Brief – Others 2026-07-13
Worth Noting
A 50-year-old safeguard against habitat destruction has been quietly erased. Trump, Ending Decades of Protection, Opens Wild Habitats to Drilling and Mining The rule change strips the longstanding prohibition on “harm” to endangered species — previously interpreted to include habitat destruction — opening millions of acres to extractive industry. Conservation biologists warn it is the most consequential rollback of the Endangered Species Act since its passage in 1973.
Western Europe just had its hottest June ever recorded, and temperatures are climbing again. Western Europe Had Its Hottest June on Record France, Britain, and Spain all broke records in what was described as an unusually early heat wave; Britain’s weather service has since declared a “severe” marine heat wave as sea temperatures follow suit, threatening marine ecosystems along the Atlantic coast.
A rising super El Niño could make this decade’s climate disruptions look mild by comparison. Odds of a Super El Niño are rising, and that could have deadly consequences Forecasters are now assigning meaningfully higher probability to an extreme El Niño event, which is historically linked to intensified Pacific typhoons, large-scale famine in parts of Africa and Asia, and expanded wildfire seasons — on top of an already stressed climate baseline.
Scientists have directly observed new seafloor being created for the first time. In a First, Scientists Observe Creation of New Seafloor A rare eruption in the Indian Ocean let researchers capture real-time footage of tectonic spreading — a process geologists have inferred for decades but never watched happen. The footage offers a new window into how roughly two-thirds of Earth’s surface is continuously regenerated.
Alpha-gal syndrome — the tick-bite meat allergy — is accelerating across the U.S. Deadly meat allergies from tick bites are on the rise. Should you be worried? Driven by the expanding range of the lone star tick, the syndrome triggers potentially severe allergic reactions to red meat and some dairy products, sometimes appearing hours after eating. Clinicians say awareness and diagnosis remain low even as case counts climb.
Advanced plastic recycling — once pitched as a plastic-waste solution — is collapsing in the U.S. Advanced Recycling Hits a Rough Patch Two facilities have halted operations in recent weeks, raising questions about whether the chemical recycling industry can survive without substantial subsidy. Critics argue the failures validate longstanding concerns that the technology was being used primarily to justify continued plastic production.
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World Cup Watch
Bellingham is doing something statistically unprecedented at this tournament. Big game Bellingham steps up again with show-stopping World Cup run for England The 23-year-old is the first player to score twice in consecutive knockout matches at a World Cup since Maradona in 1986 — a useful reminder of the company this performance puts him in before Wednesday’s semi-final against Argentina.
Tuchel’s frustration with England is tactically coherent, even if the results don’t show it. Tuchel unhappy with England display – so why do they keep winning? BBC’s tactics correspondent unpacks the gap between Tuchel’s stated standards and what England are actually producing: a team winning through individual brilliance and defensive resilience rather than the structured build-up play their manager demands. The analysis matters because Argentina will punish the structural vulnerabilities Norway did not.
Argentina’s path to the semi-final has been defined by suffering and late genius in equal measure. Argentina’s World Cup built on ‘suffering’ faces its biggest test in England Two of three knockout matches have gone to extra time, and Julián Álvarez’s stunning strike against Switzerland masked how close Argentina came to a shock exit. The piece from Pablo Iglesias Maurer traces the psychological pattern Scaloni has built — a team that absorbs pressure and finds solutions late — and asks whether it can hold against an England side increasingly shaped by one player’s ability to do the same.
The statistical portrait of the four semi-finalists reveals a tournament with unusual parity at the top. Most clinical? Least creative? Best in the air? Comparing the last four BBC Sport’s breakdown shows France as the most efficient converters, Spain as the most creative by chance creation, and England as the most aerial — with Argentina the outlier relying heavily on individual moments rather than systemic dominance. For the first time since FIFA rankings existed, the top four ranked teams have all reached the semis.
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One Thing Worth Reading Deeply
Our Bacteria Are Talking. We’ve Just Begun to Understand What They’re Saying.
This NYT Magazine piece follows two researchers attempting something that sounds straightforward but has proved almost intractable: actually mapping what the human microbiome is doing and why it matters. The honest admission running through the piece is how little the field’s enormous growth in the past decade has translated into clinical clarity — why the same bacterial community seems to produce radically different outcomes in different people remains largely unexplained. What makes it worth the full read is the way it holds genuine scientific uncertainty alongside genuine scientific excitement, resisting the hype that has made “gut health” into a wellness marketing category while conveying why the underlying biology is still one of the most consequential open questions in medicine.