Beyond Wham! and Elton, Guardian writers from across the generations select the songs that conjure the personal magic and memories of the season

I’m always fascinated by the ways in which my generation manage to participate in the circulation of music. Amateur TikTok edits resurrect forgotten gems and turn obscure starlets into sensations; home producers fabricate entire albums if their favourite rapper doesn’t release enough. Such is the case with Doom Xmas, the brainchild of Grammy-winning Spanish producer Cookin’ Soul, which refashions the work of late cult rapper MF Doom into Christmas music. There are filthy Grinch soundtrack flips, hectic Latin Christmas skits and a chopped-and-screwed Nat King Cole that’ll change the way you hear The Christmas Song.

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Equinor accused of ‘extensive and long-term pollution’ caused by years of inadequate maintenance

Norway’s national oil company, Equinor, is facing a £53m penalty for oil spills and gas leaks at the oil-rich Scandinavian state’s only refinery, which officials said were the result of years of inadequate maintenance.

Norway’s economic crime agency, Økokrim, said it had taken action against Equinor over “extensive and long-term pollution” at the refinery in Mongstad, on Norway’s North Sea coast.

Peter Hujar captured a queer Manhattan demi-monde that is now lost to Aids. Whishaw reveals what he learned playing the photographer in a minimalist film being hailed by some as a masterpiece

On 19 December 1974, the writer Linda Rosenkrantz went round to her friend Peter Hujar’s apartment in New York, and asked the photographer to describe exactly what he had done the day before. He talked in great detail about taking Allen Ginsberg’s portrait for the New York Times (it didn’t go well – Ginsberg was too performative for the kind of intimacy Hujar craved). He also described the Chinese takeaway he ate and how his pal Vince Aletti came round to have a shower. And he fretted about not being paid by Elle magazine.

So what did Ben Whishaw, who plays him in the new film Peter Hujar’s Day, do himself the day before? The actor, on a video call from his home in London, rubbing his hands through his hair in a worried manner, says he could probably describe it in “about five sentences”, but after some persuasion attempts to give a flavour. “I got home from filming and I got the chicken that I’d cooked the previous day and eaten half of and I finished it. Well, not finished it but continued eating it and then had a glass of wine and fell asleep at half past nine. Boring. But, um, maybe there’s no such thing as boring.”

While the New York mayor-elect is constantly smiling in the face of his detractors, having a perma-grin didn’t come so easily to me

As a big fan of citizen science, I have spent the past month conducting a very important experiment. While I am not quite as hardcore as the American virologist Jonas Salk, who injected the polio vaccine into himself and his family before large-scale trials, this scientific inquiry has involved some personal pain. You see, I have spent the last month trying to smile like Zohran Mamdani. This is not, as I have discovered, an easy feat.

Ever since the incoming mayor of New York became a household name, I’ve been intrigued by his perma-smile. His detractors call him a “jihadist”, and he smiles. He meets Donald Trump, and he smiles. Some Republican lawmakers launch a campaign to investigate his path to citizenship and deport him? He keeps on smiling. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him look angry.

British Indian Ocean Territory commissioner’s appeal against decision last year rejected by judges in London

Appeal court judges have backed a decision that dozens of asylum seekers were unlawfully detained on one of the world’s most remote islands, rejecting an appeal on Tuesday by the commissioner for the territory.

Exactly a year ago, on 16 December 2024, a judge ruled that Tamils who arrived on the island of Diego Garcia, a UK and US military base, after a shipwreck while they were trying to reach Canada to seek asylum, were unlawfully detained there for three years in conditions described as “hell on Earth”.

• Chelsea injuries up 44% on previous year, Howden finds

• It calculates injury cost in top leagues over past five years

Chelsea experienced a 44% increase in injuries between June and October compared with the previous season, a report released on Monday has found. This year’s period covers their participation in the Club World Cup and its aftermath.

The figure, which goes some way towards vindicating Enzo Maresca’s rotation and his complaints about injuries, is contained in a report published by the insurance company Howden, which puts the cost of injuries to clubs in Europe’s top five leagues over the past five years at almost £3bn.

Organisers of award in honour of late primatologist hope it will inspire and encourage people to take action

Earth might be under pressure, but the Queen guitarist Sir Brian May is hopeful a new award from the science, music and arts festival he co-founded will encourage people to take action.

The Starmus Jane Goodall Earth medal will be given in honour of the British primatologist who died this year and will recognise those who champion life on Earth.

