News Atlas — live world news feed

GuardianSep 27Preview

The ‘elixir of long life’: how the elusive Chartreuse quietly became the trendiest drink around

With its garish ‘grellow’ colour, mythological origins, secret recipe and limited supplies, the herbal liqueur made by French monks is now the coolest thing to order at the bar It’s just after 9pm in drizzly Belleville, Paris. Too late for cocktails, too early for bedtime, but up the steep hill that straddles the 19th and 20th arrondissements, digestif hour is in sight.In the past few years, more and more Parisians have been reaching for a glass of Chartreuse, an intensely green/yellow herbal liqueur with a folkloric backstory involving Carthusian monks, cholera and a recipe of omertà-like secrecy. Continue reading...

Morwenna FerrierAlcoholFood & drink industry

GuardianSep 26Preview

Raye’s I Know You’re Hurting urged me to confront a lifetime of depression

I had always ignored my anguished mental state or tried to push it aside, and CBT didn’t work for me – then one song seemed to articulate my painSix months ago, I was driving past John Lewis on the M40 with my wife and stepdaughter, Raye’s I Know You’re Hurting playing on the stereo, when I realised I was crying. It was the third time I’d listened to the song, but it was the first time I’d really heard it. It was as though the lyrics were speaking directly to me: “I can see you standing on the edge … You give when you have little left to give.”Music had made me emotional before, but only ever because of the melody or the arrangement or the orchestration. I have worked in music since I was 21, and as a recording and mix engineer, I’ll listen to a song all day, taking it apart to work out how to make it better. After listening to a song 200 times, it inevitably loses its meaning, and over

Jake Jackson; as told to Olivia LadanyiRayeCulture

GuardianSep 25Preview

Taylor Swift: The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore review – flashes of humanity and bafflingly vindictive love songs

(Republic)This four-track addition to a critically maligned album works hard to remind fans what they love about Swift, with some sweet highs and galling lowsOne downside of turning your release strategies into scavenger hunts and layering clues within your work is that it invites enormous amounts of scrutiny about your potential motive. When Taylor Swift announced an expanded edition of last year’s critically maligned The Life of a Showgirl this week, subtitled The Encore, many fans instantly suspected one of two things: that it was designed to remind Grammy members of Showgirl’s existence during their voting period to determine next year’s nominees, or to oust country ingenue Ella Langley from her record-breaking US No 1 run.If that sounds cynical, it’s also worth remembering that when Swift announced Showgirl last year, she said that unlike her previous album, The Tortured Poets Depar

Laura SnapesTaylor SwiftMusic

GuardianSep 25Preview

‘My generation of novelists is dying’: Rose Tremain on 70 years of writing, and late-life inspiration

As her latest novel about Daphne du Maurier is published, the bestselling author reflects on age and creativity – and why at 83 she has no plans to stop My generation of writers is dying. Of Granta’s fabled list of 20 Best of Young British Novelists, 1983, six are gone, including our most princely satirist, Martin Amis. We’re all approaching birthdays where the cake is too small for the candles. Some of us are wounded: Salman Rushdie by an attacker’s knife, Julian Barnes lives with blood cancer, others with the fatal hurt of being forgotten.But what’s the likely fate of those of us who are surviving – for now? Do readers still love us? When Barnes announced that he was signing off because of illness, was he also intuiting that the younger generations had heard enough from us old birds and geezers who were young when Sean Connery had dimples, when David Hockney first coloured his hair yel

Rose TremainBooksRose Tremain

BBCSep 22Preview

Tech Life

China is competing with the United States and other nations to develop AI.

BBCSep 15Preview

Tech Life

What should children learn in a world transformed by artificial intelligence?

BBCSep 8Preview

Tech Life

Scammers demand money from Instagram users over fake copyright claims.

BBCSep 1Preview

Tech Life

AI can only communicate in languages that it's been trained on.

NYTSep 26Preview

In an $80 Motel Room, a Discovery to Shed Light on the Origins of Life

A scrappy science project led to a significant discovery: two new species of a rare organism that could elucidate a fundamental transition in the history of life on our planet.

Carolyn Y. JohnsonMicrobiologyResearch