He has a 12-point lead before Sunday’s Abu Dhabi GP but the British driver vows to ‘crack on’ if the title goes elsewhere

The atmosphere at a season-deciding finale in the Formula One world championship is like no other. The paddock positively hums with a febrile, pulsing excitement and sense of expectation that is impossible to ignore. Amid all of which the title favourite, Lando Norris, finds himself at the moment he has dedicated his life toward, destiny lying in his own hands.

After a gruelling 23-race trek around the world, the conclusion of all the work, sacrifice and effort will be decided in just an hour and a half on Sunday afternoon in Abu Dhabi.

As Premier League’s most in-form side prepare to host Arsenal their experience is beginning to look like a superpower

In a parallel universe somewhere, Unai Emery is still wrestling with his black puffer coat in his dugout at the Amex Stadium, trying to force his hands through the sleeves, fresh from hurling it to the ground in wild celebration. The adrenaline of Aston Villa’s 4-3 comeback win at Brighton on Wednesday has probably only just faded. He made cinematic viewing and triggered memories of Mario Balotelli struggling to put on a warm-up bib and Tim Sherwood, while Villa manager a decade ago, launching his club-branded jacket towards the turf after Christian Benteke equalised against QPR.

By the end, Emery was hoarse and Villa had chalked up an eighth victory in nine Premier League matches, 12 out of 14 in all competitions. Across the past 10 league matches, Villa have accrued a division-high 25 points and in that time only Manchester City have scored more goals and Arsenal conceded fewer. This is the same team that failed to win any of their opening six matches and took three points from their first five league games. At that point Emery was concerned and shared his feelings with his squad, insisting his players raise their performance levels at training and in matches. Belief within an experienced squad – at 27.4 years, the average age of players selected in the league this season is the joint-oldest, with Fulham – did not waver.

Ruling compels unsealing of documents from 2006-2007 federal investigation into Epstein in Florida

A federal judge in Florida ordered the release of grand jury transcripts from the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell sex-trafficking cases on Friday, citing the recently enacted federal law that overrides traditional secrecy protections.

US district judge Rodney Smith ruled that the Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law last month by Donald Trump, overrode federal rules prohibiting the disclosure of grand jury materials.

• Steve Clarke’s side also drawn with Haiti in Group C

• Fifth time Scotland and Brazil will meet at a World Cup

Scotland face a mouthwatering reunion with Brazil in their first World Cup campaign since 1998 after being drawn in Group C at Friday’s ceremony.

Steve Clarke’s players will also face Morocco and Haiti on their return to the big time, opening their campaign against the latter on 13 June. That curtain raiser will be played in either the Boston area or the MetLife Stadium near New York City.

The architect, whose work included the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, died after a brief illness

Frank Gehry, one of the most influential and distinctive talents in American architecture, died Friday at his home in Los Angeles following a brief respiratory illness, his chief of staff confirmed to the New York Times. He was 96.

Gehry, the most recognizable American architect since Frank Lloyd Wright, was one of the first to embrace the potential of computer design, and pioneered a distinctively exuberant style of bravura power, whimsical and arresting collisions of form. His most famous work remains the Guggenheim Museumin Bilbao, a fantastical, titanium-clad composition on the Nervión River which received international acclaim upon its opening in 1997, heralding a new era of emotive architecture.

• England to play Croatia, Panama and Ghana in Group L

• France joined by Senegal and Norway in Group I

• Trump awarded inaugural Fifa peace prize

England will face a rematch of their 2018 semi-final in the opening fixture of their World Cup campaign next summer, after they were drawn alongside Croatia in Group L.

England will also play Panama, another side they faced at the Russia World Cup, and Ghana. Venues and kick-off times will be announced from 5pm GMT on Saturday but the group’s matches are split across four US cities – Dallas, Boston, New York/New Jersey and Philadelphia – and Toronto.

US politicians and Hollywood guilds have voiced concerns against the proposed $83bn purchase of the studio

The news that Netflix has agreed to buy Warner Bros in an $83bn deal has led to backlash among figures in and out of the entertainment industry.

Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator, called it “an anti-monopoly nightmare” in a statement released soon after the announcement.

Justices to take up case amid legal fight over order to heavily restrict right to birthright citizenship in US

The US supreme court agreed on Friday to decide the legality of Donald Trump’s order to heavily restrict the right to birthright citizenship in the United States.

Trump’s executive order banning the constitutional right to US citizenship for almost everyone born on American soil was signed just hours after the US president took office for his second term – and was immediately challenged in court.

