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The ObserverUK newsPolice sniff out mother of all stink bombsThe globalisation debate - Observer specialBritish police forces are considering using vile smells to quell riots, disperse anti-globalisation protesters and end hostage situations. Last year in the United States, the Pentagon commissioned scientists to come up with the mother of all stink bombs which would release the world's worst smell causing rioters and disorderly mobs to flee but not harming anybody.

‘Ring of fire’ annular solar eclipse: in pictures Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email People across the Americas watch brilliant ring of sunlight created during partial eclipse Pejman Faratin Main image: The eclipse reflects in the sunglasses of a young woman at the Astronomical Observatory of the National Autonomous University of Honduras in Tegucigalpa. Photograph: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images Sat 14 Oct 2023 14.

FictionReviewHelen Dunmore acclaims a first novel that was 10 years in the writing and is now on the Guardian First Book award longlistA quotation from King Lear prefaces Matthew Thomas's long and ambitious first novel, and also gives the book its title: "We are not ourselves / When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind / To suffer with the body." In the play, these words are profoundly ironic. Lear wants to find reasons for the Duke of Cornwall's refusal to come at his bidding, but, unconsciously, he foreshadows his own fate.

Life and styleDelphine, 19, a social media star with an enormous global following, was mocked for the sale – but it sold out quickly Belle Delphine, the social media star and so-called “gamer girl”, made headlines this week for selling her used bath water online. Delphine, 19, who has a global following (4.2 million on Instagram), announced she would be selling $30 bottles of “bath water for all you thirsty gamer boys” in an Instagram post that garnered more than 500,000 likes.

It's giving 2022Pharoah SandersThe saxophonist was among an assembly of American jazz musicians who reached across continents to find meaning in sound The day the music died was 24 September 2022. On that Saturday, the legendary tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, a man who blew his horn “as if he was a dragon breathing fire”, passed on, at age 81. With his death came the end of a majestic era, a time of saxophone spirituality and musical mysticism that will probably never be surpassed or even replicated.

Wimbledon This article is more than 6 months oldDaniil Medvedev ends Chris Eubanks’s SW19 fun with quiet act of devastationThis article is more than 6 months oldWorld No 43 takes the third seed to five thrilling setsRussian battles back to reach first Wimbledon semi-finalIt is rare that a match at the summit of elite sport, a contest that rips the prospect of success from the hands of one competitor and drains the body of both, ends in broad smiles and bonhomie all around.

Beyoncé This article is more than 5 years oldGermaine Greer criticises Beyoncé: 'Why has she always got to be naked?'This article is more than 5 years oldControversial feminist says nudity is ‘usually a sign of submission, inequality’ Germaine Greer has criticised Beyoncé for the “sexual display” in her stage outfits. Speaking in a BBC documentary that will be aired on Saturday, called Germaine Bloody Greer, and reported in the Sun and the Mirror, she says: “Someone like Beyoncé – who I think is a fantastic musician, a beautiful voice as true as a bell – why has she always got to be fucking naked and have her tits hanging out?

The ObserverLibrariesWhen Russia invaded Ukraine, a key part of its strategy was to destroy historic libraries in order to eradicate the Ukrainians’ sense of identity. But Putin hadn’t counted on the unbreakable spirit of the country’s librariansThe morning that Russian bombs started falling on Kyiv, Oksana Bruy woke up worried about her laptop. Bruy is president of the Ukrainian Library Association and, the night before, she hadn’t quite finished a presentation on the new plans for the Kyiv Polytechnic Library, so she had left her computer open at work.

Book of the dayFiction in translationReviewThe beginning of a septet, this darkly ecstatic Norwegian story of art and God is relentlessly consuming“You don’t read my books for the plots,” the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse has said. Over the past two decades, Fosse, a playwright, poet, essayist and children’s author as well as a novelist, has won almost every award going in Norway, while his “slow prose” has gained him a cult following in English translation.