Across the Middle East, GPS jamming has exploded since the U.S. and Israel began their war against Iran in February, “plunging both sides into an electronic warfare arms race,” said The Independent. “Underlying the dramatic clashes across the region,” forces on all sides are “quietly fighting an invisible war by land, air and sea, distorting tracking information to sow chaos or hide in plain sight.”

‘Major issue’
Jamming is the disruption of signals from global navigation satellite systems with electromagnetic noise. Spoofing is more sophisticated and involves transmitting fake signals to provide a false location. And both are used to distort drone and missile guidance systems. Interference isn’t a “new phenomenon,” said CNN. It has been used in modern warfare since World War II. But it has become a “major issue” for shipping and aircraft since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

While all sides engage in such disruption, Iran is particularly “prolific” in spoofing, said Philip Ingram, an intelligence expert and former British Army colonel, to CNN. Tehran uses it to “add confusion and disrupt any of the allied intelligence gathering.”

‘Gone dark’
The problem with GPS jamming is that it cannot be contained within precise geographic boundaries and does not discriminate between military and commercial systems. On the first day of the war alone, electronic interference disrupted the navigation systems of more than 1,100 commercial ships in Iranian, Omani, Qatari and UAE waters, according to a Windward report, per Inside GNSS.

The missiles and drones “make for good headlines, but they are a distraction,” said global financier Erik Bethel and maritime trade expert Ami Daniel at Fortune. The “real story” is that the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas passes, has “gone dark.” This is “not in some poetic sense but literally.”

Various technologies offer protection against GPS jamming, and military-grade GPS is more resistant, but the race is on to find a more secure alternative. Global navigation satellite systems are a “wonder of the modern world,” but the “luxurious era of those signals not being messed about with intentionally is over,” said Ramsey Faragher, the chief executive of the Royal Institute of Navigation in London, to CNN. “We need to rapidly catch up.”

After years of combined effort, an international coalition has proposed a new name for a reproductive disorder that affects 5 million to 6 million American women, according to the CDC. The group hopes that renaming polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) to polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS) will help illuminate a better path forward in treating it.

Why is it being changed?
Patients with symptoms like “irregular periods, pelvic pain, excess body hair and acne” have long been diagnosed with PCOS, said The New York Times. Getting a diagnosis can be difficult, and those who do encounter stigma and imperfect treatment options along the way. 

A consortium of doctors and researchers concluded that the condition’s name was part of the problem. Many PCOS patients “don’t have ovarian cysts at all” but often have “widespread hormonal and metabolic dysfunction.” So the name polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome was introduced in a policy paper published in The Lancet and presented at the European Congress of Endocrinology in Prague.

Since the previous name didn’t accurately describe the condition, it contributed to “delayed diagnosis, fragmented care and stigma, while curtailing research and policy framing,” said the consortium in the paper. The new name “moves away from the incorrect focus on cysts” to recognizing this as a “much broader condition,” said lead study author Helena Teede, the director of Melbourne’s Monash Center for Health Research and Implementation, to The Guardian. 

How will the renaming affect treatment?
It may “transform how patients understand the condition” and “how doctors treat it,” said the Times. When a condition affects one organ, everything from research funding to education to clinical guidelines is “all in that box,” said Teede to the outlet. And in this condition, it was “in the wrong box.”

The change could have “immediate implications for patients,” prompting doctors to “recommend more screening for metabolic and cardiovascular problems,” said the Times. Renaming it could also “redirect” professionals into “thinking about this as a long-term chronic condition,” said Basma Faris, an assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, to the outlet, and “not just a period problem.”

A vegetable vendor navigates the polluted waters of Dal Lake in Indian-administered Kashmir. Despite being known as the “jewel in the crown of Kashmir,” the urban lake is swamped with toxic algae blooms after decades of contamination with untreated sewage.
Tauseef Mustafa / AFP / Getty Images

The seemingly limitless budgets and bottomless demand for content of the streaming television era have allowed studios to dramatize both long-ago and recent disasters. These might never have gotten the Hollywood treatment a generation ago, ushering in a little-noticed golden age of disaster television headlined by these series.

‘Tsunami: The Aftermath’ (2006)
The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was by far the deadliest natural disaster of the 21st century, killing more than 227,000 people. Much less well-known than the 2012 film “The Impossible,” HBO Max’s “Tsunami: The Aftermath” is gripping viewing. The series depicts the aftermath of the disaster, showing that in “death, human lives develop very different values to different communities,” said Virginian Heffernan at The New York Times. (HBO Max)

‘Five Days at Memorial’ (2022)
Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,833 people in August 2005, remains one of the most underdramatized disasters in memory. One exception is the Apple TV+ drama “Five Days at Memorial.” Framed by a post-hurricane investigation into the deaths of 45 patients at the series’ namesake hospital, the eight-part series is a “powerful indictment of government and corporate inaction, and outright neglect,” said Manuel Betancourt at A.V. Club. (Apple TV+)

‘High Water’ (2023)
Disasters happen everywhere. In July 1997, parts of Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic were struck by catastrophic river flooding. “High Water” (pictured above) tells the story of the Polish city of Wrocław, which was completely inundated. A “character-driven ensemble” carries the show, said Greg Wheeler at The Review Geek, one that “doesn’t slip into the realm of soapy drama.” (Netflix)