Mayor says ‘I will govern as a democratic socialist’ at inauguration ceremony featuring AOC and Bernie Sanders
Zohran Mamdani on Thursday vowed to “reinvent” New York City in a speech on his first day as mayor, promising “a new era” for America’s largest city and an ambitious start to his term of office.
The 34-year-old political star and democratic socialist, who a year ago was a virtually unknown state assemblyman, is the city’s first Muslim mayor, first of south Asian descent and the first to be born in Africa. He is also the first to be sworn in using the Qur’an.
It’s a strange quirk of this fixture that the away side hasn’t lost for the last 10 Premier League meetings between Crystal Palace and Fulham, with substitute Tom Cairney’s late equaliser ensuring that streak goes on.
Only a brilliant save in added time from Dean Henderson and a glaring miss from former Palace player Joachim Andersen denied Marco Silva’s side all the points after falling behind to Jean-Philippe Mateta’s first goal from open play since 1 November. But Oliver Glasner was still bitterly disappointed that his team couldn’t end a sequence of six games without a victory in all competitions after running out of steam again in their 31st match of the season. “We are a little bit in survival mode,” admitted the Palace manager, whose team now faces three games in the space of seven days.
Two unbeaten records were maintained at Anfield but only one team took satisfaction along with their point. Leeds succeeded in stifling and frustrating Liverpool as the first goalless draw of Arne Slot’s reign underlined the limitations that linger behind the Premier League champions’ recent recovery.
A drab scoreless draw, the first in 84 Liverpool games under Slot, owed much to the defensive excellence of Jaka Bijol and Pascal Struijk as Daniel Farke’s depleted visitors extended their unbeaten run to six matches and moved seven points clear of the relegation zone. But Liverpool’s contribution to a meagre spectacle was significant too.
Coach stopped toeing the line at Stamford Bridge with one eye on the Manchester City job, frustrating his employers
It was late on New Year’s Eve when Chelsea’s patience ran out. They knew that Enzo Maresca was attempting to engineer an exit from the club and now they were ready to call his bluff. Midnight was approaching and the fireworks at Stamford Bridge were about to erupt.
A baffling story soon had a familiar, predictable ending. Maresca, who is not the first manager to run out of friends at Chelsea, had taken the provocations too far. There was surprise when he told staff that he did not want to conduct his post-match press conference after the disappointing 2-2 draw with Bournemouth on Tuesday night. The official explanation was that Maresca was too unwell to talk in public, despite having just spent the evening coaching on the Stamford Bridge touchline, but the friction was palpable and it was never going to sit well with the Chelsea hierarchy when it took less than 24 hours for reports to emerge that the sickness line was a red herring and their head coach had actually decided not to meet the media because he needed time to consider his options. It was further confirmation that this was someone who wanted to be sacked. Maresca dared Chelsea to act and will have been the least surprised person in the world to find himself unemployed less than a day into 2026.
Congressmember delivered opening remarks at city hall, noting that Mamdani is the city’s first Muslim mayor
Zohran Mamdani and his wife Rama Duwaji appearing on stage for his inauguration ceremony earlier.
New York is a place that “a young immigrant democrat socialist Muslim can be bold enough to run and brave enough to win,” he says, “not by abandoning conviction, but by standing firmly within it.”
Regis Le Bris also spoke to Sky: “A few weeks ago we struggled because they were really good and efficient through their counter pressing. I hope we learnt the lesson but it will be another experience at home with another energy so we’ll see.”
Pep Guardiola has been speaking to Sky: “Tough place and it means that anyone could win here. Hopefully we can perform. Josko [Gvardiol] had a few niggles, an incredible run of playing every three days and Savinho has speed and is fresh.
Switzerland will hold five days of mourning after an “unprecedented” fire tore through a crowded bar, killing about 40 people and injuring 115 who were celebrating at a New Year’s Eve party in the Alpine ski resort of Crans-Montana.
The country’s president, Guy Parmelin, described the blaze as one of the most traumatic events in Switzerland’s history. “It was a drama of an unknown scale,” he said, paying tribute to the many “young lives that were lost and interrupted”.
New year party at Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana turned into tragedy as flames shot across the ceiling
The new year had passed its first hour and the party in Le Constellation was in full swing with revellers dancing to thumping hip-hop. Dawn was far off and the teenagers and twenty-somethings were in no hurry to leave the bar. It was, after all, New Year’s Day.
