From Sinners to F1 to Highest 2 Lowest, Guardian writers pick the scenes that stuck with them the most this year

Spoilers ahead

Disclosure: I covered auto racing for years and still follow Formula One skeptically. I definitely went into F1: The Movie knowing what I was in for, an answer to the hypothetical: what if the bougiest sport on God’s green earth was turned into a western? But you can’t help going along for the ride once Brad Pitt starts filling the frame with his blue-eyed winks, wry smiles and Butch Cassidy swagger. I should’ve been more indignant about this martinet sport making a literal hero out of the biggest rogue on the grid. But I left disbelief in parc fermé as Pitt’s Sonny Hayes bumped and nicked his way to the season finale at Abu Dhabi to much consternation before his wingman (Damson Idris) takes up the ticky tactics at Yas Marina circuit and winds up sacrificing himself and producer Lewis Hamilton (not again!) to help Sonny win his first race and thwart a hostile takeover of their fragile team. And when the lights went up at my desolate midday screening, it was just me still on the edge of my seat and my disbelief still firmly off track. Andrew Lawrence

In Portishead, a dusty box of forgotten files led Jo Smith and her team to a criminal who had escaped justice for more than half a century. This was the longest-running cold case to be solved in the UK, and possibly the world

In June 2023, Jo Smith, a major crime review officer for Avon and Somerset police, was asked by her sergeant to “take a look at the Louisa Dunne case”. Louisa Dunne was a 75-year-old woman who had been raped and murdered in her Bristol home in June 1967. She was a mother of two, a grandmother, a woman whose first husband had been a leading trade unionist, and whose home had once been a hub of political activity. By 1967, she was living alone, twice widowed but still a well-known figure in her Easton neighbourhood.

There were no witnesses to her murder, and the police investigation unearthed little to go on apart from a palm print on a rear window. Police knocked on 8,000 doors and took 19,000 palm prints, but no match was found. The case stayed unsolved.

TG Jones took over stores six months ago but consumers have noticed little change or investment

“It’s just the same.” Six months on from the sale of WH Smith’s high street business, the name above the door may have changed to TG Jones, but many shoppers have not noticed a splurge of investment or change.

“The layout is the same and what they are selling is the same,” says Gillian Parsons as she exits TG Jones on a busy high street in the market town of Hitchin, Hertfordshire, where a steady flow of visitors are picking up cards, wrapping paper and the odd present in the week before Christmas.

He stole our hearts in The Celebrity Traitors – then it all went wrong. The actor and comedian opens up

When I catch up with Nick Mohammed, he is on the set of War, a new HBO series. Full of legal eagles, tech-bro hot shots and ugly divorces, it’s a punchy, slick enterprise, nothing at all like The Celebrity Traitors – except for the high drama, unbearable tension and the fact that Mohammed is reunited with Celia Imrie. Traitors was filmed in April and May and this started in September, so they both knew exactly what had happened in the castle, but were still in their chamber of deadly secrecy. Mainly, Mohammed was happy just to kick about with Imrie again. “She’s wonderful,” he says. “Everything you think she might be, she absolutely is – she’s just brilliant.”

Which brings us to the root of the problem, the answer to the question: “What the hell happened, Nick?” Spoiler alert: we intend to talk about exactly what went down in the most infuriating Traitors final since, well, the last non-celebrity Traitors. If Joe Marler had had his way, he and Nick would have sauntered to victory, Alan Carr’s magisterial fibbing finally unmasked. Instead, Nick’s niggling doubts brought down the ship.

I was a chemistry student, my days spent boiling, titrating and stirring. But after that night, I formed a double act with a friend, writing jokes and making a radio show, before heading off to Australia …

Although I loved my time at Nottingham University, I didn’t go there with much intention of doing anything with my degree in chemistry afterwards. Not only was it full-on, I wasn’t particularly good at it. In an experiment to examine the incubation of goat’s blood, I accidentally added 10 times too much hydrogen peroxide. Blood shot out of the flask and splattered all over my face like a scene from The Sopranos. I can still hear my professor’s screams.

