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A giant torrent of mud, water and ice that began high in the Himalayas tore a devastating path through a mountain valley on the border between Nepal and Tibet on Wednesday, smashing buildings and sweeping away fleeing people caught by surprise by its speed and destructive force.

At least 160 people were killed and hundreds more were missing after the flood, which snapped bridges into pieces and pulled multistory structures off their foundations. The deluge also engulfed dozens of men, women and children who were overtaken as they tried to run. The death toll was expected to rise.

Aug. 26, 2026, 4:35 p.m. ET3 hours ago

Mack Liederman

The International Federation of Red Cross is sending more than $1.2 million to the Red Cross in Nepal to help with relief efforts. The hardest-hit areas are extremely difficult to reach, particularly in the northern Rasuwa district, where bridges have been washed away and major roads cut off, making it hard to assess the full scale of the disaster, the federation said in a statement. “The priority now is to reach affected communities and get assistance to people who have lost their homes, suffered injuries or have been cut off,” said David Fisher, the head of the federation’s delegation for Nepal.

Jiban Ghimire, the managing director the expedition group Shangri-La Nepal, said he had been coordinating aerial rescue efforts with security officials. “We’ve never seen that high of a flood,” Ghimire said.

Aug. 26, 2026, 4:11 p.m. ET3 hours ago

Pranav Baskar

Ram Chandra Lamichhane, the founder of Dream Tibet Travel and Tours, a travel operator in the Himalayas, said in an interview that a group of about 35 people on one of his company’s tours were missing because of the flood. The travelers and their guides were in a town that has “completely collapsed,” making it hard to get information, he said, and the families of the tourists were reaching out in desperation. “We are still hoping,” he said.

Aug. 26, 2026, 2:06 p.m. ET5 hours ago

Binod Ghimire

Reporting from Kathmandu, Nepal

The death toll from the floods in Nepal has risen to 157, Nepal’s police said in a statement on Wednesday night. The Chinese state news agency Xinhua has reported only three deaths so far on the Chinese side of the border, after earlier reporting that there had been “significant” casualties at the Gyirong Port.

Floodwaters and mud crashed through Himalayan river valleys and swallowed villages on Wednesday, creating a cross-border crisis in Nepal and the Chinese territory of Tibet, with an unknown number of people swept away or buried.

Thousands of people live in riverside settlements downstream from the flooding, and hundreds are dead or missing, including foreign tourists. At least 19 vehicle bridges and 40 kilometers of roads have been swept away, according to a statement from Nepal’s prime minister.

Among the hundreds of tourists missing in the Nepal floods, the largest contingent — at least 100 people — are from India, according to a preliminary count from officials in Nepal and India.

Many of them were traveling to or from Mount Kailash, a Himalayan peak near the border between Nepal and Tibet, an autonomous region of China. Mount Kailash, which is part of a Hindu pilgrimage called the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, is revered by many Hindus as the spiritual home of the god Shiva.

Aug. 26, 2026, 12:32 p.m. ET7 hours ago

Judson Jones

Reporter and meteorologist

“This is one of the most devastating floods I can remember seeing in this region,” said Tenzing Chogyal Sherpa, an expert in atmospheric and water processes at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

While scientific consensus points to a glacier collapse in Nepal that caused a deluge of water and debris, Sherpa noted that the exact sequence of events would become clearer as satellite imagery and field observations emerged.

He added that the disaster serves as a “brutal reminder” for those living in the valleys, where current climate extremes mean that “events like this may happen again.”

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Hundreds of people were missing in Nepal and the Tibet region of China, officials said, after waves of floodwaters ripped through river valleys and damaged settlements. Credit…Prabin Ranabhat/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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The type 2 diabetes drug metformin may reduce the risk of dementia. A randomised study that followed people for more than 20 years found that it seems to halve the risk of developing the condition.

This offers “the available best evidence, short of a long-term randomised clinical trial, that metformin may decrease the risk of dementia”, says José Luchsinger at Columbia University in New York. However, the finding isn’t conclusive, and the potential mechanism behind it is unclear.

