Nigeria reels after second mass school abduction in a week

Unknown gunmen have abducted an unidentified number of students from a Catholic school in central Nigeria, the second mass abduction in the country in a week. The latest kidnapping, in Papiri community in Niger state, came against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s threat to intervene militarily to end a “Christian genocide”, which the Nigerian government has denied is happening. “The Niger state government has received with deep sadness the disturbing news of the kidnapping of pupils from St Mary’s School in Agwara local government area,” Abubakar Usman, the state government secretary, said in a statement. Niger, the biggest of the country’s 36 states, runs west from the capital, Abuja, to neighbouring Benin. The incident in the early hours of Friday is the third documented mass school abduction in the state in the last decade. In the last attack in Niger state, in May 2021, 135 pupils were abducted from an Islamic seminary, six of whom died while being held. On Monday, gunmen stormed a girls’ boarding school in neighbouring Kebbi state, abducting 25 schoolgirls and killing the vice-principal. According to local reports, security forces had relayed information about the plot and spent the night guarding the school but left the scene early. “The heavily armed security personnel spent time taking photographs with the students, only to abandon them 30 minutes before the attack,” the state governor said. Afterward, Nigeria’s president, Bola Tinubu, ordered junior defence minister Bello Matawalle to relocate to the state to help with rescue efforts. No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but analysts and locals say gangs often target schools, travellers and remote villagers in kidnappings for ransom. Authorities say the gunmen are mostly former herders who have taken up arms against farming communities after clashes over strained resources. Africa’s most populous nation is beset by multiple overlapping insecurity crises across its central and northern states, of which kidnapping for ransom is just one facet. On Monday, the extremist group Islamic West Africa Province claimed responsibility for the death of a Nigerian general in north-eastern Borno state. Iswap also released footage of his death as well as WhatsApp chats about a failed rescue attempt. Earlier this week, gunmen abducted 38 worshippers from a church in Kwara state, Niger’s southern neighbour, after a brutal attack that left at least two dead, according to church officials. The attack was seen by millions of people due to a live stream of the service that was taking place. The kidnappers have since demanded a ransom of 100m naira (£52,662) a person, a possible indication that the kidnapping was financially motivated rather than ideological. Regardless of motive, the scale and frequency of the attacks and kidnappings has heightened pressure on the government as it endeavours to avoid an escalating diplomatic row with the Trump administration, which has designated Nigeria a country of particular concern (CPC), a designation given to nations where the government is deemed to have engaged in or tolerated severe violations of religious freedoms. US lawmakers such as Ted Cruz have helped spread claims of a “Christian genocide” being under way in Nigeria. Trump has since warned that US forces could go “guns-blazing” into Nigeria if the country fails to protect its Christian population. There has been a flurry of activity in US parliamentary halls and the Vatican as the situation has unfolded. “Terrorists, separatists, bandits and criminal militias in Nigeria are all over the country, with ongoing attacks often deliberately targeting Christian communities,” Jonathan Pratt, a senior official with the US Bureau of African Affairs told Congress on Thursday. Nigeria’s government has rejected claims of an anti-Christian genocide and says the victims of the attacks are from all faiths. On Wednesday, Tinubu announced he was cancelling planned trips to South Africa and Angola this weekend for the G20 and AU-EU summits respectively.

Starmer, Merz and Macron confirm full support for Ukraine after call with Zelenskyy about US plan – Europe live

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has just posted his reaction to the call too, thanking the leaders for their “principled support for Ukraine and for all our people.” He says the leaders “appreciate the efforts of the US, president Trump and his team aimed at ending this war,” and are working on the US document. “This must be a plan that ensures a real and dignified peace,” he says, adding – again, pointedly – that the four leaders want to ensure that Ukraine’s “principled positions are taken into account.” “We coordinated the next steps and agreed that our teams will work together at the corresponding levels.,” he said.

