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

Judge applies sentence to all 34 felony charges

The prosecution team has entered judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom, along with Emil Bove, a lawyer for Donald Trump.

Bove has taken a seat at the defense table.

Arguments are expected to start at 10am ET after app’s Chinese-based parent company ByteDance asked justices to review case

Could Donald Trump stop the TikTok ban?

Trump has filed a request with the Supreme Court to delay the implementation of a ban on TikTok until he takes office on 20 January, which the court declined to immediately act on. The president-elect’s intervention shows the significant effort by TikTok to forge inroads with Trump and his team during the presidential campaign.

The chances are you’ve already got most of the ingredients for these sweet treats in the kitchen cupboard, so you’re ready to get baking

The start of a new year feels like a good time to have a proper clear-out of my kitchen cupboards. After a frantic festive season, I like to take stock of what I’ve got and get creative with my store-cupboard staples. I had two large opened bags of oats and even more bottles of golden syrup, so naturally a batch of flapjacks was the only answer. You very possibly have all these items in your cupboards already, so have a rummage and give them a go.

Think you always know what your mate is thinking? Forever making elaborate plans together? You might be doing your friendships more harm than you realise, say these experts

“It’s very British to joke and tease to show affection, but it can tip over into being unhealthy,” says the friendship coach Hannah Carmichael. Her online community, Friendshift, coaches adults to build authentic friendships and navigate social situations. “At the heart of every healthy relationship is the ability to show up fully as ourselves,” she says.

Economy adds 256,000 jobs in December, with Biden boasting of 16.6m jobs created during presidency

The US labor market expanded strongly in the last jobs report of the Biden administration, according to new data released on Friday.

The number of new jobs added to the economy accelerated to 256,000 in December, up from 227,000 in November, soaring past expectations. The labor market last month was bolstered by new jobs in healthcare, retail and government.

• Frankfurt may consider €60m-plus bid for forward
• City also preparing £33m bid for Palmeiras’s Vítor Reis

Manchester City are considering testing Eintracht Frankfurt’s resolve to keep highly-rated forward Omar Marmoush with a formal bid while also monitoring Lens centre-back Abdukodir Khusanov and preparing an offer of €40m (£33m) for Palmeiras’s 18-year-old defender Vítor Reis.

While Frankfurt’s official stance is that Marmoush is not for sale, it is understood the club, currently third in the Bundesliga, may countenance a €60m-plus (£50m-plus) offer for the 25-year-old Egyptian, who has scored 18 goals and provided 12 assists in all competitions this season.

To solve the climate crisis, power must flow away from the billionaire class

When I feel uncertain, I find it’s helpful to write down things I know to be true. Fossil fuels are causing irreversible planetary overheating. Overheating threatens essentially all life on Earth. Oil and gas executives knew this but they chose to systematically lie and block a climate transition. They continue to make this choice.

I choose to focus my energy on the climate crisis because a habitable planet is a prerequisite for everything worth fighting for, and because the prospect of losing a planet feels horrific and sad to me in a primal way that I can’t express with words. I’m also simply in love with the Earth. But planetary overheating is really just the most geophysical symptom of extractive colonial capitalism – “billionairism” – a system designed to pump wealth from the poor to the rich, creating billionaires, the healthcare crisis, the housing crisis, genocide, hierarchies like racism and patriarchy, and a great deal of suffering.

Peter Kalmus is a climate scientist and author of Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution

• Spurs midfielder knocked himself out in EFL Cup semi
• Will miss three games, including north London derby

Rodrigo Bentancur has been given the all-clear to return to playing after he serves a 12-day concussion protocol. The Tottenham midfielder sparked concern when he collapsed to the turf in his club’s 1-0 Carabao Cup semi-final first-leg win over Liverpool on Wednesday night.

Bentancur was taken away on a stretcher after eight minutes of treatment and was assessed in hospital. The neurological tests have revealed nothing more serious than concussion.

Here are some of the more curious health hacks circulating on the social media platform – and what the evidence says

The deluge of improbable health hacks on TikTok can only mean it’s the start of a new year. Here we look at some of the more curious tips and the evidence, where there is any, behind them.

