   
CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!
 S34Remember the climate map from your school atlas? Here's what climate change is doing to it   You probably saw a multi-coloured climate map at least once in school. You might have pored over it, fascinated. Was Antarctica really a cold desert? And why was so much of Russia listed as tundra?Almost always, those maps were based on the climate classification system proposed by Wladimir Köppen. The colours are chosen to suit our imagination: Australia with its red desert centre, surrounded by a yellow or orange semi-arid fringe and more lush green climates along many coastlines and hinterland.
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S19Leadership in a crisis: how President Ramaphosa's COVID speeches drew on Mandela's ideas of South African unity  In times of crisis, leaders wield more than just political power. They harness the art of rhetoric in a bid to unite their nations towards a common goal. South Africa, with a tumultuous history marked by apartheid, has seen leaders employ persuasive communication to navigate challenges. For instance, in the 1990s then-president Nelson Mandela appealed to patriotic sentiments. He often used reconciliatory rhetoric to help smooth the transition from centuries of colonial and apartheid oppression to democracy for South Africans.
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S322 biggest threats to wombats revealed in new data gathered by citizen scientists  Launched in 2015, WomSAT (Wombat Survey and Analysis Tool) is a citizen science project and website that allows “wombat warriors” to report sightings of wombats, their burrows, and even their cube-shaped poops.The project initially aimed to uncover information on all things wombat from across Australia, particularly threats. Its ultimate aim is to support conservation, informed by an enhanced understanding of wombat biology.
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S25Increasing melting of West Antarctic ice shelves may be unavoidable - new research  The Antarctic ice sheet, the world’s largest volume of land-based ice, is a system of interconnected glaciers comprised of snowfall that remains year-round. Coastal ice shelves are the floating edges of this ice sheet which stabilise the glaciers behind them. The ocean melts these ice shelves from below, and if melting increases and an ice shelf thins, the speed at which these glaciers discharge fresh water into the ocean increases too and sea levels rise. In West Antarctica, particularly the Amundsen Sea, this process has been underway for decades. Ice shelves are thinning, glaciers are flowing faster towards the ocean and the ice sheet is shrinking. While ocean temperature measurements in this region are limited, modelling suggests it may have warmed as a result of climate change.
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S26Decontaminating Fukushima: have the billions spent been worth it?  The Chernobyl and (to a lesser extent) Fukushima nuclear accidents contaminated large areas of land with low-level radioactivity. After both accidents, huge efforts were taken to decontaminate the affected areas. But a recent study at Fukushima raises doubts about whether these decontamination efforts were worthwhile. Less than one-third of the population has returned to the evacuated zones and extensive areas of forest in the region remain contaminated.
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S28Where the ICC stands if war crimes are committed on either side of the Israel-Hamas war  Since Hamas launched its offensive in Israel on October 7 2023, drawing a swift and emphatic response from the Netanyahu government, at least 1,400 people in Israel and 5,000 people in Palestine have been killed. Many of these have been civilians – hundreds of Israelis at a music festival near the Re'im kibbutz, close to the border of Gaza. Hundreds of Palestinians were killed by an explosion at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza. While the first atrocity was committed by Hamas fighters, responsibility for the hospital blast has yet to be determined. Investigators will eventually attempt to piece together the truth about both atrocities. But will anyone stand trial for war crimes?
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S17S70Is a Coincidental Similarity Enough for Real Intimacy?  In 2019, the astrologer Jess Campbell, who runs the popular Spicy Gemini Memes account on Instagram, posted about the experience of “sharing a soul connection” with your so-called astrological twin, someone with the same zodiac profile. She encouraged her followers to respond with their own sun, moon, and rising signs—the “Big Three” of the astrological chart, which are determined based on the time, date, and location of one’s birth—to find their twins. Campbell told me that she’d merely intended to create some lighthearted online conversation, but soon, tens of thousands of people were commenting—enough of a response that Campbell decided to start the website Zodiac Twin to facilitate these matches. (She has since archived the original post.) Others have been searching for their twins on Facebook groups.The appeal of finding one’s zodiac doppelgänger seems to be the promise, however unsubstantiated, of looking into a cosmic mirror. People might hope to find someone who understands them profoundly. In some ways, this sort of pursuit isn’t unusual—we all want to meet people we relate to. And the more similar people already are, the stronger a connection they can feel: Finding out you went to the same college as someone else is going to be more potent than simply having the same educational level, just as discovering that you have the same birth chart is probably more intoxicating than a looser shared interest in astrology. These revelations might just be coincidences, but to our pattern-loving brains, they can seem like destiny. Can that feeling be enough to power real intimacy?