Metformin, which helps control blood sugar levels, is a go-to drug for treating type 2 diabetes, with 150 million people taking it daily in 2022. “I’ve been very interested in the question of whether metformin increases or decreases the risk of dementia,” says Luchsinger. “There have been reports either way.”

Some studies suggest metformin increases dementia risk, possibly by causing a deficiency in vitamin B12 that has knock-on effects on cognition. On the other hand, a 2022 meta-analysis found that, on average, metformin was associated with a lower dementia risk.

To clarify the situation, Luchsinger and his colleagues have followed up with people who took part in a clinical trial of metformin in the 1990s called the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP). The trial showed that metformin was effective at preventing type 2 diabetes in people at risk of the condition. Since 2002, the participants have been followed by the DPP Outcomes Study.

This involved comparing 1483 people who, in the 1990s, were given either metformin, a lifestyle intervention to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes (which included a low-fat diet and regular exercise), or a placebo. The participants did multiple cognitive tests, beginning in 2009, then an intensive battery of such tests more than a decade later.

The team found that the people who had started taking metformin in the 1990s had a significantly lower chance of dementia later in life: just 1.9 per cent of those given metformin developed dementia, compared with 4.2 per cent of those given the lifestyle intervention and 3.5 per cent of those given a placebo. The metformin group also showed significantly better memory performance.

Luchsinger flags that the participants weren’t initially recruited with the aim of studying dementia, so some of them could have had early signs of the condition or cognitive impairment at the start of the trial. What’s more, only 48 people developed dementia in the entire study.

Nevertheless, it adds to the evidence that metformin has a protective effect, says Miia Kivipelto at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. It is rare and valuable to have the chance to follow participants over so many decades, she says.

A 2023 study of more than 210,000 people with type 2 diabetes also suggests that the reduction in risk of dementia is more pronounced among those who stay on metformin for longer. “One trial can answer some questions, but then if you put together evidence from different studies, then we really start to see the pattern more clearly,” says Kivipelto.

It is unclear how metformin may reduce dementia risk because it affects many organs and systems in the body, including hormone-producing glands and the immune system. “Does metformin decrease vascular disease in the brain, for example, or does it decrease inflammation in the brain?” says Luchsinger. “Does metformin decrease the risk of amyloid [the protein implicated in Alzheimer’s disease] in the brain?”

While the protective effect is still unclear, both Luchsinger and Kivipelto point out that the study didn’t find any evidence of metformin increasing dementia risk. “Given that it’s such a widely used medication, if we can at least establish that it’s not harmful, with conviction, I think that that, in itself, would be of really great public health importance,” says Luchsinger.

He is now running a randomised controlled trial called Metformin in Alzheimer’s Dementia Prevention, which is following participants for 18 months to see if the drug reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia. Luchsinger hopes to report the results by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Kivipelto is leading a study called MET-FINGER to find out if lifestyle changes alone, or a combination of lifestyle changes and metformin, can reduce the risk of dementia. Results are expected in 2028.

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From pantry staples to colorful produce, some of the most talked-about nutrition stories of 2026 have centered on foods you likely already have in your kitchen. Researchers are taking a closer look at familiar foods, such as quinoa, potatoes, and cabbage, and uncovering potential health benefits for everything from heart and gut health to cholesterol, blood sugar, and healthy aging.

So what does this mean for your diet? You may not need to overhaul your eating habits to make healthier choices. A good diet is one you can stick with, and it’s generally built around whole foods, plenty of plants, complex carbohydrates, adequate protein, and healthy fats. “Think of food like information for your body,” says Ashley Kitchens, MPH, RD, a plant-based registered dietitian and owner of Plant Centered Nutrition. “What you eat consistently over time directly influences your health and affects inflammation, your gut, cardiovascular function, as well as aging and longevity.” 

With that in mind, here are the foods making headlines so far this year — and why nutrition experts are paying attention.

01 of 07

 

Berries

The vibrant colors in blueberries, raspberries, and carrots do more than brighten your plate; they signal powerful plant compounds that support your health. A new review of 18 long-term studies and 65 clinical trials found that higher anthocyanin intake — the plant compounds that give foods like blueberries, cherries, and red cabbage their deep colors — was associated with lower risks of cardiovascular disease, heart attack, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure. The trials also found that anthocyanins were associated with improved blood vessel function and lower fasting insulin levels. 

