In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Trump robustly defended his health after the first year of his second term in office raised growing questions. Key US politics stories from 1 January 2026

Donald Trump has denied falling asleep while attending public meetings and robustly defended his health after the first year of his second term in office raised growing questions.

Trump, who at 79 is the oldest person to assume the US presidency, told the Wall Street Journal “my health is perfect” and expressed frustration with scrutiny of his wellbeing.

Trump called the actor and his wife, Amal, ‘two of the worst political prognosticators of all time’ after they were awarded French passports

George Clooney has lashed out at US president Donald Trump for criticising France’s decision to grant the Hollywood actor and his family French citizenship.

The 64-year-old Oscar winner, his wife, Amal Alamuddin Clooney, and their two children became French citizens earlier this month after living on a property in southern France for years.

Myanmar’s military rulers are holding the first elections since the 2021 coup, and life in the country’s biggest city is fraught with anxiety

Yangon feels, on the surface, like a normal, bustling city. In downtown areas, commuters stream past roadside sellers and diners perch beneath parasols. Packed buses and cars chug along the roads. At sunset, young people stop to pose for photos opposite the famous Sule pagoda, as it gleams against a pink-blue sky.

But almost five years on from the military seized power in a coup, ousting and imprisoning then de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, life for local people feels anything but stable. Myanmar’s military rulers are in the process of holding the first elections since before the coup, a vote that the junta has touted as a return to democracy and stability. The UN and western governments have called the process, which will be held in three phases ending on 25 January, a sham.

• Former world champion beaten 5-1 by rising star

• Littler cheered during rout of Krzysztof Ratajski

For the third time in this match, Gian van Veen is lining up the bull finish for a 170. This time, though, he steps away from the oche, and as the noise builds and swells around him, as the applause hardens into a tribal rhythm, he smiles. And in that moment, with millions of pairs of eyes on him, with glory within his grasp, he just knows. Knows that after all the years of hope and toil, of dreams and dismay, his moment is here at last.

That’s the thing about the future: you spend lifetimes waiting for it, peering into the glass, reading the tea leaves, and when it arrives it happens all at once. It was a little after half past nine on the first evening of the year, and already the throngs were streaming out of Alexandra Palace and back down the hill, convinced beyond any fraction of a doubt that they had just seen the next few years of darts take shape.

There was an extraordinary moment just before kick-off here when Thomas Frank strode 20 yards on to the pitch and applauded all four corners of the stadium. The Tottenham head coach was applauded back by the Brentford fans because he will always be a hero to them. His work over a near seven-year period as their manager has seen to that.

But what of the followers in his new gig, which began when he said farewell to the Gtech last summer? It is safe to say the jury remains out after this driest of January performances had the supporters in the away enclosure adapting a barb they have historically reserved for Arsenal. “Boring, boring Tottenham,” they chorused in the 85th minute.

Toby Morton now owns trumpkennedycenter.org, which advertises new year performance by the ‘Epstein dancers’

Donald Trump may be remaking the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts into a pool of his self-reflection, but a writer for South Park, the TV series that better reflects the obsessions and tendencies of the administration than any political pundit, has purchased the rights to trumpkennedycenter.org.

Toby Morton, a TV writer and producer who has worked on the long-running and joyfully offensive sitcom, said he purchased the domain in August after predicting the president would change the name from the Kennedy Center to the Trump Kennedy Center after he installed himself as chair and stocked the board with loyalists.

Something had to give and it was not Sunderland’s unbeaten home Premier League record. Instead ­Manchester City’s winning streak came to a juddering halt as Pep ­Guardiola’s side spurned a chance to move within two points of Arsenal at the top of the table.

Hats – or should that be chapeaux – off to Régis Le Bris and his clever and courageous Sunderland team for not merely frustrating City but offering Gianluigi Donnarumma scope to remind everyone precisely why he is a world-class goalkeeper.

Batter has been thrown in at the deep end at No 3 and if the selectors have faith in a young player they should be doing everything to help them succeed

There used to be a saying in county cricket: a quick game’s a good game. You’d hear it from the old pros who sensed a poor wicket or a downpour, because it meant they would get more time off. Well, England and Australia have certainly adhered to that saying.

There’s another one you hear a lot in cricket these days: there’s a ball with your name on it. It frees batters up, takes the pressure off, and allows them to run down the wicket, to play scoops and ramps, in the belief that they have to be proactive because there’s a good ball round the corner. Modern batters don’t want to trust their defence and, if the world’s best players have that mindset – you hear it a lot from this England setup – you’re going to get a lot of unnecessary dismissals, leading to accelerated matches. That’s what we saw in the fourth Test, exacerbated by an unsatisfactory pitch.

