# data[].attributes.body
Enigmatic: difficult to interpret or to understand

frenzy: a state or period of uncontrolled excitement or wild behaviour

Sputtering: make a series of soft explosive or spitting sounds

Jittery: extremely tense and nervous

Malevolant: having or showing a wish to do evil to others

Enigmatic: difficult to Interpret or understand

Donning: put on (an item of clothing)

Nuance: a subtle difference in or shade of meaning expression or sound

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Yeat review – US rapper brings exploding, sweat-drenched pandemonium

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Filled with chaotic sounds and infectious melodies, there’s a ferocious pace to the mysterious figure’s first European headline – a ribcage-reverberating success

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Embitterment- make someone feel Bitter or resentful

Scrupulously- in a very careful or thourough way

Nihilism- psychological view that everything is devoid of meaning and value

Subsume- include or absorb something else

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Playboi Carti: Music review – the most anticipated rap album this decade was worth the wait

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Already staggeringly popular since its long-awaited release on Friday, the Atlantan rapper shows off his almost mystical level of vocal range on his jaded, narcotised third LP

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Cathartic: providing psychological relief through the open expression of strong emotions.

Gargantuan: enormous

Ennui: a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of excitement

Fug: a warm stuffy or Smokey atmosphere

Psychedelic: hallucinations and apparent expansions of consciousness

Pugilistic: aggressive or combative

Croon: sing softly in a low voice in a sentimental manner

Rapt: completely fascinated

Succumb: fail to resist pressure or temptation

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Travis Scott review – rap’s commander puts the mosh pit through its paces

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The crowd-pleasing ham holds court to thrill his audience of ‘ragers’ with a combination of brawny bangers, force of will and a big box of fireworks

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Altercation: a noisy argument or disagreement, especially in public

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Travis Scott sought by New York police over alleged assault of nightclub worker

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Rapper is alleged to have punched sound engineer during a DJ set, and caused $12,000 worth of damage to equipment

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Melding: blend, combine

Introspection: the examination of one’s own conscious thoughts and feelings

Husk: the dry outer covering of something like fruits

Badassery: behaviour as formidably impressive

Palpable: tangible

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The revolutionary rage artist’s latest album fails to capitalize on any of his greatest strengths.

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Mourning- expression of the process of grieving

Candidly- in an honest and straight forward way

Encapsulate- enclose

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To listen to rap music in 2020 is to be in a constant state of mourning. Mac Miller, Lil Peep and Juice WRLD have died of drug overdoses; XXXTentacion, Jimmy Wopo, Nipsey Hussle and Pop Smoke are among the MCs to have been murdered.

It usually takes time for history to work out a generation's legends, but the legacies of these recently deceased stars already seems secure. It's not hyperbolic to call Mac Miller, Lil Peep and Juice WRLD voices of a generation - they candidly depicted addiction and mental health struggles, allowing their young disciples to make sense of their own problems. Nipsey Hussle may not be a global household name but he was so deeply embedded in Los Angeles that when he fell, the whole city mourned. The latter stages of XXXTentacion's life were dominated by a disturbing list of criminal charges. Now, unable to speak for himself, the dedicated followers he left behind are defensive of his legacy.

We'll never know how the recordings they'll never make could have kept on changing popular music, but more immediately, these deaths have profoundly affected the fans to whom the rappers were their Amy Winehouse or Kurt Cobain. This is the meaning of these artists in the words of their biggest fans. Dean Van Nguyen

Mac Miller

Alison, 24, Anchorage, Alaska: "I grew up in Houston, Texas, listening primarily to country music. I found Mac Miller when I was a young teenager. It totally encapsulated me. I have 15 Mac Miller tattoos.

"I find so much comfort in his music. I always have. And now it's so much more intense. He helped me get through really dark times in my life. When you're a teenager and it feels like everything is against you and you feel really alone, he made me feel like I wasn't alone. Mac was so open and so real in his music. He didn't hold anything back, he didn't bullshit, he told you all about his demons, and if you fight it out and stay on the rollercoaster of ups and downs, it's going to make you a better person - you just have to stay on the ride sometimes.

"I recently went to Pittsburgh for the release of Circles [Miller's posthumous album released in January]. I went to the pop-up event and the birthday party that some fans held for him in his home town and it really changed my life. I'd never been to Pittsburgh before and I'd been this 13-year-old kid, listening to this artist, thinking about these places [in his lyrics] - Blue Slide Park and Frick Park Market. To actually go there and see it in real life, to touch the slide in Blue Slide Park, made me feel a way that I can't really describe with words.

"I saw him live six times but never got to meet him and thank him and cry into his shoulder and talk to him for a second. That really messes with me. It's very heavy on my mind."

XXXTentacion

Adison, 20, Cedar Rapids, Iowa: "We're around the same age, X and me. When I started listening to him, it was because of how gritty and aggressive his music was. Because I was young and stupid and I did dumb things a lot, I could blast it and if people heard me listening, they would be annoyed. It was something I could take pride in when I was younger. That's what drew me to him initially. Then I dug deeper and I started finding sadder, more emotional music [in his catalogue] that would connect to a whole different audience - Look At Me and other songs that have a totally different vibe. Through his evolution, it seemed like he changed almost in the same way as me. I grew closer to him as he became more emotional and sad in his music than aggressive.

"Because we were both around the same age, we were maturing at the same time - under totally different circumstances but everyone's human and we go through the same problems. We go through the same struggles becoming young men and maturing into the people we're going to become. It's inspiring that he still managed to do all that. He definitely matured more than I have at this point.

"When X died, I decided to delete my Twitter temporarily because I knew there was going to be a negative backlash. I really didn't want to see the terrible things people were going to say about him. His name was completely ruined. It's such a tragedy, what happened to him."

Juice WRLD

Aspen, 25, Charlottesville, Virginia: "A lot of people who won't give certain rappers' music a chance will label them mumble rap, but if you actually dig into their message and take in their content, they cover depression, drug abuse, mental health. Juice WRLD, I like him and X and Lil Peep because they got me through some of the darkest times in my life. And Juice, I could relate to him because we had almost the same problems. He had a really special place in my heart.

"I've had similar substance abuse struggles in my past and the message that he was sending is that he attacked addiction and tied it in with mental health. He hit it right on the head - you could understand him and understand that it's not a choice. Once this demon has a hold of you, it turns you into something that's not yourself. Juice WRLD understood addiction because he was addicted to drugs. A lot of other people won't really relate to it, call him an addict, a junkie, shit like that. But real people who had to go through it can really identify. And then the music being that quality makes it that much more digestible. If you actually open your mind up and see, this was a talented kid making classic records."

Lil Peep

Jesse, 24, Shreveport, Louisiana: "I started out listening to heavy metal and stuff like that. Suicideboys were my way into the modern rap scene because they mixed rap and metal. Through them I found out about Lil Peep. I was going through a really bad depression at the time due to the situation I was living in. The music and the lyrics that he sang about his own depression and own anxiety, it was very easy to connect with. Being around my age as well - he died at 21 [in 2017] and I'm 24 now - it was having a connection with someone your age, going through the same process you are, and feeling the same things you are.

"It definitely hit me really hard when he died. I have three Lil Peep tattoos and I had just gotten my first one. I was bingeing his music all the time. He was the first and only celebrity whose death I truly cried over, because it felt like losing a loved one. When celebrities die, they're just celebrities, you've seen their movies and stuff like that but you've no connection to them.

"Peep's music connected me to him. Even though I didn't know him as a person, I felt like I knew him. It definitely felt like a personal loss, rather than a celebrity death."

Nipsey Hussle

Rosecrans Vic, 27, Los Angeles, California: "Nipsey Hussle was like the finish line for LA. He embodied what everybody would want to accomplish one day, whether they worked at a clothing store or whether they were a rapper - he checked all those boxes. He came from nothing. That's why it was such a big loss - because everyone looked up to him so much.

"Nipsey was visible in his community. He touched real people's lives every day. He didn't just start to make money and disappear into the Hollywood Hills. He stuck around his community and made it a point to push ownership and unification. I used to go to his store and see him there. You could shake his hand and he'd tell you he appreciates you for pulling up. He had so much respect across the board from rival gangs, from everybody: 'We can listen to his music even if we're enemies.' Everyone respected his business acumen - knowing he came from a place similar to them and he didn't go to college, everything was self-taught. The way he died was so tragic. It just caught everyone by surprise.

"A lot of people say Los Angeles is not like a traditional city because it's so spread out. But I feel like people like Nipsey and Kobe [Bryant] bring the city together, in life and death. When Nipsey passed, when Kobe passed, what part of LA you were from didn't matter. We're all from LA, we're all grieving together. It didn't matter if you'd never been to South Central - we all felt it the same. They really brought the city together because everybody roots for the Lakers. And everybody in LA who likes hip-hop, you'd never find somebody who hated Nipsey. I don't think that's just because he's gone now. There was nothing to dislike. If you didn't like the music, you respected the hustle."

