Fairphone users can buy new camera without replacing the phone itself

The Fairphone 3+'s new camera module is also available to Fairphone 3 owners.
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In remote Alaska, broadband for all remains a dream. So a school district got creative

A district in the Aleutian Islands has built a wide area mesh network to enable virtual learning -- skirting the need for internet access in students' homes.
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Kim Jong Un remains in charge in North Korea, Seoul says

Kim Jong Un is not sharing power with sister Kim Yo Jong, and suggestions the North Korean leader is involving his sibling at the highest level of government are an exaggeration, South Korean officials say.
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The pandemic’s indirect hit on the Caribbean

The region has been spared the worst ravages of covid-19. That has not protected its economies
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So much tear gas has been sprayed on Portland protesters that officials fear it's polluted the water

Tear gas from the near-nightly sieges in Portland may be trickling into the Willamette River, officials fear
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The Wildest Insurance Fraud Scheme Texas Has Ever Seen

Theodore Robert Wright III carried out one of the boldest insurance fraud schemes Texas has ever seen. That was only the half of it.
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The New American Status Symbol? A Second Passport

Many U.S. citizens whose families immigrated from Europe are eligible, and the pandemic has caused an uptick in applications.
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Japan’s creaking computer systems are hampering economic recovery, experts say

Economists say the shoddy state of Japan's digital services is dampening the benefits of fiscal stimulus and holding back technological progress in the private sector.
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China's Communist Party is a threat to the world, says former elite insider

Cai Xia is no stranger to defying expectations. During her years at the Chinese Communist Party's top training center and think tank, the outspoken professor had surprised many with her liberal ideas and support for democratic reform.
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Venezuela coast could take half a century to recover from oil spill, researcher says

A strip of Venezuela's western coastline boasting pristine beaches and fragile ecosystems like mangroves and coral reefs could take more than half a century to fully recover from the environmental impacts of a recent oil spill, a researcher said on Wednesday.
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Japan steps up renewables investment to beat 2030 target

Japan will invest more than $100bn in wind and solar generation before 2030, beating its renewables goals according to analyst firm Wood Mackenzie.
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How Ronald Reagan Triumphed

Rick Perlstein’s “Reaganland” completes his multivolume survey of American conservatism with the 1980 election victory of Ronald Reagan.
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In photos: California scorched by second largest wildfire in history

The blazes are overwhelming the state, with at least six deaths linked to the fires.
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Rosatom releases previously classified documentary video of Tsar Bomba nuke test

Photos and short video clips have previously been available, but this unseen 40 minutes declassified footage of the Soviet Union’s monster nuclear bomb give a whole new insight into what happened on Novaya Zemlya on October 30, 1961.
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‘For climate protesters, we are like filth’: the German village where coal is still king

Europe is going coal-free, but a vast lignite mine is expanding in eastern Germany and coronavirus has delayed new climate laws
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The climate crisis has already arrived. Just look to California’s abnormal wildfires

In the last decade, amid drought and searing heat, California has entered the ‘era of megafires’ and has become the ‘examplar for climate change extreme events today’
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The Evolving Designs of US Voting Ballots

This Is What Democracy Looked Like by Alicia Yin Cheng is the first book of its kind to look at the history of ballot design.
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A Brief History of Quarantine: Sin, Space, and Ships

The history of quarantine shows the many borrowed ideas from various religions that helped shape the first quarantine measure enacted in 1377.
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6,600-year-old gravesites in Poland suggest wealth gap existed earlier than thought

A team of researchers from Sweden, the U.S., Poland and the U.K. has found evidence that suggests the wealth gap in human communities goes back at least 6,600 years. In their paper published in the journal Antiquity, the group describes their study of skeletons in an ancient Polish graveyard and what they found.
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Nagasaki – why did the US drop the second bomb?

The first atom bomb destroyed Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Just three days later, a second atom bomb flattened the city of Nagasaki, even though Japan had long been ready to capitulate.
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Test positivity rate: How this one figure explains that the US isn't doing enough testing yet

Test positivity rates measure the success of a testing program. Even though the US performs a huge number of tests, high test positivity rates across the country show that that it still isn't enough.
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'Askers' vs. 'Guessers'

In Ask Culture it's OK to ask for anything at all, but you gotta realize you might get no for an answer. In Guess Culture, you avoid putting a request into words unless you're pretty sure the answer will be yes.
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Why America Is Afraid of TikTok

The company’s founder says in an interview that he wants it to be “a window” on the world. A Republican senator says it is a “Trojan horse.”
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Secondary school textbooks teach our kids the myth that Aboriginal Australians were nomadic hunter-gatherers

In his book Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe writes that settler Australians wilfully misunderstood, hid and destroyed evidence of Aboriginal Australians’ farming practices. My analysis of secondary school textbooks shows this behaviour isn’t restricted to the past — it is ongoing.
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