Death toll rises to 10 as first identified victims were Altadena residents affected by ongoing Eaton fire

• California wildfires – live updates
• Californians: have you been affected by the wildfires?

At least 10 people have died in the wildfires surging across the Los Angeles area. As local law enforcement scrambles to identify victims and inform their families, details are emerging about five of the Los Angeles residents killed in the worst wildfires to hit the western city in its history.

Those identified were all killed in the Eaton fire, a 13,690 acre blaze that ravaged the neighborhood of Altadena – a diverse residential community near Pasadena that is home to working- and middle-class families, including many Black residents who have lived there for generations.

Meta, fresh off announcement to end factchecking, follows McDonald’s and Walmart in rolling back diversity initiatives

Following a week in which Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta was getting rid of factchecking, as of Friday the company is also terminating its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, effective immediately.

An internal memo from Meta acknowledged that “the legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing”, while pointing to recent supreme court decisions and the “charged” view some have of DEI as a concept. Axios and Business Insider first reported the memo. While Meta confirmed to the Guardian the company is ending its DEI practices, the company did not respond to a request for a comment about how the decision aligns with its overarching goals.

• England face Afghanistan in Champions Trophy
• ICC called on to ‘intervene and show global leadership’

The England and Wales Cricket Board has called on cricket’s governing body to show leadership by taking coordinated action to stop “the gender apartheid facing the 14 million women in Afghanistan”.

In a letter to the International Cricket Council on Friday, the ECB’s chief executive, Richard Gould, also urged it “to find a solution that provides hope that the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan can be restored”.

US president moves to shield roughly 230,000 Salvadorans and 600,000 Venezuelans against Trump administration

The Biden administration on Friday extended temporary humanitarian protections for about 230,000 Salvadorans and 600,000 Venezuelans living in the US, in an effort to shield those groups from an incoming Trump administration that has promised to deport them.

The decision in the dying days of Joe Biden’s presidency came after immigrant advocates and lawmakers urged the Department of Homeland Security to extend temporary protected status (TPS), designed to protect immigrants from being deported to countries that are engulfed in disaster or conflict.

Azov, a volunteer brigade, plans to form international battalion to boost numbers as Ukraine heads into fourth year of war

• The Britons killed fighting for Ukraine against Russia

Ukraine’s highest profile combat unit is seeking English-speaking recruits at a time when the impending presidency of Donald Trump means that Kyiv is expected to come under intense pressure on the battlefield.

Azov, a volunteer brigade whose decade-old nationalist origins have made it a target of Russian propaganda, plans to form an international battalion to boost its numbers as Ukraine heads into a fourth year of full-scale war.

The full-back is clearly itching to move but an unrealistic Local Lad premium is demanded of him that reflects wider alienation

Stop talking about this thing I’m talking about. Enough already with the big media fuss I am making a big media fuss over. This kind of messaging is always hard to swallow. Why, the angry man demanded, is everyone so angry right now?

For all that, the fuss over Trent Alexander-Arnold is definitely real, whatever its source or ultimate legitimacy. Why does everyone care so much about this? It seems weird, disproportionate and strangely fevered, not to mention hostage to some persuasive media voices that carry a bit too much unexamined fan-feeling and not enough of the old journalistic detachment.

Australia and England will have to cram the eagerly anticipated series of three ODIs, three T20s and a four-day Test into three weeks and five cities

England’s last Women’s Ashes win was so long ago – 11 years, in fact – that, when asked about it last week, Danni Wyatt-Hodge struggled to ­remember many details. Her main ­recollection was of the raucous night out in Hobart afterwards – a ­celebration that the then-captain, Charlotte Edwards, said resulted in her “worst ever ­hangover”. ­Somewhere out there is a photograph of Edwards and her ­successor, Heather Knight, ­staggering back to the team hotel, looking ­distinctly worse for wear. Unsurprisingly, it has never found its way into the public domain.

Of course, that was all in the pre-professional era (January 2014). All the same, should England pull off a similar triumph over the next three weeks (the series gets under way in Sydney on Sunday), Knight may be forgiven for leading some rambunctious celebrations of her own. This will be her fifth Ashes as captain: her side have fallen short on all four previous attempts. As for the possibility of beating Australia in their own backyard? England have managed it only three times, and one of those was the first ever ­international women’s series back in 1934-35. Tasks don’t get much more uphill.

Martin Elling pleads guilty to destroying records on advice provided to Purdue Pharma on how to ‘turbocharge’ sales

A former partner at McKinsey & Co pleaded guilty on Friday to obstructing justice by destroying records related to advice he and the consulting firm provided to Purdue Pharma on how to “turbocharge” sales of its potent opioid prescription painkiller, OxyContin.

