A mystery surrounds the shape of the Sun - it is just too perfectly round, say scientists.

I am, I have to admit, a massive loser. Not in that way. What I mean is, I lose my personal possessions with the same facility other people have for breathing or sleeping. I've said goodbye – or rather, not said goodbye – to two pairs of headphones and, er, four iPhones this year. Shudder then, at the new BookBook iPhone holder (£49.99), which keeps your phone snug, while also acting as your wallet, with room for notes, credit cards and train tickets.

The American crime writer James Sallis – whose novel Drive was turned into the 2011 Hollywood film with Ryan Gosling – faced a welcome complication when he set about writing the just-released sequel, Driven.

"P.T.E.R.O.D.A.C.T.Y.L?" Even as someone who gets paid to write words, that one nearly stung me. The spelling bee, the US educational staple made famous by 2002 documentary, Spellbound, is now available to test British wordsmiths' spelling abilities.

In 1960 a woman applied for the post of exhibitions officer at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. She didn't get the job, but was able to show her interviewers her portfolio of flower paintings, and was engaged instead as an artist in the herbarium. This was Mary Grierson, soon to become recognised as one of the world's most distinguished botanical artists.

Kateri Tekakwitha, a 17th-century Mohawk Indian woman who died aged 24, after professing her vows of virginity, is to be the first Native American saint. She is among seven canonisations set for October, the Vatican said yesterday.

Security personnel tend not to challenge the public to sneak unnoticed into buildings they're guarding, preferring to give the impression that the entrances are impregnable and they themselves are invincible. But the "keep out or else" approach doesn't work online, where cyber attacks are rampant and the task of thwarting them is too colossal for stretched IT departments.

Starring: George Clooney, Judy Greer, Beau Bridges, Amara Miller

The Way I See It

Not since the turn of the millennium has a single year promised so much: the Olympics, Euro 2012, a US election, an extra day off, and oh, the end of the world. Here, we assess the 12 winners and losers, and ask what the year holds... apart from Armageddon

Enlightened, an HBO drama about a midlife crisis, began with the rich but slightly shameful pleasure of someone else's nervous breakdown. Amy, a mid-ranking executive at an American conglomerate, has reacted badly to the discovery that she's been sidelined in a jobs shuffle, her chagrin increased by the fact that she's been having an office affair with the shuffler. We found her first hunched in the lavatory, a mud-slide of mascara running down her face. Things escalated, despite the pleading intervention of her PA. She shrieked at her "back-stabbing" colleagues and ended by prising apart the elevator doors as her lover and boss attempted a getaway with a group of startled-looking clients. Given the mood of the moment, it's hard to believe that her cathartic explosion of rage wouldn't stir a sympathetic echo in quite a few viewers' hearts. She might have burnt her boats but the blaze is spectacular, and she's said nothing that isn't true.

You only have to watch Edison de Paula carve his way across one of the spectacular waves that wallop Oahu's shore to realise surfing isn't a laid-back sport. When the swells hit 30 feet, one wrong move can send you to a watery grave. At Pipeline, a break famous for its perfect "tubes," there have been 70 deaths since the 1960s. At nearby Sunset Beach, a man went missing, presumed dead, only last week.

Tensions between Hawaiian surfers and energetic newcomers from South America have reached boiling point on Oahu's famous beaches

Secretary of State seeks to woo Pacific Rim finance ministers, saying US is turning back on ailing EU