The US-Ireland Alliance will give the actor the Oscar Wilde award at the event’s 20th anniversary in Los Angeles in March

After a varied career in which he has played a psychopath, a romcom heart-throb, an intergalactic warlord and a plucky newspaper editor among others, Domhnall Gleeson has won his first Hollywood award.

The US-Ireland Alliance announced that Gleeson will receive the Oscar Wilde award at the event’s 20th anniversary in Los Angeles in March in the run-up to the Oscars. It honours a body of work rather than a particular performance.

With the Christmas recess slowing the political havoc, it’s time to hand out the Guardian’s parliamentarian of the year awards

You can hear the sighs of relief. Not from the MPs who are packing up to slope back to their constituencies for the Christmas recess, but from the rest of the country. Finally, the year is coming to an end and there will be few chances for our politicians to do any further damage before they return to Westminster in January.

The psychodrama is finally done. We can all go to bed vaguely hopeful that the world won’t have taken a further turn for the worse by the time we wake up.

You could try showing them the depths of what they don’t know, says advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Knowing what they’re missing could be a path to mutual respect

• Read more Leading questions

How do I talk to grown grandsons who have different political beliefs and dismiss mine as fuzzy thinking, since I am old?

They are conservative and believe they “pulled themselves up by their bootstraps”. They didn’t. They had parents and family and help with university. They are lovely men and kind to me, but I cannot converse with them on the issues of the day.

They have had setbacks, but nothing that makes them realise how very difficult life can be. I want to tell them that they cannot always control life, and also that I disagree with them. What can I say?

The reader’s letter has been edited for length

OpenAI is the latest to make a political hire as big tech spreads its tentacles around the world. So what’s the attraction?

George Osborne getting a new job isn’t exactly news. Since leaving frontline politics, the former chancellor has served as the chair of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, edited (not entirely successfully) the Evening Standard, advised asset manager BlackRock, joined boutique advisory firm Robey Warshaw, been appointed as the chair of the British Museum and taken on roles including advising crypto firm Coinbase. Oh, and like any white man of a particular age, he co-hosts a political podcast.

But Osborne’s latest job is the most eye-opening – and is an alarming augur of what is to come. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has become the latest organisation to employ Osborne. He will run OpenAI for Countries, a unit tasked with working directly with governments while expanding the company’s Stargate datacentre programme beyond the US. At least it was announced with a tweet, rather than a LinkedIn post.

Chris Stokel-Walker is the author of TikTok Boom: The Inside Story of the World’s Favourite App

In just two years, Rae has gone from star TikTok dancer to being Grammy-nominated for best new artist. She reflects on her critically acclaimed debut and how she’s learning to reclaim and relinquish control

No one in pop has had a year like Addison Rae. She may not be the biggest star – that remains Taylor Swift – or even the most commercially successful breakout act. But the dreamy dance-pop haze of her debut album, Addison, made her into an artist’s artist, loved by the likes of Charli xcx and Lana Del Rey – the leftfield pop acts who paved the way for someone like her. Like a pre-Brat Charli, or perhaps Sky Ferreira, the 25-year-old is the pop connoisseur’s choice, justly earning comparisons to Del Rey, her fellow Louisiana girl Britney Spears and Ray of Light-era Madonna, while knowing her way around her R&B and Jersey club. She’s up for best new artist at next year’s Grammy awards – and with Addison and its knowingly anaesthetised single Headphones On placing in the Guardian’s top five albums and tracks of 2025 respectively, she’s our artist of the year.

So it’s crazy to flick back just two years to when Rae wasn’t just a flop, but a punchline. In 2023, she released her debut single Obsessed, a perfectly average Benny Blanco-produced single that attracted disproportionate hatred because Rae was then just a TikTok star whose breezy dance videos had made her the platform’s fifth most-followed figure. The song flopped. Five months later came the AR EP: featuring a Charli guest verse – she asked to feature on a leaked demo that she loved – it made Rae a cult favourite. Last summer, she returned the favour, guesting on a remix of Charli’s Von Dutch: “While you’re sitting in your dad’s basement … Got a lot to say about my debut!” Rae taunted.

John Harris, Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey look back at the biggest political moments of 2025, and discuss what 2026 might bring

Latest image drop comes as pressure mounts on Trump’s justice department to release files

• Full report – Democrats release new Epstein photos

• What we know so far about the Epstein files

Democratic lawmakers will release more photographs from evidence gathered from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein if the Department of Justice fails to meet the Friday deadline to disclose investigative documents, Congressman Robert Garcia told CNN yesterday.

Speaking to Erin Burnett, Garcia said a petition to the federal court by Ghislaine Maxwell – Epstein’s convicted accomplice - to have her conviction on sex trafficking charges thrown out and to obtain a pardon do not trigger an exemption to the law Congress passed mandating a release of documents by the DoJ.

Summit divided on idea of loan secured against Russian assets, as Belgium seeks guarantees if scheme goes wrong

• Belgian politicians and finance bosses targeted by Russian intelligence over seized assets

EU leaders are racing to secure a funding deal for Ukraine that has been cast as a choice between “money today or blood tomorrow”, but Belgium continues to oppose a loan secured against Russia’s frozen assets.

At a summit billed as make or break, EU leaders are discussing an unprecedented move to tap some of Russia’s €210bn sovereign assets frozen in the bloc days after the full-scale invasion of 2022.

Napier barracks in Folkestone faced multiple problems, from far-right protests to damning ruling over safeguarding issues

The UK’s first and most longstanding military barracks used to accommodate asylum seekers is closing its doors on Thursday after almost six years.

The closure of the controversial Napier barracks in Folkestone comes at a time when the government has pledged to expand its use of this form of accommodation as an alternative to expensive hotels, which anti-migrant and far-right protesters have criticised for being “luxurious”, but which asylum seekers and those who work with them say are often rundown and unsuitable.

Campaigners welcome plans but say poor funding means Labour’s ambitions unlikely to be met

A landmark strategy to protect women and girls from violence and abuse “falls seriously short” of the funding required to realise the government’s ambitions, campaigners have said.

The government’s strategy to combat violence against women and girls (VAWG) was hailed as a “milestone” by women’s organisations. It will focus on prevention and tackling harmful behaviours in boys, by teaching pupils about healthy relationships and pornography and equipping teachers with the skills to intervene if they witness disturbing or worrying behaviour.

Tackling misogyny with focused education in schools.

A new GP referral service and £50m funding for therapeutic support for child victims of sexual abuse.

New laws to ban AI “nudification” apps.

Plans to work with tech companies to ban the sharing of nude images on children’s phones.

Specialist rape and sexual offences units in every police force.

A national rollout of strict new restraining orders on domestic abusers.

£19m funding for councils to provide safe housing for domestic abuse survivors.

£550m investment to support victims and witnesses throughout the criminal justice system.