We are barreling toward a nuclear problem. Decades-old radioactive waste from discarded containers may be slowly seeping into the Atlantic Ocean and affecting the marine ecosystem. Scientists have conducted dives to collect samples and test the region to determine the extent of the pollution and whether the radioactivity has made its way into the food web.

A barrel of trouble

Between 1950 and 1990, “more than 200,000 barrels filled with radioactive waste were dumped in the depths of the North-East Atlantic,” said a release by the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). Scientists first mapped the area where the barrels were dumped on a mission in summer 2025. They recently completed a second mission where they “carried out 20 dives to depths of over 4,700 meters (15,419 feet), enabling direct observation of several barrels and their immediate surroundings” using a manned submersible called the Nautile.

The barrels “contain low- and intermediate-level radioactive material” including “process sludge, contaminated metal and laboratory equipment,” said Futura. They sit “between 10,000 and 16,000 feet down in international waters.” Using the “Nautile and other instruments deployed from the vessel, together with the samples collected,” CNRS researchers “were able to document the advanced state of deterioration of several barrels, observe that some of them had leaked their contents and identify the various materials used to encapsulate the waste,” said the release.

While the “photographs from the initial cruise revealed barrels in various stages of degradation and corrosion,” images “alone cannot determine if radionuclides have entered the marine food web,” said Futura. To fill in the gaps, the researchers collected “precise water, fauna and sediment samples directly adjacent to the corroded barrels, allowing scientists to measure exactly how far any escaping radioactive materials have migrated into the deep sea ecosystem.”

Nuclear family

Due to barrel deterioration, there were “significant signals of radionuclides specifically linked to this waste, cobalt 60 and niobium 94, in addition to cesium 137 and americium 241,” Javier Escartin and Patrick Chardon, who were both involved in the research, said at The Conversation. The difficulty now is in “separating any potential leakage from historical background radiation,” said Futura. The Atlantic Ocean in the region “already contains radiation from 20th-century atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and authorized runoff from coastal nuclear power plants.”

Despite the depth and radioactive signatures at the site, it was “not devoid of life,” said The Cool Down. Researchers “saw crabs, sponges, anemones and other organisms on or near the barrels, which have effectively become hard surfaces in an otherwise soft seabed environment.” The question that remains is not simply “whether radioactive material is present” but “whether deep-sea life is absorbing it and whether it is moving through sediment and water in meaningful amounts.” Studying the collected samples will provide more information on the effect these underwater communities have on the transfer of radionuclides.

The barrels were never meant to permanently seal the radioactive waste. These containers were intended to “provide an initial period of confinement rather than act as permanent deep-sea vaults,” said Earth.com. Over time, the “radioactive contents were expected to be released gradually and dispersed in the ocean.”

“It’s too late to undo the damage inflicted on the environment by previous generations,” said Popular Mechanics. But “having a deeper understanding of how these systematic episodes of pollution impacted the world will help future generations avoid making the same mistakes.”

Produce shelves are becoming sparser and featuring fewer options. Economic, cultural and environmental factors have reduced the variety of vegetables available to consumers. Prioritizing the same produce can have negative health effects and could make crops more susceptible to climate change.

The same stock

Vegetable diversity is “declining due to market homogenization, land-use change and other threats,” and its “current conservation is insufficient,” said a study published in the journal PNAS. There have been “substantial declines in the range of traditional vegetable varieties grown over the past century, while almost one-quarter of assessed wild relatives of major vegetable crops are threatened with extinction,” said a release by the World Vegetable Center about the study.

“Vegetable biodiversity is one of the world’s greatest assets for improving diets and adapting agriculture to a changing climate,” Colin Khoury, the global conservation lead at the crop diversity preservation nonprofit Crop Trust, said in the release. “But we’re losing it at exactly the time we need it most.”

Several factors have reduced vegetable biodiversity. Initially, “humans selected only a portion of wild plants for cultivation, and then the variety narrowed even further due to the industrialization of agriculture, globalization and the spread of mass production,” said the news publication BB. As a result, traditional varieties of vegetables and “their wild relatives have fallen out of favor, leaving just a shrinking selection of tamed vegetables on supermarket shelves,” said IFL Science.

Also, agricultural practices like “monoculture, the practice of growing a single crop variety across vast areas,” are a “risky business, both economically and ecologically,” said IFL Science. If a “disease takes root in one plant, it rapidly spreads through the entire identical field like wildfire.”

Underrated options

People “consume nearly 40% fewer vegetables than recommended by the World Health Organization,” said the release. Low vegetable consumption is “among the five leading dietary risk factors contributing to the global burden of disease.” In addition, “relying on the same familiar crops,” like “standard varieties of eggplant, kale, cabbage, carrots, lettuce, onion and tomato,” may “not be enough to meet the climate challenges ahead,” said Food & Wine. The good news is that there are 1,480 known species of edible vegetables, most of which are underused.

“The solution isn’t simply to grow more vegetables,” Maarten van Zonneveld, who led the research, said in the release. “It’s also to grow more kinds of vegetables.” Many nutrient-rich vegetables, like “spider plant, slippery cabbage and other dark-green leafy vegetables, receive little breeding attention due to their lower commercial value compared to crops such as pepper and tomato,” said the study. The less-consumed vegetables also “carry traits that could help breed new varieties better able to withstand heat, drought, pests and disease,” said IFL Science.

Unfortunately, these underutilized crops “receive only a tiny fraction of the research, breeding and conservation efforts devoted to globally traded vegetables and staple grains,” said the release. The study highlights the need to “strengthen breeding capacity among both public and private organizations, combined with investment in participatory breeding with farmers,” said the study.

“Much of the vegetable biodiversity we need is still out there,” Zonneveld said in the release. The “urgency is to conserve it properly so that we can use it wisely to diversify diets amid climate change.”

“Leaked diplomatic correspondence” shows that Andy Burnham is “embroiled” in a row with Cuba over Britain’s “looming ban” on cigars, said The Telegraph.

Cuba’s former president Fidel Castro, who was often photographed puffing away, said the cigar “made our country famous” and gave “prestige” to Cuba. But now the island’s cigar industry is facing a perfect storm of existential challenges.

Unjustified barrier 

The Cuban ambassador in London has been writing to the UK government since 2024 to express concerns about plans for a “smoke-free Britain”, according to the leaked correspondence. Diplomats from Honduras and the Dominican Republic have also weighed in.

The incoming generational smoking ban brought in during Rishi Sunak’s reign will “disproportionately impact cigar-producing countries” and amounts to an “unjustified barrier to trade”, they said. Cigars “neither contribute to youth smoking initiation nor share the same public health profile as cigarettes”.

The rift is thought to have “deepened” after the UK government opened a consultation on extending the ban to premium cigars.

National pride

Cuban cigars have “held an unrivalled position at the pinnacle of the cigar world”, said Simply Cigars. They are “renowned for their heritage, craftsmanship and distinctive terroir”.

They are a “valuable export” and a “draw for many visitors”, as well as a “historic national industry” and a “point of national pride”, said CBC. The Cubans who farm tobacco are a symbol of “nationalism and resistance”.

But it’s getting harder to farm tobacco in Cuba, because climate change has made growing conditions “increasingly unpredictable, with a longer and wetter rainy season, and more intense storms”, including hurricanes.

Other challenges facing Cuba’s tobacco farmers include “finding workers and making their product financially viable”, as “falling global demand” for cigars means “lower prices for the leaf”.

But since the US imposed a “de facto oil blockade on the island, the Cuban cigar industry is facing its greatest challenge yet”, said Al Jazeera.

Since the start of the year, precious “little oil” has entered Cuba and the resultant energy crisis has “complicated the cultivation” of tobacco crops. The shortage has been worsened by the US seizing oil shipments from Cuba’s long-standing ally Venezuela.

Manufacturing has also been hit. Dried tobacco leaves are driven to Havana, where they are hand-rolled in state-run factories, but the “scarce supply” of petrol makes transportation “difficult”, and the “lack of electricity” to provide lighting for the factories “complicates production”.

In February, Cuba’s “iconic” annual cigar fair was postponed, said The Associated Press. Tabacuba, a state-run tobacco company, blamed “the complex economic situation” that the island is facing, due to the “intensification of the economic, commercial and financial blockade” imposed by the US. The organisers did not set a new date for the 26th edition of the cigar fair.

The cosmos may be speckled with black hole stars, celestial entities that have the properties of both black holes and stars. But only now have scientists discovered one for the first time, which could provide important insight about our universe.

Huge size and energy

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) previously spotted unidentified little red dots in space in 2024 that scientists have now designated as a new astrophysical source, according to a study published in the journal Nature. Deemed a “black hole star,” the celestial object “resembles an enormous star, spanning the size of our solar system,” but also puts out “100 billion times more energy than any known star can physically produce,” similar to a black hole, said a release about the study.

The NASA telescope was used to “look into deep space, back when the universe was a few hundred million years old,” to “look for galaxies that actually formed at those early times,” said the release. While analyzing JWST’s images, astronomers found the red dots that at the time of their discovery had them convinced that “something broke in the James Webb Space Telescope,” said Gizmodo. “Much about the universe’s earliest days remains a mystery,” so “pinning down the true identity of little red dots,” which are “relics from the cosmic dawn,” would “represent a huge advance in our understanding of our universe’s history.”

Researchers analyzed one specific bright red dot called MoM-BH*-1 and found that its properties were “too intense to be explained as normal star behavior,” said Wired. Instead, they posited that the dot is a “black hole devouring matter and releasing enormous amounts of energy” and surrounded by a “massive gas envelope.”

The energy “would pass through that gas before escaping into space” and “acquire some of the characteristics we would normally expect to find in starlight,” said Wired. The black hole star likely has a “central black hole that is 100,000 times as massive as the sun,” said lead study author Rohan Naidu in the release.

New questions, more research

The black hole star is a “very special thing to find,” as it is an “object with no comparison given the vast stores of data on billions of stars, galaxies and black holes that we have in our archival databases,” said Naidu to Gizmodo. MoM-BH*-1 is perhaps the beginning of “what will likely be the first of more black hole stars to come,” said Popular Science. And “many other red dots lurking in JWST models may soon be explained by the new astrophysical model.” What is unique about MoM-BH*-1 is that the “black hole star is essentially completely outshining its surrounding host galaxy, such that we are seeing pure black hole star light,” said Naidu in the release.

The study’s findings “raise new questions and insights into little red dots and, by extension, the state of the early universe,” said Gizmodo. If the “distinct color of little red dots is caused by gas,” it “could explain why the earliest supermassive black holes are far larger than what’s predicted by conventional cosmological models.”

Scientists are planning further research on the “detailed physics of these remarkable objects,” said Naidu. Perhaps it will answer exactly how “massive” they are and what their “‘stellar’ features tell us about their ‘stellar’ atmospheres.”

Imagine being thrown into No. 10 Downing Street and being forced to contend with a “public that is always fuming, a press that is consistently hostile, a cabinet that behaves badly, and backbenchers who never stop moaning about something”, said GQ Magazine. No, it’s “not one of Starmer’s recurring nightmares,” but a mobile game that has “skyrocketed in popularity”.

In the last fortnight, the average daily userbase of “No. 10: Full Confidence” has “leapt from 300 to 21,000”, propelling it to near the top of the UK paid-games leaderboard. “Absurd, nihilistic, so-tragic-it’s-hilarious – the perfect allegory, you might say, for British politics in 2026.” And its popularity, along with other similar apps, reveals a lot about the “current political mood in the UK”.

‘Close to the bone’

The game – which costs £2.99, with the option to pay extra for a “special adviser pack” – suggests that “becoming prime minister isn’t the difficult part, it’s staying one that’s tricky”, said Metro. The current average term achieved by players is two years and 11 months (in game time), which is “longer than the last three real prime ministers, and only a little shorter than the reigns of Theresa May and Boris Johnson”. Released in May, in a case of “excellent if accidental timing”, the “jury’s still out on whether this will make people more sympathetic to former PMs” such as Keir Starmer, but historical precedent suggests it seems “very unlikely the new incumbent will be able to beat the game’s high score in real-life”.

The app’s creator and developer Benjamin Brewis told GQ that the game is meant to focus on “satire rather than political advocacy”. All 350 potential scenarios are tailor-made, and some are influenced by real events, from both sides of the political divide. “Scarily”, when I speak to people in politics or the civil service, they say how “close to the bone it is”, Brewis said. Especially in scenarios where decisions need to be made quickly, and “chaos just ensues and then nothing gets done in the end”.

The first decision is selecting a chancellor. Players must decide between Harriet Voss, a “former investment banker who has ‘never expressed a political opinion in public’”, or Reginald Forthwright, who advocated for “a flat tax of 3% on everything” and “has written a book described as ‘dangerously coherent’”. While people tend to only last a couple of years, the record is “1,885 months, which is a long time. 157 years”, said Brewis. And at that point, “that’s no longer a democracy at all”.

First among equals

“Full Confidence” is not the only game based around Westminster “wheeling and dealing”, said the BBC. “Fantasy Parliament”, designed by Evan Roberts, is a “browser-based game”, where players can draft a “fantasy league” of real-life cabinet ministers and MPs, who score points based on their real-world media coverage. And later this year, Black Cannon Games is scheduled to release “UK Politics Simulator”, which is “built on real UK data down to ward level”.

The success of such apps suggests that the “dramatic recent ebb and flow of Westminster may have inspired a popular new sub-genre”. Dr Russell Foster, a lecturer in British and International Politics at King’s College London, told the broadcaster that the “churn of prime ministers” and “growing presence of politics on social media” could also explain the burgeoning popularity of such games.

This game shows us the “depressing” environment that has been “co-created by us, the unforgiving voters”, said Zoe Williams in The Guardian. Prime ministers are “evasive” because they don’t trust the reaction of the electorate, who in turn “lose trust” in their figurehead.

“Westminster hasn’t been so united by an app since the early 2010s, when everyone was trying to figure out what David Cameron saw in ‘Angry Birds’.” But “Full Confidence” is also a “useful corrective”, challenging dissatisfied voters to put themselves “in a prime minister’s shoes”.

The frozen landscape of Antarctica is holding a dangerous metal. The continent is releasing higher levels of mercury into the ocean and marine ecosystem because of climate change, and the toxic metal is accumulating in the region’s wildlife, causing health problems in the food chain. Mercury has also reached the commercial fish industry, potentially risking poisoning in humans.

Mercurial matter

Mercury accumulation in Antarctica, specifically on the Antarctic Peninsula, has “doubled relative to the global shelf average and risen sharply since industrialization,” said a study published in PNAS. The increase is “driven not only by atmospheric deposition but also by climate-warming–induced ice melt and erosion that remobilize legacy mercury stored on land.” Essentially, climate change “acts as an amplifier of mercury cycling,” said study co-author Maodian Liu, an environmental scientist at Peking University in China, to Eos.

The scientists “analyzed 16 sediment cores collected from the continental shelf off the Antarctic Peninsula” and “used a variety of chemical analyses to determine the amount and sources of mercury that was deposited in the sediment over the past 200 years,” said Eos. “Nearly all the sediment cores showed a significant increase in mercury accumulation since industrialization.” And on average, “cores in the region showed a 160% increase in accumulation since industrialization, with rates accelerating particularly quickly beginning in the 1950s.”

Mercury can be released into the environment “naturally by volcanoes and geological weathering,” said Science Alert. The continent has been “functioning as a kind of mercury ‘sink,’ locking away large amounts of pollution in its layers of ice,” which has “probably been helping reduce the amount of mercury getting into marine food chains (and our seafood).” Polar warming and ice melt are now “turning Antarctica’s cryosphere from a mercury sink into an active secondary pollution source, with important implications for future mercury risk in polar oceans and ecosystems,” said the study.

Metallic marlin

Mercury “reaches Antarctica through the atmosphere, traveling from sources such as coal plants and mining operations to settle on Antarctic ice and the Southern Ocean,” said Eos. As the metal “accumulates in sediment, it can transform into methylmercury, a more toxic form that more readily accumulates in living organisms.”

Methylmercury “enters and travels through the Antarctic food web, taken up by plankton, then krill, fish, seabirds, and marine mammals,” said Eos. The toxin can “harm animals’ neurology, behavior, growth and reproduction.” It can also get to commercial fisheries, where mercury pollution can affect human health. Now, mercury levels in “Antarctic species such as Antarctic toothfish, marlin and sharks frequently exceed previous records and food safety limits,” said Science Alert.

Antarctica is not the only place experiencing toxic mercury. In the Arctic, “permafrost thaw has begun to release trapped mercury into ecosystems,” said Eos. In the “northeastern United States, increasingly intense storms are accelerating erosion and mobilizing nutrients and metals, including mercury.” While reducing emissions is the best way to reduce the level of ice melt and mercury leaking, said Liu to Eos, “environmental mercury burdens” are “unlikely to decline immediately in step with emission reductions.”

