Six great reads: swanky manholes, babies in flowerpots and the world’s most divisive shoes |

1. ‘I don’t expect to live a normal life’: how a Leeds teenager woke up with a Chinese bounty on her head

“It was Christmas Eve 2024 and 19-year-old Chloe Cheung was lying in bed at home in Leeds when she found out the Chinese authorities had put a bounty on her head. As she scrolled through Instagram looking at festive songs, a stream of messages from old school friends started coming into her phone. Look at the news, they told her.”

Tom Levitt, writing for our Rights and Freedom series, spoke to Cheung to hear her extraordinary story and why the reward for her capture will follow her “for ever”.

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2. The world’s swankiest manhole covers? A thrilling tour of the new embankments concealing London’s £4.6bn super sewer

A sewer isn’t necessarily the first thing you think of when you think of great architecture, but Oliver Wainwright was excited to discover the new series of Thames-side embankments build in the city to to tackle 18m tonnes of rising excrement. Join him on a “stink tower” tour of the UK capital.

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3. ‘A radical act’: the rich history behind the centuries-long tradition of Black family reunions

Large-scale, often outdoor, family reunions are an important tradition for many Black families in the United States. Reporter Adria R Walker traced the history of the tradition, which can be traced back to the immediate period post emancipation and why, it’s as important as ever today.

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4. ‘We popped the baby in a flowerpot!’ Anne Geddes on the beloved photos that made her famous

It’s almost 30 years since the photographer created Down in the Garden, a series of photographs of babies in and around flora and fauna, some of which will appear in her first ever retrospective in Germany. The Australian told Morwenna Ferrier about the practicalities of photographing twin babies in an upturned cabbage and why her signature work would be difficult to make in the age of AI.

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5. Ugly, mortifying – and addictive? Tim Dowling’s week in the world’s most divisive shoes

“The overwhelming sensation, however, is one of horrifying self-consciousness – these are very weird-looking shoes. No one comments as I walk down a busy shopping street, and after a while I begin to hope no one has noticed – after all, I don’t tend to notice other people’s shoes when I’m out and about. Then I look down and think: yeah, but I would notice these.”

Twenty years after they first hit the shelves, five-fingered shoes are having a big fashion moment. But, asked an intrepid Tim Dowling, what is it like to wear them in public?

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Logo design for sport has produced some of the most memorable graphic design in history, notably US designer Lance Wyman’s work for the 1968 Olympics and 1970 World Cup (above) in Mexico. Pablo Maurer spoke to Wyman and contemporary designer Matthew Wolff about the art of sporting graphics – and why today’s logos and badges may have lost the spark that made them so special.

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