Director sets out to unmask the secret underwater agent known as Hvaldimir in new documentary

When a white whale, mysteriously kitted out with covert surveillance equipment, was first spotted in icy waters around Norway five years ago it seemed like an improbable chapter from a spy thriller. But working out the true identity and secret objectives of this beluga, nicknamed Hvaldimir by the Norwegians, quickly became a real-life puzzle that has continued to fascinate the public and trouble western intelligence analysts.

Now missing clues have surfaced that finally begin to make sense of the underwater enigma. The makers of a new BBC documentary, Secrets of the Spy Whale, believe they have traced the beluga’s probable path and identified its likely mission.

A retrospective of the work of the prolific US street photographer reveals a singular gift for investing everyday moments with lasting drama

Marvin E Newman, the son of a family of bakers from the Bronx, New York, had dreams of being a painter or a sculptor. After hitchhiking to art school in Chicago after the second world war he found a different way to express that ambition: he became a celebrated photographer during the golden age of American magazines, among the first to understand the possibilities of colour for publications that included Sports Illustrated and Esquire .

This study of women working at a drive-thru corn dog stand on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles was part of a series about California commissioned by Time/Life in 1966. The image, included in a new retrospective collection of Newman’s vast canon of work, is a classic example of his gift for framing American street life: witness the palm tree reflection that creates a Statue of Liberty crown around the head of the woman on the right – itself cast against the skyline of the Hollywood hills. Newman’s California pictures seem to demand a caption from Joan Didion’s great essay on the state, also published in 1966, “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream”: “Here,” wrote Didion, “is the last stop for all those … who drifted away from … the old ways… they are trying to find a new life style, trying to find it in the only places they know to look: the movies and the newspapers.”

The judges have a hard task at this week’s Booker prize ceremony with five of the six shortlisted books worthy winners, though Percival Everett’s James – a retelling of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn – is the title to put your money on

Seven months to read more than 150 novels... how do the Booker judges do it? It’s “impossible”, said Robert Webb, serving on last year’s panel: “You finish as many as you can and the other ones you put to one side after a respectable but undisclosed fraction has been read.” Well, maybe, but somehow I doubt this has been the approach of the novelist Yiyun Li , one of this year’s judges, who once led an 85-day lockdown book club online to read War and Peace , a novel she rereads each year.

Either way, the 2024 panel, chaired by the artist and memoirist Edmund de Waal ( The Hare With Amber Eyes ), have whittled their tottering book stacks down to an excellent six-strong shortlist, five of which would make a worthy winner on Tuesday 12 November.

The chancellor’s budget may have a small effect on UK interest rates. But US tax cuts and tariffs could have international repercussions

Having been fairly critical of my (almost) friend Rachel Reeves’s approach to her first budget, I wish to put in a word of praise for certain aspects of it before, er, continuing to be critical.

The emphasis on devoting more resources to the NHS is long overdue. The new health secretary, Wes Streeting, does no good for the morale of doctors, nurses and patients when he goes on about the NHS being “broken”. In common with friends and family, I have recently had recourse to medical help, and we have been much impressed by what we have witnessed – not least by the good work of staff from overseas.

Staff at Brook House had warned it was ‘only a matter of time’ before someone died as a result of taking the drug

The death of a man in an immigration removal centre a fortnight ago is believed to be linked to the drug spice, in what is thought to be the first case of its kind.

The death comes a year after an official report into conditions at Brook House near Gatwick Airport warned that staff believed “it was only a matter of time before a detained person died as a result of taking spice”.

The musician enjoys slow, quiet Sundays in Germany, likes a catnap and tries to live in reality

Sunday work or rest? My job doesn’t differentiate weekends from weekdays. Most musicians would say that. But I do try to keep my Sundays something like what I think a Sunday should be. Concerts tend to happen on weekends, chances are I’ll be waking up in a hotel. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be piling up my pancakes at the breakfast bar, which is how I would be starting my Sunday if I was lucky enough to wake up in my own bed.

What time are you up? You have this phase in your 20s where you think, ‘I’m a rock star, I don’t have to get up for anything – ever.’ Well, I’m 52 now. I start losing steam at 6pm, and I’ve got way too much stuff to do to be laying in bed beyond a point.

Despite their huge untaxed duchy revenues, King Charles and Prince William are still trying to claim the moral high ground

The British public remains immensely forgiving of royal failings, understandably when the family is fragile and struggling with serious illness. Huge public sympathy has allowed for the revival of a doting, vintage style of reporting that only a year ago might have seemed as absurd as it is, in the longer term, unwelcome.

A recent palace announcement to the effect that Prince William is now a “global statesman” has been received, for example, with the same eager interest as his self-appointment as a homelessness expert, his decision to grow a beard and, a few days ago, his domestic hints: do remember to turn the palace lights out before you leave for another one down the road. Even a professionally made but excruciating video of sunkissed royals romping inspirationally in meadows was accepted, pretty much uncritically, as the new Windsor normal, and maybe it is.

If you don’t want to look like a backing singer in an 80s music video, treat your eyeshadow with a light touch

Back in the day I never understood eyeshadows. That was when people would use a million shades and textures and resemble extras on a dodgy 80s music video. These days, neutrals offer a really modern approach to eye (and lip) makeup. The low-key shades of taupes, browns and plums are perfect for anyone who shies away from complex eyeshadow looks and wants ease – I tend to use just fingers to be honest(with a cotton bud dipped in makeup remover on standby). And they are easy on the eye – yours and everyone else’s.

1. Ilia The Necessary Eyeshadow Palette £40, iliabeauty.com
2. Blink Brow Bar x Priya Alhuwalia Eyebrow Pencil £22, bbb-london.com
3 . Pucci x Guerlain Powder £68, guerlain.com
4. Jones Road Lip and Cheek Palette £28, jonesroadbeauty.com
5. Lisa Eldridge Rouge Experience Refillable Lipstick £49, lisaeldridge.com

Calls for UK to work more closely with the EU on everything from defence and trade to immigration grow following Trump’s re-election

Keir Starmer’s government is coming under fire for having failed over more than four months to appoint new MPs and peers to a key EU-UK inter-parliamentary forum, as pressure grows for closer co-operation with the European Union after Donald’s Trump re-election to the White House.

Today in an article for the Observer online the MEP and former Italian government minister Sandro Gozi, recently elected as the new chair of the 70-strong UK-EU parliamentary partnership assembly (PPA), and the chair of the Labour Movement for Europe Stella Creasy MP say failure to reconstitute the PPA since the July general election is an issue that “urgently” needs to be addressed.