CATEGORIES

No 298 Bean, cabbage and coconut-milk soup

Deep, sweet heat. A soup that soothes and invigorates simultaneously.

Cottage cheese goes viral: in reluctant praise of a food trend

I was asked recently which food trends I think will take over in 2025.

I'm worried that my teenage son is in a toxic relationship

A year ago, our almost 18-year-old son began seeing a girl, who is a year older than him and is his first \"real\" girlfriend.

BOOKS OF THE MONTH

A roundup of the best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror

Dying words

The Nobel prize winner explores the moment of death and beyond in a probing tale of a fisher living in near solitude

Origin story

We homo sapiens evolved and succeeded when other hominins didn't-but now our expansionist drive is threatening the planet

Glad rags to riches

Sarcastic, self-aware and surprisingly sad, the first volume of Cher's extraordinary memoir mixes hard times with the high life

Sail of the century

Anenigmatic nautical radio bulletin first broadcast 100 years ago, the Shipping Forecast has beguiled and inspired poets, pop stars and listeners worldwide

How does it feel?

A Complete Unknown retells Bob Dylan's explosive rise, but it als resonates with today's toxic fame and politics. The creative team expl their process-and wha the singer made of it all

Jane Austen's enduring legacy lies in her relevance as a foil for modern mores

For some, it will be enough merely to re-read Persuasion, and thence to cry yet again at Captain Wentworth's declaration of utmost love for Anne Elliot.

New year is the ideal time for Keir Starmer to drop his 'bad cop' act

Who is dreading the new year more: Keir Starmer or Rachel Reeves? Most people look forward to the turn of the year as a chance that better things might be on the way, but it's hard for the UK's prime minister and chancellor to glance ahead to the next few months and expect 2025 to be any more fun than the latter half of 2024.

When I go away I don't want to hear what's going on at home

Though my internal age is set to about 28, the time when I feel profoundly 43 is when I get nostalgic for things rendered obsolete by technology.

McCarthyism's paranoia contains a lesson for Trump's second term Richard Sennett

The rise of Donald Trump aroused in me an old fear of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Apocalypse then

As the year 2000 rolled in, worldwide computer chaos was predicted to follow. Billions of dollars were spent to prevent it, yet nothing terrible happened. Was the Y2K bug a hoax or did the IT experts get it horribly wrong?

How a legal weed business ruined a Native American tribe

White investors told the Northern Paiute-Shoshone-Bannock people a cannabis farm could bring them money and jobs - but residents began to question the finances, and then the store and petrol station burned down

Lucky dip The mayor who turned wasteland into a utopia

Mexico City's mayor has never been afraid to court controversy.

Jimmy Carter 1924 -2024

The 39th president was a Renaissance man whoshould be hailed for his environment policy and his work for peace

Stop the clock! How to slow down timeby having fun

Time flies when youre... ina boring routine, according to research, which shows that new experiences can alter our perception of time

Paris TV station that's a lifeline for women in Afghanistan

From a tiny television studio in Paris, 7,000km from Kabul, a slate of female hosts and programming geared to women beams 24 hours a day into homes across Afghanistan even as women are being steadily erased from public life in the country.

Fever pitch The pop star named after an English footballer

The house lights were dimmed in one of Rio's top music venues and, as the star of the show prepared to take the stage, thousands of enraptured fans cried out their idol's name in the darkness: \"Liniker! Liniker! Liniker!\" It was not, though, the England striker turned TV football presenter Gary Lineker the sellout crowd was here to see.

Senior service The barista still going strong at 100

Anna Possi answers the phone in the cafe but immediately asks to call her back.

Raising the bar: Dublin's dry(ish) pub one year on

As young people lose the taste for alcohol, Board's menu of zero per cent drinks and board games finds an eager audience

Unearthed Rare fungi, ghostly palms and hairy herbs

List of new species discovered in 2024 highlights the natural world's fragility as well as the growing extinction risks

The fight to restore street that's a medieval marvel

Choir singers have lived in two handsome terraces of silvery-pink-stoned medieval houses beside Wells Cathedral for more than 650 years.

EU presidency Tusk's revival masks deeper divisions with neighbours

Germany's chancellor appears to be heading for defeat; France's president is mired in crisis.

WHO anger at attack on last working major hospital

The World Health Organization says it is \"appalled\" by an Israeli raid that it said had shut down and partly destroyed the last major hospital still functioning in northern Gaza.

'It was like I was reborn' Ex-inmates adapt to life after Assad

Prisoners in Sednaya prison endured squalid conditions, torture and the noise of fellow inmates being executed

Muan plane crash Runway disaster tests political unity amid leadership crisis

As 2024 drew to a close, South Koreans must have hoped for respite from the political chaos visited on their country in recent weeks.

Rally calls for suspended president's removal

Hundreds of thousands of South Koreans flooded central Seoul last Saturday in the latest wave of protests demanding the removal of the country's suspended president, Yoon Suk Yeol, a day after parliament voted to impeach his acting replacement.

Nato steps up Baltic patrols after possible cable sabotage

Nato is to increase its military presence in the Baltic Sea, the alliance has announced, after the suspected sabotage of an underwater power cable running between Finland and Estonia.