For Taylor Swift fans, 52 concerts in massive football stadiums were never going to be enough to satisfy

China is planning to release cotton from state stockpiles to boost supplies, people familiar with the matter said,

As a plus-size fashion expert who focuses on fit and style — and who absolutely loves being in the water — swimwear is a favorite of mine. But I know firsthand that it is also a category that inspires a lot of shopping anxiety, especially when the best plus-size swim options are online only, meaning you never know what you are going to get.

Call me jaded, but it’s rare that I get genuinely excited about a new beauty brand. There’s a lot out there already — and it’s a lot of the same, if we’re being honest. But sometimes, there comes a new brand that shows up as a disruptor, something new, unique, and so well done it makes me think, okay, this is going to be big.

When Jessica Martinez moved away from home in 2020, a temporary contract brought her to New Jersey as a nurse on the frontlines of the pandemic. But...

Each month, Katherine Singh and Melissah Yang share their picks of can’t-miss TV shows and movies that have them texting up a storm. Trust, you will be too.

Women may still be a minority among migrants crossing the Mediterranean for Europe, but their number is rising and so is their need for special attention after what...

With food prices hiking, many of us are looking to cut the price of our weekly shops – while still eating delicious food. And the answer, Ravinder Bhogal believes, lies in vegetables. “Vegetables are the ultimate economical thing to cook,” says the chef and restaurateur, who was discovered by Gordon Ramsay after she applied for his competition to find “Britain’s new Fanny Cradock” on The F Word. “Meat has become so expensive. If you lavish the same kind of care and attention on [vegetables] as you do a steak or joint of meat, they are going to sing with flavour.” She continues: “Why can’t you take the time to marinate vegetables, inject them with flavour, baste them, add texture to them or play with their textures?” Bhogal, who was born in Kenya to Indian parents and moved to England at the age of seven, says root vegetables are our real saviour when it comes to budget cooking in Britain. “Anything that’s grown in this country, swedes, celeriac… And if you buy in season it’s naturally going to be a bit cheaper.” The 44-year-old, who owns London restaurant Jikoni (the Swahili word for “kitchen”) is vegetarian “80 per cent of the time – then I might have a Sunday roast or something” has released her third cookbook, Comfort & Joy: Irresistible Pleasures From A Vegetarian Kitchen. “There are so many things that you can do with vegetables where you’re just not going to miss the meat. What isn’t there to love about the lightness and brightness of vegetables?” And there’s a real misconception that vegetables can’t be comforting, she says: “For me comfort is about food that nourishes you, that makes you feel well, that makes you feel alive, that makes you feel revived.” It was Bhogal’s early years in a multigenerational household in Nairobi (“My grandparents, my uncle and aunt, their children, my mother’s brood of five, whoever happened to be visiting, there was a parrot, a dog, kittens, chickens, goats – it was a really chaotic household!”) that would pave the way for how she approached food later as a chef. Her grandfather dutifully tended to his shamba – or allotment – and had a deep respect and connection to the verdant soil where many vegetables grew. “When he came from India to Kenya, he completely fell in love with this beautiful red, volcanic soil that just seemed to give and give and give,” says Bhogal. “And he never stop being grateful for that. He’d come from a place where there was so little, and then suddenly, there was this soil that just blessed him and his family with all these beautiful things to eat.” Everything the household ate was either grown by him or came from the “mama mbogas” – local women with smallholdings