Hundreds of people gather in Centenary Square to see in 2026 after false claims online promise ‘dazzling’ display

The new year got off to an anticlimactic start for hundreds of people in Birmingham who were tricked into attending a non-existent New Year’s Eve fireworks display. Again.

Crowds of revellers gathered in the city’s Centenary Square, hoping to catch a glimpse of a pyrotechnics display to welcome in 2026.

New mayor gives speech at inauguration and rescinds all orders signed by Eric Adams after corruption indictment

Zohran Mamdani vowed to “reinvent” New York City in a speech on his first day as mayor, promising “a new era” for America’s largest city and an ambitious start to his term of office.

The 34-year-old political star and democratic socialist, who a year ago was a virtually unknown state assemblyman, is the city’s first Muslim mayor, the first of south Asian descent and the first to be born in Africa. He is also the first to be sworn in using the Qur’an.

It is a strange quirk of this fixture that the away side has not lost for the last 10 Premier League meetings between Crystal Palace and Fulham, with the substitute Tom Cairney’s late equaliser ensuring that streak goes on.

Only a brilliant save in added time from Dean Henderson and a glaring miss from the former Palace player Joachim Andersen denied Marco Silva’s side all the points after falling behind to Jean-Philippe Mateta’s first goal from open play since 1 November. But Oliver Glasner was still bitterly disappointed that his team could not end a sequence of six games without a victory in all competitions after running out of steam again in their 31st match of the season. “We are a little bit in survival mode,” said the Palace manager, whose team now face three games in the space of seven days.

Two unbeaten records were maintained at Anfield but only one team took satisfaction along with their point. Leeds succeeded in stifling and frustrating Liverpool as the first goalless draw of Arne Slot’s reign underlined the limitations that linger behind the Premier League champions’ recent recovery.

A drab scoreless draw, the first in 84 Liverpool games under Slot, owed much to the defensive excellence of Jaka Bijol and Pascal Struijk as Daniel Farke’s depleted visitors extended their unbeaten run to six matches and moved seven points clear of the relegation zone. But Liverpool’s contribution to a meagre spectacle was significant too.

Coach stopped toeing the line at Stamford Bridge with one eye on the Manchester City job, frustrating his employers

It was late on New Year’s Eve when Chelsea’s patience ran out. They knew that Enzo Maresca was attempting to engineer an exit from the club and now they were ready to call his bluff. Midnight was approaching and the fireworks at Stamford Bridge were about to erupt.

A baffling story soon had a familiar, predictable ending. Maresca, who is not the first manager to run out of friends at Chelsea, had taken the provocations too far. There was surprise when he told staff that he did not want to conduct his post-match press conference after the disappointing 2-2 draw with Bournemouth on Tuesday night. The official explanation was that Maresca was too unwell to talk in public, despite having just spent the evening coaching on the Stamford Bridge touchline, but the friction was palpable and it was never going to sit well with the Chelsea hierarchy when it took less than 24 hours for reports to emerge that the sickness line was a red herring and their head coach had actually decided not to meet the media because he needed time to consider his options. It was further confirmation that this was someone who wanted to be sacked. Maresca dared Chelsea to act and will have been the least surprised person in the world to find himself unemployed less than a day into 2026.

Congressmember delivered opening remarks at city hall, noting that Mamdani is the city’s first Muslim mayor

Zohran Mamdani and his wife Rama Duwaji appearing on stage for his inauguration ceremony earlier.

New York is a place that “a young immigrant democrat socialist Muslim can be bold enough to run and brave enough to win,” he says, “not by abandoning conviction, but by standing firmly within it.”

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Regis Le Bris also spoke to Sky: “A few weeks ago we struggled because they were really good and efficient through their counter pressing. I hope we learnt the lesson but it will be another experience at home with another energy so we’ll see.”

Pep Guardiola has been speaking to Sky: “Tough place and it means that anyone could win here. Hopefully we can perform. Josko [Gvardiol] had a few niggles, an incredible run of playing every three days and Savinho has speed and is fresh.

Blaze that swept through crowded New Year’s Eve bar in Crans-Montana also injured 115 people

• Le Constellation bar fire in Switzerland: what we know so far

Switzerland will hold five days of mourning after an “unprecedented” fire tore through a crowded bar, killing about 40 people and injuring 115 who were celebrating at a New Year’s Eve party in the Alpine ski resort of Crans-Montana.

The country’s president, Guy Parmelin, described the blaze as one of the most traumatic events in Switzerland’s history. “It was a drama of an unknown scale,” he said, paying tribute to the many “young lives that were lost and interrupted”.

New year party at Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana turned into tragedy as flames shot across the ceiling

The new year had passed its first hour and the party in Le Constellation was in full swing with revellers dancing to thumping hip-hop. Dawn was far off and the teenagers and twenty-somethings were in no hurry to leave the bar. It was, after all, New Year’s Day.

