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Ukraine war live: Zelenskyy says EU’s €90bn loan is a ‘signal to Russians’ despite frozen assets not being part of deal

Sticking with Poland for a second, the country’s prime minister Donald Tusk said he wasn’t fully satisfied with last night’s decisions in Brussels, but it was still a move in the right direction as “it is always better to have a piece of something than all of nothing”. In a social media post in English, he said: “Despite excessive caution of some leaders, Europe took the decision to finance Ukraine. The possibility of using immobilized Russian assets is still on. Am I fully satisfied? Of course not. But it is always better to have a piece of something than all of nothing.” Tusk, fresh back from Brussels, will also briefly meet Zelenskyy in Warsaw later today.

‘Matter of survival’: South Korean president urges public health cover for hair loss

South Korean president Lee Jae Myung has instructed his government to consider extending public health insurance to cover hair-loss treatments, arguing that baldness has become a “matter of survival” rather than a cosmetic concern for young people. The proposal, which has since faced a backlash from medical professionals and conservative figures, was announced during a policy briefing on Tuesday and would expand coverage beyond the limited medical treatments currently available for certain types of hair loss. South Korea operates a universal insurance scheme funded by premiums that are calculated based on income. Currently, the scheme covers only hair loss caused by medical reasons, such as alopecia areata. Most treatments for common male pattern baldness remain excluded from coverage. “There may be young people who think it’s unfair that they only pay insurance premiums and can’t receive benefits,” Lee said, noting that the “sense of alienation” among them had become severe. The president first proposed the policy as a candidate during his unsuccessful 2022 presidential election campaign, when it drew criticism as populist pandering, but dropped it from his most recent election platform. The proposal has highlighted South Korea’s intense cultural focus on physical appearance. A 2024 survey of young adults found that 98% of respondents believe attractive people receive social benefits. The cultural pressure is particularly demanding and acute for women, who face strict expectations about makeup, skincare and body shape. For men, the issue is less openly discussed, but some with a receding hairline opt to grow out their fringes to disguise hair loss, or seek expensive treatments. South Korea’s hair-loss treatment market was thought to be worth around 188bn won (£95m) in 2024, and industry groups claim that of a population of more than 51 million, around 10 million experience hair loss, though this figure has never been officially verified. Hair-loss shampoos are particularly popular, though in recent years some products have faced criticism over their claims of effectiveness. The timing of Lee’s proposal is particularly sensitive because South Korea’s health insurance system faces mounting financial pressure. Recent internal projections suggest the system could reportedly face deficits as large as 4.1tn won (£2.1bn) in 2026. Medical professionals have reacted with scepticism to the idea. The influential Korean Medical Association said that “rather than investing health insurance finances in hair loss treatment coverage, prioritising coverage for cancer and other serious diseases would better align with health insurance principles.” Conservative newspapers have been particularly critical. The Chosun Ilbo argued in its editorial that “this is not something the president should suddenly instruct without collecting opinions from citizens who pay insurance premiums.” Health minister Jeong Eun Kyeong expressed caution about the proposal, interpreting Lee’s “survival” claim as referring to young people’s confidence during job searches and the impact on mental health. When asked on a radio show whether extending coverage would substantially affect health insurance finances, Jeong replied: “I think so,” and noted that expanded coverage would require a comprehensive analysis. Former conservative lawmaker Yoon Hee-sook, who has a relative undergoing cancer treatment, wrote on Facebook that while she sympathises with young people’s hair-loss stress, “prioritising treatments directly connected to life and bodily function represents the current social consensus.” Park Joo-min, a ruling party MP who has publicly discussed his hair transplant procedure and is known for his advocacy on hair-loss issues, posted “truly Korea!” on X in an apparent endorsement. Separately on Friday, Lee instructed the fair trade commission to investigate the price of menstrual pads, claiming they are 39% more expensive than in other countries due to possible monopolistic practices.

