This joke-filled caper of a Muslim-Christian family going on a Lapland holiday after an unexpected bonus will leave your cockles well and truly warmed

A one-off Christmas special must have the following traditional ingredients to be entitled to the name. First and most vitally, it must have a grumpy character to soften over the hour. (And it must be an hour – 75 minutes, tops. Anything longer and we’re out of letting-the-children-stay-up-and-watch-as-a-treat territory and that disqualifies it as a contender. Yes it’s a hangover from the days when television was broadcast at fixed points, instead of thrown into the digital ragbag to be pulled out at any time, but what is tradition if not such harkings-back? Come on).

Second, there must be snow. I know the planet is burning now, but please see above re tradition and harkings-back.

• Milan v Como was intended for Perth on 8 February

• Asian Football Confederation wanted to impose conditions

The proposal to play a Serie A match between Milan and Como in Perth, Australia, has been cancelled due to football sanctions and conditions imposed by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).

The game was set to become the first major European domestic league fixture to be played outside its home country but will now not go ahead because of the financial risks and last-minute complications.

Will Sharpe and Paul Bettany’s new TV drama is flat, airless and banal. It’s a crass affair with a thin, half-hearted performance from Sharpe

Here’s my position. If you are going to create a miniseries about the life, death and music of one of the defining geniuses of the last 1,000 years of western civilisation, and if you are going to use as your source material a script for a great play that was made into a near-perfect film beloved by almost everyone for its wit and immense, profound themes rendered accessible and moving, and for the fact that it had two of the most extraordinary performances ever committed to what may still then have been celluloid – well, you had better be pretty damn sure that you are bringing something new, exciting, different, richer, cleverer, even more illuminating to the table. Otherwise you are going to look like a bit of a berk.

And so, my friends, to the new six-part drama Amadeus, about the life, death and music of Wolfgang A Mozart, one of the defining geniuses of the last 1,000 years of western history. Co-creators Joe Barton and Julian Farino have retained parts of Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play and the 1984 film starring Tom Hulce as Mozart and F Murray Abraham as his rival composer Antonio Salieri, reworked them into lesser forms, and surrounded them with lesser – flat, airless, banal – scenes. Shaffer’s driving interests in the corrupting power of envy, the survival of religious faith under duress, the mystery of talent and what we expect to come from genius are mostly reduced to pale, petty versions of themselves. The performances – well, we’ll come to those.

Dominic Calvert-Lewin became the first Leeds striker to score in five consecutive Premier League games in 22 years to down a lethargic Crystal Palace, and open up a six-point gap on the relegation zone. Mark Viduka achieved the same feat in 2003, helping secure his side’s top-flight status with his instinctive finishing, another achievement the latest Elland Road No 9 is aiming to replicate.

The former Everton striker cannot have imagined almost 40,000 singing his name at Christmas when he was unemployed for much of the summer. It took until mid-August for newly promoted Leeds to convince Calvert-Lewin this was the right place to rebuild his career and they are proving one another right, helped by the scorer of the third goal Ethan Ampadu’s long-throws.

Decision from state supreme court on deal once worth $56bn overturns ruling that prompted angry Musk backlash

Elon Musk’s controversial $56bn pay package from Tesla was reinstated by the Delaware supreme court on Friday, two years after a lower court struck down the vast compensation deal as “unfathomable”.

The decision comes less than two months after Tesla shareholders approved a new plan that could be worth $1tn to Musk, already the world’s richest person, in a decade’s time. It overturns a ruling which had prompted a furious backlash from Musk.

The bad news for Oliver Glasner is that Crystal Palace’s marathon season is about to get even longer. A thrilling draw against Finnish side KuPS in their 27th game of the campaign means that they must now contest a two-leg playoff at the end of February after finishing outside the top eight in the Conference League table.

Having selected an entirely different starting lineup that included four teenagers from the side that lost to Manchester City at the weekend, Glasner saw his second string impress as Christantus Uche gave them a deserved lead at half-time.

As Facundo Buonanotte saddled up beside Alejandro Garnacho on the advertising hoardings in front of the pocket of away supporters after the latter opened the scoring at a jam-packed Cardiff City Stadium, for a moment or two everything seemed all right in the often chaotic world of Chelsea. Then, with 15 minutes remaining, the hosts equalised through David Turnbull’s sublime diving header and another awkward 48 hours were on the cards for Enzo Maresca.