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'I never got to thank him': fans mourn a generation of rappers dying young

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Rap's young stars connect with their audience on a deep emotional level - so it's especially devastating when they die, as those fans explain

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Lambasted- criticised

Leftist- a person who has left wing political views or supports left wing policies

Staunch- very loyal and committed in attitude

Inundate- overwhelm someone with things or people do be delt with

Pertain- be appropriate, related or applicable to

Impeach- challenge

Bludgeon- a thick stick with a heavy end, used as a weapon

Subsequently- later

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Trump ally Laura Loomer ridiculed for swinging from Charlie Kirk attacks to leading backlash against detractors

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Loomer accused TPUSA founder of betraying president in July but now bashes those she perceives to ‘celebrate’ his assassination

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Missing teen found dead in car registered to D4vd had same tattoo as singer: report

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Celeste Rivas Hernandez had been missing from Lake Elsinore in California since April 2024

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Body found in Tesla reportedly owned by singer d4vd that of missing teenager

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Celeste Rivas, 15, identified by Los Angeles officials after body discovered inside vehicle in Hollywood tow lot

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Distinguished- very successful, authoritative, and commanding great respect

Tariff- tax on the import and export of goods

Circumvent- avoid

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Trump says he believes Ukraine can regain all land lost to Russia since 2022 invasion

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US president claims Russia is in ‘big economic trouble’ as he calls for Nato countries to stop imports of Russian oil

# data[].attributes.body
Dire- extremely serious or urgent

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Interstellar overhype: Nasa debunks claim about alien-made comet

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Nasa dismisses theory by Harvard astronomer who suggested an object from beyond the solar system could be a relic from a distant civilization

# data[].attributes.body
Perceptive- having or showing sensitive insight

Coalition- a temporary alliance for combined action, especially of political parties forming a government

Triumphant- victorious

Vindication- the action of clearing someone or blame of suspicion

Zeitgeist- the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time

Ossification- to turn something into bone and become flexible

Repertoire- collection

Subsequent- following

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Men Should Weep should be compulsory viewing for politicians | John M Morrison

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John M Morrison: Those who seek to dismantle the welfare state should hasten down to the National Theatre – but Ena Lamont Stewart’s play is far more than an exercise in agit-prop

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Repatriation- process of returning an asset, an item or a person to its owner or their place of origin or citizenship

Whisked- take or move someone or something somewhere suddenly and quickly

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New Orleans couple discovers ancient Roman grave marker in their yard

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Discovery of 1,900-year-old headstone dedicated to Roman sailor sets off effort to repatriate item to Italy

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Mandate- authority granted by a constituency to act as its representative

Mitigate- make something less severe, serious or painful

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Weatherwatch: Repair of ozone layer is making the planet warmer, study finds

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Scientists say ozone is warming Earth by 40% more than expected but that repair is still right thing to do

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Flout- openly disregard

Compensation- something, typically money, awarded to someone in recognition of loss, suffering or injury

Avowedly- as has been asserted, admitted or stated publicly

Inadequate- lacking the quality or quantity required

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Calls by cancer experts to ban sunbeds in the UK will not be heeded straight away. So far, no minister or opposition party has signalled support for a step that many would regard as overly restrictive. Nor has the public been consulted. While World Cancer Research Fund (a British charity) supports a ban, Cancer Research UK has stuck to issuing warnings.

But with skin cancer rates rising, and evidence that the existing ban on children using sunbeds is being flouted, it is unsurprising that cancer doctors think more should be done. The ban on children using commercial sunbeds in the UK was introduced in 2010. Since then, Australia has banned such businesses altogether. Prof Paul Lorigan and the other authors of an article in the British Medical Journal argue that a law like Australia's would be the most cost-effective way of cutting melanoma cases - even if it included compensation for businesses. Evidence suggests that young women in deprived parts of northern England are at particular risk.

As with other activities and products that are known to cause cancer or other illness, the alternative is tighter regulation and public education aimed at persuading people to make healthier choices. On tobacco, the UK has chosen a ban - albeit a gradual one, with a bill outlawing the sale of tobacco products to anyone born after 1 January 2009. The new law will also ban the sale of vapes to children, and further restricts advertising and smoking in public places. By contrast, on junk food and alcohol Labour has failed to live up to pre-election promises, with tighter rules on advertising delayed, and England so far not following Scotland with a minimum unit price for alcohol.

Public health campaigners are only too aware of such inconsistencies. When it comes to the powerful food and drink industries, successive governments' commitment to preventing illness is in tension with an avowedly pro-business approach.

The question of exactly which risky activities should be banned will always be a difficult one in a liberal society. People take chances with their health and safety all the time, and value the opportunity to make their own choices and mistakes. But as health officials have pointed out in relation to high-risk cosmetic surgery, the UK's free-to-use national health system makes the potential downsides of such decisions harder to brush off. Choices are not simply at an individual's "own risk" when adverse consequences and costs are shared.

With "sin taxes", as they are known, another kind of cost-benefit analysis comes in. While the pleasure derived from alcohol, and the profits made from selling it, are two reasons why there is little appetite for restrictions, another is that the Treasury earns around £12.5bn in duties from sales each year.

As with sunbeds, public health experts point out that poorer people are at highest risk from obesity and alcohol-related harms (though one recent survey found that those in wealthier families were more likely to have an addiction problem). Attempts to shift consumer behaviour must never be a substitute for tackling the socioeconomic determinants of poor health, including inadequate incomes and housing. But nor can the dangers to health from gambling, ultra-processed food, sunbeds and other risky products and services simply be ignored. If ministers want the public to trust them, prevention in healthcare needs to be more than a buzzword.

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The Guardian view on calls to ban sunbeds: prevention in healthcare raises hard questions about risks | Editorial

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Editorial: Regulating unhealthy habits is difficult. But if ministers intend to reduce illness, clarity and courage will be required

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Fretfully- feeling or expressing distress or irritation

Covet- desire

Hapless- unfortunate

Blunder- mistake

Presumptuous- failing to observe the limits of what is permitted or appropriate

Abhor- detest

Ineluctable- unable to be resisted or avoided

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detain- keep someone from proceeding by holding them back

Apprehend- arrest

Jeopardise- threaten

Adequately- to a satisfactory or acceptable extent

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French police arrest two men over €88m Louvre jewel heist

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One man arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport and another just outside Paris, officials confirm

# data[].attributes.body
Disseminate- spread

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Slang terms like ‘six-seven’ have no definition. But they’re loaded with meaning | Matthew Cantor

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Older generations are demanding explanations of the viral phrase – but slang doesn’t have to make logical sense

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Intermittent- occurring at irregular intervals- not continuous or steady

Waning- disappearing or decreasing

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This isn’t a real ceasefire in Gaza – it’s a holding pattern before war returns | Sanam Vakil

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Israel’s airstrikes have exposed the fragility of Trump’s ‘peace plan’. Without international support, it risks crumbling altogether, says Sanam Vakil of Chatham House

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A "heroic" member of staff who was seriously injured after the mass stabbing onboard a train in Cambridgeshire on Saturday has been praised for his "incredibly brave" actions to protect passengers.

Samir Zitouni, 48, who has worked for London North Eastern Railway (LNER) for more than 20 years, remains in hospital following the attacks.

After the incident, police officers who had reviewed CCTV footage of the incident from within the train said it was clear Zitouni's actions were "nothing short of heroic and undoubtedly saved many people's lives".

He was one of 11 people treated in hospital after the attack on the moving high-speed train from Doncaster to London on Saturday evening. Anthony Williams, 32, has appeared at Peterborough magistrates court charged with 10 counts of attempted murder in connection with the incident.

On Tuesday, Zitouni's family said in a statement released through LNER: "We have been deeply touched by the outpouring of love and kindness shown to Sam, and by the many well wishes for his recovery.

"The care provided by the hospital and the support from his colleagues at LNER has been incredible.

"We are immensely proud of Sam and his courage. The police called him a hero on Saturday evening, but to us - he's always been a hero."

David Horne, the managing director of LNER, said: "In a moment of crisis, Sam did not hesitate as he stepped forward to protect those around him.

"His actions were incredibly brave, and we are so proud of him, and of all our colleagues who acted with such courage that evening. Our thoughts and prayers remain with Sam and his family. We will continue to support them and wish him a full and speedy recovery."

Jonathan Gjoshe. Photograph: Scunthorpe United

Among the injured was Jonathan Gjoshe, a 22-year-old Scunthorpe United footballer, who was treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

In a statement, his club said: "Everyone at the club, from the board, management and his teammates, along with all staff behind the scenes, sends our heartfelt well wishes to Jonathan for a full recovery, which is also extended to all the victims onboard the train."

Stephen Crean. Photograph: Jordan Pettitt/PA

Another of the victims has been named as Stephen Crean, 61. The Nottingham Forest football fan reportedly confronted the train attacker, going face to face with him in the carriage.

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Cambridgeshire stabbing attack: 'heroic' train worker praised for saving passengers' lives

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
LNER employee Samir Zitouni, who was hospitalised after Saturday's incident, hailed by police for 'incredibly brave' actions

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Teenager taken to Ghana away from UK ‘gang culture’ to stay for now, court rules

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Boy had sought court order to force his return, after parents took him on trip to Ghana and returned without him

# data[].attributes.body
Stringent - strict

Scapegoat- a person who is blamed for the wrongdoing, mistakes or faults of others

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Met hunting two more criminals mistakenly freed from prison

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Algerian sex offender and a fraudster freed by Wandsworth jail, days after new checks brought in after Ethiopian prisoner wrongly released

# data[].attributes.body
Reconcile- reunite

Levy- impose (a tax or fine)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Businesses worldwide brace for extra Trump tariffs on steel imports

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Commerce department expected to add about 700 more items with steel content to levy list at request of US firms

# data[].attributes.body
Idiom- a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning

Derelict- homelessness

Sardonicism- expressions of humour used during adversity

Pyrotechnics- science and craft of creating fireworks

Soliloquy- Dramatic device where a character speaks to his or herself

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Topographia Hibernica by Blindboy Boatclub review – craic of doom

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Pathos and comedy combine in an energetic collection of tales from one half of the Rubberbandits

# data[].attributes.body
humanitarian- ongoing

Inadequate- incompetent

Bilateral- having or relating to two sides, affecting both sides.

Deplete- exhaust

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More than 9,000 children in Gaza hospitalised for acute malnutrition in October, UN says

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Aid agencies say Israel is still restricting their aid shipments despite ceasefire announced two months ago

# data[].attributes.body
Tremors- trembling

Immunocompromised- having an impaired immune system

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Man dies after saving kitten from skunk – and passes rabies to kidney recipient

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Michigan man received kidney transplant from donor who had fought off a skunk and was later found unresponsive

# data[].attributes.body
Draconian- harsh

Detain- keep someone from proceeding by holding them back

Complicit- involved with others in wrongful activities

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tourists to US would have to reveal five years of social media activity under new Trump plan

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Proposed plan would apply to tourists of all countries, including those not required to get a visa to visit the US

# data[].attributes.body
Decoupling- separate, disengage or dissociate from something else

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Economic growth no longer linked to carbon emissions in most of the world, study finds

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Analysis marking 10 years since Paris climate agreement underscores effectiveness of strong government policies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Can you imagine raising a kid without ChatGPT? Sam Altman can’t | Arwa Mahdawi

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The OpenAI CEO gushed about the bot’s parental-assistance abilities. Is it really his best child-rearing hack?