The city of Dakhla, on a “peninsula where the Sahara meets the Atlantic”, is advertised to holidaymakers as “Morocco’s hidden gem”, said the BBC. But tourists flying to this part of Western Sahara might not know they’ll “be landing in one of the world’s longest ongoing territorial disputes”.

A former Spanish colony, Western Sahara was annexed by Morocco in 1975. Since then, it has been the subject of a dispute between Morocco and its indigenous Sahrawi people, led by the Polisario Front and its government-in-exile in Algeria. Now classified by the United Nations as a “non-self-governing territory”, around 80% of the country is occupied and administered by Morocco, with an earthen strip separating that area from a Sahrawi-controlled portion in the east. Numerous UN-brokered talks to resolve Western Sahara’s future have failed.

‘Tomorrow’s Dubai’

Morocco has been pouring considerable resources into Western Sahara. Since 2015, it has spent £7 billion trying to “level it up”, said The Spectator. There are now water desalination plants, 620 miles of motorways, and plans for eight “green hydrogen plants” and a “centrepiece” £1 billion Dakhla Atlantic Port. This “massive undertaking” is still under construction but, when finished, “35 million tons of goods are expected to pass through every year”.

King Mohammed VI’s “development plan” for the country he refers to as Morocco’s “Southern Provinces” includes “metamorphosing” Western Sahara’s coastline into a hub for business and tourism. Christopher Nolan filmed several scenes for “The Odyssey” on the “otherworldly” White Dune, just outside Dakhla, and it’s hoped many will want “to follow Odysseus’ footsteps and flock” to this city on the up: “think of it as tomorrow’s Dubai”.

Western Sahara also has plenty of natural resources that Morocco could exploit. Surveys have pointed to “promising deposits for gold, silver and iron” in the region, said Bloomberg.

‘International consensus’ shift

Nolan’s decision to film in Western Sahara was bound to “revive debate” over this “half-century-old territorial dispute”, said Bloomberg. Morocco’s annexation has created “one of the world’s most enduring yet overlooked refugee crises”, said Metro. For the past 50 years, the indigenous Sahrawi people have been “forced to live under occupation or go into exile”: 173,000 Sahrawi refugees live in camps in Algeria, in the “harshest part of the desert”. Each camp is named after a city in Western Sahara, but “many have never set foot” in these places “where their parents or grandparents were born”.

In recent years, international consensus has shifted and consolidated in favour of Morocco’s “autonomy plan” for Western Sahara. Spain has endorsed the plan and both France and the US have recognised Morocco’s sovereignty over the region. In October, the UN Security Council approved a resolution that gave the “strongest backing yet” to Moroccan control, “while making no mention of the independence referendum” sought by the Polisaro Front, said Bloomberg.

Last month, Donald Trump thanked Moroccan authorities for naming a highway after him, said Al Jazeera. The gesture has not been confirmed by Rabat but “would be far from surprising”, since the US has provided “crucial support” in bringing Morocco “closer to securing greater control” over the Western Sahara. In recent weeks, the US Department of Commerce announced it would fund “the early stages of an ammonium project” in the region, adding “a new economic dimension” to the long-running, “competing claims over the territory”.

France has taken a major step to crack down on telemarketers with the passage of a new law. It may make French people happy, but at least one country across the Mediterranean Sea is concerned about the move. Moroccans worry the new French law, which bans unsolicited cold calls, could have a negative impact on Morocco’s job market.

What is the new French law?

The law means that French companies are no longer “allowed to advertise goods and services through such calls unless consumers previously gave their consent or if the calls are about a preexisting contract,” said The New York Times. While many countries have attempted to enact no-contact lists for telemarketers, the law represents a new, much more proactive approach in France. Violators of the law will be subject to fines of up to $86,000.

Previously, French people who “wanted to avoid marketing calls had to register their number with a government-run service, but consumer groups said some call centers ignored the list,” said The Associated Press. Officials hope the law will fix what has been a persistent issue in France; at least 97% of French people “are annoyed by telemarketing calls,” according to a 2025 report from France’s National Assembly, while 72% say they are contacted by telemarketers “at least once a week.”

Why are Moroccans up in arms?

Despite the joy in France, the feeling in Morocco is different. Given the nations’ close proximity, Morocco “represents a major market for telemarketing companies” contacting French customers, said the Times. Moroccan officials “indicated that between 40,000 and 50,000 jobs could be at risk of disappearing” because of the new law, according to Moroccan newspaper Le Matin. France represents the majority of the Moroccan industry; Morocco’s call center business “makes 80% of its revenue from phoning French customers,” said Semafor.

Small- and medium-sized telemarketing ventures are particularly vulnerable because they “represent more than 60% of the call center network in Morocco,” said Le Matin. Despite the controversial nature of telemarketers, the centers they operate generated nearly “1.3 billion dirhams [$140 million] in investment in 2023 and generate between 10 and 12 billion dirhams [$1.1 billion and $1.2 billion] in added value annually.” Morocco’s “low labor costs, a large French-speaking workforce and relatively weak unions” make the country an “attractive outsourcing destination,” said the AP.

Some in France are also lambasting the effects of the new law. The leader of France’s direct-selling trade association, Frédéric Billon, has “criticized the reforms for adding what he said were administrative burdens for businesses,” said BBC News. Telemarketing companies will “have to obtain written consent from your customer, and you'll also have to keep proof of that consent,” Billon told BBC News. Despite some of the pushback, polls show most French people favor the law, leading Morocco to explore other avenues.

Moroccan officials are currently “rolling out a plan to ease the impact of the French law and support the sector,” said Moroccan news outlet Hespress. The plan starts by “encouraging companies to expand into new markets in Europe, including Germany, Spain and Italy, as well as in Africa and Latin America.” Officials are also urging companies to “shift from traditional telemarketing to higher-value services, including technical support, digital logistics, consulting and market research.”

A methamphetamine known as the “crazy pill” is wreaking havoc in Bangladesh and fuelling an addiction crisis. The authorities have struggled for some time to crack down on yaba, which is also known as “Nazi speed”. Their efforts are bearing some fruit but tackling the widespread use of the drug remains an uphill battle.

Black market

Yaba is a street name for pills containing methamphetamine, a powerful, highly addictive stimulant. Users generally crush and smoke the pills, although some swallow them whole. They increase alertness and energy, and raise the heart rate and blood pressure of users. Heavy use can bring on a range of problems, including paranoia, psychosis, seizures, cardiovascular problems, and even death.

Yaba, which means “crazy pill” in Thai, is “pushing thousands into addiction” in Bangladesh, said The Telegraph. The tablets, which are a blend of the stimulant with caffeine and other adulterants, are particularly common in South and Southeast Asia.

Bangladesh has become a leading destination and market for yaba because of its geographic proximity to Myanmar, where production of the drug is particularly concentrated. Rebel militias there are increasingly using yaba and crystal meth as “partial payment for smuggled Bangladeshi goods”, said the Dhaka-based newspaper The Daily Star.

The drug is trafficked westward from Myanmar into Bangladesh, through border areas that are difficult to control. Fishing boats transport Bangladeshi goods to Myanmar and “return with narcotics”. Although most of the drugs are consumed in Bangladesh, some packages are flown on to Oman, Saudi Arabia and Dubai.

Daily drudgery

Since 2006, yaba has been a common for the poor and the realities of the “daily drudgery, which makes life so hard for so many of Bangladesh’s 178 million people”, means there is “little to dull the allure” of the drug, said The Telegraph.

“The reason yaba has become so prevalent here is that it is so easy to transport and far cheaper to buy than other drugs,” government social worker Adnan Zobayer told the newspaper. “People get an easy buzz and quickly become dependent.”

Authorities in Bangladesh have been fighting for years to stamp out trade in the stimulant. In 2018, the government passed a law which makes possession of yaba punishable by death. They are having some success: enforcement agencies seized 43,562,811 amphetamine-type stimulant tablets, including yaba, last year, up 90.58 % from 22,857,751 in 2024. However, drug lords are still able to “churn out” millions of yaba pills from camps in the jungle borderlands of Myanmar at a “relentless” rate, said The Telegraph.

There’s trouble brewing in the water. The ongoing war with Iran has stranded more than 1,500 ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, since February. While closure of the strait has led to severe economic consequences, there is also a burgeoning ecological crisis. Invasive species growing on the hulls of the trapped ships could soon voyage across the globe.

Ships, wrecked

There is a “high likelihood” that the idle ships in the Strait of Hormuz will “facilitate the extensive spread of economically and ecologically damaging invasive species as they reenter the global shipping network,” said a study published in the journal Biological Invasions. The stagnant ships’ hulls are “becoming encrusted with marine life,” from “microbes and algae to barnacles and other invertebrates,” a phenomenon called biofouling, said The Guardian. These organisms can “hitchhike to ports around the world” when trade resumes.

The “Persian/Arabian Gulf is home to more than 50 marine nonnative species, and many species native to the region have already been introduced across the globe,” said four of the authors of the study in The Conversation. The circumstances, however, are different this time.

Ships “normally only remain at anchor in a harbor for one to three days, limiting the growth of organisms on their submerged surfaces,” said The Guardian. In the case of the current block of the Strait of Hormuz, many vessels have “remained stationary for months, allowing dense marine communities to establish themselves.” The marine organisms of the Middle East “can withstand extremes,” Mario Tamburri, a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the study’s lead author, said to USA Today. They are “tolerant organisms, which makes them good candidates for invasions when they go to a new location.”

New waters

Marine invasive species “have profound ecological and economic impacts on coastlines across the globe” and are “extremely difficult, if not impossible, to eradicate once they become established,” Carolyn Tepolt, a biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and co-author of the study, said in a statement.

Invasive species can outcompete local species, fundamentally altering the ecosystem. They can also perpetuate the spread of “parasites and diseases that are either entrained within ship ballast tanks or associated with organisms attached to ship hulls,” April Blakeslee, an associate professor of biology at East Carolina University and co-author of the study, said to Live Science (a sister site of The Week).

The organisms can “cause millions of dollars’ worth of damage” as well, Tamburri said to ABC News. Biofouling can “lead ships to have more drag as they move through the water, burning extra fuel and increasing exhaust emissions,” said USA Today. Invasive species can also disrupt fisheries and aquaculture, requiring extra money to manage.

The Strait of Hormuz may be the current invasive species risk, but climate change and warming temperatures have been increasing the level of global spread. “Current ship biofouling management and regulatory frameworks are insufficient to mitigate the impacts of large-scale, unplanned vessel lay-up events,” said the study. “While the human and economic consequences of events like the war in the Middle East will always remain the highest priority, ecological impacts cannot be overlooked.”

The disappearance of 43 students in 2014 has come to symbolise Mexico’s “brutal cartel violence and government impunity”, said The Guardian.

The case “rocked” the nation, and continues to “haunt” it. Now, the former governor of the state of Guerrero has been formally charged over his alleged involvement, after a judge ruled that Mexico’s attorney general had sufficient evidence to proceed.

Ángel Aguirre, who resigned as governor a month after the students vanished, is accused of “forced disappearance”, as well as the “obstruction of justice”: ordering the destruction of surveillance footage that “may have shed light on what happened”. He was ordered to remain in maximum-security detention pending trial. A lawyer for Aguirre denied any wrongdoing.

An elaborate cover-up

In September 2014, 43 students from Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College “commandeered several buses” in the city of Iguala, Guerrero state, to get to a protest in Mexico City, said The Associated Press.

The local cartel is believed to have attacked the students “in collusion with security forces as well as local, state and federal authorities, including the millitary”. The students are presumed to have been killed, but only bone fragments of three of them have ever been identified.

Now, the federal prosecutor’s office has confirmed what international investigators “denounced years ago”: that camera footage, which recorded the moment security forces stopped a bus, was “hidden or destroyed to conceal evidence”.

It shows the students “lying face-down on the back of police pick-up trucks as they were spirited out of the city”, said the BBC. An initial investigation concluded that “corrupt municipal police” had “handed the students over” to the cartel, but that federal police and the military had been “uninvolved”. This provoked “widespread scepticism”; international experts called the findings “scientifically impossible”.

It was an “elaborate cover-up”, said The Guardian. Suspects were “tortured into giving false confessions”, and evidence from the crime scene was “manipulated”. A “years-long international investigation” later determined that both federal police and the military were involved, either by “participating directly”, or “failing to intervene as the students were taken away” and killed.

A state crime

The case, considered one ​of Mexico’s “worst human-rights atrocities”, has been “marred by missteps and interference”, said Reuters.

The Mexican government’s 2022 truth commission concluded that the cartel, Guerreros Unidos, and government authorities had been involved. Then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador described the case as a “state crime”. But almost all of those detained have since been released. Many claim López Obrador’s administration “blocked the investigation as it began to close in on the military”, said the BBC.

Last year, President Claudia Sheinbaum formed an investigative unit to re-examine the case, and the new attorney general, Ernestina Godoy, began a re-analysis. Godoy said new testimony had helped establish that Aguirre not only requested the footage, but had ordered its destruction. The concealment was “the result of a malicious operation, deliberately orchestrated from the highest levels of the State Executive Branch”, she told reporters last week.

“Key questions” still remain unanswered, said AP News. The motive is also “unclear”. Authorities believe the case is linked to “heroin trafficking in buses to the US”, organised by the cartel “in collusion with authorities”. But Aguirre’s indictment is the “biggest breakthrough” since the 2022 arrest of Jesús Murillo Karam, Mexico’s attorney general in 2014, said The Guardian. Karam faces charges of forced disappearance, obstruction of justice and torture.

“We want no more deception,” said Meltión Ortega, spokesperson for the 43 students. The victims “deserve to have the actual perpetrators and the masterminds punished”.

What does Enid Blyton’s Land of Spells have in common with the Bay of Pentos in “Game of Thrones”? asked The Guardian. Both were portrayed by the same “sunny archipelago in the Mediterranean”: Malta.

The EU’s smallest country, “no bigger in size than Sheffield”, has over the past decade become “one of the most popular places” for American and British filmmakers to work. It has hosted more than 30 film and TV productions in each of the past three years, including “Jurassic World Rebirth” and Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II”. The “microstate” just south of Sicily has stood in for Greece, southern France and even the Caribbean – in Guy Ritchie’s upcoming “Viva la Madness”.

Malta is “really punching above its weight”, said Adrian Wootton, the chief executive of the British Film Commission. It’s been “very aggressive, in a positive way”.

Small but mighty

Over the last century, the “small but mighty” republic has become “an appealing global destination for major film productions”, said Variety in 2024. After the Hollywood actors strike the previous year, requests to film came in “like crazy”, said co-founder of Valletta Pictures Joshua Cassar Gaspar. “The strikes didn’t affect us because the independent productions kept going, and many of us in Malta service TV shows, which were also unaffected.”

Providers were also less “Hollywood-dependent” than some European countries, such as the UK, said the news site. And productions benefited from a “hefty 40% tax rebate”. It’s probably “the most generous cash rebate in the world”, the producer of “Gladiator II” said on Deadline.

“Every euro that we invest in the rebate, the industry generates back four,” Malta’s film commissioner Johann Grech said in June. Today, film production is one of Malta’s “most effective” sources of investment, he said in MaltaToday. According to an independent report published this year, the industry contributed 0.28% of Malta’s gross value added between 2005 and 2017. That reached a record 2.16% in 2023. Since 2018, film production has contributed €1.2 billion to the GDP.

And “the economic effect is felt throughout the country”, driving infrastructure development, boosting hospitality and tourism, and attracting “numerous high-net-worth individuals” to the island. Film production is “one of Malta’s economic engines”.

A parallel universe?

As ever with “generous rebates”, there has been “some local pushback”, said Deadline. Malta’s infrastructure is “being tested to the limits as its cities, towns and villages regularly turn into film sets”, said The Guardian. Road closures and parking restrictions “have become a bugbear” for locals.

Critics say Malta’s rise as a filming location has “come at the cost of neglecting local cinematic talent”. The Malta Film Commission is “focused on courting international productions”, while domestic production is dependent on the arts council and its much smaller budget. Examples of Maltese films reaching international audiences are “few and far between”. With local crews in demand from international companies, Maltese directors “often find themselves being outbid by Hollywood”.

“There’s a bit of a parallel universe,” said Teodor Reljić, a Malta-based screenwriter. “People in servicing are thriving, but local filmmakers can’t pay a DOP [director of photography] because they are expecting ‘Jurassic World’ fees.”

“It is tempting to sit back and believe the local film industry to be ‘strong’ simply because many foreign productions shoot in Malta,” said producer Malcolm Scerri Ferrante in The Times of Malta. But volume alone “does not constitute a robust film industry, and certainly not an indigenous one”.

The total solar eclipse, occurring on Aug. 12, 2026, in Spain and other parts of Europe, is bringing all the scientists to the yard. During a total eclipse, the moon completely covers the face of the sun, darkening the sky and revealing just the sun’s outer atmosphere called the corona. That astronomical ring provides a unique opportunity to learn more about the sun as well as its effect on Earth.

