Egypt confirms Mohamed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq in election runoff "Of all the likely outcomes of the first round of the two-stage contest, this is the most polarised, pitting the long-banned Brotherhood – the world's oldest Islamist movement – against a secular figure who is seen as a remnant of the old regime."
Save us from the saviours "On 17 June (in Greece), there will be a real choice: the establishment on one side, Syriza on the other. And, as is usually the case when a real choice is on offer, the establishment is in a panic: chaos, poverty and violence will follow, they say, if the wrong choice is made." (Slavoj Zizek)
How to feed a planet "Without the revolution in Brazil's cerrado (drylands) and the transformation of inefficient collective and state farms after the fall of communism, it is hard to imagine how the cities of Asia and Africa would have been fed. That raises disturbing questions about the future."
Earth's core: the enigma 1800 miles below us "Beneath our feet is a dense, chemically doped ball of iron roughly the size of Mars and every bit as alien. It's a place where pressures bear down with the weight of 3.5 million atmospheres, and where temperatures reach 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit - as hot as the surface of the Sun."
Summer and antipsychotics in the city "When I try to explain to people what happened to me last summer when I went insane, I have what is the fairly common experience of anyone who's been through a traumatic event: it feels as though I wasn't the person it happened to."
