‘In some cases, it may look like retribution,’ Susie Wiles says in a wide-ranging interview with Vanity Fair

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.

The BBC has vowed to defend itself against the $10bn lawsuit that the US president, Donald Trump, filed against it. Trump alleges the broadcaster “intentionally, maliciously and deceptively” edited the 6 January speech he gave before the attack on the US Capitol. On Tuesday, a BBC spokesperson said: “As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case. We are not going to make further comment on ongoing legal proceedings.”

Lucy Hough speaks to the head of national news, Archie Bland

Legislation clears upper house after Tories and cross-benchers drop opposition to lifting compensation cap

Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has published a green paper on BBC charter renewal. It includes a consultation on options for the future.

On funding, the document says the government has an “open mind” on how the licence fee system may be reformed to stop fewer households paying every year. It suggests there might be a new type of licence fee for people who say they don’t watch BBC TV, but who do use the BBC’s website, or BBC Sounds.

In addition to BBC saving and efficiency programmes, we also want to explore wider reforms that could help address the funding challenges the BBC faces. We have not ruled out keeping the current licence fee in place with its current structure. However, given the sustainability challenges it is facing, we are also reviewing the scope of services for which the licence fee is required and considering differential rates for specific types of users, to make it more sustainable for the long-term, along with increasing commercial revenue to ease the burden on the public. This would aim to reverse the trend of fewer households paying every year and declining overall income, which risks the BBC declining if it is not addressed. Any reform of the licence fee must be proportionate and reflect the cost-of-living burden on the public.

As the licence fee is a tried and tested public funding model, we are not considering replacing it with alternative forms of public funding, such as a new tax on households, funding through general taxation, or introducing a levy on the revenues of streaming services to fund the BBC …

My aims for the charter review are clear. The BBC must remain fiercely independent, accountable and be able to command public trust. It must reflect the whole of the UK, remain an engine for economic growth and be funded in a way that is sustainable and fair for audiences.

• World No 8 Dobey finds groove after early wobble

• Soutar finally holds nerve to win match at 16th attempt

Chris Dobey shrugged off an early scare to reach the second round of the World Darts Championship with a 3-1 win over China’s Zong Xiaochen at Alexandra Palace.

Dobey, who reached the semi-final last year, was not expected to be troubled by his opponent but a spate of missed early doubles threatened to cost the eighth seed. After winning the opening set, Dobey’s repeated failure to find double top allowed his opponent to level at 1-1 and briefly threaten what would have been a momentous upset.

Another day, another Reform UK press conference: this time the deputy leader’s turn to apologise for his Send remarks

Call it a Christmas miracle. For this was the day when Richard Tice sent in his application to become a fully paid-up member of Woke. The day the Reform deputy leader tried to break free from his role as the perennial sidekick. An insignificant blot on the Nigel Farage landscape. When he tried to show he was able to think his own thoughts. Be his own man. Release the closet liberal inside. No longer have to apologise for his existence at the posh dinners he enjoys so much.

Yet Dicky will always be Dicky. Unable to escape The Unbearable Lightness of His Being. When he looks in the mirror, even he has to agree there is less than meets the eye. So it was inevitable he crashed and burned as usual. There are just too many contradictions that he can’t reconcile. A lifetime of trying to be loved has left him unsure of who he really is. A neurotic narcissist with a large ego and next to no self-worth.

Writers cited Machado’s support for Trump’s pressure campaign against Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro

At least three writers have withdrawn from next month’s Hay festival in Cartagena, Colombia, in protest at an invitation extended to the Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel laureate María Corina Machado.

The main reason cited by them is Machado’s support for Donald Trump’s four-month pressure campaign against Venezuela’s dictator Nicolás Maduro and her comments in favour of a potential US military intervention in the Caribbean country.

Attraction part-funded with £500m of public investment will be constructed on site of a former brickworks

The UK’s first Universal Studios theme park has been granted planning permission by the government to begin construction.

The attraction, which is being part-funded with £500m of public investment in rail and road infrastructure, will be built on the site of a former brickworks near Bedford.

