Red and amber weather warnings have been issued across the UK as Storm Goretti evolves into a ‘weather bomb’

Birmingham airport suspended its runway operations on Thursday evening due to heavy snow.

It posted on X a short while ago that its teams were now “completing final snow clearance and safety checks on the airfield”.

Runway operations are still suspended at this time however passenger security processing has commenced … Passengers due to travel should contact their airline regarding the status of flights.

Opposition leader María Corina Machado hails move to tackle ‘injustice’ as Spain’s foreign ministry confirms release of five Spanish nationals

Five days after the US seized Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela has announced it is releasing an “important number” of detainees in what the congressional president characterised as a gesture to “consolidate peace”.

Former opposition candidate Enrique Márquez was among those released from prison, according to an opposition statement. “It’s all over now,” Márquez said in a video taken by a local journalist who accompanied him and his wife, as well as another opposition member Biagio Pilieri, who was also released.

Outrage at the US, close ties with Venezuela and mounting domestic challenges have prompted Pedro Sánchez to take a stand

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, rarely utters the words “Donald Trump” in public. Since the US president took office, Sánchez has typically referred to the US administration and its president without explicitly naming him. This was initially interpreted as a calculation designed to avoid personal confrontation, but even without using Trump’s name, Sánchez has managed to deliver harsher criticism of the US president’s aggression than any of his fellow European leaders.

This week, Sánchez did not wait for a joint EU statement to issue judgment on the US’s illegal military intervention to capture the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro: he swiftly joined Latin American countries in condemning it. A few hours later he went even further, saying the operation in Caracas represented “a terrible precedent and a very dangerous one [which] reminds us of past aggressions, and pushes the world toward a future of uncertainty and insecurity, similar to what we already experienced after other invasions driven by the thirst for oil”.

María Ramírez is a journalist and deputy managing editor of elDiario.es, a news outlet in Spain

People say my job must make me morbid, but I think the opposite is true, I truly appreciate life

Not many people can say their happy place is a cemetery, but mine certainly is. I didn’t set out to dig graves for a living – it’s nobody’s childhood dream – but working as a contract gardener for the council in Oxfordshire, I did some work tending cemeteries, and eventually I was offered a job digging graves.

I found it quite daunting at first. I was responsible for digging the plots and being on hand during the funeral service, as well as filling in the grave. It felt like a huge responsibility. I’d recently lost my nan and I’d sit and watch the funerals with a lump in my throat. From the beginning, I treated every grave as though it were for a member of my own family. For the first time, I felt like my job really mattered.

Netherlands expected to join Ireland in prohibiting most consumer fireworks as other EU countries debate crackdown

Window-rattling explosions turned Yara Basta-Bos’s street into a “war zone” last week, but she was spared from the worst of the new year chaos she had seen in the past. A few years ago, the emergency doctor in Amsterdam had to treat a patient clutching their own eyeball after a firework blew it out of its socket.

“It feels like such a waste,” said Basta-Bos, president of the Dutch society of emergency physicians, adding that last week’s revelry resulted in more than 1,200 injuries – one-third of whom ended up in hospital – and two deaths. “Of course, fireworks are nice to look at. But the level of damage it’s causing in the Netherlands right now is just unbelievable.”

When I went to Saudi Arabia in the 1980s to see my Dad it felt like visiting another planet. But beyond the scale and shininess of the country was the feeling of my family finally being together

In the 1980s, the British construction industry was hit hard by recession. At the same time, Saudi Arabia had the opposite problem; lots of money and a desire to build infrastructure, but not enough skilled workers. As a result, thousands of British labourers found it was the only place where they could earn a wage. My dad – freshly out of work with a young family to support – was one of them. We travelled out to see him twice, once to Riyadh and once to Jeddah.

Objectively, the Riyadh trip was better. Dad lived on a worker’s compound, and there was a pool and a restaurant and loads of room to run around. Jeddah, less so – but that’s where this photo was taken. Dad shared a tiny flat on the city’s noisy Palestine Street with one of his colleagues. I caught mumps basically upon landing and (according to the diary I kept at the time) experienced excessive diarrhoea for the duration of the visit. My dad bought me and my brother novelty karate-style pyjamas on arrival, which my brother used as an excuse to beat me up as often as possible. But I was six years old, and I still had the time of my life.

Cyclists and others voice frustration as transport infrastructure descends into chaos amid increasingly rare cold snap

A week-long winter cold snap that would once have been normal in the Netherlands has caused more than 20,000 flight cancellations, chaos on roads and railways, buildings to partially collapse, and a stream of angry cyclists asking why roads seem better gritted than cycle lanes.

Since Saturday, up to 15cm of snow has fallen across the country, with temperatures of -10C (14F) including wind chill, sparking angry commentary over how some nations manage months of snow but the Netherlands, no longer used to it, appears paralysed.

Caracas shake-up could intensify violence in Catatumbo in Colombia, an area rich with coca crops, cocaine laboratories and a porous border with Venezuela

Alberto’s eyes shifted nervously. His chin trembled.