Russian airstrikes in Kyiv, floods in Colombo, the cold moon in Gaza and Trump at the World Cup draw: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Hundreds of videos on TikTok and elsewhere impersonate experts to sell supplements with unproven effects

TikTok and other social media platforms are hosting AI-generated deepfake videos of doctors whose words have been manipulated to help sell supplements and spread health misinformation.

The factchecking organisation Full Fact has uncovered hundreds of such videos featuring impersonated versions of doctors and influencers directing viewers to Wellness Nest, a US-based supplements firm.

Perplexity AI also faces lawsuit from Murdoch-owned Dow Jones and New York Post for its use of copyrighted content

The New York Times sued an embattled artificial intelligence startup on Friday, accusing the firm of illegally copying millions of articles. The newspaper alleged Perplexity AI had distributed and displayed journalists’ work without permission en masse.

The Times said that Perplexity AI was also violating its trademarks under the Lanham Act, claiming the startup’s generative AI products create fabricated content, or “hallucinations”, and falsely attribute them to the newspaper by displaying them alongside its registered trademarks.

These deadly US boat strikes are the latest example of a president corrupting both the law and morality

The Trump administration looks ever more like a criminal enterprise – and now it seems to have added war crimes to its repertoire. Though even that may be too generous a description.

On Thursday, word came that the US military had launched yet another deadly strike on a small boat moving through international waters. This time the attack killed four people, bringing to at least 87 the number of people the US has killed in a series of 22 such strikes on what it says are drug boats – vessels carrying illicit narcotics in the Caribbean or eastern Pacific.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

Guardian newsroom: Year One of Trumpism: Is Britain Emulating the US?
On Wednesday 21 January 2026, join Jonathan Freedland, Tania Branigan and Nick Lowles as they reflect on the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency – and to ask if Britain could be set on the same path.
Book tickets here or at guardian.live

Exclusive: Yinka Bankole says he felt compelled to speak out after Reform leader’s attempts to ‘dismiss’ hurt of alleged targets

• I’ll never forget the look of hatred Nigel Farage had for me at school, simply for existing

A former Dulwich college pupil who claims a teenage Nigel Farage told him “that’s the way back to Africa” has said he felt compelled to speak out after the Reform leader’s attempt at “denying or dismissing” the hurt of his alleged targets.

Yinka Bankole, who claims he had just started at the school when a 17-year-old Farage singled him out for abuse, said he had decided to tell his story in full after watching the Reform leader’s press conference on Thursday.

The largest House Democrat ideological caucus has called for the defense secretary to ‘resign immediately before his actions cost American lives’

• Pentagon announces it has killed four men in another boat strike in Pacific

Lauren Gambino and Melody Schreiber

After a delay and an unusually contentious meeting, a federal vaccine advisory panel is expected to vote today whether to change the longstanding recommendation that all newborns be immunized against hepatitis B.

• Trump praised by Infantino at DC ceremony

• President’s peace claims disputed by critics

• Follow the live blog of the World Cup draw

Donald Trump has been named the first winner of the newly created Fifa peace prize, claiming “the world is a safer place now” as he received the award at the draw for the 2026 World Cup in Washington DC.

Gianni Infantino, the Fifa president and one of Trump’s closest sporting allies, presented the honour onstage at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Friday, saying Trump had been selected “in recognition of his exceptional and extraordinary actions to promote peace and unity around the world”.

Word from the top-tier press conferences, including Maresca singling out Tosin’s gaffes and Paquetá expecting an instant West Ham return

Exclusive: Billionaire is claimed to be anonymous figure behind $70m of wins in US legal case. He denies betting on his own teams

Tony Bloom, the billionaire owner of Brighton & Hove Albion FC, is facing questions over claims he was an anonymous gambler behind $70m (£52m) in winnings – which allegedly included bets on his football teams.

Bloom – one of the world’s most successful professional gamblers – is claimed to be the “John Doe” referred to in a US legal case that tried to unmask who has benefited from the lucrative winning streak.

In this week’s newsletter: We revisit forgotten noirs, rediscovered albums and retro games that stole the year

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We’ve just inched into December, which of course means Christmas list season. Already, five days in, plenty of publications have shared their cultural best-ofs for 2025 – you can read the Guardian’s best books and songs of the year right now, with our countdowns in TV, film and music coming very soon.

Meanwhile, many of you will have been bombarded on social media by screengrabs of your colleagues/friends/enemies’ Spotify Wrapped playlists (though Mood Machine author Liz Pelly has written pretty convincingly about why you shouldn’t share yours). This year’s Wrapped includes a “listening age” feature, which uses the release dates of the music you streamed to determine how horribly out-of-date your tastes are – revealing to some users that they are, in fact, centenarians.