• Flagg scored 42 points, breaking James’ 2003 record of 37

• Dallas lost 140-133 to the Utah Jazz

Cooper Flagg scored the most points by an 18-year-old in NBA history, but he couldn’t enjoy the accomplishment because it came in a loss.

Flagg had 42 points – topping the previous mark of 37 set by LeBron James on Dec. 13, 2003 – in a 140-133 loss to the Utah Jazz on Monday night.

• Midfielder has been subject of interest from Saudi Arabia

• ‘Loyalty is no longer seen the way it used to be’

Bruno Fernandes has claimed Manchester United directors “hurt” him by wanting to sell him and has criticised teammates “who don’t value the club” as he does.

Fernandes has been the subject of transfer interest over the past two summers. In the more recent window Al-Hilal, a Saudi Arabian club, offered United £100m and the player a £700,000-a-week salary.

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Warning: graphic content

Phillip Noyce’s political drama is a searing critique of American interventionism that feels all too pertinent today

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Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser) was a “quiet American”, says Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine) to a French policeman. “A friend,” he adds, as the lifeless corpse of Pyle stares back at him with a wretched expression.

This is the scene that opens Phillip Noyce’s Vietnam-set political drama before the film flashes back a few months earlier to 1952 Saigon, where Fowler, an ageing Englishman, lives leisurely as a journalist reporting on the first Indochina war. When Pyle, a young American aid worker advocating for US intervention, falls for Fowler’s 20-year-old Vietnamese lover, Phượng (Đỗ Thị Hải Yến), the jaded reporter’s tranquil existence begins to unravel.

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The former TikTok star defied expectations by delivering dreamy, experimental synth-pop whose fizzy hedonism was a tonic for trying times
• The 50 best albums of 2025
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The second coming of Addison Rae was first sown last summer, when Charli xcx featured the former TikTok dancer on the remix of her Brat single Von Dutch. Rae’s vocals are fluttery and sugar-sweet, making her an odd fit for such an abrasive song. But there was symbolic significance to Rae’s presence in a track about sticking it to the haters.

“Got a lot to say about my debut,” Rae trills, “while you’re sitting in your dad’s basement!” The 25-year-old star was referring to the backlash that followed her first single, 2021’s generic Obsessed. Back then, she was widely known as one of TikTok’s original young stars, famous for her viral choreography. Her attempts to translate that fame off-platform – that much-maligned single, a role in a dud Netflix film – had only led to widespread derision. But this time, things seemed different. Her proximity to xcx and her alt-pop cool swiftly washed away the sticky juvenilia of Rae’s TikTok fame.

Experts are calling for the integration of mental health into climate-disaster policy in the Caribbean as studies show that PTSD risks increase after hurricanes and displacement

When Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica on 28 October with 185mph winds, destroying homes, hospitals and infrastructure, killing 32 people and affecting 1.5 million, Toni-Jan Ifill immediately realised it would leave many with long-term traumatic memories.

A month and a half after the storm, which also affected eastern Cuba, the clinical psychologist says recollections of the terrifying winds also haunt some of the staff at the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston. Even the sound of rain can cause trauma responses among people who lived through it.

The third Avatar chapter erupts with volcanic world-building and thunderous action yet remains a vast, dazzling spectacle in search of an emotional arc

On and on and on it goes. The planet-sized movie franchise of Avatar continues to spin massively in the cosmos – yet without affecting the tides in any other world. Maybe Avatar is the cosmos and its originator James Cameron is the new L Ron Hubbard; the creator, or rather prophet, of a new belief system involving big blue creatures with pointy ears that flap and twitch when they talk, to whom we will all one day be required to bow down when they float past. And while the rest of the cinema industry has quietly abandoned 3D without ever quite admitting it, theatres showing James Cameron’s giant new three-hour hunk of nonsense are still handing out the 3D specs to the customers.

The first film was about human invaders seeking to exploit and colonise the weird tall blue Na’vi people in another galaxy for their mineral resources by piloting “avatar” replicants into their midst. One of these pilots was Cpl Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington, who fell in love with Neytiri, played by Zoe Saldaña, and stayed behind as a Na’vi – thus infuriating his commanding officer, Col Miles Quaritch, played by Stephen Lang, who since then has died in battle but is now resurrected as a Na’vi avatar, looking scarily as if Vinnie Jones had joined the Blue Man Group. Quaritch’s teen son Spider (Jack Champion) has turned against him and lives with Jake and Neytiri as their adoptive child. In the second film, the Na’vi people found a new world of water. Now in this third film they face the new element of … fire. For the proposed fourth and fifth films, they will presumably tackle earth and wind.

