Negotiations among EU leaders continue ahead of critical European Council meeting in Brussels on Thursday

If you want to test various scenarios ahead of tomorrow’s debate on Russian frozen assets, you can use this handy calculator to see what is needed to get the proposal passed under the so-called qualified majority vote, or QMV (expect to hear a lot about it in the next 48 hours).

As we know, the opposition is led by Belgium and its outspoken prime minister Bart de Wever, with Bulgaria, Czech Republic, and Malta also against. Italy has some doubts too (at least for now?), and Hungary, traditionally, is against anything that would help Ukraine.

Fuelled by social media and a rare visit by Japan’s elite wrestlers, growing numbers of Britons are taking part in the centuries-old sport

It is a centuries-old Japanese tradition, steeped in ceremony, with roots deep in the ancient faith of Shintoism … and it also happens to be super popular on TikTok.

Sumo is finding a new audience in the UK and, not only that, many Britons are now donning a loincloth – or mawashi – and taking up the sport themselves. So much so, in fact, that amateur wrestlers from across the UK and Ireland are gearing up for the first ever British Isles Sumo Championships, due to be held in six weeks.

This story of a teenage druid whose body is discovered in a peat bog has memorable moments – but its evocation of time and place is unconvincing

Anna North’s fourth book, Bog Queen, is a stranded or braided novel. First “a colony of moss” speaks – or rather, does not speak, but “if such a colony could tell the story of its life”, here’s some of what it might say. Then we have Agnes in 2018, American, tall, awkward, expert in forensic pathology and uncertain about everything else, including much of life in England. And then, in the first person, there is an iron age teenage girl, the druid of her village, riding towards a Roman town with her brother Aesu and friend Crab: “I had been druid for two seasons at that point and everyone said I was doing very well.”

Agnes has a post-doctoral fellowship in Manchester, from which she is summoned to the discovery of a body in a peat bog in Ludlow. The story shadows that of Lindow Man, found by peat harvesters in a bog near Wilmslow in 1984. In this novel, “Ludlow” is a town in which “the steel mill has closed down” leaving nothing but “[a] few shops, a Tesco, a Pizza Express”. It’s “the Gateway to the north” and a bus ride from Manchester. Novelists may of course invent time and place as they see fit, but it’s an odd choice to borrow the location of a bourgeois satellite town of Manchester and give it the name of a pretty medieval market town in the Welsh Marches, with a history that belongs to neither.

Some monikers are a perfect fit for the audience and reflect a player’s style of play; others are just too hot for TV

It’s September 2017, and a humble Challenge Tour quarter-final at the Robin Park Leisure Centre in Wigan is about to change the course of darting history. Luke Humphries and Martin Lukeman are two promising young throwers making their way on the Professional Darts Corporation’s second-tier tour, dreaming of the big time. But there’s one problem.

Humphries has styled himself “Cool Hand”, based on the 1967 Paul Newman film that to date he has still never watched. Lukeman, meanwhile, has decided to call himself “Cool Man”: less catchy, doesn’t really scan, but still just about works. And though the pair are firm friends, when the draw in Wigan pits them against each other, they decide that this best-of-nine match will settle matters once and for all. Winner gets the nickname. Loser has to think of something else.

Leave support is falling. That’s an opportunity the PM should seize before pro-Europe challengers for the Labour leadership do

Seven years ago, it took just eight words to electrify the Labour conference and to show the party was falling out of love with its then leader. Although not exactly the kind of soaring oratory that gets reproduced on T-shirts, the words were greeted with wild cheering as most of the hall rose in spontaneous acclamation.

As the commotion died down, Keir Starmer, then Brexit spokesman, stood at the podium, blinking in surprise. He wasn’t really accustomed to his speeches having such an effect. All he had said was: “Nobody is ruling out remain as an option.” But context is everything.

Tom Baldwin is the author of Keir Starmer, The Biography

Plus: which European champions were top at Christmas, players giving each other presents and other festive trivia

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“Just reading a book about Christmas No 1s,” begins Paul Savage. “The section about Wham!’s Last Christmas says Andrew Ridgeley was watching football at George Michael’s parents on a Sunday, when George got the melody and wandered off to record it upstairs. Greatness obviously awaited but I want to know: which match was it? It’s 1984, a Sunday and presumably on terrestrial TV. Was the second half worth Ridgeley not getting involved in the recording?”

Last Christmas by Wham! didn’t become a Christmas No 1 until 2023, having been kept off top spot by Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas in 1984. As Paul mentioned, George Michael wrote the song in his childhood bedroom while his parents and Andrew Ridgeley watched football on TV downstairs.

• Third Test, day one: Australia 326-8

• Usman Khawaja digs in for 82 while Archer has 3-29

After the pandemonium of Perth and Brisbane’s pink-ball palooza came an outbreak of more familiar looking Test cricket at Adelaide Oval. For the locals it was one to savour as their boy, Alex Carey, delivered a sparkling century at his home ground on an opening day that Australia edged.