Questions would surely have been asked of him by the Chelsea hierarchy had the League One leaders reached the Carabao Cup semi-finals at their expense. Fortunately for Maresca and Chelsea, the substitute Pedro Neto struck a late goal, his low shot sparing the Premier League side any embarrassment. Garnacho’s second in stoppage time sealed the result.

Company to scrap several electric models and focus on gas and hybrid as US president pulls support for EVs

Ford said on Monday it will take a $19.5bn writedown and is killing several electric-vehicle models, in the most dramatic example yet of the auto industry’s retreat from battery-powered models in response to the Trump administration’s policies and weakening EV demand.

Ford, based in Dearborn, Michigan, said it will stop making the F-150 Lightning in its electric vehicle form, but will pivot to producing an extended-range electric model, a version of a hybrid vehicle called an Erev, which uses a gas-powered generator to recharge the battery.

Barbican, London
An all British programme featured music by Thea Musgrave, Vaughan Williams and William Walton, with Antoine Tamestit an expressive and sensitive soloist in the latter’s Viola concerto

Antonio Pappano’s evangelical embrace of British music continued apace in a concert featuring a welcome rarity by Thea Musgrave, William Walton’s strangely neglected Viola Concerto, and the latest in his ongoing Vaughan Williams cycle, the evocative A London Symphony.

Musgrave, still composing at 97, wrote Phoenix Rising in 1997 for the late Andrew Davis, to whom Pappano dedicated this concert. A 23-minute rollercoaster, it pits a blackguardly timpanist and his stick-wielding allies against a devil-may-care hornist and his brassy backup band. The horn player enters from off stage, the timpanist stalks off in a huff, and somewhere in the middle, for no immediately discernible reason, a phoenix soars aloft in an iridescent haze of tuned percussion. Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra gave it a thorough workout with marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, xylophone and tubular bells creating a magical aura. The musicians certainly revelled in its prickly harmonies, though the theatrical elements might have been pushed further.

Ex-Fed governor Kevin Warsh is at top of his list to succeed Powell as central bank’s chair, president says in interview

Donald Trump declared he “should be listened to” by the Federal Reserve, as he weighs candidates to lead the central bank amid an extraordinary campaign by the White House to exert greater control over its decisions.

The US president said on Friday that former Fed governor Kevin Warsh is currently top of his list to chair the central bank.

Yana Leonova faces multiple charges including fraud and conspiracy for smuggling US aviation parts to Russia

An ongoing FBI investigation into a Belarusian woman accused of smuggling US aviation parts and electronics to Russia is teetering on the brink of collapse after being caught in what one judge called a “Kafkaesque” case brought on by the Trump administration’s attempts to deport her before she faces trial.

Federal prosecutors had worked for over a year to secure the extradition of Yana Leonova, who faces multiple charges including fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering. But their efforts unraveled when immigration officials abruptly issued an order to detain and deport her soon after she was flown into the US last month, a move that plunged the case into legal chaos.

Ally claims former MAS president ‘illegally kidnapped’ and suggests arrest linked to fund for Indigenous Bolivians

Bolivia’s former president Luis Arce was reportedly detained and taken to police headquarters on Wednesday.

His former presidency minister, María Nela Prada Tejada, posted a video on social media saying she had received information from “unofficial sources” that Arce had been “illegally kidnapped” by police.

President did same thing his administration is now calling ‘mortgage fraud’ in case against Fed governor Lisa Cook

Donald Trump signed mortgage documents in the 1990s claiming two separate Florida properties would each serve as his principal residence – the same thing his administration is calling “mortgage fraud” when done by political rivals, records show.

ProPublica unearthed documents demonstrating that within seven weeks of each other in late 1993 and early 1994, the president obtained loans for neighboring Palm Beach homes, pledging each would be his primary dwelling. Instead of living in them, though, he rented both out as investment properties.

A student at a San Jose high school posted a photo of eight students lying in the shape of a swastika on a football field

A photo of eight students lying in the shape of a swastika on a high school football field in San Jose, California, has caused shock and outrage among the Bay Area Jewish community.

A Branham high school student posted the photo to social media on 3 December, and included an antisemitic quote from Adolf Hitler in the caption. A screenshot of the post began circulating on Reddit last Thursday and garnered over 500 comments. The post and the account were removed by Instagram by Friday morning, according to J., the Jewish News of Northern California.