# data[].attributes.body
Heaving- a place extremely crowded

Palpable- tangible

Nocturnal - active at night

Ambivalent- has mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‘Constant stimulation, dopamine overload’: how EsDeeKid and UK underground rap exploded on a global scale

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
With an experimental and maxed-out sound, bold new MCs are emerging from all corners of the UK – and with US rap in the doldrums, the time is ripe for another British Invasion

# data[].attributes.body
Distraught- worried

Anguish- agony

Postmortem- examination of a dead body to detect the cause of death

Cordon- barrier of policemen

# data[].attributes.body
Amassing- gathering

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Sean "Diddy" Combs has taken issue with a splashy new Netflix docuseries on his life and many legal troubles, that is executive-produced by his longtime rival 50 Cent.

The former Bad Boy Records executive and hip-hop star, currently serving a four-year sentence for prostitution-related charges, blasted Sean Combs: The Reckoning as a "shameful hit piece", and accused Netflix of incorporating stolen footage.

The four-part series, to debut on Netflix on 2 December, purports to offer a "staggering examination of the media mogul, music legend and convicted offender", including never-before-seen footage of Combs and his inner circle. A new teaser released on Monday includes a clip of Combs from 10 September 2024, as the walls of his federal sex crimes case were closing in.

"We're losing," he says in a hotel room, cellphone in hand, before he calls for "somebody that'll work with us that has dealt in the dirtiest of dirty business".

Through a spokesperson, the disgraced music mogul now claims that footage, including "private moments, pre-indictment material from an unfinished project and conversations involving legal strategy", was obtained unlawfully.

"Today's GMA teaser confirms that Netflix relied on stolen footage that was never authorized for release," the statement reads. "As Netflix and CEO Ted Sarandos know, Mr Combs has been amassing footage since he was 19 to tell his own story, in his own way. It is fundamentally unfair, and illegal, for Netflix to misappropriate that work.

"None of this was obtained from Sean Combs or his team, and its inclusion raises very serious questions about how this material was accessed and why Netflix chose to use it," the statement added, claiming that Combs's legal team had been in touch with Netflix.

Netflix later refuted Combs' claims. "The project has no ties to any past conversations between Sean Combs and Netflix," a spokeperson told Deadline. "The footage of Combs leading up to his indictment and arrest were legally obtained. This is not a hit piece or an act of retribution."

Combs's response, in which he blamed the series on 50 Cent's "personal vendetta" against him, comes hours after 50 Cent touted the series on Good Morning America along with Alexandria Stapleton, the director. They did not discuss how they obtained the footage, though Stapleton assured the Hollywood Reporter that "the footage was obtained completely legally".

Asked if his involvement in the series stemmed from a longstanding, if formerly low-stakes, personal rivalry - 50 Cent released a diss track mocking Combs back in 2006 - the rapper demurred.

"It's not personal," he said, offering a more noble intention: "If I didn't say anything," he said, the world might have thought "hip-hop is fine with his behaviors. There's no one else being vocal."

In a statement announcing the series, Stapleton said the project offered "a mirror [reflecting us] as the public, and what we are saying when we put our celebrities on such a high pedestal. I hope [this documentary] is a wake-up call for how we idolize people, and to understand that everybody is a human being."

After a frenzied federal trial over the summer that featured emotional testimony from Combs's ex Cassie, detailing years of abuse, Combs was convicted on two lesser charges of transportation to engage in prostitution, for flying his girlfriends and male sex workers around the country to engage in drug-fueled sexual encounters. He was acquitted of sex-trafficking and racketeering charges that could have led to a life sentence.

Combs was sentenced to four years and two months in prison in October. He is serving the sentence in New Jersey, and is set for release in May 2028, though he can earn sentence reductions through his participation in substance abuse treatment and other prison programs. Still, his legal troubles continue: just last month, the Los Angeles county sheriff's department announced that it was investigating a new sexual battery allegation against him, involving an incident of exposure and sexual harassment from 2020.

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Sean 'Diddy' Combs decries Netflix series by 50 Cent as 'shameful hit piece'

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Disgraced and incarcerated music mogul claims footage in docuseries Sean Combs: The Reckoning was stolen

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bountiful- generous

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Scientists log rare case of female polar bear adopting cub: ‘They’re really good moms’

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Canadian researchers tracking bear known as X33991 noticed she had gained a second cub who likely needed help

# data[].attributes.body
Coalition- alliance

Demonise- portray as wicked or threatening

Punitive- harsh

Alleviate- reduce

Perpetrating- committing

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UK government strategy to protect women and girls from violence ‘seriously underfunded’

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Campaigners welcome plans but say poor funding means Labour’s ambitions unlikely to be met

# data[].attributes.body
Elude- escape from or avoid

Commend- praise

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Man who mowed down London pedestrians on Christmas Day convicted of murder

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Anthony Gilheaney, 31, targeted people with his Mercedes, killing Aidan Chapman, 25, and seriously injuring four others

# data[].attributes.body
Unequivocal- leaving no doubt

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Anthony Joshua calls out Tyson Fury after sending Jake Paul to hospital with broken jaw

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Anthony Joshua stopped Jake Paul in the sixth round in Miami, then called out Tyson Fury as Paul was taken to hospital with a suspected broken jaw

# data[].attributes.body
dire- terrible

Attorney- lawyer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sister of Epstein victim reported him in 1996, but FBI failed to investigate, files reveal

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Maria Farmer, whose sister Annie was abused by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, says Epstein ‘stole’ nude images

# data[].attributes.body
Breached-an act of breaking or failing to observe a law

Teeter- move or balance unsteadily

Mitigating- having the effect of making something bad less serious

Sporadic- occasional

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Ten people rescued after boats pulled into sinkhole in Shropshire canal

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Major incident declared as 50-metre-long breach opens up and discharges water on to surrounding land

# data[].attributes.body
Parody- an imitation of style of a particular writer, artist or genre

Concur- agree

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What happened next: the Coldplay kiss cam couple

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
They went mega-viral as the couple who were caught canoodling on a live screen. Cue plot twists and months of public intrigue

# data[].attributes.body
Scrutiny- careful examination

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Trump flew alone on jet with Epstein and unnamed 20-year-old, files suggest

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Claim by a senior US attorney about US president appears in latest batch of justice department documents

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Six UK immigration officers charged with money laundering offences

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Five of the officers also facing charges of conspiracy to steal and misconduct in public office

# data[].attributes.body
Subsequently- later

Assailant- a person who physically attacks another

Perpetrator- a person who carries out a harmful, illegal, or immoral act

Aggravate- worsen

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British boy stabbed to death in Portugal allegedly by ex-partner of his mother

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Tributes paid to Alfie Hallett, 13, as police say suspect also died in incident believed to be domestic violence related

# data[].attributes.body
Lacklustre- uninspired

Resurgence- renewal

# data[].attributes.body
Hostile- showing or feeling opposition or dislike

Antagonism- active hostility or opposition

Prevalence- commonness

Cohort- group

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Foreign medics shunning NHS because of anti-migrant rhetoric, says top doctor

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Exclusive: UK now an ‘unwelcoming, racist’ country for overseas health workers, according to medical colleges leader

# data[].attributes.body
Waived- disregarded

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Child abuse victim of Jackanory presenter tells how climbing saved him

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Iain Peters waited more than 50 years before going to the police but hopes he can be a beacon for other survivors

# data[].attributes.body
Unequivocally- in a way that leaves no doubt

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Study: How Religious Moms Screw up Their Kids in Different Way Than Atheist Moms

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There are a number of reasons why I’m childfree: I like sleep, I like money, I don’t like sharing my Legos. But one big reason is that I see that there are about a billion different ways a parent c…

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prowess- skill or courage

Penultimate- second last

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Stranger Things blasted for ‘going peak woke’ as it’s review-bombed

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The smash-hit series is currently airing its final season, with the grand finale set to air on New Year’s Eve.

# data[].attributes.body
Myriad- multitude

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‘Absolutely frightening’: surge in ketamine cases hits UK urology wards

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Young adults and teenagers prevalent in ‘skyrocketing’ admissions linked to class B drug, say doctors in northern England

# data[].attributes.body
Ailment- illness

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Huge rise in number of people in England’s A&Es for coughs or hiccups

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Lack of prompt access to primary care blamed for rise in hospital cases of minor ailments including blocked noses

# data[].attributes.body
Apiece- each

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
China forecast to have sold one in every 10 new cars in UK in 2025

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Carmakers such as MG, BYD and Chery are set to pass 200,000 mark in sales, analysis suggests, double 2024’s total

# data[].attributes.body
Lexicographer- a person who complies dictionaries

Obscure- unclear

Scepticism- doubt

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Rage bait, goblin mode … do words of the year have any real value?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Analysis shows obscure and barely used choices, drawn from online slang, do not stand the test of time

# data[].attributes.body
Magnum opus- a large important work of art

Exasperated- intensely irritated and frustrated

Convoluted- complicated

# data[].attributes.body
Sequencing- succession

Reap- harvest or receive

Zeal- passion

Benevolent- kind

Frontier- border

Caveat- warning

Cumbersome- complicated

Paradoxically- in a seemingly absurd or self contradictory way

Plethora- excess

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The Guardian view on mRNA vaccines: they are the future – with or without Donald Trump | Editorial

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Editorial: Over the holiday period, the Guardian leader column is looking ahead at the themes of 2026. Today we examine how the White House’s war on vaccines has left the future of a key technology uncertain and up for grabs

# data[].attributes.body
depraved- corrupt

Divulge- disclose

Catharsis- the purification and purgation of emotions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
I May Destroy You helped me confront being spiked

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I had previously found Michaela Coel’s 2020 drama relatable and familiar, but decided to rewatch it after going through a similar experience – and it spurred me into action

# data[].attributes.body
Condemned- damned

Insurgent- rebellious

Venture- a risky or daring journey or undertaking

Indictment- charge

Affiliated- associated

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Republican casts doubt on Trump’s claim US will ‘run’ Venezuela amid Democrats’ anger over Maduro operation – live

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Senator Tom Cotton says there are ‘still a lot of questions to be answered’ about what happens next in Venezuela and dismisses Trump’s assertion that the US will ‘run’ the country

# data[].attributes.body
Brevity- shortness

Belie- contradict

Allude- refer to

Notorious- infamous

Defiant- openly resisting or disobeying

Revulsion- disgust

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Deposed Maduro pleads not guilty after capture in shock US attack on Venezuela

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
President protests innocence in US court as countries at UN meeting condemn Donald Trump’s ‘crime of aggression’

# data[].attributes.body
Tyrant- a cruel and oppressive leader

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
US Senate advances war powers resolution to stop Trump from taking further military action in Venezuela

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Democratic-led resolution would require US president to seek Congress’s approval to use military against Venezuela

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Trump wants a deal but insists US will acquire Greenland ‘one way or the other’

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The US president says acquiring Greenland would be “easier” through a deal than by military force, while officials reportedly consider paying Greenlanders to encourage secession from Denmark.