Not that England, 2-0 down and clinging on in this series, could be too downbeat. Ben Stokes had lost what appeared an ominous toss and, though far from perfect, his bowlers kept plugging away in 35C heat. At stumps Australia were 326 for eight from 83 overs – runs on the board but surely short of ambitions when Pat Cummins got the choice first thing.

Nuno FG Loureiro, 47, was shot multiple times at his home, and no details about a suspect or motive have been released

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) community is grieving after the “shocking” shooting death of the director of its plasma science and fusion center, according to officials.

Nuno FG Loureiro, 47, had been shot multiple times at his home in Brookline on Monday night when police said they received a call to investigate. Emergency responders brought Loureiro to a hospital, and the award-winning scientist was pronounced dead there Tuesday morning, the Norfolk county district attorney’s office said in a statement.

NHS leaders warn ‘more patients are likely to feel the impact of this round of strikes than the previous two’

Resident doctors in England have begun five days of strike action after rejecting the government’s latest offer to resolve the long-running dispute over pay and jobs.

The British Medical Association (BMA), and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, met on Tuesday in a final attempt to reach an agreement, but failed to do so.

A brilliant history of psychiatric ideas suggests we are on the cusp of a transformation in our understanding of severe mental illness

In 1973, an American psychologist called David Rosenhan published the results of a bold experiment. He’d arranged for eight “pseudo-patients” to attend appointments at psychiatric institutions, where they complained to doctors about hearing voices that said “empty”, “hollow” and “thud”. All were admitted, diagnosed with either schizophrenia or manic-depressive psychosis. They immediately stopped displaying any “symptoms” and started saying they felt fine. The first got out after seven days; the last after 52.

Told of these findings, psychiatrists at a major teaching hospital found it hard to believe that they’d make the same mistake, so Rosenhan devised another experiment: over the next three months, he informed them, one or more pseudopatients would go undercover and, at the end, staff would be asked to decide who had been faking it. Of 193 patients admitted, 20% were deemed suspicious. It was then that Rosenhan revealed this had been a ruse as well: no pseudopatients had been sent to the hospital at all. Not only had doctors failed to spot sane people in their midst; they couldn’t reliably recognise the actually insane.

Big K-pop stars and a teen-skewed subtext aims this squarely at a particular audience but this fantasy never really levels up

Starring the actor (Ahn Hyo-seop) who voiced the lead boy-band bad guy in KPop Demon Hunters, and one of the singers (Kim Ji-soo, also known mononymically as Jisoo) from real-world girl-band Blackpink, this Korean sci-fi-fantasy feature feels very skewed towards the young on all counts. Superficially, it appears to be about a guy named Kim Dok-ja (Ahn) who finds that the web novel he’s been following for years is turning into reality. That means the whole world becomes gamified, as if everyone has been turned into players compelled to kill to survive, while plagued by CGI monsters and puckish digital dokkaebi (demons) which explain things when the rules change.

But under the surface, this film is really about being popular, coping with traumatic childhood experiences such as being forced to beat up your best friend, getting a pimple, and building up enough gumption to tell authority figures – older people, your boss, the author of the book you’ve been a fan of for ages – that they suck.

Celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver launch ‘Bang in Some Beans’ campaign to highlight cost savings and health advantages

• Magic beans: top chefs’ recipes for protein-rich superfood

Beans have it all, according to some of the best-known chefs in the country. They are sustainable, plentiful, nutritious and a fraction of the cost of meats such as steak and chicken.

This tiny country is awash with atmospheric castles, many of which you can stay in, making for a magical wintry break. And it won’t cost you a cent to travel between them

The top of the tower had disappeared in the mist, but its bells rang clear and true, tolling beyond the abbey gates, over the slopes of frost-fringed trees, down to the town in the valley below. Final call for morning mass. I took a seat at the back of the modern church, built when the Abbey of Saint Maurice and Saint Maurus relocated to this hill in Clervaux, north Luxembourg, in 1910. Then the monks swept in – and swept away 1,000 years. Sung in Latin, their Gregorian chants filled the nave: simple, calming, timeless. I’m not religious and didn’t understand a word, but also, in a way, understood it completely.

Although mass is held here at 10am daily, year-round, the monks’ ethereal incantations seemed to perfectly suit the season. I left the church, picked up a waymarked hiking trail and walked deeper into the forest – and the mood remained. There was no one else around, no wind to dislodge the last, clinging beech leaves or sway the soaring spruce. A jay screeched, and plumes of hair ice feathered fallen logs. As in the church, all was stillness, a little magic.