Cop30 live: standoff over inclusion of fossil fuel phaseout in final text escalates

Overnight the Guardian revealed that at least 29 nations supporting a phase-out of fossil fuels at the climate summit had sent a letter to the Brazilian Cop presidency threatening to block any agreement that did not include such a commitment, in a significant escalation of tensions at the crunch talks. The leaked letter also demanded that the roadmap be included in the outcome of the talks. Here is the text of letter in full: Dear Presidency, We wish to reaffirm our deep commitment to working hand in hand with you to ensure that COP30 becomes a true success—one that demonstrates to the world that climate multilateralism can indeed deliver the implementation results needed to keep the 1.5°C goal within reach. The legacy of the Presidency in making COP30 a milestone moment will depend on the quality—rather than the speed—of the outcome. A text that is inclusive, balanced, and ambitious would reflect the leadership needed to inspire confidence. Conversely, a weak text would be remembered as a missed and regrettable opportunity and would undermine the credibility of the process, of the Presidency, and of the regime itself. We express deep concern regarding the current proposal under consideration for a take it or leave it. We acknowledge the significant effort made by the Presidency to move the process toward conclusion, and we reaffirm our commitment to engage constructively. However, we must be honest: in its present form, the proposal does not meet the minimum conditions required for a credible COP outcome. We cannot support an outcome that does not include a roadmap for implementing a just, orderly, and equitable transition away from fossil fuels. This expectation is shared by a vast majority of Parties, as well as by science and by the people who are watching our work closely. The world is looking to this COP to demonstrate continuity and progress following the Global Stocktake. Anything less would inevitably be seen as a step backward. Third, the exclusion of a roadmap for addressing climate–nature interdependence, particularly to halt deforestation—remains deeply concerning. Not reflecting this signals that even the least contentious issues cannot be agreed. Fourth, ambition must be matched with appropriate means of implementation. We reinforce that implementation needs to be supported through concrete outcomes on finance, technology, and capacity-building. Without this, ambition remains rhetorical and implementation becomes unattainable. Finally, we are concerned by emerging narratives suggesting that ambitious countries are slowing progress. This does not reflect the real dynamics. The challenge arises when a package that omits essential elements is presented with the expectation of unconditional acceptance, reflecting only what is acceptable to a limited few. Ambition should not be portrayed as an obstacle; it is the efforts to constrain it that hinder our collective progress. For these reasons, we respectfully yet firmly request that the Presidency present a revised proposal that reflects the views of the majority and restores balance, ambition, and credibility to the process. We stand ready to work constructively with you toward such an outcome. This COP remains a crucial opportunity for leadership. But true leadership requires delivering a text that advances the global response to the climate crisis—not one that lowers expectations to accommodate the most reluctant. The success of the Presidency will lie in presenting a balanced and forward-looking outcome, rather than in asking others to accept only what the least ambitious are willing to allow. The Guardian understands that the signatories include: Austria, Belgium, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Iceland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Marshall Islands, Mexico, Monaco, the Netherlands, Panama, Palau, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and Vanuatu.