Boy was arrested on Monday evening after officers were called to property in Weston-super-Mare

A teenage boy has been arrested on suspicion of murder after the death of a nine-year-old girl in Weston-super-Mare, police have said.

Officers were called by paramedics to a property in the North Somerset town just after 6pm on Monday, Avon and Somerset police said.

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”.

Producer Stephen Woolley pays tribute to Figgis, who has died aged 77, a brilliant professional whose ‘molotov cocktail personality’ enabled her work in British and Hollywood cinema

I first encountered Susie Figgis over 40 years ago when I interviewed her for The Company of Wolves, my debut movie production with Neil Jordan. We met at my then-cinema the Scala – it was a busy, noisy office but a sunny day, so we went up to the roof. Susie, who was already something of a legend having cast Stephen Frears’ Bloody Kids, Laura Mulvey’s avant garde films and Ben Kingsley in Gandhi, unleashed a volcanic eruption of unbridled enthusiasm for Angela Carter and Neil’s script. The collection of explosive expletives and voluble “darlings” almost blasted me to the King’s Cross streets below.

So began a professional relationship that spanned more than 23 movies. The task we set her for The Company of Wolves was tricky: to find an actor to play the adolescent Rosaleen. She achieved it through painstaking and meticulous methods (her trademark) over the next few months, exceeding our expectations when she discovered the excellent Sarah Patterson. She then topped that with the suggestion of Angela Lansbury for “Grannie” (who flew from Hollywood to shoot with us and had her character’s head decapitated for her troubles) and a superlative supporting cast of dancers, performance artists and veteran actors for our strange, violent woodland fairytale. Her passion for cinema was infectious: not only for the film-makers, but also the agents and actors who read our scripts. Susie demanded an intelligent and thoughtful response to the screenplays so no simple yes or no would suffice.

Royal Opera House, London
Andrei Serban’s 40-year-old production is confidently revived by Jack Furness, while the vocal richness of the Russian soprano as its eponymous heroine takes things to another level

When the Royal Opera’s current run of Turandot ends in February, there will have been no fewer than 22 performances of Puccini’s unfinished final opera on the Covent Garden stage in less than a year. By opera house standards, that’s a remarkably big number, especially for a staging that is now more than 40 years old.

But it’s not hard to see why this Turandot keeps on returning. Puccini’s darkest, most ritualistic and choral opera is a showstopper shot through with musical colour, innovation and interest. In tough economic times for the art form, it offers guaranteed box office, due in no small part to the iconic tenor aria Nessun Dorma. What’s more, Andrei Serban’s 1984 production is a living theatrical classic, in which everything is played out within oppressive sets inhabited by shadowy watchers. It is confidently revived here by Jack Furness, with eye-catching orientalist choreography by Kate Flatt.

Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo and Eve Hewson head up the director’s latest effort

The first trailer for Steven Spielberg’s mysterious UFO movie has now provided more details on what audiences can expect.

Disclosure Day, written by Jurassic Park’s David Koepp based on a Spielberg story, sees a starry cast deal with the discovery of aliens. “Why would he make such a vast universe yet save it only for us?’” Elizabeth Marvel’s character says at the end of the teaser.

Justice secretary criticised for refusing to meet lawyers who say their clients’ health is ‘rapidly deteriorating’

Palestine Action-affiliated hunger strikers are likely to die without David Lammy’s intervention, lawyers representing the prisoners have said as they criticised the justice secretary for refusing to meet them.

Solicitors wrote to Lammy last Wednesday to request an urgent meeting before their clients’ health deteriorates “beyond any possible recovery”. But a subsequent letter sent on Tuesday said that his reply, received on Monday “does not directly address our request”.

Region known as ‘world’s refrigerator’ is heating up as much as four times as quickly as global average, Noaa experts say

The Arctic endured a year of record heat and shrunken sea ice as the world’s northern latitudes continue a rapid shift to becoming rainier and less ice-bound due to the climate crisis, scientists have reported.

From October 2024 to September 2025, temperatures across the entire Arctic region were the hottest in 125 years of modern record keeping, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) said, with the last 10 years being the 10 warmest on record in the Arctic.