Chile’s far-right president taps into support for Pinochet that never went away

Confident in his popularity, the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet called a plebiscite in 1988 asking the population whether they approved extending his 15-year-long bloody rule for a further eight years. A young José Antonio Kast, then a 22-year-old law student, joined the yes campaign, saying in a TV advert that he was convinced the regime was acting “for the direct benefit of all of us young people”. Pinochet ultimately lost and left power in 1990, but Kast never stopped openly supporting the dictator, both as a congressman and in the three presidential bids he made before being elected last Sunday. The president-elect – whose older brother, Miguel, was a prominent figure in the regime, serving as a minister and president of the central bank – once said that if Pinochet were alive “he would have voted for me”. A majority of today’s Chileans did, and the victory of the first openly Pinochet-admiring candidate has left many around the world asking why the country chose as its next leader a defender of a brutal regime under which an estimated 40,000 people were tortured and more than 3,000 killed. “The truth is that support for Pinochet among part of Chile’s population never disappeared,” said Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, a populism researcher and professor at the Institute of Political Science at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He noted that although the dictator lost the 1988 plebiscite, he still secured 44% of the vote. Since then, that support has shifted to rightwing parties, notably the Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI), which, over time, became more “moderate” under the leadership of the two-time president Sebastián Piñera. “But there were always some leaders who were bothered by that moderation, and one of them was Kast, who decided to break with the UDI, arguing that the right had lost its way and needed to return to much more authoritarian roots,” said Kaltwasser. Although stressing that other factors, such as populist public-security proposals and the promise to expel undocumented migrants, played a role in his election victory, Kast managed to “reactivate that dormant Pinochetism”, said Kaltwasser. A recent opinion poll showed that about a third of Chileans agree that Pinochet was one of the “best political leaders in the country’s history” or that, if politicians followed his ideas, the country would “regain its place in the world”. “The fact that a Pinochet admirer won shows that the current generation has forgotten or does not know enough about the horrific crimes committed during the dictatorship,” said Katia Chornik, a research associate at Cambridge University’s Centre of Latin American Studies. Her parents were political prisoners and raised her in exile, between Venezuela and France. Years later, as a teenager returning to Chile in the 1990s, Chornik learned that they had been held in a torture centre in the capital, Santiago, cruelly nicknamed La Discothèque by secret police agents because of the loud music they used to torture detainees. “When I first learned this, I was already studying music, and the idea that it could be used for very negative purposes really affected me,” said Chornik. She later conducted a decade-long research project, interviewing dozens of survivors, former prison guards, and convicted perpetrators from the higher echelons of Pinochet’s regime, and launched the digital platform Cantos Cautivos (Captive Songs), which features 168 of those testimonies. Her research was published on Friday as the book Music and Political Imprisonment in Pinochet’s Chile, in which Chornik provides examples of how music was also used as an act of resilience among political prisoners. She recounts the case of Jorge Peña Hen, a respected Chilean conductor and pedagogue, regarded as the founder of the first children’s orchestra in Latin America, who was detained shortly after the 1973 coup. While held in the Cárcel de La Serena, Peña Hen wrote an unfinished 10-bar melody on a scrap of paper, using burnt matches. He was murdered soon afterwards. Ten years later, his children found the manuscript: “Without opening it, I brought the paper to my nose. Closing my eyes, I breathed in deeply, and I felt my father’s scent permeate my soul,” his daughter, María Fedora Peña, told Chornik. Chornik is now working with Unesco on a project to bring her research into classrooms across Latin America and the Caribbean. “With Kast’s election, it’s clear that people have forgotten or don’t have enough information about the horrors of the dictatorship, so education is absolutely key,” she said.

Ukraine deal: EU leaders agree €90bn loan, but without use of frozen Russian assets