His slender hands fumbled with a manila folder containing his family’s documents, which he was waiting to present to staff of the Human Rights Ombudsman in the north-eastern Colombian city of Cúcuta, in the hope of receiving humanitarian aid.

Ahead of her final European tour, the US songwriter discusses her unlikely life as a country star, seeking advice from Pete Seeger – and why retirement isn’t on the cards just yet

When Emmylou Harris was starting out in the late 1960s, she thought country music wasn’t for her. “I hadn’t seen the light,” she says. “I was a folk singer who believed you don’t ever work with drummers as they wreck everything.” It was Gram Parsons, of the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, who changed her mind. Their musical partnership was brief – Parsons died after an accidental drug overdose at the Joshua Tree national park in 1973, aged 26 – but his impact on her was profound. “He had one foot in country and one in rock and was conversant in both. It changed my thinking completely.”

Is Harris, legendary doyenne of the country ballad and distinguished recipient of three Country Music Association awards whose guitar was exhibited in Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, really saying she hated country? “It can be corny!” she says. “Country music aims straight for the heart and when it misses, it misses really badly. And that’s the stuff that makes the most noise and takes up most space.” She pauses. “But then you hear something like George Jones’s Once You’ve Had the Best, and you hear the simplicity of his phrasing and the earnestness with which he sings. There’s a soulfulness to country music that can elude you if you just look at the big picture.”

Trump sounds off on Venezuela’s future, Taiwan’s security and his aims for Greenland, days after operation to seize Nicolás Maduro

Just days after launching an unprecedented operation in Venezuela to seize its president and effectively take control of its oil industry, Donald Trump sat down with New York Times journalists for a wide-ranging interview that took in everything from international law, Taiwan, Greenland and weight-loss drugs.

The president, riding high on the success of an operation that has upended the rules of global power, spoke candidly and casually about the new world order he appears eager to usher in; an order governed not by international norms or long-lasting alliances, but national strength and military power.

Mayor urges ICE to pause operations as representative says victims alive but extent of injuries unknown

US federal agents shot two people outside a hospital in Portland, Oregon, a day after an ICE officer shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis.

The Portland police bureau (PPB) said in a statement on Thursday afternoon that two people were in the hospital following a shooting involving federal agents, adding that the conditions of those shot were not known.

Ashley St Clair – a conservative influencer and former partner of Elon Musk – and Dan Milmo chart the scandal over Grok, X’s AI chatbot, after it generated sexualised images of women without their consent

The conservative writer and political strategist Ashley St Clair had just put her young son to bed when she received a text from a friend with a link to a page on X.

When she opened it, she says she saw a photo of ‘Grok undressing me and putting me in a bikini’.

Aria and Tia both south of Britain after US-UK seizure of Marinera, deemed to be part of Moscow’s ‘shadow fleet’

Two oil tankers under US sanctions are sailing east through the Channel towards Russia, prompting speculation over whether the US and UK would be willing to seize further vessels linked to Moscow.

The Aria and the Tia, which has changed its name and country of registration several times, were both travelling south of Britain a day after the Marinera oil tanker was captured in the Atlantic by the US with UK help.

Moscow says any Nato peacekeepers would be considered legitimate targets; US embassy and Kyiv flag ‘potentially significant air attack’. What we know on day 1,416

Heatwave warnings in place for nearly all states and territories as Sydney braces for 43C forecast on Saturday

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Victorians have been urged to stay inside as Melbourne’s mercury soared past 42C amid a heatwave engulfing much of Australia to descend on Sydney on Saturday.

Anthony Albanese met officials in Canberra for a briefing on the extreme conditions and said these were “difficult times” for the country.

Samuel J Friedman Theatre, New York

The White Lotus and Gilded Age actor takes on her real-life husband Tracy Letts’ 1996 thriller, which could have afforded some modern-day tweaks

You can practically smell the stale cigarette smoke lingering in the air of the fake motel set for Bug. It’s the play’s only location – though it appears in a distinctive second guise in the second act – and in its staging at the Samuel J Friedman Theatre, the set comes to a corner in the center of the stage, jutting out toward the audience. The additional angle gives the room a little more depth, but it also distorts the room’s geography, rendering it neither proscenium neat nor fully realistic. That’s the increasingly hard-to-recognize world that Agnes (Carrie Coon) inhabits when she brings near-stranger Peter (Namir Smallwood) into her life.

Agnes is a waitress living out of the motel, drinking and taking drugs in between shifts. Her abusive ex, Jerry (Steve Key), just out of prison, lurks around, expecting Agnes to welcome him back to their “home” whenever he pleases. So when her friend RC (Jennifer Engstrom) introduces Agnes to the drifter and supposed veteran Peter, he can’t help but seem gentler by comparison. But when Peter thinks he notices a bug bite from their shared motel bed, he starts to spiral further into paranoia. Agnes, whether aided by drugs, love, grief over her lost child or a combination of those, spirals right along with him.