# data[].attributes.body
Cede- give up

Convene- come or bring together for a meeting

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Trump cites UK’s ‘stupidity’ over Chagos Islands as reason to take over Greenland

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
US president says on social media that Britain’s decision to cede islands to Mauritius is ‘act of total weakness’

# data[].attributes.body
Mourning- the emotional expression in response to a major life event causing grief, especially loss.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Commuter train near Barcelona hits collapsed wall killing driver and injuring nearly 40

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Incident in Spain took place days after collision between two high-speed trains in Andalucía that killed at least 42

# data[].attributes.body
Articulate- having or showing the ability to speak fluently or coherently

Unembellished- a true but bland statement

Adamantly- In a way that suggests one will not be persuaded to change one’s mind firmly and resolutely.

Defiantly- in a manner that shows open resistance or bold disobedience

Adversary- opponent

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A moment that changed me: my client was accused of a crime he didn’t commit – and it led me to confront my past

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As a defence lawyer, I rely on witness statements. But one unusual case prompted me to reconsider the role of memory, and a traumatic experience that had affected me for years

# data[].attributes.body
Sentient- able to perceive or feel things

Burgeoning- beginning to grow or increase rapidly

Stigma- Shame

Flippantly- not showing a serious or respectful attitude

Petulant- childishly sulky or bad tempered

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
David and Victoria Beckham learned the hard way – modern kids go ‘no contact’ with no guilt or stigma at all | Emma Brockes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
No one is suggesting the sort of decision Brooklyn made is taken lightly, but support networks and the language of therapy seem to lessen the sting, says Guardian columnist Emma Brockes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Nasa is preparing to roll out its most powerful rocket yet before a mission to send astronauts around the moon and back again for the first time in more than 50 years.

The Artemis II mission is scheduled to launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida as early as 6 February, taking its crew on a 685,000-mile round trip that will end about 10 days later with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

The flight will mark only the second test of Nasa's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the first with a crew onboard. The four astronauts will live and work in the Orion capsule, testing life support and communications systems and practising docking manoeuvres.

Jared Isaacman, the billionaire private astronaut sworn in as Nasa's administrator in December, said on Thursday the mission was "probably one of the most important human spaceflight missions in the last half-century".

It will be the second time in space for three Nasa astronauts, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and the first for Jeremy Hansen, a Canadian astronaut. Koch will become the first woman, and Glover the first person of colour, to travel beyond low Earth orbit.

The astronauts will not land on the moon or enter lunar orbit, but will be the first to travel around the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. The mission follows an uncrewed test flight in 2022 and paves the way for Artemis III, which aims to land astronauts near the lunar south pole as early as next year.

"These are the kinds of days that we live for," John Honeycutt, the chair of the Artemis II mission management team, told a press briefing on Friday. "It really doesn't get much better than this: we are making history."

"It's a big deal," said David Parker, the former head of the UK Space Agency and a visiting professor at the University of Southampton. "It is a step towards what we in the space world always dreamed of: the sustained human and robotic exploration of the moon and, one day, on to Mars."

Some paint the return to the moon as a second space race, with the US competing against China, which hopes to put its own boots on the moon by 2030. "I'll be damned if the Chinese beat Nasa or beat America back to the moon," Sean Duffy, Nasa's former acting administrator, said in September. "We're going to win."

Artemis II to the moon: launch to splashdown (Nasa mission animation)

The SLS rocket and Orion capsule stand nearly 100 metres tall, with the rocket carrying more than enough liquid propellant to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool. When burned through the rocket's engines, it produces sufficient thrust to fly to the moon at speeds of up to 24,500mph.

But first, the rollout. As early as Saturday morning, Nasa's crawler-transporter 2, an enormous tracked vehicle, will start lugging the 5,000-tonne rocket and spacecraft from the vehicle assembly building to the launchpad. The four-mile journey can take up to 12 hours.

Nasa will then work through a preflight checklist. If all goes to plan, engineers will move on to a wet dress rehearsal, loading the rocket with more than 700,000 gallons of propellant, conducting a trial countdown and demonstrating that they can remove the propellant safely.

Any substantial problems would require the rocket to be rolled back to the vehicle assembly building for repairs. In recent days, technicians have been working on a bent cable in the rocket's flight termination system, a faulty valve used to pressurise the Orion capsule, and leaks in equipment that pumps oxygen into the spacecraft.

The entire process must go smoothly for the mission to launch on 6 February. If technical problems or bad weather intervene, Nasa has identified 14 other dates to launch before mid-April. "We're going to fly when we are ready," said Honeycutt. "From launch through the mission days to follow, the crew's safety is going to be our number one priority."

After liftoff, the crew will loop twice around the Earth. Before heading to the moon, the Orion capsule will separate from the rocket's upper stage. The astronauts will then fly the spacecraft manually, using cameras and the view outside the window, to approach and retreat from the jettisoned stage. This will give Nasa a sense of how Orion handles for future Artemis missions where crews will dock and undock in lunar orbit.

For all Nasa's preparations and the astronauts' extensive training, the mission could still throw up some surprises. "This is a test flight and there are things that are going to be unexpected," said Jeff Radigan, Artemis II's lead flight director.

A final push from Orion's European service module will send the crew to the moon. The astronauts will travel more than 230,000 miles from Earth, passing around the far side of the moon, before looping back in a giant figure-of-eight trajectory. During the voyage, the crew will practise emergency procedures and test Orion's radiation shelter, designed to protect them from harmful solar flares.

More than 50 years after humans went to the moon, it is time to get excited again - and perhaps a little nervous. "Every rocket launch is a nail-biter," Parker said. "We're putting astronauts on a rocket, and it's flown only once before, so of course it's a nail-biter. But I'm confident Nasa will only launch when they are ready."

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Nasa readies its most powerful rocket for round-the-moon flight

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Artemis II mission could launch on 6 February, sending astronauts on a 685,000-mile journey

# data[].attributes.body
Retrenchment- political act of cutting down or reduction, particularly of public expenditure

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Universe’s mysteries may never be solved because of Trump’s Nasa cuts, experts say

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
‘Extinction-level cuts’ to space agency’s spending means labs will close and deep-space missions will be abandoned

# data[].attributes.body
Doctrine- a belief or set of beliefs held and taught by a church, political party or other group

Coerce- persuade to do something using force or threats

Evangelism- the spreading of the Christian gospel by public preaching or personal witness

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Young people say they felt pressured by emerging church to donate

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Former London ICC members tell the BBC they felt pressured into making donations they could not afford.

# data[].attributes.body
Intricate- complex

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"She tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne and she cut your hair, and from your lips she drew the Hallelujah..." No one hearing these lyrics from the song Hallelujah could doubt that Leonard Cohen knew how to write and sing about love, sex and desire. But fans of his music could be forgiven for not realising exactly what he was trying to convey about religion and the intricate references he was making to biblical stories, Talmudic legends and the Mishnah, a third-century Jewish text.

Now, an analysis of Cohen's work sets out to reveal how extensively the revered songwriter used both Christian and Jewish stories and imagery to express ideas in his songs.

The book, Leonard Cohen: The Mystical Roots of Genius, explores the many different spiritual sources and the religious folklore the musician was drawing upon when he wrote masterpieces like Hallelujah, Suzanne and So Long, Marianne.

Leonard Cohen: The Mystical Roots of Genius. Photograph: Bloomsbury

"I think he sees himself a little bit as a prophet," says Harry Freedman, author of the forthcoming book, which will be published later this month, just before the fifth anniversary of Cohen's death on 7 November. "He's trying to elevate people's thinking. Most rock music is about the world we live in. And I think he's saying: there is stuff beyond that, think more deeply."

Cohen, who was brought up in the Jewish faith, was "deeply learned" about both Judaism and Christianity.

"His lyrics are full of references to the Bible, the Talmud and Kabbalah [a Jewish mystical tradition with its roots in the late Middle Ages] but they are easily missed - he wove them so skilfully into his songs before reinterpreting them in completely new erotic, spiritual or mystical ways."

In Hallelujah, for example, Cohen refers to the biblical story of King David who, according to Talmudic legend, delights angels and sages when he privately plays his harp at night. He is tested by God when - on his roof - he sees Bathsheba bathing. After committing adultery with her, David has her husband killed. "That leads to a series of disasters in David's kingdom. There are rebellions against him, his son gets killed, his kingdom is broken - terrible things happen, because of the terrible things he did."

Importantly, it is David who, according to ancient Jewish folklore, composed the Book of Psalms and invented the word "Hallelujah", meaning "praise God". "David is somebody who, like everybody, is sometimes good and sometimes bad. He's trapped in the middle. And although he writes Hallelujah, which is a holy word, he's also very, very broken."

Most rock music is about the world we live in. I think he's saying: there is stuff beyond that, think more deeply

Harry Freedman, author

There is a reference in the song to Samson, who loses his strength when his hair is cut by his lover Delilah, because - like Samson - David's troubles begin when he can't control himself around a woman. "I think Cohen is opening himself up in his songs. I think he's trying to say: love can be wonderful. And love can be terrible. It can go horribly wrong and ruin your life."

Cohen suffered from depression and, Freedman believes, would have identified strongly with David, a fellow musician. "David messed up. David's kingdom was destroyed. And yet he sang Hallelujah. Because when you don't know how to make sense of anything, when you've failed, when things go wrong, all you can do is sing Hallelujah. All you are left with is 'praise God'. It's a very religious idea."

