General news

• Five Palestinian journalists killed in Israeli strike on van in Gaza, employer says

  26-12-2024 13:52 via theguardian.com
  
  Men were asleep in marked press vehicle, say witnesses, as renewed hostage negotiations reach impasseMiddle East crisis – latest updatesFive Palestinian journalists have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on their vehicle in central Gaza, their employer has said, as renewed ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel have reportedly reached an impasse.Faisal Abu al-Qumsan, Ayman al-Jadi, Ibrahim al-Sheikh Khalil, Fadi Hassouna and Mohammed al-Lada’a were sleeping in their broadc
  
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• Israeli forces accused of taking Gaza hospital staff to detention centre for interrogation – Middle East crisis live

  28-12-2024 09:35 via theguardian.com
  
  Gaza health officials said the IDF detained the director of a hospital, which the WHO said was put out of service by an Israeli raidHello and welcome back to the Guardian’s live coverage of the ongoing crisis in the Middle East.Israeli forces have detained the director of a hospital in the north, Gaza health officials said on Saturday. The World Health Organization (WHO) said the hospital was put out of service by an Israeli raid. Continue reading...
  
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• Russia-Ukraine war live: Moscow says Kyiv plot to kill high-ranking officer with music speaker bomb foiled

  28-12-2024 09:21 via theguardian.com
  
  Claim from FSB comes two weeks after Ukrainian assassination of senior Russian general Igor KirillovHello and welcome to the Ukraine live blog. We start with news that Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) says it has foiled a plot by Ukraine to kill a high-ranking Russian officer and a pro-Russian war blogger with a bomb hidden in a portable music speaker.According to the FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, a Russian citizen had established contact with an officer from Ukrain
  
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• ‘We need dramatic social and technological changes’: is societal collapse inevitable?

  28-12-2024 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Academic Danilo Brozović says studies of failed civilisations all point in one direction – today’s society needs radical transformation to surviveFor someone who has examined 361 studies and 73 books on societal collapses, Danilo Brozović’s conclusion on what must happen to avoid today’s world imploding is both disarmingly simple and a daunting challenge: “We need dramatic social and technological changes.”The collapse of past civilisations, from the
  
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• Tom Gauld on hibernation – cartoon

  28-12-2024 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
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• The Guardian Footballer of the Year Sofie Junge Pedersen: ‘We wanted to send a message’

  28-12-2024 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The Inter and Denmark player wins the award for her climate activism and being behind an open letter to Fifa regarding Saudi Arabia’s human rights issuesThe Guardian Footballer of the Year is an award given to a player who has done something remarkable, whether by overcoming adversity, helping others or setting a sporting example by acting with exceptional honesty.If the football had not worked out, perhaps Sofie Junge Pedersen could have run away to the circus. When her after-school youth
  
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• On the towering cliffs, my family found a sanctuary. It still pulls me back today | Kat Lister

  28-12-2024 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  My grandmother called it The Haven – a shack perched high above the beach. Years later, another special woman rekindled my love of that placeIn our end of year series, writers and public figures remember the place or time when they felt most at homeIn the 18th century, physicians went looking for a nostalgia bone, as though a person’s yearning for a past time or place could be assigned to a chunk of tissue. But for me, writing in the 21st, the stimulus can be found not in the body I&
  
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• Goals of the year: long-range stunners, joyful skills and outrageous finishes

  28-12-2024 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  From thunderbolts to delicate dinks, chips and flicks, via team goals and more – enjoy our pick of 2024’s best goalsHere’s a sublime wallop from just inside his own half by Heracles’ Mario Engels against Ajax on 21 October. Unfortunately his side let their lead slip and lost 4-3. Continue reading...
  
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• Cheesy anchovy straws and chocolate meringue kisses: Yotam Ottolenghi’s recipes for party nibbles

  28-12-2024 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Bite-sized treats that are big on flavour and will see out the year in styleHappy 2025 everyone, and may the New Year bring with it the positive changes we all so yearn for. Personally, I will be embracing change in a big way, because, after seven years, this is my final column for the Guardian’s Feast. From March, I will be writing a new, long-form quarterly column packed with recipes, personal experiences and general observations about the food world, so stay tuned. The Feast community i
  
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• Are modern sports stars still cut out for pantomime season? Oh yes they are | Emma John

  28-12-2024 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Strictly Come Dancing has hit participation but the gymnast Louis Smith is still flying the flag for sporting heroes on stageMerry Betwixtmas, everybody! I’ve a great fondness for this final stretch of December, the weird dead time when Boxing Day obligations to extended family have been fulfilled, and the new year’s party still seems impossibly far in the future. It’s a truly philosophical period, raising questions of mortality, renewal and resolution, and of how long trifle c
  
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• After the show: what happened next to Olympic gender row boxers?

