Health

The Guardian view on Japan’s cherry blossom: when spring slips out of time

A 1,200-year dataset shows the ‘peak bloom’ is arriving earlier. Global heating is unsettling nature’s rhythms – and their cultural meaning

What if your life turned out to be ‘ordinary’? Slow down and relish this – it might even be enchanting

Being unremarkable is often seen as a sign of moral failure – yet finding joy in the everyday can lead to a mindful, luminous experience

The kindness of strangers: My car was stuck in the middle of a highway. I felt hopeless

I was only in my teens when, late at night, my Datsun ended up dangling off a median strip. Bracing to be harassed, I walked into a truck stop to ask for help …

I'm a psychologist who studies couples: People in the happiest relationships do 5 things on Sundays—that most neglect

Before a new week begins, the happiest couples pause. Mark Travers, a psychologist who studies couples, shares the five simple check-ins help them stay close and emotionally in sync.

Rat poison found in HiPP baby food in Austria, prompting recall

The Dutch baby food and formula brand HiPP has recalled jars of baby food after one in Austria tested positive for rat poison, officials said. No one consumed the baby food.

How to make creme caramel – recipe

The slightly retro French dessert of gently set baked custard in a caramel sauce, and all in a few simple steps

Trump is right to rebalance global drug prices

Americans pay the highest prices in the world for brand-name prescription drugs. Patients in other wealthy countries, meanwhile, pay far less for the exact same treatments. Their government-run health systems bully drug companies into offering huge discounts, and then the United States is left subsidizing drug costs for the rest of the world.

US braces for arrival of flesh-eating maggots across southern border

Federal and state governments are preparing a major response to a dangerous flesh-eating, parasitic fly present in Mexico as it inches closer to the U.S. southern border.

Nathalie Baye, prolific star of French and Hollywood cinema, dies aged 77

Actor who worked with the great French auteurs in the 1970s and 80s and starred in Spielberg’s Catch Me if You Can died of Lewy body dementia, says family

How to Train Your Brain to See Possibility Instead of Doom

Our minds evolved to minimize unpredictability. But if we learn to live with doubt, a world of opportunities opens up.

Lesbians are reclaiming Madonna as we await her new album, Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II

The singer is not only a hero for gay men. For a young lesbian like me in the 1990s, she was an object of desire and an inspiration

“After all the horrible things we’ve been through,’ he said to me, ‘if I die of cancer, it will make a bad story’: Siri Hustvedt on losing Paul Auster”

First there was the double tragedy that tore the family apart – then came a deadly diagnosis. The writer reflects on life after the death of her novelist husband