Nigeria's oil economy booms for its companies and cracks for its people

World

Africa's largest oil exporter posted record corporate profits this week even as over half its people fell into poverty - the clearest sign yet of the split at the heart of a petro-state, a pattern echoing from Libya to the Gulf.

Finance

Kevin Warsh promised to break inflation.

Tech

Five rival AI companies shipped a shared standard for packaging agent tools, but kept safety, trust, and marketplaces to themselves - a boundary that looks a lot like the industry drawing it.

Mind & body

Pain is not a straight wire to the brain.

Climate

Nigeria courts up to $50bn for deep-water fields while the majors bank $93bn in a quarter, all of it chasing barrels that cost far more energy to lift than the gushers of old.

Space

Astronomers report Pluto's nitrogen atmosphere is beginning to freeze back onto the surface as the dwarf planet moves farther from a Sun it barely feels.

Biotech

Britain became the first country in Europe to clear a once-daily obesity pill that rivals the weekly injections, as a busy week added a narcolepsy drug, the first mRNA flu shot, and a self-copying melanoma virus.

Money

Spreading money across things that don't move together cuts risk without cutting your expected return - the rare gain economics says shouldn't exist.

Sports

Gaming

Console earnings landed this week and showed the industry's hand: Nintendo's profit soared even as hardware slumped, because the box is only the hook - the games are the catch.

Food

The USDA opened a $500m program to strengthen small beef plants, aimed squarely at loosening the grip of the four giants that buy most of America's cattle.

Cyber

Three research teams showed how to defeat passkeys, the phone-and-fingerprint logins sold as phishing-proof - without breaking the maths, by owning the device underneath.