who peddled their “the freshest hand grown vegetables” from door to door, she says. The chef in the house was her mother though, who was an “exceptionally talented” cook. “There were so many mouths to feed, so you can imagine the level of organisation that it took. She was the commander in chief and we were all her assistants, whether you liked it or not.” As a result, Bhogal learned to cook from her mother’s direction, although she wasn’t always happy about it. “Initially, I really resented it because growing up in quite a patriarchal household, the boys would be outside playing, and the girls would be in the kitchen. And that really sucked to me. “Anything I tried to attempt to cook, [my grandfather] would always tell me how delicious it was and praise me, and I think I made that connection between food and love and winning people over with food.” And the influence of her time in Kenya can be seen in the latest book; think pili pili cassava (one of the go-to carbs in many African nations) or Kenyan maru potato bhajias with tamarind and tomato chutney (potato coated in spiced chickpea flour and fried). Swapping Kenya for England as a child left a mark on Bhogal. “Kenya is like a state of mind, it’s such a bewitching country, it never really leaves you, it clings to you,” she says. “When you grow up with such colour and such a colossal sky… I was outdoors a lot, playing with all the animals [with] this really beautiful, very lush sunny backdrop. When you are plucked from that age seven and turn up in a very grey dark England, you try and hold onto that and keep connected to that.” South East London was “very different and sort of haggard in comparison to Kenya”, she says. “Everything was very small suddenly. I grew up in a flat above a shop and going from huge trees and sky that was ever blue to turning up to this very dark, dank [place]… The adjustment was very, very difficult.” But it’s all culminated in her cookery style now. “I consider myself a hybrid, I’m Indian, there’s Persian ancestry too, I’m British, I grew up in London, I’m also the product of all kinds of the diverse immigrant communities that helped bring me up.” So you’ll find Persian-inspired fermented rice, lentil, beetroot and coconut handvo (a savoury cake) in her new book, alongside Mumbai street food like peanut and golden raisin poha, and English grilled peaches with silken tofu and Thai basil and lime leaf gremolata. The recipe for pea kofta scotch eggs with saffron yoghurt is vibrant amalgamation; honouring memories of her father bringing home a sack of locally grown peas from Nairobi’s bustling city market and shelling them in the kitchen with her mother – it is a hybrid of her mother’s Indian recipe and her British identity. Plus, some that have been tried and tested by her discerning restaurant diners, like mango and golden coin [curry with dumplings] – where the mangos are served whole, stone and all. “I remember telling my husband I was going to put this mango curry on the menu and he was like, ‘You’re insane, how are people going to eat a whole mango?’ And it’s gone on to be one of the most popular things. “I think the whole joy of a mango is the generosity of serving it whole, there’s something about a whole mango that’s so rapturous,” Boghal says. “When it comes to the table people often go, ‘Is it chicken breasts?’ Nothing gives me more joy than to see people using pooris to scrape off the flesh from the mango and pick up the stone and gnaw on it. “I think if you don’t have a problem picking up a lamb bone and gnawing it, why not a mango stone?” ‘Comfort & Joy: Irresistible Pleasures From A Vegetarian Kitchen’ by Ravinder Bhogal (Bloomsbury, £26). Read More Showstopping BBQ main dishes for a hot grill summer 7 TikTok food hacks that actually work Saltie Girl in Mayfair will make you happy as a clam – as long as you can afford it These recipes will keep you hydrated on hot days Three tomato salad recipes that aren’t boring Try one of these pasta recipes this British Tomato Fortnight

