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

Two-year deal will cover most of Ukraine’s needs, but will be secured against EU borrowing rather than Russian assets

EU leaders have pledged a €90bn loan for Ukraine to meet urgent financial needs, but failed to agree on the preferred option for many of securing that loan against Russia’s frozen assets in the bloc.

After talks ended in the early hours of Friday, the president of the European Council, António Costa, told reporters: “We committed and we delivered.” He said EU leaders had approved a decision to make a €90bn loan to Ukraine for the next two years backed by the EU budget, which Kyiv would repay only once Russia pays reparations.

Transport groups warn of unprecedented congestion as commuters, shoppers and holidaymakers travel at once

Britain’s roads and runways will take a festive pounding on Friday as traffic peaks before Christmas and record numbers head to the skies.

Motoring organisations are forecasting exceptionally busy roads, with getaways expected to peak on Saturday and Christmas Eve. However, they say the mix of commuter travel, shopping trips and early departures will make Friday the most congested day.

Images, undated and uncaptioned, include Nabokov lines written on woman’s body and show Bill Gates and Noam Chomsky

• What we know so far about the Epstein files

Democrats on the House oversight committee have released a new batch of photos from the estate of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as the deadline for the justice department to release its files related to Epstein looms.

The images, released on Thursday, are undated and lack captions or context. Among them are photographs of what appear to be lines from Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita written on different parts of a woman’s body.

Analysis suggests consumption at Northumberland site could be 50 times higher than US operator QTS estimates

The UK’s largest proposed datacentre is understating the scale of its planned water use, according to an analysis.

The first phase of construction for the hyperscale campus in Cambois in Northumberland has been given the go-ahead by the local council. The US operator QTS, which is developing the site, has promoted its “water-free” cooling system as proof of its sustainability.