The justice department is using a variety of tactics to try to obfuscate the US president’s connection to the sex offender

The justice department’s partial release of the Epstein files on Friday signaled how the agency is using a variety of tactics to try to bury and obfuscate Donald Trump’s connection to Jeffrey Epstein.

As the department raced towards a legally mandated Friday deadline to release its files, little emerged about what it planned to release. There never really seemed to be a doubt that the department would release the files late on Friday afternoon, deploying the well-worn Washington trick of burying unflattering news before a weekend.

Family who said they paid cash were left embarrassed after being accused of not paying £20.01

Drivers have accused a leading petrol station security company of issuing “false” fuel theft debts, which left one family unable to fill up their car at more than 1,000 filling stations for more than a year.

Amjad Khan and his family were barred from multiple petrol stations around Blackburn for 19 months after he was accused of driving out of an Esso petrol station in Manchester without paying for £20.01 of fuel.

Most Americans have yet to see this boom – but they’ve certainly heard a lot about it from the president

Moments into his second term, opening his inaugural address, Donald Trump was unequivocal. “The golden age of America begins right now,” he declared.

At a White House reception last weekend, a little over 10 months later, the US president appeared to acknowledge just how far his timeline had shifted.

Heating means pests breeding and spreading faster, warn scientists, with simplified current food system already vulnerable

• How climate breakdown is putting the world’s food in peril – in maps and charts

The destruction of food supplies by crop pests is being supercharged by the climate crisis, with losses expected to surge, an analysis has concluded.

Researchers said the world was lucky to have so far avoided a major shock and was living on borrowed time, with action needed to diversify crops and boost natural predators of pests.

The second series of the Tom Hiddleston-fronted drama is first le Carré adaptation not based on author’s own work

It was in a market square in the Colombian city of Cartagena when Georgi Banks-Davies wondered if she had bitten off more than she could chew.

The director of The Night Manager’s second series was shooting a scene in the bustling location, with just a few minutes to capture the action.

The actor on impersonating Elvis, her stint as a magician’s assistant on a cruise ship, and having eyes like currants

Born in Hertfordshire, Sarah Hadland, 54, attended Laine Theatre Arts college in Surrey. From 2009 to 2015, she played Stevie in the Bafta-nominated sitcom Miranda, and her other television work includes Horrible Histories, Waterloo Road, W1A, The Job Lot and Daddy Issues. This Christmas, she appears on The Festive Pottery Throwdown and The Celebrity Apprentice, and stars as the Wicked Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the Marlowe theatre in Canterbury. She lives with her child in London.

What is your earliest memory?
I remember putting on my sister’s dungarees – they were purple and flared – to do an Elvis impression and my family laughing, and thinking: “Oh, this is good.”

Some might regard it as ‘brain rot’, but the first word of the year just for tweens and teenagers could be the most hopeful development of 2025

What connects the word “vape”, the crying-laughing emoji and the phrase “squeezed middle”? No, it’s not just a biting crossword clue for “millennial”: they have all previously been crowned word of the year. Admittedly, there are now so many “words of the year” that, if they were physical objects, they could make a decent-sized museum collection. Which, as it happens, is exactly how I like to imagine them – artefacts of their time, telling a story of a changing society.

This year’s winners – from “parasocial” (Cambridge Dictionary’s choice) to “rage bait” (Oxford English Dictionary), “67 (six-seven)” (Dictionary.com) and “slop” (Merriam-Webster) – will join the group, though where in the “museum” remains to be seen. Will they sit in the permanent collection, along with 2005’s “podcast” and 2015’s “binge-watch”? Or the archive, where irrelevances such as 2007’s “w00t” are packed off to, to see out their days alongside David Cameron’s lesser-remembered very bad idea: not Brexit (Collins, 2016), but “big society” (Oxford, 2010).