In Kate Winslet’s Goodbye June, Timothy Spall, 68, plays the father of Toni Collette, who is 53 – and pregnant. But those liberties are nothing compared with North by Northwest, The Manchurian Candidate or Thanksgiving

To be able to enjoy Kate Winslet’s new Christmas movie, Goodbye June, you have to be able to do a couple of things. First, if you’ve ever suffered any form of bereavement, you may have to approach it slowly, since the film is explicitly about the death of a parent. But the other thing you need to do is not Google the age of any of the cast.

This is for good reason. The titular June is played by Dame Helen Mirren, and her husband is played by Timothy Spall. Fine actors and national treasures, the pair of them. However, Mirren is 80 years old, and Spall is 68. Again, this is fine. You have undoubtedly met couples with bigger age gaps than this, and in all probability they are perfectly happy together.

Moving from one avant garde movement to another during the 1920s, the American photographer’s work helps tell the story of the birth of modernism

Open letter to Reform UK leader expresses ‘dismay and anger’ at his response to racism and antisemitism allegations

Nigel Farage has been told to apologise for his alleged teenage racism by 26 school contemporaries who have written an open letter telling of their “dismay and anger” at his response in recent weeks.

In a united challenge to the Reform UK leader, the alleged victims and witnesses condemn him for what they describe as his refusal to acknowledge his behaviour at Dulwich college.

Sydney man, 24, charged with 15 counts of murder and one count of committing a terrorist act after waking from coma

• Victims of Bondi beach shooting

• Follow the latest live updates

The alleged Bondi attacker who survived a shootout with police has been charged with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder and one count of committing a terrorist act in what investigators allege may have been “inspired by Isis”.

New South Wales police charged Naveed Akram, 24, on Wednesday, after he was arrested at the scene and taken to a Sydney hospital with critical injuries on Sunday night.

Susie Wiles has spoken to Vanity Fair magazine in a series of 11 interviews that she has since dismissed as a ‘hit piece’

The president’s chief of staff Susie Wiles has given her own, unvarnished thoughts about Donald Trump’s administration, in a series of interviews published by Vanity Fair magazine, revealing details and opinions that presidential aides usually save for memoirs long after they have left power.

From calling out attorney general Pam Bondi over her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, to criticising Elon Musk over the dismantling the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Wiles has offered an unusually candid look inside the White House, after maintaining a low profile for much of Trump’s term.

A meet-cute between Humanity and Earth, a mod ballet and Nick Mohammed’s career-best standup set – our critics pick the best stage shows of the year

10. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Staging a bestselling book that has already been adapted into a film starring bona fide national treasures (Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton) might have been daunting. But, in Chichester, Katy Rudd’s musical of a man’s Bunyanesque journey to visit a dying woman met that challenge with lo-fi eccentricity and folksy songs with a foot-stomping spirit (composed by Michael Rosenberg, AKA Passenger). In the West End from 29 January. Read the review

Britain has had more than 1,600 recorded hours of sunshine this year after record-breaking spring

The UK has already had its sunniest year on record, the Met Office has confirmed, after the country battled droughts and sweltered in heatwaves.

Though the country is currently swathed in December gloom, the rest of the year brought vast amounts of sunshine.

The Russian strategy of exporting chaos to provoke extremism only works if liberals succumb to cynicism and despair

I once spent an exasperating week showing a Russian friend around London. He insisted on seeing everything and admiring nothing. Museums, monuments, shops – all compared unfavourably with St Petersburg and Moscow. This got tiresome after a few days, so I asked my friend if there was anything at all about Britain that impressed him. “The stability,” he said without hesitation. “You can feel the stability.”

That was a different world; the late 1990s. I don’t remember the year, but I remember knowing what my friend was talking about because I had felt the same culture shock in reverse when first visiting Russia.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Nepenthes khasiana oozes an enticing liquid on the rim of its pitchers that tempts its prey into a deadly trap

A carnivorous pitcher plant has recently been found to use a chemical nerve agent to drug its prey and lead them to a deadly end, being consumed in digestive juices at the bottom of the pitcher traps.

The pitcher plant Nepenthes khasiana oozes an enticing sweet nectar on the rim of its pitchers for visiting insects, particularly ants, to feed on to lure them into the trap. But the nectar is laced with a toxic nerve agent called isoshinanolone, which strikes at the ant’s nervous system, leaving it with sluggish movements, weakened muscles, and causing it to groom itself excessively. Eventually the prey falls upside down in spasms, with the nerve agent sometimes killing it outright. But apart from isoshinanolone, the nectar also contains three types of sugars that can all absorb water and make the rim of the pitcher especially slippery, so the prey is more likely to slide down into the pitchers.

Have a very chewy yuletide with this sumptuously layered meringue smasher that pumps pavlova up a level

I’m switching up my usual Christmas pavlova this year for a slightly different but equally delicious meringue-based dessert. Discs of pistachio meringue are baked until crisp, then layered with pistachio cream and cherry compote. The meringue softens a little under the cream as it sits, giving it a pleasingly chewy, cake-like texture. A very good option if you’re after a Christmas dessert without chocolate, alcohol or dried fruit.