Justice rules against ordinances in counties and towns on Texas border that sought to limit access to mifepristone

The New Mexico supreme court late on Thursday ruled against several local ordinances in the state that aim to restrict distribution of the abortion pill.

In a unanimous opinion, the court said the ordinances invaded the legislature’s authority to regulate reproductive care.

How long does it take to change a habit? It varies, but one paper suggests it takes an average of 66 days. We ask writers to change one thing in their lives within that timeframe … and tell us if it works

• Read more in the 66 days to change series
• More summer essentials
• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Not even a year ago, I would have called myself crazy for giving up sugar, even for 66 days. But the truth is I eat way too much of it and it can’t be good for me.

I’ve eaten cake for breakfast on more than one occasion and can easily finish a packet of biscuits in a day. I have a soft spot for baked goods, kindled by the many bakeries and cafes in my neighbourhood. If I go to bed without eating something sweet I feel as though something’s missing.

Experts recorded 45 entanglements off Australia’s east coast in 2024 – but believe that’s ‘the tip of the iceberg’

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

At least 45 whales were entangled by fishing ropes and line on the east coast in 2024, and experts are calling for better management of fishing gear in Australia to prevent marine suffering.

Dr Olaf Meynecke, a marine scientist at Griffith University, said the issue of preventing whale entanglements was “largely ignored in Australia”.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

Summer holidays are a time of memory-making. We asked Guardian writers and contributors to share some of the summer holiday photos that transport them back to a simpler time

• More summer essentials
• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

It had always been Harriet’s dream to get married more than mine. I’ll never forget us as little girls on summer holidays, stretched out on twin beds, poring over her magazine cutouts of white wedding dresses, multi-tiered cakes and overflowing bouquets.

We would muse what our husbands’ names would be and how many children we would have. They would be born at the same time, so they could grow up together as best friends. Just like we had.

Photographer Adam Lampton discusses capturing the vice, cash and sheer excess of the special administrative region of China – a place built on contradictions

“I am not a huge gambler,” says Adam Lampton. “The first time I went to Macau, fresh out of grad school, I didn’t have any money to spare – it all went on camera film. People take it all very seriously, so I was too intimidated to sit down and be the white guy who didn’t know what the hell he was doing.”

As a non-gambler in Macau, the American photographer would have been an oddity – most tourists go there to “play”, hoping Lady Luck glances their way. The former Portuguese colony, now a special administrative region of China, is the world’s gambling mecca. Located on China’s south-east coast, just across the water from Hong Kong, Macau’s gambling revenues often put the US’s “Sin City” in the shade. The Macau government expects its gaming revenues to hit about $27bn in 2024, while declining Nevada looks set to fall below 2023’s record $15.5bn.

Mother and newborn saved from inflatable boat off Canary Islands, on a route on which thousands have died

The call that would lead to one of the most poignant images of the humanitarian emergency in the deadly waters off the Canary Islands came at 4am.

In the early hours of Monday, the Las Palmas command centre of Spain’s maritime rescue service, Salvamento Marítimo, told Domingo Trujillo, the captain of the search-and-rescue vessel Talía, that a small inflatable boat, packed with people, was adrift 97 nautical miles (180km) off the coast of Lanzarote. Among those onboard, they added, was a woman who was due to give birth at any moment.

Have you been following the big (and small) stories in football, cricket, motor racing, golf, tennis and rugby?

Sarah Silverman and others file court case claiming CEO approved use of dataset despite warnings

• Business live – latest updates

Mark Zuckerberg approved Meta’s use of “pirated” versions of copyright-protected books to train the company’s artificial intelligence models, a group of authors has alleged in a US court filing.

Citing internal Meta communications, the filing claims that the social network company’s chief executive backed the use of the LibGen dataset, a vast online archive of books, despite warnings within the company’s AI executive team that it is a dataset “we know to be pirated”.

Those who lived in regions with firefighting training areas earned about 1.7% less later in life, research shows

Early life exposure to toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” could impact economic success in adulthood, new first-of-its-kind research suggests.