Coco Khan is a freelance writer and co-host of the politics podcast Pod Save the UK

Australia’s captain marvel, the ultimate flat-wicket operator, stormed into this third Ashes Test like he had never been away

On a redundancy scale, attending the Adelaide Test and noting that Pat Cummins was good is in the realm of noting that the Torrens was wet or the cathedral was spiky. Still, on day four, any one of those obvious things might justifiably have caught an observer’s eye. Perhaps it’s more notable just how natural, how inevitable, it felt that Cummins was indeed bowling at his best in his first match back after a nascent stress fracture cost him the first two Tests of this Ashes series and any match preparation before that.

England observers will spend four years until their team’s next visit pondering explanations for this year’s poor showing, inevitably including much examination of the lack of chances for their bowlers to adjust to Australian conditions. Cummins spent five months in the gym and the nets without once seeing the middle of a ground, latterly powering through what might have been a few months of rehab in the space of a few weeks, then hit the pitch for a Test match like he’d never been away.

A knighthood, a lifetime achievement award and a hit theatre production of The Line of Beauty… the author on a year of personal success and political change

If there can be a downside to receiving a lifetime achievement award, it can surely only be the hint of closure it evokes. I put this as tactfully as I can to Alan Hollinghurst, this year’s winner of the David Cohen prize, which has previously recognised the contribution to literature of, among others, VS Naipaul, Doris Lessing and Edna O’Brien. It does have “a certain hint of the obituary about it”, he concedes, laughing. “So I’m very much doing what I can to take it as an incentive rather than a reward.”

But there have been plenty of rewards recently. Hollinghurst was knighted in this year’s New Year honours list, a couple of months after the publication of his novel Our Evenings, the story of actor Dave Win’s journey from boarding school to the end of his life, which received rave reviews. In the Guardian, critic Alexandra Harris announced it his finest novel to date, noting that it “forms a deep pattern of connection with its predecessors, while being an entirely distinct and brimming whole”.

• Alabama overturn 17-point deficit in CFP opener

• Freshman Lotzeir Brooks scores twice in rally

• Crimson Tide set Rose Bowl clash with Indiana

Ty Simpson passed for 232 yards and two touchdowns, and No 9 seed Alabama rallied from a 17-point deficit to beat No 8 Oklahoma 34-24 on Friday night in the first round of the College Football Playoff.

“I just couldn’t be more proud of these guys,” Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer said. “Resiliency. It’s been kind of a theme all season long, but it showed up tonight on the road. Down 17, coming back the way we did just one score at a time – just really stayed the course.”

Five multiple-choice questions – set by children – to test your knowledge, and a chance to submit your own junior brainteasers for future quizzes

• ​Submit a question

Molly Oldfield hosts Everything Under the Sun, a podcast answering children’s questions. Do check out her books, Everything Under the Sun and Everything Under the Sun: Quiz Book, as well as her new title, Everything Under the Sun: All Around the World.

⚽ All the latest in the buildup to Saturday’s action
⚽ Ten things to look out for | Tables | Mail us here

Continental corner: There are some eye-catching games around the European leagues today, no less than Real Madrid v Sevilla (8pm GMT) which rounds off the day in La Liga. Dortmund went second in the Bundesliga last night but RB Leipzig can reclaim the position if they beat fourth-placed Leverkusen at 5.30pm. In Serie A, Juventus v Roma (7.45pm) is fifth v fourth but both sides will have designs on the top three.

The Coupe de France takes centre stage in, well, France, with PSG, Lille, Lorient and Toulouse among the top flight sides in action, going away to lower league opponents.

The Frenchman, who has been named the best male footballer in the world by the Guardian, has benefitted from PSG’s focus on the team rather than individuals

What makes a good player great, and a great player the best? This question has been occupying me since 2014, when the Guardian first asked me to contribute to its inaugural Next Generation feature. My job was to look for a France-based talent born in 1997 who could go on to have a stellar career.

After a great deal of research, I narrowed it down from my shortlist of five by asking questions not about the players’ football ability, but about other attributes: resilience, adaptability, decision-making, creativity, work ethic, response to feedback and willingness to learn. Qualities we cannot see, and are harder to measure.

The Celtic manager wants to focus on the things that matter but after starting with four defeats he may not have the chance

Years ago when sport was good, you didn’t have optics. You just had what happened. And what happened was what you had seen happen.

