We have already had a few bites for who is in line for Premier League traitor and both are for the same player. Erol Suleyman and Gareth Davis have emailed and said:
Shall we just put this one to bed early in two words? Sol. Campbell.
A reminder that we also have a 12.30pm kick-off in the Premier League. That’ll be Aston Villa hosting Nottingham Forest and Sarah Rendell has live coverage.
Here’s Rangers boss Danny Röhlspeaking ahead of kick-off. This is his first league Old Firm derby.
Overnight Friday, the US carried out airstrikes across Venezuela, with explosions rocking the capital, Caracas, before dawn. Shortly afterwards, Donald Trump announced that US forces had captured the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, and had flown them out of the country.
The stunning attack and unprecedented capture of a sitting president follow months of an intense US pressure campaign against Venezuela. Since September, the US navy has amassed a huge fleet off the Venezuelan coast and carried out airstrikes against alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific and seized Venezuelan oil tankers. At least 110 people have been killed in the strikes on boats, which human rights groups say could amount to war crimes.
Venezuelan officials have accused the US of trying to gain access to the country’s oil reserves, the largest in the world.
The bombardment of Venezuela and the capture of Maduro is a serious and dramatic escalation of the US campaign. The future of Venezuela’s ruling regime remains uncertain.
Guardian writers and readers share the simple tricks they use to bring a bit of joy into their lives
During the pandemic, my husband found some wood on our street and used it to build a tiny, squirrel-sized picnic table. We attached it to the side of our fence with a handful of peanuts on top. Few sights are guaranteed to lift my day more than watching a “dining in” Nutkin parking its rump on the tiny wooden seat, occasionally glancing towards the house as if he’s waiting for you to bring the drinks. If you don’t have as much time on your hands as my husband did during lockdown, you can buy one on Etsy.
The US president, Donald Trump, has said Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been captured and flown out of the country after a “large scale” pre-dawn assault on Caracas and the surrounding region. Here is what we know so far:
Donald Trump has claimed the US has “captured” Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, and flown them out of the South American country after a pre-dawn assault on Caracas and the surrounding region. The US president said a press conference will be held in Florida at 11am local time (4pm GMT).
Venezuela’s government accused the US of launching a series of attacks against civilian and military targets in the South American country, after explosions rocked its capital, Caracas, before dawn on Saturday.
In a statement, Venezuela’s government urged citizens to rise up against the assault and said Washington risked plunging Latin America into chaos with “an extremely serious” act of “military aggression”. “The entire country must mobilise to defeat this imperialist aggression,” it added.
Explosions and low-flying aircraft were heard in Caracas in the early hours of Saturday. In its statement, Venezuela’s government confirmed that the city had come under attack, as well as three other states: Miranda, La Guaira and Aragua.
Venezuela has accused the US of trying to “seize control” of the country’s resources, in particular its oil and minerals. Venezuela has called on the international community to denounce what it called a flagrant violation of international law that puts millions of lives at risk.
In the early hours of Saturday, the president of neighbouring Colombia, Gustavo Petro, called for an immediate emergency session of the UN security council, saying on social media that Venezuela had come under attack.
Colombia has mobilised its armed forces in the aftermath of US strikes on neighbouring Venezuela. President Gustavo Petro said Colombia was concerned about refugees fleeing in the aftermath of the attacks.
Petro posted on X that his government had held a national security meeting in which it was decided that forces should be sent to the border amid a potential “massive influx” of people leaving Venezuela.
The state has created the first registry in the US to track repeat domestic violence offenders
Let’s say you’re going on a first date and you want to make sure the person you’re meeting up with isn’t a registered sex offender. If you live in the US, you can find this out very quickly: there’s a centralized website provided by the US Department of Justice that lets you search a name or location in seconds.
From Britain’s medieval buildings to western pop and contemporary art, these creations showcase our interwoven stories
We are repeatedly sold a painfully two-dimensional picture of the motivations of those seeking shelter in Britain. According to this picture, migrants are eager to experience the benefits of our society, but they are also out to undermine it, because they come from cultures whose values are dramatically different from our own. Think of the ongoing “grooming gangs” scandal: an undeniably appalling series of events, institutional failures and victim-blaming that has been transformed into a narrative that suggests any “alien” is likely to be a sexual predator, since their predatory behaviour is a direct consequence of their religious and cultural background.
So often, all we are allowed to know about asylum seekers is that they are asking – with irritating persistence – for a place in our social fabric, as if they have no world of their own, no cultural hinterland, no really recognisable human values aside from mysterious and dangerous belief systems. This explains why there is now a feverish pressure to instantly reveal the ethnicity of any suspect in a major crime of unprovoked violence – as with the Cambridgeshire train attack (where, confusingly, it transpired that the hero of the day was a man of north African background), or the tabloid habit of illustrating stories about migrants with images of young men, usually of Middle Eastern appearance.
