China launches world’s largest carbon market, but questions linger over defiant emitters
China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has launched its first national emissions-trading scheme. Such carbon-pricing mechanisms exist in around 45 countries already, but China’s scheme, which began trading last week, is the world’s biggest. It has been plagued by delays, and researchers argue it might not be ambitious...
Rebellion: Prince Harry announces a book about his highs and lows as a royal will be out next year
Prince Harry is writing a book about his life in the Royal Family to be published in late 2022. The Duke of Sussex, aged 36, is said to have been secretly working on the book for almost a year. A statement from publisher Random House said: “In an intimate and...
A $100,000 birthday gift elicits strong resentment of parents by unemployed son
A man who has been unemployed for three years expressed resentment toward his parents for giving him huge loads of money, paying for his college tuition and spoiling him. Qiaochu Yuan in a 35-tweet thread said he had taken a “medium dose of aci” a few days before and explained...
Astronomers call for talks on humanity’s right to ‘dark and quiet skies’ at next month UN meeting
Aerospace companies have launched about 2,000 Internet satellites into orbit around Earth over the past two years, nearly doubling the number of active satellites. This has sparked concerns among astronomers and other skygazers, who worry about interference with observations of the night sky. Now, in what would be the biggest...
Drug makers working on super-antibodies to curb Covid and future pandemics
Companies are designing next-generation antibodies modelled on those taken from unique individuals whose immune systems can neutralise any Covid-19 variant – and related coronaviruses, too. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) in late May to sotrovimab, providing a new therapeutic weapon in the fight...
We don’t know how late people today will marry, we’ll know after everybody is dead and gone
Steven Ruggles, a historical demographer at the University of Minnesota who has built a career deciphering census says his team is currently working on linking people who were children in 1940 to lead in the water to Medicare records, in an effort to see if there is an association between...
Q&A: Demographers trying to link census data say people marry early, ‘corporate families’ thriving
They may lack the sweep of a novel, the pathos of a play or the beauty of a poem, but the facts and figures collected through the census tell us a great deal about ourselves, and about the generations who came before us. Just ask Steven Ruggles, a historical demographer...
New studies pour cold water on existence of potentially livable lakes under Mars
Maybe hold off on that Martian ice fishing trip. Two new studies splash cold water on the idea that potentially habitable lakes of liquid water exist deep under the Red Planet’s southern polar ice cap. The possibility of a lake roughly 20 kilometres across was first raised in 2018, when...
Pro-democracy violence deepens economic crisis in Africa’s absolute monarchy
The pro-democracy demonstrations and deadly violence that erupted in Eswatini last month and continued into July have deepened the southern African nation’s economic and humanitarian crisis, but without forcing any reform of the royal establishment. The people of Eswatini have never lived under a democratic system of government. King Mswati...
Historians making permanent digital copies of every document of United Nations predecessor
Rising populism, fake news, and the ending of a global pandemic – the international challenges of almost 100 years ago uncannily echo the present, a unique archival project in Geneva reveals. Archivists and historians are making a permanent digital copy of almost every document, letter, memo, photo and map from...
