Ukraine and the US are due to hold a second day of talks in Berlin on a plan aimed at ending Russia’s war
Key Ukraine-US talks are set to continue in Berlin today after five hours of negotiations on Sunday, with a group of European leaders later joining the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to show their solidarity with Kyiv.
Once the talks with the US are concluded, the mini-summit will bring together Britain’s Keir Starmer, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, Finland’s Alexander Stubb, Norway’s Jonas Gahr Støre, the Netherlands’s Dick Schoof, Poland’s Donald Tusk, Sweden’s Ulf Kristersson, as well as top EU and Nato officials.
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© Photograph: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Reuters
© Photograph: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Reuters
© Photograph: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Reuters
Photos, maps, drone footage and video show how terror attack that left at least 15 dead unfolded on Sunday evening
Warning: contains content that readers may find distressing
At about 5pm, the “Chanukah by the Sea” event begins at Archer Park, a small, grassy area at the back of Bondi beach. The park is just north of Bondi Surf Bathers Life Saving club, and has several small shelters for picnics and a children’s playground. Chanukah by the Sea is a regular event for Bondi’s large Jewish community, to mark the beginning of the religious festival. The event has been advertised on social media.
Video from the event shows a carnival atmosphere, with families in attendance and activities for kids, including a petting zoo.
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© Photograph: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images
© Photograph: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images
© Photograph: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images
© Mario Tama/Getty Images
The storytelling is brittle, but there is still enjoyment to be had from this story of a mother and child and rescue from a catastrophic flood in Seoul
Kim Byung-woo’s chimeric but not unenjoyable sixth feature begins like a normal apocalypse movie, with a deluge inundating Seoul. Then it flirts with taking on social stratification baggage as a beleaguered mother tries to climb up her 30-storey apartment block to escape the rising flood waters. But once it is revealed that An-na (Kim Da-mi) is a second-ranking science officer for an indispensable research project, the film becomes a different beast entirely – possibly something quite insidious.
As the film gats under way, An-na’s swimming-obsessed six-year-old son Ja-in (Kwon Eun-seong) sees his dreams come true when water begins flooding their apartment. Along with everyone else, they begin pounding the stairs – before corporate security officer Hee-jo (Park Hae-soo) catches up with them and explains that an asteroid impact in Antarctica is causing catastrophic rains that will end civilisation. But a helicopter is en route to evacuate her and Ja-in, because she is one of the pioneering minds who have been at work in a secret UN lab that holds the key to humanity’s future.
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© Photograph: Jeong Kyung-hwa/Netflix
© Photograph: Jeong Kyung-hwa/Netflix
© Photograph: Jeong Kyung-hwa/Netflix
The Welsh author vividly captures the solitude, hard labour, dramas and dangers of rural life
In these six stories of human frailty and responsibility, Welsh writer Cynan Jones explores the imperatives of love and the labour of making and sustaining lives. Each is told with a compelling immediacy and intensity, and with the quality of returning to a memory.
In the story Reindeer a man is seeking a bear, which has been woken by hunger from hibernation and is now raiding livestock from the farms of a small isolated community. “There was no true sunshine. There was no gleam in the snow, but the lateness of the left daylight put a cold faint blue through the slopes.” The story’s world is one in which skill, endurance, even stubbornness might be insufficient to succeed, but are just enough to persist.
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© Photograph: Mark Newman/Getty Images
© Photograph: Mark Newman/Getty Images
© Photograph: Mark Newman/Getty Images
Extreme heat follows blazes in New South Wales, while winds plunge Brazil’s largest city into darkness
Extreme heat and bushfires have ravaged the parched landscape of Western Australia. With temperatures expected to continue soaring above 40C (104F) over the coming days, the Bureau of Meteorology has issued a severe heatwave warning across much of the south-west.
