As it's Mother's Day in the UK and Ireland, we asked Guardian readers to tell us about their relationships with their mothers. Here are some of their inspiring pictures and stories
You can share your own pictures and memories with GuardianWitness
The prospect of unpopular electricity generators being taken to task by no fewer than three regulators has been widely welcomed. But as Terry Macalister reports, there are hard truths to tackle beyond ever-increasing utility bills
This is the biggest investigation of the British energy markets since privatisation and deregulation began in the 1980s. But the inquiry, triggered last week by a trio of watchdogs led by Ofgem and to be undertaken by the new Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) immediately sparked dire warnings that go to the heart of Britain's energy policy paralysis.
British Gas owner Centrica and a raft of analysts said a probe that could last two years will freeze investment in much-needed power stations and make blackouts more likely. Ofgem and energy and climate change secretary Ed Davey countered that a proper and full investigation would clear the air and rebuild trust among consumers.
On the eve of the release of a film celebrating her life, Jane Bown, the Observer's veteran photographer, reflects on her glittering career and her troubled early years
Jane Bown's work in pictures
'I spent my whole life worrying," Jane Bown says, "about time and light. If I had time it was something, but if I had light it was even better. Often, though, I had neither. I remember doing a picture of Danny DeVito: I had five minutes to squeeze him into a little window bay in the Dorchester to catch the last light. I got very quick on the draw. I think I know light, if nothing else."
Talk with Jane, who earlier this month celebrated her 89th birthday, and whom I have known and worked with for 20 of her 60 years at the Observer, quickly falls into a familiar rhythm. She punctuates her conversation which is full of shorthand memories about the people and places she has photographed, or gossip concerning her surrogate family at the newspaper with brief expressions of an ever-present internal dialogue. One part of her is forever apologising ("I'm not at my best today, I'm afraid"; "I'm not sure this is going to work out is it"; "I promise I will calm down in a minute") while another voice is always countering ("We're not doing too badly, are we?"; "This is going rather well"; "Wasn't that fun?"). It's her home counties version of a Samuel Beckett monologue: "I can't go on, I must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."
Neuroscientist says children are being 'labelled' as having ADHD when there could be other reasons for their disorder
One thing we won't be celebrating on Mothering Sunday is the annoying habit mums have of telling their daughters what no one else will that they're fat, badly dressed or having a bad hair day
Mother's Day: your photos and stories in pictures
Mother's Day is when we celebrate the maternal role. But there's one special quality to that role we don't often acknowledge: that mothers can get away with saying things that no one else is allowed to.
"I don't want to freak you out, but I think you may have put on a little bit of weight." Charlotte Alter, an American journalist, wrote in Time magazine last month that her mother said this to her when she was 12: "Horrified relatives said I would need years of therapy to forgive my mother for 'fat-shaming' me into anorexia, that I would eventually turn to drugs and cutting to heal my crippled psyche before I succumbed to a life of crime. None of these things happened. Instead, I have a good relationship with my body and my mother, partly because she told me when I was getting a little plump."
Holly Willoughby's killer combination of glamour and approachability means she's television's go-to presenter,
despite toying with respectability in Celebrity Juice. Elizabeth Day meets her to discover if she's really as flawless as she seems
Is Holly Willoughby too good to be true? She arrives at our interview in the midst of a torrential rain storm, having ridden pillion on a motorbike straight from London's South Bank. Yet when she emerges she is bone-dry and unruffled, like a hologram beamed in by laser. Her unsmudged make-up gives her an unnatural sheen of perfection, as though her face is continually being airbrushed by some unseen hand. Her hair, undented by either motorbike helmet or rain, is a volumised confection of blonde waves. Her smile is broad and unforced. She is pretty, but not unapproachably so. In every respect, Willoughby seems to embody that elusive quality much beloved of prime-time television audiences: relatability.
At 33, Willoughby has the career of someone twice her age, holding down some of the most sought-after jobs in TV. She is co-host of ITV's flagship magazine format This Morning (Most Popular Daytime Programme at the National Television Awards 2014), and fronts the prime-time show Surprise, Surprise. She is also team captain for ITV2's comedy panel game Celebrity Juice, which has become the channel's most-watched programme since its launch in 1998, routinely attracting around 2m viewers.
Meet the 10 most endangered dog breeds in Britain
For more information on breeds and breeders,
contact thekennelclub.org.uk
The party used to split along a distinct left-right divide. These days it's much more complicated. Here's a guide to Labour's warring tribes
In the good old, bad old days when Labour had a strange compulsion for committing suicide in public, the party's uncivil wars were bloody, but at least they were easy to follow. You knew where you were when the Bevanites were slugging it out with the Gaitskellites in the 1950s. As you did when the Bennites were battling with the Healeyites in the 1980s. Those fratricidal frenzies helped to put Labour out of power for long stretches, but the one redeeming feature of the divides of the past is that the battle lines were vividly drawn.
