As Russia steps up plans for hosting the 2018 World Cup, sports minister Vitaly Mutko says the country will work to reduce racism among fans.

Anzhi Makhachkala have called on Lokomotiv Moscow to identify the supporter who threw a banana at defender Christopher Samba after yesterday's Premier League game in the Russian capital.

Tonight, in Paris, the designer Stefano Pilati will show his swan-song collection for Yves Saint Laurent.

Fruit loop

Makes 12

Tackling The Issues

Talks begin this week on a global covenant to prevent weapons from falling into the wrong hands

Simone Fassari and Camilla Pessi, the award-winning double act Baccala Clowns, bow in triumph because they’ve managed to juggle a single apple. Then they flip coolly through challenging acrobatics, Pessi poised on one hand on Fassari’s head. Pss Pss is a children’s show that works for its young audience, and for adults too.

Whether in the cut-throat field of politics or the fashion industry's corridors of power, this year they left our planet a better place. Celebrate 10 of the best, nominated by Independent writers

This week I've been eating... dried pineapple, banana and mango chips

What’s your idea of the perfect beer garden? Is it beside the sea or in the heart of the city or countryside? Help us find the best and you could win a VIP trip for two to Ibiza.

A 25-year battle by Latin American banana labourers to win compensation from companies including British-Dutch oil giant Shell for exposure to a pesticide which they claim left them sterile and crippled by ill health is set to finally come to a close after dozens of workers filed damages claims.

At least Gordon Ramsay's father-in-law has been caught out in good company. After being exposed yesterday as the progenitor of a second, secret family, Chris Hutcheson has joined a French President, the billionaire Gordon Getty and OJ Simpson's dead lawyer, not to mention Charles Dickens.