SAVE $30: Now through October 12, use code UBER6jcjcqa to get $10 off each of

A father-of-two has had limb-lengthening surgery to increase his height from 6ft to almost 6ft 7in after deciding his legs were “too short” for his body, and hopes to feel “on top of the world” once the £86,000 (USD $106,000) procedure has fully healed. Brian Sanchez, 33, a mortgage broker who lives in Georgia in the United States with his wife, Nidia, 30, and their daughters, Kaisley, two, and Kairi, six, felt in January 2022 that his body was “out of proportion” and he looked like “like a huge thumb”. After some research, he discovered he could have limb-lengthening surgery in Turkey to become his ideal height and as soon as he saw it he thought: “OK, I guess this is what I’m doing.” Brian’s main reasons for wanting the surgery were not only for his physical appearance but also to improve his weightlifting goals in the gym and be around nine inches taller than his wife so they will no longer be at “almost eye level”. When he told his loved ones about his plans, they thought it was “typical of (him)” as just because “something is crazy it never means that (he) won’t do it”. Brian had his first operation in December 2022, which involved breaking his tibia and fibula, putting a rod inside the bones, and fastening it with screws. He underwent a second procedure in March 2023 to extend his femur. To recover, Brian had to be in a wheelchair and turn the screws with an Allen wrench four times a day, but when he is fully recovered he thinks the pain will have been “worth it” as he will be able to “enjoy being taller”. “My wife is pretty tall – we were only about three inches apart – but once I’m fully recovered it’ll be a nine-and-a-half-inch difference,” he said. “It’s going to be really nice just to be able to hug her and have her all the way down there on my chest instead of being almost eye level. “One of the things that I’ll enjoy the most is being able to work out again and put some weight on my legs and have my body look a little bit more how I want it to.” In January 2022, Brian suddenly realised his legs didn’t match his “torso proportions”. He said: “I realised that my legs were always looking weird, and I didn’t know what it was, until one day I was sitting next to my brother-in-law who is almost 6ft 6in, and I was actually a little taller than he was. “I thought that was weird, because I knew he was taller than I am by a lot, and we stood up, and all of a sudden, I started looking and realised my legs were too short for my body. “I’m broad, have long arms, and I’m wide, but my short legs make me look different – I almost look like a huge thumb, like those thumb men from Spy Kids.” After the realisation, Brian, who had never previously had cosmetic surgery, started to “not like (his) aesthetics” and decided to research ways to make himself taller. He said: “I thought I can either find a new hobby, and give up lifting weights, or I can fix the issue. “I started Googling and ran into the procedure from there – as soon as I saw it, I thought ‘OK, I guess this is what I’m doing’.” Brian set himself a goal of becoming at least 6ft 6in tall and said of his loved ones’ reaction when he told them about his idea: “It was a combination of disbelief, but they also said that it is typical of me. “I know this is a very crazy thing, it’s extremely expensive, time-consuming, difficult, painful and even risky in some respects.” In December 2022, he had his first operation in a clinic called Live Life Taller in Turkey, which cost him £30,000. The first procedure involved lengthening the tibia and fibula together. “In the first surgery, they broke my tibia and fibula and hollowed out the inside of the tibia, taking out the bone marrow,” he said. “They then put a rod inside the bone and fastened it with screws and attached the bone segments via pins to external fixators – so you have this piece of steel on the outside of your legs and have these constant open wounds that won’t close until you remove all the hardware.”. His recovery involved being in a wheelchair and using an Allen wrench to turn a bolt on the fixators four times a day at 90 degrees to separate the bone segments a little at a time. Brian continued to do this every day for two months, saying of his painful recovery: “The hardest part of the whole thing was the lack of sleep, but I think the pain will be worth it – once it’s all finished I’ll just be able to enjoy being taller, and hopefully feel on top of the world.” In February 2023, the external fixators on his tibia were removed and he was around three inches taller. In March 2023, he had the second operation, which cost him an additional £56,000, to carry out the same procedure on his femur. He said: “I actually felt great after my femur procedure, and there was almost no pain throughout the entire process, only from lengthening from actually stretching my legs.” Now, Brian is just over an additional three-and-a-half inches taller – making him just under 6ft 7in – but is still in a wheelchair and is waiting for it to be completely healed. He joked: “When it’s fully healed, I’m trying to not have expectations because I don’t want to be disappointed but it’s hard to imagine that I’m not going to enjoy it. “From the few times that I’ve already stood up, it is bizarre to see people that used to be my height come up to under my nose – it’s really weird, and it’s a lot of fun just seeing the world in a slightly different perspective. “I can see above the fridge more easily – not that it’s that important, but it’s cool. I’ll be able to see other people’s bald spots, everything will be just different.” Looking back on his decision to undergo the surgery, Brian said: “I didn’t need to do this procedure, but I really wanted to, and I didn’t know how hard it would be. “So, when I made the decision to do it, I kind of over-estimated how easy it would be and under-estimated how much pain and how much difficulty would be involved. “I don’t regret my decision, and I hope that I’m going to be really happy with the results.” Read More The worst day of the week for heart attacks revealed Husband of non-smoker, 24, who died two weeks after lung cancer diagnosis reveals single telltale sign A Place In The Sun’s Jonnie Irwin admitted to hospital amid terminal diagnosis Triathlete shares race photo where she bled through swimsuit while on her period The telltale sign of lung cancer everyone should know A Place In The Sun’s Jonnie Irwin admitted to hospital amid terminal diagnosis

According to our professional shopping and sale-surfing opinion, the best time to buy a new pair of headphones — especially Apple ones — is during big sale moments. And right now, there’s no bigger sale than the upcoming Amazon Prime Big Deals Day. The two-day-only event offers a variety of bestselling (and expensive) products at a ridiculously amazing discount. Whether you’re looking to upgrade your AirPods or it’s your first time owning Apple’s wireless headphones, these up-to-30%-off deals are so good. Keep on scrolling to check out the AirPods that are right for you — from the most affordable ones to the Tik-Tok-famous AirPods Max over-head ones.

I’ve been a lover of books for as long as I can remember. Junie B.