In Falls County, about 30 minutes' drive from Waco in the heart of Texas, clean energy company Avangrid is building its largest ever solar project. Due to be completed early next year, the True North solar project will have a capacity of 321 megawatts, equivalent to enough energy to provide power for more than 55,000 US homes. True North, as well as several other Avangrid projects, is a beneficiary of the Inflation Reduction Act, the US's foremost legislation to drive green investments by providing subsidies, grants and tax credits to climate-friendly projects and companies. But

Extreme weather events around the world are expected to continue owing to high concentrations of greenhouse gases, scientists say, after April marked the 11th straight month at a record global average surface temperature The temperature for the hottest April on record reached 15.03C, or 0.67C above the 1991-2020 average for the month and 1.58C above pre-industrial levels, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service. Scientists say rising temperatures will lead to more extreme weather patterns globally, with heatwaves, droughts and flooding all becoming more common. Large swaths of

The protesters were massed outside the gates of Columbia University, separated by a metal barrier and a few police. On one side, a young woman waved a large Palestinian flag, taunting her foes with chants for "intifada revolution". On the other side, a man draped in an Israeli flag blew on a piercing whistle and barked back at her and her comrades: "Fuck you, Jew-haters . . . Suck it!" Within hours, New York City police clad in riot gear and toting stun grenades would breach Columbia's Hamilton Hall to clear protesters in a scene reminiscent of 1968, when the same building was

Benjamin Netanyahu waited for months to send troops into Rafah, the southern tip of the Gaza Strip where more than 1mn Palestinians have sought refuge from fighting. When the order finally came last Monday, it was within hours of Hamas finally signalling that it had accepted the outlines of a hostage-for-prisoner ceasefire proposal drawn up with mediators. At nightfall Gazans were celebrating on the streets; by first light on Tuesday, the Israel Defence Force's tanks had taken the all-important border crossing with Egypt, the Israeli flag fluttering over Gaza's only conduit to

A US crackdown on banks financing trade in goods for Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has made it much more difficult to move money in and out of Russia, according to senior western officials and Russian financiers. Moscow's trade volumes with key partners such as Turkey and China have slumped in the first quarter of this year after the US targeted international banks helping Russia acquire critical products to aid its war effort. A US executive order, implemented late last year, prompted lenders to drop Russian counterparties and avoid transactions in a range of currencies,

In the middle of Hong Kong's business district, on the site of a former car park, an unusual addition to the city's famous skyline is nearing its opening date. The Henderson is a 36-storey office building by Zaha Hadid Architects and named for Henderson Land Development, a developer controlled by one of Hong Kong's big four property dynasties. Its curvy structure is modelled on the city's symbol, the bauhinia flower's bud. The cost of acquiring the plot alone was $3bn. Tenants announced so far include auction house Christie's, Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet

Japan, South Korea and Australia are tightening rules to rein in the market power of big tech groups, posing fresh regulatory challenges for Apple and Google following a similar crackdown in the EU and US. The cabinet of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida recently approved landmark legislation aimed at preventing the largest online platforms from using their dominance in mobile software to thwart the entry of new rivals. The rules — a narrower version of the EU's sweeping Digital Markets Act — seek to offer more choices for consumers, such as by making it easier to switch between

There is a view, pungently expressed by the venture capital investor Bill Gurley, that Silicon Valley has thrived because it is 2,850 miles west of the centre of federal government. "The reason that Silicon Valley has been so successful is because it is so fucking far away from Washington DC," Gurley told a cheering audience last year. But that view ignores a significant historical inconvenience: Silicon Valley was mostly built with federal dollars. The Pentagon and Nasa were the first, and voracious, purchasers of silicon chips to guide their military and civilian rockets. By 1963, the

In 2022, Bass Rock, a volcanic outcrop off the Scottish coast that houses the world's largest colony of northern gannets, became a graveyard. Thousands of gannets were wiped out by a bird flu now thought to have killed millions of wild birds worldwide and devastated poultry flocks. Highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI, became a zombie scourge that, unlike seasonal predecessors, never really disappeared. The virus that causes it, H5N1, has since jumped into species including mink, sea lions, dolphins, porpoises, otters and cats — and now cattle. As of April 29, nine US states had

Long Covid is exerting a silent drag on work and health, say officials and economists who warn that a struggle to count the costs of the condition is leaving authorities "shooting in the dark". The impact of long Covid — defined as symptoms that continue or develop three months after an initial infection, and last at least two months — has dealt a long-lasting blow to the productivity of health systems, with ripple effects on the wider workforce. But four years after the emergence of the pandemic, attempts to assess how large and enduring the hit will be are hampered by a dearth of data