Fellowship of the ring

Researchers around the world are investigating the eclipse in different ways. NASA is taking its research aircraft, the WB-57, to the skies with the mission of “chasing an eclipse, but in reality the eclipse is chasing them,” said The Guardian.

During the flight, the “pilot will aim to reach the point of greatest eclipse, when the largest fraction of the sun is obscured by the moon, at the moment the shadow catches up with them,” said The Guardian. The aircraft also contains four cameras to “take high-resolution images of the corona in several different wavelengths of visible and infrared light,” said NASA.

The cameras will “capture at least 20 images per second” to “learn more about the formation of prominences (solar material that gets suspended above the sun’s surface), better understand the corona and how it gets heated,” and “investigate how material in the corona and the solar wind are related,” said NASA. Scientists at the European Space Agency will be studying the eclipse to learn more about solar winds.

NASA scientists in Iceland are also launching a “total of 80 balloons starting 18 hours before the eclipse until eight hours afterward to study how the eclipse affects Earth’s ‘boundary layer,’ the part of the atmosphere that touches the ground,” said NASA. In Spain, “three balloon teams will launch a total of six balloons with 360-degree cameras to image the eclipse shadow from above” to “measure levels of ozone in the atmosphere, which requires sunlight to form.” At Spain’s Javalambre Astrophysical Observatory, researchers are testing a new linear spectrometer prototype that “has a circular slit and can capture the spectrum of the entire corona at a certain distance from the centre of the Sun in a single photograph,” Federico Landini of the Astrophysical Observatory of Turin said to Reuters.

Return of the ring

From “our unique perspective on Earth during a total solar eclipse, scientists can study the sun’s corona in a way we can’t from anywhere else in the solar system,” Kelly Korreck, the eclipse program manager at the NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in the NASA article. The sun “impacts our daily life, satellites and astronauts in space, and we can take advantage of this moment to advance our understanding of that influence.”

The sun’s corona extends about 6.2 million miles and is approximately one million times less intense than the surface. In noneclipse times, “scientists study the sun’s atmosphere with satellites equipped with a coronagraph,” which blocks out the sun’s surface, said the Agence France-Presse. However, total eclipses “allow them a rare glimpse of the chromosphere, the layer of atmosphere between the corona and the surface.”

We are “incredibly lucky” that the “moon is 400 times smaller than the sun,” as well as “400 times closer to us,” Allan Sacha Brun, an astrophysicist at France’s Atomic Energy Commission, said to the AFP. “Our work aims to understand the physical mechanisms underlying the sun’s activity” and “to put the sun back into context within its evolutionary timeline, from its birth to its death.”

“For once the colour associated with a boom in Zimbabwe is blue, not gold,” said The Economist. The country’s blueberry industry is booming; it is exporting 40 times more of the fruit than 10 years ago as part of a wider fresh produce drive across the continent.

“The success of Zimbabwean blueberries, Kenyan flowers and South African oranges” would suggest that there is “huge potential for African agriculture to play the sort of role long envisioned for manufacturing”, said The Economist. And if Africa can learn from such success stories, “there will be fruitful returns”.

‘Momentum is still building’

Just a few years ago, blueberries in Zimbabwe were seen as a “relatively small niche crop”, said Linda Nielsen, CEO of Horticultural Development Council, on Fresh Fruit Portal. Now, it is becoming “one of the country’s most exciting horticultural export success stories”. In 2025, 9,500 tonnes of blueberries were exported from the country, this year the total is expected to reach 12,000 tonnes. And “momentum is still building”.

New production techniques promise “exciting development”, planting “improved blueberry genetics” from international “breeding houses”, with “encouraging” results. These newer varieties are showing “strong performance in yield, fruit quality, shelf life and production timing” and could “significantly speed up industry growth over the next few years”. And with “favourable growing conditions, competitive labour availability, improving technical expertise, and strong international demand for our premium blueberries”, the future is looking bright too.

One major reason for the African blueberry boom is improved trade with China, said Fruitnet.com. Zimbabwe has maintained strong export links to the EU, UK and Malaysia, but China offers a market “capable of absorbing considerably larger volumes”. Growing consumer interest in healthy eating has meant “premium fresh fruit” has become much more attractive to the Chinese.

New commercial agreements have also strengthened Zimbabwe’s position. At the start of May, China’s zero-tariff policy for 53 African nations, including Zimbabwe, took effect. The first arrival of blueberries into China represented “far more than a symbolic shipment”: it marked the “opening of a potentially significant new trade channel” for the industry.

However, compliance with China’s rigorous import protocols could add “another layer of cost and complexity”. Additional steps such as methyl bromide fumigation for airfreight needed to be approved by the Zimbabwean government, and fluctuations in seasons either in Zimbabwe, or competitors Morocco and Peru, could mean the African nation being squeezed out.

A ‘boon for Africa’

Beyond blueberries, a wider emphasis on fresh fruit could be a “boon for Africa” and “force a rethink of what is meant by farming and manufacturing”, said The Economist. “In recent years African agribusinesses have responded to rising global incomes – and demand for fresh produce.”

For example, Kenya and Ethiopia account for a combined 8% of global cut-flower exports and, last year, Europe consumed more than one million tonnes of avocados for the first time, and “much of its demand was met by Morocco and Kenya”. South Africa, whose biggest export has been citrus fruit since wine was overtaken in 2010, recently replaced Spain as the world’s largest citrus exporter.

This milestone in particular not only “marks a significant shift” in the fruit trade, but also “South Africa’s growing influence in international agribusiness”, said Business Insider Africa. Yet, while South Africa leads the export market by volume, China and Brazil dominate global production, though most is used domestically, said South Africa’s agriculture minister John Steenhuisen. Forecasts have been trimmed due to bad weather and war in the Middle East, but South Africa’s position in the industry is becoming more and more established.

People might soon have a lot more to see. A retinal implant that can restore vision degraded by age has been approved for use in Europe and could soon be available in the U.S. Researchers are also evaluating the applicability of the implant for other eye conditions.

So much to see

The PRIMA retinal implant, created by the Science Corporation, can “restore functional central vision” in those with geographic atrophy (an advanced form of macular degeneration), said Stanford Medicine. The implant has shown measurable vision improvement, allowing “those who were considered legally blind to read letters and words.”

“Normal vision in the U.S. is 20/20, and blindness is 20/200,” Frank Brodie, the medical director for vision and the PRIMA implant at the Science Corporation, said to New Scientist. “Patients using PRIMA reached about 20/160, so they went from blind to not blind.”

The implant is “about the size of a pinhead and is inserted beneath the retina” and “used alongside glasses with a frame-mounted camera,” said New Scientist. It operates with a brain-computer interface (BCI), in which the camera “captures and processes images, then projects the result onto the implant’s chips using near-infrared light.” The method “offers users black-and-white vision and the ability to zoom in on objects” without interfering with any existing vision, said Stat News. “We have a cochlear implant for vision now,” Max Hodak, the founder and CEO of Science Corporation, said to Stat News.

Geographic atrophy affects eight million people globally and over one million in the U.S. Currently available treatments for geographic atrophy are “extremely limited.” We “have two [U.S. Food and Drug Administration]-approved medications for the treatment of geographic atrophy that slow down the progressive disease but, unfortunately, cannot bring back lost vision,” Sunir Garg, a doctor at the Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, said to New Scientist.

New field of vision

PRIMA has been approved for use and sale in Europe and is set to launch in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The implant also “received a Humanitarian Use Device designation from the FDA in March,” said Stat News. The designation “puts the device on track to debut in the United States early next year if it receives agency approval.” If PRIMA received FDA approval, it would be only the “second brain-computer interface (BCI) to enter the U.S. market.”

Cost could be a barrier. “Each PRIMA device is expected to cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said TechCrunch. Science Corporation and “its medical partners in Europe are currently in discussion with healthcare providers over reimbursement.” In the U.S., “most of the patient population for the device is over 65, so they expect the device to be covered by Medicare, though those details are yet to be finalized,” said Stat News. Researchers are also evaluating PRIMA for other retinal conditions like Stargardt disease and retinitis pigmentosa.

Archaeologists have uncovered hundreds of vast earthworks in the Amazon rainforest, which they say are evidence of a “lost civilisation” that flourished nearly 2,000 years ago, said New Scientist.

Researchers believe the geometrically patterned structures, known as geoglyphs, were built by an advanced pre-colonial society, known as the Aquiry, between 600BC and AD850 – without metal tools or animals. But they are almost impossible to detect under the dense tree canopy of the deep rainforest.

The scientists used cutting-edge airborne laser scanning technology and found hundreds of previously unknown earthworks. They combined the light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data with previous findings to estimate that there might be up to 30,000 structures across the Aquiry territory. The results “strongly suggest” that at its peak, the civilisation may have numbered 1.25 to 3 million, they wrote in a study published in Nature.

‘Astonishing’ scale and precision

Indigenous people have known about some of the earthworks for generations, “regarding some as sacred”, said The Times. Archaeologists first identified several in the western Brazilian state of Acre in 1977, when deforestation began to clear parts of the forest. In 2003, archaeo-anthropologist Martti Pärssinen, from the University of Helsinki, and his team flew overhead and observed ancient straight roadways connecting the sites, in a region that had long been regarded as “virtually untouched”.

“It was a common idea that the Amazonian forest was a virgin wilderness, occupied only by small groups of hunter-gatherers,” said Pärssinen, the study co-author. “These earthworks totally change our understanding of the supposedly pristine Amazon.”

Pärssinen theorised that the earthworks had been built by a complex, pre-Columbian civilisation. In 2021, he “officially introduced the name Aquiry”, said LiveScience, after the Indigenous name for the Acre River, which flows from Peru and Bolivia into Brazil.

In 2024, his team used aerial photographs and satellite imagery to count nearly 1,300 structures across southwestern Amazonia. But “the full scale remained lost beneath the trees”, said ScienceAlert. LiDAR technology “changed everything”.

The team flew over around 1,700 square miles, firing rapid laser pulses at the ground. Some pulses penetrate gaps in the forest canopy and bounce off the ground, reflecting back to the sensors. Computers can use that to create “a three-dimensional map of the ground under most vegetation”, said New Scientist.

The survey revealed 432 geoglyphs – “nearly 400 of which were completely new to science”. The largest covered an area of nearly 50 hectares. “The scale and precision of these constructions is simply astonishing,” said Pärssinen. An average-sized geoglyph would have required about 300 people to build and maintain it.

Pärssinen’s estimate of a population of up to 3 million people is bold, said Michael Heckenberger, from the University of Florida, but “plausible and extremely important, even mind-blowing”.

They lived ‘in harmony with the forest’

Over the past two decades, LiDAR has become “one of archaeology’s most exciting modern tools”, said National Geographic. It has been credited with driving an “archaeology revolution”. In the early 2010s, archaeologists were “astonished” when it revealed a lost Maya city.

But we still don’t know much about the Aquiry – they left “no written records, and their dwellings are long gone”, said ScienceAlert. We don’t know why they suddenly disappeared, between about AD850 and 1000. But the findings suggest that the view of the Amazon as a practically untouched wilderness should be “abandoned”, said Pärssinen.

The presence of thousands of geoglyphs is “leading archaeologists to rethink assumptions about pre-colonial civilisations and urban development”, said LiveScience.

While Romans were “laying roads and building temples”, the Aquiry were “carving vast circles, squares and monumental enclosures” on the other side of the world, said The Times. Their territory extended across “an area slightly smaller than Britain”. And the geoglyphs suggest “sophisticated planning and organised labour”.

Pärssinen said the civilisation is “likely to have resembled ancient Greece”: dispersed communities with shared beliefs and traditions, rather than a single centralised empire. The “great enclosures” appear to have been “ceremonial and political centres” where communities met to “make decisions, feast and perform rituals”.

The Aquiry also cultivated maize, squash and manioc, grew Brazil nut trees and peach palms, and cleared forests for the huge earthworks and extensive roads, “without destroying the Amazon”.

“They lived in harmony in that way with the forest,” said Pärssinen. “They made clearings, but not too big to change the ecological systems. Despite their huge numbers, they never converted the rainforest into savannah.”

An AI company has “destroyed” millions of books as part of a “controversial project” to train its models, said City A.M.

Tech giants want to “feed an insatiable demand for training data” but their methods could have serious ramifications for the publishing industry and the quality of future books.

Suspicious orders

The alarm was first raised when antiquarian booksellers in the UK and across Europe started to receive curious requests for thousands of obscure titles from anonymous buyers.

A London-based seller of rare books received two “unusually large” enquiries for specialist books from anonymous email addresses, with “no names or company details attached”, said City A.M. The buyers asked for additional photographs of the books before placing sizeable orders.

When the bookseller asked the purchasers “who they were and where the books were going, neither replied”. The retailer suspects the orders were placed by AI companies.

According to recent court documents, Anthropic, the developer behind Claude, launched an internal programme known as “Project Panama”, which concluded that books were “essential” for training advanced AI models.

One senior executive at the AI giant said that books taught systems “how to write well”, as opposed to using “low-quality internet speak”. The company bought millions of second-hand books, “sliced off their spines” using “industrial cutting machines”, scanned every page and recycled the rest.

Internal planning documents at Anthropic also showed bosses wanted to keep the programme secret, said Futurism. One executive said: “We don’t want it to be known that we are pursuing this project,” according to those recent court documents.

Orders have also come from Canadian company Zoom Books, according to AA, but the company has denied participating in the digitisation and destruction of books for AI development.

‘Legal loopholes’

This trend has “raised fresh concerns about copyright and the future of physical books”, said AA. But dealing with the issue could be quite another matter; copyright violations are “difficult to prove in court” because of “legal loopholes”.

Thomas Koch, of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association, said it “appears to be yet another example of AI companies using vast quantities of copyright-protected works to train their language models, without consent and without payment”.

The absence of disclosure obligations makes it “nearly impossible” for authors and publishers to determine whether their works have been incorporated into AI training datasets. Also, the legal standing “differs significantly across jurisdictions”.

AI systems have been “trained on copyrighted books” and can now produce new books “almost instantly”, leading to an “influx” of “low-cost, AI-generated titles” on digital marketplaces. Publishers are calling for stronger regulation from national governments and the EU.

Plastic products could soon have a built-in self-destruct feature. Scientists have found a way to incorporate bacteria into plastic products that can completely break down the plastic after activation. If this technique is applied widely, it could greatly reduce the amount of plastic pollution in the environment.

A plastic kill switch

Scientists have created a plastic capable of degrading quickly without producing microplastics, according to a study published in the journal ACS Applied Polymer Materials. The key is using microbes. Living plastics “contain dormant microbes capable of degrading the surrounding polymer,” said a release about the study. Earlier living plastic designs “often depended on a single enzyme, which limited how efficiently the material could be broken down.” However, in the new study, researchers engineered the bacteria “Bacillus subtilis to produce two polymer-degrading enzymes that work together.”

The two enzymes team up to break down the plastic polymers. The first enzyme “cuts the long polymer chains at random points, reducing them into shorter sections,” while the second enzyme “works from the ends of those fragments, breaking them down further into their individual monomer building blocks,” said the release. With the embedded microbes and the enzymes, “plastics could effectively ‘come alive’ and self-destruct on command, turning durability from a problem into a programmable feature,” Zhuojun Dai, a corresponding author on the paper, said in the release.

The researchers “incorporated dormant spores from the engineered bacteria into polycaprolactone (PCL), a biodegradable polyester used in products ranging from surgical sutures to 3D printing materials,” said Food & Wine. The living plastic material “retained the strength and structure of conventional plastic but could be triggered to degrade when no longer needed.” The scientists “activated the dormant spores by placing the material in a warm nutrient broth heated to about 122 Fahrenheit” where the “spores began producing both enzymes, which together had completely broken down the plastic within six days.”

Worldly applications

Most of the world’s plastic ends up in landfills or the ocean. Plastic can take anywhere from 20 to hundreds of years to break down because of its chemical structure. It can also degrade into microplastics, which have “turned up in water, food and even human bodies,” raising a number of health concerns, said The Cool Down. But creating plastic that can break down completely rather than releasing tiny fragments “could reduce one path for that contamination.” Still, the living plastic has not yet been “validated in real-world conditions in the ocean, a landfill or a roadside ditch,” said ZME Science.

Plastic that decomposes in a short time period makes “life easier for consumers by reducing the buildup of everyday products that turn into long-lasting trash,” said The Cool Down. In addition, if “disposable packaging, medical products or short-term electronics can degrade more cleanly, communities could face lower cleanup costs and less expensive waste management over time.”

While the researchers only incorporated the bacterial spores in one type of plastic, they eventually hope to “develop a method that activates the bacterial spores in water, where a significant share of plastic pollution accumulates,” said the release. The same strategy used for the PCL “could be adapted for other materials, including plastics widely used in disposable products.”

