Decision from state supreme court on deal once worth $56bn overturns ruling that prompted angry Musk backlash

Elon Musk’s controversial $56bn pay package from Tesla was reinstated by the Delaware supreme court on Friday, two years after a lower court struck down the vast compensation deal as “unfathomable”.

The decision comes less than two months after Tesla shareholders approved a new plan that could be worth $1tn to Musk, already the world’s richest person, in a decade’s time. It overturns a ruling which had prompted a furious backlash from Musk.

Release of documents from DoJ investigation comes after Trump reverses and signs bill into law

• Epstein documents release – live updates

The Department of Justice on Friday released a long-awaited and huge tranche of documents related to its investigation into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a major development in the lengthy political saga that turned into one of the biggest setbacks Donald Trump has suffered since his re-election last year.

While significant portions of the files are redacted, those that were viewable included images of Epstein socializing with Bill Clinton and former British royal Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as well as entertainers like Michael Jackson, Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey.

It is unclear if the heavily redacted Epstein documents released by Trump’s justice department are the entirety of the government’s trove on the late sex offender

• Full report: US justice department releases long-awaited cache of Jeffrey Epstein files

Deputy attorney general Todd Blanche has said that more than 1,200 victims and their families were found during the review of the documents, according to a letter to Congress obtained by Fox News, and that the justice department had redacted or withheld any materials that could reveal their identities.

In the letter, Blanche said:

This process resulted in over 1,200 names being identified as victims or their relatives. We have redacted reference to such names. In addition to redacting the names of these victims, we have also redacted and are not producing any materials that could result in their identification.

• Angels reach confidential settlement after civil trial

• Skaggs died in 2019 from fentanyl-laced pills

• Parties arrive at settlement while case with jury

The Los Angeles Angels on Friday settled a lawsuit over the drug overdose death of pitcher Tyler Skaggs.

The decision to settle was reached after a two-month civil trial in Southern California over whether the Angels should be held responsible for Skaggs’ 2019 death after he snorted a fentanyl-laced pill provided by the team’s communications director, Eric Kay.

President Nicolás Maduro orders Venezuelan navy to escort oil tankers after seizure by US forces

• What action is Trump taking against Venezuela’s oil industry?

Donald Trump and his top advisers have refused to rule out the potential for open conflict with Venezuela as Nicolás Maduro urged his navy to escort oil tankers defying the largest US fleet deployed in the region in decades.

In an interview broadcast on Friday morning, Donald Trump told NBC News that going to war with Maduro’s regime remains on the table. “I don’t rule it out, no,” he said in a phone interview with the network.

The Bondi beach terror attack, the Brown University shooting, ICE in Chicago and a fallen Statue of Liberty: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

• Liverpool teammate discusses fallout from interview

• ‘He apologised to us … That’s the man that he is’

Curtis Jones has revealed Mohamed Salah apologised to the Liverpool squad for the fallout from his interview criticising the club and Arne Slot.

Salah was omitted from Liverpool’s Champions League win against Inter having accused the club of throwing him under a bus in response to a poor run of results. The striker also claimed his relationship with Slot had broken down and that he had earned his position in the team after eight phenomenal seasons.

Jilly Cooper, Joanna Trollope and Sophie Kinsella all changed the genre. A new generation of novelists are doing the same and sales are soaring

At last, the perception of popular fiction by women as “silly novels by lady novelists”, as George Eliot sniffily put it back in 1856, is changing. Next year, the British Book Awards will recognise romantic fiction for the first time. The recognition is long overdue.

This welcome news came in the same week as the deaths of two doyennes of the form, Joanna Trollope and, at just 55, Sophie Kinsella, only a couple of months after the loss of national treasure Dame Jilly Cooper. Between them these publishing power houses produced more than 100 books, sold millions of copies, and inspired hit films and TV series, most recently last year’s star-studded adaptation of Cooper’s 1985 Riders.