A breast cancer diagnosis is hard enough – what happens when a mother and daughter go through it at the same time?

Genna Freed should have been in the mood to celebrate. On a cloudy November day in 2022, her mother, Julie Newman, was about to complete her final round of radiation, after being diagnosed with breast cancer in September. The whole family, a close-knit bunch, was gathering with balloons and signs.

But Freed, then a few weeks shy of her 31st birthday, was carrying a secret. Spurred by her mother’s diagnosis, she had her first mammogram a couple days earlier, and it had turned up a suspicious spot. Now she needed a second, diagnostic mammogram, and likely a biopsy. She found herself walking a surreal sort of tightrope, caught between relief that her mother’s treatment was over and fear that she might soon be starting her own.

Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar co-star as Sweeney’s secretive bosses in an upstate New York mansion, and director Paul Feig ramps up the sexual tension with evident gusto

Director Paul Feig is known for broad comedy; now he cranks up the schlock-serious dial for an outrageously enjoyable – or at any rate enjoyably outrageous – psycho-suspense thriller in the spirit of 90s erotic noir, adapted by screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine from the 2022 bestseller by Freida McFadden. We are back in the sleazy, glossy world of Curtis Hanson’s The Hand That Rocks the Cradle or Joe Eszterhas’s Basic Instinct, but skating quite close, though not too close, to satire.

The scene is a bizarrely opulent mansion somewhere in upstate New York, splendidly isolated among a sea of bland suburban housing; it is approached by a drive, once you have got past the electronic gates. And it is down this avenue that Millie (Sydney Sweeney) nervously drives, wearing fake glasses to make herself look more mature, to apply for the job of live-in housemaid to the wealthy couple that lives there; she is hoping her prospective employers will not notice the worrying inconsistencies in her CV. She is greeted with smiley, Stepford-blond blandness by Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried), who appears to adore Millie, and explains that the job entails cooking, cleaning and looking after her young daughter, Cece (Indiana Elle).

The 2016 drama, loosely inspired by the father-son relationship, is a gritty drama about addiction that has now become a puzzle piece

Being Charlie, a 2016 movie directed by the late Rob Reiner, stands out from the director’s filmography for a number of reasons. It’s a gritty and grounded addiction movie with a few comic elements, less ebullient than many of the movies Reiner was famous for, as well as the others he was making in the 2010s. It features then-up-and-coming stars, rather than more established figures, and way more sex and nudity than usual. And it’s the only movie co-written by Reiner’s son, Nick, whose experiences formed the basis for the screenplay, and who is now expected to be charged in the murder of both his parents.

Those horrific circumstances transform Being Charlie from one of Reiner’s more interesting late-period efforts into the subject of unavoidable rubbernecking. Here is a film Reiner made in collaboration with his son, in part as an obvious act of hope that the worst of his struggles would prove to be behind him. Real life was not quite so cooperative as the open-ended but vaguely optimistic resolution of a well-intentioned indie drama.

Soho theatre, London
The comedian’s compelling show explores gender politics in modern India, singledom and self-improvement

Modesty: “I don’t speak for all women …” Swagger: “… but I do speak for many.” Prashasti Singh’s Divine Feminine shuttles between these poles, now deprecating her own foibles as a thirtysomething unmarried woman in modern India, now running the rule over gender politics in the 21st century. A deft balance is struck, with enough self-mocking silliness to endear herself and keep us entertained, but some arresting thinking too about Singh’s home country and its progress towards female liberation.

That’s the subject under interrogation here, albeit refracted through the confusions and contradictions of a woman who grew up wishing to be a man. Few of the female role models on offer in India seemed terribly inspiring – and the one that did, a high-achieving distant relative, undercut her inspo standing with a very unsisterly warning against spinsterdom. No wonder our host swings wildly between pride in her independence well into middle age, anxiety that her descent into “crazy lady” status may soon be irreversible – and therapy sessions advising she reframe her sadness as a colourful personality trait.

