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Recent reports about the role of Donald Trump’s special envoy, American businessman Steve Witkoff, in the Ukraine peace negotiations have raised wider questions about why political leaders turn to business figures in high-stakes diplomacy – and whether this can ever work.

The COVID pandemic accelerated remote and hybrid working practices across the world. It also provided evidence that these approaches could work for a wide variety of jobs.

Bromley has never struck me as an exciting place – perhaps because I spent part of my teenage years loitering in its aggressively grey 1980s shopping centre, The Glades. I always found it bizarre that it was technically London; it felt too stiflingly suburban to belong to any city. So…

Frida Kahlo’s 1940 self-portrait, El Sueño (La Cama), or The Dream (The Bed), has sold for US$54.7 million (£41.4m) at Sotheby’s New York. It is now the most expensive Latin American artwork in history, and has set the auction record for a female artist.

In walking the political tightrope of her own budget this week, Rachel Reeves had to broadly satisfy three critical audiences. There were her own MPs in the parliamentary Labour party, business and financial markets and, of course, voters who ultimately determine whether the Labour government is re-elected three or four…

In the middle of the ongoing cost of living crisis, exorbitant displays of wealth are back. Since the beginning of his term in January, US president Donald Trump has been literally bringing the gilded age back to the White House.

Semaglutide, the drug behind the blockbuster weight-loss jabs Ozempic and Wegovy, does not slow cognitive decline in people with early-stage Alzheimer’s, according to two large new studies. The results close the door, for now, on hopes that a treatment for diabetes and obesity might also help protect the brain.

Ahead of the UN’s Cop30 summit, China appeared keen to take on the mantle of new global leader on climate change, stepping into the gap left by the US’s withdrawal from the top spot under Donald Trump.

The extraordinary Brittany Higgins saga, probably one of the biggest Australian political scandals of our time and devastating for multiple people, returned this week to the margin of public attention when one of the legal cases was in the Federal Court.

Following a year in the life of an “ordinary” woman, Carol, Andrea Gibbs’ second play for Black Swan State Theatre Company is a real original.

These days, new technology is presented as inevitable, and resistance is futile. Smartphones and social media for kids? It’s just how it is. Cynical about crypto? You must be a crackpot. Worried about AI slop? Get on board or get left behind.