Getty Images What can a 1904 cookbook – written in the Bengali language and filled with dessert recipes – tell us about colonialism and food habits? A lot, writes journalist Priyadarshini Chatterjee. On a scorching summer afternoon sometime in the late 2000s, I returned home to the unusual sight of my aunt skittering about in…

The Sandamali family By Nicholas Yong BBC News The Myotsuji temple sits in Aisai, a little known city in the Japanese prefecture of Aichi. Located more than 9,000km (5,600 miles) from her home in Sri Lanka’s Kadawatha district, it is the final resting place of Ratnayake Liyanage Wishma Sandamali. Wishma died on 6 March 2021…

AFP By Shruti Menon and Jake Horton BBC Verify A senior Conservative MP has been criticised for claiming there had been improvements in Afghanistan. Tobias Ellwood, who is chair of the Commons Defence Committee, described it as a “country transformed” following a recent visit. He also called for the UK government to re-engage with the…

Getty Images By Holly Honderich BBC News Michigan’s attorney general has announced charges against 16 people for their role in an alleged false electors scheme after the 2020 election. US presidents are technically elected by slates of electors in each state. Dana Nessel, a Democrat and the state’s top legal official, accused the 16 of…

Getty Images By Max Matza BBC News Police in Nevada have confirmed they served a search warrant this week in connection with the unsolved killing of rapper Tupac Shakur. Detectives carried out the search at a home in Henderson, a suburb of Las Vegas where Shakur was gunned down in September 1996. Las Vegas Metropolitan…

Getty Images By Anthony Zurcher North America correspondent @awzurcher North Korea hasn’t been much of a foreign policy priority for Joe Biden’s administration since he took office in January 2021, but recent escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula are moving it up the list. Now, with the detention of a US soldier who crossed the…

Reuters By Bernd Debusmann Jr BBC News, Washington Since the guns of the Korean War fell silent on 27 July 1953, tens of thousands of US troops have remained in South Korea to cast a wary eye across the 38th parallel to North Korea. Together with their South Korean allies, US forces regularly conduct large-scale…

Reuters By Sophie Long in Las Vegas & Chelsea Bailey BBC News An unrelenting heatwave continues to scorch much of the southern US, leaving more than 90 million Americans under a heat advisory. In Phoenix, temperatures hit 110F (43C) for the 19th straight day, shattering the city’s previous record. Officials said hospitals were using body…

Getty Images By Natasha Booty & Will Ross BBC News Any attempt to arrest Vladimir Putin if he visits South Africa would be a declaration of war against Russia, the country’s president says. Cyril Ramaphosa made the warning with weeks to go before an international meeting happens in Johannesburg, to which the Russian president is…

Two sweltering heatwaves in Europe have been named Cerberus and Charon, but there is no internationally-agreed naming system for these events – and some experts fear it could be counterproductive. The creature was the stuff of nightmares. Three-headed, with gnashing teeth that dripped gore and slobbering jaws that foamed poison, his mane and tail sprouted…