   
CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!
 S44Mr Bates vs The Post Office: How a TV drama shook up Britain - in just a week   The impact of a hit TV show has always been difficult to define. Should it be judged on viewership? The critics' response to it, or how many awards it wins? What about how often it's been memed, or the themes that resonated with social media users? This month, a UK TV show went far beyond all of this, when a dramatisation of a real-life British scandal was so effective in portraying a lesser-known miscarriage of justice to the public, that in just a week it moved more than a million people to sign a petition calling for justice for the accused, and prompted the British government to announce a new law.That TV show is Mr Bates vs The Post Office, a four-part drama that was broadcast for four consecutive nights from 1 January. As the BBC's political editor Chris Mason put it on Wednesday, "Just a week ago the ITV drama … was still on. Here we are, seven days later, and the prime minister stands in front of a packed House of Commons, and says the government will put forward a new law… How extraordinary. The power of drama. The momentum it has generated, the public opinion it has shifted, the government it has galvanised."
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S60Afcon: everything you need to know about a record year for Africa's biggest football event  Africa’s biggest football festival – the men’s Africa Cup of Nations 2023 – is being hosted by Côte d'Ivoire in west Africa and will culminate in its final match on 11 February 2024.More than ever before, the world will be watching the action at the 34th edition of the cup, given that some of football’s greatest athletes will be participating. Add to this the fact that the tournament takes place in the European winter and so it doesn’t face competition from any other major international tournaments except the AFC Asian Cup.
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S52S31What the 'future histories' of the 1920s can teach us about hope  From Hunger Games to Squid Games, from Black Mirror to Blade Runner, the appetite for dystopia seems higher than ever. Perhaps this is because the cliches of the genre are seeping beyond fiction. Both Elon Musk's Neuralink and Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse seem lifted straight from cautionary tales. Meanwhile, AI poises unprecedented challenges, and human-made climate change threatens to destabilise our fragile world order.Dystopian fiction can be vitally important. It can contain important warnings: raising alarms on social issues through extrapolating troubling trajectories. But in relentlessly imagining the future as already lost to dystopia in our fiction, it's possible we risk giving up on it in reality too.
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S62Four street drugs that could pose the biggest threat to UK public health in 2024  As with fashion and music, illicit drugs go through peaks and troughs of popularity. There are popular staples, such as cannabis, and more disruptive and transient substances, such as mephedrone. As with clothing fashion, the drugs that most people are able to buy are determined by the choices of designers, manufacturers and logistical operations, rather than consumers. Predicting how the UK drug market may change in 2024 relies not only on recent trends in drug use but also on international developments. Geopolitical events in south-east Asia or South America are just as important as organised crime activity in cities such as London or Liverpool. We suggest that there are four types of drugs that will be of increasing concern in 2024.
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S41Trump on Trial--And on the Trail  Just days before the Republican caucuses in Iowa officially kick off the presidential nominating process, the GOP field narrowed after former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie exited the race. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the former president and current front-runner for the Republican nomination, spent the week campaigning in Iowa and appearing in courts in Washington, D.C., and New York City.Joining the editor in chief of The Atlantic and moderator, Jeffrey Goldberg, this week to discuss this and more are Josh Gerstein, a senior legal-affairs reporter at Politico; Steve Inskeep, the host of Morning Edition on NPR; Nikole Killion, a congressional correspondent for CBS News; and Adrienne LaFrance, the executive editor of The Atlantic.
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S34We tested the most advanced haptic gloves in the world  For all the incredible advances in virtual reality devices, the worlds they generate still feel more virtual than real. That’s because much of the current development has focused on how those worlds look and sound. But humans experience the real world through many other senses — importantly touch.“What if you want to realistically simulate something like cracking an egg?” Linda Jacobson, director of marketing at HaptX, asked Freethink. “It’s one thing to do it visually and to create a sound. But it’s a whole other thing if you want to simulate the rigidity of the eggshell and then couple that with the collapse of the breaking shell and the liquidy yolk spilling out. How do you do that in a way that doesn’t break the suspension of disbelief?”
