Amid outrage over limited release so far and widespread redactions, DoJ analysts labor to vet remaining files

The US justice department estimates it has hundreds of thousands of additional records related to Jeffrey Epstein to review – a process that involves a team of 200 departmental analysts and which will take another week to complete.

According to Axios, which cited unnamed justice department officials, about 750,000 records have been reviewed and disclosed, and about 700,000 more remain to be examined. However, many of those may be duplicates, so the remaining number of records may only be in the thousands.

Rituals are different from routines – they elevate everyday life. Here’s how to create meaning beyond the festive season

How do you celebrate the end of the year?

Office parties can be a drag, but if you’re self-employed, it can be easy to roll without ceremony from one year into the next. Three years ago, two friends and I were bemoaning the lack of festivities and decided to make up for it by organising our own end-of-year lunch.

I’m an adult. Why do I regress under my parents’ roof?

I like my own company. But do I spend too much time alone?

People say you’ll know – but will I regret not having children?

I Can Fit That In: How Rituals Transform Your Life by Erin Coupe is out now

Despite fresh attempts to make women cover up, many believe the regime wouldn’t risk mass arrests for fear of sparking a wave of popular unrest last seen after the killing of Mahsa Amini

On the streets of Iran’s capital, Tehran, young women are increasingly flouting the compulsory hijab laws, posting videos online that show them walking the streets unveiled. Their defiance comes more than three years after the killing of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman taken into custody by the “morality police” for allegedly breaching the dress code rules. Her death led to the largest wave of popular unrest for years in Iran and a crackdown by security services in response, with hundreds of protesters killed and thousands injured.

Under Iran’s “hijab and chastity” law, which came into force in 2024, women caught “promoting nudity, indecency, unveiling or improper dressing” face severe penalties, including fines of up to £12,500, flogging and prison sentences ranging from five to 15 years for repeat offenders.

Two young female friends meet up in Laleh park to rest and drink tea together after a long working day. They used to be classmates studying English

Opening salvos before a huge MCG crowd are often among the most memorable meetings between Australia and England – here are five crackers

In the first session Australia set off at a lick, surging to 102 without loss with David Warner’s 83 the crux. Warner would go on to notch his 21st Test century, but not without a spot of drama when one run shy. Pity poor Tom Curran, who thought he had claimed Warner on 99 after the batter had spooned to mid-on and the eager hands of Stuart Broad. However, a replay revealed the England bowler had overstepped and his maiden Test wicket was snatched from his grasp.

• Algeria win 3-0 after Salah Adel sent off

• Tapsoba seals dramatic turnaround for Burkina Faso

Riyad Mahrez scored twice as Algeria launched their Africa Cup of Nations campaign with a comfortable 3-0 Group E win over 10-man Sudan in Rabat.

The Desert Warriors were ahead within two minutes when the former Leicester and Manchester City winger ran on to Hicham Boudaoui’s clever backheel and fired past the Sudan keeper Monged Abuzaid.

From Copenhagen’s cycle lanes and Vienna’s shared parks to Barcelona and London’s unfulfilled potential, better living is close at hand

The angry rumble of a speeding SUV. The metallic smog of backlogged traffic. The aching heat of sun-dried neighbourhoods baking in an oven of concrete and asphalt.

For most people, the mundane threats that plague our environments are likely to annoy more than they spark dread. But for scientists who know just how dangerous our surroundings can be, the burden of knowledge weighs heavy each day. Across Europe, environmental risks cause 18% of deaths from cardiovascular disease and 10% of deaths from cancer. Traffic crashes in the EU kill five times more people than murders.

• ‘It’s impossible to replace Bruno … we need more leaders’

• United host Newcastle in Premier League on Boxing Day

Ruben Amorim has described Bruno Fernandes as “impossible to replace” but has told Manchester United’s players the captain’s injury is a chance for them to step up.

Fernandes was forced off at half-time of Sunday’s loss at Aston Villa owing to a soft-tissue injury that will rule him out for a prolonged period. United host Newcastle in Boxing Day’s only Premier League fixture and Amorim was asked how he could compensate for Fernandes’s absence when the 31-year-old’s deputy, Kobbie Mainoo, is also injured.

Strikes were latest violation of year-long ceasefire and targeted what Israel said were Hezbollah sites

Israel has carried out several airstrikes in southern Lebanon on what it said was Hezbollah infrastructure, as a new year’s deadline for the Lebanese state to disarm the group in the south of the country loomed.

Israeli warplanes bombed the valleys of Houmin, Wadi Azza and Nimeiriya in the southern Nabatieh area on Wednesday morning. Residents reported that Israeli drones continued to hover over the area and other areas of south Lebanon and its eastern Bekaa valley after the strikes.

France’s rule over Algeria from 1830 to 1962 is marked by mass killings and large-scale deportation

Algeria’s parliament has unanimously approved a law declaring France’s colonisation of the country a crime and demanded an apology and reparations.

