Negotiations among EU leaders continue ahead of critical European Council meeting in Brussels on Thursday

EU leaders are entering final stages of negotiations ahead of this week’s crunch European Council meeting in Brussels, at which they will have to decide the critical decision on whether to use frozen Russian assets to fund a reparations loan for Ukraine.

Some 24 hours before they start their talks on Thursday, there is no agreement in sight, as Belgium continues to oppose the European Commission’s proposals as it worries about possible legal challenges from Russia. More worryingly for the countries supporting the loan, more countries seem to be having some doubts, including Italy.

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© Photograph: snapshot/Future Image/B Elmenthaler/Shutterstock

© Photograph: snapshot/Future Image/B Elmenthaler/Shutterstock

© Photograph: snapshot/Future Image/B Elmenthaler/Shutterstock

Actress Patricia Heaton explained why she left Los Angeles in a podcast interview Monday, citing crime, homelessness and high taxes.

The move could potentially impact 0.4-0.5 million barrels of oil per day, lifting prices by $1-2 per barrel, according to a US oil trader.

Former "Saturday Night Live" cast member Leslie Jones called for Democrats to arrest Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers if they take back Congress after the midterm elections. 

Unlike so many who visit Sin City, Tyler Kolek left this city in a much better position than when he arrived.

Former US women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe mocked the US men’s national soccer team World Cup campaign.

Some monikers are a perfect fit for the audience and reflect a player’s style of play; others are just too hot for TV

It’s September 2017, and a humble Challenge Tour quarter-final at the Robin Park Leisure Centre in Wigan is about to change the course of darting history. Luke Humphries and Martin Lukeman are two promising young throwers making their way on the Professional Darts Corporation’s second-tier tour, dreaming of the big time. But there’s one problem.

Humphries has styled himself “Cool Hand”, based on the 1967 Paul Newman film that to date he has still never watched. Lukeman, meanwhile, has decided to call himself “Cool Man”: less catchy, doesn’t really scan, but still just about works. And though the pair are firm friends, when the draw in Wigan pits them against each other, they decide that this best-of-nine match will settle matters once and for all. Winner gets the nickname. Loser has to think of something else.

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© Photograph: Andrew Redington/Getty Images

© Photograph: Andrew Redington/Getty Images

© Photograph: Andrew Redington/Getty Images

Leave support is falling. That’s an opportunity the PM should seize before pro-Europe challengers for the Labour leadership do

Seven years ago, it took just eight words to electrify the Labour conference and to show the party was falling out of love with its then leader. Although not exactly the kind of soaring oratory that gets reproduced on T-shirts, the words were greeted with wild cheering as most of the hall rose in spontaneous acclamation.

As the commotion died down, Keir Starmer, then Brexit spokesman, stood at the podium, blinking in surprise. He wasn’t really accustomed to his speeches having such an effect. All he had said was: “Nobody is ruling out remain as an option.” But context is everything.

Tom Baldwin is the author of Keir Starmer, The Biography

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© Photograph: WPA/Getty Images

© Photograph: WPA/Getty Images

© Photograph: WPA/Getty Images

Plus: which European champions were top at Christmas, players giving each other presents and other festive trivia

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“Just reading a book about Christmas No 1s,” begins Paul Savage. “The section about Wham!’s Last Christmas says Andrew Ridgeley was watching football at George Michael’s parents on a Sunday, when George got the melody and wandered off to record it upstairs. Greatness obviously awaited but I want to know: which match was it? It’s 1984, a Sunday and presumably on terrestrial TV. Was the second half worth Ridgeley not getting involved in the recording?”

Last Christmas by Wham! didn’t become a Christmas No 1 until 2023, having been kept off top spot by Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas in 1984. As Paul mentioned, George Michael wrote the song in his childhood bedroom while his parents and Andrew Ridgeley watched football on TV downstairs.

