This year features a football World Cup, a Winter Olympics, a Commonwealth Games and a historic Test match

Jannik Sinner will be aiming to become only the second man in the Open era, after Novak Djokovic, to win three consecutive Australian Open singles titles, while in the women’s draw Madison Keys will be seeking to defend the title she landed via a shock victory over Aryna Sabalenka in last year’s final. Elsewhere, Roger Federer is scheduled to return to Melbourne Park for the first time since retiring from tennis in 2022 as part of a Battle of the World No 1s match, alongside Andre Agassi, Patrick Rafter and Lleyton Hewitt. “It still makes me smile when I think about all the moments I’ve had here,” said the Swiss legend.

Next head of Cern backs massive replacement for world’s largest machine to investigate mysteries of the universe

Mark Thomson, a professor of experimental particle physics at the University of Cambridge, has landed one of the most coveted jobs in global science. But it is hard not to wonder, when looked at from a certain angle, whether he has taken one for the team.

On 1 January, Thomson takes over as the director general of Cern, the multi-Nobel prizewinning nuclear physics laboratory on the outskirts of Geneva. It is here, deep beneath the ground, that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the largest scientific instrument ever built, recreates conditions that existed microseconds after the big bang.

It was New Year’s Eve and there had been fireworks, drinking and dancing. Amid it all, I felt ashen and cold. As I walked out, I felt my first surge of quiet liberation

We drove out along the coast one afternoon, to a fireworks shop a couple of towns along. It was late in the year, and the light was low and dismal, rain scudding the windscreen. In a couple of days’ time it would be New Year’s Eve, and then our small town would scatter itself to parties held in bars and houses and nightclubs, and out along the harbour. At midnight, there would be an amateur firework display on the roof of the old lido.

In the shop that afternoon, some of the fireworks sat behind a glass-fronted cabinet. They had names like Stinging Bees, Vendetta and Sky Breaker, and beneath each item was a small laminated caption: “One hundred shot roman candle firing high whistling bees,” read one. “Twenty-five secs of time rain salutes. Noisy,” read another.

For those not going out to celebrate, you can still party with Harry and Sally, play cards with Jack Lemmon and make merry hell at the Overlook Hotel

At the end of any especially troublesome year it’s always good to revisit The Apartment, Billy Wilder’s brilliantly bleak comedy of office politics and festive bad cheer. It memorably ends on the stroke of midnight as heartsick Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) abandons a drunken new year’s party to be with hapless, jobless CC Baxter (Jack Lemmon) instead. Is The Apartment suggesting that Kubelik and Baxter then live happily ever after? Probably not, because I’ve never been convinced that these two lovers are going to stay the course. They’re too mismatched and desperate; their wounds are still too fresh. What the ending gives us is the next best thing: a sudden sense of hope and freedom, with everything packed in boxes except for a bottle, two glasses and a deck of cards. Nothing to lose and nowhere to go. “Shut up and deal.” A clean break, a fresh start. Xan Brooks

The bioscience startup has attracted billions in investment – and a flurry of criticism, but founder tells the Guardian plans to bring back the woolly mammoth will not be derailed

Death and taxes are supposed to be the things we can depend on in this life. But in 2025, the American entrepreneur Ben Lamm sold much of the world on the idea that death did not, after all, need to be for ever.

This was the year the billionaire’s genetics startup, Colossal Biosciences, claimed it had resurrected the dire wolf, an animal that disappeared at the end of the last ice age, by tweaking the DNA of grey wolves. According to the company, it had also edged closer to bringing the woolly mammoth back from the dead, with the creation of genetically engineered “woolly mice”.

Cameo’s Candy is one of the all-time great funk records, but after a six-minute dance formation everyone is heading for the door

It’s that moment at a Black party you either love or hate. Cameo’s Candy, one of the all-time great funk records, comes on and everyone lines up to do the dance. Maybe you throw yourself into it, maybe you are a white friend who looks around in confusion, or maybe, like me, you just sigh in resignation.

The dance is a US import, beginning life as the electric slide in the mid-70s, and eventually becoming the Candy in Britain, thanks to its appearance at the end of the 1999 movie The Best Man. Since then, be it birthdays, christenings, Christmas, NYE – even funerals – you’re certain to see the dancefloor immediately fill and get into formation once the initial few chords are played.

Join our live coverage as we cross the globe to enter the new year

Sydney is the self-appointed “world capital of new year’s eve” and arguably rightly so. As always, eyes will be on the Opera House at 13:00 GMT when fireworks will light up the sky in spectacular fashion. But there are also huge crowds out in Melbourne to see off the year in style.

Thousands of people are expected to descend on Melbourne this evening to celebrate NYE. There will be two 7 minute firework displays and light shows tonight, first a family one at 9.30pm for young children, and the main one at the stroke of midnight.

PM to highlight energy bill and interest rate cuts, plus end to two-child benefit cap, and to invite his MPs to Chequers

Keir Starmer will attempt to rescue his relationship with disillusioned voters and his own fractious MPs in a new year push to reduce the cost of living.

The prime minister will give a speech in the coming days focusing on how his government is bringing down living costs, highlighting recent cuts to energy bills and interest rates and the end of the two-child benefit cap.

Exclusive: Pilot scheme launches as one in five start primary school with no protection against deadly diseases

Health visitors will be sent door-to-door to deliver vaccines to children in England amid alarm that one in five start primary school with no protection against deadly diseases, the Guardian can reveal.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that at least 95% of children should receive vaccine doses for each illness to achieve herd immunity. However, not a single one of the main childhood vaccines in England hit the target in 2024-25. There were also sharp differences in uptake across the country.

• British boxer is released on New Year’s Eve in Ikeja

• Joshua can ‘recuperate at home’ after treatment

The British boxer Anthony Joshua has been discharged from hospital, Nigerian authorities said on Wednesday night. The two-time former heavyweight champion and Olympic gold medalist was involved in a car accident near Lagos on Monday which killed two of his close associates and team members.

The 36-year-old had been under observation while recovering from minor injuries, his promoter had said on Monday.