Lawmakers, standing in the chamber wearing scarves in the colours of the national flag, chanted “long live Algeria” on Wednesday as they applauded the passage of the bill, which states that France holds “legal responsibility for its colonial past in Algeria and the tragedies it caused”.

Critics compare offensive to Iraq war, citing familiar mix of regime-change rhetoric, security pretexts and oil interests

Donald Trump’s recent claims that the US should keep Venezuelan oil from seized tankers are part of a broader belief in rightwing “resource imperialism”, experts say.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has escalated pressure on Venezuela, invoking drug-trafficking claims. This month, the US intercepted two tankers carrying Venezuelan oil and began pursuing a third, while intensifying its campaign against the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro.

From postcards to 3D models of nativity scenes, Ken Bonham has spent decades crafting the vast collection of dioramas that fill his home in Birmingham

A miniature world can be found hidden inside a one-bedroom flat in Birmingham. For decades, Ken Bonham, a retired teacher, has made memory boxes of places he has visited with his dressmaker wife of 54 years, Maggie, each made up of items they have collected on their travels or Bonham has made.

Models of barns, castles and churches are also crammed into the property – made from cork, balsa wood, styrofoam – or 3D card elevations from Bonham’s photos. Each Christmas, Bonham delights his neighbours by crafting nativity scenes from items he has collected and crafted.

In this week’s newsletter: Pushing Buttons readers on their favourite games of the year, from Death Stranding 2 and Arc Raiders to Ghost of Yōtei and more

Happy holidays, Pushing Buttons readers! Once again, we are approaching the cherished time of year between Christmas and New Year when we might actually have the time to play some video games. I hope Santa brought you something new to play, instead of taking one look at all the unplayed games in your Steam library and putting you straight on the naughty list.

Over the past few weeks you have been sending in your favourite games of the year. I maintain that you readers have excellent taste: there’s crossover with our own Guardian games of the year list, but also plenty here that I haven’t played myself. Thank you to everyone who sent in a recommendation, and I hope you find yet another game to add to your pile of shame among the following suggestions. I’ll be back next week with a year-in-review issue – in the meantime, go enjoy yourselves!

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Critics say deployment is unwarranted and could cause fear in the city, which has seen a decrease in violent crime rates

The Trump administration is deploying 350 national guard troops to New Orleans ahead of the new year, launching another federal deployment in the city at the same time that an immigration crackdown led by border patrol is under way.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said on Tuesday that guard members, as they have in other deployments in large cities, will be tasked with supporting federal law enforcement partners, including the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. Parnell added that the national guard troops will be deployed through February.

Trump has shown erratic and bizarre behavior throughout the year, leading to questions about his mental acuity

In an address from the White House in December, Donald Trump claimed that, over the past 11 months, his administration had brought “more positive change” than any government in US history.

“There has never been anything like it,” Trump added.

America is respected again as a country. We were not respected with Biden. They looked at him falling down stairs every day. Every day, the guy’s falling down stairs.”

I said: ‘It’s not our president. We can’t have it.’ I’m very careful, you know, when I walk downstairs for – like I’m on stairs, like these stairs, I’m very – I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record, just try not to fall because it doesn’t work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen and it became a part of their legacy.

We don’t want that. Need to walk nice and easy. You not have – you don’t have to set any record. Be cool, be cool when you walk down, but don’t, don’t bop down the stairs. That’s the one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs, I’ve never seen – da da da da da da, bop, bop, bop, he’d go down the stairs, wouldn’t hold on. I said, it’s great, I don’t want to do it. I guess I could do it, but eventually bad things are going to happen and it only takes once, but he did a lousy job as president.”

I’ve taken in refugees from time to time, and formed ties that have lasted to this day. Instead of demonising people, we could try sharing our lives with them

There is one Christmas story from when my father first arrived in the UK, 43 years ago, that can still make me howl with laughter. It was a cold winter and my dad had been gripped by the idea of roasting chestnuts. He had grown up in the southern hemisphere, in a former British colony, so despite the fact that his Christmases were hot – spent in shorts and flip-flops – he had been surrounded by images of snowy churches, robin redbreasts, holly, ivy and, yes, chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

And so, he headed out to Clapham Common in south London to collect conkers. They were chestnuts, after all. Horse chestnuts but hey, that’s still a chestnut. Or so he thought. And so, that evening when his British friends arrived at the house where he was staying, they were greeted by the suspiciously acrid smell of about 30 conkers, baking away in the little gas oven, plus a wild-haired man in his 20s primed to chomp into his tray of baked poison.

Nell Frizzell is a journalist and author

The ‘religious atheist’ author held a reputation as CS Lewis’s opposite. But his two trilogies – which came to a close this year – were a celebration of humanity and imagination

Twenty years ago, I visited the Botanic Garden in Oxford for the first time. Among the winding pathways lined with flowers, about halfway back, stood a bench under a tree, largely identical to the others throughout the park. Was this the one? I wondered.