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© Photograph: David Lichtneker/Alamy

© Photograph: David Lichtneker/Alamy

© Photograph: David Lichtneker/Alamy

Dear Abby gives advice to a reader who wants to reveal to her 74-year-old cousin that he was actually adopted.

Naveed Akram, who allegedly opened fire on a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Sydney's famed Bondi Beach, has been charged with 59 offenses, including murder and terrorism.

“There is no excuse for what you two have done and the damage and pain that you have caused,” District Judge Jacqueline Bluth said during sentencing.

Video captured Nick Reiner casually purchasing a drink at a gas station just moments before cops arrested him for allegedly murdering his famed director father and mother at their Los Angeles home.

• Third Test, day one: Australia 326-8

• Usman Khawaja digs in for 82 while Archer has 3-29

After the pandemonium of Perth and Brisbane’s pink-ball palooza came an outbreak of more familiar looking Test cricket at Adelaide Oval. For the locals it was one to savour as their boy, Alex Carey, delivered a sparkling century at his home ground on an opening day that Australia edged.

Not that England, 2-0 down and clinging on in this series, could be too downbeat. Ben Stokes had lost what appeared an ominous toss and, though far from perfect, his bowlers kept plugging away in 35C heat. At stumps Australia were 326 for eight from 83 overs – runs on the board but surely short of ambitions when Pat Cummins got the choice first thing.

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© Photograph: Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/Reuters

© Photograph: Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/Reuters

© Photograph: Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/Reuters

The tide turned at the start of the fourth quarter in Vegas.

Nuno FG Loureiro, 47, was shot multiple times at his home, and no details about a suspect or motive have been released

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) community is grieving after the “shocking” shooting death of the director of its plasma science and fusion center, according to officials.

Nuno FG Loureiro, 47, had been shot multiple times at his home in Brookline on Monday night when police said they received a call to investigate. Emergency responders brought Loureiro to a hospital, and the award-winning scientist was pronounced dead there Tuesday morning, the Norfolk county district attorney’s office said in a statement.

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© Photograph: Jake Belcher/AP

© Photograph: Jake Belcher/AP

© Photograph: Jake Belcher/AP

NHS leaders warn ‘more patients are likely to feel the impact of this round of strikes than the previous two’

Resident doctors in England have begun five days of strike action after rejecting the government’s latest offer to resolve the long-running dispute over pay and jobs.

The British Medical Association (BMA), and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, met on Tuesday in a final attempt to reach an agreement, but failed to do so.

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© Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

A brilliant history of psychiatric ideas suggests we are on the cusp of a transformation in our understanding of severe mental illness

In 1973, an American psychologist called David Rosenhan published the results of a bold experiment. He’d arranged for eight “pseudo-patients” to attend appointments at psychiatric institutions, where they complained to doctors about hearing voices that said “empty”, “hollow” and “thud”. All were admitted, diagnosed with either schizophrenia or manic-depressive psychosis. They immediately stopped displaying any “symptoms” and started saying they felt fine. The first got out after seven days; the last after 52.

Told of these findings, psychiatrists at a major teaching hospital found it hard to believe that they’d make the same mistake, so Rosenhan devised another experiment: over the next three months, he informed them, one or more pseudopatients would go undercover and, at the end, staff would be asked to decide who had been faking it. Of 193 patients admitted, 20% were deemed suspicious. It was then that Rosenhan revealed this had been a ruse as well: no pseudopatients had been sent to the hospital at all. Not only had doctors failed to spot sane people in their midst; they couldn’t reliably recognise the actually insane.

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© Photograph: Tek Image/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF

© Photograph: Tek Image/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF

© Photograph: Tek Image/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF

Big K-pop stars and a teen-skewed subtext aims this squarely at a particular audience but this fantasy never really levels up

Starring the actor (Ahn Hyo-seop) who voiced the lead boy-band bad guy in KPop Demon Hunters, and one of the singers (Kim Ji-soo, also known mononymically as Jisoo) from real-world girl-band Blackpink, this Korean sci-fi-fantasy feature feels very skewed towards the young on all counts. Superficially, it appears to be about a guy named Kim Dok-ja (Ahn) who finds that the web novel he’s been following for years is turning into reality. That means the whole world becomes gamified, as if everyone has been turned into players compelled to kill to survive, while plagued by CGI monsters and puckish digital dokkaebi (demons) which explain things when the rules change.

