Miles Franklin winner Michelle de Kretser among more than 24 people who have pulled out of annual writers’ festival to protest Abdel-Fattah’s axing

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Dozens of authors, journalists, media personalities and a sponsor are boycotting the Adelaide festival after it dumped Palestinian Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah from its annual writers’ week lineup, citing concerns over “cultural sensitivity” in the wake of the Bondi terror attack.

More speakers were expected to withdraw from the festival, with speculation that other high-profile figures were coordinating their exit announcements.

Mayor urges ICE to pause operations as congresswoman says victims alive but extent of injuries unknown

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US federal agents shot two people in Portland, Oregon, on Thursday afternoon, Portland police said.

“Two people are in the hospital following a shooting involving federal agents,” the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) said in a statement, adding that their conditions were not known.

• ‘Five setters are a different beast’, says 30-year-old

• Australian has attempted comeback from injury in recent weeks

Nick Kyrgios’s surgically-repaired knee and wrist will not prevent him from taking part at Melbourne Park, where Australian Open qualifying begins next week, but he will not feature in the singles draw.

The 30-year-old posted on social media saying he wasn’t ready for best-of-five set tennis, ruling himself out of contention for a wildcard, but he would still take to the court alongside friend and doubles partner Thanasi Kokkinakis.

Exclusive: research suggests supplementing eggs with a key protein reduces age-related defects, raising hopes of improved IVF for older women

Scientists claim to have “rejuvenated” human eggs for the first time in an advance that they predict could revolutionise IVF success rates for older women.

The groundbreaking research suggests that an age-related defect that causes genetic errors in embryos could be reversed by supplementing eggs with a crucial protein. When eggs donated by fertility patients were given microinjections of the protein, they were almost half as likely to show the defect compared with untreated eggs.

Featuring Wood, her famous sidekicks Julie Waters and Celia Imrie and other female standups, this documentary is tender, moving and an absolute hoot

There is a moment at the start of this documentary about the comedian Victoria Wood when you realise what she was up against at the beginning of her career: a snippet from the archives of Melvyn Bragg hailing her as Britain’s first female standup comedian. That wasn’t entirely the case, but it seems unthinkable now that it took until the 1980s for women to break through in any numbers. In 1985, when season one of Wood’s sketch show As Seen on TV aired on BBC2, there were sniffs of doubt that a woman could front a comedy programme, let alone a northern woman. How wrong they were. Clips from the show, featuring Wood, Julie Waters and Celia Imrie, are a hoot: high on a tipsy energy, the performers are all on the edge of collapsing into giggles.

For those who grew up with Wood as a national treasure, Becoming Victoria Wood will be a revelation. Her standup routines in the 1980s blazed a trail, with jokes about tampons and cellulite. She had a lonely childhood, was ignored by her mother and was shy and self-conscious about her weight. (Later press coverage fixating on her size was vile.) She didn’t feel clever or good-looking enough but she had a fierce streak of ambition that seemed to come from nowhere.

Alolita Tekapu and her family among the first arrivals under a world-first agreement that allows people from Tuvalu to move to Australia

On a suburban street in eastern Melbourne on a cool summer’s day, Alolita Tekapu sits on the couch feeding her one-month-old son, Philip, while her three older boys play outside. Her husband folds laundry nearby, pausing occasionally to check on the children.

It’s an ordinary domestic scene. But the reason this family are in Australia is far from ordinary.

Emily Henry’s hit book has been adapted into a glossily made yet charmless attempt to resurrect the friends-to-lovers formula

Released just as the weather turns to freezing and we’re all daydreaming of an escape, Netflix’s early January romcom People We Meet on Vacation is at the very least smartly timed. Produced as part of the streamer’s Sony deal, it benefits from some real studio gloss (proper lighting!) and as Polo & Pan’s perfectly balmy Nana plays over a transporting shot of our heroine lounging on a beach (the song was also used in Netflix’s underrated Christmas romcom Let it Snow), I was ready to relax with her. But what a brief escape it turned out to be …

The adaptation of Emily Henry’s much-loved 2021 novel has the superficial trappings all in check (eyes with permanent twinkles, unrealistic main character job in this climate, more easily affordable Taylor Swift song on the soundtrack) but no heart or soul to go with it. There’s simply nothing to root for or care about or grasp on to, just the limp tracing of something we’ve seen many many times before. Its closest comparison would be When Harry Met Sally, a similar journey that turns friends into lovers over a fairly epic time span (the pair even meet in the exact same way, forced to drive home together from college). But what felt lived in and genuinely human back in 1989 now feels shallow and synthetic in 2026, a grim start to the year for a genre I keep hoping and praying for.