The conditions follow bushfires in New South Wales this month, which resulted in the destruction of homes and loss of life. Severe heatwave warnings have also been issued for later this week in parts of South Australia and New South Wales, as a ridge of high pressure moves eastward, bringing blazing sunshine to much of the region.
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© Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/EPA
© Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/EPA
© Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/EPA
The Colts quarterback was coaching high school football before his surprise return. And he showed brains are almost important as brawn at his position
Is quarterback the most demanding position in sports? It’s close enough to make no difference: players must memorize a complicated playbook, orchestrate an entire offense, scan for open receivers while 280lb opponents sprint toward them with violent intent, and then thread a pass to a target who could be 30 yards downfield amid a crowd of defenders. Now try doing all that as a 44-year-old grandfather, exactly 1,800 days since you last started an NFL game.
Philip Rivers broke that historic streak for the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday. The longest layoff before then belonged to another 44-year-old quarterback who returned to action after years out of the game, and some time in coaching – Steve Deberg for the Atlanta Falcons in 1998.
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© Photograph: Stephen Brashear/AP
© Photograph: Stephen Brashear/AP
© Photograph: Stephen Brashear/AP
Family say al-Ahmed ‘doesn’t discriminate’ and would have done anything to save lives during the attack
When Ahmed al-Ahmed tackled and wrested a gun from an alleged shooter at Bondi beach, he was simply thinking that he “couldn’t bear to see people dying”, his cousin says.
Less than a day later, al-Ahmed remains in a critical but stable condition at St George hospital in Sydney. Since the attack, the 43-year-old father of two young girls has catapulted to international fame and been hailed as a hero by the Australian prime minister, the New South Wales premier and the US president.
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© Photograph: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/dec/14/bystander-tackles-and-wrestles-gun-from-alleged-gunmen-during-bondi-beach-mass-shooting
© Photograph: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/dec/14/bystander-tackles-and-wrestles-gun-from-alleged-gunmen-during-bondi-beach-mass-shooting
© Photograph: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/dec/14/bystander-tackles-and-wrestles-gun-from-alleged-gunmen-during-bondi-beach-mass-shooting
We remember the key films of the great Hollywood director, who has died, alongside his wife
It is extraordinarily rare for a director to change the entire direction of comedy with their first feature, but that’s exactly what Rob Reiner did with this legendary mockumentary. Following a disastrous American tour by a witless British rock group, This Is Spın̈al Tap manages to nail so many music industry cliches so perfectly that the film quickly became a mainstay of tour buses around the world. Reiner himself got in on the act, playing the blowhard documentary director Marty Di Bergi. The fact that something entirely improvised could create so many deathless lines is even more astounding. This year a sequel, The End Continues, was released. What fitting bookends to a brilliant career.
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© Photograph: AA Film Archive/Alamy
© Photograph: AA Film Archive/Alamy
© Photograph: AA Film Archive/Alamy
Arsenal and City march on, Sunderland enjoy bragging rights, and Ekitiké gives Liverpool fans a much-needed lift
Mikel Arteta had the option to frame things differently. The Arsenal manager was even teed up to do so with a generous question in the press conference that followed his side’s 2-1 win against Wolves on Saturday. Had his team shown the toughness of champions by recovering from a 90th-minute concession to steal all three points? “That’s something very positive but I don’t put it down to resilience,” Arteta replied. It was of a piece with him essentially reading the riot act to his players. They had not turned up at the start, he suggested, and the less said about the closing stages, the better – apart from the last-gasp winner. It is rare to hear Arteta be so critical but he knew his team had got away with one and he wanted them to know, too. Arsenal have a rare blank midweek before they go to Everton for another 8pm kick-off next Saturday. The standards must be higher. David Hytner
Match report: Arsenal 2-1 Wolves
Match report: Crystal Palace 0-3 Manchester City
Match report: Sunderland 1-0 Newcastle
Match report: Liverpool 2-0 Brighton
Match report: West Ham 2-3 Aston Villa
Match report: Chelsea 2-0 Everton
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© Composite: Guardian Picture Desk
© Composite: Guardian Picture Desk
© Composite: Guardian Picture Desk
Stilettos are fine for an evening out, but wearing them all day, every day could cause permanent damage
‘If you’d asked me that 15 years ago, I would have said: ‘Absolute nonsense – it’s all genetics and shoes aren’t responsible for any problem,’” says Andrew Goldberg, consultant orthopaedic foot and ankle specialist at the Wellington hospital in London. But viewing 3D scans that show how people’s feet look while standing in their shoes changed his mind completely.
