Kyiv and the rest of Europe must stand together to prevent Russia from seizing more territory by force

• Dmytro Kuleba is a former foreign minister of Ukraine

Europe breathed a deep collective sigh of relief on Monday, as the crisis triggered by Washington’s presentation of a new 28-point plan for ending the war appeared – briefly – to have been stabilised. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, spoke of “substantial progress” after Ukraine-US talks in Geneva. On Monday night, Vladimir Putin made his countermove: another massive barrage of missile and drone strikes on Kyiv.

The sequence of contrasting events captured the grim essence of the outgoing year. By day, diplomatic battles are fought: hopeful statements are issued from Washington, London, Brussels and Kyiv. Immense energy is expended on containing Donald Trump’s initiatives. By night, Putin brutally reminds the world that, for him, war remains the primary tool for achieving “peace”.

Dmytro Kuleba is a former foreign minister of Ukraine

Expert advisers likely to recommend only a few thousand men with genetic variant should be eligible for tests

Prostate cancer screening will not be made routinely available for the vast majority of men across the UK, according to the expected recommendations from a panel of expert government health advisers.

The UK national screening committee is expected to only recommend screening for men with the genetic variants BRCA1 and BRCA2 who are between the ages of 45 and 61.

Organised by Olly Alexander and the Mighty Hoopla festival to ‘fight back against the politics of fear and exclusion’, Trans Mission will take place at Wembley Arena in March

Artists including Sugababes, Wolf Alice, Romy, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Christine and the Queens, Beth Ditto, Beverley Knight, Jasmine.4.T, Kae Tempest and more will perform at an all-star charity concert at Wembley Arena in support of trans rights next year.

Organised by Olly Alexander and the Mighty Hoopla festival, Trans Mission will also feature appearances from figures including Green party leader Zack Polanski, actor Ian McKellen, comedian Grace Campbell, author Shon Faye, actor Mawaan Rizwan, model Munroe Bergdorf and actor Nicola Coughlan.

Adam Lambert

Beth Ditto

Bimini

Beverley Knight

Christine and the Queens

Fat Tony

GottMikk

HAAi

Jasmine.4.T

Kae Tempest

Kate Nash

MNEK

Olly Alexander

Romy

Sink the Pink

Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Sugababes

Tom Grennan

Tom Rasmussen

Trans Voices

Wolf Alice

Dani St James

Grace Campbell

Harriet Rose

Ian McKellen

Jack Rooke

Jayde Adams

Jo Maugham

Jordan Stephens

Juno Birch

Juno Dawson

Kadiff Kirwan

Layton Williams

Mawaan Rizwan

Munroe Bergdorf

Nicola Coughlan

Russell Tovey

Shon Faye

Tia Kofi

Tiara Skye

Zack Polanski

Airline says 55,000 people signed up to Prime, making €4.4m, but passengers benefited by more than €6m

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Ryanair is shutting its frequent flyers members’ club after only eight months because customers exploited its benefits too much.

The budget airline said on Friday it was closing the scheme, which offered benefits including flight discounts, free reserved seating on up to 12 flights a year and travel insurance.

The Ferryman and His Wife by Frode Grytten; Woman in the Pillory by Brigitte Reimann; Iran+100, edited by various; Sea Now by Eva Meijer

The Ferryman and His Wife by Frode Grytten, translated by Alison McCullough (Serpent’s Tail, £12.99)
On the last day of his life – how does he know? He just does – Norwegian ferryman Nils Vik takes a final boat trip, alone after a lifetime helping others. He remembers those he has ferried, including actor Edward G Robinson; Miss Norway 1966, who was “declared the most beautiful woman in the nation and won a Fiat 850”; and young gay man Jon, who was bullied by his father, then drowned in a car, channelling the Smiths: “What a heavenly way to die … to die by his lover’s side.” That blend of light and dark runs through the novel, but the person Nils really misses is his late wife Marta. He masks his turmoil (“After the storm … there’s no evidence. Only the calm blue surface”), and tries to remember the happy times. He recalls his daughter taking him to see a play. “What did you like about it?” “Everything.” The reader understands.

It’s always crushing when a wildly anticipated game turns out to be a dud, but this RPG’s awful story and clunky dialogue gave my son and I something to talk about

It was an exciting November for the Diamond household: one of those rare games that we all loved had a sequel coming out! The original Outer Worlds dazzled our eyeballs with its art nouveau palette and charmed our ears with witty dialogue, sucking us into a classic mystery-unravelling story in one of my favourite “little man versus evil corporate overlords” worlds since Deus Ex. It didn’t have the most original combat, but that didn’t matter: it was obviously a labour of love from a team totally invested in the telling of this tale, and we all fell under its spell.

Well, when I say all of us, I mean myself and the three kids. My wife did not play The Outer Worlds, because none of those worlds featured Crash Bandicoot. But the rest of us dug it, and the kids particularly enjoyed that I flounced away from the final boss battle after half a day of trying, declaring that I had pretty much completed the game and that was good enough for a dad with other things to do.

