The temptation is to sit at home and hibernate, but beating the winter blues can be done. Here’s how to embrace the coldest and arguably most beautiful season

Stephanie Fitzgerald, a chartered clinical psychologist, used to dread winter. Like many, she coped by keeping busy at work and hibernating at home, waiting for the cold, dark days to be over. But this approach wasn’t making her happy. So she sought out the science that would help her embrace the winter months, rather than try to escape them. In her resulting book, The Gifts of Winter, she writes: “I fell deeply in love with winter … It is a captivating and truly gorgeous season.”

How did she change her mindset – and can the 42% of us who say summer is our favourite season learn to love winter too?

The video game-derived thriller series should be terrifying, but it’s often side-splitting. Its second outing adds excellent guest spots from Justin Theroux, Kumail Nanjiani and Macaulay Culkin

The west doesn’t get much wilder than in Fallout. The show takes place 200 years into a post-nuclear apocalypse where most humans are scratching out an existence in a stricken wasteland California of sand dunes, outlaw gangs and mutated monsters. Resources are scarce. Life is cruel. Death is a constant. It should be terrifying. Instead, it’s often hilarious.

A wicked sense of humour elevated the first season of Prime Video’s well-received, no-expense-spared adaptation of the long-running video game franchise. An early episode opened with one faction dumping newborn pups into an incinerator – in case you were wondering who the bad guys were – and those flashes of satirical glee gave Fallout an edge over gloomier post-apocalyptic shows such as The Walking Dead or The Last of Us.

A meet-cute between Humanity and Earth, a mod ballet and Nick Mohammed’s career-best standup set – our critics pick the best stage shows of the year

10. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Staging a bestselling book that has already been adapted into a film starring bona fide national treasures (Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton) might have been daunting. But, in Chichester, Katy Rudd’s musical of a man’s Bunyanesque journey to visit a dying woman met that challenge with lo-fi eccentricity and folksy songs with a foot-stomping spirit (composed by Michael Rosenberg, AKA Passenger). In the West End from 29 January. Read the review

Growth in the US economy – and the president’s political survival – rest on AI. The EU must use its leverage and stand up to him

The unthinkable has happened. The US is Europe’s adversary. The stark, profound betrayal contained in the Trump administration’s national security strategy should stop any further denial and dithering in Europe’s capitals. Cultivating “resistance Europe’s current trajectory in European nations” is now Washington’s stated policy.

But contained within this calamity is the gift of clarity. Europe will fight or it will perish. The good news is that Europe holds strong cards.

Johnny Ryan is director of Enforce, a unit of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties

On Thursday night the BBC will honour the heroes. But here are the year’s best dark, devious and downright dumb sporting stories

Another year, another raft of sporting cheating scandals for our annual anti‑Spoty awards. Where the BBC Sports Personality ceremony this week rewards the cream of athletic endeavour, the Guardian instead shines a light on the darkest corners of sporting skulduggery.

I had no idea what to do with the injured bird I named Belinda. But suddenly 3,000 Mancunians were happy to help, giving me a whole new appreciation of my home town

The plane pushed through wall after wall of sleet on its descent into Manchester. I’d had a sinking feeling during the flight that only deepened as I shuffled through the terminal. I resented having to be back in the city where I had grown up, after living on the other side of the world for what had felt like a lifetime.

After a few days, I headed out to get a haircut. My mind was miles away, back across an ocean, when I heard something hit the pavement. I looked down to see a pigeon on its back, spatchcocked, and twitching.

Deal agreed to rejoin exchange programme in 2027, fulfilling Labour election manifesto pledge

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Young people across the UK and the EU will reciprocally be able to study or gain work experience through the EU’s Erasmus scheme for the first time since Brexit, after the government announced an agreement to rejoin at a cost of £570m.

The scheme officially known as Erasmus+ will be reopened to those involved in education, training, culture and sport from 2027, after discussions in London and Brussels to fulfil a Labour election manifesto pledge.

Open letter to Reform UK leader expresses ‘dismay and anger’ at his response to racism and antisemitism allegations

Nigel Farage has been told to apologise for his alleged teenage racism by 26 school contemporaries who have written an open letter telling of their “dismay and anger” at his response in recent weeks.

In a united challenge to the Reform UK leader, the alleged victims and witnesses condemn him for what they describe as his refusal to acknowledge his behaviour at Dulwich college.

Resident doctors in England have begun five days of strike action after rejecting the government’s latest offer

Streeting says he does not want people to stay away from hospitals today if they need emergency medical help.

The most important message that I want us all to convey collectively as, as parliament and the NHS, is to the public’ I do not want people who need to access health care to think [they’d] better not try.

So if it’s an accident or an emergency, people should have access.

Sydney man, 24, charged with 15 counts of murder and one count of committing a terrorist act after waking from coma

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The alleged Bondi attacker who survived a shootout with police has been charged with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder and one count of committing a terrorist act in what investigators allege may have been “inspired by Isis”.

New South Wales police charged Naveed Akram, 24, on Wednesday, after he was arrested at the scene and taken to a Sydney hospital with critical injuries on Sunday night.