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S54S42Why olive oil prices are soaring and what to do about it  The image of a celebrity chef dousing their Caprese salad, gazpacho or dolmas with extra-virgin olive oil is incredibly ambitious at the moment, with most Europeans facing record prices in the supermarket aisle. But why have olive oil prices risen so sharply?For the past decade, the oldest cultivated trees on Earth have been showing their vulnerability with many of the Mediterranean's olive groves drying up due to increasingly difficult weather conditions such as droughts and severe hailstorms leading to floods. And in 2023, the region – as well as the whole planet – experienced the hottest summer on record.
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S61Weird, twisted, powerful films - what you should watch this week  This article was first published in our email newsletter Something Good, which every fortnight brings you a summary of the best things to watch, visit and read, as recommended and analysed by academic experts. Click here to receive the newsletter direct to your inboxI love Yorgos Llanithmos’s films. They are wonderfully weird (Dogtooth) and have a unique visceral quality that leaves me feeling all odd (Killing of a Sacred Deer). He has this way of digging into the mire of the human psyche and showing us its ugliest (The Favourite) and most peculiar (The Lobster) parts. So, I was very excited when I heard he had a new film out called Poor Things.
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S36What Conversations About DEI Are Missing  Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.What is a belief or position you hold that you feel to be misunderstood or misrepresented by many people who disagree with you?
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S1860 Things for Your Home Under $25 That Are Legitimately Amazing  There’s nothing quite like uncovering a hidden gem, and with so many items available, Amazon is absolutely chock-full of them. These clever problem-solving buys are easy on your wallet — each product included below costs less than $25 — but will make a huge difference in organizing and upgrading your home. Whether you need to tidy up your countertops, free up space in your drawers, or make your closet easier to navigate, scroll on to check out these reviewer-beloved items that will upgrade your home and make life better.The tiny deer that’s placed in the middle of this toothpick holder will add subtle but fun character to your dining table. The container is made of hard plastic and has a single hole at the top to prevent toothpicks from spilling out or getting dirty. One reviewer wrote, “Looks just like the pictures and [...] made of thick durable plastic and is very well made. Best toothpick holder we've ever had.”
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S56S30S35Would Luddites find the gig economy familiar?  The term Luddite is usually used as an insult. It suggests someone who is backward-looking, averse to progress, afraid of new technology, and frankly, not that bright. But Brian Merchant claims that that is not who the Luddites were at all. They were organized, articulate in their demands, very much understood how factory owners were using machinery to supplant them, and highly targeted in their destruction of that machinery.
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S43Krautrock: The 1970s bands which helped post-war Germany overcome its dark history  In West Germany in the early 1970s, a collection of experimental rock bands revolutionised music. Born out of a radical time in the history of post-war Germany, this loosely connected group of artists – including Neu!, Can, Kraftwerk, Faust, Tangerine Dream and Amon Düül II – created a sound that became known as "krautrock".More like this:– The cult singer rediscovered on TikTok– The forgotten 'godfathers' of hip-hop– 'The most violent band in the world'The social and musical trailblazing of the bands has a lasting legacy. Together, they influenced artists like David Bowie, Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, Joy Division, Radiohead and Bjork; over 50 years later, their impact lives on in hip hop and techno, alternative rock groups and modern jazz.
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S50Natalie Portman says method acting is a 'luxury women can't afford' - but my research shows how it can empower them  As an actor and teacher of method acting, as well as a mother, I was surprised by Natalie Portman saying in a recent interview that method acting is a “luxury women cannot afford”. The actor was questioning how acting processes – most of which have been created by men – clash with parts of the female experience, such as motherhood. Referencing her experience with the 2016 film Jackie (for which she was Oscar-nominated), Portman explained: “I don’t think that children or partners would be very understanding of, you know, me making everyone call me ‘Jackie Kennedy’ all the time.” However, having used the method style successfully for more than 15 years, I believe there is a way to make it work for women.
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S38Don't Fire People for Making Pornography in Their Free Time  Eight years ago, a middle-aged husband and wife in Wisconsin published their first book, Monogamy With Benefits, under pseudonyms. “We couldn’t be more entrenched in the local establishment,” they wrote, noting their jobs as executives at respected organizations and their nonprofit work and appearances on the local news. “So we’re not exactly the kind of couple you’d expect to be engaged in adventurous sex with others. But we have a highly erotic collection of video files on our home computers that proves otherwise.”Just imagine what would happen, they speculated, if they were to post their videos of “the full carnal process” online. “We think our sex is beautiful and have no qualms at all about other people watching us make love,” they wrote. “But our establishment colleagues likely would be shocked … and we’re fairly certain we’d be shunned in our community. Our careers likely would be ruined.”
