The largest House Democrat ideological caucus has called for the defense secretary to ‘resign immediately before his actions cost American lives’

• Pentagon announces it has killed four men in another boat strike in Pacific

Lauren Gambino and Melody Schreiber

After a delay and an unusually contentious meeting, a federal vaccine advisory panel is expected to vote today whether to change the longstanding recommendation that all newborns be immunized against hepatitis B.

• Trump praised by Infantino at DC ceremony

• President’s peace claims disputed by critics

• Nobel prize ambitions linger over Fifa award

Donald Trump has been named the first winner of the newly created Fifa peace prize, claiming “the world is a safer place now” as he recieved the award at the draw for the 2026 World Cup in Washington DC.

Gianni Infantino, the Fifa president and one of Trump’s closest sporting allies, presented the honour onstage at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Friday, saying Trump had been selected “in recognition of his exceptional and extraordinary actions to promote peace and unity around the world”.

Word from the top-tier press conferences, including Maresca singling out Tosin’s gaffes and Paquetá expecting an instant West Ham return

Exclusive: Yinka Bankole says he was compelled to speak out after Reform leader’s attempts to dismiss hurt of alleged targets

A former Dulwich college pupil who claims a teenage Nigel Farage told him “that’s the way back to Africa” has said he felt compelled to speak out after the Reform leader’s attempt at “denying or dismissing” the hurt of his alleged targets.

Yinka Bankole, who claims he had just started at the school when a 17-year-old Farage singled him out for abuse, said he had decided to tell his story in full after watching the Reform leader’s press conference on Thursday.

Exclusive: Billionaire is claimed to be anonymous figure behind $70m of wins in US legal case. He denies betting on his own teams

Tony Bloom, the billionaire owner of Brighton & Hove Albion FC, is facing questions over claims he was an anonymous gambler behind $70m (£52m) in winnings – which allegedly included bets on his football teams.

Bloom – one of the world’s most successful professional gamblers – is claimed to be the “John Doe” referred to in a US legal case that tried to unmask who has benefited from the lucrative winning streak.

In this week’s newsletter: We revisit forgotten noirs, rediscovered albums and retro games that stole the year

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We’ve just inched into December, which of course means Christmas list season. Already, five days in, plenty of publications have shared their cultural best-ofs for 2025 – you can read the Guardian’s best books and songs of the year right now, with our countdowns in TV, film and music coming very soon.

Meanwhile, many of you will have been bombarded on social media by screengrabs of your colleagues/friends/enemies’ Spotify Wrapped playlists (though Mood Machine author Liz Pelly has written pretty convincingly about why you shouldn’t share yours). This year’s Wrapped includes a “listening age” feature, which uses the release dates of the music you streamed to determine how horribly out-of-date your tastes are – revealing to some users that they are, in fact, centenarians.

The actor who marries box office ratings with Wes Anderson cool should revive the Batman series, but trying to guess who she might play is a thankless task

For years the follow-up to Matt Reeves’ slick but glacially paced 2022 comic-book epic The Batman has existed in a dimly lit rumour void. We know it will eventually get here (supposedly in October 2027), but nobody knows quite what it will look like. Entire geological epochs may come and go before the film-maker finally decides which doyen of Batman’s infamous rogues’ gallery he wants to unleash next. The foundations of Gotham itself may shift before Reeves works out which brooding, rain-soaked grunge ditty will form the basis of the new soundtrack.

And then – out of nowhere – comes this week’s news that Scarlett Johansson is in final talks to join the cast of the sequel. We have no idea who she’s likely to play but it matters not: this feels consequential, a bat-signal flickering to life over a city long abandoned. Johansson is more than just an A-lister; she’s one of the few actors who still puts bums on seats and appears in Wes Anderson movies. She retains a veneer of golden-era Hollywood cool that feels exactly right.

IP success stories such as Barbie and the DC Universe? That elusive best picture Oscar? Or perhaps the main goal is a good old-fashioned blockbuster

Corporate Hollywood has undergone huge upheavals in recent years – as consequential, perhaps, as the 1970s and 80s, when the studio marques that had made their names in the movies’ golden age were being bought up by international conglomerates. The acquisition of Warner Bros – legendary for crime pictures in the 40s and 50s, and Batman movies in the 90s and 00s – by a streaming service feels particularly significant, coming as it does on the back of the merger of Paramount with Skydance Media earlier this year and, in 2019, Disney’s purchase of fellow studio 21st Century Fox.

