Texts and letters will be sent to eligible people who had their second vaccine at least six months agoTo mask or not to mask? Opinion split on London undergroundSlow but steady has seen the EU win out in the vaccine raceMinisters told to bar EU from UK…
How leading thriller writer helped reveal plagiarism of Emmy prizewinner
Robert Harris, whose second world war film was copied, tells how the scandal led to George Stevens Jr being stripped of his awardsIt was a just few seconds of vivid footage: joyous scenes of American troops on tanks and Jeeps driving down a Champs Élys…
Slow but steady has seen the EU win out in the vaccine race
Ursula von der Leyen says the union’s vaccination programme is now a success after its stumbling startWe did it,” said Ursula von der Leyen in her annual state of the union address last week. With more than 70% of its adult population now fully vaccina…
Caked crusaders: how The Great British Bake Off took over the world
It seems everyone wants a slice of Channel 4’s action, whether homemade or imported. But what exactly is the attraction?Last week a visitor to the Great British Bake Off set was on the phone to her mother in South Africa. “She was having her hair done …
My grandmother’s Nazi killer evaded justice. Modern war criminals must not
As the 75th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials approaches, Ilse Cohn’s grandson calls for international law to ensure those committing atrocities today face retributionThe man who ordered the murder of my grandmother never stood trial for the crime. N…
Father to 15 children … but were any of blues star BB King’s offspring his?
A new biography says paternity would have been impossible for the musician because he was sterile due to illness and an accidentBB King was born into poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi and raised on a cotton plantation before becoming a street busker then…
‘We don’t want people to be in a panic,’ says chief of Taliban morality police
Exclusive: In his first interview with western media, Kandahar’s enforcer promises things will be different from the brutal 1990sMawlawi Mohammad Shebani is officially in charge of policing morals throughout Kandahar, the Taliban heartland of southern …
Making waves in the Pacific: how Boris Johnson’s Global Britain went rogue
Defence pact with Australia and the US increases chance of confrontation with China and spurs nuclear proliferationLife got a little more dangerous last week. It wasn’t due to the pandemic or the climate crisis. It was entirely the result of the consci…
The Observer view on Anglo-French relations | Observer editorial
The exclusion of France from the Aukus pact leaves the UK at risk of further isolation after BrexitFrance’s extraordinary decision to recall its ambassadors to the US and Australia reflects deep anger over its exclusion from the secretly negotiated Auk…
The kaiser and the paperweight: how Cecil Rhodes helped inspire the first world war
The German monarch’s imperial ambitions were fuelled by the British colonialist – as the story behind a recently discovered relic revealsIt was discovered, dusty and damaged, on a warehouse shelf.Recorded simply as a “paperweight” in the depot inventor…