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S40What Boredom Actually Means  This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.In 1933, the writer James Norman Hall had a bone to pick with the concise nature of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. It defined boredom as “being bored; ennui.” “To define [boredom] merely as ‘being bored,’ appallingly true though this may be, is only to aggravate the misery of the sufferer who, as a last desperate resource, has gone to the dictionary for enlightenment as to the nature of his complaint,” Hall wrote in The Atlantic.
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S58Post Office scandal: why thousands of victims are yet to see justice  Following the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, which aired on January 1 2024, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak stated he intends to introduce legislation to ensure those convicted as a result of the Post Office scandal are “swiftly exonerated and compensated”.Meanwhile, a petition calling for former Post Office boss Paula Vennells to be stripped of the CBE awarded in 2019 – for services to the Post Office – reached more than a million signatures in the days after the documentary aired.
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S45Canada is being hypocritical by failing to support South Africa's genocide case against Israel  South Africa has made submissions at the International Court of Justice in its genocide case against Israel. It’s requesting the court order provisional measures to safeguard the rights of Palestinians in Gaza that would protect them from genocide until the case is heard.South Africa alleges that Israel is engaging in genocidal acts violating the United Nations’ 1948 Genocide Convention. It accuses Israel of engaging in killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the Palestinian people in Gaza in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
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S48Smersh: why Putin has reinstated Stalin's notorious and much-feared anti-spy unit  A man under arrest by Russian internal security forces was seen confessing to a “crime”, in a video posted on January 2. He had been apprehended after allegedly posting a video on social media that purportedly showed air defences near the Russian city of Belgorod. This city, on the border with Ukraine, was the target of Ukrainian missile attacks on the same day. What was notable, though, about this confessional was that the man was flanked by two internal security officers who had the word Smersh emblazoned on the backs of their jackets.
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S47What One Life gets wrong about Nicholas Winton and the Kindertransport story  Barbara Winton self-published a biography of her father, Nicholas Winton, in 2014, which has now become a new major biopic, One Life. Already dubbed “the British Schindler” for his role in the rescue of 669, mainly Jewish, children from Czechoslovakia in 1939, with this new film Nicholas Winton’s fame is firmly established.The film has a quality cast, including Anthony Hopkins as an aged Winton (the humanitarian died in 2015 aged 106), Helena Bonham Carter as his impressive mother, Babette, and Johnny Flynn as the young Winton. Romola Garai and Alex Sharp star as Doreen Warriner and Trevor Chadwick, the workers for the Czech Refugee Committee, who did all the dangerous and extensive rescue work in Prague.
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S57Data brokers know everything about you - what FTC case against ad tech giant Kochava reveals  Kochava, the self-proclaimed industry leader in mobile app data analytics, is locked in a legal battle with the Federal Trade Commission in a case that could lead to big changes in the global data marketplace and in Congress’ approach to artificial intelligence and data privacy.The stakes are high because Kochava’s secretive data acquisition and AI-aided analytics practices are commonplace in the global location data market. In addition to numerous lesser-known data brokers, the mobile data market includes larger players like Foursquare and data market exchanges like Amazon’s AWS Data Exchange. The FTC’s recently unsealed amended complaint against Kochava makes clear that there’s truth to what Kochava advertises: it can provide data for “Any Channel, Any Device, Any Audience,” and buyers can “Measure Everything with Kochava.”
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S32A Mountain of Used Clothes Appeared in Chile's Desert. Then It Went Up in Flames  This story originally appeared on Grist and was copublished with El PaÃs. It's reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A Spanish-language version can be read here. Reporting was supported by the Joan Konner Program in the Journalism of Ideas.On the morning of June 12, 2022, Ãngela Astudillo, then a law student in her mid-twenties, grabbed her water bottle and hopped into her red Nissan Juke. The cofounder of Dress Desert, or Desierto Vestido, a textile recycling advocacy nonprofit, and the daughter of tree farmers, Astudillo lives in a gated apartment complex in Alto Hospicio, a dusty city at the edge of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, with her husband, daughter, bunny, and three aquatic turtles.