Martin Elling, 60, entered his plea in federal court in Abingdon, Virginia, a month after the US Department of Justice announced that his former employer had agreed to pay $650m to resolve related charges over its work for Purdue, the Connecticut-based pharmaceutical company.

As factchecking attempts end, Meta’s platforms will become a wasteland of fake news and misinformation

Mark Zuckerberg craves one metric more than any other: engagement, the statistic that tracks how long social media users spend scrolling, clicking, commenting, and viewing ads. More engagement, more profit. The Meta CEO will do almost anything to keep users online for an extra two minutes – even, it seems, surrender his websites to a flood of fake news.

On Tuesday, Zuckerberg announced that his company plans to fire its US factcheckers and weaken its ability to moderate disinformation on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. This new policy is meant to curry favor with the coming Trump administration. It’s also a desperate attempt to boost engagement across all Meta’s social networks.

• Browns QB has surgery after tearing achilles again
• Watson, 29, signed guaranteed $230m contract in 2022

Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson had surgery after rupturing his achilles tendon for the second time in three months and could miss the entire 2025 season.

The team said Watson, who has played in just 19 games in three seasons with Cleveland due to an NFL suspension and injuries, felt discomfort in his ankle after “rolling” it while in Miami. He only revealed the injury during a player-exit meeting on Sunday.

A visual guide to the damage caused by the wildfires that have devastated the city

Wildfires continue to ravage parts of Los Angeles, California, with at least 10 people dead, thousands of homes, businesses, schools and churches leveled and more than 150,000 people still under evacuation orders. The Palisades fire – which continues to burn – already ranks as one of the most destructive in the city’s history. The second largest blaze, the Eaton fire, to the east, has destroyed homes and lives in and around Altadena, which neighbors Pasadena, home of the Rose Bowl. Meanwhile, smaller fires rage on but are more contained.

California wildfires, Donald Trump’s sentencing, hunger in Khan Younis and freezing temperatures in London: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

• Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing

A small group of activists faced off outside court in Manhattan as the president-elect was sentenced to an ‘unconditional discharge’ in his hush-money case

Outside the lower Manhattan courthouse where Donald Trump was sentenced on Friday in his hush-money case, groups of his supporters as well as anti-Trump protesters gathered in the below-freezing temperatures to express their views on the sentencing.

About 20 supporters stood on the right side of the courthouse entrance, displaying signs and banners that read “Stop Political Witch Hunts” and “Free Trump, Save America”. In contrast, around 15 anti-Trump protesters stood on the left side.

Five months after retiring, the Scot is throwing himself into his work with the most successful men’s player of all time

At the height of the Covid-19 lockdowns almost five years ago, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray logged on to Instagram Live for a casual conversation from their homes. As some of their viewers began to send through questions, they were asked to list the first three things they do when they wake up. Djokovic went first: “Gratitude and prayer,” he said. “A couple of long, deep breaths. Hugging my wife if she’s still in bed and running to my children.”

Murray, who seemed to be fighting hard to maintain a straight face throughout Djokovic’s response, offered his own contributions: “For me, too much information, but I go for a pee.”

We’ve been together a long time but now he says I either accept an open marriage or we get a divorce. The only way I cope is by turning to alcohol

We are gay men in our mid 40s, who have been together 20 years. From the outside, we have a fantastic life: very well-paid, high-status jobs, and we divide our time between lovely homes in two cities. We have an active social life in both places.

Around 10 years ago, I had a feeling of mild unease that he was cheating on me, but I told myself I was being silly. He soon asked for an open relationship and said that I wasn’t sexual enough for his needs. I said no. Looking back, I think that may have been the moment that killed my marriage.

• FA Cup updates from the 8pm GMT kick-off at Villa Park
• Live scoreboard | Read Football Daily | And mail Scott |

1 min: Just 41 seconds on the clock, in fact, and West Ham nearly take the lead in spectacular style. The ball’s shuttled right to left via Wan-Bissaka, Summerville and Paqueta, the latter pearling a diagonal rising shot from 25 yards that misses the top-right corner by an inch or two. Not sure Olsen was getting there.

West Ham get the ball rolling. A reminder that this tie will be decided tonight, after extra time and penalty kicks if necessary. And there’s no VAR!

The supreme court order may also be a harbinger of what awaits the US over the next four years: litigation that again divides the judiciary and the nation

Donald Trump will take the office on 20 January 2025 as a convicted felon. On Thursday night, a sharply divided US supreme court declined to ride to his last-minute rescue. In a one-paragraph order, the majority refused to stay his state court sentencing whose genesis lay with payments that Trump allegedly arranged to cover up his purported affair with the adult film actor Stormy Daniels. Last May, a Manhattan jury unanimously found the 45th president guilty of 34 counts of conspiracy and fraud.