For Cohen, there is no conflict between popular culture and profound thinking, and no difference between Judaism and Christianity, says Freedman. "He sees them as all part of the same thing." Sex and religion are also often closely intertwined in his songs: "In the Kabbalah, sex and procreation are holy acts. They symbolise the union of human and divine." In one version of Hallelujah Cohen wrote, the narrator recalls: "I moved in you, and the holy dove she was moving too, and every single breath we drew was Hallelujah."

Leonard Cohen in concert at the O2 Arena in London in 2013. Photograph: Brian Rasic/Getty

Cohen, Freedman says, saw the imagery of religion as something he could use in lyrics to express himself and his unique, mystical way of looking at the world. "His vocabulary is one of religious myths and legends. This is what he knows and where he gets his metaphors from." In Suzanne, for example, Cohen casually refers to an ancient Christian legend about Jesus rowing the apostle Andrew to a city, performing miracles and converting everyone from cannibalism to Christianity. "And that's just in that one line in Suzanne: Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water."

So Long, Marianne is one of the earliest songs Cohen wrote which has a mystical, spiritual element, Freedman says, and marks the beginning of the musician's quest for spiritual meaning. "He sings 'Come over to the window, my little darling. I'd like to try to read your palm.' That's probably the first time he mentions windows, which - later on in his work - are going to be a really important trope for him." In Cohen's work, a window is a liminal space, a place between two worlds or two states of being, he says. "He's using the window to read her palm. He's expressing something about destiny, about wanting to see what the future holds."

When he tells Marianne that he forgot to pray for the angels, Freedman thinks he's confessing that he has neglected his religious duties and spiritual side for her. "His love for Marianne has pushed everything else out. And maybe that's one of the reasons he says 'so long, Marianne'. It's time we moved on. You've made me forget too much. And now I've got to get back to my spiritual core."

Hallelujah: the first two verses

Now I've heard there was a secret chord

That David played, and it pleased the Lord

But you don't really care for music, do you?

It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth

The minor falls, the major lifts

The baffled king composing Hallelujah.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof

You saw her bathing on the roof

Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew her

She tied you to a kitchen chair

She broke your throne, and she cut your hair

And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

* Used with permission of the estate of Leonard Cohen

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Leonard Cohen mined sacred texts for lyrics to his songs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
New book reveals extent of the musician's fascination with scriptures of Judaism and Christianity

# data[].attributes.body
Cordially- in a warm and friendly way

Invoke- call on (a deity or spirit) in prayer, as a witness or for inspiration

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Elon Musk had more extensive ties to Epstein than previously known, emails show

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Newly released files from DoJ show the pair making plans in 2012 and 2013 for the Tesla CEO to visit Epstein’s island

# data[].attributes.body
Obstinate- stubbornly refusing to change one’s opinion or chosen source of action

Pneumatic- containing or operated by air or gas under pressure

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The pet I’ll never forget: Cocolo, the donkey who arrived unexpectedly at our door

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An offhand comment from my mother meant we suddenly owned a donkey. I loved him – but was embarrassed when I had to ride him to school

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Mandated- an official order or commission to do something

Incarcerate- imprison or confine

Disgruntled- angry or dissatisfied

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
BySakshi Venkatraman and Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Millions of Jeffrey Epstein files released by US justice department

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Three million new documents include hundreds of mentions of Trump and emails between Epstein and a person called “The Duke”.

# data[].attributes.body
Gentrification- a process where increased investment in a neighbourhood drives up property values and rents, is placing lower income residents.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‘Made me feel proudly American’: stars react to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl show

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
While Trump has attacked the Grammy-winning Puerto Rican star, celebrities have come out in force to support the half-time show

# data[].attributes.body
Occult- mystical, supernatural or magical

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Luci4 Cause of Death: How Did the Rising Star Die? Mysterious Circumstances Surround Demise of 23-Year Old ‘BodyPartz’ Rapper

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Luci4 Cause of Death: Rapper Luci4, 23, was found dead at a Los Angeles home with his wallet emptied. Police are investigating possible foul play as his family demands answers about the cause of death.

# data[].attributes.body
Misconduct- unacceptable or inappropriate behaviour

Envoy- a messenger or representative, especially one on a diplomatic mission

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‘Rude, arrogant and entitled’: MPs line up to condemn disgraced Andrew

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The speaker let it be known there was no prohibition on criticising royals in the chamber. So MPs had a go

# data[].attributes.body
scour- thoroughly search

reimburse- repay

procure- obtain something, especially with care or effort

simultaneously- at the same time

in lieu- instead

incur- become subject to something unwelcome or pleasent as a result of one's own behaviour or actions.

orchestrating- carefully planning or organising.

terse- brief

tranche- a portion of something

masseuse- a woman whoi provides massage professionally

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‘Really a lot of amazing beauty’: emails show how model scout connected Epstein with young women

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Daniel Siad, accused by a Swedish model of rape, appears in more than 1,000 documents in latest declassified files

# data[].attributes.body
Resurgent- increasing our reviving after a period of little activity, popularity or occurrence

Sentiment- view or feeling

Leverage- the use of borrowed funds rather than fresh equity in the purchase of an asset

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If you think politics shaped these Winter Olympics, just wait until LA 2028

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In Milan, athletes showed that patriotism can be generous. In Los Angeles, that definition will be tested on the biggest, loudest stage sport can offer

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A beer at sunrise then back on duty – the British pilot who made RAF history shooting down Iranian drones

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
F-35 pilot based in Cyprus becomes first to destroy a target in combat – and celebrates with a single beer

# data[].attributes.body
Coercive- relating to or using force or threats

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
London man charged with manslaughter in case that links alleged domestic abuse to suicide

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Gillian Morand, 36, died in Bexley, south-east London in 2020 after which allegations against her husband emerged

# data[].attributes.body
Feasible- possible or practical to do

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‘Dark, like our future’: Iranians describe scenes of catastrophe after Tehran’s oil depots bombed

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Residents report terror of smoke-filled city, from potentially toxic rain, air and water to food scarcity and difficulty of escape

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ministers must act more quickly on deepfakes to protect women and girls, Kendall says

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Exclusive: Technology secretary urges tech companies to do more to tackle online misogyny

# data[].attributes.body
Grievous- (of something bad) very severe or serious

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Teenage boy arrested after girl allegedly stabbed at Norwich school

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Police say 16-year-old being questioned and teenage girl taken to hospital with minor injuries

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‘The moon is safe’: asteroid is not on collision course, scientists confirm

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
ESA’s Planetary Defence team allay fears 100-metre-wide object could hit Earth’s moon and disrupt satellites

# data[].attributes.body
Retrospectively- with consideration of past events or situations

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Wealthy British nationals fleeing Gulf conflict bypass UK to avoid tax bills

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
High-net-worth residents of UAE heading to Ireland and France to wait out missile attacks before tax year ends

# data[].attributes.body
Ubiquitous- present, appealing or found everywhere

Incentivise- motivate or encourage someone to do something

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
One of Britain’s last major chemical plants at risk as energy prices surge

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If costs stay high for the next three months, US owner Peter Huntsman says he will close the site on Teesside

# data[].attributes.body
Proscription- public identification and official condemnation of enemies of the state

Chaplain- minister of a religious tradition who is attached to an institution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Antisemitism has ‘become normalised’ on UK campuses, says Union of Jewish Students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Poll of students of all faiths and none found almost a quarter had seen Jews targeted for their religion or ethnicity

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Magnetic fluid injected into the heart could stop strokes before they start

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A liquid injected into the heart that sets like a gel could one day prevent strokes caused by atrial fibrillation, animal tests suggest.

# data[].attributes.body
Augment- increase

Implication- the conclusion than can be drawn from something although it is not explicitly stated

Stagnant- still

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I'm on a deadline that is approaching fast to finish writing my next book, The Great Progression: 2025 to 2050. Luckily, my use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has dramatically increased my productivity, so I should hit that deadline. But the increase in my own productivity has gotten me thinking a lot more about what happens when all knowledge workers get a lot more productive with AI.

I have written two comparable books in the era before AI, and each time I had a human research assistant to help me. They transcribed my interviews and verbal notes, located material I needed to read, researched areas I did not have time to explore myself, and helped fact-check my writing.

My AI research assistants have made me at least twice as productive as I was when I wrote my previous books with human assistants. There are obvious examples of how - AI needs mere seconds to transcribe interviews that would take my human assistants all day, and it can pull up any fact or concept in context, across virtually any field, almost instantly.

But there are less-obvious productivity boosts, too. These arise in how I use Google's NotebookLM. Since Amazon introduced e-books in 2007, I've read almost all my books on a Kindle. I highlight all the passages that make an impression on me using various colors to mean different things. For this book project, I exported all of those highlighted passages from Kindle and then imported them into NotebookLM.

Now, I can ask my Gemini assistant to pull from that text the six passages most relevant to any topic - for example, productivity growth rates - and it will provide an excellent list in 30 seconds. The AI has read everything of note that I have read in the last 20 years and can retrieve and explain it on demand - a human assistant could never do anything remotely comparable.

This gets even stranger and more amazing. A couple times a week for most of my career, I have recorded verbal notes about what I am thinking. It's something like an audio journal. I talk through the ideas I am wrestling with or the problems I am trying to solve in a shorthand that only I can readily understand. These verbal notes become especially important as I rough out chapters and passages week by week for a new book I'm writing. With my previous books, my poor human research assistants had to try to transcribe the notes despite having essentially no idea what I was talking about.

This time, I had an AI transcribe 18 months' worth of these verbal notes and then imported the transcripts into my NotebookLM. What then happened shocked me. Gemini essentially learned my personal shorthand language and could retrieve obscure thoughts that I had roughed out months ago. My wife of 35 years wouldn't have been able to understand almost any of it. Yet the AI figured it out.

I can already see a through-line to becoming as much as 10 times as productive at writing a book within the next year or two. Generative AI has only been mainstream for several years and is still improving every month. I am only just getting used to these new tools and understanding how best to use them. I am incredibly augmented today and maybe two to three times as productive, but with teams of agents assisting me in the near future, I will probably reach 10x.