Austin Peay State University will also pay theater and dance professor Darren Michael $500,000 in settlement

Austin Peay State University has reinstated a professor who was fired for his social media post after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The Tennessee school is also paying the teacher $500,000 in the settlement.

Austin Peay spokesperson Brian Dunn said Darren Michael returned to his position as a tenured faculty member at the public university in Clarksville effective 30 December. A copy of the settlement agreement obtained through a public records request includes a $500,000 payment and reimbursement of counseling, as reported earlier this week by WKRN-TV.

Democrat Ro Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie seek to compel justice department to release full set of files

Two US House of Representatives members have asked a federal judge to appoint a special master to compel the justice department to release all files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender.

On Thursday, Democratic representative Ro Khanna of California and Republican representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky asked US district judge Paul Engelmayer to release the full Epstein files, as required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Attacks bring total number of Palestinians killed by Israel to 425 since October ceasefire took effect

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli attacks in the Palestinian territory on Thursday killed at least 13 people, including five children, despite a ceasefire that has largely halted the fighting.

Four people including three children were killed when a drone struck a tent sheltering displaced people in southern Gaza, agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

Space agency says US-Japanese-Russian crew of four will return to Earth in the coming days, earlier than planned

Nasa is cutting short a mission aboard the International Space Station after an astronaut had a medical issue.

The space agency said Thursday the US-Japanese-Russian crew of four will return to Earth in the coming days, earlier than planned.

• Atlético Madrid 1-2 Real Madrid

• Sørloth 58; Valverde 2, Rodrygo 55

Real Madrid hold on and so does Xabi Alonso, all the way to the final. Judgment was due to come in Jeddah but it will be put off for another day at least, and instead of the sack there may be a medal waiting at the end of a month spent on edge after Real defeated Atlético 2-1. Goals from Fede Valverde and Rodrygo set up another Super Cup meeting with Barcelona on Sunday night, opportunity and obligation in one.

On a night when Madrid scored after 77 seconds, Atlético’s last opportunity to get a result they probably deserved and force a penalty shootout slipped agonisingly away with only 10 more seconds remaining. Julián Alvarez had it, Antoine Griezmann almost did, but, in at last, a shot from the former just evaded the latter. As the ball bounced past the post, it took Atlético’s hopes with it.

Seventeen Republicans join Democrats to pass a three-year extension of tax credits cutting ACA premiums

The US House of Representatives on Thursday passed legislation to re-establish tax credits that lowered premiums for Affordable Care Act (ACA) health plans, after a small group of Republicans broke ranks and joined with Democrats to defy Donald Trump on a key healthcare issue that could sway voters ahead of the November midterm elections.

The chamber voted 230-196 to approve a bill that would extend for three years the credits, which were first created under Joe Biden but expired at the end of last year despite a concerted effort by the Democratic minority to continue them.

GM says end of tax incentives and less stringent emissions regulations slowed consumer demand for EVs in 2025

General Motors said on Thursday it will record a one-time earnings hit of $7.1bn in its quarterly financial results, mostly due to its pullback from electric vehicles in light of shifting US policies.

The Detroit auto giant’s fourth-quarter results will be dented by $6bn in charges connected to reversals on EV investments, according to a securities filing. The remaining $1.1bn includes costs from the company’s restructuring of its China operations.

• Kim, 25, injured shoulder during training in Laax

• MRI will determine Olympic availability for US star

• Two-time champion chasing historic third gold

Chloe Kim’s pursuit of an unprecedented third straight Olympic gold medal has been thrown into uncertainty after the American snowboard star dislocated her shoulder during a training session in Switzerland.

Kim, the dominant force in women’s halfpipe snowboarding for nearly a decade, revealed the injury on Thursday, sharing video of the fall that caused the scare. The injury occured while Kim was training in Laax, a regular World Cup venue and a key pre-Olympic stop on the circuit. The 25-year-old landed a maneuver cleanly but lost her edge shortly afterward, sliding awkwardly across the pipe and into the wall.