The supreme court order may also be a harbinger of what awaits the US over the next four years: litigation that again divides the judiciary and the nation. Five of the nine supreme court justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, refused to buy what the monarch of Mar-a-Lago was selling. The rest may be more inclined to do his bidding.

Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992

Police opposed to protesters gathering outside BBC HQ, which is near a synagogue, on the Jewish holy day

Mark Rylance, the star of the BBC’s Wolf Hall, has joined the singer Charlotte Church and actor Juliet Stevenson to condemn a decision by the police to ban a pro-Palestine protest outside the corporation’s Broadcasting House headquarters.

Protesters were planning to gather in Portland Place in central London on Saturday 18 January before marching to Whitehall. A ban was imposed on Thursday by the Met, with officers citing the risk of “serious disruption” to a nearby synagogue on the Jewish holy day, as congregants attend Shabbat services.

Analysis estimates death toll by end of June was 64,260, with 59% being women, children and people over 65

Research published in the Lancet medical journal estimates that the death toll in Gaza during the first nine months of the Israel-Hamas war was about 40% higher than numbers recorded by the Palestinian territory’s health ministry.

The peer-reviewed statistical analysis was conducted by academics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Yale University and other institutions, using a statistical method called capture-recapture analysis.

Thomas Kingston, son-in-law of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, had been prescribed SSRIs

A coroner has issued a warning about the effects of antidepressants prescribed by a Buckingham Palace doctor to the son-in-law of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent before his suicide.

Thomas Kingston, 45, whose marriage to Lady Gabriella at Windsor Castle in 2019 was attended by the late Queen, killed himself last February after “suffering adverse effects of medication he had recently been prescribed”, an inquest found last month.

Noaa says last year was the warmest since records began in 1850 and Nasa concurs: ‘The long-term trends are very clear’

It was the hottest year ever recorded for the world’s lands and oceans in 2024, US government scientists have confirmed, providing yet another measure of how the climate crisis is pushing humanity into temperatures we have previously never experienced.

Last year was the hottest in global temperature records stretching back to 1850, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa announced, with the worldwide average 1.46C (2.6F) warmer than the era prior to humans burning huge volumes of planet-heating fossil fuels.

Grammy-winning musician alleged the imprisoned rapper is harassing her through surrogates after he shot her in 2020

Megan Thee Stallion has been granted a restraining order from the imprisoned rapper Tory Lanez until early 2030.

The Los Angeles superior court judge Richard Bloom has granted Megan’s request for a protective order after the hip-hop star alleged that Lanez was harassing her from prison through surrogates as he serves a 10-year sentence for shooting her in the feet.

Events in California reveal how political obstruction is deepening a climate crisis that needs urgent action to prevent it becoming an irreversible disaster

The wildfires ravaging Los Angeles have killed at least 10 people, displaced 180,000 and scorched about 40 square miles – an inferno driven by fierce winds and severe drought in what should be California’s wet season. It is a sobering reminder that the climate crisis is driving wildfires to become more frequent, intense and destructive – leaving ruined lives, homes and livelihoods in their wake. The US president Joe Biden responded by mobilising federal aid. By contrast the president-elect, Donald Trump, a convicted felon who was criminally sentenced on Friday, used the disaster to spread disinformation and stoke political division.

The climate crisis knows no national borders. Deadly floods in Spain, Hawaii’s fires and east Africa’s devastating drought show nowhere is safe from its effects. Countries must work toward the global common interest and beyond their narrow national interests. The scale of the climate emergency is such that there is a case to view all crises through a green lens. Instead Mr Trump’s denialism works to foment distrust about the science. He’s not just aiming to delay the onset of truth. He wants to demolish it. It’s a familiar playbook: the fossil fuel industry knows the reality of the climate emergency but chooses profit over responsibility, effectively deceiving the public while the planet burns.

Healy’s side have reacted strongly again to World Cup pain and the tourists need to keep the series live until the Test

If you’re playing against the Australian women’s cricket team, there are points where the only option is to brace yourself. Because they lose so very rarely, in any format, they tend to respond to those anomalies by proving how unusual they are. For England’s women, visiting Australia for a Women’s Ashes series of three one-day internationals, three Twenty20s and a day-night Test, this is now the position they are in.