Kirill Dmitriev: ‘ruthlessly ambitious’ Kremlin figure behind Ukraine plan

When relations between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin soured this autumn, with the US president publicly accusing Moscow of blocking a path to a peace in Ukraine and announcing significant sanctions against Russia’s oil sector, one man saw an opening. Kirill Dmitriev, the US-savvy, Harvard-educated head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, boarded a plane to Florida late October, where he met Steve Witkoff, the property developer serving as Trump’s freelance envoy on Ukraine. The two men, neither of whom has any real diplomatic experience, began drafting a plan that would impose draconian terms on Ukraine and hand Moscow sweeping influence over the country’s political and military sovereignty. The scheme, which surfaced in media reports on Wednesday, has thrust Dmitriev back into the global spotlight – a position, several people who have met him over the years say, he has long craved. “Dmitriev is obsessed with being perceived as important,” said one source, who has known him since the Moscow business scene of the late 2000s. “He is ruthlessly ambitious,” the source added, describing him as “very thin on substance but exceptionally good at selling himself”. The source, like others, asked for anonymity so they could speak freely. “Fake it till you make it” was Dmitriev’s modus operandi, the source said. “And he has, objectively, made it very far.” It may come as a surprise to some that one of Moscow’s most aggressive champions was born in Soviet-era Ukraine. The son of prominent scientists, Dmitriev grew up and studied at Kyiv’s elite Lyceum No 145, a competitive maths and physics school where he made an impression on friends as a hard-working pupil who was obsessed with the US. “He was quite arrogant … but very systematic, and if he wanted to achieve something, he worked on that,” said Volodymyr Ariev, who was in the same year as Dmitriev and is now a Ukrainian MP. At 15, Dmitriev was selected by his school for a trip to the US – an experience that, according to Ariev, solidified his fascination with the country. He later enrolled at Stanford University, followed by an MBA course at Harvard. In a 2000 New York Times story about Harvard’s business school, Dmitriev marvelled at the opportunities that came with his new course. “There’s a great sense of bonding with your teammates. You live together, go out at night to celebrate victories or drown sorrows,” Dmitriev says. He also foreshadowed his own ambition and knack for making connections: “I also go to New York for business development, to establish strategic alliances and meet with clients, four times a month.” After stints at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs, his real business breakthrough came not in Moscow or New York but in Kyiv. From 2007 to 2011, he ran Icon Private Equity, a Ukrainian fund managing roughly $1bn, most of it belonging to the oligarch Victor Pinchuk, the son-in-law of the former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma. Pinchuk introduced him to Vladimir Dmitriev (no relation), then head of the Russian state development corporation VEB, according to a well-connected source in Moscow who has direct knowledge of the events. Together, the two Dmitrievs persuaded the Kremlin to launch Russia’s foreign investment fund (RDIF) that would lure American, European and Gulf capital into Russia. The role – eventually overseeing $10bn – seemed to suit him perfectly, said a Russian business reporter who knew Dmitriev personally. The smooth-talking Dmitriev became a fixture in Davos, Riyadh and at global investor summits, gliding from panels on artificial intelligence to discreet bilateral meetings with sovereign funds. It was also around this time that Dmitriev’s personal connections to the Kremlin thickened. His wife, Natalia Popova, developed a close personal and professional relationship with Putin’s younger daughter, Katerina Tikhonova. Popova remains the deputy director of Innopraktika, Tikhonova’s research institute. An investigation by the Russian outlet the Insider also alleged close links between Dmitriev and Russia’s security services. “He grew extremely confident, even pompous,” said the source who knew Dmitriev at the time. Sanctions imposed on Russia after the 2014 annexation of Crimea made it harder for Dmitriev to sell Moscow abroad, but he sensed an opening with Trump’s first election in 2016. One former RDIF colleague said Dmitriev swiftly ordered the fund to release a statement the morning after Trump’s win signalling support for the incoming president. Robert Mueller’s report on Russian 2016 US election meddling found that Dmitriev tapped his UAE network, drawn from one of the RDIF’s principal investors, to build a back channel to Trump’s first administration. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Dmitriev was placed under sanctions by Washington. But Trump’s return to power handed him another lifeline. Dmitriev quickly began signalling to the White House that there was money to be made in any eventual peace deal, touting the prospect of multibillion-dollar contracts in the Arctic and other areas of US-Russia cooperation – a potent pitch for a business-obsessed administration. He set out specifically to cultivate a relationship with Witkoff, Trump’s trusted friend and longtime business associate, leaning heavily on the property mogul’s enthusiasm for deal-making. Together, the two men helped arrange the release of the US schoolteacher Marc Fogel in a prisoner swap in February – a gesture they framed as an early step toward repairing relations between Washington and Moscow. But Dmitriev has not limited himself to Witkoff. Much of his public activity now appears focused on courting other prominent Maga figures and amplifying the US far right’s talking points. A fervent user of X, he posts daily about Europe’s migration “crisis,” accuses “globalists” of indoctrinating children with “pro-trans programmes” and regularly promotes conspiratorial rhetoric – once even adding a QAnon-style slogan popular with Trump’s most extreme base. Dmitriev’s Ukrainian background has not stood in the way of his rise. At 15, he told a local journalist during his trip to the US that Ukraine had a long and proud history of independence – and that rising nationalist sentiment would help “break the power of the communist system” – but he has since become one of the Kremlin’s most loyal advocates. “Dmitriev chose Putin’s side,” said Ariev, the Ukrainian MP, adding that most childhood friends had long since broken contact with him. Dmitriev’s closest school friend became a soldier in the Ukrainian army and was wounded in battle recently, Ariev added. The source who knew Dmitriev in Moscow in the 2010s said he almost never spoke about his place of birth. “He had no real interest in Ukraine. His attention was always on Moscow,” they said. Still, despite his fierce loyalty to Putin, Dmitriev’s meteoric rise has ruffled feathers within Russia’s ageing foreign policy establishment. One source close to the Kremlin said they had offered to help Dmitriev with outreach to the Americans and with drafting a potential pathway to end the war in Ukraine – assistance Dmitriev flatly declined. “He could really use some advice on foreign relations, because he himself admitted to me he isn’t an expert on this. But he decided to go at it alone,” the source said. Dmitriev’s relationship with Sergei Lavrov, the long-serving foreign minister, is also notoriously poor. The rift between them is now an open secret in Moscow and has occasionally burst into the open. Lavrov and Dmitriev clashed last February during peace talks in Riyadh with the US, when the foreign minister tried to exclude him by removing the chair set out for him, according to two people who separately described the episode. Dmitriev ultimately joined the meeting after a call with Putin. “Dmitriev has made enemies in Russia. But right now, he is untouchable because he is proving to be very useful for Putin,” said the source close to the Kremlin. Shaun Walker contributed reporting