Soon, all knowledge workers - and eventually most workers - will experience their own big productivity boosts. AI is particularly well-suited to work in the rational world of coding, and so in 2025, software engineers were among the first categories of knowledge workers to be augmented and enhanced by it.

We did not see mass layoffs of software engineers last year, though we did see some layoffs and adjustments to hiring out of college. What we mostly saw was an increase in productivity throughout the profession. So far, the first companies hit have jumped on the productivity gains and mostly leaned into more growth rather than cost- cutting. Set aside worries about job disruption for now (we'll come back to that), and stay with me as we talk through the implications of the rise of productivity rates throughout the whole economy.

Small increases in productivity growth rates make big differences over time

Economists are obsessed with productivity growth rates because they are arguably the best indicator of an economy's long-term health. When the people of a society are consistently more productive, the overall economy grows and more wealth is generated. Wages then can rise, and the standard of living improves. The society gets steadily richer without workers having to work more hours. In some cases, they can even work fewer.

Economists track two numbers in the aggregate: labor productivity and a broader metric known as Total Factor Productivity (TFP). The first measures how much output you get for how much labor - for example, if one hour of work generates $100 in wealth one year, but $110 the next, labor productivity has increased. The second measures the efficiency with which an economy translates a bundle of inputs - labor, technology, capital, etc. - into outputs. If TFP increases by 2% from one year to the next, that means the economy can produce about 2% more output than the previous year using the same inputs. In short, it has become more efficient.

TFP is the more important of the two metrics and the one I'll use going forward. For simplicity, I'll just call it "productivity."

Small differences in productivity can result in hugely different outcomes over time. Even if it increased at a rate of just 2% each year, that 2% would keep compounding off a growing base, much like a savings account. At the end of a generation, you'd have a lot more than what you started out with.

During the post-World War II economic boom - the 25 years from 1948 to 1973 - productivity in the United States increased at a rate of 1.9% annually. That meant that the average worker could produce 60% more at the end of that period than at the beginning, creating more wealth that could be shared throughout the society. We often talk about that period as a Golden Age where all boats rose with the tide.

In more recent times, the U.S. has been experiencing smaller annual increases in productivity. In the aftermath of the Great Recession - the dozen years from 2007 to 2019 - it increased by just 0.6% annually. If you took that rate and compounded it over 25 years, you would end up with the average worker only producing 16% more - compared to the 60% more from that postwar era. That's a lot less economic growth, fewer wage gains, and a much more stagnant standard of living. We remember those times as tough, with many people dissatisfied.

We know that new general-purpose technologies bring productivity gains, though it's not a direct or immediate correlation. Businesses have to adopt the new technologies and rework their processes, and workers have to retrain and adapt to take advantage of the new tech's potential.

This did happen during the internet boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s - between 1995 and 2007, productivity increased by 1.4% annually. Some of this increase was due to factors beyond just the internet, such as businesses fully adopting personal computers and other parts of the digital transformation.

If you took that 1.4% annual increase and compounded it over 25 years, the average worker would be producing 42% more by the end of the period - significantly more than the 16% growth during those slow post-Great Recession years - and we generally remember wage gains for most workers and a rising standard of living in that internet boom time.

What happens if AI boosts productivity growth rates above historical norms?

Now let's look ahead at how the arrival of AI, a new general-purpose technology, could affect productivity. I talked about how I could potentially be 10 times more productive in writing books in the next year or two, but the productivity of the whole economy is highly unlikely to increase by that much (though there are some extreme techno-optimists who claim otherwise).

But what if the widespread adoption of AI could lift overall productivity by something like 2.5% a year compared to the 2% a year during the postwar boom? That rate increase would compound over 25 years to an 85% gain compared to the 60% gain of that Golden Age.

Or what if AI pushed productivity to increase by 4% annually - twice the rate experienced during the postwar boom? This rate is historically unusual but not unprecedented - we've seen it in China and in Europe and Japan during the rebuilding phase that followed the devastation of World War II.

If you could keep that 4% increase up for 25 years, you would arrive in 2050 with a 167% gain in what one average worker could produce. If a company was paying a worker $100,000 a year in 2025, they could afford to pay them the equivalent of $267,000 in today's dollars in 2050.

If you assume that the size of the labor force in a developed economy like the U.S. grows modestly over that time (say, about 0.5% annually), the country would be experiencing 4.5% GDP growth per year, compared to the roughly 2% GDP growth per year in recent decades.

There would be a lot of negotiation around what to do with all that new wealth, but the tax base could explode - we could eliminate federal budget deficits, fund more social programs, or reduce inequality.

That scenario - a 4% annual increase in productivity - may sound crazy at first. We could increase productivity at twice the rate the U.S. pulled off after World War II? But then again, those Americans did not have intelligent machines and autonomous robots to help them.

Some AI experts think productivity could increase by much more and much faster than what I've laid out. That group includes the people who talk about AI achieving super-intelligence and freeing itself from human control. I don't believe we will hit that between 2025 and 2050, the 25 years I'm calling the Great Progression. Increases in productivity depend on human beings adopting and adapting new technologies - and that will take some time.

The new rebalancing act of wealth coming off AI

AI is going to boost productivity and drive economic growth. This is going to happen under almost any scenario going forward. An enormous amount of new wealth is going to be created in the next 25 years, and it is going to significantly disrupt the way the economy works.

If we distribute the new wealth in the U.S. the same way we have been for the last 40 years, the billionaires and 1% elite who already own a lion's share of the wealth are going to pull even farther ahead of everyone else, and the government will remain underfunded and overburdened. The many workers who will have their careers and livelihoods disrupted by AI are going to be even more angry and scared. This is a recipe for a big backlash or even efforts to tear down the existing system.

On the other hand, we could use the windfall of new wealth coming from AI to fundamentally rework the economic system to work better for everyone over the long haul. There will be plenty of wealth to go around as we move toward a society of abundance. Many leaders in the tech world understand the value of giving all employees equity in their company, and so they can understand the logic of giving everyone in society a stake in the AI economy writ large. We have an opportunity to create a new economy based on a transformative new technology. How should that new economy operate?

A growing number of people think one fundamental rework of the economic system should be going from redistribution at the end of wealth creation to predistribution of wealth itself. Everyone needs a stake on the capital side of the AI revolution. Not necessarily an equal stake, but a stake. Everyone needs a piece of equity in the AI economy.

Over the last 80 years, the federal government used taxpayer dollars to fund much of the research that laid the groundwork for today's manifestation of AI. AI companies draw off their employees, who were often educated in university systems we helped fund, and who drive to work each day on roads built and maintained using our tax dollars. For that matter, the large language models supporting today's most powerful AIs were trained on the internet - content that we created collectively.

The wealth to spin off this technology shouldn't go solely to founders, VCs, and a handful of tech employees. They certainly deserve a good chunk of it as a reward for all their creativity and hard work. But we need to rethink who gets what share of the new wealth that's coming in the AI Age.

The new notion of Universal Basic Capital for all

This is where the notion of stakeholder capitalism - a concept that has been talked about for a long time - gets real. How do we move from the longstanding status quo of financial capitalism - where those with money can keep compounding their wealth - to a new form of capitalism where all the stakeholders - workers, local communities, and governments of various levels - partake in it? How can everyone benefit from the growing value of stock markets or the economy at large?

Universal Basic Capital (UBC) is one possible answer. It generally means giving every citizen a share of productive capital so they can earn capital income in the long run. In the AI context, this would mean figuring out how to make sure everyone in the U.S. gets to tag along as the companies riding the AI revolution grow in value. This could mean that a certain portion of stock or a meaningful percentage tax gets pulled from AI companies - these could be the trillion-dollar Big Tech companies building the AI models, any AI company hitting a certain billion-dollar valuation, or perhaps all companies in AI who grow beyond some minimal threshold. That wealth could take the form of a stake that goes directly into the federal government, a new American sovereign wealth fund, or even the accounts of individual citizens.

People like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other serious tech leaders are talking about how something like UBC might work and how their industry might fund it. They understand how much wealth AI will generate and how much disruption to the current economy might lie ahead. They are not out to squeeze all the juice out of AI for themselves. They are open to figuring out win-win solutions that keep all Americans moving ahead. Their opening bids on what they are willing to contribute might be too minimal to make a big difference. And they might want their companies to shoulder more of the burden of funding the public pool, rather than contributing to it from their personal wealth. An ongoing negotiation in the politics of progress is playing out, and I predict the people (via the government) will be able to work something out with the AI industry and those with wealth.

To be sure, there are those in tech who want the existing system to stay locked in place - they want to remain the main beneficiaries in this next phase of wealth creation. Even modest talk of new forms of wealth taxes on billionaires in California has some of them howling and threatening to move to states with no chance of implementing such taxes, like Texas.

Rebalancing the inequalities of wealth that have built up in our current Gilded Age is going to be difficult. It was extremely difficult coming off the original Gilded Age, which I have laid out in a previous essay. The Robber Barons and those with great wealth in the early 20th century fought every reform at every stage. But we reset the system then, and we will do so again now.

A rare opportunity to reset the economy for a world of abundance

At this juncture, America needs to really rethink its economic fundamentals, just like it did during the three previous reinventions I laid out in other essays. How much wealth should any one individual deserve to hold before they have to contribute a much higher percentage to the shared pot? How much wealth is too much? Who really needs more than $1 billion? Do most of us really want to live in a democracy where all citizens are supposedly equal yet a handful of billionaires can spend millions of dollars to impose their will on elections in ways that the rest of us can't? Should we restrict how much wealth can be used to influence politics? How much of that accumulated wealth can they pass on to their children? What is a reasonable inheritance tax to ensure we don't create a permanent class of elites, a plutocracy?

These are reasonable questions for Americans to revisit at these reinvention junctures, when we reset our systems to work much better going forward. In the last such juncture, the one coming off World War II, the answers to those questions were very different from what we consider normal today.

Those with great wealth at the top of postwar society - the billionaire equivalents - were taxed at 90% on income over $400,000 (equivalent to $4.8 million today). That rate held for 20 years - through most of the great economic boom - until it was reduced to 70% on income over $200,000 (equivalent to $2 million today) in 1965, and which held until 1976. The range has changed several times since then, and today, the top federal marginal income tax rate is 37% on income above $609,350.