The photographer’s painted bottles and hoops enhanced a carefree afternoon on a Burmese beach
As a tuk-tuk driver, Moe Wai feels that he has honed both his observational and people skills. Wai lives and works in Myin Ka Par, a village in Myanmar, and became interested in mobile photography several years ago. In this instance, he used his phone to capture this gaggle of local children as they were returning home from school.
“They were playing on a sandbank with their own plastic bottles,” Wai recalls. He’d been collating props for some time; bottles and hoops he had painted in a variety of colours, including neon pink. “The children were happy to let me replace theirs with my own colourful ones for the purpose of this photo.” He later applied some minor edits using the Lightroom app.
The US may be making positive noises, but exhausted Ukrainians remain wary after nearly four years of war
“I would give anything in the world if, in this address, I could say that peace will also come in just a few minutes,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a message to the Ukrainian people released just before midnight on New Year’s Eve. “Unfortunately, I cannot say that yet.”
Zelenskyy said a peace agreement was “90% ready”, but added something that subverted Donald Trump’s constant claims that a deal is just around the corner. “Those 10% contain, in fact, everything,” he said.
Prof Shitij Kapur says there are too many graduates and degree is now just a ‘visa’ to enter professional world
The UK now has a “surfeit” of graduates and students must accept that a university degree is no longer a “passport to social mobility”, a leading vice-chancellor has argued.
Prof Shitij Kapur, the head of King’s College London, said the days when universities could promise that their graduates were certain to get good jobs are over, in an era where nearly half the population enters higher education.
The presenter on a Strictly apology, her high-wire triumph, and flashing her knickers at David Cameron
Born in Cumbria, Helen Skelton, 42, began her broadcasting career at BBC Radio Cumbria and Newsround. From 2008 to 2013, she was a Blue Peter presenter. Her other credits include reporting on the London 2012 Olympics and presenting Countryfile and BBC Morning Live; she also voices Annie in Fireman Sam. In 2023, she published her autobiography, In My Stride. A new series of her show Lost and Found in the Lakes starts on 5 January on BBC One. She lives in Cumbria and has three children with her former husband, Richie Myler.
What is your greatest fear?
Getting to the end and thinking that I haven’t laughed enough.
Palmer and Delap are among five academy players who learnt their trade at City, as links between the clubs grow
Chelsea’s visit to Manchester City on Sunday will be a homecoming for members of the travelling party. Five Chelsea players were nurtured at the academy that sits a few hundred yards from the Etihad Stadium, on the other side of a bridge.
The London club’s recent recruitment has been heavily influenced by City’s teaching of players and coaches. Tosin Adarabioyo, Cole Palmer, Liam Delap, Jamie Gittens and Roméo Lavia were members of City’s youth ranks, most working there under Enzo Maresca. If one thread was unpicked this week when Maresca dramatically departed Chelsea, the link remains strong because Sunday’s caretaker, Calum McFarlane, was formerly the under-18s assistant manager at City.
The Reuters news agency says it has been told by a US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, that the US carried out strikes inside Venezuela on Saturday.
The unnamed official did not provide details. As mentioned earlier, the White House and Pentagon did not immediately respond to request for comment on Saturday morning.
After 35 years of teaching fiction writing, the prize-winning author shares her wisdom. First tip? Don’t write what you know…
I don’t think it’s a bad thing to want to write a first sentence so idiosyncratic, so indelible, so entirely your own that it makes people sit up or reach for a pen or say to a beloved: “Listen to this.” A first line needn’t be ornate or long. It needn’t grab you by the lapels and give you what for. A first line is only a demand for further attention, an invitation to the rest of the book. Whisper or bellow, a polite request or a monologue meant to repel interruption. I believe a first line should deliver some sort of pleasure by being beautiful or mysterious or funny or blunt or cryptic. Why would anyone start a novel, “It was June, and the sun was out,” which could be the first line of any novel or story? It tells you nothing. It asks nothing of you.
Ailing economy sparks biggest uprising in years, with protesters saying it’s time to hit regime when it’s at its weakest
Mehnaz was too young to protest when Mahsa Amini died in police custody three years ago after she was arrested for allegedly wearing the hijab improperly. Her mother did not let her join the throngs of crowds chanting “woman, life, freedom” in Tehran and across the country – so she could only watch at home as they were beaten back by batons and bullets.
Since then, the 19-year-old computer science student in Tehran has waited for the chance to join fellow Iranians in protest. On Sunday, the moment finally came.