Hundreds of English-language websites link to pro-Kremlin propaganda

Hundreds of English-language websites – from mainstream news outlets to fringe blogs – are linking to articles from a pro-Kremlin network flooding the internet with disinformation, according to a study released by a London-based thinktank. The study by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) found that in more than 80% of citations it analysed, the websites treated the network as a credible source, legitimising its narratives and increasing its visibility. The disinformation operation – known as the Pravda network – was identified by the French government last year. The ISD cautioned that by linking to articles in the network, the websites were inadvertently increasing the likelihood of search engines and large language models (LLMs) surfacing the pages, even in cases where the linking sites were disputing the Pravda network as a source. Security experts have expressed fears in recent months that Russia is trying to seed chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini with pro-Russia narratives by feeding them large volumes of disinformation, a process called “LLM grooming”. The Pravda network has been around since 2014, but researchers tracking its output say the number of articles it churns out has surged this year. Up to 23,000 articles a day were published in May, up from approximately 6,000 daily articles in 2024. The network now appears to be aiming for a global audience, targeting countries across Asia and Africa as well as Europe. “The Pravda network has been expanding pretty rapidly over the past year,” said Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation expert who spoke to the UK parliament earlier this week on efforts to undermine democracy. “They are targeting a lot of different languages. They want to have a presence across a bunch of different countries.” It is unclear what led to this increase, but some disinformation experts believe it was an effort to push large amounts of pro-Russia content into the training datasets of AI models, which use massive amounts of data during their training and scrape content from the entire internet. Studies from earlier this year showed that popular chatbots at times repeated Russian disinformation in response to certain queries – suggesting, for example, that the US was building a bioweapon in Ukraine or the French were supplying mercenaries to Kyiv. Researchers at the ISD say that, whether or not LLMs have been poisoned, their findings indicate the Pravda network’s high-volume strategy is working. “More than any other Russia-aligned operation, the Pravda network is playing a numbers game,” said Joseph Bodnar, a senior researcher at the ISD. “They’ve saturated the internet ecosystem enough to get in front of real people who are doing research on Russia-related issues.” The ISD found that 40% of the Pravda network content picked up by mainstream websites appeared to be related to Russia’s war in Ukraine. A vast amount, however, concerned other topics: US domestic policy, for example, or the fortunes of Elon Musk. As well as surfacing on news websites, the Pravda articles have also appeared on social media. “This happened to a lot of different reputable sources and a lot less reputable sources too, like people from across the ideological spectrum. It really touched every part of the web that we could find,” said Bodnar. Jankowicz warned that the Pravda network’s increasing legitimacy might allow it to “usurp coverage” on Ukraine as media outlets increasingly shift their coverage elsewhere. “There’s a bit less news about Ukraine. And if they can get in there and fill that gap really soon, that means that the Russian viewpoint is the one that’s going to get out there quickly and be cited in large language models.”