He took two scans of a person’s feet – one barefoot and one in high heels – and the difference was striking. In the high heels, the toes were crowded together, the big toe showed a bunion, and the smaller toes were clawed, gripping for balance.
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© Illustration: Becky Barnicoat/The Guardian
© Illustration: Becky Barnicoat/The Guardian
© Illustration: Becky Barnicoat/The Guardian
Culture is not immune from the advances of the hard right – but it isn’t too late for resistance
Into the pale stone wall of the Kennedy Center, above its elegant terrace on the edge of the Potomac river, are carved bold and idealistic sentiments. “This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor. To further the appreciation of culture among all the people, to increase respect for the creative individual, to widen participation by all the processes and fulfillments of art – this is one of the fascinating challenges of these days.” Those are the words of John F Kennedy, after whom the US’s national performing arts centre is named. The impulse to build it came from Dwight D Eisenhower; it was given JFK’s name after his assassination; and it opened in 1971, to the music of Leonard Bernstein and the choreography of Alvin Ailey, in the presidency of Richard Nixon. The Kennedy Centre, in short, was designed to be bipartisan, a place of gathering for Democrats and Republicans alike, a proud showcase of the best of America’s dance, opera and music.
For 50 years it carefully trod that line, its board balanced by members of Congress from both sides of the political divide. But it turns out it can take just months to unravel half a century of high-minded purpose.
Charlotte Higgins is the Guardian’s chief culture writer
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© Photograph: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
© Photograph: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
© Photograph: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
Who’s that daring young farmyard animal on the flying trapeze? The creatures of Mossy Bottom have been put on stage by ‘edgy’ circus stars Circa – but the burlesque shearing had to go
‘It’s a family drama,” says Yaron Lifschitz. “It’s kind of a minor key, gently comic version of the Oresteian trilogy. Without the dismemberment and murder and purple carpets.” Lifschitz is talking about his latest production for Circa, the acclaimed Australian contemporary circus group. Is it a Greek epic? A state-of-the-nation drama? A searing emotional journey? Nope, none of those. It’s a fun, family circus show based on that cheeky cartoon character Shaun the Sheep.
You might not think the antics of an anthropomorphic flock of farm animals can be compared to Aeschylus, but Lifschitz sees characters bound together as family with different personalities, friends and enemies, having to work out how to live together. Shaun the Sheep has been a huge success since the character originated in Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave in 1995. The stop-motion series launched in 2007 has been broadcast in more than 50 countries, and had multiple spin-offs including two feature films and another one in the pipeline.
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© Photograph: Joel Goodman/The Guardian
© Photograph: Joel Goodman/The Guardian
© Photograph: Joel Goodman/The Guardian
At least 16 people including one of the alleged gunmen died at the shooting in Sydney on Sunday, aged between 10 and 87
At least 16 people were killed and more than 40 wounded when gunmen fired on a Hanukah celebration in Bondi beach, which Australian police and officials are describing as a terrorist attack.
In the latest update on Monday morning, the New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, confirmed 16 people, including one of the alleged gunmen, have died, and 42 people injured in the shooting were taken to hospital.
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© Composite: Instagram/Jewish Care annual report/anash.org/supplied
© Composite: Instagram/Jewish Care annual report/anash.org/supplied
© Composite: Instagram/Jewish Care annual report/anash.org/supplied
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