Ed Miliband's Labour is not noisily split along left-right lines. Though his senior team seethes with plenty of personal rivalries, the lid has been kept on them for most of the time. That is one of the lesser sung achievements of his leadership of a historically fissiparous party. It doesn't mean that Labour is not divided. The difference is that the fault lines these days are more complex and various. I offer you my attempt to delineate the five Labour divisions that matter at the moment.
Benedict Cumberbatch last week became the latest actor to take on the part of the great Dane. After 400 years, should the Prince be given a rest?
To judge from the world's social media, thousands are delighted that Benedict Cumberbatch has just announced he will be returning to the London stage, affording fans of Sherlock their first opportunity since the National's Frankenstein to see someone who is rapidly becoming a card-carrying screen idol actually acting in person before their very eyes. I'm pleased too, primarily because he has made such an intelligent choice of play.
There's still time to dash out for a present. Or you can post your mum a message here
Have you remembered it's Mother's Day? Quick! Dash out to the petrol station and grab whatever bad chocolate or limp flowers they have left! Or you could do something slightly more meaningful and post your mum a message below. Explain what she means to you and then send them the link (by clicking on the paper clip next to your comment) of you marking their greatness in public. If your mum isn't around any more, do share your memories too.
The Scottish referendum debate has become a narrow discussion of economics and does no justice to our nation
How could you fail to have an argument about identity in Scotland and at a time like this? A referendum on independence should be the very definition of the moment to have it. You'd have thought the Scottish cultural air would be thrumming with an accrued history of intellectual fighting and flyting over who we are, dating back to the unions of crowns and parliaments, through the Enlightenment and into all the scientific and artistic legacies of 19th and 20th-century Scottish culture, as manifested now, at a constitutional crossroads.
But this is a strange time. The argument about Scottish culture is not being had. The accusation aimed at the Better Together campaign is that it has no positive vision of the UK. But, by exactly the same token, the yes campaign has little more than economic promises, based on speculation that an independent Scotland could be better off financially. In this reductive economic standoff, Scots are defined only by geographical residency, our identity dependent on resolving the currency problem, our future pegged on the dubious question of EU membership. There is lots of angry smoke in the debate, but no real fire.
There are other privileges the justice minister could add to his proscribed list
Admit it: when you heard that books had been banned for prisoners, did you feel a wave of envy for the old lags? I think we can all see the upside if we faced a similar ban ourselves. We'd be off the hook with the latest experimental Polish novel, for example. As we flicked through the literary supplements, gloomily thinking: "This 500,000 word plotless reworking of the Icelandic sagas is very well reviewed; I suppose I ought to read it", we would remember with a rush of delight that books are banned and we could simply settle down in front of an old Poirot instead.
When it comes to prisoners, they have enough to feel guilty about without adding "reluctance to get stuck in to the latest Michel Houellebecq" to the list.
Scottish secretary slams complacency in unionist camp and says: 'By the time we wake up it may be too late'
The cabinet minister in charge of Scotland has issued a stark warning that the country could sleepwalk into a split from the UK because unmotivated unionists are failing to wake up to the threat posed by Alex Salmond's nationalists.
Amid clear signs of tension and division in the no campaign, the Scottish secretary, Alistair Carmichael, said he believed the nationalists had greater "hunger" for victory and could create an unstoppable momentum.
Mark Menzies quits as a parliamentary private secretary to Alan Duncan following Sunday Mirror investigation
A Tory MP has resigned as a ministerial aide following allegations reportedly made by a Brazilian male escort.
Mark Menzies quit as a parliamentary private secretary to international development minister Alan Duncan following a Sunday Mirror investigation into his personal life.
Gun and grenade attack in Kabul as insurgents try to disrupt presidential ballot on 5 April
Taliban fighters who were disguised under burqas stormed the heavily fortified headquarters of Afghan election organisers on Saturday the second suicide attack in Kabul in less than 24 hours, as the country prepares for a crucial but much threatened election.
At least three men took over a campaign office of the presidential candidate Gul Agha Sherzai, and used it to fire guns and rocket-propelled grenades over the security forces protecting the Independent Election Commission.
Lawyers tell of victims facing abusers without representation and children stuck in legal limbo while parents dispute custody
Cuts in legal aid are creating chaos in the family courts, according to legal experts, who warn that the resulting delays are having a serious impact on the children of warring parents.
Couples disputing access and custody of their children now mostly have to represent themselves in court, and this causes lengthy delays in determining the best outcome for the children, they say.
Statement to Observer signed by public figures including sculptors Anthony Gormley and Anish Kapoor, presenter Griff Rhys Jones and Royal Academy's Charles Saumarez Smith
Interactive: what will London's skyline look like?
Some of Britain's most influential figures in the arts, politics and academia have launched a campaign to save London's skyline from being dominated by more than 200 additional skyscrapers.