Paul Brown looks back at his career reporting on the climate crisis, failed summit and nuclear power – and how to do it well

Paul Brown was the Guardian’s environment correspondent from 1989 until 2005 and has written many columns since. He submitted his last column last week after being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. From his hospital bed in Luton, Paul offers his reflections on 45 years writing for the Guardian.

We, in the climate business, all owe a great deal to Mrs Margaret Thatcher. Her politics were anathema to me and to many Guardian readers. But she prided herself on being a scientist before she was a politician.

Up to 1,000 women globally await execution in prison, with mitigating factors such as child abuse and coercion ignored

• Read more in our Women in prison series

There are between 500 and 1,000 women on death row in at least 42 countries, according to a 2023 report by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty. The countries that execute the most women are also the countries that execute the most people, namely China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

According to Amnesty International, in 2024 an unknown number of women were executed in China, two were put to death in Egypt, 30 in Iran, one in Iraq, nine in Saudi Arabia and two in Yemen. Some countries, including China, North Korea and Vietnam, do not publish accurate data.

Californian singer-songwriter Lukas Frank is picking up rave reviews for his second album’s epic choruses and lush orchestrations

From Los Angeles
Recommended if you like John Grant, Scott Walker, Father John Misty
Up next A cover of Duran Duran’s The Chauffeur is out now, with another single due in February

After several years of perseverance, things are happening for Storefront Church. The audience at this month’s sellout gig at St Pancras Old Church in London included Perfume Genius and members of the Last Dinner Party and the Horrors and their self-released second album, Ink & Oil, is picking up rave reviews. One used the term “emotional flood” to describe the album’s epic, baroque pop, big pianos and drums, sweeping choruses and Travis Warner’s lush, cinematic orchestrations.

Far-right minister defends killing of two men who appeared to have given themselves up, saying ‘terrorists must die’

Video of an Israeli military raid in the West Bank shows soldiers summarily executing two Palestinians they had detained seconds earlier.

The shooting on Thursday evening, which was also witnessed by journalists close to the scene, is under justice ministry review, but has already been defended by Israel’s far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who declared that “terrorists must die”.

Coastguard says 76-year-old passenger was reported missing from Tui-operated vessel on Thursday morning

A British cruise company has said it is working with authorities after a passenger on one of its ships was seen entering the water in the seas around the Canary Islands.

Marella Cruises, which is operated by Tui UK, said the guest went overboard as the vessel was heading towards La Gomera, the second-smallest of the main islands in the Spanish archipelago off the coast of north-west Africa.

A change of heart on the search for a GHS down by the Thames before discovering the growing trend for ‘posting zero’

The hunt is apparently on in London for the German hairy snail. OK. I have an idea. Why don’t we NOT search for anything called “the German hairy snail”? In fact, I have an even better idea – why don’t we not search for any kind of “hairy snail”. I would go even further and suggest not searching for anything “hairy” at all because that is second only to “mucus” in the list of world’s worst words. But I will settle for not searching for the thing that unassailably evokes the two in grotesque combination.

While some call budget ‘tactical victory’, few MPs believe it is enough for Labour to beat Reform

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Labour MPs have said they believe Keir Starmer’s leadership is safe until at least the May elections, after a budget that avoided any major damaging measures but which few MPs believe will revive the party’s fortunes.

More than a dozen previously loyal MPs told the Guardian they did not believe the budget would shift the fundamentals required for the party to beat Reform. “It only delays what is inevitable,” one minister said.

Ex-member of the hip-hop group was convicted of money laundering and campaign finance violations after funneling money from a rich Malaysian

From the moment the Fugees shot to fame in the mid-90s, Prakazrel “Pras” Michél was discounted as an incidental member of the hip-hop superstars. He was the unremarkable New Jersey rhyme spitter by way of Brooklyn who was lucky enough to be a high school classmate of the mesmerizing Lauryn Hill and a cousin to mercurial Wyclef Jean. On the group’s breakout album The Score, Michel’s eight-bar features were minor contributions, relative to Hill’s adroitness as an emcee and balladeer and Jean’s compositional polymathy.

“From Hawaii to Hawthorne, I run marathons, like / Buju Banton, I’m a true champion, like / Farrakhan reads his daily Qur’an / It’s a phenomenon, lyrics fast like Ramadan,” Michél raps on the band’s breakout single Fu-Gee-La, in one of his more pedestrian efforts.

Many knew little about the polarizing figure before Utah Valley University was thrust into the national spotlight

The spot where Charlie Kirk was killed is fenced off. The fountain beside it shut down. The American flags nearby hang low above the spot where he fell. Every so often, someone stops to leave flowers or say a prayer. There are far more police officers and security staff than before, and many linger around the venue, as if the campus itself hasn’t taken a full breath since that day.

