The Economist Magazine (January 12, 2024): The latest issue features ‘China’s EV Onslaught’ – An influx of Chinese cars is terrifying the West; Europe’s Silicon Valley; ‘America Fights Back’ – The new contest for sea power; Why Olaf Scholz is no Angela Merkel – Germany is unable and unwilling to lead Europe; What science says about old leaders…
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (January 12, 2024): The new issue features ‘Why Are American Drivers So Deadly’ –After decades of declining fatality, dangerous driving has surged again….
After decades of declining fatality rates, dangerous driving has surged again.
By Matthew Shaer
In the summer of 1999, a few years after graduating from medical school, Deborah Kuhls moved from New York to Maryland, where she had been accepted as a surgical fellow at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. Founded by a pioneer in emergency medicine, Shock Trauma is one of the busiest critical-care facilities in the country — in an average year, doctors there see approximately 8,000 patients, many of them close to death.
Andy Reid’s diligence and sense of mischief have made him one of the game’s best-ever coaches. Can he get his struggling Chiefs back to the Super Bowl?
By Michael Sokolove
Andy Reid, the coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, has won more than 250 games in his career, fourth all-time, which puts him high on any list of the N.F.L.’s greatest coaches. Most of the others in that pantheon are men who personify the sport’s militaristic soul — Vince Lombardi, for example, the fabled coach of the 1960s-era Green Bay Packers, or Reid’s contemporary, the grim Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots. But Reid is no Lombardi or Belichick; he’s Steve Jobs. He’s a designer, a tinkerer, a product engineer who imbues his football with creativity and even an occasional touch of whimsy.
Science Magazine – January 11, 2024: The new issue features‘Lost City’ – Ancient development in the Upper Amazon; What SARS-CoV-2’s mild cousins reveal about Covid-19; Specifying laws of friction and a Continued decline in sharks despite regulation…
The assassination of a Hamas chief in Lebanon. A terror attack on mourners of an Iranian former general. Commercial shipping in the Red Sea targeted by Yemeni rebels, and a US airstrike in Iraq.All were separate events in the Middle East last week but all were linked, in one way or another, to the presence of autonomous but Iranian-backed militia forces in the region.
When asked to visualise the threat of war engulfing the Middle East, for this week’s cover, illustrator Carl Godfrey took a literal approach. “I wanted to convey the tense and unpredictable situation,” says Carl, “and there’s nothing more tense than looking down the barrel of a gun. Especially when those barrels are pointing in all directions, and the risk of war is expanding in all directions.”
Studies of the microbes living on and in our bodies are conducted mainly in a few rich countries, squandering opportunities to improve the health of people globally.
Times Literary Supplement (January 10, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Have a good trip’ – On the uses of psychedelic drugs; Hisham Matar’s novel of London exile; A West Bank tragedy; Puzzled by crosswords; French Band Aid, and more…
Country Life Magazine – January 9, 2024: The latest issue features‘Walk This Way’ – England’s secret sunken roads; Return of the curly-coated retriever; Tom Parker Bowles on the comfort of pie; Britain’s most poisonous plants, and more…
Curls, curls, curls
The intelligent, powerful curly-coated retriever was favoured by the Victorians and is still winning plaudits as a working breed, discovers Katy Birchall
Rolling in the deep
Ben Lerwill follows in the foot-steps of our ancestors to explore the history of holloways, those sunken and often secret routes criss-crossing the countryside
Little crop of horrors
From hemlock and henbane to giant hogweed, Britain is home to a host of poisonous plants. John Wright reveals how to spot the dangerous and the deadly
Why we all cry for pie
Tom Parker Bowles earns his crust with an ode to the enduring appeal of this humble, yet oh so heavenly savoury creation
Lady Violet Manners’s favourite painting
The broadcaster chooses a poignant work that speaks of absolute parental devotion
A distant horizon conquered
Fiona Reynolds explores the ancient Wiltshire Downs, with her sights set firmly on the far-off landmark of Cherhill Monument