Spaniard resumes intense rivalry with Jannik Sinner, while Sabalenka and Swiatek remain at the top of women’s game
Amid the endless flood of Instagram photo dumps and gushy captions from social media users around the world saluting another year gone by, Carlos Alcaraz’s efforts were particularly interesting. The candid photos chosen by Alcaraz from his camera roll included dozens of friends and family, various barbecues and his many haircuts throughout the year, but there was no room at all for one notable individual: Juan Carlos Ferrero.
The abrupt dissolution of the coaching partnership between Alcaraz and Ferrero is one of the most shocking recent coaching splits and the reaction has been dramatic. Journalists swarmed outside Alcaraz’s tennis club in El Palmar a day after the news in their futile attempts to speak with the world No 1, then Ferrero decided to give a number of interviews to offer his own side of the story. Reports from Spain detailing reasons for the end to their partnership continue to circulate. Depending on who you ask, Alcaraz either made a fatal mistake by not fighting harder to maintain his relationship with the coach who guided him for seven years, or he is courageously taking responsibility for his career as an adult.
From Trader Joe’s totes to Greggs jewellery, swag mania reveals how small businesses can promote their ‘brands’ – and how we use stuff to signal our tribe
For all its many charms, Norwich tends to lag behind London on internet-buzzy trends (personally, I count that as among its charms), but it’s not always easy to pinpoint by exactly how long. So I was interested to spot, on a recent trip into the fine city, a woman carrying a Trader Joe’s-branded tote bag.
Trader Joe’s is a US supermarket; it does not operate in the UK, let alone East Anglia. And yet its merchandise – specifically this black-strapped, red-stamped but otherwise unremarkable tote bag – has been increasingly ubiquitous in London this year, as noted by the New York Times in July.
Defenders say AI can do good to fight the climate crisis. But spiralling energy and water costs leave experts worried
During a golden sunset in Memphis in May, Sharon Wilson pointed a thermal imaging camera at Elon Musk’s flagship datacentre to reveal a planetary threat her eyes could not. Free from pollution controls, the gas-fired turbines that power the world’s biggest AI supercomputer were pumping invisible fumes into the Tennessee sky.
“It was jaw-dropping,” said Wilson, a former oil and gas worker from Texas who has documented methane releases for more than a decade and estimates xAI’s Colossus datacentre was spewing more of the planet-heating gas than a large power plant. “Just an unbelievable amount of pollution.”
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s inexorable rise will continue in the Indian Premier League this year, but it is unlikely to stop there
It’s that time of year again, a time of lists and countdowns, of soul-crushing AI brain-vomit ringed by adverts for miracle dental implants. In the spirit of the season the tech website Feedpost produced its own list on New Year’s Eve of the Top 100 Kid Influencers on Instagram And YouTube in 2025, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s fine and definitely not strange or creepy [narrator’s voice: it is strange and creepy].
Don’t think about end times. Don’t think about plagues of woodlice, flames licking at your feet. I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it. I saw a 12-year-old influencer who loves fun fashion collabs. I saw a kitten in a waistcoat smoking crack from a milk jug. Don’t think about any of that. But I am going to say it. The Top 100 Kid Influencers on Instagram and YouTube list is bullshit.
Collective grief hangs over Swiss resort as relatives desperately seek information about missing loved ones
The group of 15 young people had travelled from Milan to Crans-Montana, some of them crossing the border by car, others by train, to celebrate New Year’s Eve. The Swiss ski resort was well known to them, having spent summers here with their families, and a big draw was marking the new year in the bar that in recent years had become known as the place to be.
Eight from the group managed to escape the inferno that ripped through Le Constellation, killing about 40 people, while three are among the 80 who were critically injured. Two of the eldest, Marco, 20, and Gabriele, 18, had planned to join their friends in the venue – appreciated by young people for being an affordable place to party in a resort popular with celebrities and wealthy skiers – shortly after midnight but by a last-minute twist of fate decided not to.
Donald Trump has claimed the US has “captured” Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, and flown them out of the South American country after a pre-dawn assault on Caracas and the surrounding region.
“It was a brilliant operation, actually,” the US president told the New York Times after witnesses in Venezuela reported a series of explosions. “A lot of good planning and [a] lot of great, great troops and great people.”
This first newsletter of the new year looks at some of the big questions we hope will be answered in the next 12 months, across film, TV, music and games
Welcome to 2026! I hope you are enjoying the final dribblings of the festive break, before reality bites on Monday. As is now tradition (well, we did it once before), this first newsletter of the new year looks at some of the big questions we hope will be answered in the next 12 months, across film, TV, music and games. Hopefully it will double up as a decent primer for the year ahead too, though for a more exhaustive rundown check the Guardian’s 2026 previews for film, music, TV, gaming, stage and art. Right, let’s get on with it:
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