Outside, darkness draped Crans-Montana, a ski resort in the Swiss Alps with a reputation for posh luxury. Le Constellation, however, had few pretensions: a cavernous venue with TV screens on the top floor to watch sport, and a basement with low lighting, loud music and a dancefloor.
Philogene and Akpom goals secure 2-1 win over Oxford
Charlton hold Coventry 1-1; Derby upset Middlesbrough
Ipswich climbed into the automatic promotion places in the Championship following a 2-1 victory over struggling Oxford.
Their success came via first-half goals from leading scorer Jaden Philogene and Chuba Akpom, while Will Lankshear replied for the visitors. Ipswich moved a point above Middlesbrough after they fell to a 1-0 defeat at Derby, while Oxford remain three points from safety.
Over the holiday period, the Guardian leader column is looking ahead at the themes of 2026. Today we examine how the White House’s war on vaccines has left the future of a key technology uncertain and up for grabs
The late scientist and thinker Donald Braben argued that 20th-century breakthroughs arose from scientists being free to pursue bold ideas without pressure for quick results or rigid peer review. The rapid development of Covid-19 vaccines seemed to validate his claim: emergency conditions sped up trials, relaxed regulatory sequencing and encouraged scientists to share findings before peer review. Out of that sprang one of the great scientific success stories of our age: mRNA vaccines. These use synthetic genetic code to train the immune system to defend itself against viruses. Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, whose work enabled the mRNA Covid vaccine, went on to win the Nobel prize. Their breakthrough suggests that loosening traditional constraints could accelerate major scientific advances.
The extensive scientific and logistic infrastructure built during that period is now occupied with turning the technology towards other diseases: flu, HIV and even cancer. Until very recently, the US, which put more than $10bn into mRNA development, appeared primed to reap the scientific and commercial rewards. Despite the deregulatory zeal that birthed mRNA, the second Trump administration has rejected it. Instead, it has been remarkably steady in its commitment to the radical anti-science and anti-vaccine agenda of the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr. He has spent the past year undermining and outright sabotaging the US’s own success. Over the summer, the US Department of Health and Human Services announced a “coordinated wind-down” of federal funding for mRNA research, cancelling an additional $500m in funding for 22 projects.
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About 40 people are believed to have been killed and 115 injured after a fire tore through a crowded bar during a New Year’s Eve party in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana, according to the Italian foreign ministry. Video from the scene shows orange flames billowing from inside the ground-floor bar and lounge. Swiss police confirmed arson was not the cause and the blaze is thought to have been started accidentally
Investigators say no indication of terrorism or arson after 40 people die and 115 are injured in blaze
Dozens of people are presumed dead and about 115 injured, many of them seriously, after a fire at a bar in the Swiss Alps during a new year celebration at a luxury ski resort.
The blaze ripped through the packed bar, Le Constellation, early on Thursday in Crans-Montana, one of the top-ranked ski destinations in Europe, which lies about 25 miles (40km) north-west of Zermatt.
Second highest annual number of irregular arrivals on record reached British shores in 2025
More than 41,000 people crossed the Channel in small boats last year, figures branded “shameful” by the Home Office have revealed.
The government said 41,472 people arrived in the UK by crossing the Channel in 2025 – the second highest number on record after 45,774 made the journey in 2022.
• Chris Powell is an election strategy analyst and advised the Labour party for more than 20 years
The next general election will be no ordinary democratic contest. Not the usual swing of the pendulum this way or that. It will be a key moment in the history of our democracy – and it could be less than three years away.
Be in no doubt: populists represent a new and terrifying threat to the kind of free elections and free society we cherish, but now take for granted.
Chris Powell is an election strategy analyst and advised the Labour party for more than 20 years. David Cowan, who co-authored this article, is founder of Forensics, a data and consumer research consultancy. They are co-founders of winningagainstpopulists.com
Abortion was seen as one of Democrats’ strongest issues in the 2024 election – new polls indicate that may be shifting
Up to seven states will vote on abortion rights this year. But recent polling indicates that Democrats may not be able to count onthe issue in their efforts todrive votes in the 2026 midterms, after makingabortion rightsthe centerpiece of their pitch to voters in the elections that followedthe fall of Roe v Wade.
In 2024, 55% of Democrats said abortion was important to their vote, according to polling from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). But in October of this year, just 36% of Democrats said the same. By contrast, abortion remained about as important to Republicans in both 2024 and 2025, PRRI found. PRRI’s findings mirror a September poll from the 19th and SurveyMonkey, which found that the voters who cared most about abortion are people who want to see it banned.