Liz Kost had "never experimented" with ketamine, an anaesthetic with a reputation for being a party drug. But she decided to give it a try when she was offered it by her employer. "It was awesome," she says. The experience was not for fun, but for therapeutic reasons. Dr Bronner's, the California-based organic toiletries company, where Kost is a marketing operations manager, provides fully paid-for ketamine therapy as part of its employee benefit package. The offer coincides with a "dramatic growth in interest in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy over the past few years," says Jeffrey

Before I speak to Joseph Stiglitz, one of his surprisingly ample team asks if I can give him notice of my questions. The Nobel laureate, it turns out, appreciates time to prepare. Stiglitz's critics might laugh: hasn't he been preparing for the past three decades? Surely his leftist critique of free markets now comes naturally? Stiglitz, chair of Bill Clinton's council of economic advisers, then chief economist at the World Bank during the 1990s, found fame with his 2002 bestselling attack on the IMF, Globalisation and Its Discontents. Disdained by The Economist, for many

The following two sentences might seem a little surprising, coming from a journalist at a large media organisation armed with cutting-edge analytics displaying how each article, newsletter and podcast is performing, but here they are nonetheless. First, I think it's reasonable to argue that the age of mass media has not been unambiguously good for public understanding of the world. And second, the more information publishers and broadcasters have had about how their audience is interacting with their output, the more ambiguous the impact of this output has become. The muddy relationship

When people ask "How's it going?", I sometimes have to stop and think. The expected response is either "great" on a good day or "fine thanks" on the others. (Some Brits still favour the old-fashioned reply, "fair to middling" or even "fair to crap" as a useful blanket summary of life's vicissitudes.) But rather than finding the right tone, what makes me pause is working out which "me" is being asked the question. Some elements either at work or at home are probably going very well. Others are more towards the "middle age is a bin fire" or "my dreams have turned to ashes in the

Night was falling when sergeant Pa Wen-shan rode his motorcycle up the steep, narrow road that leads home. It had been a long journey. Four hours on the train from Chiayi, then another 45 minutes on the road from the station in Taitung, the only city on Taiwan's remote south-east coast. Once the Pacific fell back behind him and he entered the valley where Jialan, his village, is located, a rush of cool air dried the sweat on his face. The village sits on a slim, slanted plateau. Pa, then 25, passed the baseball field where he played as a boy. The cemetery where his father was buried a

The commander of US forces in the Indo-Pacific region has accused China of pursuing a "boiling frog" strategy, raising tensions in the region with increasingly dangerous military activity. Admiral John "Lung" Aquilino said that during his three years as US Indo-Pacific commander, China has increased its pace of military development and matched its growing capabilities with more destabilising behaviour. "It's getting more aggressive, they're getting more bold and it's getting more dangerous," Aquilino told the Financial Times in an interview before he hands over command to

Republicans are seizing on campus turmoil from New York to California as they attack Joe Biden for failing to quell the protests over Israel's war in Gaza and portray America as spiralling out of control under the US president's leadership. Biden on Thursday denounced the "acts of chaos" on campuses around the country, after police moved in to quell demonstrations at the University of California, Los Angeles. Order "must prevail", he said. But the unrest, now weeks old, has amplified tensions within the president's Democratic party over his handling of the conflict in the

America is in knots over the foolishness — or worse — of its campus protesters. But it is adults who are making the biggest dunces of themselves. The role of grown-ups facing student unrest is to keep the peace without sacrificing rights. These include free speech and physical safety. The task requires principled consistency. In practice, adults from all walks — Republicans, Democrats, the media and university administrations — are exhibiting traits of hysteria and dogmatism they deplore in the young. It should come as no surprise that the protests are getting angrier. Students have

Wilhelmshaven has long been a strategic port for Germany, initially a stronghold for 14th-century pirates and later a major trade and naval base. However, in 2022 the North Sea coastal town took on a new role. It became home to Germany's first floating gas terminal, a vital artery for gas supplies to keep power flowing both at home and across Europe at a time when the continent was coming perilously close to running out. The infrastructure for the terminal was constructed in just 10 months as Russia slashed pipeline gas supplies to the EU after its invasion of Ukraine, threatening

Russian deputy defence minister Timur Ivanov attended a meeting of the military's top brass last month, sitting a seat away from his boss and wearing the uniform of one of the highest-ranking officials in the country. Hours later, Ivanov was taken to a courtroom, still wearing the same uniform but now under arrest on suspicion of corruption and facing many years in jail. The downfall of a man whose opulent lifestyle was known and tolerated by the Kremlin for years deals a significant blow to his longtime mentor, defence minister Sergei Shoigu, at a time when much of the country's