Gunmen abducted 315 pupils and staff last month from St Mary’s school in Niger state as part of spate of kidnappings

Nigerian authorities have secured the release of 100 kidnapped schoolchildren taken by gunmen from a Catholic school last month, a UN source and local media said on Sunday, though the fate of another 165 students and staff thought to remain in captivity remained unclear.

In November 315 students and staff were kidnapped from St Mary’s co-educational boarding school in north-central Niger state, as the country buckled under a wave of mass abductions reminiscent of the infamous 2014 Boko Haram abduction of schoolgirls in Chibok.

The basketball legend says Nascar gives teams too little power with too much risk. His lawsuit could force historic changes to how one of America’s biggest sports is run

Michael Jordan took the stand on Friday in his landmark antitrust fight against Nascar, a case that could reshape how one of America’s biggest sports is run. Jordan’s team, 23XI Racing, and Front Row Motorsports say Nascar holds so much control over everything, from the tracks to the money to the rulebook, that teams have no real bargaining power. Nascar denies that and says the lawsuit threatens to blow up a system that has held the sport together for decades.

The case has already pulled blunt internal messages into public view and laid bare long-running frustrations between teams and Nascar leadership. Denny Hamlin, Jordan’s co-owner, has said the trial will finally “hear the truth” about how the series “really operates”.

An investigation found defense secretary put US forces at risk, triggering fresh demands for his resignation

The Department of Defense’s inspector general released the much-anticipated unclassified report on Thursday about Pete Hegseth’s disclosure of plans for military airstrikes in Yemen in a Signal group chat earlier this year.

It found that Hegseth violated departmental policies when he shared information in the chat, and that if a foreign enemy force intercepted that information it could have endangered the lives of US troops, as the Guardian reported on Wednesday. “Using a personal cell phone to conduct official business and send nonpublic DoD information through Signal risks potential compromise of sensitive DoD information, which could cause harm to DoD personnel and mission objectives,” the report said.

MG4 only managed 281km of its claimed 405km range, while Tesla Model Y came closest to matching expectations

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Electric vehicles are not travelling as far as their manufacturers promise, with independent road tests showing all models analysed have failed to meet their advertised range.

One popular small car produced the worst EV result to date in the latest tests, pulling up more than 120km short of the distance printed on its sticker. At the other end of the scale, Tesla’s latest Model Y SUV was only a few kilometres short of its claim.

President says countries manufacturing and selling drugs to the US are “subject to attack”, adding that strikes wouldn’t be limited to Venezuela

• Trump says he and Hegseth didn’t know about second strike on alleged Venezuelan drug boat

• Pete Hegseth told US soldiers in Iraq to ignore legal advice on rules of engagement

Joseph Gedeon is a politics breaking news reporter based in Washington

The FBI director, Kash Patel, is “in over his head” and leading a “chronically under-performing” agency paralyzed by fear and plummeting morale, according to a scathing 115-page report compiled by a national alliance of retired and active-duty FBI special agents and analysts.

This old-school sitcom about a PE teacher who wakes after being frozen since the 70s is an impeccably deadpan send-up of masculinity. But it hits hardest when this unreconstructed man turns out to be right about life today

You can lay the demise of political satire at the door of stranger-than-fiction governmental turmoil. You can attribute the disappearance of pop culture pastiche to a fractured zeitgeist and the thinning out of the artistic mainstream. Yet there’s no obvious reason for the scarcity of jokes about contemporary society in comedy. Maybe it has something to do with the decline of the sketch show; perhaps it’s simply because there’s far less funny stuff on TV in general (during the 2010s, the BBC’s comedy output almost halved). Whatever the reason, when we get a chance to laugh at modern mores, we should probably take it.

Re-enter Mammoth, an old-school sitcom from the Welsh comedian Mike Bubbins. The 53-year-old stars as the eponymous Tony Mammoth, a PE teacher who was buried by an avalanche on a school skiing trip in 1979. A quarter of a century later he was unearthed – nice one, global warming! – with his middle-aged body and dated values perfectly preserved. Yes we can laugh at this swaggering alpha’s outmoded tastes and borderline offensive views. But the beauty of this series is that the comedy flows both ways: when Mammoth looks aghast at the things that pass for normal in 2020s Britain, it can be hard to deny that he has a point.