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Society

  • Food items in a food bank

    How many people in the UK are in ‘hunger and hardship’?

  • A food bank worker carries a basket of tinned tomatoes

    More than 9 million Britons vulnerable to reliance on food banks, research finds

    One million more people are in what Trussell charity defines as ‘hunger and hardship’ than five years ago
  • A pair of black glasses with blue lenses sitting on a black surface

    AI glasses to anticipating falls: firms vie to win £1m for dementia technology

    Longitude prize will give one of five finalists money towards creating an innovation for independent living
  • Closeup of woman's hands holding a tampon

    The ‘huge disadvantage’ women behind femtech phenomenon face

  • Woman's hand with a wedding ring writing on a tablet during a psychotherapy session.

    Scottish ministers ‘mismanaging NHS’, say opposition, as huge hourly rates revealed

  • Two young people smoking cigarettes

    UK campaigners call for tobacco windfall tax and yearly levy on ‘lethal trade’

  • An elderly man holding a walking stick

    Rises in life expectancy have slowed dramatically, analysis finds

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Interviews & opinion

  • Eva Wiseman

    Medical tourism is booming. But is it a price worth paying?

    Eva Wiseman
  • Illustration of a woman in a natural landscape

    Midlife left me asking what was the point of me? But then everything changed, again

    Ros Reines
  • Eco Dewi Beach Cleaners pictured at Newgale beach in North Pembrokeshire.<br>From left to right: Jeremy Wadia (Director of the community interest company) and Katy Fox (Director of the community interest company), stand at the northern end of Newgale Beach in North Pembrokeshire, holding refuse bags, litter pickers, and collected beach debris and rubbish.

    Make it beautiful: seven local heroes improving communities

  • Staff working in a hospital unit

    Noble visions have been proposed for the NHS before. Will this time be different?

    The Secret Consultant
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In mind: focus on mental health

  • Peyo the horse licks the hands of Roger, a patient at the palliative care centre at Calais Hospital.

    ‘Doctor Peyo’: the horse comforting cancer patients in Calais – in pictures

  • illustration

    An illness in the shadows: life with borderline personality disorder

    BPD is one of the mental illnesses we still know least about, but now there is hope of a treatment
  • Yoni Yehuda, an Israeli psychotherapist, with Jack Daniels.

    Cats, camels and a Jesus lizard: the rise of animal-assisted therapy

    Once considered eccentric, using animals in psychotherapy is becoming popular as research reveals benefits
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My working week

  • A woman waits in the shadows

    My working week: ‘I wonder who buys sex from the vulnerable women I try to help’

  • ‘Minor changes make a big difference for disabled people.’

    My working week: 'Julie is disabled and the only one in her team made redundant'

  • GPs have had to adapt patient care during the pandemic.

    My working week: 'A patient arrives at my GP surgery with Covid symptoms'

  • ‘Faith feels lost after the removal of her children. So much of what she knows about herself is as a mother.’ Picture posed by model.

    My working week: 'Fiona's son was taken into care a year ago. Today is his birthday'

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Health

  • Ian Paterson.

    UK news
    Colleague of disgraced surgeon Ian Paterson raised concerns two decades ago, inquest hears

  • Team of surgeons at work

    Medical research
    Scientists create surgical stitch to aid healing by electrical stimulation

    Researchers in China say their suture can speed up wound healing and reduce risk of infection by producing a charge
  • Zoe Williams

    Melania Trump
    Why has Melania Trump come out as pro-choice? Seems obvious to me

    Zoe Williams

  • Florida
    Court must rule whether Florida’s anti-trans law is the work of ‘political bullies’

  • Cambridge
    Family of deceased tenant refused entry to property containing life’s work

  • Sally Field
    Sally Field recalls her ‘hideous’ illegal abortion at 17 as she urges voters to back Kamala Harris

  • Coronavirus
    Severe Covid infections can inflame brain’s ‘control centre’, research says

Blood, sweat & tears

  • Patient receiving chemotherapy

    Watching my cancer patients go through treatment alone is heartbreaking

    Lucy Gossage
    Covid-19 has made this year tougher for those experiencing treatment and those of us who work in cancer care
  • Surgery

    I tried to take my life five years ago. Now I'm grateful to be alive

    Anonymous surgeon
  • Emergency service ambulance with blue lights flashing

    There's a patient I'll never forget. Their burns and screams still haunt me

    Anonymous
  • A protestor outside the Scottish parliament building

    My husband is in a care home. I visit him for 30 minutes each week in a car park

    Anonymous
  • Catherine Pointer University of Southampton general hospital

    I was diagnosed with cancer at 14. Now I work alongside a doctor who treated me

    Catherine Pointer
  • Anonymous as told to Sarah Johnson

    I'm disabled but was told I won't receive critical care if I get Covid. It's terrifying

    Anonymous as told to Sarah Johnson
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Social care

  • Little boy looking out of a window

    The Guardian view on privatised care failures: a service crying out for change

  • Sammy Morris

    Sammy Morris obituary

  • The shadow of a child playing on a swing.

    English council may ask parents of children taken into care to pay half of costs

  • Fiona poses for a photograph sitting on a log in a park or woodland

    Children raised by friends or relatives are being ‘plunged into poverty’, says UK charity

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Central & local government

  • Keir Starmer and Sue Gray.

    Scapegoat Sue Gray’s exit leaves Starmer’s No 10 with nowhere to hide

  • Pupils putting their hands up in class

    Special needs funding claims in English schools ‘increasingly being refused’

  • City and regional mayors pose for a photo outside the door of 10 Downing Street

    Key Labour thinktank recommends major new powers for elected mayors

  • People walk past Birmingham City Council House, a Victorian-era domed building

    ‘A shattering effect’: Birmingham youth services face huge cuts

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Voluntary sector

  • A man pushes a trolley by high shelves of stone objects

    Wellington’s false teeth and wolf bones: English Heritage seeks help to record vast collection

  • King Charles III first-class stamps

    UK charities fear first-class stamp price rise will mean fewer Christmas cards sent

  • Giles Duley and Olive Mutetamfura photographed by Paola Kudacki for the Observer New Review.

    ‘What is it that keeps you wanting to survive?’ Giles Duley and Rwandan genocide survivor Olive Mutetamfura on resilience and forgiveness

  • Naomi Campbell

    Naomi Campbell admits failures at fashion charity but denies misconduct

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Housing

  • Scaffolding surrounds red-tiled and solar-panelled roofs on a construction site

    Housebuilder Vistry loses more than £1bn in value after profit warning

    • An ambulance on a flooded street lined with destroyed buildings.

      Helene-ravaged areas will feel health effects for years: ‘It’s unprecedented’

    • Angela Rayner in hi vis jacket and hard hat walking through a building site

      ‘It’s decimated’: Rayner faces a battle to boost Britain’s social housing

    • A woman looks distracted and pensive as she lies on a bed holding a mobile phone

      The solo penalty, from rent to holidays: ‘Being single is costing me £12,000 extra a year’

    • A US plane lands at the military base on Diego Garcia, part of the Chagos Islands

      UK politics: Tom Tugendhat suggests Chagos Islands deal could lead to China establishing base there – as it happened

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