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Latest Trends

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Latest Trends

The Houthis Took Mocha, the Red Sea Is Now the Second Strait in Play, and Two Ships Were Hit Off Oman Overnight

With Hormuz reduced to a trickle, Saudi exports go out through the Red Sea. On Thursday the Houthis took Mocha, eighty kilometres from Bab al-Mandeb, after the heaviest fighting since the 2022 truce. Hours later four projectiles hit two ships off Khasab.

Sep 12, 2026/3 min read

Perim Island and the Shaikh Said peninsula at Bab al-Mandeb, the strait between Yemen and Djibouti, photographed from the International Space Station in 2010

Latest Trends

A Feather Inside a Tyrannosaur's Droppings Is the First Ever Found That Way, and It May Say Why Some Birds Survived

A nodule half the size of a golf ball, picked up in Montana in 2016, holds feathers, gar scales and the leg bones of a diving bird eaten 66 million years ago. Two of the feathers have a structure otherwise unknown until ten million years after the extinction.

Sep 12, 2026/3 min read

A mounted skeleton of Hesperornis, the flightless diving bird of the Late Cretaceous, in a museum display; the Montana coprolite holds the bones and feathers of a bird from the same group

Latest Trends

At Hadrian's Villa, a Marble Slab Still in Its Place Marks Where Lightning Struck at Night and the Ground Became Sacred

Two words cut into a slab forty centimetres across, FVLGVR SVBMANIVM, record a rite the Romans performed wherever a bolt came down: bury what it touched, mark the spot, never build on it. Found in place near the Amphitheatre by the University of Urbino.

Sep 12, 2026/3 min read

The Maritime Theatre at Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli, a circular island villa ringed by a moat; the lightning marker was found in the Amphitheatre area elsewhere on the site

Latest Trends

Twenty-Five Years On: Four Former Presidents at Ground Zero, Trump on Iran at the Pentagon, and a Seventh Silence

The names of 2,983 people were read in Lower Manhattan, 184 at the Pentagon and forty in Shanksville. For the first time a seventh silence marked the thousands who have since died of what they breathed. And 2,977 drones drew two towers over the harbour.

Sep 12, 2026/3 min read

The Tribute in Light installation on the roof of the Battery Parking Garage in Lower Manhattan, seen from above at its switch-on on the evening of 10 September 2026

Latest Trends

The US Sank Five Iranian Tankers, Iran Fired Twenty Missiles at a Base in Jordan, and Oil Closed Above a Hundred Dollars

CENTCOM named the five crude carriers it disabled after two missile attacks on one of its warships. Iran answered at Al-Azraq, where Jordan says it intercepted eighteen of twenty missiles, and claimed strikes on ten ships. Brent closed at 101 dollars.

Sep 10, 2026/3 min read

A United States guided-missile destroyer under way in the Gulf of Oman, in an archive US Navy photograph; not one of the ships involved this week

Latest Trends

August Was the Joint Hottest Month Ever Measured, and the First Above 1.5 Degrees Since Last November

The EU's climate service puts last month at 16.96 degrees Celsius globally, level with July 2023 and 1.65 degrees above pre-industrial. The oceans set their own record, western Europe had its hottest summer, and its rivers ran low. What the numbers mean.

Sep 10, 2026/3 min read

The Rhine at Bacharach with its gravel bed exposed at low water in August 2022, the last time the river ran this dry; Copernicus reports exceptionally low flows again this August

Latest Trends

PISA 2025: Fifteen-Year-Olds Across the Rich World Read Worse Than Any Cohort the OECD Has Measured

Reading scores across the OECD have fallen 28 points in a decade, about a year and a half of schooling, and maths 22. One in five students is now a low performer in all three subjects. The largest PISA ever, and the sharpest fall came in the last three years.

Sep 10, 2026/3 min read

Junior high school students working at computers in a classroom in Taiwan, one of the ninety-one systems that took part in PISA 2025

Latest Trends

Britain, France and Canada Ban Settlement Goods, Nine States Follow, and Israel Closes the British Consulate

Ed Miliband told Parliament the trigger was the E1 tender for 1,200 homes east of Jerusalem, a red line Britain drew two decades ago. The ban covers settlement goods and the services that build settlements, not Israel itself. Twelve countries signed on.

Sep 10, 2026/3 min read

The E1 area east of Jerusalem seen from the air, with the Ma'ale Adumim interchange and the police headquarters built on the site, and bare hills around them

Latest Trends

Iran Says It Will Declare a Restricted Zone Beyond Hormuz, Names Oman as Corridor Partner, and Jizan Is Hit Again

Mohsen Rezaei says any ship entering a zone that starts at the American blockade line will be put on an Iranian sanctions list. The same day Aramco's Jizan refinery took a second strike in a month, Brent passed 97 dollars, and flydubai cut its schedule.

Sep 8, 2026/3 min read

A United States aircraft carrier and an escort transiting the Strait of Hormuz, in an official US Navy photograph

Latest Trends

A Crocodile Keeper in Port Moresby Was Held in the Water for an Hour, and Died the Next Morning

A handler at Adventure Park in Papua New Guinea was seized at feeding time on Saturday and died at 7am on Sunday. Witnesses say his legs were in the animal's jaws for about an hour before help arrived.

Sep 6, 2026/4 min read

A saltwater crocodile, Crocodylus porosus, lunging into shallow water beside mangroves. The species, not the animal involved, which has not been identified

Latest Trends

The American Alligator Recovered Forty Years Ago and Is Still Listed as Threatened, Because It Looks Like a Crocodile

In 1987 the alligator no longer qualified for protection on its own merits, so it was kept on the list for resembling species that did. A Florida congressman now wants that provision studied, after a woman was killed in June.

Sep 6, 2026/3 min read

An adult American alligator resting on a bank, head towards the camera with teeth showing along the jawline