Point proven? Well, not exactly. Just when Arsenal looked ready to lay down a real marker for their title aspirations, a rejuvenated Liverpool side that has been through the wringer since they were crowned champions last season showed the Gunners remain fallible.

It could have been even worse for Mikel Arteta’s side if Liverpool had been awarded one of two potential penalties or if Conor Bradley’s brilliant chip had not struck the crossbar in the first half.

The vice-president went ballistic against the media and the left – a version of Trump with even more menace

It was James David Vance’s pitch to his boss: don’t forget me!

The vice-president was nowhere to be seen last weekend when US special forces swept into Venezuela and snatched its leader, Nicolás Maduro. Instead Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and a potential rival to Vance in the 2028 presidential election, grabbed all the Maga glory.

During black summer, my daughters were too young to know what was happening. Now, amid another Australian heatwave, they deserve answers

When the forecasts for this week started to roll in, my mind immediately drifted back to Australia’s black summer.

I had taken my daughters down to the pool in our estate in western Sydney, hoping for a brief reprieve from the relentless heat. The Gospers Mountain fire was raging in the Blue Mountains, but on that particular day the smoke didn’t seem too bad.

David Hart, 22, imprisoned for one year over nuisance calls to London hospitals and Westminster Abbey

A man has been jailed for a year in New York for calling in a series of hoax bomb threats, many of which targeted institutions in the UK.

David Hart was prosecuted by US authorities after a joint investigation by Scotland Yard and the US department for homeland security.

• The 1958 says club has become a ‘laughing stock’

• Protest planned at Old Trafford in early February

Manchester United supporters group The 1958 has called for a vote of no confidence in the club’s ownership model, calling Sir Jim Ratcliffe “an incompetent clown”. The organisation will also hold a protest at the home match against Fulham on 1 February to make their voices heard at Old Trafford.

The group wants the removal of the Glazer family and Ratcliffe from the club. Concerns were also expressed in relation to the work of the chief executive, Omar Berrada, and the director of football, Jason Wilcox, in the aftermath of Ruben Amorim’s sacking, which will lead to an interim replacement.

There’s a great deal of unpretentious B-movie fun to be had in this brief, brutal and slickly made creature feature

There’s a refreshing lack of subtext and pretension to this week’s gory creature feature Primate, a straight-to-the-point riposte to the glum, trauma-heavy horror films we’ve been enduring of late. Rather than following his genre peers who are busy aiming for the lofty heights of Don’t Look Now and Possession, British director Johannes Roberts is happy to give gen Z their very own Shakma, the goofy 1990 schlocker about a baboon driven wild by an experimental drug.

That film took a while to gain a cult following, ultimately accepted by the same drunk Bad Movie crowd who took in Troll 2, but Primate won’t take anywhere near as long. It’s a far better, slicker movie for one, a surgically well-made crowd-pleaser that swaps out baboon for chimp, cleverly turning him from test subject to domesticated pet. At 89-minutes and paced like a rollercoaster, there’s little room for life lessons, although the film does make for a stern, grisly reminder of why chimps should not be considered part of the family (something many still don’t seem to understand).

Security forces reported to have killed at least 45 people since protests began 12 days ago, as pressure on regime increases

Iran was plunged into a complete internet blackout on Thursday night as protests over economic conditions spread nationwide, increasing pressure on the country’s leadership.

While it was unclear what caused the internet cut, first reported by the internet freedom monitor NetBlocks, Iranian authorities have shut down the internet in response to protests in the past.

• Capacity will increase from 37,645 to about 53,000

• Proposals were approved by city council on Thursday

Leeds have received planning permission to redevelop Elland Road and lift the stadium’s capacity from 37,645 to about 53,000.

There had been fears that a delay to the long-mooted introduction of a tram network in the surrounding area until the late 2030s might impact the club’s plans to expand the ground but the proposals were approved by the city council on Thursday.

DHS secretary’s claims have been widely disputed with video of shooting showing vehicle turning away from agent

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Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, has doubled down on her claim that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who shot and killed a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis was acting in self-defense and responding to an “act of domestic terrorism”.

Noem also said that she was “not opposed” to sending additional federal agents to Minneapolis.