2 min: Liverpool immediately concede a free-kick on their own byline, which immediately allows Leeds’ looming back-line to come up from the back. Liverpool, remember, are joint last in the Premier League for goals conceded from set pieces, and sacked their set-piece coach last week.
Liverpool survive here, though, with Alisson punching away.
England’s World Cup-winning coach says Ashes series has been ‘a disappointment’ and that a harder mentality in Australian youth cricket could be a factor
Trevor Bayliss will be among those watching the fifth Ashes Test at the iconic Sydney Cricket Ground this Sunday. But even as the head coach responsible for delivering the World Cup in 2019, the majority of England fans who walk past him will probably do so without so much as a double take.
This was very much the Australian’s way when sporting the Three Lions on his training kit for five years – low key and forever dodging the spotlight under that wide-brimmed hat. Even crediting Bayliss for that World Cup – or the Ashes win in 2015 – cuts against his mantra that players alone deserve the glory. Coaches, he always stressed, are simply there to facilitate.
Nationwide protests against living conditions enter fifth day with security forces reportedly using live ammunition
The largest protests in Iran for three years entered a fifth day on Thursday amid reports of deadly clashes between protesters and security forces, with state-affiliated media confirming at least two people had been killed.
Although state media did not identify those killed, witnesses and videos circulating on social media appear to show protesters lying motionless on the ground after security forces opened fire.
British charitable trust that draws on OxyContin-maker fortune says it exempted names to protect reputations
Two charities that received a combined total of more than £1.1m from the British charitable trust run by the Sackler family were kept out of its latest accounts to protect their reputations from “serious prejudice”.
The trust, which draws on the Sackler fortune that came out of the US opioid crisis, gave £3.8m to arts, eduction and science bodies in 2024, according to its latest accounts, filed on New Year’s Eve.
Scot chasing third world title, 10 years after last triumph
Searle talks about playing through eye condition on oche
Gary Anderson returned to the World Championship semi-finals for the first time in four years after ending Justin Hood’s dream debut run.
The 55-year-old is enjoying a renaissance and is now just two wins away from lifting a third world title, 10 years after his last. If he can do so, he would become the oldest player to lift the PDC world title and join Michael van Gerwen in second place in the all-time list of champions.
Sheldon Whitehouse, an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center board, remains undeterred and determined to press on with his investigation
“That’s the tactic they use,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island senator, pondering whether Donald Trump might attach his name to the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. “You float stuff and you float stuff and you float stuff until people get inured to what a stupid or outrageous thing it is that has been floated and then you pull the trigger.”
Whitehouse was sitting in his Senate office and speaking to the Guardian at 11am on Thursday 18 December. Two hours later, his words proved prophetic. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, announced on X that the Kennedy Center board had “voted unanimously” to rename it the Trump-Kennedy Center.
It is an all-too-familiar scenario: you reheat a bowl of last night’s noodles for lunch, devour it, then return to your desk and gradually droop over the course of the afternoon, to the point at which you are battling to keep your eyes open. Or perhaps you struggle with energy on waking up; or, after a busy start and strong coffee first thing, you begin to fade mid-morning. Or, like me, after dinner in the winter months, you are completely lethargic.
How common are such peaks and troughs in our energy levels? “If you’re having an active day, then you will naturally get tired because we are human, we’re not machines,” says Dr Linia Patel, a dietitian and nutritionist. “Getting tired at the end of the day, before you go to bed, is perfect. But getting tired at your desk is not great.” Chronic tiredness is something to see a doctor about, says Patel, as it could be a symptom of illness.
Historic trawler and floating lighthouse among East Yorkshire city’s attractions as it gears up for tourism boost
A combination of a world record-breaking trawler, a floating lighthouse and a dizzying array of maritime objects that include a stuffed polar bear called Erik are all helping to make Hull one of the top 25 places in the world to visit in 2026.
The East Yorkshire city is on the verge of completing an ambitious £70m transformation, which, supporters believe, will propel it into becoming an international tourist destination.
South Carolina-based journalist Jeffrey Collins observed back-to-back executions in 2025 after the state revived the death penalty following a 13-year pause
Jeffrey Collins has watched 14 men draw their final breaths.
Over 25 years at the Associated Press, the South Carolina-based journalist has repeatedly served as an observer inside the state’s execution chamber, watching from feet away as prison officials kill men who were sentenced to capital punishment. South Carolina has recently kept him unusually busy, with seven back-to-back executions in 14 months.
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