What is most evident in all these deals is how streaming services have changed the game. Disney’s buying spree – which had previously included Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar – in retrospect looks essentially like preparatory positioning to increase the marketability of their Disney+ player. It is significant that the new Paramount regime’s first move was to prise Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer away from Netflix. And Netflix, of course, have made their billions by upending the traditional pitch-session-to-cinema pipeline that had sustained the film industry for decades. They have signed up legions of the classiest directors, hogged nearly all the audience-friendly documentaries and premiered one water-cooler series after another.

Paper published in 2000 found glyphosate was not harmful, while internal emails later revealed company’s influence

The journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology has formally retracted a sweeping scientific paper published in 2000 that became a key defense for Monsanto’s claim that Roundup herbicide and its active ingredient glyphosate don’t cause cancer.

Martin van den Berg, the journal’s editor in chief, said in a note accompanying the retraction that he had taken the step because of “serious ethical concerns regarding the independence and accountability of the authors of this article and the academic integrity of the carcinogenicity studies presented”.

The paper, titled Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans, concluded that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weed killers posed no health risks to humans – no cancer risks, no reproductive risks, no adverse effects on development of endocrine systems in people or animals.

Action detailed in a state department memo directs officials to deny visas to any applicant engaging in ‘censorship’

• US politics live – latest updates

The Trump administration has moved to formalize a crackdown on the issuance of visas for people who it deems to have engaged in censoring the free speech of US citizens.

The action, detailed in a state department memo sent to overseas missions this week, first reported by Reuters and then NPR, directs consular officials to deny visas to any applicant “responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the US”.

Host broadcaster says show will not suffer after four countries withdraw from 2026 contest over Israel and Gaza

Austria has said it will continue with plans to host next year’s Eurovision, in spite of its budget being hit by four countries boycotting the song contest over Israel’s participation and the war in Gaza.

At a meeting in Geneva, the national broadcasters that make up the European Broadcasting Union gave the all clear for Israel to take part in next year’s event in Vienna, the contest’s 70th anniversary edition.

Even without Maro Itoje, Ben Earl and Jamie George, the English club are set to deploy a formidable lineup against their depleted opponents

Judging by the Saracens side ­starting their Champions Cup campaign against Clermont Auvergne on Saturday, a show of strength is the aim. Owen Farrell, Elliot Daly, Tom Willis and Nick Isiekwe are some of the ^­distinguished names who will line up in north ­London aiming to put a small, symbolic dent in the notion that French clubs are poised to dominate the competition again.

Even without the rested England captain, Maro Itoje, and back-row Ben Earl – both recently returned from a successful autumn campaign – the quality of the lineup indicates the depth required for a deep tournament run.

Exclusive: Move is part of Trump’s broader crackdown on leftwing groups, including designation of antifa as ‘domestic terrorism’ group

• US politics live – latest updates

The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, instructed law enforcement officials on Thursday to investigate antifa and other supposed domestic terror groups, and specifically directed them to search for “tax crimes” the groups may have committed, according to a memo obtained by the Guardian.

The document signals how the Trump administration and Bondi are ramping up efforts to crack down on leftwing groups. Antifa, short for antifascist, is not a clearly defined organization, but rather a loose network of activists. Trump signed an executive order in September declaring it a domestic terrorism organization – something legal experts say he does not have the authority to do.

Late-night hosts discussed Hegseth’s deflection of international outrage on to his admirals, Trump’s changed auto standards and new photos of Epstein’s island

Late-night hosts talked Donald Trump’s renaming of the Institute of Peace, Pete Hegseth’s ongoing Venezuela scandal and a new batch of photos from Epstein Island.

With Nuremberg out in Australian cinemas, we cast an eye over Rusty’s eclectic, varied and downright impressive oeuvre. Are you not entertained?

Russell Crowe’s hair-raising performance as Hermann Göring in Nuremberg is the latest example of the veteran actor’s high-risk, high-reward approach. He has a knack for taking on difficult, baggage-laden roles that could have gone spectacularly badly – only to deliver the goods and make you want to stand up and yell “bravo!” You’ll struggle to find many other actors working today with an oeuvre as eclectic, varied and downright impressive as the Wellington-born star’s. Here are his 20 greatest performances.

