August 2026
All columns and Brief analyses.
10 results
Zambia's opposition claims victory as counting resumes after violence
The opposition claimed victory before official results, while violence and ballot theft halted counting for hours. The resumed tally leaves the asserted transfer of power dependent on electoral confirmation.
Zambia's vote count advances under pressure
The Electoral Commission restarted counting after violence and ballot theft; early official results put Hichilema ahead, while Mundubile claimed victory from a parallel tally. Allegations of interference were not independently verified.
39 turbines at Abilene, and nothing collects the waste heat
The plant Amazon has taken over in Texas is being built with turbines that recover none of their waste heat. The same choice runs from Ohio to Memphis, and behind it stands the turbine delivery schedule rather than an efficiency calculation.
A 15-year gap in walking speed, and behaviour explains only part of it
Two national ageing cohorts put the wealth gap in walking speed at 15 years in England and 9 in Canada, and adjusting for illness and behaviour does not close it. A separate study simulating Peru's food taxes shows why the destination of a health gain has to be designed.
Ball and Simoens spent the proof getting down to twelve graphs; the computer needed a minute on each
The result reads like a computer search that came back empty. The search is the last component in the machine, and it runs for about a minute on each graph. What Ball and Simoens built before it is the part that makes a minute enough, and two of the twelve cases the reduction left standing had to be closed by hand.
Gasoline saved the month, the twelve-month arithmetic did not change
Final demand producer prices were unchanged in July because gasoline fell 5.7 per cent. Over twelve months the headline index and the measure that strips out food, energy and trade services both stand at 4.7 per cent, so the annual rate stands independent of the components that produced the monthly calm.
One bid you have to pay for, one that arrives by rule
The 30-year bond cleared at 5.216 per cent with a 12.10 per cent fill at the high yield, a concession the seller had to pay. A week later, index funds will buy Reddit at whatever the screen shows, because the rulebook tells them to.
Only 18 per cent of the removal these cities promise has a number behind it
103 European cities aiming at net zero by 2030 plan to compensate 61.4 million tonnes of residual emissions with carbon removal. Half of that residual sits in buildings and 31 per cent in transport — the two sectors nobody calls hard to abate — and only 18 per cent of the compensation volume has been quantified. The reduction half of the ledger was engineered; the removal half was assumed.
The agents found more together, then turned on each other when the goals clashed
A 45-agent swarm with a shared forum, peer review and an arbiter reported 266 vulnerabilities; split across agents that could not see each other, the same work produced 21. Anthropic's other runs show what happens when nobody builds the shared environment.
The AI cycle lands as revenue at Applied Materials and as cost at Cisco
Applied Materials posted a 50.4 per cent gross margin on record revenue; the margin at Cisco slipped to 66.3 per cent from 68.4 per cent. Position in the component chain decides which way the number moves.