Your tips and tricks for cutting festive waste; how to host the perfect Christmas dinner; and the best pyjamas for cosy nights and lazy mornings

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Not to sound too Scrooge-ish, but it can sometimes feel like Christmas is the season of overconsumption and overindulgence. Whether it’s wasted food, unwanted presents or single-use crackers, trees and wrapping paper – once we’ve finished decking the halls, a lot of it ends up decking landfill.

Our handy guide to cutting Christmas waste has lots of useful ideas, but we also asked you for your tips and tricks. From alternative trees to an ingenious way to use up leftovers, here are your top hacks for a more sustainable festive season.

Benjamin Lewis pleads guilty to harassing Christians by dumping dead deer and lambs in New Forest

A 47-year-old man has admitted harassing Christians by dumping animal carcasses outside churches in and around an English forest.

Benjamin Lewis admitted seven offences relating to incidents in which dead deer and lambs were left at churches in the New Forest in Hampshire earlier this year.

Paul Doyle, 54, is due to be sentenced on Tuesday after admitting 31 offences against 21 adults and eight children

A man was “in a rage” as he mowed down dozens of Liverpool football club fans at a victory parade in what many feared was a terrorist attack, a court has heard.

Victims of Paul Doyle wept as dashcam footage showed bodies spinning through the air as he accelerated into crowds while screaming: “Fucking hell, move!”

Just 10,000 out of economic bloc’s 6m trucks are electric and are more likely to be operating on short routes

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The chances of the European trucking industry hitting zero emissions targets are “dire”, an industry body has warned, as it emerged that only a tiny amount of lorries delivering goods in the EU are electric.

Speaking as the European Commission prepares to water down electric car targets, the boss of the association for commercial vehicles called on the commission to commit to an urgent review of the sector, tackling problems including lack of public charging points, lack of tax breaks for trucks and high energy costs.

Returning in high style to the operatic electroclash that first made her name, the zest and zip of these songs still sounds truly innovative
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On her sixth album, pop’s queen of the dramatic reinvention did something more shocking than meat dresses and humanoid motorbikes: Lady Gaga looked back.

Unlike the smooth tech-house flavour of its predecessor Chromatica, and diametrically opposed to the dinner jazz of her work with Tony Bennett, on Mayhem she returned to the operatic electroclash that powered her first two albums. There are synths that sound like a Dyson on its last legs. There are the kind of trashy guitars that contractually can only be played by someone sporting a lime mohawk, low-riding leather trousers and nothing else. There is the baby talk of her biggest hit Bad Romance, only where that was “Ro-ma, ro-ma-ma / Gaga, ooh la la” it’s now “Ama ooh na-na / Abracadabra, mutta ooh Gaga”. You can see the difference, right?

Prime minister Anthony Albanese says ‘we are stronger than the cowards’ as people return to the scene of Australia’s worst ever terror attack

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In the fading light, they came back to Bondi, to light candles, to sing and to stand together, in solidarity and in defiance of the terror that had been visited upon their beach, their world.

Across Bondi, and Sydney, and Australia, people lit candles in solidarity with the Jewish community which suffered the worst antisemitic attack in the country’s history when two gunmen allegedly opened fire on a Hanukah celebration at Bondi Beach shortly after 6:40pm on Sunday evening.

Fifty years on Aitor Aguirre and Sergio Manzanera still share a connection after their protest against executions in Spain in 1975

Amid the clatter of studs and the shouts of encouragement, the players of Racing Santander filed out of the home dressing room and into the tunnel to face their opponents. All of them, that was, except two. The broad-shouldered centre-forward Aitor Aguirre and the winger Sergio Manzanera lingered furtively.

“We said that if we could do something to damage this military regime, we should,” recalls Aguirre on the terrace of the restaurant he ran for many years after his retirement. “But it had to be subtle, or they wouldn’t let us out on the field. So, we slipped into the toilets with a pair of bootlaces. I tied one onto Sergio, and he tied one onto me, so they looked like armbands.”

AA sounds out buyers, and owners of fellow roadside assistance provider prefer IPO of similar value

The private equity owners of the AA, Britain’s biggest roadside recovery business, are looking for a potential £5bn sale or stock market flotation, while the owners of the rival RAC are targeting a London listing with a similar valuation.

The AA, which provides roadside assistance as well as insurance and driving lessons, is owned by a consortium including TowerBrook Capital Partners, Warburg Pincus and Stonepeak, and has been sounding out buyers, in news first reported by the Financial Times.

The business is valued at £5bn and is thought to have sparked interest from private equity companies and strategic buyers. The owners are also considering floating the AA on the London stock market – a decade on from its flotation by previous private equity owners. The plans are still in the early stages.

Zelenskyy to meet British, French and German leaders, with Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, also invited

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European leaders including Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron will meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday in a show of support hosted by the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz , as the US pushes for a swift end to the war in Ukraine.

The British prime minister, French president and the heads of Nato and the EU, who have criticised previous US proposals to end the Russian invasion as too favourable to Moscow , are set to convene with Zelenskyy on Monday evening at Merz’s offices in central Berlin.