But under the surface, this film is really about being popular, coping with traumatic childhood experiences such as being forced to beat up your best friend, getting a pimple, and building up enough gumption to tell authority figures – older people, your boss, the author of the book you’ve been a fan of for ages – that they suck.

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© Photograph: Lotte Entertainment/Realies Pictures

© Photograph: Lotte Entertainment/Realies Pictures

© Photograph: Lotte Entertainment/Realies Pictures

Celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver launch ‘Bang in Some Beans’ campaign to highlight cost savings and health advantages

• Magic beans: top chefs’ recipes for protein-rich superfood

Beans have it all, according to some of the best-known chefs in the country. They are sustainable, plentiful, nutritious and a fraction of the cost of meats such as steak and chicken.

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© Illustration: Jamie Wignall/The Guardian

© Illustration: Jamie Wignall/The Guardian

© Illustration: Jamie Wignall/The Guardian

This tiny country is awash with atmospheric castles, many of which you can stay in, making for a magical wintry break. And it won’t cost you a cent to travel between them

The top of the tower had disappeared in the mist, but its bells rang clear and true, tolling beyond the abbey gates, over the slopes of frost-fringed trees, down to the town in the valley below. Final call for morning mass. I took a seat at the back of the modern church, built when the Abbey of Saint Maurice and Saint Maurus relocated to this hill in Clervaux, north Luxembourg, in 1910. Then the monks swept in – and swept away 1,000 years. Sung in Latin, their Gregorian chants filled the nave: simple, calming, timeless. I’m not religious and didn’t understand a word, but also, in a way, understood it completely.

Although mass is held here at 10am daily, year-round, the monks’ ethereal incantations seemed to perfectly suit the season. I left the church, picked up a waymarked hiking trail and walked deeper into the forest – and the mood remained. There was no one else around, no wind to dislodge the last, clinging beech leaves or sway the soaring spruce. A jay screeched, and plumes of hair ice feathered fallen logs. As in the church, all was stillness, a little magic.

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© Photograph: Alfonso Salgueiro Lora/© Alfonso Salgueiro/Visit Luxembourg.

© Photograph: Alfonso Salgueiro Lora/© Alfonso Salgueiro/Visit Luxembourg.

© Photograph: Alfonso Salgueiro Lora/© Alfonso Salgueiro/Visit Luxembourg.

In Kate Winslet’s Goodbye June, Timothy Spall, 68, plays the father of Toni Collette, who is 53 – and pregnant. But those liberties are nothing compared with North by Northwest, The Manchurian Candidate or Thanksgiving

To be able to enjoy Kate Winslet’s new Christmas movie, Goodbye June, you have to be able to do a couple of things. First, if you’ve ever suffered any form of bereavement, you may have to approach it slowly, since the film is explicitly about the death of a parent. But the other thing you need to do is not Google the age of any of the cast.

This is for good reason. The titular June is played by Dame Helen Mirren, and her husband is played by Timothy Spall. Fine actors and national treasures, the pair of them. However, Mirren is 80 years old, and Spall is 68. Again, this is fine. You have undoubtedly met couples with bigger age gaps than this, and in all probability they are perfectly happy together.

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© Photograph: Album/Alamy

© Photograph: Album/Alamy

© Photograph: Album/Alamy

Moving from one avant garde movement to another during the 1920s, the American photographer’s work helps tell the story of the birth of modernism

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© Photograph: Edward Weston

© Photograph: Edward Weston

© Photograph: Edward Weston

New national armaments director insists the paper is in its ‘final stages’