TV might actually be rotting our brains. Watching television for extended periods of time could increase the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, new research says. To combat this danger, experts recommend taking breaks from binge-watching and engaging in more mentally stimulating activities.

Your brain on TV

Frequent TV watching in midlife was associated with reduced volume in the parts of the brain vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia. The diminished brain systems include those associated with memory and cognition as well as executive functioning. More surprisingly, the brain volume reduction was not tied to sedentary behavior but specifically to watching TV. “People whose jobs involved sitting for much of the day tended to have healthier-looking brains,” said ScienceAlert. Also, “when the researchers accounted for differences in overall physical activity, that didn't seem to impact the outcome.”

The results also showed that men were particularly vulnerable to these brain changes. “This could be because men and women accumulate sedentary time differently,” Natan Feter, a biological scientist and the lead author of the study, said to ScienceAlert. “Women may interrupt their sitting more often,” or “biological differences in how the brain responds to prolonged sedentary behavior” may be to blame. In general, “women tend to prefer TV programming in shorter chunks, though they spend more time watching overall,” said ScienceAlert. By contrast, “men’s preferences for watching sports and movies” mean they are are “more likely to spend long, uninterrupted periods on the couch.”

Researchers analyzed a sample of 1,712 adults with an average age of 53 years who did not have a diagnosis of dementia when the research began. Between 1987 and 1989, “participants completed a detailed physical activity questionnaire during an in-person interview” where they reported “how often they watched television during their leisure time,” as well as “answered specific questions about how often they sat down during their work hours,” said PsyPost. Between 2011 and 2013, the participants underwent an MRI of their brains.

The study “shows an association, not a cause-and-effect relationship” between TV and dementia, Feter said to Healthline. The researchers also “relied on self-reported data for TV consumption, which can be less precise than timed tracking,” said a news release about the study.

Beyond the screen

“For years, we’ve focused on how much people sit,” David Raichlen, a professor of biological sciences and anthropology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the senior author of the study, said in the news release. But these findings “suggest we should also pay attention to what they’re doing while they’re sitting.” For example, working from home, while sedentary, is more “intellectually stimulating” compared to watching TV, said the release.

Because TV watching appears to specifically affect the brain, “we might eventually see a different approach to health guidance around sedentary activities,” said the release. “Rather than just directing their patients to move more, for example, physicians might recommend they reduce television time and add cognitively engaging activities for when they do sit.” Activities like “puzzling, crafts and even texting, which require your brain to work while you are sitting might also change how much sitting negatively impacts your brain,” said ScienceAlert.

“The goal is not to eliminate passive rest,” Dung Trinh, a doctor at the MemorialCare Medical Group and the chief medical officer of Healthy Brain Clinic in Irvine, California, said to Healthline. It is to “build more cognitively engaging moments into the day.”

This year’s Tour de France Femmes has been rocked by allegations that some riders are artificially exaggerating their bust size to gain an aerodynamic advantage.

Several women’s World Tour teams have raised concerns that cyclists on rival teams are padding their sports bras to give them a boost in time trials, according to leading Dutch cycling news site, WielerFlits.

Every second counts

The practice of “chest fairing” – also known as “bra boosting” or “bra doping” – involves increasing the surface area of the chest to change the airflow around the torso. Other forms of chest fairing include placing a water bottle or radio receiver under your cycling jersey. This can reduce drag, potentially saving valuable seconds in a time trial, where aerodynamics are crucial.

An optimised chest fairing can reduce drag by as much as 3.6%, which could gain a time-trial cyclist at least 0.78 seconds every kilometre, according to research published in the Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics in 2024. “You won’t gain tens of seconds,” said study lead Bert Blocken, an aerodynamics expert at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland. But over a 20- to 30-km time trial, “it could save enough seconds to make the difference”.

“We’ve done some testing with a push-up bra versus a sports bra” and “we’ve definitely found some differences there”, Koen de Kort, head of technical and innovation at professional cycling team Lidl-Trek, told The Athletic. We haven’t used enhanced bras in competition, as we “don’t think it’s in the spirit of the sport” but I’m sure other teams “have found the same results and have experimented with it”.

It’s a controversy that has echoes of the row at the Winter Olympics earlier this year, when male ski jumpers were accused of artificially boosting their penis size in order to be fitted into ski suits with larger, more aerodynamic dimensions in the crotch area.

Grey area

Using any item to “artificially modify the morphology” of a rider to gain an advantage is banned by the UCI, cycling’s governing body. Riders found violating these rules can be disqualified and fined. Yet, at present, they are “virtually unenforced”, said WielerFlits.

For male riders, the policing of chest fairing “is relatively easy”, said Cycling News, but it becomes “complicated for women, who all have different sized breasts and use all different kinds of sports bras during races”.

On Monday, the UCI took the unusual step of issuing a warning that the Tour de France Femmes race jury overseeing final checks for yesterday’s stage 4 time trial will play “particular attention” to clothing and accessories which “could modify riders’ morphology”.

But “confusion remains as to what exactly” the jury was tasked with looking for, said Cycling Weekly. I don’t see how they are going to police this in future, de Kort told The Athletic, describing sports bras as a “grey area”. How can you define how much padding “a woman needs”?

Microplastics could be responsible for a lot of heartache. The tiny pieces of plastic have been found in high amounts in patients who suffered from heart attacks, leading experts to question their effect on cardiovascular health. Plastic likely has a more significant impact on health than we currently know and should be taken into account in analyzing environmental risk management.

Heart of plastic

Microplastics were “detected significantly more frequently” in patients who suffered heart attacks, said a study published in the European Heart Journal. Among those who had heart attacks, “micro and nanoplastics were detected in 84% of patients, compared with 40% of patients with chronic ischemic heart disease and 32% of patients with normal coronary arteries,” said a press release about the study.

The “highest levels of plastics were in blood drawn from the blocked artery itself, at the site of the blockage,” said Time. These tiny plastic particles are “found virtually everywhere in the environment, including the air we breathe, the water we drink and many foods we consume,” Pasquale Paolisso, the first author of the study, said in the release. “Scientists have begun to detect these particles in human tissues and organs, raising concerns about their potential health effects.”

The study also found that “people who smoke were six times more likely to have detectable micro and nanoplastics in the blood supplying their hearts than non-smokers,” David C. Gaze, a senior lecturer in chemical pathology at the University of Westminster, said in The Conversation. Therefore, along with the well-known detrimental effects of cigarettes, they “may also act as an efficient delivery system for microscopic plastic particles.”

The same pattern for smoking held for those who were exposed to bad air quality. “Both exposures appeared to amplify each other,” Paolisso and Emanuele Barbato, another author of the study, said to El País. “All patients who smoked and lived in areas with high air pollution had detectable plastics, compared with only one in eight of those who neither smoked nor were highly exposed.”

World of plastic

The study’s findings “do not prove that microplastics cause heart attacks, but they reveal a strong association between environmental exposures, microplastics in the blood and cardiovascular disease,” Barbato said in the press release. Microscopic plastic particles are present in “synthetic clothing fibers, tire wear, degraded packaging and countless other environmental sources,” Gaze said in The Conversation. But “at the moment, we cannot measure our exposure to plastics” in an accessible way, Rocco Montone, an interventional cardiologist at Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli in Rome, said to Time.

Microplastics were previously “found inside the liver, kidney, intestine and human brain, among other tissues,” said El País. Scientists have been interested in the health implications for some time. This study “reframes the issue of microplastics not as an isolated curiosity but as another link in a wider environmental exposome interconnected with the air we breathe and our habits,” the study authors said to El País.

The apparent connection between microplastics, smoking and air pollution also “underscores the urgent need to shift from isolated risk factor management toward comprehensive environmental health strategies,” said the study. Such strategies may include the “integration of air quality monitoring, anti-smoking interventions, plastic pollution reduction and exposomic assessment into cardiovascular disease prevention guidelines.”

While the jury is still out on whether diet and zero-sugar drinks are really better for your health than sugary sodas, a recent study has found that the artificial sweeteners they use may have one very unintended side effect: memory loss, particularly among younger consumers. But even though the study found a significant link between artificial sweeteners and memory issues, experts say this is still only a correlation, not causation.

What did the study find?

Several widely used artificial sweeteners may be “associated with faster declines in memory and thinking skills over time,” according to the study published by the American Academy of Neurology. It followed 12,772 adults in Brazil for about eight years and examined their intake of seven sugar substitutes: aspartame, saccharin, acesulfame K, erythritol, xylitol, sorbitol and tagatose. These are “frequently added to ultra-processed products, including flavored water, soft drinks, energy drinks, yogurt and desserts marketed as low in calories.”

Researchers found that the people who consumed the highest amount of artificial sweeteners “experienced a 62% faster rate of cognitive decline than those with the lowest intake,” said USA Today, a rate “estimated to be comparable to about 1.6 additional years of brain aging.” People who were in the mid-range of consumption “experienced cognitive decline that was 35% faster than those in the lowest-intake group.” The memory loss itself was also most prevalent in study participants who were under 60; researchers “did not find the same association among participants older than 60,” said the study.

When it came to the amount of sweetener consumed, those in the “lowest consumption group averaged 20 milligrams per day, while those in the highest group averaged 191 milligrams per day,” said the study. Regarding aspartame, one of the most common artificial sweeteners, the “amount consumed by the highest group was roughly equal to the aspartame in one can of diet soda.”

What is the bigger picture?

This study suggests that sugar substitutes are not as good for you as their marketing makes them seem. “Low- and no-calorie sweeteners are often seen as a healthy alternative to sugar; however, our findings suggest certain sweeteners may have negative effects on brain health over time,” the lead study author, Dr. Claudia Kimie Suemoto of Brazil’s University of São Paulo, said in a press release.

This is not the only new study to suggest that artificial sweeteners have negative health effects; recent research published in the journal Current Atherosclerosis Reports showed that these chemicals are “linked to higher fasting insulin levels and a higher HbA1c — a measure of long-term blood sugar control,” said HealthDay. It also “found that people who consume more artificial sweeteners may have a higher risk of cardiometabolic conditions, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease.”

When it comes to memory issues, scientists are careful to point out that this research doesn’t necessarily mean artificial sweeteners cause lapses. The study “identified a relationship between sweetener intake and cognitive decline but could not determine whether the sweeteners caused the changes,” said USA Today. The data also “did not include every artificial sweetener currently used in foods and beverages,” and Suemoto emphasized that more research was needed.

South Korea’s culture of heavy drinking has long been seen as a male-dominated phenomenon, fuelled by corporate workplace and business drinking traditions.

But over the past decade, rates of high-risk drinking for men (defined as seven or more shots of traditional soju rice wine, or five cans of beer, in a single sitting, at least twice a week) have fallen significantly among all age groups. For women, the trajectory has been the reverse.

High-risk drinking for women (five or more shots of soju, or three cans of beer, in one sitting, at least twice a week) rose significantly among those over 30 between 2016 and 2025. That’s according to a new analysis by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), based on last year’s annual Community Health Survey data and reported by Seoul Economic Daily.

Among women in their 20s, high-risk drinking declined by only 18.5%, compared with a sharp 41.6% drop among men in their 20s. But rates rose by 19.1% among women in their 30s, 41% in their 40s and 13.2% in their 50s. The findings highlight “a growing divergence in the country’s drinking habits”, said The Korea Times.

‘Cultural change’

At company dinners, heavy drinking has become far less common, said Aju Press, a South Korean news agency. But “drinking has quietly moved into the home”.

For many women, alcohol has become “more varied, more accessible and more seamlessly woven into everyday life”. One “popular explanation” is that more women have entered the workforce and become “more exposed to Korea’s long-standing drinking culture”, with the “double burden” of juggling childcare and household responsibilities.

But it is “difficult to attribute the increase solely to stress”, said sociology professor Kim Yoon-tae; there’s a broader cultural shift afoot. “As women’s economic and social participation has expanded, there may be more occasions when they drink at workplaces or social gatherings,” he said, such as networking events. Drinking “remains a strong part of social culture”.

The rising number of single-person households has also “normalised honsul” – drinking alone, said Aju Press. Convenience stores have become “major retailers” of alcohol, and the growing popularity of wine and cocktails like highballs has “broadened alcohol’s appeal beyond the traditional soju-centred drinking culture”.

The hit South Korean TV comedy series “Work Later, Drink Now”, which follows three women in their 30s “whose friendships revolve around sharing drinks after work”, captures “the cultural change”. Boozing has become “a familiar part of women’s everyday routines rather than a predominantly male social ritual”.

Men ‘still outpace women’

Despite the cultural shift, men still "outpaced women on every indicator”, said The Korea Times, drinking substantially more. Half of men in their 30s, 40s and 50s engaged in binge drinking, and more than one in five men in their 40s and 50s qualified as high-risk drinkers.

“This analysis confirmed that Korea’s overall drinking behaviour is improving, but men in their 30s, 40s and 50s still show high rates of monthly binge drinking and high-risk drinking,” said KDCA commissioner Lim Seung-kwan. These behaviours “raise the risk of disease, injury and alcohol dependence”.

South Korea’s high-risk drinking rate may have “come down somewhat over the past decade”, but it’s still “near the top by international standards”, said Seoul Economic Daily. Its monthly binge drinking rate ranks fifth-highest among 27 developed countries, according to the OECD.

The right garment can make you invisible, at least to AI face recognition software. So-called adversarial clothing is specially designed to thwart AI’s ability to identify the wearer. As people become increasingly discontent with AI video surveillance, anti-AI fashion could soon get its time in the spotlight.

Outfitted anonymously

Adversarial clothing uses “special patterns and materials made to confuse AI facial recognition software,” said Inc. This may include “unique patterns that can cause AI to misidentify people as animals or objects” or “infrared reflective gear that blocks faces out entirely on camera, as if a bright light was shining on them.” The trend comes at a time when “unlike traditional CCTV, modern computer vision systems can identify faces, follow individuals across cameras and search footage at scale,” said The Guardian.

Video surveillance using artificial intelligence is “worth over $4 billion in 2026” and is “expected to surpass $10 billion” by 2032, said Inc. Companies such as Ring and Flock Safety have incorporated AI into their products to identify people and objects. The problem with AI video surveillance is that “citizens don’t have the possibility in the physical world to opt out,” Rachele Didero, the founder and CEO of the Italian adversarial clothing brand Cap_able, said to the Mozilla Foundation. “In the digital space we can say yes or no to cookies. In the physical world, we don’t have this option.”

Adversarial clothing “wins on many levels,” Nick Tidball, the co-founder of the clothing brand Vollebak, said to The Guardian. Along with the “practicality of protection, it’s fashionable and fun.” It also “makes a powerful, public statement that many are in agreement with.”

The trend exists in an “interesting area of tension,” Nicole Scheller, the designer and co-founder of the adversarial clothing brand Urban Privacy, said to Euronews. “Surveillance systems are all about capturing identities, while fashion is about expressing identity outwards.” Adversarial fashion can “protect identity and at the same time raise awareness of the issue because it is so eye-catching.”

To AI or not to AI

While adversarial clothing is designed to avoid AI facial recognition, at the rate at which the technology is advancing, no design can completely guarantee that you won’t be detected. “Controlled testing against one object-detection model can’t prove a garment will defeat facial recognition in public,” said Digital Trends. “Lighting and camera position can alter the result, while newer software may learn to ignore patterns that once caused trouble.” Additionally, “if such clothing genuinely proved effective, it could get political very quickly,” Tidball said to The Guardian. “Then this type of clothing could find itself banned.”

While some companies are working on anti-AI clothing, others, including luxury brands, are embracing AI in their design process. It is predicted that the AI fashion market will be worth “$60 billion by 2034, with annual growth rates nearing 40%,” said Vogue. “Brands across the sector are integrating generative tools into both creative and production workflows.” Such tools “offer clear advantages: speed, efficiency and reduced costs.” But they also “sit in direct opposition to the principles that have long underpinned luxury value: time, craftsmanship and human expertise.”

The use of AI by luxury brands could help open the door for more adversarial clothing brands. “New generations are increasingly afraid of AI and concerned for their privacy,” Didero said to The Guardian. “The mainstream is quickly coming up behind them, helped by the fact that bigger companies will see the potential for profit and will push the trend into the popular, public domain, changing the way we dress on a large scale.”

Social media feeds full of hiking content and glorious views have contributed to a growing interest in the outdoors among young adults. But a worrying number of young people have also needed rescuing from mountainous regions.

Hiking influencers have become an “inadvertent source of inspiration” for their followers to take treks “without understanding the scale of the challenge” and that are “beyond their skill set”, said The i Paper.

#Hiking

Hiking posts can make the “toughest climbs look like a walk in the park”, said Kate Davis, from the Ramblers walking charity. While no influencer would “encourage novices” to take intermediate hikes without proper preparation, said The i Paper, not “everyone is honest” about their experiences.