Things are different now. If you haven’t lent into optics when discussing your underperforming team, then you’re missing out. One dictionary definition for you: Optics (1) “The way in which an event or course of action is perceived by the public.”

Funding to tackle misinformation and cyber-attacks, and boost democracy, cut from £40m to £24m

Keir Starmer’s raid on overseas aid has led to a 40% cut in funds for countering Russian aggression and misinformation in a region of Europe described by the prime minister as vital to the UK’s national security.

British funding committed to bolstering the western Balkans, where Russia has been accused of sowing division and creating destabilisation, has been cut from £40m last year to £24m for 2025-26.

Cyclist and road safety groups argue proposed alternative route away from traffic-free Le Piétonnier is unsafe

On an unseasonably mild winter’s day, people are gathering at Le Piétonnier, the pedestrian zone in the heart of Brussels. Tourists buy mulled wine and churros at the Christmas market outside the Bourse, the old stock exchange, now repurposed as a beer museum. A few people drink coffee on cafe terraces. Up and down the length of the 650-metre-long space, people come and go, bikes and scooters weaving in and out of the crowds.

Next year, this scene will look somewhat different: bikes and scooters will be banned from this 18,000-sq-metre pedestrian zone for most of the day. People on two wheels will be allowed to ride only between 4am and 11am. At all other times, they must dismount and push their vehicle up the street, or face a fine.

• Third Test, D4: Australia 371 & 349; England 286 & 207-6

• Spinner strikes late as tourists briefly threaten record run chase

There was a time when England players threw around phrases like “the more the better”, such was their confidence in the chase. But tasked with knocking off a world record 435 runs to stop Australia winning this Ashes series at the earliest opportunity, one suspects similar words were not uttered on Saturday.

Instead, having picked up six cheap wickets first thing to set up this unlikely five-session challenge, it was first about seeing where they could get to by stumps. The upshot was 206 for six from 63 overs which, while progress of sorts on this malfunctioning tour, means Australia will go into the final day of this third Test within touching distance of an unassailable 3-0 lead.

• Joshua stops Paul in sixth and calls out Fury

• Paul drives himself to hospital with broken jaw

• Netflix spectacle ends with hierarchy restored

• Dubois prevails as women’s champions shine

Anthony Joshua wasted little time in Miami turning the page from spectacle to ambition, calling out Tyson Fury moments after stopping Jake Paul in a bout that ended with the YouTuber-turned-boxer driving himself to hospital with a suspected broken jaw.

Joshua halted Paul in the sixth round of Friday night’s heavyweight contest at the Kaseya Center, dropping him four times in a one-sided fight that had been built as a Netflix-backed global event. Afterwards, the former two-time unified champion was blunt in his assessment of his performance and what should come next.

In the Jordan valley, teenage settlers drive herds of goats into a Palestinian community in a bid to force families out – volunteers are trying to hold the line

It is a daily onslaught. Every morning, teenage Israeli settlers drive a herd of goats from their outpost in the hills down into the valley towards the Palestinian village of Ras Ein al-Auja.

The local men, women and children retreat inside their huts and tents. Any hint of resistance from a Palestinian is likely to bring in the Israeli army or the border police, confiscation of property and disappearance into the maw of “administrative” detention without trial, for months or years.

Emma Thompson’s quiet suffering in the hit Christmas movie helped me to realise that I didn’t need to stay with someone who had betrayed me

I was 12 when Love Actually came out. In the eyes of my younger self it was a great film – vignettes of love I could only imagine one day feeling, all coloured by the fairy lights of Christmas. And there was even a cameo from Mr Bean himself, Rowan Atkinson. The film captured the romance I craved as a preteen, the idea that maybe a kid I fancied in my class would learn the drums for me and run through airport security to ask me out.

I was young enough to think it was sweet for Keira Knightley’s husband’s best friend to turn up on her doorstep declaring his quite obviously unrequited love. I even thought it was adorable that he ruined their wedding video by filming only closeups of her face. Of course, I feel differently now about problematic moments like these – even if I do have the film to thank for introducing me to Joni Mitchell.