The actor who marries box office ratings with Wes Anderson cool should revive the Batman series, but trying to guess who she might play is a thankless task

For years the follow-up to Matt Reeves’ slick but glacially paced 2022 comic-book epic The Batman has existed in a dimly lit rumour void. We know it will eventually get here (supposedly in October 2027), but nobody knows quite what it will look like. Entire geological epochs may come and go before the film-maker finally decides which doyen of Batman’s infamous rogues’ gallery he wants to unleash next. The foundations of Gotham itself may shift before Reeves works out which brooding, rain-soaked grunge ditty will form the basis of the new soundtrack.

And then – out of nowhere – comes this week’s news that Scarlett Johansson is in final talks to join the cast of the sequel. We have no idea who she’s likely to play but it matters not: this feels consequential, a bat-signal flickering to life over a city long abandoned. Johansson is more than just an A-lister; she’s one of the few actors who still puts bums on seats and appears in Wes Anderson movies. She retains a veneer of golden-era Hollywood cool that feels exactly right.

IP success stories such as Barbie and the DC Universe? That elusive best picture Oscar? Or perhaps the main goal is a good old-fashioned blockbuster

Corporate Hollywood has undergone huge upheavals in recent years – as consequential, perhaps, as the 1970s and 80s, when the studio marques that had made their names in the movies’ golden age were being bought up by international conglomerates. The acquisition of Warner Bros – legendary for crime pictures in the 40s and 50s, and Batman movies in the 90s and 00s – by a streaming service feels particularly significant, coming as it does on the back of the merger of Paramount with Skydance Media earlier this year and, in 2019, Disney’s purchase of fellow studio 21st Century Fox.

What is most evident in all these deals is how streaming services have changed the game. Disney’s buying spree – which had previously included Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar – in retrospect looks essentially like preparatory positioning to increase the marketability of their Disney+ player. It is significant that the new Paramount regime’s first move was to prise Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer away from Netflix. And Netflix, of course, have made their billions by upending the traditional pitch-session-to-cinema pipeline that had sustained the film industry for decades. They have signed up legions of the classiest directors, hogged nearly all the audience-friendly documentaries and premiered one water-cooler series after another.

Paper published in 2000 found glyphosate was not harmful, while internal emails later revealed company’s influence

The journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology has formally retracted a sweeping scientific paper published in 2000 that became a key defense for Monsanto’s claim that Roundup herbicide and its active ingredient glyphosate don’t cause cancer.

Martin van den Berg, the journal’s editor in chief, said in a note accompanying the retraction that he had taken the step because of “serious ethical concerns regarding the independence and accountability of the authors of this article and the academic integrity of the carcinogenicity studies presented”.

The paper, titled Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans, concluded that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weed killers posed no health risks to humans – no cancer risks, no reproductive risks, no adverse effects on development of endocrine systems in people or animals.

Action detailed in a state department memo directs officials to deny visas to any applicant engaging in ‘censorship’

• US politics live – latest updates

The Trump administration has moved to formalize a crackdown on the issuance of visas for people who it deems to have engaged in censoring the free speech of US citizens.

The action, detailed in a state department memo sent to overseas missions this week, first reported by Reuters and then NPR, directs consular officials to deny visas to any applicant “responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the US”.

Host broadcaster says show will not suffer after four countries withdraw from 2026 contest over Israel and Gaza

Austria has said it will continue with plans to host next year’s Eurovision, in spite of its budget being hit by four countries boycotting the song contest over Israel’s participation and the war in Gaza.

At a meeting in Geneva, the national broadcasters that make up the European Broadcasting Union gave the all clear for Israel to take part in next year’s event in Vienna, the contest’s 70th anniversary edition.

Even without Maro Itoje, Ben Earl and Jamie George, the English club are set to deploy a formidable lineup against their depleted opponents

Judging by the Saracens side ­starting their Champions Cup campaign against Clermont Auvergne on Saturday, a show of strength is the aim. Owen Farrell, Elliot Daly, Tom Willis and Nick Isiekwe are some of the ^­distinguished names who will line up in north ­London aiming to put a small, symbolic dent in the notion that French clubs are poised to dominate the competition again.

Even without the rested England captain, Maro Itoje, and back-row Ben Earl – both recently returned from a successful autumn campaign – the quality of the lineup indicates the depth required for a deep tournament run.