The proposal, supported by Kate Mosse and Philip Pullman, aims to make public library membership a national birthright

Richard Osman, Kate Mosse and Sir Philip Pullman are among authors calling for all babies to automatically receive a library card at birth. The proposal, put forward by the thinktank Cultural Policy Unit (CPU), aims to make public library membership a national birthright and encourage a culture of reading and learning in the early stages of childhood through a National Library Card.

“The idea behind a National Library Card is very simple,” Alison Cole, director at the CPU, said. “Access to knowledge and culture should be a birthright, not a postcode lottery. By giving every child an automatic library card from birth, together with a programme of activities and engagement, we make libraries part of the fabric of everyday life.”

Social and environmental reporting to be required of fewer companies after EPP aligns with far right to achieve goals

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Fewer companies operating in Europe will be made to carry out due diligence on the societal harms they cause, in what green groups have called a “betrayal” of communities affected by corporate abuse.

The gutting of the EU’s sustainability reporting and due diligence rules, which was greenlit by MEPs on Tuesday, slashes the number of companies covered by laws to protect human and ecological rights, and removes provisions to harmonise access to justice across member states.

News of Ahmed al-Ahmed’s selfless act quickly reached al-Nayrab, where locals say it proves religion or birthplace no barrier to heroism

A man who risked his life to wrestle a gun from a shooter in the Bondi beach terror attack on Sunday has become a hero in his home town in Syria.

Video of Ahmed al-Ahmed’s selfless act quickly reached his birthplace of al-Nayrab, a small town in the countryside of Idlib, north-west Syria. Ahmed, a 44-year-old father of two children, left the village to emigrate to Australia in 2007. He initially worked in construction, but soon opened a fruit and vegetable shop in Sydney.

District attorney’s office has until Wednesday to file charges against Nick Reiner following deaths of his parents

Los Angeles investigators are expected on Tuesday to lay out their case against Nick Reiner, who was arrested on suspicion of murdering his parents, the actor-director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner.

Detectives from the Los Angeles police department’s (LAPD) homicide division took Nick, 32, into custody on Sunday night, hours after his parents were found dead in their Brentwood home, the department announced on Monday.

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.

• Dispute related to contract before exit for Real Madrid

• Court sided with player amid accusations of betrayal

A Paris labour court has ruled Paris Saint-Germain must pay more than €60m (£52.7m) to Kylian Mbappé in a dispute over unpaid wages and bonuses linked to the end of his contract before his 2024 move to Real Madrid.

Lawyers argued last month before the Conseil de prud’hommes. The court sided with the player amid accusations of betrayal and harassment surrounding the breakdown of their relationship. PSG had been seeking €440m from Mbappé, citing damages and a “loss of opportunity” after he left on a free transfer. It is understood PSG are likely to appeal.

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.

Soho theatre, London
Lauren Lyle and Alexander Arnold make a compelling pair in a surprising drama about a one night stand

It is set on a summer morning in Edinburgh during the festival but David Ireland’s two-hander, first staged as a reading at the fringe in 2012, has an odd sort of Christmas spirit heightened by the timing of its London premiere.

To explain requires some spoilers about its bizarre twists but the setting could not be more straightforward. In a Travelodge hotel room, a couple wake up after a one night stand. She’s in the shower; he’s devouring a bucket of KFC for breakfast. When she emerges, Glaswegian Mary (Karen Pirie star Lauren Lyle) licks her lips and takes pleasure from recounting their mind-blowing sex while Hoosier Mike (Skins’ Alexander Arnold) reserves his orgasmic delight for the drumsticks. Wasn’t last night amazing, she asks. “It was something else,” he replies – and half an hour later we find out what he means.

At Soho theatre, London, until 24 January

Police said Paul Doyle, 54, used his vehicle ‘as a weapon’ in a moment of rage at a victory parade in the city on 26 May

A former Royal Marine is starting a 21-year jail term for mowing down dozens of Liverpool football fans in a “truly shocking” act that “defies ordinary understanding”.

Paul Doyle, 54, bowed his head as he was sentenced at Liverpool crown court where victims and their families watched, some in tears, from the public gallery.

