Travis Head powers hosts to 356-run lead at Adelaide Oval
Ashes top 100 | Get the Spin newsletter | Email Tanya

68th over: Australia 276-4 (Head 142, Carey 57) Carse’s first ball is short and wide and thumped to the boundary by Carey. A diving catch by Smith saves any further blushes and that’s all Australia can milk from the over.

67th over: Australia 272-4 (Head 142, Carey 53) Stokes has the ball. Hair swept back and regal. Running in to the strains of the Barmy Army’s Jerusalem. On the ball. Just one single from it.

Trump’s justice department says more Epstein files will be released on a rolling basis after releasing heavily redacted documents on Friday

• Full report: Long-awaited cache of Epstein files released

Deputy attorney general Todd Blanche has said more files will be released by the justice department on a rolling basis.

He said in a post on X that “additional responsive materials will be produced as our review continues, consistent with the law and with protections for victims”.

Interview from 2019 reveals specific preferences for recruitment, including age and race

• Epstein files release – follow live

Investigative notes describing Jeffery Epstein’s detailed demands of the people he sent to procure children for his sexual predation are among the documents released by the Department of Justice on Friday.

They cast a grim spotlight on the actions of Epstein and those around him amid their efforts to procure young women and underage girls for the late disgraced financier. They were part of a long-awaited release of documents from Donald Trump’s justice department, which has been slammed for being only a partial release and heavily redacted.

Attacks come after two US soldiers and interpreter killed as Pete Hegseth says ‘this is … a declaration of vengeance’

The US military launched airstrikes against dozens of Islamic State targets in Syria on Friday in retaliation for an attack on US personnel, two US officials said on Friday.

The attacks come after Donald Trump vowed to hit back after an attack last weekend in Syria by a suspected Islamic State member.

Club remain bemused by head coach creating speculation he has issues with the hierarchy who want to avoid drama at all costs

One of the theories doing the rounds this week is that Enzo Maresca is behaving like someone who wants to be sacked. He has stumbled into a fight he cannot win. It did not go down well with Chelsea when Maresca lobbed a grenade into the mix by talking about not being supported enough after last Saturday’s humdrum win against Everton and it is hard not to read his refusal to defuse the situation since then as the stance of a man daring his bosses to act.

Chelsea remain bemused by their head coach creating speculation that he has issues with the club’s hierarchy by saying that the 48 hours before the Everton game had been his worst since joining the club. Sources say the outburst even caught people close to Maresca by surprise. Confusion reigns. It does not help that Maresca has publicly and privately rejected repeated opportunities to explain the source of his discontent, leaving it open for outsiders to assume that the Italian’s issues are with Chelsea’s hierarchy.

• Spaniard approaches sixth anniversary in charge

• Arteta ‘has to earn the right to be here tomorrow’

Mikel Arteta has conceded his long-term future at Arsenal is dependent on winning silverware as he prepares to celebrate his sixth anniversary in charge.

The Spaniard was appointed on 20 December 2019 and led Arsenal to the FA Cup a few months later but that remains his only major trophy since replacing Unai Emery. Arteta will mark six years in the job against his former club Everton on Saturday night – the same opponents Arsenal faced a day after he was announced as their manager. He watched that game from the stands before officially beginning his role the next day.

Dane wants time but before Saturday’s match against Liverpool, faithful are frustrated by stodgy performances

There are plenty of well-known checkpoints in the life cycle of a Tottenham manager and we have reached one with Thomas Frank. It is the pleading for time bit. “If nobody gets this, nobody will be able to turn this around,” he said after last Sunday’s 3-0 Premier League defeat at Nottingham Forest. It is not a “quick fix,” he added. And nobody was about to disagree.

Frank is veering towards another – the one where it is as if he wants to scream, to release the inner hurricane that he referenced in Nottingham. Is anybody seeing what he is seeing? In other words, the immense difficulties that he faces.

Analysts see ‘global construction frenzy that shows no signs of slowing’ amid surge in demand from AI boom

A new report finds that investment in the worldwide data center market reached $61bn this year, setting a new record atop the wave of the artificial intelligence boom.

The analysis by S&P Global, first reported by CNBC, documented what the market intelligence firm called a “global construction frenzy that shows no signs of slowing”, to build out the massive real estate, hardware, and energy requirements driven by insatiable demand from AI companies. S&P pegged 2024’s investment in the data center market at $60.8bn, just below the 2025 number.