Just in time for Christmas, a little calf has arrived at a German zoo and gone viral. But is he cuter than Moo Deng?

Name: Panya the pygmy hippo.

Age: About three weeks.

Review, which will focus on effectiveness of political finance laws, follows conviction of former Reform politician for accepting bribes

• UK politics live – latest updates

An independent review into the impact of foreign financial influence and interference in domestic politics from Russia and other hostile states has been announced after one of Reform UK’s former senior politicians, Nathan Gill, was jailed for accepting bribes from a pro-Kremlin agent.

Amid growing concern inside the security services and parliament over the scale of the foreign threat to British democracy, the government-commissioned inquiry will focus on the effectiveness of the UK’s political finance laws.

Court filing was response to lawsuit asking judge to halt project until it goes through independent reviews and wins approval from Congress

• US politics live – latest updates

Donald Trump’s administration argued Monday in a court filing that the president’s White House ballroom construction project must continue for reasons of national security.

The filing came in response to a lawsuit filed three days earlier by the National Trust for Historic Preservation asking a federal judge to halt the ballroom project until it goes through multiple independent reviews and wins approval from Congress.

The US House member says president’s rhetoric about her and Somali Americans could have dangerous consequences

US congresswoman Ilhan Omar has warned that Donald Trump’s repeated personal attacks and dehumanising rhetoric are fuelling a climate of political violence that could have dangerous consequences.

Speaking days after the president called for her to be thrown out of the country, Omar said Trump’s incendiary language reaches “the worst humans possible” and encourages them to act.

The devastated parents of the 10-year-old victim of the Bondi massacre say they gave their firstborn child ‘the most Australian name ever’ as people gather to honour her and 14 other dead

• What we know about the victims named so far

The silence that fell upon the Bondi Pavilion forecourt was not the silence of peace, but the heavy, leaden quiet that follows an explosion of hate.

Under the gathering dusk, a community stood bowed, its grief focusing on the most poignant loss: 10 year-old Matilda, the youngest victim of Sunday’s terrorist attack by two gunmen that has so far claimed 15 innocent lives.

The former first lady paid tribute on Jimmy Kimmel Live to ‘some of the most decent, courageous people you ever want to know’ as Jerry Seinfeld also writes of debt to Reiner
• Reiner changed Hollywood for ever

Michelle Obama said that she and her husband Barack were due to meet Rob and Michele Reiner the same day that the couple were found dead.

Obama was speaking on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Monday and told Kimmel: “We were supposed to be seeing them that night – last night.” Obama did not clarify what their plans had been, but the Reiners are known to have attended a Christmas party hosted by comedian Conan O’Brien on Saturday along with their son Nick, who has been arrested on suspicion of murder.

On Monday night, the US military said it attacked three more boats believed to have been smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing eight people

• US military says eight killed in strikes on three boats in eastern Pacific

Wiles also said she had told Donald Trump that his second term was not supposed to be a retribution tour.

“We have a loose agreement that the score settling will end before the first 90 days are over,” she said in an interview in March.

I mean, people could think it does look vindictive. I can’t tell you why you shouldn’t think that.

I don’t think he [Trump] wakes up thinking about retribution. But when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.

Some clinical psychologist that knows one million times more than I do will dispute what I’m going to say. But high-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink. And so I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities.

Investigators say latest studies of wreckage reveal no sign to back up alternative theories of a collision or a blast

• Europe live – latest updates

The sinking of the Estonia ferry more than 30 years ago was caused by the failure of its bow section, not an explosion or collision as claimed by some, authorities have said, in a report aimed at finally closing the case on Europe’s worst civil maritime disaster since the second world war.

“The MV Estonia sank as a result of the collapse of its bow construction,” Estonian, Swedish and Finnish investigators said. “There is, therefore, no reason to start a new full-scale … investigation of the accident.”

The Zen-like US representative from Minnesota has had the highest level of death threats of any congressperson because of the president’s attacks

“That’s Teddy,” said Tim Mynett, husband of the US representative Ilhan Omar, as their five-year-old labrador retriever capered around her office on Capitol Hill. “If you make too much eye contact, he’ll lose it. He’s my best friend – and he’s our security detail these days.”

The couple were sitting on black leather furniture around a coffee table. Apart from a sneezing fit that took her husband by surprise, Omar had an unusual Zen-like calm for someone who receives frequent death threats and is the subject of a vendetta from the most powerful man in the world.