For example, some content creators will “walk to a scenic spot” and “pose with merchandise” before heading back down, said Nige, who posts on TikTok as W33k3ndwanderer. This can “mislead viewers into thinking” that certain mountains with challenging inclines and scrambles are “easily accessible”.

This combination of misleading content and hikers unaware of factors like weather, technical clothing and time needed to complete a hike could be behind the rise in rescue call-outs.

‘Excitable explorers’

In the Scottish Highlands the number of “mountaineering incidents” involving the 17–25 age group has “nearly quadrupled since 2022”, said The Economist.

In England and Wales last year, 18 to 24-year-olds “kept mountain rescue services busy”, said The Times, with almost 400 incidents, “more than double the 166 in 2019”.

This trend of “excitable explorers” following in “influencers’ footsteps without fully understanding” what the hike entails has led to more rescue call-outs in the US, France, Italy and Switzerland.

Nathan Mburu, 24, a fitness influencer, told the BBC that he and his two friends being “overconfident” and “under-prepared” led to them getting into difficulty on Crib Goch in north Wales last year. The weather conditions quickly turned a “manageable day into something extremely dangerous”, resulting in the group being stuck on a ridge waiting nearly six hours for a rescue team to reach them.

Last year, nearly “a quarter of rescues” in England and Wales were the result of “slipping or tripping”, with common injuries being to the “ankles, lower legs and head”, said The Times. Almost “one in 10 incidents” was because of “poor equipment” and around 20% were due to “severe weather conditions”.

While it’s “great to see more young people going outdoors”, the question is how to make sure every hiker is prepared for the journey ahead. Since people “rarely use maps and compasses”, some parks are “developing signage with common routes”, said Nick Phillips, from Mountain Rescue England and Wales. An initiative will allow people hiking in the Lake District, Peak District and Wales to “scan a QR code” and “upload a map” on to their device with the route “they need to follow”.

If navigating an airport with your partner has caused an argument, an airport divorce may be the right kind of divorce for you. Contrary to the name, an airport divorce is not a divorce or breakup.

Rather, it is when a couple decides to go their separate ways in the airport to tackle preflight activities and tasks before reuniting to fly together. The separation can keep stress to a minimum and allow both people to regulate their emotions before a trip.

See you later

At the airport, “we transmute, werewolf-like, into unrecognizable beings,” journalist Huw Oliver, who coined the term “airport divorce,” said in a column for The Times in 2025. Airport divorces are ideal for people who travel differently. “One traveler wants to browse every shop, while another seeks a quiet seat. One arrives hours early, the other prefers last-minute entry,” said Yahoo. “In that pressure cooker, minor disagreements can quickly spiral out of control.” Instead opting to separate, “couples can avoid friction before it begins, and each party retains control of their airport experience.”

Despite its name, airport divorce is “remarkably domestic,” said Travel Noire. Giving each other “space during the part of a trip that exposes every difference in timing, hunger, anxiety and tolerance for crowds” can make travel more peaceful.

The science supports it. One person’s tension and stress can spread to the people they are with through “interpersonal physiological synchrony,” which can lead to the “coupling of autonomic nervous system signals such as heart rate,” said a review article in Nature Reviews Psychology.

Reassuring a partner also “compounds the problem rather than solving it,” said Forbes. “Calming an anxious partner draws on the same limited pool of attention and patience a person needs for everything else that day, and that pool depletes with use.” Instead, going separate ways, temporarily, allows both people to stabilize their nervous systems before the flight. Both partners “arrive at the gate having actually rested rather than one having spent the wait managing the other’s nerves.”

Carrying the luggage

While there are benefits to an airport divorce, it may not be for everyone. It works best for “experienced travelers who communicate well and understand each other’s habits,” said Travel Noire. It can also “solve practical mismatches when one partner has TSA PreCheck or Global Entry and the other moves at a different pace.” There are many cases, however, in which splitting up is less beneficial.

Ideally, a “successful airport divorce divides responsibility as well as physical space,” said Travel Noire. “Parents managing children, first-time flyers, couples carrying shared medication or documents, and anyone needing mobility support may gain more from staying together.”

Airport divorce, in addition, often “exposes invisible labor when the same person still tracks boarding, carries the passports and sends every location update,” said Travel Noire. Both partners should be capable of keeping track of their belongings and the time independently.

Those skeptical of the arrangement argue that being unable to maneuver an airport with your partner does not bode well for the rest of the relationship. Those in favor emphasize the importance of space in relationships and not strictly while traveling. “People love to consciously uncouple,” whether it is going to bed at different times or taking part in activities separate from your partner, said PureWow. “In that stretch between check-in and takeoff,” said Yahoo, “sometimes a separation is the key to appreciating each other’s company again.”

An anonymous phone call may soon be a relic. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has proposed requiring a host of personal information in order to enable someone’s phone service. While the new rules are an effort to stomp out pesky robocalls, they may cause more harm than peace.

Caller ID

The FCC 26-27 proposal, adopted on April 30, was deemed a “know-your-customer” standard with the intention of “stopping illegal calls before they enter the phone network, requiring providers to block unwanted or illegal calls and giving consumers more information about the calls they receive,” said the FCC in a news release. Part of the proposal is for phone providers to “verify customer identities — including name, address, government ID and alternative phone numbers — before enabling service.” It sounds good on paper, but many are concerned about this measure’s breach of privacy.

The proposal is “misguided and counterproductive,” Sydney Saubestre, a senior policy analyst on the Privacy and Data Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said to Fortune. It is a “mandate that would deny access to the most vulnerable, strip anonymity from those who need it most and do little to stop the sophisticated scam operations it claims to target.” This removal of anonymity would essentially put an end to prepaid cellphones and burner phones.

Besides removing access to private telecommunications, the new proposal would do “little to combat scams and robocalls, since most people doing that will have no trouble creating fake documentation or identities,” Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said to 404 Media. “Given this administration’s crackdown on free expression, protest, immigrants and women’s health,” they “want to take away our ability to make an anonymous phone call.”

Wrong number

While burner phones are often associated with crimes like espionage and fraud, there are plenty of nonnefarious reasons someone may want one. A lack of access to private telecommunications can cause “especially acute harm and danger for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, technology-facilitated abuse and stalking,” the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual & Domestic Violence said in a letter to the FCC. Also requiring government-issued IDs is a barrier for many to obtain a phone.

As of 2024, close to 21 million voting-age U.S. citizens do not have a current driver’s license, according to the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland. Black and Hispanic Americans are also disproportionately less likely to have one. An address requirement would prevent those who are unhoused from being able to purchase and operate a cell phone.

Many also have concerns about how phone providers will handle user data. “Every other year, there’s a new data breach in which 70 million, 100 million U.S. consumers have their data exposed,” Chao Jun Liu, a senior legislative associate at the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, said to CNET. “These are the people that we are trusting to collect and hold and retain information.” Those in favor of the proposal, like banking industry groups, have cited “fraud and scam losses that totaled nearly $200 billion in 2024,” said Fortune, arguing that the “financial sector already spends billions annually fighting it.”

As firefighters battle wildfires that have already burned nearly 300,000 acres in southwest Spain and France, the search is on for ways to prevent fires of this scale in the future. One solution might be in the hands – or hooves – of goats.

Why the goat is the G.O.A.T

Goats might sound like unlikely firefighters, but their role is preventative. They actually provide a “cost-effective and environmentally sound way” to clear shrubbery that would “otherwise feed a wildfire instead of a hungry herd”, said the Los Angeles Times. In California, where the size and intensity of wildfires have increased, 400 goats and 100 sheep have been deployed in Fresno to graze on yellow star thistle, a weed that can help to spread fires.

Goats are “particularly effective” at reducing flammable flora as they “happily consume” thorny shrubbery other animals tend to avoid. And sheep are good at reaching grasses and low-growing plants, said The Times of India. “Together, they provide an environmentally friendly alternative to bulldozers, lawnmowers and herbicides, especially on uneven or difficult terrain.” The animals consume seeds, as well as leaves, which limits the plant’s ability to spread further.

It is not just goats and sheep. The cow breed Cachena is making a “comeback” in northwest Spain, for a similar purpose, said Reuters. A fire in 2017 prompted the community to turn to the “centuries-old wildfire prevention technique”. These “goat-like” smaller cows “eat almost anything” and can “negotiate mountainous terrain that ​larger cows can’t”. As well as creating firebreaks, their consumption of “gorse, brambles and scrub” also helps “preserve local ecosystems”, said Deustche Welle.

‘Regulatory attack’

Certain laws and regulations could put these “most effective fire-prevention specialists” under “regulatory attack”, said Reason Magazine. California’s minimum and overtime wage laws will now apply to “goat-herding companies” which “for decades” have been “largely exempt” from these rules. Given the “round-the-clock” nature of herding, this would make employing the companies “prohibitively expensive”. Owners of herding companies cannot “sustain” this new cost along with doing “fire fuels abatement”, said Tim Arrowsmith, owner of Western Grazers.

The recent wildfires in southwest Europe have been the “most painful manifestation” of the “climate emergency”, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told a climate conference this week. If these extreme crises are “no longer an exception”, but the rule, we need to look at solutions for future prevention.

A super-Earth 48 light-years away, approximately 1.7 times the diameter and 5.6 times the mass of our planet, may be capable of sustaining life. The exoplanet, LHS 1140 b, was leaking helium, which could be indicative of the presence of an atmosphere, a necessary factor for life to flourish.

A whole new world

LHS 1140 b likely has an “upper atmosphere dominated by helium and depleted in hydrogen, with other volatile species trapped at lower altitudes,” said a study published in the journal Science. The exoplanet was discovered in 2017 and was found to share many qualities with Earth. Though its temperatures are colder than our planet’s, it “orbits a red dwarf star within the star’s habitable zone,” which is the sweet spot “where temperatures and environmental conditions are within the range that could support liquid water on the planet’s surface,” said a news release about the study. This is the “first time anyone has found an atmosphere on a rocky planet in the habitable zone of another star,” Collin Cherubim, the lead author of the study, said in the release.

The researchers were able to identify the exoplanet’s atmosphere using a technique that is “typically reserved for observing giant planets” and using it “for a rocky planet, which nobody has done before,” Cherubim said to Space.com (a sister site of The Week). With the Warm Infrared Echelle (WINERED) Spectrograph on the Magellan Observatory in Chile, they were “able to see LHS 1140 b and another planet both transit, or pass in front of, their star in the same night,” where they could “identify the signatures of molecules in the atmospheres of these planets as they passed,” said Space.com. One planet “yielded no results,” but LHS 1140 b “showed a direct, undeniable helium signature.”

Helium is a “very light gas that easily escapes gravity,” so it “could serve as a readily detectable marker of a complex atmosphere underneath,” said Time. A potential atmosphere is a significant find as small red dwarf planets are the “most common type of star, and hence our best chance for studying nearby rocky exoplanets in their habitable zone,” said The Guardian. Red dwarfs aren’t as bright as our sun, so their planetary habitable zone tends to be in the range of solar flares, which often strip “away the atmospheres from the planets they host, leaving rocky planets with thin atmospheres or airless.”

Endless diamond sky

While the findings are promising, “at this point, we have absolutely no evidence for life on the planet,” Cherubim said to The New York Times. “But we think all of the really important, essential ingredients are there.” The question remains whether LHS 1140 b is “bare rock with no atmosphere that sometimes burps up some gas that then immediately escapes” or if there is a “steady-state atmosphere there that will leak out stuff like the Earth does from time to time,” Jason Dittmann, an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Florida and the one who first found the planet, said to The Independent.

An atmosphere helps a planet hold water, regulate climate and protect from space radiation. To determine whether the helium leak is from an atmosphere, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will be used to “look for water, and if there’s water in the atmosphere, then it’s probably a stable atmosphere that will persist,” said Dittman to The Independent. Even if this exoplanet is not the next Earth, “if one potentially organic world is out there, countless others could be too,” said Time. The existence of potentially viable planets “dramatically” boosts the odds of alien life.

Scientists are testing the “surprising theory” that “splitting sleep into two separate blocks” may be “the most effective sleep pattern for people working through the night”, said the BBC.

Better management of insomnia

Biphasic sleep means two distinct sleep periods in 24 hours instead of one. Researchers suggest it may be a more natural rhythm, even if the biological reasons for it are still being debated.

The concept has “captured the interest of many today”, said MediaFeed, and some individuals are “experimenting with segmented sleep patterns”. Its supporters say the benefits include “improved restfulness and better management of insomnia”.

During pre-industrial times people often slept in two blocks. Roger Ekirch, a historian at Virginia Tech, found that sleeping in two halves was the “predominant pattern” in the Western world until the mid-19th century. A “typical family” would “go to bed around nine, wake naturally after midnight for an hour or so – for prayer, chores, conversation – then sink back into what they called their ‘second sleep’.”

This changed when artificial light transformed the “economics of the night” and gas lamps “began lighting London’s streets in 1807”. As a result, “people stayed up later, the gap between the two sleeps narrowed and eventually closed”.

‘Dubious’ findings

The shift to a single period of sleep came at the time of the Industrial Revolution, as people changed to new work schedules, which were dictated by “mechanised time”, said MediaFeed.

But Ekirch believes the old approach hasn’t fully disappeared because the prevalence of “middle-of-the-night insomnia” represents a “persistent echo, a relic of this earlier pattern of sleep”.

A study in 1992 sought to discover whether, without industrialisation, humans would have remained natural biphasic sleepers. It limited participants to just 10 hours of light per day and found that they naturally shifted into a biphasic sleep pattern.

But the experiment drew criticism. In 2023, Niall Boyce wrote in the journal Medical History that its findings were “dubious” and suggested participants were simply restless.

Disrupted sleep, whether by working night shifts or insomnia, does have health implications. When we sleep, “our brain consolidates the memories of the day, processes emotions, and solves problems that defied it in the waking hours. It also strengthens immune defences and repairs muscle tissue”, said the BBC

So for those struggling to get enough sleep, “it’s not solely about being tired, but potentially about repeatedly disrupting a system that's doing far more behind the scenes than many people realise”.

Some experts have warned that biphasic sleep could have health risks, including from disruptions to circadian rhythms. Existing research on the topic is “fragmented” because some studies treat biphasic sleep as “one long sleep plus a brief nap”, but others “count only two equal periods”, so there is “no agreed definition”.

In a growing movement in India, young people have opted to trade alcohol and house music for chai and devotional music. Bhajan clubbing has brought Hindu tradition to the dance floor, providing a sober and spiritual nightlife experience. The trend reflects a collective desire for community and belonging in an increasingly uncertain world.

Devotion on the dance floor

Bhajans are a form of “devotional singing performed in temples, religious processions and community spaces across India,” said CNN. These centuries-old Hindu hymns have gotten a revamp all across India, as there has been a rise in “ticketed events held in large venues, complete with smoke machines, giant LED screens and the kind of production usually associated with clubbing and concerts.” The events are free of drugs and alcohol but still allow people to “come with their friends, dress up, sing loudly, clap, laugh,” Prachi Agarwal of the bhajan jamming group Backstage Siblings, said The Times of India.

The new trend is a way for Gen Z to engage with spirituality on their own terms. “Practices once tied to family or community structures are now approached almost like creative disciplines: something to explore, test, remix and personalize,” said Vogue India. Bhajan clubbing is “another iteration of the ‘sober curious’ events or ‘coffee raves’ that are growing in popularity in Europe and America,” said CNN.

Today’s social climate is likely the reason for Gen Z’s rise in spirituality. Living “under conditions of climate anxiety, economic precarity, digital hypervisibility and constant comparison, the desire for grounding is hardly surprising,” said Vogue India. “Ritual and collective chanting offer a shared moment of grounding,” Meghna Siraj, the founder of the wellness initiative Megh and co-creator of the devotional music collective Kirtan Mumbai, said to Vogue India. “When hundreds of voices chant together, the mind quiets and a natural sense of belonging emerges.”

Spiritual split

Critics of bhajan clubbing claim that it “raises uncomfortable questions about the commercialization of faith,” said The Indian Sun. For those who grew up with the faith, turning “devotion into a party and calling it clubbing could be disrespectful, hurt certain sentiments and dilute the whole objective,” Nirvaan Birla, the founder of Sounds for the Soul and managing director of Birla Open Minds, said to Vogue India. The rise of Gen Z spirituality has “unfolded against the backdrop of a broader political shift in India, where Hindu symbolism and religious identity have become increasingly visible in public life,” said CNN.

Despite the criticism, supporters argue that the “gatherings represent a form of devotion untethered from rigid rituals and the gatekeeping normally associated with temples or religious processions,” said CNN. Bhajan clubbing “reflects a deeper yearning for meaning, belonging and well-being,” said The Economic Times. “Rather than rejecting Indian tradition, Gen Z is reshaping it in an innovative format.”

