
Seattle astounded housing advocates around the country in February 2025, when roughly two-thirds of voters approved a ballot initiative proposing a new 5% payroll tax on salaries in excess of US$1 million. The expected...

Misinformation lends itself to social contagion – here’s how to recognize and combat it
In 2019, a rare and shocking event in the Malaysian peninsula town of Ketereh grabbed international headlines. Nearly 40 girls age 12 to 18 from a religious school had been screaming inconsolably, claiming to have seen a...

Social media can support or undermine democracy – it comes down to how it’s designed
Every design choice that social media platforms make nudges users toward certain actions, values and emotional states. It is a design choice to offer a news feed that combines verified news sources with conspiracy blogs ...

Turbulent research landscape imperils US brain gain − and ultimately American prosperity
Despite representing only 4% of the worlds population, the United States accounts for over half of science Nobel Prizes awarded since 2000, hosts seven of The Times Higher Education Top 10 science universities, and...

Why are we so obsessed with bringing back the woolly mammoth?
In just the last several months, de-extinction bringing back extinct species by recreating them or organisms that resemble them has moved closer from science fiction to science fact. Colossal Biosciences an American...

Samora Machel’s vision for Mozambique didn’t survive: what has taken its place?
Samora Moisés Machel, the first president of independent Mozambique, was born in 1933 in Gaza province, in the south of the country. He died in an unexplained plane crash on 19 October 1986, in Mbuzini, South...

Alcohol and colonialism: the curious story of the Bulawayo beer gardens
Kontuthu Ziyathunqa Smoke Rising was what they used to call Bulawayo when the city was the industrial powerhouse of Zimbabwe. Now, many of its factories lie dormant or derelict. The daily torrent of workers flowing...