The Latest Breaking News from The Conversation

As Winter Storm Fern swept across the United States in late January 2026, bringing ice, snow and freezing temperatures, it left more than a million people without power, mostly in the Southeast.

An unusually large majority of Americans agree that the recent scenes of Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Minneapolis are disturbing.

If you break open a chicken bone, you won’t find a solid mass of white material inside. Instead, you will see a complex, spongelike network of tiny struts and pillars, and a lot of empty space.

Last autumn, a UK government report warned that climate-driven ecosystem collapse could lead to food shortages, mass migration, political extremism and even nuclear conflict. The report was never officially launched.

Restitution debates – the question of whether a cultural object should be returned from a museum or other collection to a person or community – often begin with a deceptively simple question: who owns an object?

Hawks are taking cinematic flight. In two recent literary adaptations, they are entwined with the lives and emotions of their respective protagonists – Agnes Shakespeare (née Hathaway) and Helen Macdonald.

Many of us have noisy joints. Knees crack on the stairs, necks pop when we stretch, and knuckles seem to crack almost on demand. These sounds can be startling and are often blamed on ageing, damage or the looming threat of arthritis.

Joint cracking is one of those habits most of us acquire without thinking about it. A knuckle popped mid-sentence. A back twisted as we stand up. A neck gently crunched while the kettle boils. It is common, oddly satisfying and, for anyone sitting nearby, faintly alarming.

As governments around the world tighten migration controls, Spain has taken a strikingly different path. In January 2026, the Spanish cabinet approved a decree opening a pathway to legal residency for hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants who already live in the country. At a time when deportations, detentions and…