The Iowa State University and US Census Bureau working paper compared the earnings, college graduation rates, and birth weights of two groups of children – those raised around military installations that had firefighting training areas, and those who lived near bases with no fire training site.

In 1989, an on-camera head to head triggered the then PM’s demise. Harriet Walter, Steve Coogan and James Graham discuss their gripping take on the bombshell broadcast

It was the interview that destroyed Thatcher. Three days after the furious resignation of her chancellor Nigel Lawson in October 1989, she went on TV for a 45-minute interview with an unlikely confidant of hers – Brian Walden, the Labour MP turned ITV journalist. She was ready for him, but she also trusted him: it wasn’t their first rodeo together. It was, however, emotionally intense.

“I think so many of his questions are beseeching,” says James Graham, the celebrated writer of Sherwood and Brexit: The Uncivil War, who has turned it into new drama Brian and Maggie, starring Steve Coogan as Walden and Harriet Walter as Thatcher. “Just say that you get it. Just say that you were wrong, just say that you’re not flawless. And if you do that, grab my hand and I’ll save you.” Saving her is the opposite of what happened.

Refugees tell of attacks on darker-skinned people and non-Arab groups by Rapid Support Forces and its allies in Darfur

Husna Ibrahim Arbab had already lost her son in the early days of Sudan’s civil war – burned to death in his tent after it was set on fire – when she was apprehended by militia aligned with the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group while fleeing west towards the border with Chad.

A bullet flew by close to her head, the 24-year-old said. Five male relatives were separated from the group she was travelling with, taken to a creek, and shot in the chest.

Trump and Maga allies are using the fires to attack leaders like Newsom – possibly foretelling power struggles ahead

If ever a situation cried out for elevating national unity over political divisions, the dystopian scenes emanating from the Los Angeles fires surely qualified.

The catastrophe that has left at least five people dead, more than 1,000 structures destroyed and forced thousands fleeing their homes would – in an ideal and less polarised America – spur humane empathy and solidarity in place of tribal partisanship.

• Eight-year agreement deepens Qatar’s role in the sport
• Inaugural Nations Championship is in London next year

Qatar Airways has agreed a deal worth up to £80m to become title sponsors of the new Nations Championship in a move that underlines rugby union’s determination to follow other sports in securing investment from the ­Middle East.

The Guardian revealed in October that Qatar had been chosen to stage the second finals series of the Nations Championship, in 2028, and the national airline has now come on board as headline sponsors. The eight-year deal will cover the qualifying matches and finals series for the first four editions of the new competition running from 2026 until 2034.

(Domino)
The Scottish art rockers’ sixth album benefits from an infusion of fresh blood, but can’t maintain the standards of the first few songs

A sparkling 2015 collaboration with Sparks aside, Franz Ferdinand’s career has felt like an exercise in diminishing returns, each successive album slightly less interesting than its predecessor. Seven years on from the paradoxically titled Always Ascending, their sixth set finally bucks that trend. Part of that could be down to an infusion of fresh blood, with frontman Alex Kapranos and bassist Bob Hardy the only surviving members of the original lineup.

From the opener Audacious on, it’s clear that revitalisation rather than reinvention is key, with Kapranos’s distinctive, arch delivery very much retaining centre stage, and the penchant for a big chorus undimmed. Indeed, there’s a long-absent freshness to the first few songs, which simply fizz with ideas: The Doctor possesses a manic energy; the standout Hooked deserves to fill dancefloors. But that early charge isn’t sustained and there’s a distinct sag to the middle of The Human Fear, the likes of Tell Me I Should Stay (its bassline’s unlikely nod to Oxygène-era Jean-Michel Jarre aside) and Cats (seemingly an act of watered-down auto-pastiche) distinctly less engaging. A comeback that’s only fitfully pleasing.

If time management is all life is, asks the author and narrator, why do we treat it as such a depressingly narrow-minded affair?

The title refers to the time most humans spend on Earth, assuming they live until their 80s. When the author Oliver Burkeman first made the calculation, he felt unexpectedly queasy at our “insultingly” short lifespans. He also began thinking about how we manage our time.

