2026/08/24 Daily Edition

Many people don't pay attention to bond markets, but they should — especially now. This is why they matter and why the drop in bond prices is signaling investor concerns about the U.S. economy.

Just like all previous summers since the pandemic began, COVID-19 cases are ticking up again, even while other health threats make more headlines.

The collapse was caused by a landslide, while local officials say the death toll is likely to rise as recovery efforts continue More than 100 people have died after an artisanal goldmine at a small village in western Central African Republic (CAR) caved in due to a landslide, local officials and aid workers said on Wednesday. The landslide happened on Tuesday afternoon in the village of Zamboye, about 50km (31 miles) from the town of Baboua and close to the border of Cameroon. Footage on social media appeared to show an avalanche of sand descend on a group of people, likely the miners, and cover them...

A historic drought may have helped yellow fever spread in Brazil. A new study shows how understanding the connection could help prepare for future outbreaks.

The milestone by the private company, LandSpace, could put China closer to challenging SpaceX’s rule in lower-cost spaceflight.

Officials say all seven people onboard killed, including Telemundo executive and Ecuador intelligence chief Seven people, including five Americans, were killed when a safari helicopter crashed on Wednesday morning in a remote part of northern Kenya, according to local police and the state department. Among the dead were an executive with Telemundo, the US-based Spanish-language network owned by NBC Universal, and the director of Ecuador’s national intelligence service...

Amid race with Anthropic, firm plans to overhaul research and training and require more safety parameters after hack OpenAI on ⁠Tuesday said it had slowed down the ⁠pace of ⁠its ​AI development while it overhauled its ⁠research and training systems. The company’s researchers were ⁠caught unaware last month ​when an ‌AI agent ‌under testing hacked another AI ‌firm, Hugging Face...

The national debt reached $40 trillion this week. It's an eye-popping figure — one that has grown as the influence of debt and deficit hawks has receded in Congress.

Hundreds of aircraft traversing the North Atlantic will be asked to adjust their altitude in an effort to reduce heat-trapping contrails.

The former Meta employee testified that the company culture prioritized user numbers over child safety measures.

Sunflower sea stars are critically endangered in the Pacific Ocean. University of Washington researchers are working with the Samish Indian Nation to bring this 24-armed creature back from the brink of extinction.

Madrid government changes stance after previously saying anyone who entered territory illegally would be sent back The Spanish government has U-turned and said it will allow 500 migrant children in Ceuta to relocate to the mainland. The majority of the estimated 70,000 people who crossed into Ceuta – a Spanish territory on the coast of north Africa – on 30 July have returned to Morocco. However, under Spanish law, the state has a duty of care to young, unaccompanied migrants until they reach the age of 18...

The party’s deputy leader Richard Tice says we should stop worrying about extreme heat and enjoy it. This dangerous nonsense will wreck our finances and the planet So now we know: the smart response to the UK’s summer of record temperatures is to do precisely nothing. According to Richard Tice, Reform UK’s deputy leader, the climate crisis is just one of those things. Nothing can be done about it, so we should simply bask in the sunshine. It is reasonable to assume Tice would not have said anything quite as crass had he been addressing people in Stourbridge who have seen their homes burn to the ground. Or the farmers whose crops shrivel in parched fields. Or the firefighters exhausted from battling wildfires across Britain. Larry Elliott is a Guardian columnist..

An eye surgeon says that fewer people have been seeking treatment for eye damage than after the UK's last total solar eclipse in 1999.

Multiple children are feared to have been conceived using sperm and egg donors which were not the ones selected by the parents.

Resolution Foundation suggests economy may finally be emerging from shadow of 2008 financial crisis Productivity in the UK – a vital measure of economic health – is growing more strongly than official figures suggest, according to analysis from the Resolution Foundation. The thinktank suggests the chancellor, John Healey, may have inherited an economy finally starting to emerge from the long shadow of the 2008 global financial crisis...

Lord O'Neill, former chief economist at Goldman Sachs, was tipped to become Andy Burnham's chief economic adviser.

Aleksander Ceferin, president of the European soccer confederation (UEFA) has announced that he will not run against Gianni Infantino but warned the under-fire FIFA president that he must either quit or face a leadership challenge in March. Infantino has been mired in a crisis since the failure of his controversial – and ultimately abandoned – plan to open FIFA to private investors.

Review will look at improving system for English and Welsh hospitality venues before next revaluation date in 2029 The government has promised that business rate valuations will be “made fairer” for pubs and hotels in England and Wales, as Andy Burnham faces growing calls to help the UK’s struggling hospitality sector. An independent review for England and Wales will look at improving the system for hospitality venues, which were hit by higher business rate bills this year after the end of pandemic-era relief and when new revaluations took effect...

CrossCountry says its "key priority" is now restoring as close to a normal service as possible.