From the Bondi beach rescuers to the women taking on the police, great acts of courage offer hope even in the bleakest times

Some traditions are getting harder to maintain. Among them, my own custom of devoting the last column before Christmas to reasons to be hopeful. In recent years, amid war and bloodshed, that task has been especially challenging – and this week was no exception.

It began with the news from Bondi beach, where 15 people were gunned down and dozens more injured, most of them Jews celebrating the festival of Hanukah. That came just two-and-a-half months after the deadly attack on Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester, on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur. To be a Jew at the end of 2025 is to fear that to gather together, whether at moments of joy or sorrow, is to take a mortal risk. That even to do relatively ordinary things together has become a matter of life and death.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist and the author of The Traitors Circle: the Rebels Against the Nazis and the Spy Who Betrayed Them

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Around a quarter of all tickets for the world championship were sold to visitors from Germany. How did a country with no world-class player get hooked?

They walk among us, sit among us, sing among us. They speak perfect English, hunt in packs, down industrial quantities of Amstel just like everyone else. And yet to the trained eye, to the seasoned Ally Pally veteran, there is just something different to them. A comportment and a vibe. Perhaps the fact they speak perfect English. You can even spot a subtle distinction in the choice of fancy dress; fewer jockeys and 118 118 runners, more woodland animals and flag suits, less postmodern ironic and more Euro-kitsch. They come, mostly, in love and peace. Even so, the divide is real. Enmity? Perhaps a bit strong. Either way: don’t tell them your name, Pike.

Slowly and by degrees, the Germans are coming. At first in small scattered groups and landing parties, then larger expeditions, and then finally the full-scale mass incursion. A battery of tour buses spills the latest recruits up the steps and into the Palace. Package excursions sell out months in advance. Around a quarter of all tickets for this year’s world championship have been sold in Germany, rising to as many as a third for some sessions. Why are they here? What do they want? And how did a country that has never produced a world-class player of its own get so thoroughly hooked on the darts?

Exclusive song for online retailer prevents a hat trick of Christmas No 1s for Wham!, as Kylie becomes first woman to secure UK No 1 singles in four different decades

Kylie Minogue has scored her first UK Christmas No 1, and eighth No 1 single overall, with the song Xmas.

She beat competition from Wham!’s mega-streaming Last Christmas, which has been Christmas No 1 for the past two years: it was last week’s chart-topper but drops to No 2. Also in the race was Lullaby from the charity campaign Together for Palestine, which reached No 5.

Monitor says almost one in eight people face food shortages as flooding and cold exacerbate humanitarian emergency

The famine in Gaza has ended as a result of increased humanitarian aid deliveries into the territory, the UN said on Friday, though it warned that levels of hunger and the humanitarian situation remained critical.

Almost one in eight people in Gaza still faced food shortages, the UN said, adding that persistent hunger had been made worse by winter flooding and the colder weather. Most people in Gaza live in tents or other substandard accommodation as Israel destroyed much of the housing and civilian infrastructure during its two-year war.

Todd Blanche, deputy attorney general, says release of files won’t include full set, prompting outrage from lawmakers

• Epstein documents release – live updates

The Department of Justice on Friday released some long-awaited files related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but did not release everything in its possession as required by a law Congress passed last month. The partial release drew swift rebukes from Capitol Hill and threats of legal action.

Speaking in an interview on Fox News on Friday morning, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, said: “I expect we’re going to release several hundred thousand documents today, and those documents will come in all different forms, photographs and other materials associated with all of the investigations into Mr Epstein”.

What we know about the deal with TAE Technologies so far – from why it is happening to what fusion energy is

Trump Media & Technology Group, owner of Donald Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, announced a merger on Wednesday with a company developing fusion energy technology.

TAE Technologies, an energy company founded in 1998, will join with Trump Media via a $6bn merger that it promises will propel it to build “the world’s first utility-scale fusion power plant” next year.