I didn’t have to question it for long. A closer look revealed words and images etched along its wooden slats, all along similar lines: “Lyra + Will”, they said. Or: “Pantalaimon” and “Kirjava”. Tucked between the bench’s arm and seat was a folded-up scrap of paper with a handwritten message of thanks.

Off-spinner not guaranteed spot in XI but may have key role against a side that will try to clear the boundary

It would really be something. A Victorian spin bowler – one from St Kilda Cricket Club, no less – walking out on Boxing Day to play an Ashes Test in the shadow of the Shane Warne Stand at the MCG. Todd Murphy is not much like Warne in most respects: quiet, modest, thoughtful, bespectacled, a student of the even tempered practice of off-spin bowling rather than the lavish excess of leg-spin. But still. The links that do exist are too appealing to ignore.

Not that Murphy is guaranteed to play the fourth Test in place of the injured Nathan Lyon, with Australia’s coach, Andrew McDonald, prevaricating about whether to pick four frontline fast bowlers plus an all-round seamer in Cameron Green or Beau Webster. But in picking him as the lone option in the squad, Australia have already given their spinner more positive feedback than Shoaib Bashir has received from England, who have repeatedly referred to him as their No 1 choice while leaving him on the bench for all four Tests so far.

Head-to-toe can be too much, but a lace trim on a skirt, a camisole under a blazer, lace tights? Now you’re talking

Sometimes a little goes a long way. This is true for Tabasco on eggs, for fragrance in an elevator, for confidence in the karaoke booth, and it is also, I have belatedly realised, the secret of how to wear lace.

All these years, I’ve been getting lace wrong by wearing too much of it. Killing it with overenthusiasm. Lace is beautiful stuff: delicate and romantic. Look closely at it and you will see tiny motifs and patterns, flowers and symbols, crafted in miniature like secret messages. Lace has drama: it is the fabric of marriages, funerals and christenings, after all. And it can switch vibes: white is chaste, red is raunchy, black is sophisticated. Lace has it all going on.

⚽ Updates from Group E fixture; kick-off 12.30pm GMT
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It looks a touch damp in Casablanca but is brightening up slightly. Rain has really been an issue in the opening few games. The crowd, like in Mali v Zambia, is very sparse.

Will Mohamed Salah still be a Liverpool player by the time Afcon concludes? John Duerden looks at the prospect of the Egyptian forward moving to Saudi.

Ukraine accepts principle of demilitarised zone in east, while insisting Russia make similar concessions in pulling back forces

Washington and Kyiv have edged closer to a jointly agreed formula to end the war in Ukraine amid continuing uncertainty over Moscow’s response and a number of unresolved issues.

Revealing the latest status of the peace talks, brokered by Washington, Ukraine’s president, Volodmyr Zelenskyy, appeared to have secured several important concessions from earlier versions of the now-slimmed-down plan after intense talks with the US negotiating team.

From Peaky Blinders to Sherwood, Shaheen Baig has cast some of the best shows on screen. But she struck gold with Owen Cooper for Adolescence – and won an Emmy. How does she spot such game-changing talent?

At the Emmys in September, Adolescence all but swept the board. It won best limited series. It won awards for writing, for directing, for cinematography. Three of its actors – Stephen Graham, Erin Doherty and Owen Cooper – all took home awards. But Adolescence also earned another Emmy for a craft that often goes overlooked: best casting.

Shaheen Baig was the woman responsible for casting Adolescence, and her Emmy is tucked away in the top right corner of the screen as we chat about her year over Zoom. She is mortified as soon as she realises this, immediately re-angling her webcam to keep it out of sight, lest anyone mistakes it for a boast.

Members of Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms network tell Guardian they didn’t mind missing out on the Nobel peace prize because ‘we only want to help’

Doing good gets you killed in Sudan. It was why Amira did not tell her mother when she joined a volunteer group that felt like the only thing stopping her country sliding deeper into dystopia.

Each morningshe secretly crossed the shifting frontline of Sudan’s North Kordofan state. Amira was entering territory held by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), paramilitaries who have committed countless war crimes, including genocide, during the country’s cataclysmic war.

This make-ahead, easy green sauce is suitable for to almost any main dish and a great way to use up hang-about herbs

Whenever I want to cook something special, my first thought is always salsa verde, and Christmas is no exception. This vibrant sauce is so forgiving and endlessly versatile – a last-minute showstopper that can be whipped up with a few store-cupboard ingredients and some herbs. It’s normally made with parsley, garlic, capers, anchovy fillets, olive oil and vinegar, but as long as the end result is green and saucy, I’m generally more than happy. Finely chop whatever herbs you have to hand – I used rosemary, sage, lemon verbena and nasturtiumsfrom the garden.