Soaring global demand, climate change, more speciality teas – it can only mean prices will go up

They're eco-unfriendly and cost the earth to run – but does that deter us from buying capsule coffee machines? Does it heck, says Samuel Muston

Global demand for traditional British tea, biscuits and sausages has seen food and non-alcoholic drink exports rise last year to top £12bn for the first time.

A fuel pipeline exploded yesterday, killing at least 11 people, injuring more than 70 others and destroying homes.

Chosen for the Channel 4 TV Book Club, this lavish saga may help dispel the winter gloom. A love triangle set in the lush hills of Coorg in southern India underlies a similarly undulating narrative that moves between 1878 and 1936.

Hang on, isn't he dead?

Dairy Milk maker Cadbury today looked set for a takeover tussle with US food giant Kraft after it rejected a surprise £10.2 billion approach.

'Values' are only meaningful if you stick to them in bad times as well as good

Forget builders' brew - fancy an infusion of jasmine green tea flowers? Britons are demanding a classier cuppa

It's not always obvious why an ad agency loses an account. But often it is. A glance at the ads they're producing is often evidence enough of the client's rationale.

Premier Foods, the owner of Typhoo Tea and Branston Pickle, has changed its accounting policies, resulting in a restatement of its turnover figures for the past three years. It is also selling peripheral businesses as speculation mounts that it could announce a £1.3bn float within the next two weeks.

Tea makers For a nation of tea lovers, we cut a lot of corners brewing up. Martin Skegg and Michael Oliveira-Salac advise on the perfect cuppa. Photograph by Adrian Burke

TETLEY GROUP, the UK's largest tea maker, yesterday unexpectedly scrapped plans to list on the stock market amid speculation that it had received a bid approach that could top the pounds 400m it planned to raise in the flotation.

Convoys of heavily armed troops, church workers and volunteers are escorting thousands of frightened Tzotzil Indians from at least three villages where armed bands have ruled by threats and violence since March. The gangs, loyal to Mexico's ruling party, are blamed for the massacre of 45 people a week ago in Chiapas state, where guerrillas of the Zapatista National Liberation Army have waged a four-year-old insurgency aimed at securing rights for the region's poor Indians.