A new underwater research facility is making waves. Deep, a U.K. ocean engineering company, has installed a subsea human habitat almost 60 feet underwater in the Tennessee Reef, part of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Called Vanguard, the habitat allows for four aquanauts to live in a dry environment underwater for five days without needing to resurface. And Vanguard is just the first of a proposed network of underwater habitats by the company.

Aquanaut in the ocean

Deep’s Vanguard is “providing extended access to the ocean for research, conservation and training,” said Deep’s website. The habitat is the “first open-ocean human habitat built, tested and deployed in the United States in four decades,” said Vice.

To install Vanguard on the sea floor, engineers “first needed to install a base foundation and then lower the habitat onto the platform using a boat crane,” said Popular Science. The habitat is “tethered to a surface buoy,” which is a “bright-yellow structure” that “holds multiple vital support services, such as communications arrays, breathable air and power.” Aquanauts are expected to be able to safely use the facility, as it has received the “green light from Det Norske Veritas, an internationally recognized accreditation institution used by oceanographic organizations and companies.”

Vanguard is a precursor for another habitat the company is working on called Sentinel. This habitat would be an “underwater station with direct ocean access, individual suites with showers and toilets, and configurable workspaces, as well as social spaces and communal rooms for meetings and dining,” said Oceanographic magazine. Sentinel will be “complemented by a revolutionary range of submersibles” with “dive and scientific research equipment to cover the full range of ocean depths.” Deep hopes to enable permanent underwater living by as soon as 2027.

Previous dives

Living underwater exploits a “strange loophole in human biology,” said Vice. “It’s like you have been scuba diving for a really long time and your tissues and your blood get saturated with nitrogen, the inert gas that you are breathing,” said Dawn Kernagis, the director of scientific research at Deep, to Science Alert. “Essentially, once you are saturated, you could stay down there for weeks, months at a time.” Those in the facility can leave the habitat using a cord connected to Vanguard’s air supply, allowing for hourslong dives as opposed to the 60-minute limit of recreational scuba dives.

Underwater facilities are not new. They have been used for professions such as underwater welding and in energy and defense industries. The Florida Keys are home to another underwater research habitat, Florida International University’s Aquarius Reef Base.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has designated the Tennessee Reef as a “research-only zone.” The goal of Vanguard is to allow scientists to conduct marine science research, mainly related to “coral reef restoration, long-term monitoring, climate impact studies, human performance research, and training for extreme environments,” said Deep in a statement. And the deployment of the Vanguard habitat within the marine sanctuary “creates additional opportunities for marine science and builds on research infrastructure.”

As the US and Iran continue to trade blows in the Middle East, the consequences of the intense bombings threaten Iran’s already “fragile biodiversity”, said The Associated Press.

Historically, Iran has had a “deep connection” with its wildlife, being one of the first countries to form an environmental protection agency, although “decades of mismanagement and years-long drought” had already put a strain on conservationist work.

Unique biodiversity

Iran’s geographical location gives it a “wide range of climates” that host an “astounding diversity of life”, said the AP. The country is home to at least 86 species at risk of extinction, including the “Asiatic cheetah, Persian fallow deer, brown bear, leopard, black bear, Persian onager, the great bustard and various birds of prey”, according to a 2024 report by Iran’s Environment Department. “Ironically”, military zones had been considered “one of the few areas where falcons can breed safely”, out of reach of smugglers and poachers.

US and Israeli strikes on remote military facilities in deserts and mountain ranges are “causing habitat degradation”, leading to “water and land pollution, soil contamination” and “destruction of land cover”, US-based Iranian wildlife expert Jamshid Parchizadeh told the AP. And an animal population driven away from its habitat, like mountain-dwelling Persian leopards and brown bears, “forever leaves that area from fear”.

Land ecosystems are not the only ones at risk. The “highly contested” Strait of Hormuz is home to the “most diverse” coral population in the region, said CNN. Greenpeace researchers have been able to “regularly detect oil slicks” in the water, following attacks on tankers passing through the strait.

“Many of the compounds found in crude oil will target heart function and respiration,” Martin Grosell, a professor of biology and ecology, told the outlet. Prolonged exposure also “suppresses immune function, rendering animals more susceptible to infections”.

Invisible victims

While most of the attention has been on the urban and economic consequences of the war, the country’s animal species are “less visible victims”, said Iranian news agency Wana.

While there have been “no official reports” on widespread casualties of animals in “natural habitats”, experts warn that a “lack of reporting does not equate to an absence of damage”. And the war’s impact “extends far beyond direct fatalities”: the “intense” noise pollution of bombardments also inflicts “devastating” physical and psychological trauma.

At the Lavizan Bird Garden in Tehran, it was reported that the “deafening noise” caused several birds to lose “behavioural control” due to “severe stress” and to collide with enclosure walls, resulting in injuries and some fatalities.

There are also lasting “indirect” ecological impacts for Iran’s biodiversity. International studies have shown animals exposed to conflict zones develop “disrupted migration, feeding, and breeding patterns” and show signs of “severe aggression or depression”.

“The war has caused serious environmental degradation in a country reeling from a range of climate-related crises, water stress, and air quality issues”, and Iran’s “fragile” ecosystems now face an uncertain future, said non-profit US news organisation Truthout. When it comes to “post-conflict reconstruction”, environmental rehabilitation “often doesn’t take priority”.

There’s a whale of a problem off the U.S. West Coast. Gray whales are undergoing a “catastrophic mortality event,” said the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), with close to 150 carcasses found on beaches along the Pacific Ocean just this year. The loss is largely due to human-caused climate change, and action is needed to protect the species.

Blood in the water

Gray whales are under stress due to “multiple threats, including ship strikes and reduced food sources,” said PEER in a statement. Between 2019 and 2023, their population declined by almost 30% from 20,500 to 14,526.

The statistics are even worse between 2025 and 2026. An estimated 2,500 to 8,000 whales died during that time frame. “Determining an exact number is difficult because marine biologists can only count the whales that are stranded,” said The Guardian. The ones that “wash ashore are only maybe 10% of the whales that are dying,” said Rick Steiner, a marine ecologist in Alaska and the chair of PEER’s board of directors, to KTOO.

Because of climate change, the marine animals are “starving” as “Arctic sea ice decline is reducing their Arctic seabed prey resource,” said Steiner in the PEER statement. The West Coast population travels approximately 10,000 miles between Baja California, Mexico, and its feeding grounds in the Arctic, where the whales “feed on crustaceans called amphipods,” said Smithsonian magazine. Climate change is reducing the amphipod population, so “some hungry whales are detouring into dangerous places like San Francisco Bay, where they are being fatally struck by ships or becoming entangled in fishing gear.”

Gray whales were once protected under the Endangered Species Act because of commercial overfishing but were removed from the protection list in 1994 after populations recovered. So it may be necessary to “relist them on the Endangered Species Act” and “provide the management tools that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) needs" to "give these guys the best chance of making it through this climate bottleneck,” said Steiner to KTOO.

Where to next

Along with anthropogenic climate change, other human actions are threatening gray whale populations. Reducing emissions is necessary to protect the whales and other species, but “shorter-term threats to these whales must also be reduced, including ship strikes, oil spills, entanglement in fishing gear, harmful algal blooms, microplastic pollution, ocean noise, disturbance, and the harvest in Russia,” said Steiner in the PEER statement.

NOAA has yet to relist the gray whale under the Endangered Species Act or take action to protect the species. Individual states, however, have enacted protective policies.

California has “ship-speed reduction zones in areas known to have higher gray whale concentrations,” and, though voluntary, “many ships do reduce their speed,” and some ships have people assigned to look out for whales, said The Guardian. Other states are advocating for similar measures. “The loss of thousands of whales in just two years,” said Steiner in the statement, “should be of concern to us all.”

A recent study conducted by Anthropic, the creator of Claude, analysed the AI chatbot’s responses across different languages. It found that if you want a friendlier tone, you may want to switch your language settings.

Results may vary

Anthropic compared data from more than 300,000 anonymised conversations in a two-week period during May 2026, said The Decoder. The company looked into samples from the top 20 languages of Claude.ai and their three models: Sonnet 4.6, Opus 4.6 and Opus 4.7. The results showed Claude “emphasises different values” when producing responses in different languages.

The study used the technique “dimensionality reduction” to measure the responses across four separate axes: warmth vs. rigour, depth vs. brevity, candour vs. execution and deference vs. caution. Anthropic “explicitly states” this study does not “imply that Claude intrinsically holds values”, but instead the term “values” refers to “values reflected by Claude’s behaviour and outputs”.

The warmth vs. rigour axis that studies “whether Claude leans towards expressing positivity and care for the person or emphasising accuracy and precision” saw the most fluctuation in results, said The Indian Express.

The results showed the “systematic differences” in Claude’s responses. For example, Arabic responses were shown to have “greater warmth”, meaning they contained more “polite phrasing, humour, playfulness, and affirmation”, said The Decoder. On the candour vs. execution axis, Dutch responses showed a more “honest appraisal of potential shortcomings”, said The Register.

Anthropic “isn’t yet sure” what properties caused these “linguistic differences”, said Techbrew on Instagram.

Proceed with caution

Despite the interesting results, there are some “limits” to the "explanatory power” of the study, said The Decoder. Some languages had “far more data than others” and were more “overrepresented in professional writing”, making the data not “evenly distributed”, said Anthropic.

The main point was “addressing hidden biases and language-specific gaps” when training the AI model, said The Indian Express. However, the subject “deserves further exploration” because of the “important implications” for how people use such AI products, said The Register.

Anthropic gave the example of two people using Claude to give feedback on the same business plan, one in Hindi and the other in Russian, and saw that “Claude expressed different values in how it framed its assessment”.

The study also showed the response differences across Claude’s models. Sonnet 4.6 appeared to be more affirming towards users’ ideas and “offers comfort without passing judgement”, while Opus 4.7 “openly critiques” and “questions assumptions”, said The Decoder. Sonnet 4.6 is the default free model on the Anthropic platform. Opus 4.7 is the premium paid model of Claude.

These differences remain an “open question” as Anthropic said it is “making sense of this variation” and using what it learns to “improve Claude’s behaviour”.

Several contenders have tried to depose Benjamin Netanyahu, who has led Israel nearly uninterrupted since 2009, and now a man who “lost his son in Gaza” is “coming for” Israel’s prime minister, said The Telegraph.

Gadi Eisenkot has been described as “gruff”, “uncharismatic”, a “stocky newcomer” and a “teddy bear with a steel spine”. Israeli politics is a complex web but if the pundits and polls are correct, he could also be called PM by the end of October.

Working-class roots

Eisenkot was “born into the Israeli working class” from which the right-wing Likud has “traditionally garnered so much support”. He was one of nine children in a Jewish family of Moroccan descent, part of a “historically marginalised minority” in Israel, said the Times of Israel.

He joined the military as a private soldier in the Golani infantry brigade and became the most senior officer. Eisenkot’s “most controversial moment” came in 2016 when a combat medic killed a Palestinian terrorist who had already been wounded and didn’t pose a threat. In a “politically charged tribunal”, the Israeli military, backed by Eisenkot, tried and convicted the medic for manslaughter.

After retiring from the military, Eisenkot entered politics in 2022, and briefly held a role in Netanyahu’s coalition, before forming his own party, Yashar, which means “honest” in Hebrew.

His youngest son, Gal, 25, was killed in Gaza in 2023. He also lost two nephews during the invasion that followed the 7 October attacks.

Dangerous challenger 

He has “emerged as the most dangerous challenger to the veteran prime minister”, said The Telegraph, after his party became the largest in the opposition bloc hoping to replace Netanyahu ahead of elections that will take place by 27 October.

A poll in the Maariv newspaper put Eisenkot ahead of Netanyahu for the first time, another found that 41% of voters thought Eisenkot would make a more suitable prime minister, against 40% for Netanyahu.

A razor-thin lead but commentators “increasingly believe that he could be the one to break” Netanyahu’s “voodoo-like grip” on the premiership with an attack from the “security-orientated centre”.

His “lack of showmanship gives many the impression he would be an authentic and strategic leader”. Dr Maoz Rosenthal, a Jerusalem-based political analyst, told The Telegraph that many of those who are “fed up” with Netanyahu “kind-of like this old general who hesitates before he speaks and who wants to be sure of what comes out of his mouth”.

Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party and an influential figure in Israeli politics, suggested that Shas could “be open” to joining a government led by Eisenkot, said The Jerusalem Post.

“We are in a secular country ... There are those whom I don’t believe will repent,” said Yosef in a filmed speech. “There’s no chance [Netanyahu] will repent. Eisenkot might repent.”

Australia and Fiji have agreed a new defence alliance, the latest in a series of regional pacts that could significantly alter the Pacific’s defence landscape.

In a “surprise move”, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Fijian counterpart, Sitiveni Rabuka, elevated diplomatic ties between the two countries to a “formal treaty”, said The Guardian. The Ocean of Peace alliance, which will in the future be open to other Pacific nations to join, aims to bolster regional security and “limit China’s influence”.

The Vuvale Union

For 75 years, Australia had just two formal alliances – with the US and New Zealand under the ANZUS Treaty, signed in 1951. But recently, it has been “racing to shore up defence ties with its Pacific neighbours”, said the BBC, to counter China’s “military expansion”.

In October, Canberra signed a defence deal with Papua New Guinea – the most populous South Pacific nation – granting it access to PNG’s military facilities and troops.

At the end of June, after “months of negotiations”, Albanese also signed Australia’s long-awaited treaty with the South Pacific island of Vanuatu. Called the Nakamal Agreement, it “recognises Australia as Vanuatu’s primary policing partner”, and prevents any other nation from establishing a military base there.

The latest Australia-Fiji pact, the Vuvale Union, is more significant than previous deals because it includes a mutual defence agreement, committing each country to come to the other’s aid should there be the threat of an armed attack. It also offers closer military cooperation, including planning, exercises and intelligence sharing.

It is open for other Pacific nations to join, although at first Australia would “likely only look to extend the treaty to Pacific nations which maintain a standing military”, said ABC News: New Zealand, PNG and Tonga.

New Zealand will consider joining, Prime Minister Christopher ‌Luxon said on Thursday. The country has only one formal ally, Australia ​, although it is part of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing group (Australia, UK, US and Canada are the others) and it is “a key partner of Nato”, said Reuters.

Has Fiji picked a side?

China has “sharply criticised” some of Australia’s recent agreements, accusing Canberra of using them as a “geopolitical tool” to keep Beijing out of the Pacific, said ABC News. But Rabuka said he did not believe that either Australia or Fiji would have to deal with “severe pushback” from China, but that they will “welcome the understanding that is between Australia and Fiji", he said.

Those remarks were “telling”, said The Conversation. Rabuka stressed that the alliance threatens neither country’s relationship with Beijing, but a leader “does not repeatedly reassure a country that a treaty is not aimed at it unless everyone understands it is”, and is to some degree a sign to the region to see whether “Fiji has picked a side”.

Hours after the pact was signed, China test-launched a long-range ballistic missile with a dummy warhead into the Pacific Ocean. Beijing described it as “routine”, part of the country’s annual programme, but the launch provoked an angry response in Canberra, which accused China of destabilising the region. Ultimately, the test “underscored the need for Pacific Island countries to collectively think through their defence and security arrangements”.

Astronomers have detected a type of sugar that’s found in raspberries and self-tan lotions near the centre of the Milky Way. A study published this week in the journal Nature Astronomy revealed evidence of erythrulose, a simple sugar, in interstellar gas and dust clouds between stars.

The discovery may conjure up images of a “civilisation of pale, safety-conscious frugivores” in outer space, said The Guardian science editor, Ian Sample, but for astronomers it is significant because “it shows that compounds important for life can form in the frigid expanse between the stars”.

Erythrulose is a monosaccharide (simple sugar) like glucose and fructose, but it is the “most complex sugar spotted beyond our Solar System”, said Nature. Two-carbon simple sugars have previously been detected on meteors and asteroids, but this is the first time a four-carbon “true sugar” has been spotted in interstellar space.

‘Exceptionally sensitive observations’

Using radio telescopes in Spain, researchers collected data from a dust cloud called G+0.693-0.027 near the centre of the Milky Way. After comparing these signals to samples in the lab, they detected traces of erythrulose. The discovery was enabled by “the combination of exceptionally sensitive observations, extensive frequency coverage, and highly accurate laboratory spectroscopic data”, study co-author Izaskun Jiménez-Serra told Live Science.

The findings indicate that erythrulose was probably produced by chemical reactions on tiny interstellar dust grains, which then “rained down” on nearby objects, including planets, or were incorporated into comets. It’s thought that “Earth underwent a period of heavy bombardment from asteroids and comets” around the time that the earliest signs of organic life began to emerge “about four billion years ago”, said Nature. This might have been how sugar molecules were brought to our planet’s surface.