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S24S23A brief history of goth fashion - from all-black to pastels  Goth is the subculture that never died – or more precisely, perhaps, remains undead. The persistence of the subculture’s style is due to the remarkable richness of the cultural tradition on which it draws, and its malleability – its striking ability to absorb new influences into a recognisably coherent aesthetic. Goth’s visual style has left as vivid a legacy as its music, one that continues to inspire designers, creatives and today’s teenagers far beyond its initial invention.
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S35Israel-Palestine conflict: How sharing the waters of the Jordan River could be a pathway to peace  When the Israeli government cut off supplies of water to the Gaza Strip following Hamas’s brutal attack, it put the role of water within human conflict into particularly sharp relief.Debate on the notion of “water wars” has raged among water experts for nearly four decades. In 1988, Boutros Boutros-Ghali (who later became secretary general of the United Nations) said that the next set of wars will be over water. However, the years since have seen no clear instances of wars fought over water, making such a bold statement seem somewhat misguided in hindsight.
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S20Climate change: Kenya's power sector is a shining example, the big hurdles are household and transport emissions  Kenya’s ambition is to reduce carbon emissions by one-third by 2030, relative to the business-as-usual scenario of 143 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. It also seeks to reduce carbon emissions to as close to zero as possible by 2050. How and whether these goals are achieved will have huge implications for the country’s economic development.Over the past decade, Kenya has taken unprecedented measures to move towards low-carbon energy sources. Despite increasing electricity demand over the past decade, carbon emissions in the power sector have been on a decline. This is because renewable energy sources such as hydropower, geothermal, wind and solar have continued to slowly replace power plants that run on fossil fuels, such as diesel. These clean sources made up 90% of Kenya’s total energy source in 2022. Their share is likely to increase following the country’s plan to promote private sector deployment of renewable electricity at competitive bidding prices in the near future.
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S22Accidental managers: why people who are great at their job can fail when they get promoted  There’s a saying that people don’t quit their job, they quit their boss. And poor management certainly has a lot to answer for in the UK workplace. A staggering 82% of new managers in the UK are what the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) calls “accidental managers”, according to a YouGov survey commissioned among 4,500 workers and managers in June, which has recently been published.As a first and obvious step to combat the curse of the accidental manager, companies shouldn’t appoint people to managerial roles unless they’ve had the appropriate training. Alongside this, they need a clear development plan before they start their new management role.
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S18How antidepressants, ketamine and psychedelic drugs may make brains more flexible - new research  The first-line pharmacological treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD) are antidepressant drugs known as selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs). But a significant proportion of people don’t respond to these drugs. Given that major depression is a global mental health problem that is on the increase, it is important to find novel pharmacological treatments for those who do not respond to the current ones. But to do that, we need to understand exactly how the drugs work – which we currently don’t.
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S15S6715 Years Ago, a Chilling Thriller Made Vampires Scary Again -- And Jumpstarted a Phenomenon  In 2008, vampires were facing an existential crisis. More than 100 years after Dracula first emerged from the pages of Bram Stoker’s 1897 classic, the once-intimidating monsters had long lost their fangs thanks to swooning YA books and their glossy big-screen adaptations that romanticized the once-fearsome creatures. Now, vampires were brooding bad boys, not sinister creatures of the night. However, a month before Catherine Hardwicke’s Twilight hit theaters, a nondescript Swedish horror movie introduced one of the most terrifyingly eerie cinematic takes on the vampire.Based on the 2004 novel of the same title by John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In is a chilly, brutal coming-of-age story that happens to feature a vampire. But one of the ingenious decisions by director Tomas Alfredson and Lindqvist, who wrote the screenplay, was to withhold the fact that this was a vampire movie until about two-thirds of the way in. Up until that point, Let the Right One In is a story of Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant), a meek 12-year-old boy who lives with his mother in the western Stockholm suburb of Blackeberg in 1982.
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S13S21Breakthroughs in medicine: top virologist on the two most important developments for Africa  Nigerian Academy of Science provides support as a hosting partner of The Conversation AFRICA.There have been several important breakthroughs in medical science recently. Crispr, mRNA, next-generation cancer treatments and game-changing vaccines are some of them. Oyewale Tomori, a virologist with decades-long involvement in managing diseases in Nigeria, gives his verdict on the most significant discoveries and what they mean for Africa.
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S29The Israel-Hamas war deepens the struggle between US and Iran for influence in the Middle East  As Israel readies for a ground invasion of Gaza, and Palestinian and Israeli civilian deaths continue to mount, a broader struggle for influence continues in the Middle East between the United States and Iran. The U.S. has long played an important leadership role in the Middle East. American influence has hinged on maintaining close ties to diverse allies, including Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
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S27X/Twitter: imposing a US$1 bot tax on new customers will only make the platform's problems worse  X, formerly known as Twitter, is testing a subscription plan called “Not a Bot” of US$1 equivalent per annum in New Zealand and the Philippines. Those who don’t subscribe will still be able to log in to view content and follow other accounts, but won’t be able to interact through tweeting, liking, sharing or bookmarking content. The plan is limited to new accounts and only the browser version of the platform, as opposed to the mobile app. As the name of the plan suggests, X has positioned Not a Bot as a means to deter bots. Bots are fake accounts running on automated scripts, usually created by malicious actors to spread fake news and drive advertising traffic. They are present in large numbers not just on X but also other platforms such as Facebook.