A lot of axolotls: the amphibian-themed banknote Mexicans don’t want to spend

For most of her life, Gorda was just an axolotl who lived in a museum in Mexico City – that is, until she became the star of the country’s favourite banknote. The note, which features a depiction of Gorda as the model for Mexico’s iconic species of salamander, went into circulation in 2021, dazzling the judges of the International Bank Notes Society, who declared it the Note of the Year. Four years later, the Bank of Mexico has released a report revealing that 12.9 million Mexicans are holding on to this note as if it were worth more than just its value of 50 pesos, or a little under $3. Indeed, millions of them are hoarding more than one. Only a minority said they would not contemplate spending the notes. Nonetheless, the survey found that roughly $150m worth of them were at least temporarily out of circulation at the time. Some of the first to be printed are even being traded for 100 times their intended value. All of this is specific to the axolotl banknote: only 12% of those holding on to it said they did the same for other notes. And the reason for most was simple: they liked the design. Perhaps it is because axolotls are a symbol of something uniquely Mexican. Axolotls – which are forever tadpoles, never losing their gills to become land dwellers like other salamanders – predate the Aztecs, let alone the Spanish, and once inhabited Lake Texcoco, under the ever-smoking volcano, Popocatépetl. When the Aztecs arrived in roughly AD1300, they built Tenochtitlan, the seat of their empire, on an island in the middle of the lake – a scene depicted on the flip side of the banknote, based on a mural of the ancient city by the artist Diego Rivera. The Aztecs sometimes snacked on axolotl – but also named them after their god of fire and lightning. After the Spanish conquered Tenochtitlan, the new rulers drained the lake, restricting axolotls to Xochimilco, on the southern edge of today’s capital – the only place the old waterways endured. Today, few axolotls survive in the wild. By 2014, their population in Xochimilco had collapsed to just 36 per square kilometre. Gorda is one of six specimens living in Axolotitlán, the Mexico City museum dedicated to Mexico’s cutest critter. She is now rather elderly, and rarely put on display in the museum. But the museum’s founder, Pamela Valencia, told El País that it had been worth wheeling her out for the photo shoot for the banknote’s design, if only to bring the public closer to an iconic species at risk of extinction. “We used to see souvenirs of jaguars and hummingbirds. Today we can see how the axolotl is becoming part of our culture, our everyday lives,” said Valencia. “We cannot save something if we don’t know it exists.”

Friday briefing: The end of the affair – why we’ve fallen out of love with the cinema