The American people, through democratic politics, using their elected governments, have fundamentally reworked the rules by which the minority of those with great wealth play before. We now need to do it again. My forthcoming book will go into more depth on how.

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AI could trigger the biggest productivity boom ever

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Higher productivity drives increases in wealth, wages, and living standards. AI could be just what we need to solve many of today's problems.

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Disingenuous- dishonest

Propagate- spread

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No matter what you may have heard, make no mistake: physics is not "over" in any sense of the word. As far as we've come in our attempts to make sense of the world and Universe around us - and we have come impressively far - it's absolutely disingenuous to pretend that we've solved and understood the natural world around us in any sort of satisfactory sense. We have two theories that work incredibly well: in all the years we've been testing them, we've never found a single observation or made a single experimental measurement that's conflicted with either Einstein's General Relativity or with the Standard Model's predictions from quantum field theory.

If you want to know how gravitation works or what its effects on any object in the Universe will be, General Relativity has yet to let us down. From tabletop experiments to atomic clocks to celestial mechanics to gravitational lensing the formation of the great cosmic web, its success rate is 100%. Similarly, for any particle physics experiment or interaction conceivable, whether mediated via the strong, weak, or electromagnetic force, the Standard Model's predictions have always been found to agree with the results. In their own realms, General Relativity and the Standard Model can each lay claim to be the most successful physics theory of all-time.

But there's a huge fundamental problem at the heart of both of them: they simply don't work together. If you want your Universe to be consistent, this situation simply won't do. Here's the fundamental problem at the heart of physics in the 21st century.

On the one hand, General Relativity, our theory of gravity, was a radical concept when it first came out: so radical that it was attacked by many on both philosophical and physical grounds for many decades.

How could space and time not be absolute quantities; how could they be different for everyone dependent on the particular properties of whoever's observing it?

How could gravitation not be instantaneous between any two objects that would attract; how can this interaction only propagate at a finite speed that was equal to the speed of light?

How could gravity not only affect masses, but all forms of energy, including massless objects like light?

Conversely, how could all forms of energy, not just mass, affect how all other objects in the Universe experienced the effects of gravity?

And how could there be an underlying, warped-and-curved geometry to the Universe that determined how objects moved?

Regardless of how anyone might have felt about the new picture that Einstein's greatest achievement, the general theory of relativity, brought along with it, the behavior of physical phenomena in the Universe doesn't lie. Based on a whole suite of experiments and observations, General Relativity has proven to be a remarkably successful description of the Universe, succeeding under every conceivable condition that we've been able to test, whereas no other alternative does.

What General Relativity tells us is that the matter-and-energy in the Universe - specifically, the energy density, the pressure, the momentum density, and the shear stress present throughout spacetime - determines the amount and type of spacetime curvature that's present in all four dimensions: the three spatial dimensions as well as the time dimension. As a result of this spacetime curvature, all entities that exist in this spacetime, including (but not limited to) all massive and massless particles, move not necessarily along straight lines, but rather along geodesics: the shortest paths between any two points defined by the curved space between them, rather than an (incorrectly) assumed flat space.

Where spatial curvature is large, the deviations from straight-line paths are large, and the rate at which time passes can dilate significantly as well. Experiments and observations in laboratories, in our Solar System, and on galactic and cosmic scales all bear this out in great agreement with General Relativity's predictions, lending further support to the theory.

Only this picture of the Universe, at least so far, works to describe gravitation. Space and time are treated as continuous, not discrete, entities, and this geometric construction is required to serve as the "background" spacetime in which all interactions, including gravitation, take place.

On the other hand, there's the Standard Model of particle physics. Originally formulated under the assumptions that neutrinos were massless entities, the Standard Model is based on quantum field theory, where there are:

fermionic quanta (particles) that have charges,

bosonic quanta (also particles) that mediate the forces between particles with the relevant charge,

and a (quantum) vacuum of spacetime through which all of the quanta travel and interact.

The electromagnetic force is based on electric charges, and so all six of the quarks and the three charged leptons (electron, muon, and tau) all experience the electromagnetic force, whereas the massless photon mediates it.

The strong nuclear force is based on color charges, and only the six quarks possess them. There are eight massless gluons that mediate the strong force, and no other particles are involved in it.

The weak nuclear force, meanwhile, is based on weak hypercharge and weak isospin, and all of the fermions possess at least one of them. The weak interaction is mediated by the W-and-Z bosons, and the W bosons also possess electric charges, meaning they experience the electromagnetic force (and can exchange photons) as well.

There's a rule in quantum physics that all identical quantum states are indistinguishable from one another, and that enables them to mix together. Quark mixing was expected and then confirmed, with the weak interaction determining various parameters of this mixing. Once we learned that neutrinos were massive, not massless as originally expected, we realized that the same type of mixing must occur for neutrinos, also determined by the weak interactions. This set of interactions - the electromagnetic, weak, and strong nuclear forces, acting upon the particles that have the relevant and necessary charges - describes everything that one could want to predict particle behavior under any imaginable conditions.

And the conditions we've tested them under are extraordinary. From cosmic ray experiments to radioactive decay experiments to solar experiments to high-energy physics experiments involving particle colliders, the Standard Model's predictions have agreed with every single such experiment ever performed. Once the Higgs boson was discovered, it confirmed our picture that the electromagnetic and weak force were once unified at high energies into the electroweak force, which was the ultimate test of the Standard Model. In all of physics history, there's never been a result the Standard Model couldn't explain.

But there's a catch. All of the Standard Model calculations we perform are based on particles that exist in the Universe, which means they exist in spacetime. The calculations we typically perform are done so under the assumption that spacetime is flat: an assumption that we know is technically wrong, but one that's so useful (because calculations in curved spacetime are so much more difficult than they are in flat space) and such a good approximation to the conditions we find on Earth that we plow ahead and make this approximation anyway.

After all, this is one of the great methods we use in physics: we model our system in as simple a fashion as possible in order to capture all of the relevant effects that will determine the outcome of an experiment or measurement. Saying "I'm doing my high-energy physics calculations in flat spacetime" rather than in curved spacetime doesn't give you an appreciably different answer except in the most extreme conditions.

But extreme conditions do exist in the Universe: in the spacetime around a black hole, for example. Under those conditions, we can determine that using a flat spacetime background is simply no good, and we're compelled to take on the herculean task of performing our quantum field theory calculations in curved space.

It might surprise you that, in principle, this isn't really all that difficult. All you have to do is replace the flat spacetime background you normally use for performing your calculations with the curved background as described by General Relativity. After all, if you know how your spacetime is curved, you can write down the equations for the background, and if you know what quanta/particles you have, you can write down the remaining terms describing the interactions between them in that spacetime. The rest, although it's quite difficult in practice under most circumstances, is simply a matter of computational power.

You can describe, for example, how the quantum vacuum behaves inside and outside of a black hole's event horizon. Because you're in a region where spacetime is more severely curved the closer you are to a black hole's singularity, the quantum vacuum differs in a calculable way. The difference in what the vacuum state is in different regions of space - particularly in the presence of a horizon, whether a cosmological or an event horizon - leads to the production of radiation and particle-antiparticle pairs wherever quantum fields are present. This is the fundamental reason behind Hawking radiation: the reason that black holes, in a quantum Universe, are fundamentally unstable and will eventually decay.

That's as far as we can go, however, and that doesn't take us everywhere. Yes, we can make the Standard Model and General Relativity "play nice" in this fashion, but this only allows us to calculate how the fundamental forces work in strongly curved spacetimes that are sufficiently far away from singularities, like those at the centers of black holes or - in theory - at the very beginning of the Universe, assuming that such a beginning exists.

The maddening reason is that gravity affects all types of matter and energy. Everything is affected by gravitation, including, in theory, whatever types of particles are ultimately responsible for gravitation. Given that light, which is an electromagnetic wave, is made up of individual quanta in the form of photons, we assume that gravitational waves are made up of quanta in the form of gravitons, which we even know many of the particle properties of in the absence of a full quantum theory of gravitation.

But that's precisely what we need. That's the missing piece: a quantum theory of gravity. Without it, we cannot understand or predict any of the quantum properties of gravity. And before you say, "What if they don't exist?" know that wouldn't paint a consistent picture of reality.

For example, consider the most "inherently quantum" of all the quantum experiments that have ever been performed: the double slit experiment. If you send a single quantum particle through the apparatus and you observe which slit it goes through as it goes through it, the outcome is completely determined, as the particle behaves as though it

was going to go through,

goes through,

and went through,

the slit you observed it to go through at every step of the way. If that particle was an electron, you could determine what its electric and magnetic fields were during its entire journey. You could also determine what its gravitational field was (or equivalently, what its effects on the curvature of spacetime were) at every moment as well.

But what if you don't observe which slit it goes through? Now the electron's position is indeterminate until it gets to the screen, and only then can you determine "where" it is. Along its journey, even after you make that critical measurement, its past trajectory is not fully determined. Because of the power of quantum field theory (for electromagnetism), we can determine what its electric field was. But because we don't have a quantum theory of gravitation, we cannot determine its gravitational field or effects. In this sense - as well as at small, quantum fluctuation-rich scales or at singularities in which classical General Relativity gives only nonsense answers - we don't fully understand gravitation.

This works both ways: because we don't understand gravitation at a quantum level, that means we don't quite understand the quantum vacuum itself. The quantum vacuum, or the properties of empty space, is something that can be measured in various ways. The Casimir effect, for instance, lets us measure the effect of the electromagnetic interaction through empty space under a variety of setups, simply by changing the configuration of conductors. The expansion of the Universe, if we measure it over all of our cosmic history, reveals to us the cumulative contributions of all of the forces to the zero-point energy of space: the quantum vacuum.

But can we quantify the quantum contributions of gravitation to the quantum vacuum in any way?

Not a chance. We don't understand how to calculate gravity's behavior at high energies, at small scales, near singularities, or when quantum particles exhibit their inherently quantum nature. Similarly, we don't understand how the quantum field that underpins gravity - assuming there is one - behaves at all under any circumstances. This is why attempts to understand gravity at a more fundamental level must not be abandoned, even if everything we're doing now turns out to be wrong. We've actually managed to identify the key problem that needs to be solved to push physics forward beyond its current limitations: a huge achievement that should never be underestimated. The only options are to keep trying or give up. Even if all of our attempts turn out to ultimately be in vain, it's better than the alternative.

