There are a lot of incentives to go with refurbished tech, and thanks to a

Chef Maria Bradford remembers the first time she came to Peckham market. Originally from Sierra Leone, she moved to England in her late teens, and after four years she was desperately homesick. She was living in Kent and felt far removed from her home of Freetown – until she went to Peckham in South London. “The first time I ever came to Peckham, it was such a shock. I didn’t think a place existed like that [in England] – it reminded me so much of the hustle and bustle in Freetown,” she says. “All of a sudden, you get off the train and you come to this place and you’re like, Oh my God. I’m home.” Bradford, now 42, says she “desperately needed” a place like Peckham, and has been coming to the market regularly ever since. We’re back there today – on a hot but overcast London day, and Bradford is showing me how to pick out the best Sierra Leonean ingredients. We go on a weekday, as she says a weekend would take us a lot longer to get round, once she’s spoken to all the aunties in the community who want a chat. As we walk through the market, Bradford starts talking about Sierra Leonean cuisine. “I would say it’s quite healthy. We eat lots of leaves and greens, and we eat a lot of seafood as well. There’s lots of layers to Sierra Leonean food, because we mix things like smoked fish and meat in the same dish… Because we use fish more as a flavouring.” The words that spring to mind when she thinks about the food of her homeland? “Healthy, homely, comforting.” Bradford continues: “I don’t know if that’s because I’m Sierra Leonean, it brings me that calmness and home feeling. That warmth. It feels like I’m sitting at the back of our house with my mum, my nan, my grandmother, my aunties and everyone – we’re sitting around cooking, and it feels like comfort.” When she really wants to feel comforted and soothed, Bradford whips up a bowl of egusi soup (egusi – also known as melon seeds – is a thickener, and the recipe includes oxtail, goat meat, white sorrel, smoked barracuda and Scotch bonnet chillies) that Bradford says is like a “food hug, because when you eat it all you want to do is sleep”. After looking at some of the outdoor stalls full of colourful produce – bright pumpkins, squat varieties of cucumber, browning plantains – we go into Bit By Bit, a Sierra Leonean shop run by Sarian Karim-Kamara. Karim-Kamara immediately starts singing Bradford’s praises (“you’re flying the Sierra Leonean flag – we’re so proud of you!”) and thumbing through her new cookbook, called Sweet Salone – a nickname for the country. The shop is full of speciality ingredients you’ll need to make some of the recipes in the book – from the brightly coloured red palm oil (a staple in the country) to frozen cassava leaves and smoked barracuda. Bradford is keen to promote local shops such as this one, saying: “People are really friendly and want to talk about the ingredients – they don’t just know about the ingredients, they know what to do with it, how to promote it… It’s nice to step into these shops and have conversations, because you might learn so much more than what you bargained for.” As well as running the shop, Karim-Kamara is an FGM campaigner – she’s just launched a new campaign with the Mayor of London – and runs a food bank out the back. “For three years I’ve been supporting refugees and asylum seekers, but the food bank is open now to the community because everyone is struggling,” she says. Karim-Kamara adds she doesn’t talk much about it because “some people are really shy… The way we do the service is people come to the back and help themselves”. We move onto another shop selling West African ingredients – including jute leaves, black velvet tamarind and white hibiscus – and Bradford strikes up a conversation with the shopkeeper, who says she’ll pre-order the cookbook and give it to her daughter, so traditional Sierra Leonean cooking continues down the generations. “The children that are born here, they don’t really know how to cook the traditional stuff,” Bradford says after this exchange. “They’ll be more gearing towards the Afro-fusion side. It’s really important we keep the core traditional stuff, and also keep it separate.” But Bradford is an advocate for Afro-fusion dishes as well, describing it as “taking traditional Sierra Leonean ingredients and using techniques we wouldn’t necessarily use to extract as much flavour from those things”. After working as an accountant for 10 years (which she hated), Bradford did an evening course at prestigious cooking school Leiths and set up a catering company, and now uses her classical training to give a spin on the dishes she grew up eating. Examples of Afro-fusion recipes in the book include cassava chips with truffle and Parmesan, and the oxtail pepe stew – which has red wine added, a French technique she drew upon to deepen the flavours. Whether it’s traditional dishes or Afro-fusion flavours, Bradford – who is still based in Kent – uses cooking to connect with her roots. It started when she first moved to the UK and was missing home. “So I started cooking, making stuff I like to eat with stuff I can get my hands on,” she says. One of the first dishes she made was peanut soup (“you can get peanut butter anywhere, and you can pick up chicken anywhere”) and it grew from there. “Cooking and throwing those things together to feel like you’re home, connecting back to Sierra Leone.” ‘Sweet Salone’ by Maria Bradford (Quadrille, £30). Read More A week’s worth of summery recipes (even when the weather is dire) The dish that defines me: Frank Yeung’s prawn wontons How to make cassava chips How to make a traditional Sierra Leonean rich cake How to make West African brasied beef shorts in peanut and coconut milk In Horto: Hearty, outdoorsy fare in a secret London Bridge garden