Good morning. Last week, on my way to see Michael Gira’s noiseniks Swans play in Brixton, south-east London, I passed through Leicester Square. It was brightly lit up in pink and green, and nestling among the Christmas market and seasonal ice rink were a throng of people eagerly awaiting a glimpse of the stars of Wicked: For Good at the film’s European premiere. Some say the rise of the second Wicked is a sign that the movie industry is in rude health, but this kind of occasion is increasingly seen as an outlier in an industry that is having something of an annus horribilis. And not just because our film critic Peter Bradshaw is retroactively downgrading some terrible movies to zero-star ratings. I spoke to the Guardian’s film editor, Catherine Shoard, about the state of Hollywood, which recently posted record low box office figures. This newsletter is about how studios have got themselves into the doldrums, and the factors that are preventing them pulling in peak post-pandemic audiences to theatres. Here are the headlines. Five big stories Covid | The UK’s response to Covid was “too little, too late”, a damning official report has concluded, saying the introduction of a lockdown even a week earlier could have saved more than 20,000 lives and there was a “toxic and chaotic” culture inside Boris Johnson’s Downing Street. Nigel Farage | Cabinet ministers have detailed multiple allegations of teenage racism by Nigel Farage as “repulsive”, with both science minister Liz Kendall and Welsh secretary, Jo Stevens, calling for answers from the leader of Reform. Gaza | Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed 33 people and injured many more, according to medical officials, in one of the most serious escalations of violence since the US-backed ceasefire came into effect last month. Ukraine | Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he will negotiate with Donald Trump on a US-backed peace plan that called on Kyiv to make painful concessions in order to end the Kremlin’s invasion of his country. NHS | Record numbers of overseas-trained doctors are quitting the UK, leaving the NHS at risk of huge gaps in its workforce, with hostility towards migrants blamed for the exodus. In depth: Films such as Wicked are hits because there’s already a built-in fandom On the night of the premiere, fans in Leicester Square were dressed up as characters from Wicked, and I spoke to one person who said they had gone to see the first instalment 12 times. A couple I spoke to had already been queueing for a couple of hours to grab a prime spot to see its stars, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, in person. But beyond the glitter of Leicester Square, Catherine Shoard says Hollywood is staring at one of its bleakest financial years in decades. “These are the diehards,” she told me. “Wicked has that Broadway-level fandom that turns up in costume and wants to be part of a moment. But they’re not representative. For a lot of the audience, going to the cinema just isn’t a habit any more, unless it’s an event – something they have to see with other people.” *** Why is the film industry concerned? As Andrew Pulver recently reported, excluding the months when theatres were shut due to the pandemic, box office earnings in North America crashed in October to levels not seen since the late 1990s, with Halloween weekend being the worst of the year so far. “It’s been a weird year. March and April were surprisingly strong,” Catherine says. “You had these oddball hits like Sinners coming out of nowhere, and the more predictable success of the Minecraft movie. “But the summer was weak, and then the autumn has been dire. It’s the worst run in decades. And Halloween is normally a banker, because horror is one of the few genres people still show up for en masse, but even that flopped.” She sees all of that as catastrophic: not just for the business of cinema, but for those of us who want there to be a variety of good new films about. *** Vanity projects don’t put bums on seats Catherine says that the kinds of films studios are choosing to back isn’t helping. Those studios have massively overestimated how much audiences care about stars in Catherine’s view – building entire films around the perceived popularity of someone such as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson or Sydney Sweeney, only to find that those movies bomb at the box office. “The Smashing Machine cost almost $100m and didn’t connect with anyone,” says Catherine says of Johnson’s mixed martial arts drama, which was released last month. It’s almost hard to overstate how dire the gap between prediction and reality at the box office has been: with Francis Ford Coppola recently reduced to selling his watches to cover his (perhaps ill-advisedly self-funded) Megalopolis vanity project. “Studios have been indulging these prestige vanity projects. They cost a fortune, they’re meant to burnish reputations, but they’re simply not films anybody actually wants to go to the cinema for,” Catherine told me. *** Where does that leave awards season? I’ve become quite a keen cinemagoer in recent years, after spending most of my life curmudgeonly thinking movies generally last too long and it is annoying that you can’t press pause. On Falling, Honey Don’t!, Sketch and The Courageous have all hit the mark for me this year. Catherine, though, thinks we are heading into a dismal Oscars season, as there just haven’t been that many great films on offer. “There are exceptions – people are raving about Hamnet – but broadly it feels thin. Partly that’s the hangover from the writers’ strikes two years ago, and partly it’s because the mid-range adult dramas that used to fill out awards season just aren’t getting financed.” *** Is this all just the impact of streaming? The answer is both yes and no. Netflix, in particular, has leant in to hiring auteurs and giving them complete creative freedom. “They’ve secured big names by giving them two-week cinema windows and essentially the final cut,” Catherine said. But there are also downsides to that model: “Nobody is giving them notes, and you can see the results on screen.” She used the example of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, which has been criticised for its ableism and lack of subtlety. “It badly needed someone to say, ‘No, this bit doesn’t work.’ That’s true of a lot of Netflix’s prestige films – they are incredibly expensive, and theatrically they bomb because everyone knows they can just wait two weeks to watch it at home.” Sometimes the industry doesn’t help itself. Catherine cites the most recent Bridget Jones movie. In the UK, it performed well at the box office. But in the US? It went straight to streaming. “That was considered a normal choice,” she says, “because in America anything that isn’t deemed cinematic just goes straight to streaming. But, of course, Bridget Jones is actually also one of those films that people do like to see with their girlfriends or other half as an event, and potentially more than once.” *** Whither Barbenheimer? In 2023, the industry was basking in the glow of the Barbenheimer hype – with people making it a mission to see the contrasting Barbie and Oppenheimer movies amid all the attendant cultural and media excitement around it. Catherine thinks that Barbenheimer worked because it was an event. “People wanted to be part of something. Horror does that. Musicals do that. But studios haven’t figured out how to recreate it. They’ve lost the mid-budget films that keep people going to the cinema regularly, and the big tent poles aren’t good enough to carry a whole year.” “The only things that seem to work now are the films you absolutely have to see big – Avatar-type