Expect gory set pieces and jump scares galore in the return of the supernatural anthology series, with Dan Stevens among the many poor souls terrorised by an evil spirit haunting their ward Things that go bump in the night? Bad. Things that go bump in the night in a dilapidated psychiatric hospital? Infinitely worse. That, basically, is the premise of Devil in Silver, the latest volume of anthology series The Terror, which began in 2018 with a supernaturally charged tale of a polar expedition to find out what happened to Sir John Franklin’s voyage. Crikey, it does not end well. The next was set during the second world war and was about shapeshifters from Japanese folklore terrorising a Japanese-American community in southern California. A hiatus followed, but now The Terror is back with a double dose of horror: a malevolent spirit moving in and out of the bodies of the patients of New Hyde psychiatric hospital, and the more tangible but no less frightening diabolism of the US mental healthcare system. Pepper (Dan Stevens, still of Downton Abbey fame despite his many varied roles since) is in New Hyde because the three policemen who arrested him after they caught a few punches he was aiming at his girlfriend’s controlling ex threw him in there rather than completing the paperwork the station would have required. There he meets the lost and suffering souls who have ended up in what amounts, due to underfunding and understaffing, to a holding pen rather than a rehabilitative or care facility. Dorry (Judith Light) is the longest-serving resident – put there decades ago by her husband because of her endless crying fits, though her later memories reveal a greater darkness. Kofi (Chinaza Uche) – or Coffee, as he is called by the rest of his companions until it is too late – was a structural engineer in Ghana but now depends on medication to keep himself steady. Loochie (played by non-binary actor b) ended up in the system after a violent incident with a sibling, but at least one member of staff believes her charge is able to cope in the real world and, as the hospital’s evil spirit gathers strength and wrath, gets the chance to prove it...

Cedric Lodge, 58, sentenced in December to eight years in prison for stealing and selling body parts in national scheme Harvard University has agreed to pay a $53m settlement to resolve civil lawsuits stemming from the illegal theft and sale of human remains that had been donated to its medical school for scientific research. A former Harvard medical school morgue manager, Cedric Lodge, 58, was sentenced in December last year to eight years in prison after he had pleaded guilty in May to stealing and selling human body parts in a nationwide scheme. Prosecutors said this had involved the theft and sale of organs, skin, brains and dissected heads from cadavers donated to Harvard from 2018 through at least March 2020...

The former skippers say it is "basic decency" for Pakistan to comply with a court-ordered medical assessment.

New findings further call into question scientific judgment of current health leaders in the Trump administration A French researcher whose work was praised by Donald Trump and Dr Mehmet Oz during the Covid-19 pandemic published hundreds of papers with “substantial” ethical and legal concerns, according to a new analysis. An international team of scientists found concerns in 853 articles published by the Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire Méditerranée Infection, or the IHU, hundreds more than previously flagged by past investigations into work at the large research hospital. Of those, institute founder Didier Raoult was listed as co-author on 758 of them, according to one of the researchers behind the new analysis...

Syria's foreign minister meets Israeli officials to de-escalate tensions after Israeli strike near Turkish border.

Other brands affected by the recall include Chinese carmakers XPeng, Xiaomi and Geely.

It comes after Moscow warned of "consequences" over the reported use of British drones by Ukraine.

‘We don’t want distraction, we want concentration’: many teachers and parent groups think its time for a ‘digital detox’ Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Earlier this month, the federal education minister, Jason Clare, took to Facebook. “When I was a kid there was a computer room at school. Now they are everywhere. From morning till night,” he wrote. “I think there is a good argument our kids need a digital detox.” Since that post, as the minister told ABC News Breakfast last week, he has been “inundated” with support from parents and teachers...

The Cockroach Janta Party’s ‘Fix the Schools’ campaign in India is facing pushback from BJP leaders and supporters.

Case fatality rate climbs to nearly 48 percent in DRC, meaning almost one in two people infected with Ebola are dying.

As Kenya courts data-centre investment, communities fear growing pressure on an already stressed water system.

Leah Stewart was mauled by a shark in June, suffering multiple bites to her arms and legs.

The valuation is much lower than $100bn reached in a round of private fundraising in 2022.

A nonprofit and a local public health agency are subsidizing marketplace health insurance for Austin musicians, even as rising healthcare costs make the program more expensive.

Symptoms after looking at the sun without eclipse glasses can include blurred vision

A large forest fire is threatening homes near residential areas of Mamak on the outskirts of the Turkish capital.

Prestige Brand Holdings has voluntarily recalled a batch of its Clear Eyes eye drops after FDA alert Nearly 40,000 bottles of eye drops are being pulled from store shelves across the US over concerns about potential contamination, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Prestige Brand Holdings, based in Tarrytown, New York, has voluntarily recalled 39,060 bottles of Clear Eyes Maximum Itchy Eye Relief eye drops because of a “lack of assurance of sterility”, an FDA enforcement report states. The FDA classified the action as a Class II recall, defined on the agency’s website as a moderate-risk situation “in which use of or exposure to a violative product may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences or where the probability of serious adverse health consequences is remote”...

Exit polls give Kazakhstan’s pro-Tokayev Adilet party about 70 percent of the vote in the parliamentary elections.

Draft law says ships of countries permitted to pass through the Strait of Hormuz will pay for services provided by Iran.

Similar initiatives have been launched from Barcelona to Bogotá, but they have misinformation, political pressure and vested interests stacked against them Ten years ago, Alastair Harper was an advocate for young people’s health sitting in a stuffy meeting room in London planning an air pollution campaign. “My phone started buzzing,” he said. “I took the call, and then told the room I needed to leave immediately. “I had to get to UCLH [one of London’s major hospitals]. My own child was headed there in a blue-lit ambulance because she was struggling to breathe London’s toxic air.”..