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The fundamental problem with gravity and quantum physics

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We have two descriptions of the Universe that work perfectly well: general relativity and quantum physics. Too bad they don't work together.

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Disaggregated - separate

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Meta, Tiktok and Google under investigation for allegedly disobeying Australia’s social media ban

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Nearly 70% of under-16s with accounts on Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok had maintained access, survey finds

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Executive- relating to or having the power to put plans and actions into effect

Circumspect- wary or unwilling to take risks

Endeavour-try hard to do or achieve something

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Artemis II launch: crowds gather for glimpse of historic Nasa moon mission

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Fully crewed rocket will head to moon from Florida – first time since 1972 that humans will have left lower Earth orbit

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Three teenagers arrested after 14-year-old boy shot dead in south-east London

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Boys aged 14 and 16 and 18-year-old man arrested on suspicion of murder after shooting in Woolwich

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Obsolescence- the process of becoming obsolete or outdated and no longer used

Akin- of similar nature or character

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Why fixing your gadgets often costs more than replacing them

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A broken laptop hinge revealed a broader shift in how modern products are designed, sold, and owned

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Atavistic- relating to or characterised by reversion to something ancient or ancestral

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By Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP, FRCP

Why do people say, "Everything happens for a reason"? Much of the time it is for reassurance. In the wake of a seemingly random event (usually a bad event), it offers a measure of comfort to believe that there was a hidden purpose behind it. Otherwise, life would seem too random and accidental. Saying that there's a hidden purpose at work is the equivalent of a religious person saying, "It's God's will."

Both are metaphysical statements. "Meta" is a Greek root word for "beyond," and looking beyond the physical world is a deep impulse in human beings. When we believe in an afterlife, that's the metaphysical impulse at work. But of course no one can know why everything happens, so to say "Everything happens for a reason" would appear to be factually invalid. Some things might happen for a reason while other things are random.

If you take that viewpoint, your logic is impeccable. A kitten taken away early from its mother will stalk birds without being taught - its genes or instinct or natural selection drives the behavior. But whether the bird is caught or gets away is random. Likewise, in humans the lower brain is the source of atavistic drives for sex and the fight-or-flight response, but each person will act out those impulses differently.

Logical reasoning should settle the matter, but in reality it doesn't even come close. The metaphysical impulse is too strong. We want to know, for example, why human existence contains higher experiences of love, beauty, truth, creativity, insight, wonder, ecstasy, and religious epiphany - none of these experiences can be logically explained. Even where pure logic does apply, as in mathematics, no one can explain why mathematical laws exist, why they are perfectly meshed, and what their origin is.

In short, each of us, whether we know it or not, is trapped in a metaphysical mystery. The mystery reaches all the way to the creation of the universe. Physical creation takes place in a framework of time, space, matter, and energy. But where did they come from? There has to be a pre-created state that gave rise to the big bang, yet we cannot cross the horizon that separates us from this pre-created state. The same mystery is personal as well. Everyone has thoughts, but we don't know where thoughts come from; we cannot predict our next thought; and at bottom, we don't know what a thought is. Thinking about thoughts is like a snake biting its tail, a kind of circular process that reaches no conclusion.

Driven by the metaphysical impulse, humans have journeyed into places where logic, science, mathematics, and even everyday cause-and-effect don't apply. All of those tools are crucial for exploring the model of reality we call the physical world. Beyond the physical world, other tools are needed. By comparison, they are very vague, since we don't look upon insight, imagination, intuition, reflection, meditation, contemplation, and epiphany as tools.

But they are, and everyone uses them all the time. When you decide what to have for dinner, you are seeking an intuitive answer. Asking a computer what you will eat for dinner is the wrong way to go about it. Anytime we say, "What strikes your fancy?" we are asking a metaphysical question in a modest way. The big metaphysical questions involve the same tools of intuition, insight, imagination, etc., but go much deeper.

Without a doubt everyone's life is balanced on the edge of the physical and the metaphysical. This uniquely human position allows us to use randomness rather than being ruled by it. A close-up video of an artist's palette would reveal random daubs of color being picked up by the painter's brush, but pull back, and you see that a creative process is at work. The random daubs are in the service of painting a portrait, landscape, or anything the painter can imagine.

Creativity is the triumph of purpose over chaos and randomness. Imagination is an escape route beyond physical limitations. Spiritual experiences take us beyond pain and suffering. Curiosity and discovery allow us to evolve beyond the strict scheme of Darwinism. All of these things exist as a result of living on the cusp between the physical and the metaphysical.

Yet the metaphysical impulse doesn't stop there. The painter's palette proves that creativity can overcome randomness, using it for a higher purpose. What if the same holds true everywhere? The chemical reactions inside a cell, including brain cells, must obey randomness. Chemicals automatically react when they come into contact with other chemicals. Molecules don't get to choose. Yet cells are exquisitely organized into orderly processes that fire with specific purposes amid the swirling chemical soup we observe inside a cell.

Instead of contemplating the intricacies of biology that mysteriously lead to an organ as organized as the human brain, we can cut to the chase. What is creativity is the very essence of everything that happens in, around, and through us? Here is the real motivation for saying "Everything happens for a reason." Knowing that human life, despite its limitations and struggles, has a meaning, we intuit that a higher meaning is plausible. People can lose faith in God or the gods, undergo horrific catastrophes, bear witness to loss of lives in war or natural disasters, and all the rest.

But somewhere, somehow, existence is meaningful. The one thing that humans can't abide, in fact, is the prospect of a completely meaningless life - nothing feels more tragic. The beauty of the metaphysical impulse is revealed only if you carry it to its source. At the depth of human awareness, the great saints, sages, avatars, artists, and luminaries in every field (choose any term you wish) discovered that we do not, in fact, live on the cusp between the physical and the metaphysical.

Instead, to be fully human means living entirely in the metaphysical. That's the meaning of Nirvana, enlightenment, being in the world but not of it, seeing beyond the illusions of Maya - again, choose any term you wish. Stripped of terminology, the revelation comes down to one thing: existence is conscious. Consciousness creates and governs everything, not like a watchmaker putting the intricate workings of a timepiece together but by consciousness transforming itself into all of creation. We inhabit a metaphysical universe, and the glory of being human is that everyone can say, "I am the universe."

DEEPAK CHOPRA MD, FACP, FRCP, founder of The Chopra Foundation, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global, a whole health company at the intersection of science and spirituality, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. Chopra is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego and serves as a senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is the author of over 90 books translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His 91st book, Total Meditation: Practices in Living the Awakened Lifeexplores and reinterprets the physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual benefits that the practice of meditation can bring. For the last thirty years, Chopra has been at the forefront of the meditation revolution. His latest book, Living in the Light co-authored with Sarah Platt-Finger. TIME magazine has described Dr. Chopra as "one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century." www.deepakchopra.com

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Does Everything Happen for a Reason? By Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP, FRCP Why do people say, "Everything happens for a reason"? Much of the time it is for reassurance. In the wake of a seemingly ...

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Burgeoning- beginning to grow or increase rapidly

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The Artemis II crew has a chance to recreate ‘Earthrise,’ one of the most famous photos of all time

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The 1968 photo of our blue planet inspired the global environmental movement. Now, NASA hopes to recapture that magic on their 10-day mission.

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Prime- make something ready for use or action

Pareidolia-the perception of apparently significant patterns or recognisable images, especially faces, in random or accidental arrangements of shapes and lines.

Predominate- be the strongest or main element

Contemporary- living or occurring at the same time

Predisposed- liable or inclined to a specified attitude, action or condition

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They’re in clouds, electric sockets and even on toast. Why do humans see faces in everyday objects?

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Human brains are designed to detect faces as quickly as possible, which can lead to the perception of ‘false faces’

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Perpetrator- a person who carries out a harmful, illegal or immoral act

Coercive- relating to or using force or threats

Detrimental- tending to cause harm

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Police record nearly fiftyfold rise in stalking offences in England and Wales in past decade

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Increased recognition of crime and perpetrators using technology to track victims are behind rise, say experts

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Rigorous- extremely thorough and careful

Depraved- morally corrupt

Stringent- strict

Enticement- something used to attract or tempt someone

Copious- abundant in supply or quantity

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Long plagued by moderation issues, the platform recently released a series of updates aimed at improving the experience for kids. Experts worry they could have the opposite effect.

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Grievance- a real or imagined cause for complaint, especially unfair treatment.

Subservience- willingness to obey others unquestionably

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Social media plays ‘huge role’ in promoting traditional gender views, say experts

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Women’s rights’ groups worry about consequences of this shift in attitudes.

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Portmanteau- a word blending the sounds and combining the meaning of two others

Cohort- group of people with a shared characteristic

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AI to predict how bowel cancer patients will respond to new NHS drug

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PhenMap tool could spare thousands of patients from treatment that would be ineffective for them

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Gross- very obvious and unacceptable

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Police watchdog investigates handling of inquiry into Wimbledon crash that killed two schoolgirls

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Independent Office for Police Conduct examines allegations that the race of victim’s’ families influenced conduct of officers

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Strenuously- in a way that requires great physical exertion

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Police investigate claims Katy Perry sexually assaulted Ruby Rose at Melbourne nightclub

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Perry denies the allegations, shared by Rose on social media, calling them ‘dangerous reckless lies’

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Incensed- enraged

Benign- gentle and kindly

Malignant- an evil nature or effect

Bespoke- made for a particular customer or user

Pontificate- express one’s opinion in a pompous and dogmatic way

Archly- deliberately or affectedly playful and teasing

Ream- 500 sheets of paper

Surge- a sudden powerful forward or upper movement

inauguration- the beginning or introduction of a system, policy or period

Incontinent- having no or insufficient voluntary control

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Behold, another second coming. But this one is Donald Trump – WAY BETTER than that Jesus guy | Marina Hyde

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The Middle East on fire, a spat with the pope – and he posts himself as Potus Almighty. Will his disciples now see that their messiah has feet of clay, asks Guardian columnist Marina Hyde