Congo's Ebola outbreak becomes the worst-starting one ever — because it was caught too late

World

The Democratic Republic of Congo's Ebola outbreak has infected more people in its first month than any on record.

Finance

Two of the biggest names in private lending capped how much investors can pull out this week, a sign that the $1.8 trillion market built on hard-to-sell loans is straining when too many people want their money at once.

Tech

A Chinese machine just topped the famous TOP500 list using ordinary CPUs, not AI chips.

Mind & body

One hormone lowers your blood sugar.

Climate

Washington poured conditional loans into ten new reactors to feed the AI boom, even as it killed a nearly-built wind farm and battery storage set records.

Space

For 70 years space was a one-way trip up.

Biotech

Pfizer, Exelixis and Novocure all saw late-stage trials fall short this week, even as the LSD pill and the $10.9bn deal grabbed the cheers.

Money

The "minimum payment" looks like a kindness — the smallest amount that keeps you in good standing.

Sports

At the World Cup, single players are valued above whole rival squads.

Gaming

Valve priced its Steam Machine above $1,000 and said plainly it won't subsidise the hardware — exposing why the same box is a loss-leader for Sony and Microsoft but a full-price product for Valve.

Food

A wave of lab-grown and insect-protein startups proved their food works — and then collapsed trying to scale it.

Cyber

Researchers named "Cordyceps" — a weakness where the automated systems that handle open-source contributions trust those contributions too much, exposing CI/CD pipelines at Microsoft, Google, Apache and Cloudflare.