EU leaders have pledged a €90bn loan for Ukraine to meet urgent financial needs, but failed to agree on the preferred option for many of securing that loan against Russia’s frozen assets in the bloc. After talks ended in the early hours of Friday, the president of the European Council, António Costa, told reporters: “We committed and we delivered.” He said EU leaders had approved a decision to make a €90bn loan to Ukraine for the next two years backed by the EU budget, which Kyiv would repay only once Russia pays reparations. Costa added: “The union reserves its right to make use of the immobilised assets to repay this loan.” The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wrote on X that the deal “is significant support that truly strengthens our resilience”, adding: “It is important that Russian assets remain immobilised and that Ukraine has received a financial security guarantee for the coming years.” EU leaders entered the summit on Thursday with many wanting to secure the urgently needed loan against some of Russia’s €210bn frozen assets on the continent. But the plan hinged on the demand of Belgium, which hosts 88% of the Russian funds in the EU, to have unlimited budget guarantees from other member states if Moscow won a successful claim for damages. Belgium’s prime minister, Bart De Wever, said the reparations loan had not been a good idea. “When we explained the text again, there were so many questions that I said, ‘I told you so, I told you so.’ There are a lot of loose ends. And if you start pulling at the loose ends in the strings, the thing collapses.” Euroclear in Brussels is being sued by the Russian central bank for $230bn while its top executives have also faced a campaign of intimidation orchestrated by Russian intelligence, the Guardian reported this week. The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, a strong advocate of the reparations loan, said the agreement was “a decisive message because [Vladimir] Putin will only make concessions once he realises his war will not pay off”. He said he was delighted with the outcome and that it still fulfilled his goal of using the Russian assets, because they would be used to repay the loan if Russia refused to pay reparations to Ukraine. “We just changed the timeline a bit,” Merz told reporters. “It remains the case that Russian assets will be used as a securitisation for the loan and then also for paying back the loan.” As the loan will be raised on capital markets, it will also be available more quickly to Kyiv, whereas the Russian assets plan would have required a potentially complicated sequence of legal steps. Merz said he expected the funds to be available from mid-January – well ahead of Ukraine’s cash crunch forecast for April. Merz and other supporters of the reparations loan plan had argued that funding Ukraine via the EU budget was impossible because it required unanimity. But the path was cleared when the three nationalist governments in central Europe indicated they would approve the use of the EU budget to fund Ukraine, as long as they did not have to contribute to the loan guarantees. The leaders of Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic were pictured in a trilateral meeting by the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who tweeted: “back in business!” According to the final text of the agreement, the EU guarantees for the loan “will not have an impact on the financial obligations” of these three countries. The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said it was “quite something” to get 27 countries to agree on a €90bn loan for another. She said: “There are a lot of people outside the European Union and unfortunately also inside the European Union who tries to divide us. It is getting more and more difficult and I think this will continue.” Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said she was glad that common sense had prevailed and that resources for Ukraine had been agreed on “a solid legal and financial basis”. She said the most important decision had already been taken a few days earlier when the EU decided to freeze the Russian assets indefinitely. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, also said the indefinite freezing of assets was “the big win”. In a post on Telegram, the Kremlin’s top economic negotiator, Kirill Dmitriev, welcomed the failure to “illegitimately use Russian assets to finance Ukraine”, adding that “for the time being, the law and common sense have won a victory”. The Ukraine finance decision had been cast as “money today or blood tomorrow” by Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk. EU officials had hoped that if the union went ahead with using frozen assets for Ukraine, other western allies , such as the UK, Canada and Japan, would follow suit. Now it is not clear how they will respond. But Brussels has called on non-EU allies to provide about €45bn to cover the rest of Ukraine’s estimated €136bn needs for military and civilian finance in 2026 and 2027. Writing on X, the former head of the Foreign Office in the UK, Lord Ricketts said: “In the face of [Donald] Trump’s disdain and Russian intimidation, the EU has shown it can act even if at the last moment. But if a reparation loan had been agreed, UK was set to put its £20bn or so of frozen Russian assets into the pot. How does UK contribute now?”