spectacles – things where you absolutely can’t recreate the experience at home.” Contrastingly, films such as Wicked are such a hit at the box office because there’s already a built-in fandom. Which is perhaps why none of this “cinema is dying” chat seemed to be on the minds of the fans waiting for the stars in Leicester Square. They queued right next to the spot where a lifesize statue of Renée Zellweger as Bridget Jones was recently erected, joining the likes of Paddington, Harry Potter and Charlie Chaplin. The sculptures are part of Westminster council’s Scenes in the Square scheme, cementing Leicester Square as the centre of film in London. Perhaps film studios have something to learn from those fans: that the magic of the movies hasn’t gone – they just may have to try a little harder to bring it to the big screen. What else we’ve been reading Simon Jenkins is interesting as always on the hold-up of the assisted dying bill in the Lords. “Second chambers are a good idea,” he writes, but “They should not be able to overturn clear decisions reached by a democratic chamber. Least of all should they be free to impose their own moral views on the lives of British citizens.” Charlie Lindlar, newsletters team Think you’d do a better job on the budget than Rachel Reeves? Why not play our thoughtful interactive game to find out? I managed to keep the pollsters and markets happy and land the country in surplus on my attempt, plus spare a little cash for a pre-speech whisky. Rachel, I’ll wait for your call. Poppy Noor, acting newsletters editor There are few greater guarantees of a wild read than an interview with Boris Becker, who turns 58 this weekend. Donald McRae’s sitdown with the former tennis wunderkind covers tons of ground, from becoming a father again soon to a memorable birthday in prison in which “three inmates had somehow obtained the ingredients to make him three cakes in their kettles”. Charlie The reader interview with Keira Knightley was pretty good yesterday, not least because it earmarks her as a potential future manager of my local football club, West Ham. Poppy Line of Duty will be back for a seventh series, and Michael Hogan has some ideas of what we need to see on our trip back to AC-12 (genuinely good twists, more Ted-isms and many, many more acronyms). Charlie Sport Cricket | Test cricket’s oldest rivalry resumes on Friday inside Perth’s 60,000-seat thunderdome and with it, mercifully, comes fresh fuel for the ever-raging fire. For all the latest from the start of the Ashes, click here for our liveblog. Football | The spoils were as Ewa Pajor cancelled out Ellie Carpenter’s opener to give Barcelona a 1-1 draw with Chelsea in the Women’s Champions League. Formula One | Felipe Massa’s £64m claim against Formula One, its governing body the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone over Lewis Hamilton’s first F1 world championship in 2008 can go to trial, a high court judge has ruled. Something for the weekend Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read, play and listen to right now Music Oneohtrix Point Never: Tranquilizer | ★★★★☆ Tranquilizer is constructed from a cache of old sample CDs – prepackaged collections of royalty-free sounds that used to be sold to musicians and producers in the 90s and early 00s – that Daniel Lopatin found uploaded to the Internet Archive. An extra frisson came when, after bookmarking the page for future use, he discovered that it had been deleted. It subsequently reappeared, but it underlined the shakiness of the assumption that everything is preserved for ever in some corner of cyberspace. For all the calm its source material was ostensibly intended to provoke, Tranquilizer seems unlikely to help you calm down. It’s too kaleidoscopic and restless, too crammed with sounds: an album that demands – and repays – your full attention, rather than simply drifting by. Alexis Petridis TV The Black Swan | ★★★★★ It would be an understatement to say that The Black Swan made an impact on Danish viewers. Half of all Danes watched it when it aired in 2024, and it sparked a string of police investigations, as well as a tightening of the laws around money laundering and gang activity. For film-maker Mads Brügger, the mob lawyer Amira Smajic is a “once in a lifetime” source who – he says – could “force us to rethink Danish society”. Smajic has spent years acting on behalf of some of the country’s most infamous criminal gangs, and is now exposing their activities as part of this major investigation for the state-owned broadcaster TV 2. Crucially, it’s not just the criminal underworld that Smajic is laying bare, but also their white-collar accomplices. Hannah J Davies Film The Ice Tower | ★★★★☆ An eerie and unwholesome spell is cast in this film; it is a fairytale of death-wish yearning and erotic submission. Marion Cotillard plays a diva-ish movie actor called Cristina, who is the lead in a new adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, which is being filmed on a soundstage in a remote and snowy spot in late 60s France. Clara Pacini plays Jeanne, a teenage girl in a foster home nearby, stricken with memories of the death of her mother, whose bead necklace she keeps. It is a mesmeric melodrama, mixing sensuality with a teetering anxiety, balancing on a cliff edge of disaster. Peter Bradshaw Art Harold Offeh: Mmm Gotta Try a Little Harder, It Could Be Sweet | ★★★★☆ The sound of Harold Offeh humming and ummming fills the lobby of Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge. He up-speaks and mumbles and wrings a whole world of feeling out of this disembodied overture. The title of Offeh’s show, including that Mmm, is a quote from a song on Portishead’s 1994 album Dummy. The show blares and jostles with life, with song and dance, with skits and routines, with public moments and private performances on the loo and in the bathroom. Offeh is compelling to watch, even when he is lying in the bath or just standing on the pavement, the world swirling round him. He is happy to objectify himself, I think, even as he questions what it means to be a queer, Black body. Eddy Frankel The front pages “Too little, too late: Tory response to Covid crisis damned in report,” is the splash on the Guardian today, of a story that dominated the UK headlines. “Johnson’s ‘toxic’ leadership blamed for 23,000 deaths,” says the i paper, “Betrayal of our children,” writes the Mail, while the Independent opts for: “Elect a clown, expect a chaotic circus.” “Inexcusable’ pandemic delay cost 23,000 lives,” is the splash at the Times, “The £200m Covid ‘I told you so’” at the Telegraph. “Toxic, chaotic, calamitous,” says the Metro, while the Daily Record runs with: “Boris covid blunder cost 1000s of lives.” “Give kids chance of freedom like’ unstoppable’ Robyn, aged 4,” says Friday’s Express. “Migration overhaul offers big earners three-year pathway to settled status,” is the lead story at the FT. Today in Focus Nazi salutes and racism: the allegations about Nigel Farage’s school days Former pupils at Dulwich College have made shocking claims about the Reform leader’s behaviour at school – which he denies. The Guardian’s chief reporter Daniel Boffey reports. Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Our Feast newsletter is always a one-stop shop for must-try recipes. But this week’s issue feels more vital as ever, as Georgina Hayden guides you through soups, stews and more to get you through this cold snap. Irish stews, laksa made with your roast chicken leftovers, “sociable” fish stews … there’s something for everyone. And do make sure you sign up here to get future editions straight into your inbox every Thursday. 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

