Parents and parentingIt’s easy to guess the age of a Susan or a Jayden. US experts explain what makes a name desirable one decade and dated the next
How old is Dorothy? How about Susan, Tyler or Jayden?
These names were popular in the 1920s, 1950s, 1990s and 2010s, respectively, so it’s easy to guess the answer. The past few years have been overrun with tiny Olivias and Elijahs, and many parents are choosing names that wouldn’t have been out of place a few generations back – Hazel, Henry, Vivian.
Rugby unionObituaryJPR Williams obituarySupremely skilful Wales and British Lions rugby player acknowledged as one of the greatest full-backs of all timeIn the closing minutes of Wales’s Five Nations meeting with France at Cardiff Arms Park in March 1976, the home side were resisting an onslaught by the visitors when the French wing Jean-François Gourdon found some space on the touchline by the north stand. Gourdon was then hit by a shuddering shoulder charge from Wales’s full-back, JPR Williams, that all but sent him spinning into the crowd.
WSL player in focusReading WomenInterviewReading’s Sanne Troelsgaard: ‘Teammates ask how I go home and work’Ella BraidwoodDenmark midfielder discusses her online fitness company, stopping for months after her father died and her World Cup dream
Sanne Troelsgaard is, by her own admission, “not a normal professional football player”. Instead of winding down after training – perhaps by watching some Netflix, like her teammates – the Reading midfielder gets straight back to work on what she describes as her “online coaching universe”: that is her own company, Troelsgaard Fitness, set up during the pandemic.
Facial recognition This article is more than 1 month oldRite Aid facial recognition misidentified Black, Latino and Asian people as ‘likely’ shopliftersThis article is more than 1 month oldSurveillance systems incorrectly and without customer consent marked shoppers as ‘persons of interest’, an FTC settlement says
Rite Aid used facial recognition systems to identify shoppers that were previously deemed “likely to engage” in shoplifting without customer consent and misidentified people – particularly women and Black, Latino or Asian people – on “numerous” occasions, according to a new settlement with the Federal Trade Commission.
OpinionCelebrity This article is more than 6 years oldThe ‘arm vagina’ – Hollywood’s latest form of female self-flagellationThis article is more than 6 years oldGaby HinsliffActors such as Jennifer Lawrence have their insecurities fuelled by twisted celebrity norms. But beyond the red carpet, it’s teenage girls who suffer
It all started with the muffin top, that telltale spillage of flesh over the top of a tight waistband. Then came the bingo wing, the supposedly shaming droop of flesh beneath middle-aged arms; or maybe it was the cankle (chubby ankle), or the saggy knee.
The ObserverBiography booksReviewA moving portrayal of an astonishing man with a brilliant brain trapped inside a damaged body, writes Anushka AsthanaChristy Brown: The Life That Inspired My Left Foot, Georgina Louise Hambleton, Mainstream Publishing, £15.99, pp240
Christy Brown once wrote: 'From the gutter of my defeated dreams you pulled me to heights almost your own.'
It was August 1968 and the poem was a dedication to his mother, Bridget, whose recent death had plunged Christy 'into the worst depression he would ever suffer'.
New Zealand This article is more than 4 years old'Earth sandwich': two men, two slices of bread and 12,724km of fillingThis article is more than 4 years oldMen in New Zealand and Spain calculated longitude and latitude to perfectly align both slices An Auckland university student has created an “earth sandwich” with a stranger in Spain, after a long search for an accomplice.
Etienne Naude, 19, placed a slice of white bread on the ground at Bucklands Beach in Auckland, using longitude and latitude to ensure he was precisely opposite a volunteer he had found in the south of Spain after posting for help on Reddit.
(From left) Vicky Krieps as Empress Elisabeth in Corsage; Charles (Steve Martin), Mabel (Selena Gomez) and Oliver (Martin Short) from Only Murders In the Building; Rosario Dawson as Jedi Ahsoka Tano in Star Wars spinoff Ahsoka; and M3gan. Composite: AP/HBO/Lucasfilm Ltd/Universal PicturesPlus Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd join Only Murders in the Building, Nicolas Cage’s first western and a Japanese ‘zom-com’
Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email by Luke BuckmasterNetflixZom 100: Bucket List of the DeadFilm, Japan, 2023 – out 3 August
Dare to bare: (from left to right) Helen and Simon Berriman, Richard Stacey, Fiona and Michael Discombe and Steve Paton at the Naturist Foundation at Brocken Hurst. Photograph: Pål Hansen/The ObserverOne of the unexpected results of the pandemic has been the rise of nudism – so much so that British Naturism is experiencing the fastest growth in new members in 100 years
by Sally HowardIt was summer 2021 and Nick Mayhew-Smith pressed into the bosky depths of ancient woodland outside Hastings.
World newsCalling Islam stupid lands author in courtMichel Houellebecq, whose new novel Platform was released in Britain this month, appeared in a Paris court yesterday charged with inciting religious and racial hatred in an interview about the book, in which he dismissed Islam as "stupid".
The charges, based on a complaint by the Islamic authorities in Lyon and Paris, are being challenged by a group of best-selling authors led by Philippe Sollers and Régine Desforges who have condemned the trail as an attack on freedom of speech.