Despite its links to oral cancer, people in Hainan have for centuries produced and eaten betel nuts, which give a natural high. But sales are falling

Many cities across southern China are known for the art of relaxing. Chengdu in Sichuan province is the tea house capital. Guangzhou is the birthplace of dim sum, a time to share steamed dumplings and chew the fat with friends. And in Haikou, the capital of Hainan province, people have been chewing the betel nut for centuries.

You don’t have to walk far in Haikou to find a vendor. The small, hard, green fruits are sold in little piles alongside fresh coconuts and bottled water at pretty much any convenience store, for about five yuan (£0.52) a piece. Some vendors, mostly women, sit by the side of the road to dish out betel nuts to passing drivers on mopeds, nearly all of them men.

Self-tracking is regularly promoted as a way toward self-improvement. But life is not a mathematical problem waiting to be solved

Inspired by a curiosity to factcheck my own feelings, I’ve been tracking my mood: Far too often a bad day can feel like a permanent state rather than a passing experience. As it turns out, observing the little coloured emojis on my mood chart, one bad day does not, in fact, mean I am doomed to live a blue crying-face life forever. Thank goodness.

Others track themselves in different ways : monitoring daily step counts, tracking sleep cycles and bodily functions, counting calories, logging meals and so on. Digital technologies, wearable devices and an array of platforms make this easier than ever. Many people set reading targets and log books read on Goodreads or films watched on Letterboxd. Some track daily outfits online with the goal of perfecting personal style. Self-tracking is regularly promoted as a way toward self-improvement.

Samantha Floreani is a digital rights activist and writer based in Melbourne/Naarm

Children taking ADHD drugs showed small increases in blood pressure and pulse rates but ‘risk-benefit ratio is reassuring’

The benefits of taking drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder outweigh the impact of increases in blood pressure and heart rate, according to a new study.

An international team of researchers led by scientists from the University of Southampton found the majority of children taking ADHD medication experienced small increases in blood pressure and pulse rates, but that the drugs had “overall small effects”. They said the study’s findings highlighted the need for “careful monitoring”.

Loss of funding could undo progress in reducing deaths in pregnancy and childbirth, especially in war zones, says UN

More women risk dying in pregnancy and childbirth because of aid cuts by wealthy countries, which could have “pandemic-like effects”, UN agencies have warned.

Pregnant women in conflict zones are the most vulnerable, and face an “alarmingly high” risk that is already five times greater than elsewhere, according to a new UN report on trends in maternal mortality .

Move comes after Keir Starmer tells cabinet to stop ‘outsourcing’ decisions to regulators

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Ministers could introduce legislation to abolish a swathe of quangos in one go as part of the government’s plans to restructure the state and cut thousands more civil service job cuts, the Guardian understands.

Government sources said they were considering a bill that would speed up the reorganisation of more than 300 armslength organisations that between them spend about £353bn of public money.

Three detectives involved in the investigation speak of their relief at finally solving the puzzle

Detective constable Beth Colbourne was walking out of Chester crown court when she got the email that brought an end to one of the longest baby death mysteries in recent times. It started: “Are you sitting down?”

As an officer in Cheshire constabulary’s major crime review team, Colbourne had been tasked with solving a puzzle that had confounded police for 25 years: who was Baby Callum ?

The older you are, the more likely it is that a fall, a knock or just gravity will break bones that have been weakened by osteoporosis. But there are ways to protect yourself – and the earlier you start, the better

I’ve broken just one bone in my 61 years – my fibula, the smaller of the two that connect your knee to your ankle. I was skiing, I caught my left foot on some ice and the rest of my body just rotated around it until something snapped. Yeah, ouch. I made a full recovery, but I’d rather not break anything else. I definitely don’t want to become so frail that just sneezing or coughing might fracture a rib, or gravity alone could crack my spine.

Like broken hips and wrists, these are all possibilities with the bone disease osteoporosis. In Britain alone, an estimated 3.5 million people live with porous and fragile bones – and one in two women and one in five men over 50 will have a fracture as a result, according to the Royal Osteoporosis Society (ROS). The older you are, the more likely you are to be affected.

Survey says queues outside emergency departments are leading to ‘car park care’ and fatalities

Paramedics across England are watching patients die in the back of ambulances because of delays outside emergency departments, according to a survey by Unison.

The gridlock of patients in some of the country’s hospitals has led to queues of up to 20 ambulances outside casualty departments in certain areas. In a number of cases, crews have been forced to wait more than 12 hours before handing over patients.

Prof David Liu is among the winners of 2025’s ‘Oscars of science’, with honours also going to researchers for landmark work on multiple sclerosis, particle physics and ‘skinny jabs’

For the past five years, David Liu – a professor at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a biomedical research facility in Massachusetts – has marked Thanksgiving by handing over his entire annual salary, after taking care of taxes, to the staff and students in his laboratory.

It started as the pandemic broke and Liu heard that students who wanted to cycle instead of taking public transport could not afford bicycles. Given how hard they worked and how little they were paid, Liu stepped in. He couldn’t unilaterally raise their incomes, so emailed them Amazon eGift cards. This ran into problems too, however. “Everyone thought they were being scammed,” he recalls. And so he switched to writing cheques.