But that’s OK, because I hadn’t really gone to university to win the Nobel prize, I’d gone to experience the culture of the mid 90s. British dance music – through acts such as Orbital, Leftfield, Underworld, Faithless and the Chemical Brothers – was exploding. Britpop was happening around me: (What’s the Story?) Morning Glory was released the week I went to uni. My entry to this smorgasbord of cool happened when, in our second year, Ant and Dec announced a live show up in town.

Life goes on in a vibrant Greater Manchester neighbourhood after a plan for an attack was thwarted

“They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s eat,” Andrew Walters said.

It is an old Jewish joke that’s as relevant as ever in Greater Manchester in the face of today’s threats.

Imran Ahmed and Clare Melford among five Europeans hit with visa bans over claims they wish to ‘suppress American viewpoints they oppose’

The Global Disinformation Index, which is run by Clare Melford, one of the two Britons on the list of five Europeans facing US visa restrictions because of their work to stop online disinformation and hate (see 9.28am), has described the US state department’s decision as “immoral, unlawful and un-American”. In a reponse, a GDI spokesperson said:

The visa sanctions … are an authoritarian attack on free speech and an egregious act of government censorship.

The Trump Administration is, once again, using the full weight of the federal government to intimidate, censor, and silence voices they disagree with. Their actions today are immoral, unlawful, and un-American.

WE’VE SANCTIONED: Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, the leader and founder of HateAid, a German organization founded after the 2017 German federal elections to counter conservative groups. HateAid is an official “trusted flagger” (a censor) under the EU’s anti-speech Digital Services Act (DSA) and routinely demands access to propriety social media platform data to help it censor more. Hodenberg cited threat of “disinformation” from “right-wing extremists” online in upcoming U.S. and EU elections when circulating a petition for the DSA to become more strongly enforced to allow data access for “researchers”.

WE’VE SANCTIONED: Josephine Ballon, co-leader of HateAid, who flags disfavored speech throughout Europe under the Digital Services Act. In addition to her running an official “trusted flagger” body under the DSA, she serves on Germany’s Advisory Council of the Digital Services Coordinator (DSC), which directly advises Germany’s DSC on the application and enforcement of the DSA. In February 2025, Ballon spoke before an American audience in a notable 60 Minutes interview, outlining her position on censorship succinctly: “Free speech needs boundaries.” In October 2024, she vowed to stop the “emotionalization of debates” by “regulating platforms”.

Ukraine accepts principle of demilitarised zone in east, while insisting Russia make similar concessions in pulling back forces

Washington and Kyiv have edged closer to a jointly agreed formula to end the war in Ukraine amid continuing uncertainty over Moscow’s response and a number of unresolved issues.

Revealing the latest status of the peace talks, brokered by Washington, Ukraine’s president, Volodmyr Zelenskyy, appeared to have secured several important concessions from earlier versions of the now slimmed-down plan after intense talks with the US negotiating team.

Exclusive: Donna Ockenden paid highly for advice in relation to the biggest review of maternity failings in NHS history

The midwife leading the biggest inquiry into maternity failures in the history of the NHS is charging NHS England up to £26,000 a month for her advice through her company, the Guardian can reveal.

Donna Ockenden, who has been chairing a review into maternity failings at Nottingham university hospitals NHS trust since 2022, is paid an £850 daily rate for every 7.5 hours she works.

Strikes were latest violation of year-long ceasefire and targeted what Israel said were Hezbollah sites

Israel carried out several airstrikes on southern Lebanon on Wednesday targeting what it said was Hezbollah infrastructure, as a new year’s deadline for the Lebanese state to disarm the group in the south of the country loomed.

Israeli warplanes bombed the valleys of Houmin, Wadi Azza and Nimeiriya in the southern Nabatieh area on Wednesday morning. Residents reported that Israeli drones continued to hover over the area and other areas of south Lebanon and its eastern Bekaa valley after the strikes.