With Covid variant danger unclear, advisers say home working and less social mixing should be encouraged

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Government officials and scientific advisers believe that the danger posed by the Omicron variant may not be clear until January, potentially allowing weeks of intense mixing while the variant spreads.

Across Westminster, invitations to Christmas drinks are landing in embossed envelopes or on WhatsApp groups. Departmental staff parties are set to take place, as well as a reception for journalists with Rishi Sunak at No 11. Even Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are hosting a joint bash.

• Jennifer and James Crumbley went missing, prompting search
• Son Ethan, 15, charged with murder over deadly school shooting

The parents of a boy who is accused of killing four students at a Michigan high school have been taken into custody after the pair went missing in the wake of being charged as part of the investigation into the mass shooting.

Jennifer and James Crumbley were charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter but authorities on Friday said the whereabouts of the Crumbleys were not known, prompting a search.

Emma Tustin sentenced to minimum of 29 years as boyas father is jailed for 21 years for manslaughter

A woman who killed her six-year-old stepson, who had been poisoned, starved and beaten in the weeks before his death, has been sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 29 years.

Emma Tustin, 32, was sentenced for the murder of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, alongside his father, 29-year-old Thomas Hughes, who was given 21 years in prison for manslaughter.

Staff processing a APS23 parcels duty rebate paid the life-changing sum into a womanas bank account

A woman who woke up to find more than three-quarters of a million pounds had been deposited in her bank account by HMRC has described how she spent a year waiting for it to realise its mistake and reclaim the money and worrying about what would happen when it did.

In August 2020, Helen Peters*, a self-employed mother of a five-year-old, looked at her bank statement and found that instead of being mildly overdrawn, a APS774,839.39 Bacs payment from the Revenuetaxman had sent her account very much into the black.

Critics say disadvantaged children are losing out in England as selective schools find creative ways to poach students

Itas a glorious late autumn day at Herne Bay high school in Kent, and boys and girls in red tops are playing sport on neat artificial pitches, but the principal, Jon Boyes, is looking into the distance, pointing out a piece of land on the other side of the road. If the local authority could be persuaded to buy it, he says, maybe he could squeeze in a much-needed new sixth-form centre.

The school, a secondary modern a a non-selective school in a selective authority a is heavily oversubscribed, and a huge housing development next to the school is about to bring yet more pupils to the door.

Met asked to investigate reports of alleged breaches of Covid lockdown rules at No 10

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The prime minister has been reported to the police by Labour MPs over allegations there were at least two parties in Downing Street during lockdown restrictions last year.

Neil Coyle, Labour MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, wrote to the Met police commissioner, Cressida Dick, asking her to investigate reports that the prime minister spoke at a leaving do in November and also allowed a staff Christmas party to go ahead in December.

Insurgents shoot villagers going to a market on the same day UN peacekeeping convoy attacked, killing one person

Militants have killed at least 31 people in central Mali when they fired upon a bus ferrying people to a local market and attacked a UN convoy in the north of the country in a region racked by a violent insurgency.

The bus was attacked on Friday by unidentified gunmen as it travelled its twice-weekly route from the village of Songho to a market in Bandiagara six miles (10km) away, said Moulaye Guindo, the mayor of the nearby town of Bankass.

Mohammad Ureza Azizi, 57, to face court charged with murdering Malak aKatya Adabzadeh who was found dead in house on 25 November

A man has been charged with the murder of a 47-year-old woman whose body was found at a house in Stoneycroft, Liverpool.

Emergency services were called to The Green around 4.55pm on 25 November to reports Malak Adabzadeh had been found in a house, Merseyside police said.

Charityas site reduced to a landing page after asuspicious activitya and staff sent threatening emails

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) has taken down its website after asuspicious activitya and said its staff had been sent threatening emails.

The charityas website was reduced to a pared-back landing page on Friday afternoon after a suspected hacking attempt.

Poll takes place as human rights groups express fears over record of successor Adama Barrow

Gambians are heading to the polls on Saturday for the first time since the former president Yahya Jammeh was forced into exile after 22 years in power.

Jammeh, whose rule was marred by allegations of torture, extrajudicial killings and rape, fled to Equatorial Guinea in 2017 when United Nations-backed regional coalition forces staged a military intervention after his refusal to concede electoral defeat.

Researchers say conservative estimate shows importance of wooded areas to wellbeing, with street trees also beneficial

Walks taken by people in UK woodlands save APS185m a year in mental health costs, according to a report.

Spending time in nature is known to boost mental health, but the report by Forest Research is the first to estimate the amount that woodlands save the NHS through fewer GP visits and prescriptions, reduced hospital and social service care, and the costs of lost days of work. The research also calculated that street trees in towns and cities cut an additional APS16m a year from antidepressant costs.

Going vegan has never been more popular a but some people who try it and then decide to reintroduce animal products face shocking treatment

In 2015, Freya Robinson decided to go vegan. For more than a year, the 28-year-old from East Sussex did not consume a single animal product. Then, in 2016, on a family holiday in Bulgaria, she passed a steak restaurant and something inside her switched. aI walked in and ordered the biggest steak I could have and completely inhaled it,a she says. After finishing it, she ordered another.

For the previous year, Robinson had been suffering from various health problems a low energy levels, brain fog, painful periods and dull skin a which she now believes were the result of her diet. She says her decline was gradual and almost went unnoticed. aBecause itas not an instant depletion, you donat suddenly feel bad the next day, itas months down the line. Itas very, very slow.a In just over a year, the balanced plant-based food she cooked daily from scratch, using organic vegetables from the farm she works on, and legumes and nuts vital for protein, had, she felt, taken a toll on her body.