  28-12-2024 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting won historic gold medals in Paris, but the future of both fighters remain in doubtIt was the full hero’s welcome for Imane Khelif on her return home from Paris to Algiers. An open-topped bus parade on a humid evening that had followed a meeting with president Abdelmadjid Tebboune in the El Mouradia Palace where she was granted the honorary title of major in the Algerian army.The celebrations were only a little more muted on the other side of the world, where Li
  
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• Ukraine war briefing: ‘Human wave’ of North Korean troops being sent to their deaths, says US

  28-12-2024 08:57 via theguardian.com
  Kyiv reports heavy casualties among Pyongyang’s soldiers in Russia while Washington accuses generals of seeing the troops as ‘expendable’. What we know on day 1,039See all our Ukraine war coverage Continue reading...
  
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• ‘The impact has been out of this world’: the stranger who gave away a £100,000 inheritance to his neighbours

  28-12-2024 08:36 via theguardian.com
  
  When David Clarke’s mother died, it took him 10 years to work out what to do with the money she left him. This year, a panel of locals in Liverpool made the decision for himIt was a quiet act of generosity that briefly captured the news agenda: David Clarke, a researcher in Liverpool, made the extraordinary decision to give away the £100,000 he had inherited from his late mother a decade ago. But instead of donating it to one cause, Clarke did something radical. He wrote to 600 addre
  
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• Last major health facility in north Gaza ‘out of service’ after Israeli attack

  28-12-2024 08:33 via theguardian.com
  
  Gaza officials say staff at Kamal Adwan hospital, including its director, have been detained as WHO reports Israeli forces burned and destroyed key departmentsThe last major health facility in northern Gaza has been put out of service, the World Health Organization has said, and its director detained according to Gaza officials after an Israeli military operation targeting sites near the Kamal Adwan hospital.“Initial reports indicate that some key departments were severely burnt and destro
  
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• Olivia Hussey, star of 1968 Romeo and Juliet film, dies aged 73

  28-12-2024 08:31 via theguardian.com
  Golden Globe-winning actor ‘lived a life full of passion, love and dedication to the arts’, says family in statementOlivia Hussey, who starred as a teenage Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film Romeo and Juliet, garnering her a Golden Globe, died peacefully at her home on Friday at age 73, her family has announced.“Olivia was a remarkable person whose warmth, wisdom, and pure kindness touched the lives of all who knew her,” her family said in a statement posted to
  
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• That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz by Malachy Tallack review – the joys of country music

  28-12-2024 08:30 via theguardian.com
  A shy man leads a solitary existence until a young girl – and a cat – inveigle their way into his apparently contented life in this big-hearted taleAll Jack Paton ever wanted was to be a famous country singer, but somehow it never happened. Certainly, the odds were stacked against him: cripplingly shy, no self-confidence. And although he considers it “a landscape of country music”, it can’t have helped matters that he was born in one of the more windswept corne
  
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• ‘I don’t want flowers, I want my Ukraine’: women’s acts of resistance against Russian occupation

  28-12-2024 08:14 via theguardian.com
  
  Zla Mavka movement – meaning ‘wicked forest spirit’ – drops fake rouble notes bearing pro-Ukrainian images and shares messages of solidarityOn 8 March 2023, International Women’s Day, Russian soldiers were handing out tulips and boughs of mimosa to women and girls in the city of Melitopol, southern Ukraine – a move designed to promote friendly relations between the occupiers and the inhabitants.But the night before, someone had been discreetly sticking posters
  
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• Nitish Kumar Reddy century leads India fightback to frustrate Australia on day three

  28-12-2024 08:12 via theguardian.com
  
  All-rounder joins Washington Sundar in critical 127-run standTourists trail by 116 runs with one wicket in hand in fourth Test52nd over: India 180-5 (Pant 22, Jadeja 4) Smokes a pull shot! Pant moves along to the 20s by clattering Boland, then takes a single. Jadeja keeps blocking.Guy Hornsby winds up the crank handle on the email machine. “Morning/evening Geoff. I’m somehow still up in darkest Sale in Manchester, full of port and cheese and wondering if Pant and Jadeja can actually
  
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• What links Blade Runner (35) and Gladiator (24)? The Saturday quiz

  28-12-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  From brain rot and brat to “thumping a fellow in Wales”, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz1 Who predicted he’d be remembered for “thumping a fellow in Wales”?
  2 What is the world’s most widely grown non-food crop?
  3 Park and Street are the disciplines of which Olympic sport?
  4 Pardoned in November, what are Peach and Blossom?
  5 In India, what names are given to 100,000 and 10 million?
  6 Which UK gull is named for its shrill cry?
  7 Which artist brought
  
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• The gentle magic of walking in Somerset’s Mendip Hills

  28-12-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  John Harris and family revisit the first serious hill-walk they made in a landscape that’s more comforting than challenging – just what they’re looking for at this time of yearI moved to Somerset in 2009, from a home in Wales between Bannau Brycheiniog (the Brecon Beacons) and the Black Mountains. The change took me closer to London and rid me of painfully long train journeys, but I really missed the landscape – and, more specifically, walking around it. The little I knew
  
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• New year finances: a month-by-month UK guide to sorting out your money

  28-12-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  A checklist of vital tasks throughout the year, from filing your tax return to making the most of your holiday cashThe new year is almost upon us and you may have started filling in your phone planner for 2025 or scribbling key dates on next year’s family calendar.But it’s not just birthdays, weddings and get-togethers to keep in mind – there are various tasks and bits of life admin (some nice, others not-so-nice) to grapple with in 2025. Continue reading...
  