‘I can’t think of a place more pristine’: 133,000 hectares of Chilean Patagonia preserved after local fundraising

A wild valley in Chilean Patagonia has been preserved for future generations and protected from logging, damming and unbridled development after a remarkable fundraising effort by local groups, the Guardian can reveal. The 133,000 hectares (328,000 acres) of pristine wilderness in the Cochamó Valley was bought for $78m (£58m) after a grassroots campaign led by the NGO Puelo Patagonia, and the title to the wildlands was officially handed over to the Chilean nonprofit Fundación Conserva Puchegüín on 9 December. The now-protected ecosystem is 383 times the size of Manhattan’s Central Park, or 800 times as big as London’s Regent’s Park. The lush, forested Cochamó Valley is home to waterfalls, emerald green rivers, hummingbirds and condors. The ancient forests hold groves of alerce trees that sprouted about 1,000BC, four centuries before the rise of the Roman empire. The newly acquired lands hold 11% of the remaining alerce forests on Earth. Logged for their solid, water-resistant trunk, alerce wood was fashioned into ship masts and telephone poles. Sparsely populated by a few remote homestead camps and rustic campgrounds, the Cochamó Valley is surrounded by 3,200ft (970 metre) granite cliffs that in 1997 lured climbers seeking the first ascent of rock faces on Cerro Trinidad. In 2012, rancher families and lone cowboys living in the valley joined forces with tour operators, NGOs, climbers, backpackers and explorers in vociferous opposition to a $400m hydroelectric plan that included 150-metre transmission towers, access roads and complete disruption of the rural way of life along the Manso River. The communities then worked together to stop a high-end vacation home development and plans to pave roads through the valley. “Our goal was to transform threats into opportunities,” said José Claro, the president of Puelo Patagonia. Claro described how one large-scale project after another was stymied by Puelo Patagonia and the local community working together. The conservation campaigns highlighted Cochamó’s importance as a biological corridor that could connect to the surrounding 1.6m hectares of protected lands in Chile and Argentina. A coalition of local and foreign NGOs known as Conserva Puchegüín then began recruiting donors to fund long-term conservation strategies. The valley receives over 3 metres of rain a year, making industrial agriculture virtually impossible. Cattle grazing is difficult as the mountain slopes are nearly vertical. Except for a few cave drawings attributed to native peoples from present-day Argentina who migrated along riverbanks, this corner of northern Patagonia reveals few signs of longstanding human habitation. These never-logged forests and free-flowing turquoise rivers are a field biologist’s paradise. The area teems with ferns the size of beach umbrellas. The undergrowth of native bamboo makes bushwhacking through this temperate rainforest nearly impossible, even with a machete. The dense underbrush prevents many larger mammals from migrating through the valley. Local species of deer known as pudu have adapted so they are rarely taller than 40cm. “You think about those trees being cut down or the valley flooded. It’s just terrifying,” said Alex Taylor, the chief executive of Cox Enterprises, who was first introduced to Cochamó in early 2025 by fellow fly fisher Yvon Chouinard, the founder of the clothing company Patagonia. Taylor returned to Atlanta with an idea for the James M Cox Foundation to support the protection of the valley. The other trustees agreed and approved a $20m donation. “It’s almost like the spiritual centre of the universe from a forest biodiversity standpoint,” said Taylor. “I can’t think of a place more pristine.” The successful fundraising campaign to buy the land is the beginning of what is likely to be a decades-long project to conserve the homesteader way of life and the valley’s rich biodiversity. “How do we ensure that traditional living and practices that have been going on for the better part of a century or more don’t get disrupted?” said Alex Perry, the Latin America general manager for Patagonia, which has been funding local conservation groups in the Cochamó Valley for more than a decade and in 2024 donated $4m through the company’s non-profit owner, Holdfast Collective. “How do we make it so that this model is something that can be replicated and scaled and is attractive to the next generation?” While the 133,000 hectares may eventually be donated to the Chilean national park system, recently passed environmental legislation in Chile created a system that secures permanent protection of designated areas even when the land remains in private ownership. As the valley’s popularity surges among hikers, climbers and horseback riders, a limit of 15,000 visitors a year has been set. Reservations are now required and a master plan of hiking trails, base camps and horse stables is being developed with direct participation from the local communities. “The beauty of the Pucheguín project is that it’s coming with an endowment,” said Anne Deane, the president of the Freyja Foundation which helped fund land purchases in the valley and recruited additional funders including the Wyss Foundation. “Cochamó is only going to get more and more popular, so it’s very important that there is an operating budget to support it.” Using camera traps and through collaboration with residents, a survey of the area’s wildlife has begun. A small herd of Chile’s national symbol, the now-endangered huemul deer, was recently discovered. There are no roads through the valley and electricity is generated house by house through solar or wind. The homes are often rough cabins set on riverbanks, allowing small motorboats to navigate up and down the Puelo River. Pack horses still haul in most food and supplies. The Cochamó conservation project was inspired by the landmark conservation efforts of Kris and Doug Tompkins, who abandoned successful leadership roles at the Patagonia and Esprit clothing companies respectively, moved to a remote cabin in Patagonia and dedicated 25 years and $300m to creating national parks in Chile and Argentina. By buying massive swathes of land and then negotiating with the Chilean government to expand its existing parks, the Tompkins conservation group – now known as Rewilding Chile – helped protect more than 5.7m hectares of wildlands. The path to becoming a park may be different in Cochamó. The measly budget allocated for national parks in Chile – highlighted by the recent deaths of five hikers in Torres del Paine national park – has convinced many conservation advocates to look at creating private parks that combine conservation with low impact commercial operations such as family farms or a solar-powered craft brewery. The plans for Cochamó are to place at least 80% in protected national park level status, while the remaining 20% will be zoned for multiple use, allowing locals to earn a living off tourism and traditional activities such as family farms and their small ranches. On a recent hike through Cochamó, the connection between conservation and community was evident. A Chilean cowboy hauling a horse piled high with fruits, vegetables and canned food stopped to share news. His horse was pregnant. Rex, a neighbour’s dog, needed medicine. The remote bridge washed away by the floods was nearly rebuilt. Stopping to chat in the cool fern forest, the cowboy spoke with excitement about the German tourists he would that evening be guiding down the mountain, on a path that his father helped build and that his children might one day continue to use and preserve.

‘Better off with Taiwan’: Honduras joins other Latin American countries rethinking ties with China

