ShortcutsCoffeeWhere should you head if you're unhappy with the company's policy on corporation tax? Our reporter samples the optionsIt's not a good time for Starbucks. After it emerged that the company had paid less than £7m in tax since 1998, on sales of £3bn, the chain promised to make a couple of £10m payments to the Treasury over the next two years. This has done little to mollify observers angry at a business that seems to treat tax as an optional inconvenience, and whose first response to the negative publicity was cut paid lunchbreaks, maternity benefits and sick leave from its already low-paid workforce.
College sportsLast year Erin Matson led the UNC Tar Heels to the NCAA field hockey title as a student-athlete. Now the 23-year-old has done it again as a coach who’s just barely older than her players
Sleep eludes Erin Matson. It’s been three weeks since the University of North Carolina’s most decorated field hockey player-turned-head coach shepherded her players to an NCAA championship victory in her debut season; the 23-year-old is believed to be the youngest ever college coach to win a national title.
Sexual healingLife and styleI have an active and enjoyable sex life with my husband, but I can’t reach orgasm without a great deal of drama. Should I try to be more restrained?
I am a married woman in my 50s who enjoys an active and enjoyable sex life. Unfortunately, I can’t climax any more without a great deal of drama, including moaning, heavy breathing, even crying or shouting. We have teenage children and I worry about the embarrassment that I might cause them.
The ObserverDocumentary filmsReviewBombay Beach director Alma Har’el blurs the boundary between drama and real life with three stories examining love and faith
Documentary film-maker Alma Har’el follows her extraordinary debut, Bombay Beach, with another picture that weaves together real life with dramatisation to poetic effect. While not quite as focused or poignant as her debut, this film explores love and faith through three very different stories. In Hawaii, William is struggling to come to terms with the fact that the son he adores is not his biological child.
Anatomy of an artworkPaintingVincent van Gogh’s Prisoners Exercising: expressionism at its most despondentThe Dutch master depicts his fragile state of mind, trapped and unable to escape routine
Going down …This 1890 work needs little explanation. Painted while Van Gogh was heavily depressed and in an asylum in Saint-Rémy, it is expressionism at its most downcast.
Right round …The circular trudge of the watched-over men so perfectly captures the mental rat runs the artist felt trapped in; you can almost hear the shuffle-thump of those boots.