Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky both described yesterday’s Mar-a-Lago peace talks to end the war in Ukraine as “great”. The US president said a security guarantee for Ukraine was “close to 95%” done but that “very thorny issues” over disputed territory remained unresolved. Talks will resume next week. Keir Starmer is facing calls to revoke the British citizenship of Alaa Abd el-Fattah, an Egyptian activist who was released from jail this week and welcomed back to the UK, over past comments calling for Zionists and police to be killed. Fattah has apologised for making such “shocking and hurtful” remarks, calling them “expressions of a young man’s anger”. More than 300 earthquakes were recorded in the UK this year, according to the British Geological Survey. The most powerful quake – a 3.7-magnitude tremor – occurred near Loch Lyon in Scotland, while other active regions included Scotland’s western Highlands, south Wales, Yorkshire and Lancashire.

According to Amazon, the general knowledge questions most asked to Alexa by British users this year were “what is the diameter of the earth?” and “how long do I poach an egg?” The most asked-about celebrities were Taylor Swift, Elon Musk and, in a rather drab first place, Cristiano Ronaldo. The most asked-about heights were, covering both extremes, Tom Cruise and Peter Crouch. For net worths, it was Elon Musk and the YouTuber “MrBeast”. And in the most requested podcasts, the seemingly still popular The Rest Is Politics was beaten into second place by something rather less fashionable: The Archers.

Waitrose has published its annual “food and drink report”, analysing what it believes to be the hot trends of the past 12 months. The breakout stars of the store cupboard are Bold Bean Co beans (or chickpeas or whatever); Ottolenghi’s harissa; posh tinned tomatoes from the likes of Mutti; and Gymkhana jars of curry sauce. For the fridge, courgettes are in, apparently, as are “burnt butter”, fancy dips (ideal for a supper of “picky bits”), unhomogenised full fat milk, and cottage cheese. Frozen croissants and cinnamon swirls are a thing now, and in the drinks department it’s Buzzballz (ask a Gen Z), vermouth spritz, fancy “functional” waters and a zesty Albariño. How on trend is your weekly shop?

The FT’s list of travel writers’ greatest discoveries – and disappointments – of the year includes, at the happy end, the bohemian Dar Sinclair in Tangier, a home for travellers with a “suitcase and a soul”; Ecuador’s romantic Anakonda riverboat, which passes deep through the Amazon jungle; Scotland’s rambling Dunskey Estate in the Galloway region, with 800 hectares of waist-high ferns and fairy glens; the Gothic churches and medieval alleys of Troyes (a perfect stopover halfway to Provence); and Borobudur, the monumental nine-levelled Buddhist temple on the Indonesian island of Java. Bummers include the beds on Austrian sleeper trains; Singapore’s overrated airport; the sanitised uniformity of the Scilly Isle of Tresco; and, of course, “other tourists”.

Dezeen’s editor Tom Ravenscroft has picked his top ten of the more than 300 houses featured on the architecture and design site this year. His faves include the Wild House in India, a sculptural shell coated in mud plaster with a winding, cave-like interior; Hedge and Arbour House in Australia, wrapped in perforated metal screens and deciduous climbing plants; Frame House in Portugal, a fortress-like concrete four-bed on a prominent hilltop; and HATA in the Californian desert, a white concrete dome marrying the memory of Soviet-era Brutalism to the futurism of California. To see the rest, click here.