“Arguably, time management is all life is,” he notes. “Yet the modern discipline known as time management is a depressingly narrow-minded affair, focused on how to crank through as many work tasks as possible, or on devising the perfect morning routine, or on cooking all your dinners for the week in one big batch.” But what is the point of all that “doing” when life is so short?

Never trust a hippy selling pine-flavoured butter. Plus, a watch that finally explains it all

The AFSCA (Belgium’s federal agency for ensuring food supply chain safety – but of course you knew that) has been forced to issue a warning to the good people of Poirot’s homeland not to eat their Christmas trees. This is after the city of Ghent – an environmentalism hotspot in northern Flanders – posted tips on how to recycle their obsolete festive conifers into food, including using them to make pine-flavoured butter.

Norwegian capital’s sites were 98% free of fossil fuels last year, and it aims to increase use of electric machinery

Tafseer Ali felt no need to raise his voice as the pair of diggers lumbered past him, their treads weighing heavy on the rock and asphalt.

Quiet electric machines like these make it easy to work in the city centre, the construction manager said – and keep the neighbours happy. “If they have less noise, we get fewer complaints.”

• Neil Robertson replaces 2024 winner at Alexandra Palace
• O’Sullivan had withdrawn from Championship League

Reigning champion Ronnie O’Sullivan has withdrawn from the upcoming Masters snooker event on medical grounds.

The world No 3, who has won the competition eight times, was due to face John Higgins in the opening match on Sunday afternoon. Neil Robertson has replaced O’Sullivan in the draw for the tournament, which runs until 19 January at Alexandra Palace in London.

• Raducanu snubs spray after Swiatek and Sinner sagas
• ‘I’m going to tough it out because I don’t want to risk it’

Emma Raducanu says the chance of ingesting a contaminated substance is a notable concern on the minds of tennis players at a time when Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek continue to navigate the fallout of two of the most high profile anti-doping cases in the history of the sport.

Speaking at her pre-tournament press conference at the Australian Open before her first round match against the 26th seed Ekaterina ­Alexandrova on Monday, ­Raducanu said players must “manage the ­controllables” as well as they can. She had suffered a significant insect bite the previous day but declined the antiseptic spray she was ­provided because she did not want to risk ­taking a banned substance.

Three people arrested after group escapes Johannesburg house by breaking a window and burglar bar

South African police have rescued 26 Ethiopians from a suspected human trafficking ring in Johannesburg after the group broke a window and burglar bar to escape from a house where they were being held naked.

Three people were arrested on suspicion of people trafficking and possessing an illegal firearm on Thursday night after neighbours in the Sandringham suburb heard the commotion and tipped off the police, the Hawks serious crime unit said in a statement. Police urged the public to report any other escaped naked people in the area.

The judgment has been welcomed as an important shift in perceptions by human rights and mental health groups

A Kenyan judge has declared as unconstitutional sections of the country’s laws that criminalise attempted suicide. In a landmark ruling on Thursday, Judge Lawrence Mugambi of the country’s high court stated that section 226 of the penal code contradicts the constitution by punishing those with mental health issues over which they may have little or no control.

While the constitution says in article 43 that a person has the right to the “highest attainable standard of health”, criminal law states that “any person who attempts to kill himself is guilty of a misdemeanour and is subject to imprisonment of up to two years, a fine, or both”, with the minimum age of prosecution for the offence set at eight years old.

Sadly, the Amazon-Melania deal has much the same flavor as the rest of Trump appeasement moves – not just by Bezos but by others of his ilk

The language in a New York Times article was extremely restrained as it described Jeff Bezos’s evolving stance regarding Donald Trump.

The Amazon founder and the president-elect had had a rocky relationship in the past, “but in recent months, Amazon and Mr. Bezos have taken steps to repair it”.

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist

Premier of most populous province says rhetoric clouds trade relationship worth hundreds of billions of dollars

The United States will “feel pain” if Donald Trump doesn’t back down from his threat to impose steep tariffs on its northern neighbour, the leader of Canada’s most populous province has warned.

After a tumultuous week that left Canadian leaders flailing for a coherent national response to Trump’s provocations – including the suggestion that the US would annex its closest ally – Ontario premier Doug Ford told the Guardian: “We will never be for sale.”

