Happy Monday, gentle readers! It’s been quite a weekend of excitement in Rio and beyond, so let’s take a look at some of the stories that are getting us excited (or horrified, or fascinated) this week.
Expert on MH370 Disappearance: ‘There Is Absolutely No Mystery To What Happened’ (Spiegel)
One airline investigator has a theory about what happened to MH370, and it’s pretty wild: Did one of the pilots hijack the plane? If so, why?
Somebody pushed the lever, there is no other way to move the flaps. Somebody wanted that airplane to land on the surface of the ocean in such a way that the fuselage stayed intact, so that everything would go to the bottom, never to be found or seen again. All this talk of this being aviation’s biggest mystery makes me angry. There is absolutely no mystery to what happened. It’s a mystery why somebody would do this.
I Survived ‘Trump’ Magazine—Barely (Politico)
An insider talks about what lay behind the doors of yet another failed Trump enterprise.
It was even harder to ignore the chaos that was building inside the office. The lack of organization was rampant. There was no companywide database for subscriptions; all the information was stored in Excel spreadsheets that were emailed back and forth. Staff meetings were few and far between, with little communication taking place despite our close quarters. Jacobson’s demands were erratic and always urgent, and often had no clear connection to the publication, including shipping framed paintings via UPS and DHL. I left the office promptly at 5 p.m. every day, but the majority of the staff was still hard at work when I closed the doors.
Climate Change Will Make Choosing A City To Host The Olympics Almost Impossible (Think Progress)
As the Olympics in Rio unfold, a serious question: How is climate change affecting the Olympics, and what does our shifting climate have to do with our future sporting events, from unseasonable temperatures to sea level rise?
The study, written by a group of U.S. and Australian researchers, looked at how global climate change would affect the viability of host cities in 2085. In less than eighty years, the researchers concluded, only eight cities in the Northern Hemisphere — outside of Western Europe — will have a cool enough climate to host the summer games. No cities in Latin America or Africa would be viable hosts for the games, and only three North American cities — Calgary, Vancouver, and San Francisco — would qualify.
Could Yellow Fever Become the Next Pandemic? (Scientific American)
Ebola might be flashy, but the real killers are all around us, and sometimes, they flare up without explanation, but with very serious consequences.
The World Health Organization is rushing to play catch-up, planning to send millions more doses of vaccine, extra supplies and even a mobile lab to test samples in distant parts of the DRC. But there are no guarantees that all the extra equipment, even if it arrives quickly, will halt the spread of yellow fever before October and the traditional start of the rainy season. A reporting trip to the DRC in July revealed just how haphazard the response has been to date.
Have You Heard Anything? (Guernica)
A little fiction to start off your week.
When I have two pecks I take them to the house, stopping at the garrafón to drink. The water gleams and splashes in the cup. I appreciate how perfect it is, how pure. I give Red water too, and he lies beside me, lapping. In the dirt around him there’s a ring of rust-colored hair.
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Photo: Andy Roberts/Creative Commons