‘Fighting with arms and legs is something anyone can do. Fighting without them — that’s a challenge’
© Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
Australia chased down a mammoth total as England suffered an early Champions Trophy blow
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Regardless of anxiety by most parents about over-sharing, the president’s aide brought one of his children to the White House
If the reversal of declining birthrates is genuinely a preoccupation of Elon Musk’s, recent reviews suggest that the exhibition of his four-year-old son, “X”, may not be the most effective fertility stimulus.
That there is more chance of the exact opposite, a global stampede for contraceptives, remains likely even if X can be persuaded not to pick his nose and, as the world witnessed last week, idly consume its contents beside the US president’s Resolute desk. I say “idly”. Donald Trump, in attendance, introduced X as “a high IQ individual”. Behind his show of mucoid innocence, the prodigy may have been reflecting, with wry amusement at the double standards, that no woman in his father’s role would get away with bringing a docile child to a presidential press conference, still less one as irksome as himself.
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© Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
© Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
One child died instantly while the other succumbed at the hospital
© ASSOCIATED PRESS
Germany heads to the polls for the fourth snap election in its history
© AP
Hamas accuses Netanyahu of ‘stalling’ release of Palestinian prisoners
© EPA
One of the first places Gordon Cordeiro visited when a judge ordered his release was his mother’s grave
© ASSOCIATED PRESS
This is a collection of photos chosen by AP photo editors.
© Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
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
© AP
‘The night was tranquil, the pope rested’
© Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
When a congressman is abducted from his beachfront home in 1970s Rio, his wife and children are left reeling – for decades – in Walter Salles’s Oscar-nominated drama starring an extraordinary Fernanda Torres
Sometimes, the course of a life changes suddenly and emphatically with an event so final and unequivocal that it shifts the very world on its axis. On other occasions that change, or at least the understanding of that change, comes gradually, with the enormity of the situation obscured by the natural human propensity to hope for a happy outcome. For Eunice Paiva – the phenomenal Fernanda Torres – in Brazilian director Walter Salles’s superb, factually based Portuguese-language drama I’m Still Here, both are true.
When we first meet Eunice, life with her husband, Rubens (Selton Mello), a former congressman and civil engineer, and their five children in a beachfront house in 1970 Rio de Janeiro, is full of friends and laughter; books and art; cigars, whisky and celebration. The flexing muscle of Brazil’s military dictatorship is background noise – the helicopter blades carving up the sky as the kids play beach volleyball; the rumble of a convoy of armoured vehicles on the seafront – that can be tuned out. It feels removed from the liberal intellectual social whirl of the Paiva household.
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© Photograph: AP
© Photograph: AP
As much as we need to stay informed, that relentless ping of potential horrors can’t be good for us
How are you not going mad?” is a thing I’ve heard recently. “How are you not talking about this all the time, how are you merrily, some say stupidly, going about your business as if the world did not feel like a coin in an arcade 2p machine, being pushed slowly but definitely off the edge and tasting of blood?” My answer: I’ve turned off breaking news alerts. More than that, I’ve dramatically limited the news I read. How am I not going mad? This is how I’m not going mad.
Perhaps turning away from the news is a silly and job-endangering thing to admit to as somebody employed by a news organisation. Perhaps it’s unattractive or exposing, as somebody living in a time when news is currency and ignorance is fatal. But I have seen the red-eyed horror of people immersed, I have felt the heat of anxiety, that burning shiver of the spine, and I’ve lain awake beside scrolling thumbs that dig deeper and deeper into algorithms that know us better than our own mothers, and are just as likely to shape who we become.
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© Photograph: Alamy/PA
© Photograph: Alamy/PA
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.
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© Photograph: S Meddle/ITV/Shutterstock
© Photograph: S Meddle/ITV/Shutterstock
The crowds have left and the elements reign supreme on an off-season escape to Newquay
Surfers are bobbing in the whitewater shallows off Newquay’s Fistral Beach, poised for that ecstatic moment when a barrelling Atlantic roller will propel them to their feet. Then it arrives – the Big One. Despite the biting cold the surfers rise in unison, carving into the wave’s lip with effortless balletic grace.
There’s something quite magical about Cornwall off-season. Gone are the crowds; this is the time when the elements reign supreme. Storm Éowyn recently made that very clear, hammering the coast with brutal winds and booming surf. But even in calmer periods, the landscape feels untamed, an unpredictable theatre of darkened skies, crashing waves and howling gusts.
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© Photograph: Connor Duffy/PR IMAGE
© Photograph: Connor Duffy/PR IMAGE
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 Klein
Pamela 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.”