The company’s plan to end its factchecking program is about appeasing Trump. That signals the making of a mafia state

This week Meta announced the elimination of its factchecking program in the US and rollbacks to content moderation policies on “hateful conduct”. These measures undoubtedly open the floodgates to more hateful, harassing, and inciting content on Facebook and Instagram. Immigrants and LGBTQ+ communities are two of the groups most likely to be affected.

Last month, after Donald Trump won the election, Zuckerberg visited Trump in Mar-A-Lago and then Meta sent $1m to his inauguration fund. When asked for comment about Meta’s policy changes, Trump admitted that Zuckerberg was “probably” influenced by his threats to imprison the tech CEO.

With a new year comes new plans, but don’t forget to relax in and enjoy your garden at this time of year, too

I don’t love gardening to-do lists – they make it feel too much like work – but I do think there’s value in thinking about what you’d like to do with your garden this year. Perhaps you haven’t been out in it for weeks, or maybe just for a few minutes here and there, to add the sprout leaves to the compost bin. But while January might be the sleepiest time in the garden – perhaps a snowdrop swelling somewhere, but otherwise fallen leaves and perennials tucked well beneath the earth – it’s still the start of a new year.

I have never been a huge one for new year resolutions, but I make gentle exceptions for my garden. Gardening is a practice that exists in the temporal space of hope. At this time of year, we imagine warmer days and flick through seed catalogues (if you want something more substantial, I recommend Katharine S White’s Onward and Upward in the Garden, a collection of the New Yorker fiction editor’s columns reviewing 1950s seed catalogues). The whole horticultural year unfurls before us: what will we do with it?

Biden signed a law banning the app in January – if parent firm ByteDance fails to block it, here’s what could happen

The US supreme court will hear arguments on Friday from TikTok and its China-based owner ByteDance, which is seeking to block a law signed by Joe Biden that will ban the short-form video app beginning on 19 January unless it is divested from ByteDance. TikTok has said divestment is “not possible technologically, commercially, or legally” and requested an injunction to pause the ban during the legal process.

More than 170 million Americans use TikTok. Lawyers for the company contend that banning the app violates the first amendment rights of those tens of millions of users; the argument did not sway a federal appeals court, which upheld the ban-or-sale bill in December. Congress passed the legislation with a bipartisan majority in April. US legislators fear that China will spread propaganda through the app, though they have produced no documentation of such manipulation. Donald Trump, who first championed banning the app in 2020, now opposes it after finding a large audience there during the presidential election. He has filed a brief on TikTok’s behalf to stay the ban until he takes office on 20 January.

Fire crews are facing dire challenges, hurdles that have intensified the fires and are complicating the response

• LA fires live updates: California wildfires latest news

As multiple fires rage around the Los Angeles basin, the 7,500 fire and emergency personnel on the ground are facing unprecedented conditions.

At least five LA residents have been killed, and the death count is expected to rise as responders search burned areas. At least 10,000 structures have been destroyed, and several of the five blazes are still burning out of control.

• All the latest before a busy weekend of FA Cup action
• Email Niall your thoughts | Sign up for Football Daily

Here’s the bottom of the final Premier League table last season…

17th Nottingham Forest

18th Luton

Fernanda’s pooch, Roo, has been banned from the home after an altercation with Vivienne’s cat. You decide if Roo should be let out of the doghouse

If Fernanda’s dog moves in, my cat will get stressed and not come home. That would break my heart

I’ve put in more effort to adjust to Vivienne’s life than she has to mine. Roo just needs training

The justices are increasingly operating by the sheer force of raw power. That should trouble us all

We’re supposed to believe that it was about a job interview. On Tuesday, president-elect Donald Trump spoke on the phone with supreme court Justice Samuel Alito; the call came just a few hours before Trump’s attorneys petitioned the supreme court to put a stop to his criminal sentencing, scheduled for this Friday, in a New York state court.

Alito insists that this was all perfectly innocent. “William Levi, one of my former law clerks, asked me to take a call from president-elect Trump regarding his qualifications to serve in a government position,” the justice told ABC News after word of the call leaked on Wednesday.