’s normally made with parsley, garlic, capers, anchovy fillets, olive oil and vinegar, but as long as the end result is green and saucy, I’m generally more than happy. Finely chop whatever herbs you have to hand – I used rosemary, sage, lemon verbena and nasturtiumsfrom the garden.

Published: December 24, 2025, 1:00 pm

What happened next: how a shocking rape and murder case was solved – 58 years later

In Portishead, a dusty box of forgotten files led Jo Smith and her team to a criminal who had escaped justice for more than half a century. This was the longest-running cold case to be solved in the UK, and possibly the world

In June 2023, Jo Smith, a major crime review officer for Avon and Somerset police, was asked by her sergeant to “take a look at the Louisa Dunne case”. Louisa Dunne was a 75-year-old woman who had been raped and murdered in her Bristol home in June 1967. She was a mother of two, a grandmother, a woman whose first husband had been a leading trade unionist, and whose home had once been a hub of political activity. By 1967, she was living alone, twice widowed but still a well-known figure in her Easton neighbourhood.

There were no witnesses to her murder, and the police investigation unearthed little to go on apart from a palm print on a rear window. Police knocked on 8,000 doors and took 19,000 palm prints, but no match was found. The case stayed unsolved.

Published: December 24, 2025, 5:00 am

Tell us: do you have unusual living arrangements?

Perhaps you have been living with friends for many years, or live in a commune

Do you have what could be described as unusual living arrangements?

Perhaps you live in communal housing, or a commune or with extended family.

Published: December 24, 2025, 12:46 pm

Christmas Eve swims and an underground mass: photos of the day – Wednesday

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Published: December 24, 2025, 2:34 pm