The Latest Breaking News from Katie Flood

In a special episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast to start 2025, we’ve brought together three science editors from The Conversation’s editions around the world to discuss what to look out for in the world of science and technology in the coming year.

Surveys suggest that in many western democracies, political trust is at rock bottom. Scandals, corruption, faltering economies, conspiracy theories and swirling disinformation are all playing their part. But is it really such a bad thing for people living in a democracy to distrust their government?

It was a story that pulled at the heartstrings. In 2018, an orca called Tahlequah was seen dragging the corpse of her newborn baby calf for 17 days, over 1,000 miles along the coast of North America. Eventually, Talequah let the baby go (happily, she’s had another baby since), but…

Amazon workers in 20 countries are expected to strike or protest on Black Friday, pushing the company to respect their rights and commit to more action on the climate. The protests are coordinated by the Make Amazon Pay campaign, run by a global umbrella body of trade unions and workers’…

For generations, cod fishing was a way of life in Newfoundland and Labrador, the easternmost province in Canada. But in 1992, after cod stocks in the north Atlantic plummeted, the federal government imposed a moratorium on cod fishing. It was to last for 32 years until it was lifted in…

Amid deep political polarization and extreme campaign rhetoric, the U.S. presidential election on November 5 is likely to be decided by a small number of voters in swing states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan. But why is it so close?

In 2018, the Australian philosopher Kate Manne coined the word “himpathy” to describe what she called “the inappropriate and disproportionate sympathy powerful men often enjoy in cases of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, homicide and other misogynistic behavior”.

The only known specimens of Encephalartos woodii (E. woodii), a species of cycad, are all clones of the same male plant found over 100 years ago in a South African forest.

An epidemic of mpox in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is spreading quickly, particularly among young children. At least 20,000 people are known to be infected in the country, and more than 600 people have died, more than two thirds of them children. Cases have begun to appear…

Dating apps are having a rocky moment. In February, Bumble said it would lay off 30% of its workforce after disappointing results in 2023. Match Group, which has struggled to maintain paying subscribers for its most popular app, Tinder, in recent years, announced plans to cut 6% of its global…

One technique involves releasing particles of sulphur dioxide high up in the stratosphere. Another involves trying to brighten the clouds over the sea by spraying salt water off the back of ships. Both are potential methods of solar radiation modification (SRM), a type of solar geoengineering aimed at trying to…