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S36S31Could gut fungi be linked to severe COVID? What to make of new research findings  Many tiny organisms including bacteria, fungi and viruses normally live on our bodies, and even inside us. These are called the microbiome. The large number of these organisms living in the gastrointestinal tract are collectively known as the gut microbiome.Increasingly the gut microbiome is recognised as playing a large part in health and disease, particularly relating to human physiology, metabolism and immune function.
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S61Here's Exactly When You Can Start Playing 'Alan Wake 2'  After 13 years of waiting, the sequel to the cult classic horror game Alan Wake is just around the corner. It’s clear Remedy Entertainment put everything it has into Alan Wake 2, making it the studio’s most ambitious game to date. Of course, it’s also Remedy’s first true take on survival horror, a genre that’s seen a massive resurgence in recent years. With all that in mind, here’s everything you need to know about Alan Wake 2, including exactly when you can dive back into the eerie town of Bright Falls.
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S59Kevin Feige Just Shattered MCU TV Canon  The Marvel universe is as complex as the comics it was birthed from. Now, in Phase Five, we’ve reached a new level in the multiverse. While the action is still playing out in the blockbuster movies, there’s now an entirely different medium at play: Disney+ streaming originals like WandaVision and Loki, which exist totally separately from the other television series like the Defenders group of Netflix originals and the ABC series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.Now, finally, we have an answer to one of the biggest question in all of the MCU — how do these other series fit into the greater scheme?
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S33Fallen crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried was 'perfectly positioned to make a religion of himself'  A year ago, Sam Bankman-Fried (often called “SBF”) was on top of the world. He had been on the covers of Forbes, which dubbed him “the richest twentysomething in the world”, and Fortune – the equivalent, for a business leader, of a rock star on Rolling Stone, or an athlete on Sports Illustrated. He was featured in the prestigious “lunch with the FT” in the Financial Times. He was seen as the responsible face of cryptocurrency. There was even speculation he could become the first trillionaire.
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S38S30GOP's House paralysis is a crisis in a time of crises  House Republicans fired one leader, Kevin McCarthy, and have spent almost three weeks trying unsuccessfully to choose another to succeed him as speaker of the House. That’s left the U.S. House of Representatives unable to do its work, paralyzing the entire legislative branch of government, because the Senate can’t pass legislation without a functioning House. The speaker of the House of Representatives is a powerful position with an outsized role in lawmaking. According to the rules of the House, the speaker is “the presiding officer of the House and is charged with numerous duties and responsibilities by law and by the House rules.”
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S50"My Name Is Barbra," Excerpted  With her long-awaited memoir, Barbra Streisand offers a funny and frank look at her career, six decades in. At a whopping 992 pages, it appears that the Hollywood and Broadway legend . . . isn't skimping on the details of her rarefied life.PAGE 5 â Barbra recounts girls' weekend with Donna Karan full of laughter, nail care.
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S70'Spider-Man 2' Reveals the Limits of a Popular Video Game Trend  Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 may just be the best-looking game on PlayStation 5. But swinging around the game’s rendition of New York City and watching cutscenes of Peter and Miles, I can’t help but wonder what “best-looking” means. Realistic? Spider-Man 2 certainly tries to get closer to reaching the other side of the uncanny valley, but at a time when the race toward better graphics has diminishing returns, the industry should prioritize unique art direction over graphical fidelity.On an otherwise uneventful afternoon in 2011, my mother walked into the living room where I was playing the recently released Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception on the television. Whatever set-piece was currently on-screen made an impression on my mother, who commented that she thought I was watching a movie.
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S12For the Osage Nation, the betrayal of the murders depicted in 'Killers of the Flower Moon' still lingers  The excerpt is from the poem “Wi’-gi-e,” or “Prayer,” which Osage author Elise Paschen wrote in 2009 to honor Anna Kyle Brown, who was thought to be the first victim of the Osage Reign of Terror.Brown’s body was found at the bottom of a ravine near Fairfax, Oklahoma, in 1921, with the cause of death ruled as “whiskey poisoning.” In truth she’d been murdered for her share of the hereditary mineral rights that had made her wealthy. Years later, a widespread investigation would reveal that Brown clearly died by gun violence and her cause of death was a cover-up.
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