A Georgia police officer shot his girlfriend dead before turning the gun on himself — as worried friends discovered the couple’s bodies days after they were last seen at a Christmas party.

They were contentious, unprecedented and among the policies that drove long-haul truckers from across Canada to overtake Ottawa’s downtown core for nearly a month. Read More

Tom Christie believed he was doing his job when he waded into a crowd of drunken, rowdy teens at a Calgary park. Read More

"I was reading my book and you know this boy - man - attacked me, and I did fight back."

The Issue: President Trump’s efforts to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine. The United States’ approach to brokering a peace settlement in the Russia-Ukraine war can best be described as bias-based diplomacy, with Russia the beneficiary and Ukraine the strategic victim (“Zel scoffs at Don’s Vlad view,” Dec. 30). The policy’s inherent flaws, stemming from...

Join our live coverage as we cross the globe to enter the new year

Some community events have been cancelled across New Zealand’s North Island due to forecasts of rain and possible thunderstorms.

Auckland has welcomed in the new year with a colourful fireworks display over the Sky Tower.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters

© Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters

© Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters

Even if Carter and Dart do not win any awards, they clearly have emerged as two of the main building blocks for the Giants' future.

The towering obelisk on the National Mall in Washington, DC, will feature patriotic projections telling the story of America starting on Wednesday.

The United States has a political violence problem to which the Trump administration is responding with a focus on domestic terrorism. Unfortunately, and not for the first time, federal officials define “terrorism” broadly enough to include protected activities, and they’re once again going after adherents of specific ideologies that are out of favour with the powers that be. This isn’t a new problem; presidents from both major parties have engaged in the persecution of political opponents in the name of fighting extremism and violence. The result is always the same: the violation of constitutionally protected rights. Read More

Montreal — On New Year’s Eve 250 years ago, Brig.-Gen. Richard Montgomery of the Continental Army, headquartered here in Montreal at the Château Ramezay, ordered a multi-pronged attack on Quebec City. The future existence of Canada hung in the balance; Quebec may have become the 14th state at the conclusion of the American Revolution. Read More

My name is Harley Finkelstein. I am a proud Jewish-Canadian, an entrepreneur and the grandson of Holocaust survivors. Read More

Reiterating the liberal ideals behind the revolution may be tricky when they are out of favour in the White House

• Gabonese FA president was voted on to Caf exco in 2023

• Caf chief allegedly failed to act on reports of sexual abuse

The general secretary of the Confederation of African Football (Caf), Veron Mosengo-Omba, ignored a recommendation that Pierre-Alain Mounguengui was ineligible for election to its powerful executive committee because he had been accused of covering up widespread sexual abuse in Gabonese football, it can be revealed.

Mounguengui, the president of the Gabonese football federation (Fegafoot), has been accused of failing to act on reports of sexual abuse and rape of young footballers in a series of stories that were first published by the Guardian in 2021. He has denied the allegations and there is no suggestion Mounguengui has been accused of sexual abuse himself. Although he has not yet been formally charged, Mounguengui spent six months in custody awaiting a decision from the authorities in Gabon and was visited by the Caf president, Patrice Motsepe, with a final ruling on his case still pending almost four years on.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Sebo47/Alamy

© Photograph: Sebo47/Alamy

© Photograph: Sebo47/Alamy

Despite reviews of the district as a raucous tourist trap, improved policing has restored safety and an eclectic vibe

When Ireland redeveloped a swathe of central Dublin in the 1990s, the idea was to create a version of Paris’s Left Bank, a cultural quarter of cobbled lanes, art and urban renewal.

Planners and architects transformed the run-down Temple Bar site by the River Liffey into an ambitious experiment that drew throngs of visitors and won awards.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters

© Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters

© Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters

Scale of Europe’s narcotics crisis ‘not even possible to imagine’, says EUDA director Alexis Goosdeel

The bioscience startup has attracted billions in investment – and a flurry of criticism, but founder tells the Guardian plans to bring back the woolly mammoth will not be derailed

Death and taxes are supposed to be the things we can depend on in this life. But in 2025, the American entrepreneur Ben Lamm sold much of the world on the idea that death did not, after all, need to be for ever.

This was the year the billionaire’s genetics startup, Colossal Biosciences, claimed it had resurrected the dire wolf, an animal that disappeared at the end of the last ice age, by tweaking the DNA of grey wolves. According to the company, it had also edged closer to bringing the woolly mammoth back from the dead, with the creation of genetically engineered “woolly mice”.