Origin of life

“Sugar does more than sweeten tea and powder doughnuts”, said The Associated Press. “Different varieties fuel our cells and even make up DNA,” so scientists are “itching to know how sugars form because they’re a key ingredient for life as we know it”. Erythrulose itself “isn’t essential for life, but can easily convert to a form that’s thought to be crucial to kick-starting life on Earth”.

It is “especially tantalising” to think that erythrulose might have acted a “feedstock” for the more complex sugars that evolved into nucleic acids – the “building blocks of modern-day DNA and RNA”, said Nature.

“That’s why the detection of erythrulose is so relevant for the origins of life,” said Jiménez-Serra. And, if we could discover even more complex sugars in the Milky Way, more light could be shed, astrophysicist Anthony Remijan told Nature. “An actual building block of RNA and DNA: that would be the next big thing.”

Australian beaches are seeing a higher-than-usual number of shark bites. There were two attacks in the span of 48 hours in January, and since then, at least four people have been killed and almost two dozen others injured in encounters. Extreme rainfall and warming ocean temperatures due to climate change are driving the uptick.

Water weather

While shark attacks remain very rare, they have been increasing. In Australia, there has been a “gradual rise in encounters,” said Reuters. The country has been “averaging nearly 29 incidents per year over the last decade, up from an average of roughly 16 per year in the 2000s.”

Australia is not the only country seeing more of the aquatic predators. South Korea “counted 46 large sharks in Korean waters by late June, nearly four times the number recorded at the same point last year,” said The Independent. There have also been an increased number of shark sightings in the U.S., even though summer has just started.

The January attacks were predicted to be caused by a deluge “which broke January daily rainfall records for Sydney” and “flushed sewage and other waste into the nearby coastal waters, attracting baitfish, which in turn lured sharks closer to shore,” said Scientific American. Heavy rain also causes increased sediment, especially on coasts. The sediment “reduces water visibility, making it more difficult for sharks to see and avoid people.”

Along with increasing rainfall, climate change is warming the oceans, which changes shark behavior. Fatal shark attacks are usually because of bull sharks, tiger sharks or white sharks. All three species tend to prefer warm water and stay longer in those waters during summer.

The sharks’ range is growing as the ideal water temperature is encompassing a larger region. There may be increased shark sightings this year in the Pacific Ocean as well because of the super El Niño bringing warmer-than-usual water temperatures. Sharks that bite people have “often mistaken a human for a seal” or the bites “can be exploratory” or to “ward off imagined competition for food, such as a school of fish,” said The Guardian.

Spotting and culling

To prevent human-shark interactions, Australia has used aerial surveillance to spot the marine animals. “Once drone pilots spot a potentially dangerous shark, they will alert lifeguards, who can sound the shark siren and clear the water,” said The New York Times. The country does currently have a shark culling program, but some are calling for the program’s expansion in light of recent attacks.

However, others have objected. If sharks are removed from a certain area, that “habitat does not cease being suitable,” said The Sydney Morning Herald. “Other sharks will swim in and colonize that area.” Therefore, to be effective, “you would have to remove all the sharks, driving them to extinction or close to it,” which is “not a cull, it’s ecocide.”

“Human-shark encounters are extremely rare” despite the increased number of shark attacks, and “you’re statistically more likely to be killed by lightning,” said Scientific American. Instead, “beachgoers should be ‘shark smart,’” and avoid swimming when the sharks are most active, at dusk and dawn. Environmental factors play a part, but an increased human population along with the growth of water sports and recreation in the ocean have also increased human-shark interactions.

Sharks are not simply deadly killing machines. Their presence may be helping fight climate change. Sharks in coastal waters “ultimately protect and enhance what is known as ‘blue carbon,’ which is “carbon stored in oceans,” said the World Wildlife Fund. “When sharks target plant-eating fish, they can positively impact the marine carbon cycle.”

All over the world, a growing number of late-in-life mothers are facing overlapping symptoms as they deal with postpartum challenges while also entering the perimenopause period. With so little research available on either condition, women are turning to each other to parse their experiences.

Fighting two battles at once

Last year in the United States, the number of births among women ages 35 to 39 was up by 90% since 1990, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2023, births among women ages 40 and older exceeded teen births for the first time in the country’s history. As these numbers increase, more women are confronting the “bewildering convergence of two mind- and body-altering hormonal events,” The Washington Post said: the postpartum period and the transitional years of perimenopause marked by “hormonal instability” that can “wreak havoc for up to a decade before menopause occurs.”

There are specific struggles as more women experience postpartum and perimenopause simultaneously, Jessica Shepherd, an OB-GYN and the chief medical officer at the telehealth platform Hers, said to Self. Postpartum symptoms “can take upward of a year to resolve” following pregnancy. Meanwhile, perimenopause can arrive as early as your late 30s. With women waiting to have kids later in life because of “changing cultural norms and a boom of fertility medicine,” it is “no wonder even first-time moms” are becoming “more likely to hit perimenopause while postpartum.”

The symptoms can overlap because post-childbirth, estrogen and progesterone drop to their pre-pregnancy levels. In perimenopause, those same two hormones “tumble downward, often on a zigzagging path,” which can trigger “similar mental symptoms, like anxiety or a short fuse,” said Self. The picture “gets fuzzier in moms over 35,” who are both “more likely to be heading toward menopause” and may be at greater risk for postpartum depression.

Breastfeeding, which can cause prolactin and oxytocin levels to soar, also complicates the issue. When women are nursing, it can “create this pseudomenopausal state” due to low estrogen, which may cause “symptoms like vaginal dryness, low libido, hot flashes and night sweats,” OB-GYN Stacey Silverman Fine said to Self.

Women owed the ‘respect of more research’

In the medical community, there is a “dearth of knowledge” about the intersection of the postpartum and perimenopausal stages, Suzanne Fenske, an OB-GYN who specializes in perimenopause and menopause, said to the Post. This is only made worse by the fact that the United States “offers minimal postpartum care,” the outlet said. Women’s health concerns are often “systemically dismissed,” and “women have been socialized to downplay their experiences.” Thankfully, that is shifting, in part because physicians are more outspoken on social media and awareness is spreading to “mainstream pop culture.” Every time you turn around, there’s a “book that’s out about perimenopause or menopause” or a “popular TV show alluding to these changes,” said Fenske.

Within the “maelstrom of hormonal chaos,” many women point to one “meaningful bright spot,” the Post said. Postpartum and perimenopausal mothers are “finding one another” and “building a sense of connection around their shared experience.” Online forums and group chats can be a “lifeline for postpartum and perimenopausal moms” who might “otherwise feel alienated in spaces dominated by younger parents.”

With so much gray area in our knowledge of the overlap, it is of paramount importance to listen to and believe patients, OB-GYN Talat Uppal told the Australian Financial Review. Before we can help patients navigate these intersecting life stages, we have to listen to their concerns. With more women birthing after 40, “we need to really give them the respect of more research.”

The supply of one of the world’s “hottest commodities” is suffering a “huge disruption”, said Javier Blas in Bloomberg: the “humble anchovy”. The tiny fish may sound “utterly mundane”, but it’s at “the bottom of a crucial supply chain”.

Anchovies are the main ingredient in fishmeal, used to feed farmed seafood like salmon and prawns. But a drop in the catch has caused global fishmeal production to plummet an estimated 40% in a year. Prices are now up 80% since last year to “an all-time high”, threatening a knock-on effect on the global aquaculture industry – and food prices. The culprit? This year’s El Niño.

The ‘Saudi Arabia’ of anchovies

Most of the tinned anchovies we buy in Britain come from Mediterranean fisheries. But fishmeal is primarily made with the South American species, anchoveta. Peru is “the Saudi Arabia of anchovies”, said Blas. Combined with Ecuador and Chile, the catch accounts for nearly a third of the world’s fishmeal production.

Around Peru, the “unusually warm waters” in the Pacific, linked to El Niño, have dramatically reduced the population, said The Times. The naturally occurring weather pattern “reduces the nutrient-rich upwellings on which the fish depend”.

“It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, well, anchovies, who cares? I don’t particularly like them,’” food economist Mike von Massow said on Global News. But they are “a critical part” of the global food supply chain. About two-thirds of the fish and seafood we consume is farmed using fishmeal.

Manufacturers are trying to substitute anchovies with plant-based proteins, like soy or insect protein. “The problem is the profile of that protein isn’t the same,” said Von Massow. It “changes the nutritional makeup of the feed”, and therefore, the fish that consume it. We can do “small degrees of replacement”, but yields are lower, with lower levels of omega-3. It’s not “the same kind of fish product”.

The interconnected supply chains

Peru has imposed increasingly severe restrictions on anchovy fishing this year to protect the remaining population and allow the stocks to recover. That has caused the “unprecedented surge” in the price of fishmeal, said The Times, as buyers “compete for dwindling supplies”. Producers are “trying to absorb” some of the hikes, but “analysts say the pressure is building”. The “real impact” will likely be felt “much higher up the food chain”, on supermarket favourites such as salmon. If shortages continue, companies “may have little choice but to pass on higher costs to retailers”.

Industry executives are “tight-lipped about how much prices could increase”, said Blas, but 20% to 25% seems a “reasonable expectation”. Once, this would have been “a first-world problem”. But since the last powerful El Niño in 1997-1998, the aquaculture industry has “exploded”. The average fish consumption per capita has also “jumped” to nearly double the levels of the 1990s. So fishmeal is “crucial”. And because El Niño typically “peaks” at the end of the year, the problem is “likely to get worse before it gets better”.

The “anchovy crisis” is a reminder of “the surprising ways in which the world is wired today”, in which weather in Peru can increase fish costs in European supermarkets. It’s also “a warning sign that El Niño will have significant impacts on global food prices – far greater than those from the war in Iran”.

Retired Americans who worked all their life while paying into Social Security may assume that both men and women are entitled to the same amount. But that belief doesn’t appear to align with reality, as according to recent studies, women may receive significantly less in Social Security benefits than their male counterparts. Looming benefit cuts could widen the gap even more.

How big is the Social Security gender gap?

Women receive $4,800 a year less than men in Social Security benefits on average, said AARP. The disparity is largely because women “still tend to earn less than men,” said CNBC. Over half of caregivers, 61%, are also women, said AARP, and as a result they are “more likely to take time out of the workforce or reduce their working hours to make time for those caregiving responsibilities,” said CNBC. Both of these factors “tend to leave women with less retirement savings.”

Other data from the personal finance website FinanceBuzz claims that there is an even larger gap in Social Security pay. According to FinanceBuzz’s research, women “receive an average of $1,760 per month in Social Security, 19.9% less than the $2,198 men receive, a gap of $438 every month or $5,254 per year.” Women make up about 55% of all Social Security recipients, but the “total monthly payout to men is higher ($54.4 million vs. $53.5 million), meaning women collect far less per person.”

How does this impact retirees?

While the pay gap has been improving in recent years, the “median earnings for American women working full-time are only 83% of those of their male counterparts,” and the financial consequences may be “felt long after women have retired from the workforce,” said FinanceBuzz. The “result is a retirement income system that faithfully mirrors the inequalities of working life.”

The ongoing disparity also means that Social Security cuts, which are slated to occur in 2032, would “more deeply impact women,” said USA Today. Elderly women are “far more likely than men to rely on Social Security to meet their basic needs,” Courtney Anderson, a social insurance legal fellow at the National Women’s Law Center, said to the outlet. Her organization is pushing for policymakers to “strengthen and expand — not weaken and cut — Social Security.”

These cuts would come at a time when women, especially elderly women, are already more likely to live in poverty than men. Between 2023 and 2024, the national poverty rate “significantly increased from 15.0% to 16.2% for older women while remaining unchanged for older men,” according to a National Women’s Law Center report. But these rates “would be far higher without Social Security, which has protected millions of older women from falling into poverty.”

Some “potential solutions are in the mix,” though they would require congressional intervention, said Fast Company. One recent proposal from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget “would cap Social Security payments to $100,000 per couple, reducing the amount paid out to wealthy retirees who rely on the monthly benefits the least.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) have also “floated the idea of lifting the payroll tax cap to make the Social Security program’s math work once again,” said Fast Company. This plan would “replenish the Social Security trust by collecting more for Social Security withholding” above the current income cap — a “limit that only benefits the highest earners.”

The Byzantine city, in the Dakhla oasis region, was a “remarkably preserved secret”, said the Egypt Independent. Eighteen tombs were also uncovered from the Marina el-Alamein archaeological site near Egypt’s northern coast.

Aside from the historical knowledge gained from these sites, the discoveries could also attract more tourists to the country.

A ‘thriving’ city

The Dakhla oasis site could offer a “detailed glimpse” into urban development and economic activity in Byzantine Egypt, said The Independent. The ancient city had a “meticulously planned layout” that allowed for open and public spaces.

Key structures discovered include a basilica church and the remains of two watchtowers, said head archaeologist, Mahmoud Massoud in The Guardian. Archaeologists also observed “heavily fortified structures” and homes, including the house of Tisous, a church deacon from the second half of the fourth century

Other artefacts found included kitchen tools, bronze coins, and more than 200 pottery fragments. The pottery fragments were used to record daily transactions and correspondence, according to Diaa Zaharan, head of the Islamic, Coptic and Jewish antiquities department at the Supreme Council of Antiquities. These artefacts offer a “direct window into the past”, said The Independent.

The Dakhla oasis is on the Unesco tentative list, but now could be a “step away” from being added to the official list, said The Guardian. Unesco’s world heritage list recognises cultural and historic landmarks for their “outstanding universal value to humanity”.

Tombs and tongues

The second archaeological discovery was of 11 rock-cut tombs and seven surface limestone-built tombs at the Marina el-Alamein site, west of Alexandria, said The Associated Press.

Archaeologists found gold pieces inside the mouths of some of those buried there, a funerary practice known as the “golden tongue”. In addition, they found a 2.5-metre-long granite sarcophagus containing skeletal remains, and remains of a plaster sphinx statue, said mission chief, Eman Abdel-Khaliq.

This brings the total tombs uncovered at the Marina el-Alamein site to 48, said The Guardian. The site was discovered in 1986 and archaeologists believe it to be part of the ancient port city of Leukaspis.

As well as providing insight into life in fourth-century Egypt, these sites will also be “simultaneously bolstering” the nation’s crucial tourism sector, said The Independent.

Over the past decade, the country has been rebuilding its tourism appeal after years of political turmoil, violence, and the pandemic. Last year, Egypt saw a record 19 million visitors, said the AP, a 21% increase from 2024.

The matriarch of one of Thailand’s richest families has finally dropped a lawsuit against her son just days before it was scheduled to come to court. Chiranuj Bhirombhakdi was suing her son under the 1908 “ungrateful child law”, claiming his actions had caused material and reputational damage to the family.

In May, Siranudh “Psi” Scott, heir to the Singha beer dynasty, caused a “firestorm of controversy” when he made allegations that he had been sexually abused by his older brother and a babysitter, said The Japan Times.

Thailand is not the only country to have a law demanding filial support, with similar legislation in existence and in development across the continent.

Allegations ‘stunned’ the public

Psi’s allegations “sparked a crisis” in the Bhirombhakdi family, owners of the Singha beer company and one of the wealthiest families in Thailand, said the South China Morning Post. He had “stunned” the public two months ago after claiming he was sexually abused by his older brother, Sunit. Despite “strenuously” denying the allegations, Sunit was removed from executive roles at Singha’s parent company, Boon Rawd Brewery, soon after the allegations were made.

“Matriarch” Chiranuj Bhirombhakdi said that her decision to withdraw legal action was an act of “opening the door to dialogue about everything that has happened and to discuss how we should move forward”. “As a mother, it deeply pains me that I have had to rely on the court process. This is never something any mother would wish for,’’ she said in a statement last week.

Psi reportedly first told other family members of the alleged abuse about three years ago, but “accepted financial compensation from them to keep quiet”, said the Taipei Times. However, after his mother sued him this year over a property dispute, he decided to speak out.

Some experts believe that this case “marks an unprecedented shift in Thailand”, providing an opportunity for Thais to discuss sexual abuse cases more openly. Patinya Kuantrakul, scion of one of Thailand’s best-known golf courses, and influencer Taylor Srirat, have since shared their own personal experiences.

‘More on the way’

This “bitter” legal case was centred around a “century-old law reinforcing traditional values of obedience and hierarchy”, said The Telegraph. Known as the “ungrateful child law”, the 1908 legislation is used to “protect parents from neglectful children”, enabling them to withdraw gifts or financial donations if their children are deemed “ungrateful, physically abusive, neglectful in old age, or responsible for serious reputational harm”.

The “closest English translation would be ‘ingratitude’”, said Jiraporn Laocharoenwong, an anthropology professor at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. But the Thai term “carries a much stronger moral meaning”.

Cases invoking the law “rarely reach the public eye”, often resolved via court-mediated negotiations. An exception to that rule came in 2021, when an elderly couple in Bangkok sued their son and his wife, after they were told to leave the family home. Ruling in the parents’ favour, the judge also ordered other properties that had previously been transferred to their son to be returned to the older couple .

