The Observer Magazine

8 hours ago | theguardian.com | Ajit Niranjan

Europe dismantled 542 river-blocking dams, weirs, culverts and sluices in 2024, a report has found, helping a record number of waterways resume their natural course. The number of removals grew 11% from the year before, according to an annual report from Dam Removal Europe. It found 23 countries had removed a river barrier last year, four of which – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic and Turkey – did so for the first time.

12 hours ago | theguardian.com | Hollie Richardson |Graeme Virtue |Phil Harrison |Ellen Jones

Marie Antoinette9pm, BBC TwoThe second season of this period drama continues to deliver palace gossip, backstabbing, political scheming, a rumbling revolt … and magnificent costumes. It’s spring 1784 and the “affair of the necklace” scandal is being hatched to try to bring down Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. Meanwhile, people are using the queen’s melancholy against her and the court is putting on a comic play – with serious consequences.

22 hours ago | theguardian.com | Anna Bawden

People on weight loss drugs regain all the weight they have lost within a year of stopping the medication, analysis has shown. Analysis of 11 studies of older and newer GLP-1 weight loss drugs by the University of Oxford found that patients typically lost 8kg on weight loss jabs but returned to their original weight within 10 months of stopping them.

23 hours ago | theguardian.com | Dani Anguiano

After months of delays and decades behind bars, Erik and Lyle Menendez now have a long-awaited chance at freedom after a judge reduced their sentences for the 1989 killings of their parents. Their family and massive network of supporters celebrated Tuesday when Judge Michael Jesic resentenced the brothers from life in prison without the possibility of parole to 50 years to life.

23 hours ago | theguardian.com | Nadeem Badshah

A taxi driver has been charged by French police with stealing luggage and cash from the UK’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, and his wife, Nicola Green. The driver took the couple more than 600km (370 miles) from the town of Forli in Italy to the French ski resort of Flaine, Haute-Savoie, last month. The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said Lammy and his spouse were victims in the case and that the driver has been charged with theft after driving off with their luggage.