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© Photograph: Venetia Scott/The Observer
© Photograph: Venetia Scott/The Observer
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 reveals
It 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.
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© Illustration: Philip Lay/Observer Design
© Illustration: Philip Lay/Observer Design
Zelensky has demanded that Europe be given a seat at any negotiating table with Russia
© PA Wire
© Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
The hashtag #droppingthingsonmyfoot has been used on hundreds of videos
© Luke Pilling/PA Wire
The stakes couldn’t be higher and the risks couldn’t be greater when the prime minister visits Washington this week
For 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-election as US president, UK policy might be summarised by the phrase “Don’t poke the beast”. Keep the temperature cool. Ignore provocations. Attempt to trade on British heritage – golf, the royal family – with which this US president has an affinity. Put David Lammy out there to suggest that there is lots to respect about the man whom the foreign secretary used to call a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”. Softly-softly was the doctrine and they thought it was bearing fruit.
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© Photograph: Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters
© Photograph: Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters
China says Australia made ‘unreasonable accusations’ and deliberately hyped the situation after naval drills
© Australian Defense Force
Ahead of a career retrospective, Sue Williamson tells how the US pair are dragging her country ‘through the mud’
For more than 50 years, Sue Williamson’s art has been shining a light on South Africa’s problems – first to campaign against the apartheid state, and then to question how far the country has progressed in reconciliation and remembrance.
But as she prepares for her first retrospective exhibition, the 84-year-old artist has a new pair of targets in sight: US president Donald Trump and his billionaire, South African-born adviser, Elon Musk.
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© Photograph: Sue Williamson
© Photograph: Sue Williamson
Photographer Ewen Spencer captures the energy of a garage music night for working-class kids
Ewen Spencer took this picture at a Sunday club night called Twice As Nice at The End in London’s West Central Street in 1999. He’d been a regular there back in the days when it was held at the Colosseum in Vauxhall, south of the river. The move to the West End signalled that its garage music was becoming more a mainstream part of culture. Spencer, who grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne, had been documenting underground party nights for a decade by then for magazines such as the Face and i-D. He was a soul boy at heart, and saw in garage culture similar attractions: “It was working-class kids dressing up for a big night out,” he recalls, “quite different from acid house, for example.”
Spencer’s picture is included in a new Hayward Gallery touring exhibition After the End of History: British Working Class Photography 1989-2024. Spencer was influenced by north-east based photographers such as Chris Killip and Graham Smith; he wanted to make authentic pictures that captured “some of the moves and female-heavy love and jubilation of those nights”, he says.
After the End of History: British Working Class Photography 1989-2024 is at Stills, Edinburgh, 21 March to 28 June
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© Photograph: Ewen Spencer
© Photograph: Ewen Spencer
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 life
Like 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 Jazeera correspondent, whose wife, daughter, son and grandson were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home in the Nuseirat refugee camp; Bisan Owda, who shares videos of the destruction that begin with the same defiant mantra of survival: “This is Bizan from Gaza and I am still alive.”
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© Photograph: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters
© Photograph: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters
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 next
About 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 as well as Parr-type things: his collections of Saddam Hussein watches, Soviet-space-dog ephemera, Spice Girls merch. He was obsessed with gathering all sorts of daft stuff, but he’s stopped now to concentrate solely on his work. Though as he says, “photography is a form of collecting.”
His obsession now is the Martin Parr Foundation, headquartered in Bristol, which he established in 2017 and which is where all of his photos have been moved to (along with the watches, space dogs and Spiceys). The foundation is a collection of documentary photography of the British Isles, his own and other people’s. Alongside maintaining Parr’s huge archive, it buys work by lesser-known photographers, gives bursaries to those who are just starting out, has a library and gallery, curates shows, and is Parr’s legacy, what he’s most proud of. He’s 72, is in cancer recovery and is conscious of his age. “Hopefully it will be of some benefit,” he says. “I’m not going to say I’m saving the world. I never expect photography to change anything.” Perhaps not, but the Foundation is clearly a good thing: the website is great and the current show, featuring Siân Davey’s photos of family life, is excellent.
“Have you been to visit it?” he asks. I haven’t. He looks a bit miffed. He’s quick to pick up on things he thinks I’ve missed about what he does. When we go for a coffee after the interview, he says, almost triumphantly, “You just missed me taking a photo with my phone, of that wall!”
In my defence, there is so much of Parr’s work to see that you could spend your whole life looking at his photographs. He’s been working since the 1980s, has had well over 80 exhibitions all over the world, has published more than 145 photography books. He is madly prolific, with an archive that’s endlessly recategorisable. “If you want me to do a book on dogs, no problem,” he says. “I can come up with 100 pictures straight away. Or cigarettes. I’ve just done a book called No Smoking, using my archive, edited by my gallery here in London.”