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S33A Bloody Pig Mask Is Just Part of a Wild New Criminal Charge Against eBay  After the security firm Mandiant had its X account compromised earlier this month, the US Securities and Exchange Commission dealt with a similar intrusion this week. Attackers wrested control of the agency’s account for more than half an hour and posted false information during that time about a highly anticipated SEC regulatory decision on a Bitcoin financial product. The incident was concerning, given that it indicated a lack of adequate security protections on the SEC’s account, but also because attackers may have intended to manipulate markets, and their fake post led to fluctuations in the price of Bitcoin.If you want to avoid these shenanigans on your own X account, we’ve got tips for locking everything down as much as possible.
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S37Texas Pulls an Ugly Stunt on the Border  National leaders left an immigration-policy vacuum that the Lone Star State is eager to fill.The Texas National Guard has taken hostage a 2.5-mile stretch of the U.S. border with Mexico. According to a shocking Supreme Court filing by the Justice Department early yesterday morning, armed soldiers and vehicles deployed by the state have repeatedly denied U.S. Border Patrol agents access to the Shelby Park area in Eagle Pass, Texas. The state did not immediately deny this; a spokesperson for Governor Greg Abbott said the state will keep “utilizing every tool and strategy to respond to President Biden’s ongoing border crisis.”
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S53Biden, like Trump, sidesteps Congress to get things done  With two presidents – one current and one former – running against each other for the first time since 1912, the 2024 election presents voters with the unique opportunity to compare how Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump, who are each likely to get their party’s nomination, actually used the authority of the presidency. Examining Biden and Trump from this perspective, it’s clear that while they pursued vastly different policies, they often used presidential power in remarkably similar ways.
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S55S28S39A Surprising Success Story for Humpback Whales  In November 1904, the Norwegian explorer Carl Anton Larsen landed in South Georgia. It was his second visit to the remote island, roughly 1,800 kilometers east of the tip of South America, where the waters of the South Atlantic Ocean were home to huge numbers of whales—and he’d returned with a whaling ship and crew to catch them.Just a few weeks after establishing a camp in Cumberland Bay, a deep, two-pronged fjord in the rugged island, Larsen’s men killed their first humpback. So many whales foraged in the bay that the mariners didn’t need to venture to the open ocean. By mid-April 1905, they’d killed 91 whales—67 of them humpbacks.
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S59Former Post Office boss Paula Vennells says she'll hand back her CBE - but it may not be that simple  Paula Vennells, former chief executive of the Post Office, has said she will hand back her CBE, following the outrage over the Horizon scandal that left hundreds of people prosecuted for crimes they didn’t commit. Craig Prescott, lecturer in law at Royal Holloway, University of London, answers this and other questions about the UK’s honours system.Once it has been awarded, there is no formal process to renounce an honour. However, a recipient may choose to return the physical insignia to the Central Chancery of the Orders of the Knighthood and no longer use the honour. Formally, the award of the honour still stands.
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S27S49Why the world is turning away from the US dollar  The invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 prompted the US Treasury Department to impose unprecedented sanctions on Russia, to hold it “accountable for its premeditated and unprovoked invasion”.The aim was to prevent Russia from “prop[ing] up its rapidly depreciating currency by restricting global supplies of the ruble and access to reserves that Russia may try to exchange to support the ruble”. In other words, Russia wouldn’t be able to sell enough US dollars in the foreign exchange market to buy up Russian currency and bolster its value.
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S64BBC's The Traitors: how unconscious biases can impact who you think is guilty  Subterfuge, betrayal, murder and money abound in the BBC hit series The Traitor’s, now in it’s second season. It’s no surprise that it has become a huge hit. The basic premise of the show is that you have “the faithful” and “the traitors”. The game hinges on everyone presenting themselves as a faithful, but with the knowledge that there will be at least one traitor among them.
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S63S25S70US election: how a Trump victory could embolden Russia, China and Israel  A potential second term as president for Donald Trump is likely to result in an America-first, America-alone foreign policy. The ramifications for the rest of the world could be huge, potentially endangering international security around the globe. So it’s no wonder that the result of the November vote seems of more interest than normal to non-Americans.
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