Famous for felines that outnumber its humans, Aoshima is also emblematic of a deeper trend afflicting the country’s rural and island communities

The reason for Aoshima’s nickname was clear before we had set foot on the island. As our tiny vessel slowed to a halt and its handful of passengers prepared to disembark, the quayside was alive with orangey-white blurs – a whiskered welcome party that forms as soon as its members hear the hum of an approaching motor.

The only human here to greet us is Naoko Kamimoto, appropriately dressed in a pinafore with feline designs, who secures the boat with a rope as half a dozen cats swirl around her feet.

Cats lazing in the sun among the Kamimoto’s fishing nets.

Record-breaking explorer, who was first woman of colour to complete solo expedition to Antarctica, turns to north

The record-breaking British explorer Preet Chandi, who made history trekking solo to the south pole, is now turning her ambitions north.

Nicknamed Polar Preet, the 36-year-old from Derby has made three solo expeditions to Antarctica, earning herself four Guinness world records, as well as praise from the Princess of Wales for her “incredible” achievements.

Chandi reached the south pole for the first time in January 2022, travelling 702 miles in 40 days, and becoming the first woman of colour to complete a solo expedition to Antarctica.

The incessant notifications make me pine for the days when staying in touch required greater effort

Though my internal age is set to about 28, the time when I feel profoundly 43 is when I get nostalgic for things rendered obsolete by technology. One of those things was being able to go on holiday without being continually contacted, because the price of sending a text message was the same as a glass of wine. WhatsApp has obliterated that.

Over the past year, I’ve noticed how much harder it has been to switch off as a result of the incessant flow of information. I have walked in the Polish countryside foraging for mushrooms under a crisp blue sky, while listening to a friend’s voice note about their work worries in minute detail. After I spent a glorious day out with my 10-year-old niece in Barcelona, eating dumplings and buying stickers, a friend decided to share a non-urgent but emotionally difficult update about a mutual friend’s bad health. While I was in the Maldives, after I had watched a stingray glide below me in a cobalt-blue ocean, a cousin sent me a rundown of a date where the guy had sneezed all over her food.

Poorna Bell is a freelance journalist and author of Chase the Rainbow

Splicing indie-rock with weird electronics and snottily menacing vocals, this duo stick out from the rest of the capital’s scene – and have turned Tyler, the Creator’s head

From London
Recommended if you like Dean Blunt, Nine Inch Nails, Suicide
Up next Debut single in 2025

Most London bands are so predictable. Oh, you make “jagged post-punk”? And reflect “the malaise and ridiculousness of life online”? Cool. Join the pile. Have fun playing Wide Awake festival this summer.

It seemed important to have a packed calendar. But when I slowed down I made space for spontaneity and fun

I used to equate a packed calendar with a full life. My days were booked up, well ahead of time, for dinners out, pub quizzes, exercise classes, trips to the cinema – activities that I knew to be beneficial or rewarding.

I had been determined to make work less central to my life: I couldn’t burn out when I had so much else going on, I reasoned. But when the time came to follow through on my plans, I tended to find that I had been overly optimistic – not only about how much it was possible to squeeze into a day, but also about my enthusiasm to do so.

A lady grabbed my hand and began praying. That was the moment I thought I might be dying

I grew up in Hampshire, in the UK, in the 1980s, and still remember the terrifying fireworks safety videos from my childhood. They made dire warnings of death and disaster if you picked up a dropped sparkler or went back to a lit firework. Every Guy Fawkes Night, Dad made sure we watched the action from inside the house.

Here in Texas, things are different. I moved to the US in 2007, and each year, as the Fourth of July approached, containers would appear by the road, selling enormous fireworks to anyone, no questions asked. My American wife, Megan, was always safety-conscious. Our son was allowed a sparkler if he was lucky. But for our friends, you couldn’t celebrate Independence Day without huge explosions. We knew that the Fourth of July party we were invited to in 2022, on a friend’s two acres of land, would have fireworks.

Zoe Claymore says she wants to help promote and protect rare habitats by using lichens, ferns and foxgloves

Mosses and cow parsley will feature in a Chelsea flower show garden to celebrate endangered British rainforests.

Vast expanses of the UK were once temperate rainforest. But these moss-covered ancient trees and their lichen have become a rare sight due to deforestation and overgrazing. Dartmoor, for example, once covered with trees, now harbours just a few fragments of temperate rainforest.

Crackling fireplace edges out new series of Squid Game as streaming service’s most watched Boxing Day show in UK

It pays the world’s biggest stars and utilises the most cutting-edge special effects to entice families away from terrestrial TV over the festive period.

But Netflix viewers this year were instead drawn to one of humanity’s oldest sources of fascination: fire.

Woman, 33, arrested after incident in early hours of Christmas Day at house in Norton Canes, near Cannock

A man who was found dead at home in Staffordshire in the early hours of Christmas Day has been named as Louis Price.

A 33-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of murder after officers from Staffordshire police were called to an address in Norton Canes, near Cannock, at about 3.25am, to a man in his 30s suffering a cardiac arrest. Despite the efforts of medics, he died shortly afterwards.