Decision from state supreme court on deal once worth $56bn and now worth some $139bn overturns ruling that prompted angry Musk backlash

Elon Musk’s controversial $56bn pay package from Tesla was reinstated by the Delaware supreme court on Friday, two years after a lower court struck down the vast compensation deal as “unfathomable”.

The reinstated pay package could be worth as much as $139bn today, according to the New York Times. The decision comes less than two months after Tesla shareholders approved a new plan that could be worth $1tn to Musk, already the world’s richest person, in a decade’s time. Musk’s fortune currently stands at an estimated $600bn.

• Angels reach confidential settlement after civil trial

• Skaggs died in 2019 from fentanyl-laced pills

• Parties arrive at settlement while case with jury

The Los Angeles Angels on Friday settled a lawsuit over the drug overdose death of pitcher Tyler Skaggs.

The decision to settle was reached after a two-month civil trial in Southern California over whether the Angels should be held responsible for Skaggs’ 2019 death after he snorted a fentanyl-laced pill provided by the team’s communications director, Eric Kay.

Files that were viewable included images of Epstein socializing with Bill Clinton, as well as entertainers like Michael Jackson

• Epstein documents release – live updates

The Department of Justice on Friday released a long-awaited and huge tranche of documents detailing its investigations into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a major development in the lengthy saga that turned into one of the biggest political setbacks Donald Trump has suffered since his re-election last year.

While significant portions of the files are redacted, those that were viewable included images of Epstein socializing with an array of prominent figures, including entertainers like Michael Jackson, Chris Tucker and Diana Ross, and the entrepreneur Richard Branson. Bill Clinton appears in several photos, including one in which he is in a swimming pool along with Epstein’s convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. The images also show former British royal Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

From the Bondi beach rescuers to the women taking on the police, great acts of courage offer hope even in the bleakest times

Some traditions are getting harder to maintain. Among them, my own custom of devoting the last column before Christmas to reasons to be hopeful. In recent years, amid war and bloodshed, that task has been especially challenging – and this week was no exception.

It began with the news from Bondi beach, where 15 people were gunned down and dozens more injured, most of them Jews celebrating the festival of Hanukah. That came just two-and-a-half months after the deadly attack on Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester, on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur. To be a Jew at the end of 2025 is to fear that to gather together, whether at moments of joy or sorrow, is to take a mortal risk. That even to do relatively ordinary things together has become a matter of life and death.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist and the author of The Traitors Circle: the Rebels Against the Nazis and the Spy Who Betrayed Them

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

President Nicolás Maduro orders Venezuelan navy to escort oil tankers after seizure by US forces

• What action is Trump taking against Venezuela’s oil industry?

Donald Trump and his top advisers have refused to rule out the potential for open conflict with Venezuela as Nicolás Maduro urged his navy to escort oil tankers defying the largest US fleet deployed in the region in decades.

In an interview broadcast on Friday morning, Donald Trump told NBC News that going to war with Maduro’s regime remains on the table. “I don’t rule it out, no,” he said in a phone interview with the network.

The Bondi beach terror attack, the Brown University shooting, ICE in Chicago and a fallen Statue of Liberty: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

• Liverpool teammate discusses fallout from interview

• ‘He apologised to us … That’s the man that he is’

Curtis Jones has revealed Mohamed Salah apologised to the Liverpool squad for the fallout from his interview criticising the club and Arne Slot.

Salah was omitted from Liverpool’s Champions League win against Inter having accused the club of throwing him under a bus in response to a poor run of results. The striker also claimed his relationship with Slot had broken down and that he had earned his position in the team after eight phenomenal seasons.

Jilly Cooper, Joanna Trollope and Sophie Kinsella all changed the genre. A new generation of novelists are doing the same and sales are soaring

At last, the perception of popular fiction by women as “silly novels by lady novelists”, as George Eliot sniffily put it back in 1856, is changing. Next year, the British Book Awards will recognise romantic fiction for the first time. The recognition is long overdue.

This welcome news came in the same week as the deaths of two doyennes of the form, Joanna Trollope and, at just 55, Sophie Kinsella, only a couple of months after the loss of national treasure Dame Jilly Cooper. Between them these publishing power houses produced more than 100 books, sold millions of copies, and inspired hit films and TV series, most recently last year’s star-studded adaptation of Cooper’s 1985 Riders.

