51 m. ago Marvel and DC announce historic crossover that will be released this year

‘I think we put together some creators and some character ideas ’ confirmed Marvel’s editor-in-chief

Politics

68 m. ago Ukraine war live: Russia launches largest drone attack on eve of third anniversary of invasion

Drones intercepted in at least 13 regions including Kharkiv, Poltava, Sumy, Kyiv, Chernihiv, Mykolaiv and Odesa, according to Ukrainian authoritiesVolodymyr Zelenskyy is urging for peace in the region following the large-scale Russian attack. In a post on X, the Ukrainian president wrote:Every day, our people stand against aerial terror. On the eve of the third anniversary of the full-scale war, Russia launched 267 attack drones against Ukraine — the largest attack since Iranian drones began striking Ukrainian cities and villages. In total, nearly 1,150 attack drones, more than 1,400 guided aerial bombs and 35 missiles of various types were launched this week. I thank everyone who repels such attacks on a daily basis—our aviation, anti-aircraft missile troops, electronic warfare units and mobile fire groups of the air force and defence forces. I also thank those on the ground who save lives and respond to the aftermath of shelling—the state emergency service, medics, and the nationa...

Events

78 m. ago Russians hoping for peace talks and ‘universal joy’ – but will western brands return?

Following last week’s US-Russia talks, the mood in Moscow suggests many are beginning to think about what a post-war reality might look likeAfter three years of war and western isolation, Russians are starting to hope that the recent flurry of US-Russia diplomacy could offer a path to peace in Ukraine – and restore the sense of normality lost when their leader sent tanks across the Ukrainian border.Last Tuesday’s US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia have sent the country’s propagandists and political establishment into euphoria, celebrating what they see as a real chance of achieving Russia’s goals in the war at the expense of Ukraine and its European allies, which have been sidelined from discussing the future of the invaded country. Continue reading...

Politics

78 m. ago Schmeichel review – amazing saves but too few insights into the great Dane

This by-numbers documentary of a glittering goalkeeping career only really kicks off when the footballer and his father get talkingIn Denmark it’s actually pronounced “Schmy-shell” — but that’s the extent of the stunning revelations provided by Owen Davies’s worshipful and rote sports doc about the former goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel, now 61. Footage of all his amazing saves – the ones that won Euro 92 for the Danish national side, or led Man U to the treble in ’99 – impressively affirm the Great Dane’s greatness. The question though is how? And why?At 6ft 4in tall, his imposing physicality obviously had something to do with it (“The span was like an aeroplane!” marvels Sir Alex Ferguson). Schmeichel’s competitive edge and total inability to abide weakness are attributed to the parenting of a tough, Polish-born father who was orphaned at a young age by the second world war; their story of estrangement and reconciliation is worthy of soap opera. But it’s the insights that the Schmeich...

Politics

2 h. ago Marvel and DC announce historic crossover event that will be released this year

‘I think we put together some creators and some character ideas ’ confirmed Marvel’s editor-in-chief

Politics

2 h. ago Chain, chain, chain: political theatre confirms Elon Musk’s Maga hero status at jubilant CPAC

Emboldened and exultant, speakers put less emphasis on baiting liberals and more on spreading the Maga gospelWhat do you give the man who has everything? A ballroom full of cheering conservative activists found out this week when Elon Musk was presented with a chainsaw by Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, who has used the power tool as a symbol of his push to impose fiscal discipline.Wearing sunglasses, a black Maga baseball cap and a gold necklace, Musk giddily wielded the chainsaw up and down the stage. “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy!” he declared. Members of the audience shouted: “We love you!” Musk replied: “I love you guys, too!” And he quipped: “I am become meme.” Continue reading...