Is he constantly thinking about work?
“More or less, yes. I’m either thinking about things I haven’t shot, or things I’ve done. What’s got to be done. What can I do next? Where can I go?”
© Photograph: © Lee Shulman
© Photograph: © Lee Shulman
The comedian, 57, talks about jogging, not drinking, how his kids are the funny ones and why he’s depriving himself of those moreish ice lollies
Sundays to you? My kids are 10 and seven, and my son is always up by 6.30. As a younger man, I would have spent most of Sunday sleeping off a hangover. I don’t drink now.
Do you live in a funny household? My wife doesn’t think I’m funny at all any more, having lived with me for 17 years. Our kids are funnier. If I tell them to ‘read the room’, they’ll look around for things to literally read.
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© Photograph: Tim P Whitby/Getty Images
© Photograph: Tim P Whitby/Getty Images
The best of British athletics will be fighting for medals and the chance to compete at European and World Indoor Championships in the coming weeks on the road to the Tokyo World Championships in September
© Getty Images
If you’ve got no time to make it to the salon, the latest leave-in hair treatments are the only answer
My hair is desperate for a salon treatment. But I have no time. In an ideal world, I want something I can use at home that gives me close to salon results. But it can’t take up too much time, because, well, no time. When I find myself in such situations – alas too often – a leave-in hair treatment is the answer. Leave-in conditioners are super easy; they seal in moisture without weighing down the hair and double up as a detangler, making hair easier to manage. But recent developments in the leave-in category mean it covers even more extensive hair needs. Ouai, Virtue, Aveda and Briogeo have serums for healthier scalps, thus promoting healthier hair. There are treatments to counteract hair thinning: Living Proof, Phillip Kingsley and The Ordinary all have serums that decrease shedding and increase density. For damaged, chemically (over) processed hair, you need a bonding treatment – these are concentrated to repair hair’s broken bonds, which dictate what your hair looks and feels like. (Frizzy, dry hair with split ends is a sign your bonds are not in good shape.) But there’s help from the likes of Olaplex, K18 and again Living Proof. And the treatment takes minutes. Which is perfect when you have no time at all.
1. K18 Leave-In Molecular Repair Hair Mask £30, k18.co.uk
2. Davines OI All In One Milk £23.50, libertylondon.com
3. Olaplex No.0.5 Scalp Longevity Treatment £41, spacenk.com
4. Aveda Scalp Solutions Overnight Renewal Serum £42, aveda.co.uk
5. Sisley Revitalising Fortifying Serum £170, sisley-paris.com
6. Philip Kingsley Bond Builder Restorative Oil £29, philipkingsley.co.uk
7. Living Proof Triple Bond Complex £42, livingproof.co.uk
8. OUAI Scalp Serum £48, lookfantastic.com
9. The Ordinary Multi-Peptide Serum for Hair Density £20.80, theordinary.com
10. Briogeo Scalp Revival Spray £27, spacenk.co.uk
© Photograph: Hero Images Inc./Alamy
© Photograph: Hero Images Inc./Alamy
Accepting the presidential nomination, the Arizona senator tells the Republican National Convention that Americans have been betrayed
‘We want Barry! We want Barry!’ cheered the crowd as Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater entered the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco. ‘The band blared the crusaders’ song of American politics, Glory Glory Hallelujah’, writes Theodore H White in the Observer Magazine on 20 September 1964, with Goldwater’s 89-year-old mother on the cover.
In his speech accepting the presidential nomination, the far-right Arizona senator, with his deep tan and ‘silvery white hair’, aroused both ‘fervour and fear… Then he swung into his theme: “The Good Lord raised this mighty republic, not to stagnate in the swamplands of collectivism, not to cringe before the bully of Communism.”’
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© Photograph: Bill Ray
© Photograph: Bill Ray
Faithlessness doesn’t only have to take the form of infidelity. It can be the slow erosion of trust and care
The question My wife and I live in different countries and see each other once a year. The last time we saw each other we argued all the time and slept in separate beds. I’ll be going to see her soon and I’m worried she’s seeing someone else, although I have no proof. She will expect sex from me, and I think I should protect myself by wearing a condom. How should I broach the condom suggestion without upsetting her, especially if she is actually being totally faithful?
Philippa’s answer It seems that your marriage is not in great shape. Rather than worrying about condoms, I think you need to think and talk about your relationship together. It sounds like you’ll need time to adjust and get to know each other again, and gradually find a place that feels natural and comfortable for both of you.
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© Photograph: True Images/Alamy
© Photograph: True Images/Alamy
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