Falls, feuds and fury: Miss Universe crowned after chaotic – and controversial – pageant

As contestants prepared to walk the runway for the 74th Miss Universe competition on Friday, the pageant’s organisers were in damage control. “In light of recent public statements and social media posts, the Miss Universe Organization considers it necessary to clarify certain inaccuracies,” a statement by the organisation began. It was addressing allegations of vote rigging – but it could just have easily been referring to a myriad of other scandals the event has seen over recent weeks. Before Friday’s polished finale there had been a chaotic run-up, with the competition – styled as a celebration of all cultures, backgrounds and religions in a safe space for women – facing judges resigning, denying allegations of vote rigging, mock drug use, stage falls and dramatic walkouts. At the beginning of November Miss Mexico, Fatima Bosch, claimed that she had faced a public dressing down from the pageant’s Thai director, Nawat Itsaragrisil, who allegedly called her a “dumbhead”. She walked out, followed by several fellow contestants, a moment that was caught in a livestream. Later, Bosch told reporters the way she was treated lacked respect and that “the world needs to see this”. “This is about women’s rights,” reigning Miss Universe, Victoria Theilvig, said in defence of Bosch. “To trash another girl, it’s beyond disrespectful, and it’s nothing I’ve ever done. That’s why I’m taking my coat and I’m going.” The Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, called Bosch an “example of how we women should speak out”. Nawat later apologised and claimed he had been misunderstood, wiping tears away as he fronted the media – at what appeared to be an official event. The drama continued this week, when on Tuesday, Omar Harfouch quit as one of the eight judges, with the French-Lebanese musician claiming a “secret vote” had been arranged to pre-select 30 contestants out of the 136 two days before the final. “I could not stand before the public and television cameras, pretending to legitimize a vote I never took part in. Some of the countries eliminated through this process could be at war, discriminated against, or geopolitically sensitive”, he said via Instagram. On the same day, the French footballer Claude Makelele announced he, too, had made the “difficult decision” to quit as a judge for “unforeseen personal reasons”. The organisation responded with a statement regarding what it said were Harfouch’s “inaccuracies”, suggesting his “confusion” was over the pageant’s social impact initiative, which operates separately from the Miss Universe competition and its judging panel. “The Miss Universe Organization firmly clarifies that no impromptu jury has been created, that no external group has been authorized to evaluate delegates or select finalists,” it said. Then, on Wednesday evening, Miss Jamaica, Gabrielle Henry, fell from the main stage during the preliminary competition’s evening gown round, an accident that landed her in hospital. That same day Miss Great Britain, Danielle Latimer, tripped and fell flat on the stage while wearing an outfit inspired by the cockney character Eliza Doolittle. She later claimed the fall was choreographed. Conflict in the Middle East couldn’t be kept away from the proceedings, with the inaugural Miss Palestine, Nadeen Ayoub, wearing a gown emblazoned with an image of the Dome of the Rock – the holiest Muslim site in Jerusalem. Miss Israel claimed to have received death threats after purportedly giving her side-eye – something that Melanie Shiraz said was down to misleading editing. It goes on. The Chilean Miss Universe, Inna Moll, apologised after mimicking snorting white powder from her arm in a before-and-after makeup video filmed in Bangkok and posted to TikTok. And on the sidelines of the pageant, the the winner of Miss Teen Cambodia used her speech to accuse Thailand of starting ongoing violent border clashes. But by Friday afternoon, however, the weeks of chaos was forgotten when Miss Mexico was crowned the 74th Miss Universe, beating crowd favourite Miss Thailand. Despite the dramatic start to her competition, Bosch seemingly made good on her promise to show the world a more appealing side to the pageant.