A game of solitaire accompanied by a nasty note, dog food for someone who just lost a puppy … Secret Santa is supposed to be fun, but when it’s not, it can lead to all kinds of trouble

Susanna Beves was a young teacher working at an international school in Germany when she opened a gift that would put her off Secret Santas for ever. The present itself, a solitaire game, “would have been quite nice in the normal circumstances,” she says. But it was accompanied by a note: “It told me that it had been chosen for me because I was single and lonely and likely to remain so, as I had no friends.”

“It was the most awful thing,” Beves, now 57, remembers. When she opened the gift, in a room full of 60 staff members, “I just wanted to cry,” she says. “Everybody was there and everybody was opening their gifts. So I knew that the person who’d written that note was in the room with me.”

In his 46 years of service, Nick Hulme has seen the best and the worst of the NHS. He issues a stark warning about its future

I catch him before he slips out of the NHS ahead of Christmas. After 46 years in the health service, no better time for an exit interview with a leading NHS trust chief executive, who has seen the best and worst of it. Nick Hulme is in brutal truth mode. He has one foot out of the door of his East Suffolk and North Essex NHS foundation trust, just as the resident doctors strike for the 15th time, amid a rampant flu crisis. But he’s off, his time is up.

“I can’t remember a time when the NHS was at such risk,” he says. Labour has put in more money and staff, productivity and activity has risen a bit, waiting times down a bit, yet waiting lists stay stubbornly high. “That’s dangerous ammunition for Nigel Farage and the Conservatives,” says Hulme, “a narrative for people who want to kill the NHS.”

Ten years after I first followed the proposed route, I retraced my steps to see what life was like along the world’s most expensive, heavily delayed railway line

Ten years ago, I walked the route of HS2, the 140-mile railway proposed to run from London to Birmingham, to discover what lay in its path. Nothing had actually been constructed of this, supposedly the first phase of a high-speed line going north. The only trace was the furtive ecological consultants mapping newts and bats and the train’s looming presence in the minds of those who lived along the route. For many, it was a Westminster vanity project, symbolising a country run against the interests of the many to line the pockets of the few. People whose homes were under threat of demolition were petitioning parliament, campaigning for more tunnels or hoping the project would collapse before their farms, paddocks and ancient woodlands were wiped out.

The line, we were told a decade ago, would be completed by 2026. Like many of the early claims about the longest railway to be built in Britain since the Victorian era, that fact no longer stands. The fast train is running – very – late. The official finish date of 2033 was recently revised upwards. “The best guess is that it will begin with a ‘4’ when you can catch a train,” one well-informed observer told me. There’s similar uncertainty about its cost, but one thing is sure: it is catastrophically over budget. When complete, HS2 will almost certainly be the most expensive railway in the world. Nearly 20 years ago, HS1, the line from the Channel tunnel to St Pancras, was completed on time and on budget for £51m per mile (£87m in today’s prices). It was criticised for being twice as expensive as a high-speed route constructed in France. HS2 may cost almost £1bn per mile.

Nour AbuShammala has returned to her partly destroyed apartment in Gaza City. This is her story of multiple displacements, injury and devastation over the last two years

When 26-year-old Nour AbuShammala stepped back into her family’s apartment in Gaza City in October the rooms were gutted, the walls were damaged by bombing, and there was no water or electricity, but it was still home.

Since the outbreak of war in October 2023 she has been forced to flee six times. This is her story of relentless displacement, survival and loss, told using photography and videos provided by AbuShammala and satellite imagery of a ruined Gaza.

Unless urgent action is taken life will be fundamentally altered for the ancient communities who live on its banks

As a leader of one of the oldest gnostic religions in the world, Sheikh Nidham Kreidi al-Sabahi must use only water taken from a flowing river, even for drinking.

The 68-year-old has a long grey beard hanging over his simple tan robe and a white cap covering his equally long hair, which sheikhs are forbidden from cutting. He says he has never got ill from drinking water from the Tigris River and believes that as long as the water is flowing, it is clean. But the truth is that soon it may not be flowing at all.

From tender coming of age stories to images that question the meaning of home, Ed Alcock’s photography blurs the personal with the political

Lib Dems urge Keir Starmer urged to ‘stand up for the BBC’ after US president files $10bn lawsuit against corporation

BBC bosses are “right to stick by their guns” against Donald Trump, a minister has said, after the US president filed a $10bn lawsuit against the corporation.

The UK government is under pressure to throw its weight behind the corporation as Trump demands billions in damages over its editing of a speech he made to supporters in Washington before they stormed the US Capitol in 2021.

Paul Doyle pleaded guilty to 31 offences after more than 134 people including children injured

Josh Halliday, the Guardian’s North of England editor, was at Liverpool crown court yesterday and will be covering the sentencing today. Here is some of his report from Monday:

Paul Greaney KC, prosecuting, warned those in Liverpool crown court on Monday that the footage from Paul Doyle’s Ford Galaxy was “truly shocking”.

It showed the father of three shouting “fucking pricks” and “fucking move” as he drove towards hundreds of fans, some pulling children out of the way as he blasted the vehicle’s horn.

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

ING’s UK economist James Smith has spotted that government hiring is no longer supporting the jobs market.

He writes:

Companies – especially in retail and hospitality – have been shedding workers this year, partly because of earlier tax and minimum wage hikes. Hiring surveys remain weak.

Until recently, that was helpfully offset by resilience in government hiring, but that appears to be changing. Public sector employment has also now fallen for three consecutive months, judging by those payroll numbers.

Police investigating claims Sajid and Naveed Akram received ‘training’ overseas before Sunday’s attack

• Full report: Bondi terror attack

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• What we know so far about the Bondi terror attack

• Follow the latest live updates

The father and son duo allegedly behind the Bondi attack appear to have been inspired by Islamic State, the Australian prime minister says, as police confirmed they were investigating why the pair travelled to the Philippines last month.

The New South Wales police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, on Tuesday alleged Naveed Akram, 24, and his 50-year-old father, Sajid, had recently travelled to the Philippines, which was confirmed by authorities in Manila.