Back in 2019, Utah Valley University felt big and loud in the best way, a sprawling public campus of nearly 46,000 students and one of the most diverse in the state, with a large share of first-generation students. Then, on 10 September 2025, Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA and one of the country’s most polarizing conservative commentators, was shot on stage during a campus event. The attack sparked national outrage and political blame, adding to a long list of politically violent episodes. Two months later, UVU stands at the center of a national conversation.

We live not in a post-Holocaust world of ‘Never Again’ but in the same world that led to the Holocaust, a world of ‘Again and Again’

On 10 October, following two years of Israeli genocide that have turned Gaza into the new benchmark of total destruction, after Israel has killed and injured hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and inflicted on all the people in Gaza “severe bodily or mental harm,” to quote from the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the Trump administration imposed a ceasefire, giving rise to the idea that the Gaza war has ended.

The ceasefire, however, seems to be designed mostly to move forward with the business deals of the mega rich in the Middle East, and the fire has never ceased: the Israeli government has continued its assault, killing and injuring hundreds of Palestinians since 10 October, destroying thousands of homes and buildings, and blocking the entry of sufficient aid.

Raz Segal is an associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University and the endowed professor in the study of modern genocide

Temperatures dip to -8.5C in Poland and 250mm of rain falls in 24-hour period across Sri Lanka

Temperatures plummeted this week across the eastern half of Europe, with the Alps dipping as low as -20C and to -8.5°C in the Polish town of Zakopane in the Tatras Mountains.

Heavy snow also affected other parts of Poland with 15-20cm (about 6-8in) of snow falling in much of the central swathe of the country and more than 40cm in the south towards the mountains.

Investigators focus attention on to Andriy Yermak as part of inquiry into nuclear energy kickback scandal

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Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies have said they are conducting searches at the home of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s powerful chief aide and lead negotiator in the latest round of peace talks, Andriy Yermak.

Journalists filmed about 10 investigators entering Kyiv’s government quarter in a widening of the investigation into a nuclear energy kickback scandal allegedly run by an associate of the Ukrainian president who has fled the country.

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Europa League: Aston Villa 2-1 Young Boys

Donyell Malen has a cut to the head and two more goals to his name after leading Aston Villa to the verge of automatic qualification for the last 16 of the Europa League against a backdrop of more crowd violence from Young Boys supporters.

The author on Anna Karenina, the brilliance of Anita Brookner and finally getting Nabokov

My earliest reading memory
I acquired from somewhere, in my more or less atheistic family, a Ladybird Book of the Lord’s Prayer, whose every page I can recover in all its lurid 1960s naturalism. “As they forgive us our trespasses against them …” The horrified boy leaves a hand mark on the wall his father has just painted.

My favourite book growing up
One of my favourites was E Nesbit’s The Wouldbegoods. The lives of those Edwardian children seemed as rich as a plum pudding, with their knickerbockers and their ironies, their cook and their sophisticated vocabulary. I didn’t understand, in my childhood, that they were separated from me by a gulf of time and change. Because of books, the past seemed to be happening in the next room, as if I could step into it effortlessly.

Alarming shift since 2010 means planet’s three main rainforest regions now contribute to climate breakdown

Africa’s forests have turned from a carbon sink into a carbon source, according to research that underscores the need for urgent action to save the world’s great natural climate stabilisers.

The alarming shift, which has happened since 2010, means all of the planet’s three main rainforest regions – the South American Amazon, south-east Asia and Africa – have gone from being allies in the fight against climate breakdown to being part of the problem.

Dread the thought of party chat? This selection of cultural keypoints will put some fizz in your conversation

It seemed Trump had finally dealt with domestic terrorist Jimmy Kimmel after his chat show was briefly cancelled, but now it’s back on air. So should we expect more censorship? Surely South Park is skating on thin ice by mocking the president and his allegedly inadequate penis? Maybe the president will throw a curveball and declare a nature show about squirrels to be a secret antifa recruitment operation? Or perhaps he will simply cut the niceties and just put Oprah Winfrey up on Showtrial (“Ratings like you’ve never seen before!”)?

Brazil shows little sign of feared rightwing rebellion, with only a few die-hards protesting outside prison

A few hours before Jair Bolsonaro was ordered to start his 27-year coup sentence in a parking space-sized room, Arley Xavier stood outside the former president’s new home putting a brave face on his leader’s bind.

“It’s not over. There’s still so much Jair Messias Bolsonaro needs to do here in Brazil … No, it’s not over,” insisted the 21-year-old activist, urging conservatives to rise up against Bolsonaro’s imprisonment by flocking to the capital, Brasília, to protest.

Exclusive: It follows calls from US senator Elizabeth Warren to investigate bank executives including ex-Barclays boss Jes Staley

US regulators say they are taking allegations that top banks may have facilitated Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal activity “very seriously”, as they faced calls to investigate executives including the former Barclays boss Jes Staley.

In correspondence seen by the Guardian, bosses from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) said they had reviewed a letter from the Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, which raised concerns over bankers’ alleged support for the convicted child sex offender Epstein.