In this week’s newsletter: Not exhaustive, not definitive and unapologetically subjective: our annual tour of the best TV, music, films, podcasts, games and books of the last year

• Don’t get The Guide delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

It’s time to look back on a year of Traitors and Sinners, of Bad Bunnies and Such Brave Girls, with the Guide’s now annual roundup of the year’s best culture. As ever, the Guardian is already knee-deep in lists – of films (UK and US), albums (across rock and pop, and classical), TV shows, books and games, and theatre, comedy and dance. Some of those have already counted down to No 1, others will reach their respective summits in the coming days, so keep an eye on the homepage.

Our list meanwhile is entirely, unapologetically partial, and definitely not as comprehensive as The Guardian’s many top 50s: there are numerous albums we never got around to hearing, and TV shows we’re still only halfway through. (Pluribus, Dope Thief and Blue Lights, I will return to you, I promise!) But hopefully it should give a flavour of a year that, despite so many headwinds, was a pretty strong one for culture. On with the show!

From the Yule Cat and Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur to Taylor Swift and John Everett Millais, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Where does the Yule Cat devour people who don’t have new clothes?
2 Who successfully answered the radio advert: “Astronauts wanted, no experience required”?
3 Which story popularised the eating of turkey at Christmas?
4 Who signed his letters to Queen Elizabeth I as “007”?
5 What is the most abundant metal in the Earth’s crust?
6 Which Olympic athletics record is still standing from 1968?
7 Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur is the smallest of which order of mammals?
8 Where do the Rockettes dance each Christmas?
What links:
9 Alps in Slovenia; dates after 45BC; month of Quintilis; 42% of English births?
10 Taylor Swift; Friedrich Heyser; John Everett Millais?
11 Killed Baldr in Norse myth; Harry Potter’s wand; annual commemoration of Parnell?
12 MLA; MP; MS; MSP?
13 Stan Laurel; Mick McCarthy; Paul Raymond; Martin Sixsmith; Tony Wilson?
14 M (3); V (6); E (8); M (13); J (43); S (80); U (160); N (240)?
15 Ballgames; carpet tiles; gold chains; David Bowie LPs; Trevor Francis tracksuits?

If meeting Santa is on your family wishlist, this trip on a festive sleeper train from Helsinki to Rovaniemi, with reindeer and huskies thrown in, is Christmas with jingle bells on

Christmas was only a few days away and the Finnish capital of Helsinki was ringing with festive cheer as we explored the Tuomaan Markkinat in Senate Square, sipping from mugs of hot, spicy glögi (mulled wine), and biting into joulutorttu (jam-filled puff pastries shaped like catherine wheels). A cold front had brought abundant snow and inhaling was rather painful at -8C, but nothing could still the tremble of excitement.

Along with my husband and two young daughters, I was here to take the Santa Claus Express to the northern city of Rovaniemi, the heart of Finnish Lapland – and the “official” home of Father Christmas. A regular commuter train for the rest of the year, come late November the Santa Claus Express is Finnish Railways’ flagship service, offering the ultimate sleeper-train adventure. As I checked my watch and announced it was finally time to make our way to Helsinki central station, the girls were pink in the cheeks, eyes sparkling from all the surrounding golden lights.

• YouTuber stopped in sixth after four knockdowns

• Trump weighs in on fight from Air Force One

• Victor eyes Fury after hospitalizing Paul with broken jaw

• Women’s boxing shines on Miami undercard

• Jake Paul v Anthony Joshua – as it happened

Anthony Joshua did what he was meant to do on Friday night in Miami: he lay waste to Jake Paul’s bravest and most controversial experiment in boxing with a destructive victory that felt less like a sporting result than the restoration of sanity.

In their scheduled eight-round heavyweight bout at the Kaseya Center, streamed globally to Netflix’s roughly 300 million subscribers, the former twice unified heavyweight champion scored four knockdowns before stopping the YouTuber-turned-boxer in the sixth round of a mismatch that had prompted weeks of safety fears and moral hand-wringing. Joshua’s triumph, on a night purpose-built as much for memes as for punches, served as a reminder that boxing still adheres to its elemental laws and that power and pedigree eventually reassert themselves.