After weeks of technology failures, accusations of fraud and complaints about US President Donald Trump’s interference, the outcome of Honduras’ 30 November election is yet to be called. But there is a clear winner beyond the Central American nation’s borders: Taiwan. Both leading candidates say they will cut diplomatic ties with Beijing and re-establish relations with Taipei, reversing the March 2023 decision by the then president, Xiomara Castro, to sensationally end Honduras’ 82-year relationship with Taiwan. At the time, Honduras was the ninth of 10 countries to sever ties with Taipei in favour of Beijing in the last decade, amid an intensifying pressure campaign by the Chinese government to isolate Taiwan and delegitimise its sovereignty, and boost Beijing’s claim that it’s a part of China. But they seem to be having regrets. “For Honduras there has been absolutely no benefit from [the relationship with China],” says Salvador Nasralla, the Liberal party’s candidate. “We were 100 times better off with Taiwan,” agrees his opponent Nasry Asfura, the former mayor of Tegucigalpa who received Trump’s endorsement days before the vote. Today, Taipei has just 12 diplomatic allies in the world, thanks to Beijing’s relentless campaign to force foreign governments to choose one or the other. Sometimes it sparks an unedifying bidding war of financial and other inducements, even alleged corruption. In the end most countries choose the world’s second-biggest economy. Honduras was the fifth Central American and Caribbean nation (after Panama, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Nicaragua) to cut ties with them in the past decade. Since the beginning of the century, 21 nations have turned from Taipei to Beijing. Nauru has done it twice. Those who resist face enormous pressure. During the pandemic Guatemala, Taiwan’s most populous remaining ally, was urged to recognise China in return for vaccine aid. Taiwan-based diplomats from its remaining allies have told the Guardian they have faced a gamut of tactics, from promises of major infrastructure investment to intimidating visits by Chinese officials to their UN offices, and sudden bans on lucrative Chinese tourism to their countries. Now however, US pressure, broken Chinese promises and corruption scandals appear to have halted Taiwan’s seemingly inexorable slide into diplomatic irrelevance in the region. In November, a delegation of 10 Panamanian lawmakers and advisers made a trip to Taipei in search of business deals and parliamentary ties. Meanwhile Godwin Friday, the recently elected president of St Vincent and the Grenadines, dropped his party’s longstanding promise to recognise China from his party’s manifesto. Officials in Taipei may be feeling vindicated. At the time Honduras cut ties, its foreign minister said Honduras was struggling financially and Taiwan hadn’t answered a request to renegotiate $600m in debt or increase financial aid. Taiwan in turn accused Honduras of asking for more than $2bn and urged it not to “quench your thirst with poison” by siding with China. The foreign ministries of Taiwan and China were contacted for comment. US pressure and China’s broken promises The cost-benefit analysis of establishing relations with China have shifted, especially since Trump’s re-election, according to Evan Ellis, a professor in the US Army War College in Pennsylvania. In Honduras, shrimp exports collapsed when Chinese buyers didn’t replace the 40% of exports absorbed by Taiwan, as promised. In Panama, major Chinese infrastructure projects, including ports and bridges have been chronically delayed or cancelled. Panama also wants to play a role in the re-shoring of the microchip industry to the western hemisphere, for which economic relations with Taiwan are crucial. Public opinions of China have also been affected by revelations about some of the methods by which the switches were achieved. Messages from the phone of former Panamanian president Juan Carlos Varela suggested that his family-run business had benefited from multimillion-dollar orders from Chinese diplomats after recognition, allegations that Varela denies. In Paraguay, the head of the Chinese business association tasked with establishing political relations told undercover reporters for Al Jazeera “we’ll pay bribes”. But geopolitics are far from the thoughts of most Central American citizens. The issue of the net benefits of ties to China or Taiwan are of secondary importance compared with “virtue signalling” allegiance to US influence, according to Ellis. “The US is pushing back against China in the region and countries choosing to stay with Taiwan is part of this,” he says, “The expectation is that they will be rewarded.” Honduras – where Trump endorsed one candidate and pardoned a former president for drug trafficking in the space of the week – is just the latest example of his often nakedly transactional foreign policy in the region. Following Trump’s threats to “take back” the Panama Canal from alleged Chinese control, Panama said it would not renew its membership of China’s Belt & Road infrastructure scheme and lodged a legal case against two Chinese-run ports at either end of the waterway. US firms seem well placed to win a number of new port and energy projects in the country. When the Panamanian delegation to Taiwan received WhatsApp messages from the Chinese ambassador demanding that they cancel their trip, the US ambassador stepped in to reassure them of his support. With the Trump administration’s focus shifting to the Caribbean, where several warships float off the coast of Venezuela, governments such as that of St Vincent’s are unlikely to make diplomatic moves that would antagonise the US. “It’s not the time for a small Caribbean island not too far from major US military operations to be flipping to the PRC [People’s Republic of China],” says Ellis.

