Ukraine says it has assassinated a high-ranking Russian general in Moscow. Igor Kirillov, who oversaw Russia’s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, was blown up outside his home by a bomb strapped to a scooter less than 24 hours after Kyiv accused him of ordering almost 5,000 chemical weapons attacks against its forces. German chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a vote of confidence in the Bundestag yesterday, meaning the country will face early elections in February. Despite promising higher spending on defence, business and social welfare, the SPD leader secured only 207 votes – far short of the 367 he needed. New regulations that give NHS patients the right to request an urgent second opinion are proving effective. In a trial of “Martha’s Rule” around half the requests led to an urgent care review, one in five of which led to potentially life-saving treatment.

Cheer up conservatives – you’ve won

Merry Christmas conservatives, says Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph. “Time to stop moaning.” Yes, there’s still the odd “supermarket ad featuring a pansexual Santa” or whatever. But the political reality is that the Right is winning. Donald Trump’s second victory is not like 2016, when it looked like an accident that could be “corrected with legal action”. This time, he won the popular vote; his approval rating is at a seven-year high; his party controls Congress; and there’s a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. The US economy is booming. Iran, who Trump hates, is humiliated; Russia is hurting; Nato is more willing to spend money; and the EU suddenly cares about border security.

When Trump visited Notre Dame for its grand reopening earlier this month, he was welcomed like an “elder statesman” and looked totally at home in a building that is itself the “epitome of conservative revival”. The “most powerful woman in Europe” is conservative Giorgia Meloni; in Argentina, the right-wing economist Javier Milei has balanced his country’s budget for the first time in 123 years. Everywhere, the Right has adapted itself to the needs of the people, assembling a coalition of the richest and poorest that, in Marxist terms, simply shouldn’t be possible. The Left, meanwhile, has been utterly unable to change, telling voters off if they don’t sign up to its narrow worldview: Hillary Clinton called Trump voters “deplorable”; Biden called them “garbage”. What all this suggests is that Labour – the major exception to the rightward shift – is not the future, but the “fag-end of a dying order”.

Ed Miliband is widely portrayed as a “comical figure”, says Dominic Lawson in The Sunday Times, but the energy secretary is perhaps “the most historically significant politician in our parliament”. His shock defeat in the 2015 election put in power a party committed to holding a referendum on the EU. He then changed the rules of Labour’s leadership elections, paving the way for Jeremy Corbyn. Perhaps his most important act was in 2013, when as Labour leader he scuttled the government’s push to use air power against the “beleaguered” Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. Barack Obama felt he couldn’t act unilaterally, and so the US didn’t punish Assad for crossing the “red line” of using chemical weapons. The consequences of that – nine more years of autocratic rule, mass immigration to Europe, and so on – are still playing out today.

Some of the most memorable lines in movie history were entirely improvised, says The Independent. In Casablanca (1942), Humphrey Bogart ad-libbed “Here’s looking at you, kid”, having used the phrase when teaching co-star Ingrid Bergman how to play poker. Roy Scheider’s “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” in Jaws (1975) began as in-joke on set. And Jack Nicholson’s “You can’t handle the truth” in A Few Good Men (1992) was written in the script as “You already have the truth”. See more iconic improv here.

The two outsiders hoping to win big in Syria

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is one of two strongman leaders reshaping the Middle East after the coup in Syria, says Gideon Rachman in the FT. “His hated rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, is the other.” Turkey was the only regional power to put its full weight behind Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist group that toppled the Assad regime – the country’s top spy boss visited Damascus days after HTS took power. Erdoğan has long aspired to rebuild Turkish power across the lands of the old Ottoman Empire. Ousting Assad not only gives him a new route to local influence but also has the domestic benefit of weakening the Kurds and easing Turkey’s refugee problem, which should help his bid to win re-election in 2028.

Israel, meanwhile, has raced to destroy Syria’s military capacity, obliterating its navy, bombing its air force and seizing territory beyond the Golan Heights. Netanyahu, like Erdoğan, knows an opportunity when he sees one. Aluf Benn of Haaretz says Netanyahu may be “angling for a legacy as the leader who expanded Israel’s borders after 50 years of retreat”. Many in his coalition government are pushing for Israel to reoccupy parts of Gaza, and the incoming Trump government may give him the nod to formally annex parts of the occupied West Bank. Those “temporary” excursions into Syria may prove permanent. Like Erdoğan, Netanyahu is a “ruthless political survivor” who regards himself as a man of destiny. The two men’s rival ambitions – to be non-Arab giants in Arabia – may well clash in Syria. What will prove decisive is whether the true regional superpower, Saudi Arabia, is more troubled by Turkish Islamism or Israeli land grabs. The side the Saudis pick will win.

All the big cheeses in Dubai and Abu Dhabi drive the same car, says Jeremy Dicker in International Intrigue: the Nissan Patrol. The reason this relatively unremarkable SUV is a must-have for Emirati elites is some very smart marketing. Years ago, when the Japanese firm was first trying to crack the Gulf market, some clever executives gave a whole fleet of the cars to the UAE royal family. “Once the royals started rolling around town in their shiny new Patrols, everyone else wanted one.”

If you’re looking for a cough and cold remedy “fit for a king”, you’re in luck, says the Daily Mail. The National Archives at Kew has unearthed two 15th-century recipes that were prescribed to King Henry VI. The first is a herbal “poultice” that you put on your head, made from camomile, sage wood, betony (a perennial wildflower) and wild purslane (a leafy succulent). The other is a congestion-clearing inhalation made from strong ale, mustard seed and nutmeg. Historian Kathryn Maude, who found details of the remedies among papers from the king’s writing office, describes them as “medieval Vicks VapoRub”.

It’s Miss France 2025, Angélique Angarni-Filopon, who at the age of 34 has become the competition’s oldest ever winner. Until two years ago the former air hostess from Martinique would have been barred from even entering, says Sky News – before that, women over 24 were deemed “too old to be a symbol of female beauty”. (Married women, mothers and those with tattoos were also deemed unworthy.) “People are always talking about my age,” says Angarni-Filopon, who will receive a €60,000 salary for the year along with the use of a car and a flat near the Arc de Triomphe. “I think I am well-preserved.”