August 2026
All columns and Brief analyses.
10 results
Boliden buys a controlling stake in Nexa Resources as South32 sells its aluminium business
Swedish mining group Boliden agreed to buy a controlling 64.68 per cent stake in Latin American producer Nexa Resources for 1.31 billion dollars to expand its base-metals and silver platform. Australian miner South32 confirmed a deal to sell its aluminium operations to Alcoa for up to 5.6 billion dollars, after reporting a 55 per cent jump in full-year underlying earnings and a return to a net cash position.
Britain moves to clear phantom data centres from a 125-gigawatt grid queue
Britain's grid queue climbed from 41 to 125 gigawatts, including 73 gigawatts sought by new data centres; Ofgem proposes large nonrefundable deposits and proof of customers and financing to deter speculative projects. In India, communities near Microsoft and Google sites say land, water and job promises arrived without meaningful consultation, showing how the build-out can strain local consent as well as national power planning.
China sales return to growth as Agilent's operating margin widens
Agilent's revenue rose 8.1 per cent as China sales returned to 9 per cent growth and adjusted operating margin reached 28.3 per cent. Insilico Medicine reported 106.3 million dollars of first-half revenue and roughly 7.3 billion dollars of announced deal value. Veeva's revenue grew 18 per cent to 928 million dollars with a 44.8 per cent adjusted operating margin. Life-sciences growth arrived through equipment, research partnerships and software.
Enterprise agents gain a CRM plugin, a training sandbox and a framework-agnostic evaluator
Salesforce and Anthropic launched a Claude Cowork plugin that lets sellers query and update live CRM data through 37 pre-built sales skills without opening Salesforce. Arga Labs raised 10 million dollars to build digital twins of enterprise software so agents can train on realistic environments. AWS released Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Evaluations, a service that reads OpenTelemetry traces from any agent framework and applies built-in quality checks without per-SDK setup.
First chromosome-level Saimaa seal genome gives conservation a sharper reference
The University of Eastern Finland and the University of Oulu have produced the first chromosome-level reference genome for the Saimaa ringed seal. The university lists monitoring genetic diversity and inbreeding in the small, fragmented population, investigating inherited defects and comparing signs of freshwater adaptation among its intended uses. The detailed analysis is a bioRxiv preprint and has not completed journal peer review.
Forty million barrels of Iranian oil float past the blockade as a second carrier prepares to deploy
Roughly 40 million barrels of Iranian crude sit on tankers near Malaysia beyond the US naval blockade line, even as China's imports of Iranian oil fell to an estimated 534,000 barrels a day from 823,000 in July. The aircraft carrier and its 5,000-strong crew will deploy to the Middle East within weeks for at least seven months, relieving the Abraham Lincoln after more than 250 days at sea.
Four EU capitals ask to put the Russian-asset loan for Ukraine back on the table
Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, and Poland have formally requested that the European Commission restart discussions on a reparations loan for Ukraine funded by frozen Russian assets, the Financial Times reported. According to a draft letter seen by The Kyiv Independent, the four countries are asking EU foreign ministers to address the stalled mechanism and Belgium's objections during an upcoming informal meeting in Ireland.
Gecko sex chromosomes arose independently 22 times
A comparison of 22 gecko species and 2 outgroups finds that 22 separate sex-determination systems arose independently from only 17 ancestral chromosomes. Other studies reveal evolution reusing and reversing earlier solutions: a family tree of 50 crab species points to many returns from sideways to forward walking; 5 museum bones separate two extinct Galápagos tortoise lineages; and dodder remodelled a gene acquired from its host while keeping it functional.
Glassfish follow one nearby neighbour at a time when the school turns
When a glassfish school turns, each fish copies one nearby neighbour rather than averaging the direction of every fish around it. The brief matching window reported by the UC San Diego team describes coordinated turns as a sequence of one-neighbour interactions. The finding comes from one small species under laboratory conditions, so its reach to larger, mixed schools in the wild remains open.
Google's new transcription model cleans up speech while it listens
Gemini 3.5 Transcribe turns speech in more than 85 languages into formatted text while removing filler words and speaker corrections. Particle's Radar converts more than 130,000 podcasts into an index that agents can query. Amazon's book-scanning operation in Las Vegas shows the uncertainty that appears when physical publications are turned into a data source.