"Dialogues between East and West, between two worlds and two seas" is the apt subtitle of this fascinating CD, which reflects the cultural melting-pot which Istanbul was in its medieval heyday.

After 50 years, has the Costa Brava fallen off the map for British travellers? Simon Calder returns to the place Salvador Dalí once called home

It happens sometimes in a foreign city. You leave the tawdry, neon-lit sprawl of the main drag and wander down an unpromising side street, only to stumble across The Perfect Restaurant – golden and gorgeous and oozing relaxation and low-key glamour. Emerging hours later, as though from a dream, you forget to note the name of the restaurant or the street, and when you return, you never manage to find it again.

Serve up delicious dishes with these top choices

The classic Istrian hotel of the Seventies was the unlikely cue for this high-design property. Karen Glaser explains

This is supposed to be the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. What would Keats make of this autumn, sweltering in the unremitting sunshine, reading newspaper headlines that proclaim Britain is hotter than Barbados, or Hawaii, or Mars? He, like most of us, might not be a climatologist, but I think he'd recognise there's something weird going on.

With beaches packed, barbecue sales soaring and warnings of traffic jams on the roads, Britons look set to enjoy summer's last hurrah in style this weekend – even if it is officially autumn.

Victory was sweet for the British-based Rán winning the Barcelona Trophy finale of the Audi MedCup series. It crowned a debut season for Skype founder Niklas Zennström in his 52-footer and completed the treble of back-to-back Fastnet Race wins and the Mini-maxi division of the world series in Porto Cervo.

Is Skype founder Niklas Zennström on a roll? Having won the Fastnet Race, he jetted his crew across to Sardinia and Porto Cervo to win the mini-maxi division of the maxi worlds and then to Catalunya.

Turkey announced the expulsion of Israel's ambassador yesterday and the freezing of military relations in response to the Netanyahu government's refusal to apologise for the lethal raid it authorised on a Gaza-bound flotilla 15 months ago.

Israel intensified a high-security alert along its border with Egypt yesterday after a warning that there might be a second wave of attacks by a militant cell of infiltrators.

Pristine and fragile stretches of the Sicilian coastline are under threat from the rush to plunder the island's rich oil resources, environment campaigners warned yesterday.