Unleash your inner mixologist this Christmas with these awesome agave spirits, from sustainable to smoky to margarita-ready

• ‘Dreamy in a dirty martini’: the best vodkas, tested

Across North America, Mexican spirits have always been big – tequila even overtook whiskey as the US’s second biggest spirit in 2023 – but it’s taken the UK a little longer to catch on.

Now, though, premium Mexican spirits are on the rise, and we are surely in our agave era. Celebs are bringing out agave-based drinks by the crate-load (shout out to Rita Ora, Kendall Jenner and Nick Jonas), spicy margs have their own merch, and even Waitrose reported an 86% increase in sales of tequila last year.

• 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 Tuesday 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.

Christine Hazell has progressive memory loss yet now has four shows in the works, thanks to these raw, untutored drawings of her children, grandchildren, great grandchildren – and Kizzy the dog

In his four decades as a curator, publisher and gallerist, Matthew Higgs has supported many artists’ careers, including those of his contemporaries Jeremy Deller, Martin Creed and Peter Doig when they emerged in the early 1990s.

Higgs also champions artists from alternative backgrounds – those who are self-taught, say, or have developmental or cognitive impairment – and his latest discovery is one such person. Christine Hazell is 88, has progressive memory loss, and had never made art until six months ago. She has since created more than 200 drawings, which have rapidly gone viral on Instagram, inspired a following, and will feature in four scheduled exhibitions. She is also Higgs’s mother.

Green-led authority to provide 250 pitches in richer neighbourhoods rather than poorer parts of the city

Bristol city council has vowed to open temporary sites for people who live in vehicles in some of the most affluent neighbourhoods rather than trying to shift them to more deprived areas.

The Green-led authority is aiming to provide 250 pitches on “meanwhile sites” – often plots of land about to be developed – for vehicle dwellers by the spring.

Data shows the headline unemployment rate continued to climb and hit 4.6%, a four-year high, last month

The US labor market grew by more than expected last month, recovering some of the damage inflicted by the federal government shutdown, according to official data.

An estimated 105,000 jobs were lost in October, and 64,000 were added in November, a highly-anticipated report showed on Tuesday.

• Midfielder has been subject of interest from Saudi Arabia

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

Bruno Fernandes has claimed that 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 the Saudi Arabian club Al-Hilal offered United £100m and the player a £700,000-a-week salary.

If not, academics say, people will continue to get sick and die while schools close and hospitals are overwhelmed

With flu cases rising and resident doctors on strike from Wednesday, the NHS is under considerable pressure. But experts say lessons from the Covid pandemic could help ease the situation.

A trio of UK-based academics say a three-pronged approach of increasing uptake of flu vaccines, boosting support so people can stay home when unwell, and increasing ventilation and air quality would help to protect people from influenza.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

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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Shrieking Victorian phantoms, dastardly occultists and Christopher Lee’s vast head … here we reveal the finest Christmas chillers there ever were

Christmas time. Mistletoe and wine. Children singing Chriiiiiiistian rhyme. But what is this? Beneath the unrecyclable wrapping paper stirs a sense of unease. For here comes the BBC’s annual Ghost Story for Christmas, a brrr-inducing, Mark Gatiss-helmed adaptation of EF Benson’s The Room in the Tower, starring Tobias Menzies and Joanna Lumley.

The festive schedules have, of course, long played host to ghost stories; the season lends itself as readily to the shrouded and malign as the baubled and mulled. But which are the finest of TV’s many Christmas chillers?

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.

Parole Board rules that Norris, 49, should not be freed after he was convicted of murder in 2012

One of the killers of Stephen Lawrence, the teenager murdered in a racist attack by a white gang, has had his application for parole rejected.

David Norris was convicted in 2012 of the murder, carried out with at least four other white youths.

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

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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.

Paul Doyle had previous serious convictions and was described as a ‘live wire’ by a Royal Marines colleague

The sound was sickening: a thud, thud, thud as bodies bounced violently off the bumper. Inside Paul Doyle’s two-tonne vehicle, the scene was perhaps even more shocking.

Dashcam footage played in court this week showed the former Royal Marine screaming angrily as he ploughed into Liverpool FC supporters: “Get out the fucking way! Get out the way! Move, move, move!”

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.