Skip back two places on the list of major failures to the 50-over World Cup semi-final of 2017, when Australia got ambushed by Harmanpreet Kaur in one of the all-time batting assaults. Outraged at watching England subsequently knock over India in the final, Australia went on a tear: unbeaten in series terms across four Women’s Ashes, three T20 World Cups, three T20 tri-series, 14 bilateral T20 series, 14 bilateral ODI series, the Commonwealth Games and the next 50-over World Cup, on the way notching a world record ODI winning streak of 26.

New Zealand garden takes first prize in global competition designed to promote water conservation

A sun-scorched patch of lawn near Christchurch, in New Zealand, has been crowned the ugliest lawn in the world.

Now in its second year, the World’s Ugliest Lawn competition rewards lawn owners for not watering their parched yellow grass and patchy flowerbeds.

Move marks shift in views but sexually active gay men will not be admitted to Roman Catholic seminaries

Gay men will be allowed to train as priests in Roman Catholic seminaries, so long as they observe celibacy, according to new guidelines announced by the Italian Bishops Conference (CIE).

The decision marks a shift from the view previously held by Pope Francis that gay men should not be admitted to seminaries owing to the risk of them leading a double life.

• Former manager set to return to Goodison Park
• Owners hope Moyes can steer team away from relegation

Everton are hopeful of appointing David Moyes as Sean Dyche’s replacement after a day of productive talks with the club’s former manager.

Moyes met representatives from The Friedkin Group (TFG), Everton’s new owner, on Friday to discuss a return to the club he managed between 2002 and 2013. Negotiations are understood to have advanced well and there is confidence a deal could be concluded within the next 24 hours. The length of contract is being discussed but the expectation is that it will cover the remainder of this season and Everton’s first year at their new Bramley-Moore dock stadium in 2025-26.

Alice Weidel’s livestreamed chat with the X owner made for excruciating listening – but even talk of Hitler won’t deter her supporters

Imagine a politician fighting a general election being granted the opportunity of a publicly livestreamed chat with one of the most powerful figures in the world, only to be heard wriggling out of it after 70 minutes. “I don’t know what to continue (with),” Alice Weidel said to Elon Musk, in effect shutting down the unique audience the owner of X had gifted the AfD leader on Thursday evening.

Admittedly, the rambling conversation felt longer than 70 minutes. It missed moderation and while Musk and Weidel giggled a lot and agreed on almost every issue, the sense that they were boring each other became increasingly acute as they droned on about space travel and religious belief rather than the alleged decline of western civilisation. Had Adolf Hitler not been mentioned, the highly anticipated live talk would have been shocking only for being so unnewsworthy.

Thomas Vorreyer is a Berlin-based journalist with a focus on East German politics

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US announces $65m bounty for arrest of president, who has led country since 2013 and failed to prove he won recent vote

Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, has been​ accused of a shameless and fraudulent power-grab after swearing himself in for a third term, despite domestic outrage and a chorus of international condemnation at his alleged theft of last year’s election.

“This is a great victory for Venezuelan democracy,” the 62-year-old autocrat boasted during a sparsely attended oath-taking ceremony in Caracas that was boycotted by the leaders of democratic nations.

Markets appear to be fretting over sustainability of tax and spending plans and whether UK is heading for ‘stagflation’

Rachel Reeves intended to spend January burnishing her reputation on the global stage with trips to Beijing and Davos, and flipping the focus from her £40bn tax-raising budget to Labour’s plans to rekindle economic growth.

Instead, the chancellor was reduced to watching anxiously, as a sell-off swept through government bond markets, and sterling came under intense pressure as a result.

Measures targeting Russian energy sector attempt to leverage peace deal for Ukraine in Trump administration

The Biden administration on Friday imposed its broadest package of sanctions yet targeting Russia’s oil and gas revenues in an attempt to give Kyiv and the incoming administration of Donald Trump leverage to reach a deal for peace in Ukraine. The move is meant to cut Russia‘s oil revenues for the war that started in February 2022, and has killed or wounded tens of thousands and reduced cities to rubble.

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the timing of the was chosen because “oil markets are in a fundamentally better place” and the US economy is better positioned to absorb any market disruption.

So-called department of government efficiency charged by Trump to help effect radical government shake-up

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have already dispatched emissaries across the US government ahead of their mission to slash public spending as joint heads of “Doge” (the so-called “department of government efficiency”), a non-governmental body ordered by Donald Trump to help realize his goal of a radical government shake-up.

The two tech billionaires have already sent aides to more than a dozen federal agencies as they look to identify possible cuts, according to the Washington Post.

‘Now we have to make sure there’s not a second, financial tragedy that follows the physical catastrophe,’ says consumer advocate

• California wildfires – live

California homeowners who lost everything in this week’s devastating Los Angeles-area fires now have to battle their insurance companies to recover the value of their homeowners’ policies – if they are lucky enough to have insurance at all.

