New user-interface goes into beta over next few weeks, full launch to come at end of summer

Media empire's new design is based on the handwriting of its executive chairman

Have you heard of Jazan? Nope, me neither – until this week.

With her sharp suits and well-coiffed hair, Peng Liyuan looks like the embodiment of a softer, kinder China – so when a photograph of China’s new first lady serenading martial-law troops after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre flickered across cyberspace this week, it was swiftly scrubbed from China’s internet.

It misses that vital spark of inventiveness

Former world No 1 leads by two after impressing on the greens but faces McDowell challenge

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Can the answer to the obesity crisis be found in the cutlery drawer? The first intimation that it might came, of all places, from Sir Alan Sugar, who titled a chapter "The Tiny Fork Diet" in his 2011 book The Way I see It. It gathered pace thanks to a French book, published last year, called Dîne Avec Une Fourchette: the idea of both being that if you only eat food with a fork, and prepared with a fork, you forgo the fattening, slippery delights of yoghurt, ice cream, butter et al (see forkitdiet.com for a wider array of things that aren't allowed to tickle your tines).

Valérie Trierweiler, the partner of French President François Hollande, today described her difficulties in adjusting to a new role as France's "first girlfriend", saying that it was like doing a parachute jump "without a parachute".

With a reputation for being a hardheaded, canny, political calculator, at first glance Artur Mas has always seemed an unlikely figure to lead Catalonia on what has - after yesterday's elections - become an increasingly uncertain path towards possible independence.

Musical makeover adds elegance to Kylie's pop kitsch

Visitors taking tours of the Shard will be able to enjoy views of up to 40 miles across London when it opens in February.