There are many ludicrous things that money can buy and that I will duly covet: a therapeutic robotic seal (Paro, from Japan, RRP £5,000), Gwyneth Paltrow’s famously luminous aura, and – the most aspirational of them all – the kind of super-rich personal daily routine that is savagely mocked by harried mere mortals. You know…

When Sahra Koshin first returned to Somalia from the Netherlands in 2008, she was full of hope and courage. Eager to use her expertise in gender development to rebuild her wartorn country, she immediately started work with one of the many UN agencies in Mogadishu. “The moment I stepped into the compound, I saw the…

It is the moment we have been waiting for since we last saw our favourite characters making final preparations as the Wall came crashing down thanks to ice dragon Viserion. Now that it has returned to our screens, we would like to hear your thoughts on the first episode. In the meantime, you can read…

The Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has released 15 years of tax returns, including her returns for 2018. The California senator reports that she and her husband had a federal tax bill of about $700,000 on an adjusted gross joint income of about $1.9m last year. Harris reported an income of about $157,000 in 2018…

Facebook has said it has restored services on Sunday after some users were unable to access its social networking site, photo-sharing network Instagram and messaging app WhatsApp. However, Facebook did not specify the cause or scope of the outages. “Earlier today, some people may have experienced trouble connecting to the family of apps. The issue…

In the Philharmonie de Paris on an overcast Tuesday afternoon, Jean-Yves Leloup is pondering why what may be the most comprehensive exhibition ever assembled about the history of electronic music is taking place in France’s capital. “I don’t understand why the Germans or the British didn’t do it before,” he shrugs. “But we have a…

The Senate has voted to confirm David Bernhardt, a former a former oil and gas and water lobbyist, as secretary of the embattled interior department. Senators voted 56-41 to approve Bernhardt’s nomination to oversee more than 500m acres of public lands and other resources, including national parks, monuments and wildlife refuges. Bernhardt, who was confirmed…

This ended up a timely reminder of the resilience, and ruthlessness, Chelsea can still command on this stage. A tie that might have veered away from them, particularly while they laboured to contain Slavia Prague’s urgent intent, was claimed late on by a marauding full-back, breaking late into the box to meet an inviting centre….

When Julian Assange, disguised as a motorcycle courier, first walked up the steps of Ecuador’s small embassy behind Harrods in central London and asked for asylum, few people – including, surely, Assange himself – could have imagined it would be almost seven years before he next exited the front door. It was mid-June 2012, and…

France must act on the “dire” living conditions of refugees and migrants sleeping rough in Calais and stop systematically evicting people from tents in violation of the right to adequate housing, the United Nation’s housing envoy has said. Leilani Farha, the UN’s special rapporteur for housing, highlighted the “harsh conditions” of an estimated 600-700 refugees…