Politics

2 h. ago Nigel Slater’s recipes for sausages with spinach and cannellini beans, and artichokes, potatoes, cheese and cider

Hearty warming dishes which make the most of the best seasonal vegThey were hidden between bouquets of parsley and coriander on the green grocer’s display. Fat bunches of true spinach so fresh they stood up by themselves, their leaves as sharp as a Stone Age arrow, tied up with rubber bands. The sort of crisp-stemmed spinach that would laugh in the face of those flabby, round-ended leaves incarcerated in cellophane at the supermarket. I bought four bunches.It was a sausage-and-beans kind of night. Fat sausages from a traditional butcher, coarse-textured and freckled with thyme and black pepper. Continue reading...

Politics

2 h. ago German election 2025 live updates: Voting begins after final poll predicts large gains for AfD

Germany heads to the polls for the fourth snap election in its history

Politics

3 h. ago Liverpool XI vs Man City: Confirmed team news, predicted lineup and injury latest for Premier League today

Arne Slot could have Cody Gakpo back for huge showdown at the Etihad Stadium

Politics

3 h. ago Man City XI vs Liverpool: Erling Haaland injury latest, confirmed team news and predicted lineup today

Pep Guardiola was set to decide on Saturday if star striker would be fit for massive game

Events

3 h. ago Trump’s bullshit blitz has Europe on its knees | Stewart Lee

For the US president’s cheerleaders, the whitewashing of the deaths of ten of thousands of Ukrainians is a small price to pay for sticking it to the wokeratiWas it really only a month ago that the pole-dancer patron, fridge explorer, Brexit get-doer, model bus maker, sofa-strainer, wall-spaffer, current Daily Mail columnist and former British prime minister Boris Johnson eulogised the inauguration of Donald Trump in the Mail, recounting how, as the “invisible pulse of power surged” from the battered bible into the hand of Trump: “I saw the moment the world’s wokerati had worked so hard to prevent.”I hope Johnson is pleased with the way things have worked out. Because now the foolish wokerati have been schooled beyond Johnson’s wettest dreams. It’s the Trump-Putin-bin Salman party! An adjudicated sex offender and convicted fraudster, and a man who sanctioned a chemical warfare hit, killing a British citizen on British soil, have met at the luxury Saudia Arabian hotel of another man, ...

Events

3 h. ago New York City’s Ukrainian community ‘disappointed’ after Trump’s ‘betrayal’

As the US upends decades of foreign policy, those watching the war unfold from miles away resolve to stand strongMembers of New York’s large Ukrainian community expressed a mix of disillusionment, betrayal, defiance and acute uncertainty about what the future holds for Ukraine after tensions escalated this week between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.Geopolitical events in the last week have shocked Ukrainians at home and overseas as well as US lawmakers and allies, as the US president appeared to heavily favor the Russian president Vladimir Putin to dictate peace terms on the eve of the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Continue reading...

Politics

3 h. ago Review: This wireless 2K outdoor camera costs just £100 and has loads of features

Consumer technology writer Gareth Butterfield reviews a new camera from Imou that claims to has a year-long battery life

Economics

3 h. ago Musk tells US federal workers to explain what they achieved last week or be fired

‘Cruel and disrespectful’ request to employees sparks confusion across key government agenciesHundreds of thousands of federal workers have been given little more than 48 hours to explain what they accomplished over the past week, sparking confusion across key agencies as the tech billionaire Elon Musk expands his crusade to slash the size of government.Musk, who serves as President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting chief, telegraphed the extraordinary request on his social media network on Saturday. Continue reading...

Events

4 h. ago Our home has been struck by the dreaded head lice. Must we all shave our heads?

The treatment for lice has improved since our day, but their presence is no less horrifyingMy daughter hadn’t been in nursery for an hour when the phone call came. My darling child, I was informed, had head lice, and I was to collect her at once.At pickup, they pointed at her head and told me they’d seen something ‘wriggling’. Pathetically, I examined her scalp and insisted I couldn’t see anything. This was my first experience of head lice since childhood, so I will admit to being embarrassed. Continue reading...