Outside, darkness draped Crans-Montana, a ski resort in the Swiss Alps with a reputation for posh luxury. Le Constellation, however, had few pretensions: a cavernous venue with TV screens on the top floor to watch sport, and a basement with low lighting, loud music and a dancefloor.

• Philogene and Akpom goals secure 2-1 win over Oxford

• Charlton hold Coventry 1-1; Derby upset Middlesbrough

Ipswich climbed into the automatic promotion places in the Championship following a 2-1 victory over struggling Oxford.

Their success came via first-half goals from leading scorer Jaden Philogene and Chuba Akpom, while Will Lankshear replied for the visitors. Ipswich moved a point above Middlesbrough after they fell to a 1-0 defeat at Derby, while Oxford remain three points from safety.

Over the holiday period, the Guardian leader column is looking ahead at the themes of 2026. Today we examine how the White House’s war on vaccines has left the future of a key technology uncertain and up for grabs

The late scientist and thinker Donald Braben argued that 20th-century breakthroughs arose from scientists being free to pursue bold ideas without pressure for quick results or rigid peer review. The rapid development of Covid-19 vaccines seemed to validate his claim: emergency conditions sped up trials, relaxed regulatory sequencing and encouraged scientists to share findings before peer review. Out of that sprang one of the great scientific success stories of our age: mRNA vaccines. These use synthetic genetic code to train the immune system to defend itself against viruses. Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, whose work enabled the mRNA Covid vaccine, went on to win the Nobel prize. Their breakthrough suggests that loosening traditional constraints could accelerate major scientific advances.

The extensive scientific and logistic infrastructure built during that period is now occupied with turning the technology towards other diseases: flu, HIV and even cancer. Until very recently, the US, which put more than $10bn into mRNA development, appeared primed to reap the scientific and commercial rewards. Despite the deregulatory zeal that birthed mRNA, the second Trump administration has rejected it. Instead, it has been remarkably steady in its commitment to the radical anti-science and anti-vaccine agenda of the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr. He has spent the past year undermining and outright sabotaging the US’s own success. Over the summer, the US Department of Health and Human Services announced a “coordinated wind-down” of federal funding for mRNA research, cancelling an additional $500m in funding for 22 projects.

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About 40 people are believed to have been killed and 115 injured after a fire tore through a crowded bar during a New Year’s Eve party in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana, according to the Italian foreign ministry. Video from the scene shows orange flames billowing from inside the ground-floor bar and lounge. Swiss police confirmed arson was not the cause and the blaze is thought to have been started accidentally

Investigators say no indication of terrorism or arson after 40 people die and 115 are injured in blaze

Dozens of people are presumed dead and about 115 injured, many of them seriously, after a fire at a bar in the Swiss Alps during a new year celebration at a luxury ski resort.

The blaze ripped through the packed bar, Le Constellation, early on Thursday in Crans-Montana, one of the top-ranked ski destinations in Europe, which lies about 25 miles (40km) north-west of Zermatt.

Second highest annual number of irregular arrivals on record reached British shores in 2025

More than 41,000 people crossed the Channel in small boats last year, figures branded “shameful” by the Home Office have revealed.

The government said 41,472 people arrived in the UK by crossing the Channel in 2025 – the second highest number on record after 45,774 made the journey in 2022.

There is much to learn from the New Labour playbook. We were disciplined, innovative, robust and proactive – and we won

• Labour needs complete ‘reset’ to defeat threat posed by Reform UK, says strategist

• Chris Powell is an election strategy analyst and advised the Labour party for more than 20 years

The next general election will be no ordinary democratic contest. Not the usual swing of the pendulum this way or that. It will be a key moment in the history of our democracy – and it could be less than three years away.

Be in no doubt: populists represent a new and terrifying threat to the kind of free elections and free society we cherish, but now take for granted.

Chris Powell is an election strategy analyst and advised the Labour party for more than 20 years. David Cowan, who co-authored this article, is founder of Forensics, a data and consumer research consultancy. They are co-founders of winningagainstpopulists.com

Abortion was seen as one of Democrats’ strongest issues in the 2024 election – new polls indicate that may be shifting

Up to seven states will vote on abortion rights this year. But recent polling indicates that Democrats may not be able to count on the issue in their efforts to drive votes in the 2026 midterms, after making abortion rights the centerpiece of their pitch to voters in the elections that followed the fall of Roe v Wade.

In 2024, 55% of Democrats said abortion was important to their vote, according to polling from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). But in October of this year, just 36% of Democrats said the same. By contrast, abortion remained about as important to Republicans in both 2024 and 2025, PRRI found. PRRI’s findings mirror a September poll from the 19th and SurveyMonkey, which found that the voters who cared most about abortion are people who want to see it banned.