With estimates of the economic damage from the fires now reaching $52bn-$57bn, consumer advocates and veterans of past disasters say homeowners can expect weeks or months of paperwork to prove that they have lost what they say they have lost, if not also pressure from claims adjusters and a whole class of disaster professionals to make a quick settlement for less than they are entitled to under their policies.

A negroni-style premix that you can prep ahead so it’s ready to rustle up on a Friday night

This premix is brilliant for a crowd, and it’s also a celebration of every right-thinking bartender’s favourite garnish: the glorious maraschino cherry. Fabbri makes the best, but if you can’t find those, Luxardo is a good alternative.

Max and Noel Venning, Three Sheets, London W1

World’s largest aircraft lessors and insurance firms battle over compensation for jets stranded after Ukraine invasion

Sitting in a nondescript building near the high court in Dublin, about 40 cloaked barristers have gathered almost daily since June last year. At stake is €2.5bn (£2.1bn) worth of aircraft stranded in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.

Behind multiple screens and a mountain of warehouse boxes they are fighting to determine who should pay for the losses – the aircraft lessors or the several insurance companies, including Lloyd’s, AIG and Chubb.

The director said the long-planned follow-up to the 2004 hit, which is due to start filming next year, will contain ‘some crazy stuff’

Mel Gibson says that he is going to cast a de-aged Jim Caviezel in his long-planned sequel to The Passion of the Christ, and that the film will be an “acid trip”.

Gibson was speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, and when asked who “the next Jesus” was going be, Gibson replied that he was aiming to use Caviezel, who had played the lead role in the first film in 2004, in a story about Jesus’ resurrection. Asked how he would handle the 20-year time gap for a story that is supposed to take place three days after the events depicted in Passion of the Christ, Gibson said he would use de-ageing techniques that are “so good now”.

With brutishly fast zombies, raw action and most importantly an over-the-shoulder viewpoint, the influence of Capcom’s horror game can still be felt

It is an interesting quirk of video game history that one of the greatest ever horror titles debuted on the Nintendo GameCube, a toylike console better known for the cutest titles in the Zelda series and Animal Crossing. But in 2002, Capcom revealed five exclusives to boost the beleaguered platform – and among them was Resident Evil 4, technically the 13th title in the franchise, which on its release three years later would be considered its zenith. It was an exciting new lease of life for the survival horror genre.

Not that you’d guess all this from the game’s extraordinarily pedestrian setup. Six years after the fall of the Umbrella Corporation smouldering cop Leon Kennedy has been dispatched on a mission to retrieve the US president’s kidnapped daughter, who has been spotted in a tiny village in rural Spain. For some reason best known to the Secret Service, he’s going in alone.

Brandon, 28, and Christine, 27, became close friends when they worked together at a Covid testing lab. Now they live in different countries, but make time to continue their friendship

When Brandon and his boyfriend moved to London from Wales in April 2021, there wasn’t much going on. With the city under lockdown, he took a job in a Covid lab at Gatwick Airport. “I was processing PCR tests for people who were travelling,” he says. “I didn’t know anyone in London except my boyfriend, but luckily the team I was working with were great.”

In June, they were joined by Christine, a biology graduate who lived in London and had transferred from the PCR testing lab at Heathrow. “When I arrived, they seemed like a tightknit team, so I was a bit anxious about fitting in,” she says. “But Brandon was super friendly and that drew me to him straight away. I really wanted to be his friend.”

• Ex-Hull and Bradford forward has stage two dementia
• ‘Just got to keep smiling and trying to help people,’ he says

The former Premier League forward Dean Windass has been diagnosed with dementia at the age of 55, it has been revealed.

The former Hull and Bradford City player, who scored the goal that took Hull to the Premier League in 2008, has stage two of the condition, but joked with social media followers that he was “glad they found a brain”.

In March 2022, the largest theatre in Mariupol – while in use as a bomb shelter for 1,000 people – was hit by a Russian air strike. A re-enactment based on survivors’ testimonies has been moving audiences to tears

The play opens with the usual pre-show request for audiences to switch off their mobile phones before the curtain rises, but along with this come warnings – and instructions for how the audience should evacuate the auditorium in the event of an air raid.

That is because Mariupol Drama, a play based on the real experiences of a Ukrainian theatre company during the Russian invasion of the titular city, was written and staged in the midst of war. It re-enacts the horrifying moment on 16 March 2022 when their theatre was bombed by Russian forces, even though it had by then been turned into an evacuation shelter for almost 1,000 people.