The future as a footstool
The landmark 1980s restoration of London’s Liverpool Street Station is under threat from new proposals, argues Ptolemy Dean
The Midas touch
In the first of two articles, John Goodall investigates the early history of Madresfield Court, Worcestershire, which has been in the same family for 900 years
I can’t believe it’s British butter
Butter is making a comeback in a welcome celebration of our dairy heritage—Jenny Linford meets the artisan makers who are helping to spread the word
The good stuff
Tackle the snow in style this winter with Hetty Lintell’s pick of the best skiing accessories
Sweet dreams are made of these
The gardens at Villa Durazzo-Pallacini in Italy are Heaven on Earth for Charles Quest-Ritson
‘I have seen a very pretty thing…’
Lucien de Guise reveals how you can add a true touch of Ottoman opulence to your home
Interiors
Amelia Thorpe selects the hottest new stoves, fires and range cookers, and Giles Kime examines the growing range of options fuelled by bioethanol
Money for old rope
Deborah Nicholls-Lee looks at how hemp can help in the battle against climate change
I rode west with a childhood friend who was driving to a job in California. We passed through Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and still there was no sign of the Commander. My friend placed a bag of chocolate-covered espresso beans on the console between us, jumble of rich dark gems, glittering like they were wet. I crunched them in my teeth without thinking. Sometimes I drove and let her sleep. When clouds clotted the sun her hair still glowed, some mix of orange and yellow and pink. Toast, or the honey for it, or the cinnamon.
After we spent a day and a night in a certain desert town, I told my friend to go on without me. I’d stay. The town was bordered by empty hills and endless sky: room to disappear. I found an unopened pack of Juicy Fruit gum on the sidewalk, which I took for a sign.
Every year, we look for promising technologies poised to have a real impact on the world. Here are the advances that we think matter most right now.
AI for everything
We now live in the age of AI. Hundreds of millions of people have interacted directly with generative tools like ChatGPT that produce text, images, videos, and more from prompts. Their popularity has reshaped the tech industry, making OpenAI a household name and compelling Google, Meta, and Microsoft to invest heavily in the technology.
Super-efficient solar cells
Solar power is being rapidly deployed around the world, and it’s key to global efforts to reduce carbon emissions. But most of the sunlight that hits today’s panels isn’t being converted into electricity. Adding a layer of tiny crystals could make solar panels more efficient. WHY IT MATTERS
Apple Vision Pro
Apple will start shipping its first mixed-reality headset, the Vision Pro, this year. Its killer feature is the highest-resolution display ever made for such a device. Will there be a killer app? It’s early, but the world’s most valuable company has made a bold bet that the answer is yes. WHY IT MATTERS
Weight-loss drugs
The global rise in obesity has been called an epidemic by the World Health Organization. Medications like Mounjaro and Wegovy are now among the most powerful tools that patients and physicians have to treat it. Evidence suggests they can even protect against heart attacks and strokes. WHY IT MATTERS
The New Yorker – January 15, 2024 issue: The new issue‘s cover featuresBarry Blitt’s “Back to the Future” – The artist depicts a goose-stepping Donald Trump, determined to march back into political relevance.
Absenteeism underlies much of what has beset young people, including falling school achievement, deteriorating mental health, and elevated youth violence.
What Frantz Fanon and Ian Fleming Agreed On
From opposite directions, the revolutionary intellectual and the creator of James Bond saw violence as essential—psychologically and strategically—to solving the crisis of colonialism.
More than fifty years later, Zohra Drif could still picture the Milk Bar in Algiers on September 30, 1956. It was white and shining, she recalled, awash in laughter, young voices, “summer colors, the smell of pastries, and even the distant twittering of birds.” Drif, a well-coiffed law student in a stylish lavender dress, ordered a peach-Melba ice cream and wedged her beach bag against the counter. She paid, tipped, and left without her bag. The bomb inside it exploded soon afterward.
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