August 2026
All columns and Brief analyses.
10 results
A two-thirds majority is replacing the constitution a two-thirds majority wrote
Hungary's 2011 constitution is being dismantled by the same threshold that produced it. Bern is asking the same question a month in advance: does a political settlement really become durable once it is written into constitutional text?
Employment fell by 16,000; the number of people looking rose by 345,000
South Africa's unemployment rate rose 0.9 percentage points in the second quarter, and almost none of that came from jobs disappearing. Employment fell by 16,000 while the labour force grew by 329,000, and most of the additional unemployed are under 35.
Gasoline fell for a month while rent kept rising at the same pace
Consumer prices rose 0.1 per cent in July and 3.4 per cent over the year. Behind the calm headline sits a 1.5 per cent fall in energy, an index still up 14.7 per cent over 12 months. Shelter rose 0.1 per cent over the month while rent and owners' equivalent rent each rose 0.3 per cent.
Saber counts 3,000 jobs; Sacco is asking about one commission
Saber's chief executive answers the replacement claim with a company-wide headcount and a habit of using AI tools dated to the studio's founding. The writer's claim is narrower and more checkable: a body of writing work she was contracted for, and where it went.
The complaint names the maker and the shops alike
The file that went to Frankfurt asks a narrow question: while the glasses are recording, can a bystander tell from the device itself? For now the only account in hand is the one from the organisation that filed it.
The distinctiveness gap is 5 percentile points, and no proposal was assigned at random
The study measures language-model use with a detector, distinctiveness with an embedding, and sets both against the same investigator's other proposals. The design carries real weight and stops well short of a causal claim, and the authors say so themselves.
The glucose sets the dose; who will set the safety threshold?
In diabetic mice and in diabetic monkeys, an engineered gut bacterium released its therapeutic protein only when glucose climbed past the normal threshold. That shortens the efficacy road for closed-loop diabetes therapy. For a live organism swallowed every day, it leaves the safety road exactly as long as it was.
The interest bill was 640 million dollars in a quarter where CoreWeave booked 2.575 billion dollars of revenue
The backlog is contracted and adjusted EBITDA at CoreWeave still covers the interest more than twice over. What changed in the second quarter is the speed: net interest expense went from 267 million dollars to 640 million dollars in a year.
The interior minister who went to Tehran carried Pakistan's unpublished proposals
Islamabad is making its case on Hormuz in its own voice now: an interior minister travelling with proposals nobody has seen, and a defence minister saying publicly how close he thinks a deal has come. Ten days ago the counterpart Iran called in Pakistan was the army chief.
The new number is Swift's altitude: 347 km, with 300 km as the floor
NASA's August 11 update moves the measurable quantity in this rescue from LINK's own rotation to the observatory's altitude. The software is uploaded, and it will work with the actuators the craft still has.