From best friend Carl Reiner to wife Anne Bancroft, the great comic has had to face great loss. But even in the middle of a pandemic, the 95-year-old is still finding ways to laugh

In February 2020, I joined Mel Brooks at the Beverly Hills home of his best friend, the director and writer Carl Reiner, for their nightly tradition of eating dinner together and watching the gameshow Jeopardy!. It was one of the most emotional nights of my life. Brooks, more than anyone, shaped my idea of Jewish-American humour, emphasising its joyfulness, cleverness and in-jokiness. Compared with his stellar 60s and 70s, when he was one of the most successful movie directors in the world, with The Producers and Blazing Saddles, and later his glittering 2000s, when his musical adaptation of The Producers dominated Broadway and the West End, his 80s and 90s are considered relatively fallow years. But his 1987 Star Wars spoof, Spaceballs, was the first Brooks movie I saw, and nothing was funnier to this then nine-year-old than that nonstop gag-a-thon (forget Yoda and the Force; in Spaceballs, Mel Brooks is Yoghurt and he wields the greatest power of all, the Schwartz).

I loved listening to Brooks and Reiner a whose films included The Jerk and The Man With Two Brains a reminisce about their eight decades of friendship in which, together and separately, they created some of the greatest American comedy of the 20th century. The deep love between them was palpable, with Brooks, then 93, gently prompting 97-year-old Reiner on some of his anecdotes. It was impossible not to be moved by their friendship, and hard not to feel anxiety about the prospect of one of them someday having to dine on his own.

Adriana, 27, reporter, meets Streisand, 27, freelance reporter

Adriana on Streisand

What were you hoping for?
A good night, some delish food and to meet someone fun and exciting.

Cherry Kearton popularised nature like a Victorian David Attenborough a using bold techniques to get close to his subjects, as a new exhibition shows

• Filming wild beasts: Cherry Kearton interviewed a archive, 1914

In 1909 two wildlife safari expeditions arrived by ship in Mombasa, Kenya, within days of each other. One party was enormous and led by the adventure-loving US president Teddy Roosevelt; the other consisted of just two men and was headed by Cherry Kearton, a young British bird photographer from Yorkshire.

Over several months on safari the trigger-happy president and his son Kermit killed 17 lions, 11 elephants, 20 rhino, nine giraffes, 19 zebra, more than 400 hippos, hyena and other large animals, as well as many thousands of birds and smaller animals. By contrast Kearton, the first man in the world to hunt with a camera and not a rifle, killed just one animal, in self-defence.

The inventor on the joy of Hockney, a fear of forgetfulness and how his father taught him to sink or swim

Born in Norfolk, Sir James Dyson, 74, studied at the Royal College of Art. He spent four years developing the cyclonic vacuum cleaner and went on to set up his company in 1992. Dyson products, now available in 82 countries, span household vacuums, purifier fans and heaters, lighting, hand dryers and haircare. This year he published his autobiography, Invention: a Life. He is married with three children and lives in Wiltshire.

What is your earliest memory?
Being lowered into a swimming pool by my father who had me in a rope noose attached to a stick. Thatas how I learned to swim.

Make ahead, finish with a flourish: crisp potatoes with a creamy onion dip, spiced potted duck and crumbly Austrian cookies

And so begins the party season. When Iam throwing a party, I want most of my food prepped and ready: no one comes to watch the host be a slave to the kitchen all night, after all. At the same time, I also like to have one or two things that need a bit of last-minute attention a I enjoy the theatre and energy of it a so todayas party food suggestions reflect that balance: something savoury that can be made days in advance, something sweet that can be made weeks in advance and something to be cooked there and then and eaten in the moment. Cheers!

UK readers: click to buy these ingredients from Ocado

UK readers: click to buy these ingredients from Ocado

Dazzling debuts, a word-of-mouth hit, plus this yearas bestsellers from Sally Rooney, Jonathan Franzen, Kazuo Ishiguro and more

The most anticipated, discussed and accessorised novel of the year was Sally Rooneyas Beautiful World, Where Are You (Faber), launched on a tide of tote bags and bucket hats. Itas a book about the accommodations of adulthood, which plays with interiority and narrative distance as Rooneyas characters consider the purpose of friendship, sex and politics a plus the difficulties of fame and novel-writing a in a world on fire.

Rooneyas wasnat the only eagerly awaited new chapter. Polish Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczukas magnum opus The Books of Jacob (Fitzcarraldo) reached English-language readers at last, in a mighty feat of translation by Jennifer Croft: a dazzling historical panorama about enlightenment both spiritual and scientific. In 2021 we also saw the returns of Jonathan Franzen, beginning a fine and involving 70s family trilogy with Crossroads (4th Estate); Kazuo Ishiguro, whose Klara and the Sun (Faber) probes the limits of emotion in the story of a sickly girl and her aartificial frienda; and acclaimed US author Gayl Jones, whose epic of liberated slaves in 17th-century Brazil, Palmares (Virago), has been decades in the making.

Usually when I mess up on stage my bandmates reassure me I played OK. Not this time a|

After our first gig in months, the members of the band Iam in walk off the stage and regroup outside the dressing room.

aHow was that for you?a says the guitar player. aGood?a