Every family in Ukraine’s northeastern village of Hroza was affected after a missile strike killed 52 people on Thursday, obliterating a sixth of the local population, say locals. However, it may take several months before DNA analysis can identify the majority of the remains. For now, the names are scrawled on cardboard or white plastic squares, and strings mark the boundaries of the fresh graves. Dozens of people gathered in the local cafe for a meal to honour Andrii Kozyr, a soldier who died in the war against Russia, with almost every household in the village sending someone to mourn the native son. When the gathering was struck by a precision missile that Ukrainian officials said was fired by Russia, entire families perished in an instant. In all, 52 people died out of a population of 300, while only six people in the cafe survived, with villagers suspecting that a local may have tipped off Russian forces. “From every household, there were people present,” said interior minister Ihor Klymenko. “My neighbours, my neighbours,” Valentina Kozeinko, a 73-year-old retiree, wailed in agony. “A lot of our people died there,” she told CNN. “It was a powerful strike, very powerful, I came out and everything was burning,” she recalled. “It was so scary … The corpses were burned and there was blood everywhere.” Among the dead was Valeriy Kozyr’s daughter, Olya, who was survived by her three children. Mr Kozyr’s son-in-law died in the attack as well. "It would have been better if I had died," he said quietly as he wept. "Oh God, you cannot punish me like this. To leave the father and take the children!" Wiping tears from his face, the 61-year-old explained that he must now work out how to care for his three grand-children aged 10, 15 and 17. Mr Kozyr wants to bury Olya and her husband side-by-side in a single grave. Like much of the region east of the regional capital of Kharkiv, Hroza was under Russian occupation for six months, until September 2022, when Ukrainian troops liberated the area. Locals say it is strictly a civilian area. There has never been any military base, whether Russian or Ukrainian. They said only civilians or family came to the funeral and wake, and residents were the only people who would have known where and when it was taking place. Moscow denies targeting civilians in its full-scale invasion, a position it repeated on Friday in response to the Hroza strike. Thousands have been killed in a bombing campaign that has hit apartment blocks and restaurants as well as power stations, bridges and grain silos. Ukrainian officials said the weapon was a precision Iskander-style missile, which is said to have an accuracy of five to seven meters. Dmytro Chubenko, spokesperson for the regional prosecutor, said investigators are looking into whether someone from the area transmitted the cafe’s coordinates to the Russians — a betrayal to everyone now grieving in Hroza. Many share that suspicion, describing a strike timed to kill the maximum number of people. The date of the funeral was set a few weeks ago, and the time was shared throughout the village late last week. Not all of the victims have been identified. Regional police investigator Serhiy Bolvinov told reporters late on Thursday that authorities would have to use DNA to identify some of the victims because their remains were beyond recognition. "Corpses lay there in that yard, and nobody could identify them," said Valentyna Kozienko, 73, speaking near her home close to the site. "Half the village is gone, families are gone," said Kozyr, standing beside his wife as she wept. "All the time they miss. Well, this time, they hit. "Now I’ll have to cross out half my phone book." Additional reporting from the wires Read More Ukraine-Russia war – live: Putin’s ‘inhuman’ missile strike hit area with no military targets, says Kyiv Precision missile strike on cafe hosting soldier's wake decimates Ukrainian village ‘You can still smell the blood’: Inside the village where more than 50 were killed by a Russian missile

A US federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by chess player Hans Niemann, who was seeking $100 million from those who accused him of cheating...

President Joe Biden threw his support behind the United Auto Workers’ efforts to unionize employees at Tesla Inc.

Late 'Euphoria' producer Kevin Turen was married to Evelina Turen, who is known for her roles in 'The Box', 'That Awkward Moment', and 'Arbitrage', on June 23, 2012

VIDEO: Mike Lindell is back with a new summit and things are still going great.

Hurtigruten Norway has unveiled a design for a battery-powered, zero-emission ship.

Jalen Green scored 23 and Fred VanVleet added 22 points and 11 assists as the Houston Rockets earned their first win of the season, 128-119 over the Charlotte Hornets

Malaysia will scrap entry visa requirements for citizens of China and India visiting the nation beginning Dec. 1,

The Biden administration is taking steps to thwart oil development in remote reaches of Alaska by conserving more

Detroit Tigers outfielder Riley Greene will have surgery on his right elbow on Wednesday in Dallas