Some of Asia’s biggest countries have similar laws, and “more are on the way”, said Asia editor Richard Lloyd Parry in The Times. China, Singapore and Taiwan all place “varying legal obligations on children under civil or criminal law”. Officials in the Philippines are considering pushing for a Parents Welfare Act, which would punish neglectful offspring with 10 years in prison”. Malaysia is also considering introducing a law that would “oblige children to care for their ageing parents”.

At their core, such laws “codify an assumption that was common in most pre-modern societies”: whatever joy they bring to their parents’ lives, “children are a form of investment”, delivering “returns” as financial support when they start work, and as “physical care when their parents become feeble in body”. Yet, as the Singha beer dynasty case demonstrates, such statutes and penalties may be “crude tools for dealing with the fraught emotional dynamics of families”.

New medicine can be found even in the iciest of locations. During an expedition to Antarctica, scientists discovered a species of sea squirt that may promise a new cancer treatment. The marine organism contains bacteria capable of producing a toxin that could eventually become a widely available drug. However, research still needs to be done on the species and bacteria before it can be tested on humans.

The dive

The cancer-fighting sea squirt, also called an ascidian, was first discovered 20 years ago and identified as a potential cancer therapy. The bacterium in the organism, Candidatus Synoicihabitans palmerolidicus, can “produce the metabolite palmerolide A, which kills melanoma cells without causing too much harm to healthy human cells,” said Discover.

Scientists have now conducted a second expedition to Antarctica to “better understand the compound and explore whether it could someday contribute to new therapies for patients battling melanoma,” said a news release by the University of South Florida. “Our expedition focused on determining where the ascidian’s melanoma-killing bacterium occurs and how widespread it is,” Sam Afoullouss, a postdoctoral researcher who participated in the dive, said in the release. “We also wanted to understand how it lives inside the organism and how that connects to the compounds linked to melanoma research.”

Sea squirts are “sac-like marine invertebrates that tend to live on sloped sea beds,” said the BBC. The ascidians found in Antarctica have “evolved over millions of years to cope with the harsh conditions there, producing chemical defenses that can deter predators and disease.” The discovered species was found at “depths between 60 and 80 feet, often along sloped or vertical seafloor surfaces where water currents are strong,” said the release. These “currents help deliver nutrients that sustain the organisms.” Such conditions allow for the organisms to be highly specialized.

The test

The researchers tested the sea squirt’s bacteria on melanoma cells in mice. “The good news is it didn’t kill the mice,” Bill Baker, a chemistry professor at the University of South Florida who led the first expedition and advised the second one, said to The Guardian. “It did kill their cancer, so we know it has the physiological properties to act like a drug.” The scientists are also analyzing the “quantity and distribution of palmerolide A, the bacterium, and the molecular target of palmerolide A,” Baker said to Discover. “These analyses will help us determine, for example, whether the ascidian and bacterium are working in concert, whether the bacterium is detrimental to the ascidian, or one of several other potential relationships between the two.”

Most FDA-approved drugs originated in nature, and Antarctica could be a rich source of new possibilities. While the sea squirt shows promise, the “pathway to producing a safe and effective anti-melanoma drug, with approval for use in humans, is long,” said The Guardian. It would “require a succession of strictly regulated and ever-expanding trials even after a drug was formulated.” Still, the knowledge gained from this expedition “could significantly advance the timeline.”

The ancient Moa Eggshell Cave in New Zealand contains the remains of several extinct animal species lost approximately a million years ago. This finding sheds light on an understudied period of ecological history and hints at more environmental factors that could have driven the extinction of species over time.

Birds of a feather

Scientists discovered the fossils of 12 ancient bird species and four frog species in the Moa Eggshell Cave, according to a study published in Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology. Of the fossils found in the cave, “about 33-50% of species went extinct during the million years before humans arrived,” said a statement about the study. These extinctions were likely “driven by relatively rapid climate shifts and cataclysmic volcanic eruptions.” Some of the notable species found include a “now-extinct ancestor of the takahe (a flightless swamphen native to New Zealand) and an ancient pigeon species closely related to Australia’s bronzewing pigeons, which were not around in the million years before humans arrived,” said The Economic Times.

The most surprising discovery was a parrot species called the Strigops insulaborealis, which is an ancient relative of the kakapo, the “only flightless parrot in the world, the heaviest parrot alive and critically endangered,” said The Economic Times. As of 2026, there are “only 235 known kakapo in existence, and all of them are on islands free of predators.” This is a “newly recognized avifauna for New Zealand, one that was replaced by the one humans encountered a million years later,” Trevor Worthy, the lead author of the study, said in the statement. “This remarkable find suggests our ancient forests were once home to a diverse group of birds that did not survive the next million years.”

Between a rock and a hard place

The findings fill in a period of New Zealand’s evolutionary history that was largely unknown. Researchers “know a lot about its really ancient past (circa 18 million years ago) and its more recent past (around 10,00 years ago), but the bit in the middle is less well understood,” said the BBC.

The fossils were found “trapped between two layers of volcanic ash,” said Earth.com. The older ash layer “fell during the Ngaroma eruption about 1.55 million years ago,” while the younger layer “came from the Kidnappers eruption right around 1 million years ago.” Having the two layers clearly defined in time gave the team “something rare: a fossil deposit with a firm age, pinned between two natural clocks.”

These discoveries also change the way researchers consider extinction. “For decades, the extinction of New Zealand’s birds was viewed primarily through the lens of human arrival 750 years ago,” Worthy said in the statement. But this study “proves that natural forces like super-volcanoes and dramatic climate shifts were already sculpting the unique identity of our wildlife over a million years ago.” This “isn’t a missing chapter in New Zealand’s ancient history,” study coauthor Paul Scofield said in the statement. “It’s a missing volume.”

A “durian tsunami” has crashed the price of the notoriously smelly tropical fruit, with some sellers in Singapore giving them away completely free, said the BBC.

The glut is the result of a “decade-long boom” during which Malaysian farmers “flocked to durian farming to cash in on growing Chinese demand”.

‘Turpentine and rotten onions’

Beloved by large parts of Asia, the prickly fruit is known for its distinctive smell that has been compared to “sewage, turpentine and rotten onions”, said The Times. The novelist Anthony Burgess famously described his durian experience as like “eating strawberry blancmange in an unspeakably foul public lavatory”.

Due to this pungent smell, the fruit is “commonly banned” on public transport and in hotels in southeast Asia. But the global durian trade has gone from strength to strength; last year it was worth £5.5 billion, with 90% of exports going to China where a “newly affluent middle class is discovering a taste for the exotic”.

Prized varieties like the Musang King – known as the “Hermès of durians” – have proved particularly popular, as Chinese consumers become more “selective and sophisticated”. A single durian can sell for “up to 200 yuan (£21.50), and they are often presented on special occasions as luxurious gifts”.

To help meet this “insatiable appetite”, freight trains have been kitted out with “specially refrigerated cars” which allow durians to travel all the way from Thailand and Vietnam to China “with their flavour unimpaired”.

Tumbling prices

But now a “bumper harvest” has caused durian prices to “tumble”, said The Star. “It feels like a rare chance to enjoy a Musang King without paying a bomb”, said engineer Kelvin Tan, who travelled the 46 miles from Kuala Lumpur to Raub in Malaysia to enjoy the lower prices.

Customers are “swarming fruit stalls” to pick up bargains, said the BBC. A lot of the durian trees planted in the last decade to meet soaring demand from China are “now starting to bear fruit”, Lu Yuee Thing, owner of several durian farms near Raub, told the publication.

Some farmers, however, had been “grappling with poor harvests” due to uneven rainfall across the country when the glut arrived. While “durian lovers feast”, some growers of the tropical fruit in Malaysia are “chagrined”.

Malaysia’s Federal Agricultural Marketing Authority has stepped in to support the industry and help “manage surplus durian supply as the season begins to ramp up”, said Asiafruit. As well as preparing 142 cold rooms for preserving the extra stock, the authority has been buying durians from farmers at a base price to protect their incomes.

For fans of the pungent fruit, however, prices will “remain low until August” before “gradually recovering”, said The Star.

Until then, shops are taking “creative measures” to shift their extra stock, said the BBC. Viral videos have emerged of customers leaving a stall in Malaysia’s Pahang state with all-you-can-fit sacks filled “beyond the brim” with the spiky green fruit.

Prediction markets have already made their mark on Americans, but right now they are especially persistent about attracting a particular audience: women. Social media campaigns are popping up online, urging women to place their bets on sites like Kalshi and Polymarket. Instead of sports, though, women are wagering on their knowledge of pop culture.

Gambling is in its #girlboss era

Up until recently, prediction markets have had a “dude problem,” said The Atlantic. Despite hosting all kinds of wagers, including celebrity gossip like Taylor Swift’s possible bridesmaids, the user base has skewed mostly male. They have largely become “yet another place for men to bet on football and March Madness.” Now, Polymarket and Kalshi are trying to lure more women to their sites using “social media campaigns that parrot the language of female empowerment and girlish memes.”

Some posts are company advertisements, while others are paid influencer partnerships. These are “either undisclosed partnerships” or made by “women who are just super excited to post a suspicious amount of links to Polymarket,” the Atlantic added. When the markets attempt to entice women, they “especially tend to lean into the idea that all of this is investing, not gambling.” Kalshi, in particular, has been “ramping up its efforts with women.” The fact that one of the company’s co-founders, Luana Lopes Lara, has become the youngest self-made female billionaire only adds to the #girlboss appeal.

A campaign that seems to be gaining particular steam appeals to the fanbase of the popular dating reality show “Love Island USA.” The massive fandom, which includes a large proportion of women, is “already doing the forecasting work of analysts,” so the “pipeline from group chat guesswork to prediction markets” is “evidently short,” said Time. Kalshi is capitalizing on the cultural phenomenon by “showing up where the fandom already lives,” sponsoring influencer posts that are “turning episode recaps into market analysis.”

In the first two weeks of the latest season of “Love Island USA,” the show’s markets “amassed more than $20 million in trading volume on Kalshi,” said Time. For context, the latest Oscars race for Best Picture “drew $25 million in trading volume.” The show is testing whether “social-media dominance” can translate into “record trading volume for a television show” and whether the show’s “female-skewing audience can reshape who trades on prediction markets.”

The value of women traders

Prediction markets “operate on a simple premise”: Prices get “smarter when a more diverse public participates,” and a “crowd dominated by one kind of trader can only be so wise,” said Time. The “significance in the marketplace” of “Love Island USA” may have “little to do with forecasting the winner of a reality dating show,” and everything to do with “bringing prediction markets closer to the wisdom of crowds they promise to harness.”

Simply put, women are “50% of the population,” Elisabeth Diana, Kalshi’s head of communications, said to The Atlantic, noting that 26% of Kalshi account holders are female — up from 13% just 10 months ago. The more women there are betting, the “closer these sites get to their stated goal of forecasting the future,” said the outlet. If they want to be able to predict the “Fed’s next interest rate, the winner of The Bachelor or whether or not it will rain tomorrow in Poughkeepsie,” a market “made up only of male sports fans won’t cut it.” If women start “using them en masse,” prediction markets will “burrow into American life even more deeply.”

Regardless, the threat of gambling addiction looms over the growing popularity of prediction markets. There is “going to be an absolute epidemic,” Kitty Martz, the executive director of Voices of Problem Gambling Recovery, said to The Independent. It is worrying that companies are targeting Gen Z and young millennials because they are at a stage of life when they are “trying to have some equity in getting into the workforce, [buying] homes and paying off tuition.” Women have these “very specific concerns,” and the prediction markets’ strategy seems to be to “convert that concern into contracts.” There need to be “actual, robust warnings” that the “more you do it, the more you’re going to lose.”

Desperate to soothe symptoms caused by unbalanced hormones, women are turning to a TikTok trend that recommends combining allergy medication and antacids to treat conditions like PMS or menopause. Despite a lack of clinical evidence, experts say there may be a reason the cocktail is helping some people keep persistent symptoms at bay.

OTC relief

People who feel “extra rotten in the days leading up to their period” are finding relief from this TikTok-approved concoction, said NPR. The over-the-counter combo “helps to combat premenstrual blues,” leading participants to feel “less irritable and more energetic.” Others going through perimenopause and menopause reported that it “helps to lessen similar symptoms.” The drugs also went viral last year amid claims they helped manage symptoms of premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), where patients “experience depression and anxiety caused by premenstrual hormonal shifts.”

Some women struggling with “conditions marked by hormonal fluctuations” swear that the blend finally provides some relief, said People. It helps with “hot flashes, mood swings and sleeplessness often associated with these disorders.” The specific drugs most often “touted in this hormonal cocktail” are Allegra and Pepcid AC.

To date, there have not been any clinical trials testing the safety or efficacy of this trend. Those who are using the combo are operating in an “evidence-free zone,” Leigh Frame, the executive director of the Office of Integrative Medicine & Health at George Washington University, said to NPR. There is “no evidence that it does or doesn’t work."

However, experts agree there is a “plausible biological mechanism” for why some may be seeing benefits, said NPR. It has to do with histamine, a chemical released when you come into contact with an allergen, which triggers an inflammatory response. There is evidence that suggests “histamine also fluctuates with your menstrual cycle.” Estrogen, which stimulates the release of histamine, “ebbs and flows throughout the month,” while progesterone acts as a “sort of natural antihistamine.” But in the days leading up to your period, progesterone “takes a nosedive.” In perimenopause, too, the levels of both hormones “rise and fall rapidly, often erratically.”

Both allergy medication and antacids are histamine blockers that interact with different receptors throughout the body, said Mara Rivera, a psychiatrist who specializes in reproductive health challenges, to NPR. The theory is that this combination may help keep histamine in check, basically replacing the effect of progesterone. In some ways, the trend is a modern-day example of an old wives’ tale. Women have been “doing this forever, just talking to one another, and seeing what works,” Rivera said.

Feeling unheard

The popularity of the “DIY Allegra and Pepcid AC cocktail” stems in part from “women feeling like they are not being heard by their doctors,” said People. Women are “hungry to know more and to help themselves,” and they often “feel like they’re not being listened to,” Soma Mandal, the medical director of women’s health at Jersey Shore University Medical Center at Hackensack Meridian Health, said to People. It is important to “find someone who will listen,” who will “take complaints seriously” and who also understands that this is a “physiologic part of life and deserves the appropriate treatment.” If you are not getting that level of care with your current practitioner, “then it’s time to move on."

Experts are not against open discussion and the sharing of symptoms and potential remedies over social media. It is “great that we are asking these questions and bringing up these ideas,” because we “desperately need more research in midlife women’s health,” gynecologist Amy Voedisch said to Everyday Health.

On the small Caribbean island of St Lucia, a crisis is brewing. For “more than a decade”, residents have lived with an “intermittent water supply”, said The Guardian. But the most recent emergency has upended day-to-day life for thousands, turning everything from “normal hygiene” practices to “food preparation” into a struggle.

And despite “millions of dollars of investment”, including $80 million (£60 million) from World Bank financing, funds have merely “scratched the surface” when it comes to tackling the water supply issues pushing islanders “to the brink”.

‘Complex mix of challenges’

Water supply is among St Lucia’s “most politically contentious issues”, with the two major political parties, Labour and the United Workers Party, “routinely trading accusations” that resources have been “mismanaged”, said The Guardian. The island has a sole water company – the Water and Sewerage Company (Wasco) – which therefore has the monopoly on supply.

Wasco’s provision of water to homes and businesses is hampered by service issues including leaks, blockages “and damage to key transmission lines”, said the St. Lucia Times. But there is also a “complex mix of challenges” at play, ranging from climate change to the island’s “ageing infrastructure”. Rainfall patterns are now far “less predictable” and the island grapples with “drier years alternating with wetter ones”.

The “severe” water shortage even led the island’s government to consider the “unprecedented” measure of importing water from nearby Dominica at the peak of its tourist season, said Caribbean National Weekly. While the return of rainfall in May ultimately tackled the issue, many fear the implications for future supply issues.

The ‘new norm’?

While the “popular imagination” may lend itself to believing the “paradise” islands of the Caribbean would not struggle with supply, “water scarcity may become the new norm” in the region, said PreventionWeb in 2024. In fact, the Caribbean as a whole is “one of the most water-stressed regions in the world”. Trinidad and Grenada have grappled with drought, St Vincent and St Kitts have both had to ration water, and Barbados has previously implemented “water bans” to curb usage.

In the meantime, “urgent but carefully planned intervention” is required to keep the island’s water system afloat, said the St. Lucia Times. As a temporary solution, citizens have been urged to “engage in rainwater harvesting”. In the longer term, the government has already promised “significant investment” along with a “dedicated committee” to examine Wasco’s future. The supplier’s slogan declares that “water is life”, said the newspaper. If that is the case, it is also true that “clearly the company and its systems are gravely ailing”.