10 minutes ago Trump taps Pam Bondi for attorney general after Gaetz withdraws; hedge fund boss Scott Bessent to lead treasury: Live

President-elect made flurry of nominations on Friday night to form his new administration

Economics

58 minutes ago Trump’s defense secretary pick Pete Hegseth threatens ‘educational insurgency’ in schools

Pete Hegseth says ‘classical Christian schools’ can act as boot camps to establish ‘foothold’

Events

81 minutes ago Resurfaced clip shows how Trump did a complete 180 on transgender bathroom controversy

‘People go. They use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate,’ Trump said in 2016 about a North Carolina bathroom bill

Politics

2 hours ago The Observer view: Selling a piece of fruit for £4m isn’t bananas, it’s decadent. Art is better than this

The sale of Maurizio Cattelan’s work, Comedian, to a crypto entrepreneur is a grim concept that has little to do with disruptionPaulina Brandberg, the Swedish minister for gender equality and work life, has a phobia of bananas so severe, her aides check rooms for the fruit before she’s due to enter them. Like other sufferers of this most unlikely of conditions, she is triggered by the merest traces of banana: a skin mouldering in a far-off wastepaper basket; a lingering smell; the sense that until recently something bendy and yellow lurked next to the perfectly innocent apples and oranges in the bowl on that coffee table.We can only hope, then, that the minister was – trigger warning – nowhere near the big auction house news of last week, in which a banana sold for $5.2m (£4.1m) at...

Economics

2 hours ago King Charles makes comedian roar with laughter over joke at Royal Variety Performance that plays off Donald Trump's 'they're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs' comments

The King's response to political satirist Matt Forde's joke at the Royal Variety which played off of comments made by Donald Trump made the comedian burst into laughter

Politics

3 hours ago Thousands protest against femicides and sexual and sexist violence in France

Thousands of protesters have demonstrated in Paris and other French cities against femicides and sexual and sexist violence

Events

3 hours ago A caring Thomas Cromwell makes good TV, but beware the ‘yes’ men who enable tyrants| Kate Maltby

Mark Rylance’s sensitive portrayal blinds us to the lessons Henry VIII’s righthand man could offer for Donald Trump 2.0 Thomas Cromwell is back, and this time he’s a romantic. In Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, the latest BBC TV adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Tudor novels, we see Henry VIII’s chief facilitator turn 21st-century empath, offering a listening ear to half the young women of the Henrician court.Mark Rylance, former artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, is an actor with an extraordinary capacity for vulnerability. Here he is at his best and most sympathetic. As Cromwell, we watch him safeguard the victimised adolescent Mary Tudor, coaching her to negotiate her way out of looming execution at the hands of her axe-happy father, Henry. (Cromwell made a promise to Mary’s ...

Events

4 hours ago Trump ally warns Keir Starmer US will 'crush' UK economy if Britain helps arrest Benjamin Netanyahu

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told Prime Minister Keir Starmer that those who follow the ICC's ruling could expect sharp economic consequences

Events

4 hours ago A look at how some of Trump's picks to lead health agencies could help carry out Kennedy's overhaul

The people that president-elect Donald Trump has selected to lead federal health agencies in his second administration include a retired congressman, a surgeon and a former talk-show host

Politics

4 hours ago Keir Starmer played the China card in Rio – and sent a message to a hawkish Donald Trump | Simon Tisdall

The PM and other western leaders are cosying up to Beijing. If the president-elect imposes punitive tariffs on Chinese imports, he will give Xi the upper handBoth were lawyers before they became politicians, but that’s where the similarities between Keir Starmer and Richard Nixon end. The former US president resigned in disgrace at the height of the Watergate corruption scandal exactly 50 years ago. Britain’s prime minister may have been unwise to accept free tickets from Arsenal FC – but he’s not in Nixon’s league.Except, perhaps, was there just a touch of Tricky Dicky about Starmer’s meeting with China’s president, Xi Jinping, at last week’s G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro? Watergate aside, Nixon is famous for his groundbreaking 1972 visit to Beijing, which opened the way to normalised r...

Politics