Friday briefing: Why the search for Britain’s missing TV is running out of time

Good morning. We take it for granted in 2025 that anything we watch on Christmas Day will soon be on a streaming platform, or end up on a pristine Blu-ray release. That was very much not the case in the early decades of British television. Programmes were often treated as fleeting stage productions rather than archival objects, and when recordings were made, tapes were often wiped or film reels junked, leaving frustrating gaps in our cultural memory. Earlier this month I spent a day at Derby Quad which is devoted to Nigel Kneale’s pioneering Quatermass stories, and spoke to actor, writer and comedian Toby Hadoke. This newsletter is about the enduring appeal of seeking out these lost fragments in time, why certain programmes still cast such a long shadow, and why our chances of recovering missing episodes may now be running out. But first, here are the headlines. Five big stories Ukraine | EU leaders have pledged a €90bn loan for Ukraine to meet urgent financial needs, but failed to agree on the preferred option for many of securing that loan against Russia’s frozen assets in the bloc. UK news | Boys as young as 11 who show misogynistic behaviour will be taught the difference between pornography and real relationships, as part of a multimillion pound investment to tackle misogyny in English schools. UK news | The Bank of England has cut interest rates to 3.75%, giving a pre-Christmas boost to the UK’s struggling economy. US news | Democrats have released a new batch of photos from the estate of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, among them photographs of what appear to be lines from Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita written on different parts of a woman’s body. Sport | A full-throated “Rory roar” reverberated around MediaCity in Salford as Rory McIlroy became the first golfer in 36 years to win the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award – and tie a bow on a year for the ages. In-depth: Inside the search for the TV that time forgot When I arrived at the Quatermass event, I immediately spotted Doctor Who scarves and Hitchhiker’s Guide T-shirts, and knew I was with my people. It was the kind of event where you might bump into someone who co-wrote one of your favourite cult comedies in the toilets – I did – or notice a raffle winner whose voice you recognise from sci-fi audio dramas you’ve bought. Toby Hadoke writes lovingly researched obituaries of cult TV and film figures, and is a stalwart of the extra features that appear on the Doctor Who releases. He is also among the leading experts on Nigel Kneale and Quatermass, which he has just published a book about (pictured below being signed by Toby at the event). “Television back then went out once, then it was gone. That’s part of why these stories still haunt us,” Toby says. *** Why do some ‘missing’ television programmes continue to have currency? Before Toby ever saw a frame of Quatermass, the series had an almost mythical quality. “My parents’ generation talked about it in hallowed terms,” he says – scarcity seemed to give it “the innate power of a sacred relic.” Discovering old TV in his youth was “a kind of archaeology”. You might glimpse a late-night repeat or find a fuzzy VHS to watch when everyone else had gone to bed. That effort, he says, gave the experience a romance that instant access can’t replicate. “I don’t envy young people who have it all at the touch of a button – part of the magic was in the hunt.” For his book, Toby unearthed dozens of previously unseen production photos, expanding the visual record of those missing episodes far beyond the handful known for decades. *** Why don’t we have a complete TV archive? The final four episodes of the original Quatermass Experiment were never recorded after a technical fault during episode two. But many other shows were deliberately wiped. Videotape was expensive, storage was limited and there was no home media market to anticipate. Probably the most prominent example of this, and the one closest to my own heart, is Doctor Who – with 97 episodes missing from the William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton years – but Top of the Pops, Dad’s Army, The Likely Lads, Hancock’s Half Hour, The Avengers and many more items of cultural significance all have incomplete preservation. “Television wasn’t seen as something with future value,” Toby says. *** Are people still looking to find things and rediscover lost TV? Yes – but in a different way to the meticulous archive searches of the 80s and 90s. Toby says the most active effort now comes from Film Is Fabulous, a volunteer network created not as a treasure hunt, but as a last-ditch safeguard. Their aim is to intercept film collections at risk of being thrown away when collectors die or downsize. Recently unearthed, for example, was a nine-minute BBC recording from an internal directors’ course – never intended for broadcast, but a fascinating insight into how the corporation worked. And several missing episodes of ITV’s Emergency Ward 10 have recently resurfaced, while the BFI’s annual Missing Believed Wiped day continues to showcase new recoveries. As Toby puts it, “a collector might see a rusty film can as a curiosity; an archivist sees ‘the only surviving copy of something’.” *** Why is there a race against time to preserve this heritage? Private film collecting, Toby says, “is very much an old man’s game”. Many collectors are now dying without leaving instructions about what they own. A family clearing a house might keep an antique cabinet – “but a rusty film can in the corner means nothing to you if you don’t know what it is”. Complicating matters, collectors often weren’t TV experts. They liked the mechanics of projection and the thrill of “swapping reels like Panini stickers”. Some ended up with missing episodes purely by accident. “The difference between an episode of Z-Cars the BBC retains and one it doesn’t isn’t obvious if you’re not into Z-Cars,” Toby says. “And that’s how things end up in a shed for 50 years – or in a skip.” “Film has to be carefully stored, and it ages,” he adds. “If it has survived 50 years, it might not survive a whole lot longer unless it’s in professional facilities.” *** Would we make these mistakes again? Preservation in the digital era isn’t straightforward either. Last year Jason Okundaye wrote movingly about trying to track down an episode of The Black Bag, a 1990s Channel 4 documentary about Dennis Carney, a Black gay man living in Brixton. He eventually paid £100 to digitise Carney’s personal VHS copy because no archival version could be found. Rights issues can block access, too: several early Doctor Who stories exist, but remain unavailable on iPlayer due to unresolved agreements with the estates of deceased writers. And some shows simply vanish because tastes change. Two series of the early-2000s bleakly satirical animation Monkey Dust have never had a commercial release or streaming run. Even digital formats are fragile. When I visited the BBC’s Windmill Road archive in 2004, they were already grappling with the looming obsolescence of D3 tape – the format chosen in the 1990s to preserve older stock. *** Echoes of transmission At Derby I spoke to a 78-year-old man called Ken, who remembered watching The Quatermass Experiment when it was first broadcast in 1953, and wanted to come and see it again on the big screen. He