Politics

4 h. ago Literary gold or betrayal of trust? Joan Didion journal opens ethical minefield

Soon we can all read the late author’s private notes about her therapy. But should we?In 1998, the late journalist Joan Didion wrote a scathing essay about the posthumous publication of True at First Light, a travel journal and fictional memoir by Ernest Hemingway, 38 years after the author killed himself. “This is a man to whom words mattered. He worked at them, he understood them, he got inside them,” Didion wrote. “His wish to be survived by only the words he determined fit for publication would have seemed clear enough.”Just over a year later, in December 1999, Didion began writing her own journal about her sessions with a psychiatrist. She addressed these notes – detailing her struggles with alcoholism, anxiety, guilt and depression, a sometimes fraught relationship with her adopted daughter Quintana and reflections on her childhood and legacy – to her husband, John Gregory Dunne. Continue reading...

Politics

5 h. ago Snubs, omissions, and a secret publicity race: The thorny diplomacy of the Oscars in memoriam segment

The in memoriam tribute serves a worthy cause, but the scrutiny is real, and errors don’t go unnoticed. Clémence Michallon takes a closer look at a segment that tends to make headlines for the wrong reasons

Events

5 h. ago Julen Lopetegui: ‘Of course we could have played better. It was our fault’

Spaniard on the ‘pain and anger’ of his sacking at West Ham and rejecting an immediate return to management“And then suddenly they sacked me.” Julen Lopetegui is running through the reasons to be cheerful – safety secure, 17 shots at the Etihad and the physical stats, an identity emerging, a winter window and a kinder calendar coming – when he uses one of only two English lines in as many hours, delivered as if the final page of a story. The other, not entirely incidentally, is “no comment”, and a smile accompanies both. Five weeks from his sacking at West Ham, the anger and hurt has subsided, on the surface at least. The period of mourning, as he puts it, is over.“My father died and, although you can’t compare them, personal and professional mourning came together,” Lopetegui says. Offers arrived, but it was too soon. Instead he headed to Mexico, where he is building a hotel with his brother Joxean, a former pelota player, and as he arrives at another hotel, this time in Madrid, it...

Politics

5 h. ago Can a brown Hindu be English? English people say yes. Why do so many on the right say no? | Kenan Malik

An argument about Rishi Sunak’s identity reveals how ideas of ethnicity and race have become conflated‘They think they’re English because they’re born here. That means if a dog’s born in a stable it’s a horse.” That was a staple of the comedian Bernard Manning’s routine back in the 1970s. Enoch Powell had, a decade earlier, expressed the same sentiment in more refined language: “The West Indian or Asian does not, by being born in England, become an Englishman. In law he becomes a United Kingdom citizen by birth; in fact he is a West Indian or an Asian still.”Few today would laugh along with Manning or take seriously the claim that only white people can be English. Britain has transformed over the past half-century and most English people now embrace Ian Wright and Idris Elba as being as English as David Beckham or Joanna Lumley. Continue reading...

Politics

5 h. ago ‘I stripped away this caricature that I created’: Pamela Anderson on makeup, activism and gardening

The star of Baywatch and The Last Showgirl answers questions from Observer readers and famous fans including Stella McCartney, Liam Neeson, Ruby Wax and Naomi KleinPamela Anderson, makeup-free and beautiful in a floral Westwood suit, is making a fuss of my dog. My dog likes her. I’m not a particular believer in the idea that animals are great character judges but, in this case, me and the dog are aligned. I like Anderson too. She combines openness with a kind of vulnerability, and you warm to her immediately.Settled on a sofa in a small dressing room off a photography studio, she asks for a coffee and promptly spills it everywhere. “I strive for imperfection,” she jokes. “I strive for it, and I just hit it every time.” Cortado mopped, she takes a breath, before talking excitedly of a new phase in her eventful life. “A door opened, and I walked through,” she says. “It’s hard to believe.” Continue reading...

Politics