In a statement in the Observer today, signatories from sculptor Sir Antony Gormley to philosopher Alain de Botton, author Alan Bennett, Stirling prize-winning architect Alison Brooks, and London mayoral hopefuls Dame Tessa Jowell and MP David Lammy warn: "The skyline of London is out of control."
Lib Dem energy and climate change secretary speaks out on eve of publication of major UN report on environment
Britain must lead the international battle against global warming, says energy and climate change secretary Ed Davey, who added that not to do so would be "deeply irresponsible".
His comments, made on the eve of a landmark UN report on the impacts of global warming, are in pointed contrast to chancellor George Osborne's statement in September that he did not want the UK to be "the only people out there in front of the rest of the world".
Prime minister congratulates newlyweds on Twitter as act of parliament comes into force in England and Wales
David Cameron has welcomed Britain's first gay marriages by claiming the coalition has honoured Britain's "proud traditions of respect, tolerance and equal worth" in changing the law.
As the Marriage (Same Sex) Couples Act was introduced on Saturday, Cameron tweeted: "Congratulations to all same-sex couples getting married today I wish you every possible happiness for the future."
In an open letter, the justice secretary says he was only involved in one discussion about reading material availability
There has been no attempt to curtail prisoners' access to books, Chris Grayling has insisted in an open letter to poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy.
The justice secretary said he had only ever been involved in one discussion on the availability of reading material behind bars and that was to allow EL James' erotic thriller Fifty Shades Of Grey to be circulated in women's prisons.
When Hunter Moore posted topless pictures of Charlotte Laws' daughter online, she decided to take him down
I don't realise quite how brave Charlotte Laws is until I see her in action at the United States Court House in Los Angeles. I'd met her at her home two days previously, but for most of the interview she'd been sitting down, and it's only amid the imposing gloom of the 1940s building that I realise how tiny she is less than 5ft tall, despite a pair of platform heels and what exactly it is that she has taken on. We're waiting for a bail hearing in the case of the United States versus Charlie Evens, and Laws is clutching a stash of printouts from the internet which she shows the prosecutor before the judge arrives.
"What are these?" the prosecutor asks.
Evidence from skulls in east London shows plague had to have been airborne to spread so quickly
Archaeologists and forensic scientists who have examined 25 skeletons unearthed in the Clerkenwell area of London a year ago believe they have uncovered the truth about the nature of the Black Death that ravaged Britain and Europe in the mid-14th century.
Analysis of the bodies and of wills registered in London at the time has cast doubt on "facts" that every schoolchild has learned for decades: that the epidemic was caused by a highly contagious strain spread by the fleas on rats.
Anfield manager backs Liverpool to play through the anxiety at the Premier League summit and says big-spending Tottenham are the ones feeling the strain
Amid Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin's talk of 'conscious uncoupling', more over-50s are splitting up. With damaging effects
Dr Penelope Leach has been a passionate defender of babies and children since the 1970s. But she is no upholder of the idea that adults should stay together regardless of the measure of misery; unhappy parents make for unhappy offspring. "Divorce and separation is a safety valve for marriage and cohabitation," she tells me. "And society cannot do without one." So when the break occurs she advocates what she calls "mutual parenting". It doesn't have the slightly sexual, semi-spiritual, yogic-infused ring of "conscious decoupling" but it amounts to something similar, albeit with the celebrity varnish scraped away.
In her latest book, Family Breakdown: Helping Children to Hang on to Both Parents, to be published in June, she advocates two enmity-free households, working together, to make the best of a bad job for children when their parents opt to go their separate ways. The key, she says, is to separate parenting from partnership; so much easier said than done, as she is the first to acknowledge. "Research tells us parents matter even more and for even longer than everybody knows already," she says. "No child is too young or too old to be affected."
The chief medical officer worries that obesity is becoming seen as 'normal'. Let's stop this focusing on extremes of body shape
Chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies worries that being overweight is in danger of being "normalised". Davies points to "vanity sizing", larger shop mannequins, cheap drink, big portions, supermarket bulk buys and news stories featuring photos of the morbidly obese, making the overweight feel (comparatively) slim. Davies, who also calls for a sugar tax, feels that all this makes once-shocking obesity seem unexceptional, standard, a new kind of normal. Maybe, but with this ongoing polarised focus on extremes of body shape, could it also be true that we're losing sight of what normal is?
There is a complex backdrop to what Davies says. First, if obesity is being normalised, this is at least preferable to the "fat-shaming" that still goes on, making the lives of countless overweight adults and children a daily misery. Then there are economic concerns. For many food and drink outlets, and their customers, value for money isn't a marketing conceit, it's a necessity. Likewise, clothes shops find themselves stuck between a retail rock and a hard place: criticised for using skinny mannequins (promoting food disorders), but also for using bigger ones (patronising their customers).