Here’s how to follow along with our coverage – the finest writing and up-to-the-minute reports

Group called Robins des Ruelles later said in statement stunt was intended to highlight cost of living crisis

Dressed in red suits and backed by masked elves, a group of Santas marched into a Montreal supermarket, loaded their bags with thousands of dollars worth of groceries and disappeared into the night.

The bandit Santas later released a statement saying the food would be distributed to the needy, and saying the Robin Hood-style stunt was intended to highlight the spiralling cost of living crisis that has pushed basic necessities increasingly out of reach for ordinary Canadians.

This holiday staple is also one of the world’s oldest crops – here’s what to know about adding sweet potatoes to your diet

Sweet potatoes can be roasted, mashed, fried and pied – you might have eaten them so often that they feel old hat.

In a way, they are – sweet potatoes count among the world’s oldest domesticated crops. Archeological evidence suggests they were cultivated in South America “more than 4,500 years ago”, says Michelle Johnson, a seed historian, journalist and self-described “sweet potato superfan”.

Exclusive: federal document reveals children arriving as undocumented immigrants being threatened with detention

Border officials are pressuring unaccompanied children who arrive in the US as undocumented immigrants to quickly agree to return to their countries of origin, even if they express fear for their safety there – or else face “prolonged” detention and other consequences, a federal government document reveals.

The document, which emerged as an attachment in a court filing made by immigration attorneys, is understood to be presented or read to children within the first few days of them entering the US while they are still in the custody of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), before they can see any relatives in the US.

• ‘We will not take that long,’ says Amorim in response

• Amorim criticises sense of ‘entitlement’ at United

Sir Alex Ferguson has stated it could take Manchester United another “10 or 11 years” to win the title, prompting Ruben Amorim to ­publicly ­disagree with the club’s most ­successful manager.

Ferguson won 13 of United’s 20 league titles, the last in 2013, and was asked when a 21st may be added to the trophy cabinet.

Experts decry ‘neocolonialist’ Guinea-Bissau study after Trump administration changed advice for US babies

The Trump administration has indicated that it will fund a $1.6m study on hepatitis B vaccination of newborns in the west African country of Guinea-Bissau, where nearly one in five adults live with the virus – a move that researchers call “highly unethical” and “extremely risky”.

The news follows an official change in recommendations on hepatitis B vaccines at birth from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which called the shots an “individual” decision, despite decades of safe and effective vaccination and no evidence of harm. It is part of sweeping changes to childhood immunizations by the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, which have global repercussions – including cutting funding for programs that bring vaccines to countries around the world.

Man, 27, from northern Taiwan reported to have fallen to his death in police chase after rampage through capital

At least four people have died in a rare mass stabbing incident in central Taipei after an attacker used smoke grenades to cause chaos as he went on a violent rampage through Taiwan’s capital. Several people were also injured.

The suspected assailant is among the dead after he fell from a building during a police chase through a busy shopping district on Friday evening.

From celebrity endorsements to digital fatigue, the once-obsolete white wire has become a fashion statement and a quiet act of opting out

With white-wired headphones endorsed by celebrities including Lily-Rose Depp, Paul Mescal, Bella Hadid and Apple Martin, a growing number of people are breaking away from wireless listening.

For inspiration, there is the Instagram account @wireditgirls, or a Balenciaga campaign featuring the model Mona Tougaard reclining bed, wired headphones in place.

Reportedly critical drone strike is first in Mediterranean since full-scale invasion began as maritime conflict grows

• ‘There are hundreds’: tracking Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ of oil tankers

Ukraine says it has attacked a Russian “shadow fleet” tanker with aerial drones 1,250 miles (2,000km) from its borders, in the first such strike in the Mediterranean Sea since Moscow’s full-scale invasion nearly four years ago.

Friday’s strike off the coast of Libya, which reportedly caused critical damage, took place on the day of Vladimir Putin’s annual end of year press conference in which he said Russia would respond to recent Ukrainian attacks on shadow fleet tankers.

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