The writer of the Tony award-nominated Slave Play remains in custody after authorities say they found MDMA in his bag

American actor and playwright Jeremy O Harris, known for the Tony-nominated Slave Play, was arrested last month at an airport in Japan on suspicion of attempting to smuggle illegal drugs into the country, local authorities said late on Thursday.

Harris, 36, was stopped on 16 November at Naha airport on Okinawa island after a customs officer discovered 0.78 grams of crystal containing the synthetic drug MDMA in his tote bag, an Okinawa regional customs spokesperson said.

• Drops not down to poor preparation, says Root

• ‘Not great visuals’ at Gabba, says Australia’s Weatherald

Joe Root has insisted that human error rather than poor preparation lay behind a string of dropped catches during a day of toil in the field for ­England. Travis Head, Alex Carey – twice – Josh Inglis and Michael Neser all got lifelines as Australia ended day two of the second Test on 378 for six, a lead of 44.

“We worked as hard as we could in the lead-up to this, we had five days of prep and we did a huge amount of catching,” Root said. “We made sure we utilised those two [training] sessions under lights well. You can’t replicate that surface, the bounce, the way the nicks come. It’s never going to be exactly the same, it’s never going to be perfect. All you can do is give yourself the best possible chance and I think we’ve done that.

Nuzzi is on a temporary contract that ends this month – but it remains unclear whether she’s staying after former fiance Ryan Lizza’s exposés about her

In September, under the leadership of new top editor Mark Guiducci, a thirtysomething favorite of Condé Nast eminence Anna Wintour, Vanity Fair announced a slate of new hires that included one prominent name that hadn’t been heard from in a while: the political writer Olivia Nuzzi.

At seemingly the height of her rapidly ascendant career, Nuzzi was cut loose by New York Magazine last October after the media newsletter Status broke the news that she had maintained a relationship with Robert F Kennedy Jr, whose presidential campaign she had covered for the magazine.

⚽ Draw begins in Washington DC at 5pm GMT / 12pm local
⚽ Draw explainer | Qualifiers | Follow on Bluesky | Mail us

Benjamin gets in touch: “I am webmaster of www.national-football-teams.com !

“As you can imagine, draw day is quite something when international football is one of your things. I want to chip in on possible groups of death. These are the two of the hardest groups I could come up with:

Argentina

Morocco

Norway

Italy (If they qualify)

Spain

Colombia

Ivory Coast

Denmark (If they qualify)

Canada

Austria

Qatar

Cape Verde

Belgium

Iran

South Africa

Curacao

Move from RFK Jr’s advisers mirrors Trump team’s regressive approach to longstanding vaccine guidance

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s vaccine advisers voted on Friday morning to limit hepatitis vaccines in a major move signaling the Trump administration’s regressive approach to vaccines that have been given safely and effectively for decades.

The panel of advisers to the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, decided to remove the well-established and far-reaching recommendation that all newborns in the US receive a hepatitis B vaccine.

Decision by four countries to pull out over Israel’s inclusion is significant for the contest but crisis may not be existential

The decision by four European broadcasters to boycott next year’s Eurovision over Israel’s inclusion is undoubtedly a watershed moment in the 70-year history of the song contest.

One of the few genuinely popular, non-elitist and pan-European cultural events will be without Spain, one of the “big five” nations in terms of financial contributions; Ireland, which has won the contest more times than any other country bar Sweden; the Netherlands, a 1956 founding member; and Slovenia, symbolic of the EU’s eastward enlargement.

Nathaniel Spencer, from Birmingham, is accused of 45 offences, including some against children under 13

A former doctor has been charged with carrying out sexual assaults against 38 people who were patients in his care.

Nathaniel Spencer, from Birmingham, is accused of dozens of acts of sexual assault, some of them against children younger than 13, between 2017 and 2021.

• CEO Zak Brown: ‘We’re going to do what we can to win’

• Verstappen could pip Norris and Piastri to championship

Zak Brown has said McLaren will use team orders for Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri if required to ensure the team secure the Formula One drivers’ championship in the season finale at Abu Dhabi on Sunday.

With Red Bull’s Max ­Verstappen trailing Norris by 12 points, the Dutchman still has a shot at taking the title from McLaren’s grasp. Piastri is a further four points back. Having spent all season allowing their drivers to race and attempting to be scrupulously fair to both, Brown announced at the Yas Marina circuit that if circumstances rendered it ­necessary, they would use orders.