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Djibouti, the port-state squeezed by the Houthis’ Red Sea campaign - The Economist (No paywall)
We found the beach between two black hills. On the wet sand, yellow crabs scuttled across the tracks of a gazelle. The sun beat down on a rusting tank, left by French soldiers who once came here for artillery practice. There was something dreamlike about the scene: how the desert blurred into the shore, the waves into the sky.
Our driver parked the ambulance beside two clusters of dark rocks, arranged too neatly to be a natural feature of the landscape. “Here we have maybe ten, and there we have 14,” said Dr Youssouf Moussa. I realised we were looking at grave markers and that he was counting the people buried in the sand. “Behind that mound we have 20 more bodies. And behind that, in one place we have 43, in another place we have 16 bodies, in a third place we have five bodies…The 43 were, most of them, minors, children.”
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Exercise May Help Counteract the Toll of Poor Sleep
The new research builds upon a large body of work showing just how critical both sleep and fitness are for overall health. Various studies show that healthy amounts of each individually are linked to increased longevity. And at least one suggested that sleep problems tended to increase the chances a subject would die during the follow-up period but that regular exercise helped eliminate that risk.
A team of researchers based in China wanted to better understand the protective power of exercise, so it examined data collected in the United Kingdom from over 92,000 adults between the ages of 40 and 73. Participants spent a week between 2013 and 2015 wearing a wristband that measured how much they exercised and slept, which the researchers used as an indication of their lifestyle habits.
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Brain Cancer Was Supposed to Kill Me. Instead, It Gave Me a Second Life.
The French neuroscientist David Servan-Schreiber, who survived 18 years with brain cancer, is one of many philosophers of cancer who speak of the phenomenon of the Second Life. Faced with a terminal diagnosis, patients realize that a new vista has just opened up. It is one of doctors, impairment and uncertainty, to be sure, but also one of surprising beauties and benefits.
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Can Certain Foods Really Reduce Your Cancer Risk?
Scientists have a good idea of what you should avoid to reduce your risk of cancer, such as red and processed meats, “fast” or processed foods, alcohol and sugary drinks. But knowing what to eat isn’t always straightforward, said Johanna Lampe, a cancer prevention researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.
Many nutrition studies rely on people to accurately remember what they consumed up to a year ago, Dr. Lampe said. And it’s tricky to understand how single foods may influence your health when they’re part of a larger diet, she said, adding that your lifestyle, environment, hormones and genes can also play a role.
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‘A Chance to Live’: How 2 Families Faced a Catastrophic Birth Defect
The consequences of trisomy 18 are dire. The babies have three copies of chromosome 18 instead of two and, as a result, have serious medical and developmental problems. Nearly all are unable to eat, walk or talk, and all have severe cognitive disabilities. They often need open-heart surgery and feeding and breathing tubes. Many women, after hearing what is in store, choose abortion.
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The centuries-old baba recipe made with 96 egg yolks
The baba is often served at Easter in Poland, with the most extraordinary version – the muslin baba – made from a rich dough of flour, yeast, butter and quite a lot of egg yolks.
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How AI Changes Your Workforce
The spring 2024 issue’s special report looks at how to take advantage of market opportunities in the digital space, and provides advice on building culture and friendships at work; maximizing the benefits of LLMs, corporate venture capital initiatives, and innovation contests; and scaling automation and digital health platform.
The spring 2024 issue’s special report looks at how to take advantage of market opportunities in the digital space, and provides advice on building culture and friendships at work; maximizing the benefits of LLMs, corporate venture capital initiatives, and innovation contests; and scaling automation and digital health platform.
Today’s leaders must grapple with big expectations for the impact of AI on the workforce — and an even larger amount of hype. Will AI automate away a huge number of jobs? How do companies use AI to find new talent and staff new opportunities? How do leaders use AI as part of the workforce to augment performance?
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Apple's Most Promising Noir Thriller is the Biggest Disappointment of the Year
Like any good detective, Apple TV+’s Sugar keeps things close to the chest. But unlike any other good detective show, Sugar gets so wrapped up in its own mysteries that it forgets how to be engaging TV.
A genre-bending noir from I Am Legend scribe Mark Protosevich, Sugar has a lot of intriguing elements going for it. It’s got star Colin Farrell, who also executive produces the series. It’s directed by Fernando Meirelles, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind City of God. And it’s executive produced by Simon Kinberg, whose fingerprints can be found all over sci-fi hits like Legion and The Martian (but also directed arguably the worst X-Men movie ever: Dark Phoenix). Sugar has all the makings of a great genre show, one that could cleverly play with its noir tropes in exciting and unconventional ways. Unfortunately, none of its most promising elements come together, and Sugar ends up an incoherent jumble of half-formed ideas.
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Is The Gut Microbiome Actually Our "Friend"? One Scientist Says No
While we might think we derive health benefits from our uninvited houseguests, the theory of evolutionary addiction begs otherwise.
The story of the microbiome is often portrayed as blissful mutualism: Throughout human evolution, the trillions of microbes colonizing every square inch of our bodies found ways to make their uninvited stay beneficial for us. Numerous studies suggest that the microbiome plays a key role in keeping us healthy. But this benefit only occurs when the bacteria are in balance.
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The Director of 2023's Wildest Sci-Fi Movie Just Dropped an Unsettling New Trailer
Yorgos Lanthimos has always been an offbeat director, but in recent years his strange lens on life has been elevated to a new level thanks to a partnership with The Great creator Tony McNamara, who crafted the scripts for Lanthimos’ The Favourite and Poor Things. But for his next movie Kinds of Kindness, Lanthimos is going back to basics and creating a film unlike anything he’s done before: an anthology of three stories, each weird enough to capture audiences on their own.
Check out the teaser trailer for the film below in anticipation of its June 21, 2024 release, less than a year after the release of Poor Things.
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Friday 29th March 2024
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