Here's one for our handbag-carrying readers: What, exactly, is in that purse? And the smaller pouches within? Would you suffer a stranger to scrutinise the contents? Two men, an artist and a sociologist, have undertaken just such an exploration. It's fascinating reading from contributor paper Le Monde in the Weekly's review section.
We enjoy putting together such feature pages, where the contents can be thoughtful, insightful and equally playful. Hence the good read this week about the death of the landline telephone and the disconnect it can bring to communities, as well as the interview with a man who leads treks to the far north.
Science looks at the evil that is a lack of empathy, books savours the Italian conquest of cuisine and culture delights in the architectural swansongs of the Soviet era. Check out the photo gallery that goes with the architecture piece. There's lots of great reading for an April weekend.
On the news front, we stay with conflicts in Libya, Syria, Yemen and Ivory Coast. And we keep you in Japan, where operators of the Fukushima nuclear plant continue to lurch from crisis to crisis in efforts to stabilise runaway reactors.
The front page makes way for a good-news environmental story, a cash-for-trees swap between Norway and Guyana that sees Norway paying for rainforest preservation. Call it the green bargain of the century – we did in our headline. Whatever you call it, the initiative is the kind that many have talked of but few have the boldness to undertake.
Sports roundup sees the return of Guardian columnist Barney Ronay's sassy style. We sought feedback in the autumn on our sports coverage, and many readers asked for Barney to come back. He's here, in full glory. This week's column made me laugh out loud – twice – on our busiest workday of the week. So it must be good stuff. Thanks for reading and your comments are, as always, appreciated.
Quote of the week: "If you go through the entire canon of [Pedro] Almodóvar, you'll see all the perversions known to us." Course presenter Peter Wolson on a study day, reported in Shortcuts, in the US for the works of the Spanish film director.
Fact of the week: 17% of the world is Indian. So finds India's latest census, which showed the country added 181 million citizens in the last decade.
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