told me: “It wasn’t just about the horrors or the scares, it was about the way that Kneale wanted to broaden the way that people – and the BBC itself – thought with those Quatermass stories.” The science fiction dream is that in the future people will find a way to travel faster than light, and find all these old TV signals bouncing faintly around the cosmos. “I think that would be a wonderful inspiration to go to the stars,” Toby says. “I went into outer space, and all I came back with was television.” What else we’ve been reading It doesn’t have as many jokes as one of my quizzes, but the King William’s College quiz has appeared in the Guardian since 1951. Here is this year’s edition. You have until 13 January to complete it. Martin I enjoyed this wry take, by Emma Brockes, on how many big names have paid the price for their association with Jeffrey Epstein. You can probably guess the answer. Karen Thom Waite writes for Dazed asking, with the internet “hacking our limbic system better than ever”, was 2025 the year of peak ragebait? I’ll go out on a limb. No. 2026 will be worse. Martin Phoebe Weston looks into the depths of Lake Geneva, to examine how millions of quagga mussels, among the planet’s most potent invasive species, have altered it for ever. Karen At one point I had to ban Overcooked 2 in our household because it sparked too many angry shouts of “You’re burning the rice!”. Usually at me. Keith Stuart offers the best party video games to play at Christmas. Martin Sport Cricket | Australia shut down England’s attempted fightback as they moved into a commanding lead on day three of the third Ashes Test in Adelaide. Travis Head was leading the way, with England’s energy waning in the field. Football | Crystal Palace missed a chance to advance directly to the Conference League round of 16 when it was held to a 2-2 draw with Finnish club KuPS on Thursday. Football | Saudi Arabia’s 2034 World Cup preparations have hit delays after several architecture firms were asked to resubmit stadium designs, with sources telling the Guardian initial plans were rejected for being too expensive. Something for the weekend Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read, play and listen to right now TV Fallout season two | ★★★★☆ The west doesn’t get much wilder than in Fallout. The show takes place 200 years into a post-nuclear apocalypse where most humans are scratching out an existence in a stricken wasteland California of sand dunes, outlaw gangs and mutated monsters. Resources are scarce. Life is cruel. Death is a constant. It should be terrifying. Instead, it’s often hilarious. A wicked sense of humour elevated the first season of Prime Video’s well-received, no-expense-spared adaptation of the long-running video game franchise. Flashes of satirical glee give it an edge over gloomier post-apocalyptic shows such as The Walking Dead or The Last of Us, and season two adds excellent guest spots from Justin Theroux, Kumail Nanjiani and Macaulay Culkin. Graeme Virtue Film Hong Kong Mixtape | ★★★☆☆ Dotted with towering corporate skyscrapers, the skyline of Hong Kong attests to its global reputation as a financial hub; this image is profoundly challenged by San San F. Young’s passionate documentary. Turning her camera to the streets and taking us into artists’ studios, the film-maker captures the vibrant creative scene of the city. The turmoil of the protests against the 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill, along with the draconian laws that followed, hangs heavy over every frame. In the midst of political turbulence, art emerges as a powerful, transformative tool of collective resistance. In an engaging and personable voiceover, Young weaves in stories from her own life growing up in Hong Kong as a rebellious teenager. Her youthful disenchantment only makes Hong Kong Mixtape more moving as a hybrid of autobiography and documentary. Phuong Le Theatre Indian Ink at Hampstead theatre | ★★★★☆ Indian Ink grew from a radio play, its title In the Native State a very Stoppardian pun encompassing both the painting of nudes and the regions of British India permitted some self-government – both pivotal to the story. It has deep notes of grief and love, which Jonathan Kent’s production sounds perfectly from a cast in which Gavi Singh Chera is powerful as Das, who can love an Englishwoman but not the British. Irvine Iqbal smoothly doubles Indian leaders of two periods and Donald Sage Mackay’s Pike amusingly pops up all around the auditorium, putting his footnotes in it. Ruby Ashbourne Serkis is amusing and moving as Flora, doomed with literary and sexual sensibilities ahead of her times, but the core draw is Felicity Kendal, the Flora on Radio 3 and in the 1995 stage premiere, who graduates to Mrs Swan (played previously by Peggy Ashcroft and Margaret Tyzack.) Mark Lawson Games Simogo Legacy Collection: PC, Nintendo Switch/Switch 2; Simogo | ★★★★★ Simogo Legacy Collection represents the Swedish indie studio’s first seven games, released across its first five years for iPhone and iPad from 2010 to 2015. Like all of the studio’s work, this anthology of games is smartly designed, its contents arranged on a homescreen made to look like a smartphone’s – except, you know, full of wonderful little games and not horrid social media apps. And oh, these games remain remarkable, all these years later. The brief, heady days of App Store brilliance are over; the world that allowed Simogo to flourish is now extinct. How fortunate it was that Simogo got the chance they did; that they’re still with us, and able to assemble this inspiring little collection we can play in perpetuity. These games, in all their varied playfulness, are full of longing: for a lover, for meaning, for a chance to write your own ending. Play them and dream about a world where it all went differently. Joshua Rivera The front pages The Guardian leads with “New Epstein photos show quotes from Lolita written on women”. The Times has “Voters face longer wait to kick out councillors,” while the Mail follows the same story with “Labour’s running scared of voters”. The Telegraph says “Phillipson blocks safe spaces for women”. The Financial Times reports “BoE responds to cooling inflation by cutting rates a quarter point to 3.75%”. The i has “Mortgage price war in spring 2026 – as Bank offers hope on inflation”. The Mirror headlines on “1.8m alone at Christmas”. Today in Focus Culture 2025: the best in film, TV and music Guardian critics Ben Beaumont-Thomas, Catherine Shoard and Hannah J Davies look back at some of the best (and worst) of the year. Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad From the late 1960s until the early 70s, Celia Brayfield was one of a few female journalists working on women’s pages in newspapers. She, and many others, dealt with everyday sexism, discrimination and prejudice on an “unbelievable scale” from colleagues. Then, Brayfield found her own way of reporting on developments in the women’s liberation movement, setting up interviews with radical feminists and other big hitters. Joining the pressure group Women in Media, she challenged sexism in the industry and beyond, and played a key role in the campaign for equal pay and opportunities, and outlawing sex-based discrimination. This generation of second-wave feminists are somewhat overlooked, but this article shares the stories of Brayfield, and the many women like her. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