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• McCarthyism stalked my family. Its paranoia contains a lesson for Trump’s second term | Richard Sennett

  28-12-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Trump’s eerily familiar evocations of the ‘enemy within’ may be harder to shake off than the man who targeted my parentsThe rise of Donald Trump aroused in me an old fear of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Both McCarthy and Trump rose to power as demagogues who fed on the American public’s fear of “enemies within”. My family had cause to fear on the biggest of these counts: my parents were communists from an early age, although they had quit the party in 1939 after H
  
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• Former world’s tallest man calls for more compassion for vulnerable in UK

  28-12-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Hussain Bisad, who has had health problems, says government should do more for people with physical or mental illnessWhen Hussain Bisad first settled in north London as an asylum seeker after fleeing from war in Somalia 23 years ago, he did so in the hope of a new and more settled life. Little did he know that shortly after arriving he would be at the centre of the media spotlight, not for his story of escaping conflict but for something altogether different: his height.Bisad had been in the UK
  
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• India mourns former PM Manmohan Singh with Delhi state funeral

  28-12-2024 07:22 via theguardian.com
  
  Coffin flanked by honour guard and carried to Congress party headquarters in capital as Modi hails one of country’s ‘most distinguished leaders’Mourners in India’s capital gathered on Saturday to pay their respects to former prime minister Manmohan Singh ahead of a state funeral for a leader who was key to the country’s economic liberalisation.Singh, who held office from 2004 to 2014, died at the age of 92 on Thursday, after which seven days of state mourning were d
  
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• What to wear for a New Year’s Eve party

  28-12-2024 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Staying in or going out, it’s always nice to make a bit of an effort. And you can’t go wrong with a little black dress, little black boots, a velvet suit or simply a red lip Continue reading...
  
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• TV tonight: beautiful tributes to Maggie Smith and more greats we lost in 2024

  28-12-2024 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Steve Wright, Edna O’Brien and Sven-Göran Eriksson are also remembered in Lives Well Lived. Plus: a night of Oasis. Here’s what to watch this evening6pm, BBC Two Continue reading...
  
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• Tim Dowling: my year in numbers (yes, most of them involve the new dog)

  28-12-2024 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  I’ve had a topsy-turvy year, but the statistics prove beyond doubt that my chief distraction of 2024 was the acquisition of a small furry menaceAs the year barrels toward its end, I feel in many ways as if I have survived a difficult and challenging period, worse than the year before, and the year before that, if possibly better than anything one dares expect from 2025. But impressions can be deceiving, and I find that when I’m reviewing the year gone it helps to rely on nothing but
  
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• Sonic the Hedgehog 3 to The Traitors: a complete guide to the week’s entertainment in the UK

  28-12-2024 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Jim Carrey is back causing mayhem as the megalomaniacal, moustachioed Dr Robotnik, and Claudia Winkleman’s top-notch reality betray-em-up returnsSonic the Hedgehog 3
  Out nowDr Robotnik (Jim Carrey) becomes a paid-up member of the school of thought that says if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, teaming up with former adversaries Sonic, Tails and Knuckles against new kid on the block Shadow the Hedgehog, voiced by Keanu Reeves. Continue reading...
  
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• One in five Britons would use weight-loss drug if free on NHS, poll reveals

  28-12-2024 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Survey also finds one in seven have either taken such jabs themselves or know someone who hasOne in five Britons would use a weight-loss drug if it was free on the NHS, according to polling that also shows one in seven have either taken a jab themselves or know someone who has.But almost one in four people would not tell others if they were using them, suggesting the growing popularity of weight-loss jabs is accompanied by persistent stigma about them. Continue reading...
  
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• ‘Illegally smuggled’ cannon at Tower of London subject of dispute with Ireland

  28-12-2024 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Newly released documents show Irish officials sought return of cannon sold by ‘gang of British treasure hunters’Rare cannon allegedly smuggled out of Irish waters by a gang of British treasure hunters and acquired for a knockdown price by a Tower of London official were at the centre of a decades-long dispute between British and Irish officials, according to newly released records.Irish officials made extensive efforts to convince UK authorities to return the bronze cannon after clai
  
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