Helen Garner and Miles Franklin winner Michelle de Kretser among 45 people who have pulled out of annual writers’ festival to protest Abdel-Fattah’s axing

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The Adelaide festival has pulled down part of its website as dozens of speakers said they were boycotting writers’ week, after Palestinian Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah was dumped from the lineup with the board citing “cultural sensitivity” concerns in the wake of the Bondi terror attack.

The page promoting the schedule of authors, journalists, academics and commentators was “unpublished” on Friday following widespread condemnation of the board’s decision to remove Abdel-Fattah.

• ‘Five setters are a different beast’, says 30-year-old

• Australian has attempted comeback from injury in recent weeks

Nick Kyrgios’s surgically-repaired knee and wrist will not prevent him from taking part at Melbourne Park, where Australian Open qualifying begins next week, but he will not feature in the singles draw.

The 30-year-old posted on social media saying he wasn’t ready for best-of-five set tennis, ruling himself out of contention for a wildcard, but he would still take to the court alongside friend and doubles partner Thanasi Kokkinakis.

Exclusive: research suggests supplementing eggs with a key protein reduces age-related defects, raising hopes of improved IVF for older women

Scientists claim to have “rejuvenated” human eggs for the first time in an advance that they predict could revolutionise IVF success rates for older women.

The groundbreaking research suggests that an age-related defect that causes genetic errors in embryos could be reversed by supplementing eggs with a crucial protein. When eggs donated by fertility patients were given microinjections of the protein, they were almost half as likely to show the defect compared with untreated eggs.

Featuring Wood, her famous sidekicks Julie Waters and Celia Imrie and other female standups, this documentary is tender, moving and an absolute hoot

There is a moment at the start of this documentary about the comedian Victoria Wood when you realise what she was up against at the beginning of her career: a snippet from the archives of Melvyn Bragg hailing her as Britain’s first female standup comedian. That wasn’t entirely the case, but it seems unthinkable now that it took until the 1980s for women to break through in any numbers. In 1985, when season one of Wood’s sketch show As Seen on TV aired on BBC2, there were sniffs of doubt that a woman could front a comedy programme, let alone a northern woman. How wrong they were. Clips from the show, featuring Wood, Julie Waters and Celia Imrie, are a hoot: high on a tipsy energy, the performers are all on the edge of collapsing into giggles.

For those who grew up with Wood as a national treasure, Becoming Victoria Wood will be a revelation. Her standup routines in the 1980s blazed a trail, with jokes about tampons and cellulite. She had a lonely childhood, was ignored by her mother and was shy and self-conscious about her weight. (Later press coverage fixating on her size was vile.) She didn’t feel clever or good-looking enough but she had a fierce streak of ambition that seemed to come from nowhere.

Alolita Tekapu and her family among the first arrivals under a world-first agreement that allows people from Tuvalu to move to Australia

On a suburban street in eastern Melbourne on a cool summer’s day, Alolita Tekapu sits on the couch feeding her one-month-old son, Philip, while her three older boys play outside. Her husband folds laundry nearby, pausing occasionally to check on the children.

It’s an ordinary domestic scene. But the reason this family are in Australia is far from ordinary.

Emily Henry’s hit book has been adapted into a glossily made yet charmless attempt to resurrect the friends-to-lovers formula

Released just as the weather turns to freezing and we’re all daydreaming of an escape, Netflix’s early January romcom People We Meet on Vacation is at the very least smartly timed. Produced as part of the streamer’s Sony deal, it benefits from some real studio gloss (proper lighting!) and as Polo & Pan’s perfectly balmy Nana plays over a transporting shot of our heroine lounging on a beach (the song was also used in Netflix’s underrated Christmas romcom Let it Snow), I was ready to relax with her. But what a brief escape it turned out to be …

The adaptation of Emily Henry’s much-loved 2021 novel has the superficial trappings all in check (eyes with permanent twinkles, unrealistic main character job in this climate, more easily affordable Taylor Swift song on the soundtrack) but no heart or soul to go with it. There’s simply nothing to root for or care about or grasp on to, just the limp tracing of something we’ve seen many many times before. Its closest comparison would be When Harry Met Sally, a similar journey that turns friends into lovers over a fairly epic time span (the pair even meet in the exact same way, forced to drive home together from college). But what felt lived in and genuinely human back in 1989 now feels shallow and synthetic in 2026, a grim start to the year for a genre I keep hoping and praying for.

Austin Peay State University will also pay theater and dance professor Darren Michael $500,000 in settlement

Austin Peay State University has reinstated a professor who was fired for his social media post after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The Tennessee school is also paying the teacher $500,000 in the settlement.

Austin Peay spokesperson Brian Dunn said Darren Michael returned to his position as a tenured faculty member at the public university in Clarksville effective 30 December. A copy of the settlement agreement obtained through a public records request includes a $500,000 payment and reimbursement of counseling, as reported earlier this week by WKRN-TV.

Democrat Ro Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie seek to compel justice department to release full set of files

Two US House of Representatives members have asked a federal judge to appoint a special master to compel the justice department to release all files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender.

On Thursday, Democratic representative Ro Khanna of California and Republican representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky asked US district judge Paul Engelmayer to release the full Epstein files, as required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.