Continue reading...

© Illustration: Joe Plimmer/Guardian pictures/Colossal Biosciences

© Illustration: Joe Plimmer/Guardian pictures/Colossal Biosciences

© Illustration: Joe Plimmer/Guardian pictures/Colossal Biosciences

Whether you go for an easy jog or actively limit your screen time, studies show there are tried and tested ways to wind down and be sure of a good night’s sleep

• Sign up here to get the whole series straight to your inbox

After a hard day at work, the last thing you want to do is fritter away your precious downtime slumped on the sofa in a dazed doomscroll. Yet, in the absence of a better plan, it happens with depressing ease. How we spend the hours between shutting down the laptop and slipping under the duvet affects sleep quality, mood and how restored we feel the next day. So, how can we reclaim those lost evenings?

According to Jason Ellis, a professor of psychology at Northumbria University and director of the Northumbria centre for sleep research, establishing a regular end-of-day routine sends a signal to your brain that you are making a shift between work mode, and rest and recreation. “It’s about putting the day to bed before you go to bed,” he says. Gretchen Rubin – an author, podcaster and creator of the Happiness Project – agrees. “Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life,” she says.

Continue reading...

© Illustration: Spencer Wilson/The Guardian

© Illustration: Spencer Wilson/The Guardian

© Illustration: Spencer Wilson/The Guardian

It was a tough year (again) and we met it all with a shrug

It’s the end of another year, which means a deluge of dire looks back on the various atrocities of the last go around the sun. As is my duty, I have to add to the pile. But does it all have to be quite so sad? Do we have to dutifully trawl through the muck to find some elusive meaning to what we’ve been forced to endure? Unfortunately, yes. It was a tough year (again) and we met it all with a shrug. As we’ve all been made punishingly aware, Dictionary.com’s word of 2025 is “6-7,” a viral meme slogan which is technically two words. Pretty cheeky of the Dictionary to cheat on their own assignment.

How tragically emblematic of the year we just witnessed. We’re all too apathetic to even complain about getting swindled by a gaggle of word snobs. “Apathy” would have been a better choice for word of the year, considering how we’ve collectively shrugged at every dispiriting development of the last 12 months. Nicki Minaj popped up at the Turning Point USA conference to kiki with Erika Kirk and the most I could muster was “I guess she’ll do a concert at the Trump-Kennedy Center soon.”

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Ashley Landis/AP

© Photograph: Ashley Landis/AP

© Photograph: Ashley Landis/AP

American economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell once wrote about the political compulsion to assess bad events “one day at a time" — as if events sit in a sealed jar, hermetically inert to antecedent and consequence alike. Read More

Canadians are growing impatient with the lack of progress in Canada-U.S. trade relations, a new Leger poll suggests. Read More

"So the driver did this for 1 poke bowl?"

‘I was reading my book and this boy, man, attacked me, and I did fight back,’ queen tells BBC’s Today programme

Queen Camilla has spoken for the first time about how she was “so angry” when she was physically assaulted on a train as a teenager.

Camilla described the incident in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, during which she also praised the courage of the racing commentator John Hunt and his daughter Amy, whose family were murdered at their home.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA

© Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA

© Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA

Analysis shows obscure and barely used choices, drawn from online slang, do not stand the test of time

If you have seen a news story declaring 2025’s chosen “word of the year” in recent weeks, you might be forgiven for asking yourself: what, another one?

Depending on which dictionary you turn to, the chosen term this year was either Collins’s “vibe coding”, “parasocial” from Cambridge Dictionaries or their Oxford University Press rival’s “rage bait” – with many other selections besides.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Wachirawit Iemlerkchai/Alamy

© Photograph: Wachirawit Iemlerkchai/Alamy

© Photograph: Wachirawit Iemlerkchai/Alamy

Country’s six-month stint at helm begins with defence, migration and Ukraine still at top of agenda

Cyprus says it will bring “a new approach to the table” when it assumes the EU presidency on Thursday, as defence, migration and Ukraine continue to top the agenda at a time of acute geopolitical uncertainty.

As one of the 27-member bloc’s smaller member states, Cyprus will tackle its six-month stint at the EU’s helm with discipline and dedication but also “a different mindset”, the Cypriot foreign minister, Constantinos Kombos, said.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Stavros Ioannides/PIO/Reuters

© Photograph: Stavros Ioannides/PIO/Reuters

© Photograph: Stavros Ioannides/PIO/Reuters