Ukraine war briefing: Hungary agrees to allow EU loan to Kyiv but will not contribute

Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has agreed not to block a massive EU-backed interest-free loan to Ukraine to meet its military and economic needs for the next two years, as long as his country, Slovakia and the Czech Republic were excluded from the guarantees for the debt. After failing to agree on using frozen Russian assets, diplomats announced the new loan in the early hours of Friday. The deal will not affect the financial obligations of Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, which did not want to contribute to the financing of Ukraine, the text said. Moscow-friendly Hungary had previously said it would oppose the deal, just as it opposed the use of Russian assets. German chancellor Friedrich Merz said Ukraine would have to repay the loan only if Russia paid reparations for its war, and that the EU reserved the right to use Russian assets immobilised in the EU for repayment if Russia failed to pay compensation. Merz had pushed hard for the frozen asset plan – but still said the final decision on the loan “sends a clear signal” to Russian president Vladimir Putin. The move follows hours of discussions among leaders on the technical details of a loan based on the frozen Russian assets, which turned out to be too complex or politically demanding to sort out at this stage, diplomats said. “We have gone from saving Ukraine to saving face, at least that of those who have been pushing for the use of the frozen assets,” one EU diplomat said. The main difficulty in the use of the Russian money was providing Belgium, where €185bn ($217bn) of the total €210bn of Russian assets in Europe are held, with sufficient guarantees against financial and legal risks from potential Russian retaliation for the release of the money to Ukraine. Donald Trump has urged Ukraine to move “quickly” on a deal to end Russia’s invasion ahead of fresh talks expected in Miami at the weekend. The US president told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday on a potential settlement: “Well, they’re getting close to something, but I hope Ukraine moves quickly. I hope Ukraine moves quickly because Russia is there. And you know, every time they take too much time, then Russia changes their mind.” Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner plan to meet Russian officials in Florida for the talks, a White House official said, after the envoys met a Ukrainian delegation in Berlin last Sunday and Monday. The Danish government has accused Russia of being behind two “destructive and disruptive” cyber-attacks in what it describes as “very clear evidence” of a hybrid war, reports Miranda Bryant. The Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS) announced on Thursday that Moscow was behind a cyber-attack on a Danish water utility in 2024 and a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks on Danish websites in the lead-up to municipal and regional council elections in November. A DDIS statement cited Russia’s “hybrid war against the west” and said: “The aim is to create insecurity in the targeted countries and to punish those that support Ukraine.” Russian strikes near Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa on Thursday killed a woman in her car and hit infrastructure and the regional governor asked residents suffering long power cuts to stop blocking roads in protest. Oleh Kiper said on Telegram that a Russian drone killed a woman crossing a bridge in her car south-west of Odesa. Her three children were injured. Kiper asked residents whose homes had been hit by extended power outages to exhibit patience and end roadblocks. Britain has imposed sanctions on more Russian oil companies and Canadian-Pakistani billionaire Murtaza Lakhani as part of efforts to increase pressure on Moscow over the Ukraine war. The government on Thursday targeted 24 individuals and entities, including what it described as Russia’s largest remaining unsanctioned oil companies: Tatneft, Russneft, NNK-Oil and Rusneftegaz. Earlier in the day the EU imposed sanctions on 41 more ships in Russia’s so-called shadow fleet that seeks to circumvent western trading restrictions.