• • Royal Mail hires 30,000 workers to crush strike

    • Temp staff 'to keep post moving'
    • Mandelson 'beyond anger' over strike

    • Victoria Coren: It's enough to make anyone go postal
    • Leader: Politicians should show courage

  • Inmates moved 'to dupe inspectors'

    Wandsworth and Pentonville jails are accused of transferring most difficult inmates to pass inspections

    • Crisis over claim prisons 'duped' inspectors
    • 'Ghosting' threatens to plunge jails into fresh crisis

  • Mournful pride fills Dublin streets

    City welcomes famous faces to say last goodbye to much-loved son, Boyzone star Stephen Gately

    • Funeral mourners praise 'brother, son and hero'

  • 'Sting' reveals race bias in workplaces

    Civil servants created false identities to send CVs to hundreds of employers in bid to uncover discrimination

  • Pakistan launches Taliban assault

    30,000 troops flood into South Waziristan on Afghan border to attack militant strongholds

    • Outcome of offensive will depend on local tribes

  • Labour MPs may sue over expenses

    Backlash grows over Gordon Brown's leadership after treatment over claims according to senior figures

  • Working mums 'don't harm children'

    Improved childcare, flexibility at work and more help from fathers dispels myth, new study finds

• • A life in black and white

    Jane Bown's extraordinary portraits

    Since her portrait of Bertrand Russell appeared in the Observer 60 years ago, Jane Bown has photographed some of the world's most famous faces
    

  • Five dead and helicopter down in Rio

    Host of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics shaken by intense violence as drug warlords clash

  • Violent clashes at climate protest

    Police officer airlifted to hospital as demonstrators try to invade Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal power station

  • NHS sending its own staff private

    Liberal Democrats say £1.5m bill 'raises serious issues' about health service provision

  • France gripped by murder hunt

    Survival expert, suspected of killing actress and her friend, escaped from prison in cardboard box

  • After the mourning, the earning

    With a film about his abortive comeback set to earn $250m, Michael Jackson seems bigger than ever