Around a quarter of all tickets for the world championship were sold to visitors from Germany. How did a country with no world-class player get hooked?

They walk among us, sit among us, sing among us. They speak perfect English, hunt in packs, down industrial quantities of Amstel just like everyone else. And yet to the trained eye, to the seasoned Ally Pally veteran, there is just something different to them. A comportment and a vibe. Perhaps the fact they speak perfect English. You can even spot a subtle distinction in the choice of fancy dress; fewer jockeys and 118 118 runners, more woodland animals and flag suits, less postmodern ironic and more Euro-kitsch. They come, mostly, in love and peace. Even so, the divide is real. Enmity? Perhaps a bit strong. Either way: don’t tell them your name, Pike.

Slowly and by degrees, the Germans are coming. At first in small scattered groups and landing parties, then larger expeditions, and then finally the full-scale mass incursion. A battery of tour buses spills the latest recruits up the steps and into the Palace. Package excursions sell out months in advance. Around a quarter of all tickets for this year’s world championship have been sold in Germany, rising to as many as a third for some sessions. Why are they here? What do they want? And how did a country that has never produced a world-class player of its own get so thoroughly hooked on the darts?

Exclusive song for online retailer prevents a hat trick of Christmas No 1s for Wham!, as Kylie becomes first woman to secure UK No 1 singles in four different decades

Kylie Minogue has scored her first UK Christmas No 1, and eighth No 1 single overall, with the song Xmas.

She beat competition from Wham!’s mega-streaming Last Christmas, which has been Christmas No 1 for the past two years: it was last week’s chart-topper but drops to No 2. Also in the race was Lullaby from the charity campaign Together for Palestine, which reached No 5.

Monitor says almost one in eight people face food shortages as flooding and cold exacerbate humanitarian emergency

The famine in Gaza has ended as a result of increased humanitarian aid deliveries into the territory, the UN said on Friday, though it warned that levels of hunger and the humanitarian situation remained critical.

Almost one in eight people in Gaza still faced food shortages, the UN said, adding that persistent hunger had been made worse by winter flooding and the colder weather. Most people in Gaza live in tents or other substandard accommodation as Israel destroyed much of the housing and civilian infrastructure during its two-year war.

Todd Blanche, deputy attorney general, says release of files won’t include full set, prompting outrage from lawmakers

• Epstein documents release – live updates

The Department of Justice on Friday released some long-awaited files related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but did not release everything in its possession as required by a law Congress passed last month. The partial release drew swift rebukes from Capitol Hill and threats of legal action.

Speaking in an interview on Fox News on Friday morning, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, said: “I expect we’re going to release several hundred thousand documents today, and those documents will come in all different forms, photographs and other materials associated with all of the investigations into Mr Epstein”.

What we know about the deal with TAE Technologies so far – from why it is happening to what fusion energy is

Trump Media & Technology Group, owner of Donald Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, announced a merger on Wednesday with a company developing fusion energy technology.

TAE Technologies, an energy company founded in 1998, will join with Trump Media via a $6bn merger that it promises will propel it to build “the world’s first utility-scale fusion power plant” next year.

Here’s how to follow along with our coverage – the finest writing and up-to-the-minute reports

Reportedly critical drone strike is first in Mediterranean since full-scale invasion began as maritime conflict grows

• ‘There are hundreds’: tracking Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ of oil tankers

Ukraine says it has attacked a Russian “shadow fleet” tanker with aerial drones 1,250 miles (2,000km) from its borders, in the first such strike in the Mediterranean Sea since Moscow’s full-scale invasion nearly four years ago.

Friday’s strike off the coast of Libya, which reportedly caused critical damage, took place on the day of Vladimir Putin’s annual end of year press conference in which he said Russia would respond to recent Ukrainian attacks on shadow fleet tankers.

Group called Robins des Ruelles later said in statement stunt was intended to highlight cost of living crisis

Dressed in red suits and backed by masked elves, a group of Santas marched into a Montreal supermarket, loaded their bags with thousands of dollars worth of groceries and disappeared into the night.

The bandit Santas later released a statement saying the food would be distributed to the needy, and saying the Robin Hood-style stunt was intended to highlight the spiralling cost of living crisis that has pushed basic necessities increasingly out of reach for ordinary Canadians.