Stacey Solomon enjoyed a skiing trip with her family as they visited her rarely seen brother for 'the most special, tiring, adrenaline pumping week'

Politics

The versatile teenager bounced back from a tough start to impress once more against Ipswich

Politics

This is expected to involve Mr Trump formally addressing MPs and Lords - ahead of his first state visit he had been controversially blocked by former speaker John Bercow .

Politics

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

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

Everton had a 94th-minute penalty overturned against Manchester United after VAR deemed Harry Maguire had not fouled Ashley Young and recommended an on-field review.

Politics

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

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

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

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

A globe-spanning study of the waste industry reveals how wealthy nations dump their garbage on the poor while the rate at which we produce near-indestructible rubbish only increasesYou know the drill: plastic and glass containers go in the blue recycling bin, paper and cardboard in the blue sack, vegetable matter in the green compost bin, and the rest in the grey general rubbish bin. Households up and down the land go through variations of these familiar refuse-sorting tasks each week. But where does it actually all go?Into the trucks that pick them up, yes, but after that? It’s a kind of act of faith that we imagine our detritus that we’ve carefully – or not so carefully – categorised is transported to the right location where appropriate measures are taken to dispose of it in the most sensible and ecological manner. Continue reading...

Events

They are beloved by A-listers and surging in popularity. But claims that NAD+ infusions are a fix for addiction are unproven, risky – and possibly illegal, an Observer investigation revealsIt is billed as a “miracle” treatment that can reverse ageing and regenerate brain cells. And getting hooked up to IV drips containing NAD+ has surged in popularity, with record Google searches and celebrity fans such as Kendall Jenner and Joe Rogan.Now NAD+ is being touted in the UK as a treatment for substance ­misuse. Infusions of NAD+, which is derived from vitamin B3, are being sold across the country as a ­“clinically proven” and “effective” way to quit drinking or get off drugs. Continue reading...

Science

Mario Salcedo recently clocked up his 1,000th voyage with Royal Caribbean and is known as 'Super Mario' in cruise circles.

Politics

Celebrities across the US and UK have been channelling 'spornosexuality'- including Stormzy, Tom Holland and Jeremy Allen White.

Politics

Pontiff had fallen into critical condition, receiving high flows of oxygen and blood transfusions in hospital as he battles complex lung infection Pope Francis had a “restful night” in hospital, the Vatican said on Sunday morning, after announcing on Saturday that he was in critical condition following a prolonged asthmatic respiratory crisis linked to pneumonia and a complex lung infection.The 88-year-old pope received “high flows” of oxygen to help him breathe, it was announced on Saturday. He also received blood transfusions after tests showed low counts of platelets, which are needed for clotting, the Vatican said in a late update. Continue reading...

Events

The stakes couldn’t be higher and the risks couldn’t be greater when the prime minister visits Washington this weekFor British prime ministers, with their ideas about the world shaped by the histories of Churchill and Roosevelt, Maggie and Ronnie, and the rest of the folklore about the transatlantic alliance, the prospect of a visit to the White House usually causes tingles of excitement. One of our senior diplomats once offered me an explanation of the allure: “The red carpet is laid out, the national anthems are played, all that stuff is very seductive.” This will be customarily accompanied by ritualistic words about the importance and invincibility of the “special relationship”.Number 10 lobbied hard to get Sir Keir Starmer across the Atlantic early in the second term of Donald Trump and, until recently, Downing Street people were telling themselves that an encounter between the two men needn’t be a disaster and might even turn out to be a success. In the weeks since Trump’s re-e...

Politics

As Meghan tentatively 'drip-feeds her children' into the public eye, royal expert Duncan Lancombe warns 'it's a tap they won't be able to turn off - royal celebrity never fades'

Politics

The prospects of peace and the return of Russian gas looks likely to serve the interests of Donald TrumpThe Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago has reverberated through the global energy industry; unravelling Europe’s decades-long reliance on gas imported via pipelines from Russia, and triggering a global squeeze on gas markets that unleashed a cost of living crisis still felt today.The prospect of a peace deal has many wondering whether the energy industry could be upended once again; this time giving way to a market serving the interests of the US president hoping to broker the deal. Continue reading...

Politics

This powerful new book examines the moral contradictions of the west and asks what liberal values mean in the face of such brutal and sustained obliteration of human lifeLike many people, I have followed the unrelenting horror that has unfolded in Gaza since the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 mainly through the medium of social media. The Instagram reels of citizen journalists on the ground have become for me and countless others the most powerful testimony to the slaughter, destruction and trauma visited on the already beleaguered Palestinian population. Recorded at great risk, they are often heartbreaking and enraging: so many dead infants; so many maimed and traumatised children; so many obliterated families and communities.Some of these witnesses have achieved heroic status among their millions of followers, the likes of Motaz Azaiza, a photojournalist who was evacuated to Qatar after 108 days covering the carnage at close hand; Wael Al-Dahdouh, the Al Jazeer...

Politics

He has a prolific career and extensive portfolio, with his images of British life especially iconic. At 72, he tells Miranda Sawyer, he’s still thinking about what to shoot nextAbout 20 years ago, I was on a judging panel for a photography competition, and one of the other judges was Martin Parr. He was charming and affable, almost teddy bear-ish. He was also utterly ruthless. When it came to deciding which photographs were worthy of a prize, he went through the selection swiftly – no, no, yes, no – without hesitation or doubt. His eye was impeccable. Has he always known what makes a good photograph? “Oh yes,” says Parr. “Right from the beginning. Total conviction. I knew I would be a photographer from the age of 13, 14, and I knew what was good even then. I was obsessive about photography. All artists are obsessive, I think.” We are in his agent’s office, a small upstairs flat on a market street in east London. Parr owns the building, and this room used to be packed with his work a...

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