Their nutritional appeal is well established. Berries have impressive antioxidant content, according to Jennifer Pallian, RD, a registered dietitian and founder of Foodess. “Berries are particularly rich in phenolic compounds and have considerably higher antioxidant capacity than many other fruits and vegetables,” she explains. “This is important because oxidative stress has been linked to aging and the development of numerous chronic diseases.”

As little as 50 milligrams of anthocyanins per day were associated with improvements in certain cardiovascular and metabolic measures. To put this into perspective, a cup of blueberries provides roughly 150 to 160 milligrams of anthocyanins. Blackberries, cherries, grapes, pomegranates, purple potatoes, and red cabbage are also excellent sources. 

02 of 07

Dairy

Got milk, yogurt, or cottage cheese? If not, it may be worth adding these items to your grocery list. A systematic review and meta-analysis found that consuming 30 to 60 grams of milk protein daily was associated with modest reductions in total cholesterol, triglycerides, and systolic blood pressure. The proteins casein and whey may play a role by encouraging the liver to clear LDL (bad) cholesterol and release compounds that help blood vessels relax.

To increase your milk protein intake, aim for two to four servings of protein-rich dairy foods each day, such as Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, skyr, or a whey protein shake. More isn’t always better, though, because excessive milk protein can cause stomach upset. “Traditional cow milk contains both A1 and A2 beta-casein proteins, and for some people, A1 can be harder to digest, so choosing A2 milk or dairy products made only with A2 protein can be gentler on the gut while still providing all the benefits,” says Samantha Peterson, RD, a registered dietitian and cofounder of Simply Wellness.

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Dolly Parton, a rhinestone-studded, rags-to-riches daughter of Appalachia who for six decades ruled country music — and much of pop culture — with an outsize personality and down-home wit that enshrined her as one of America’s most cherished originals, died on Tuesday in Nashville. She was 80.

Her death was announced in a video posted on social media by her nephew Bryan Seaver. No cause was provided. Concerns about Ms. Parton’s health were raised last year as she postponed and later canceled a Las Vegas residency, and intensified to the point that she took to social media in October to announce, “I ain’t dead yet.” This May, she said that she had responded well to treatment after her immune and digestive systems had, as she put it, “got all out of whack” in recent years.

From her hardscrabble beginnings to glittering stardom, Ms. Parton’s life was the stuff of make-believe. With her voluptuous figure, sparkly stage costumes and blond bouffant wigs, she was likened by the writer Chet Flippo to the Big Rock Candy Mountain, the Depression-era symbol of abundance. Her songs spoke to millions, confronting privation and loss even as they radiated possibility and hope.

She was, quintessentially, a uniter of people. In 2019, The New York Times ran a story with the headline “Is There Anything We Can All Agree On? Yes: Dolly Parton.”

Ms. Parton cannily exploited — and transcended — rural stereotypes and kitsch to fashion a folksy chic entirely her own. (“A country girl’s idea of glam,” she called it in the song “Backwoods Barbie.”) In the process, she became an international celebrity who headlined stadium tours, starred in Hollywood movies, built a business empire and appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone. Her at times girlish soprano notwithstanding, she was anything but the “dumb blonde” invoked in the title of her 1966 single.

“I’ve created this and played it up — the makeup, the whole persona,” Ms. Parton said, alluding to her plastic surgeries as well as her colloquial “Dollyisms” in a 2002 interview with The Times.

“But this isn’t all I am,” she added. “It’s not even most of what I am. Hopefully people can see beneath the hair to know there’s a brain, beneath the boobs to know there’s a heart and behind all the other stuff to know there’s some talent.”

Inducted into both the country music and rock ’n’ roll halls of fame, Ms. Parton was the top-ranking female singer on country radio from 1967 to 1993, and had a total of 25 No. 1 country singles.

Her early breakthrough came in 1967 when she was hired as the “girl singer” on “The Porter Wagoner Show,” a syndicated country music television variety program. Several years later, she had No. 1 country hits with records like “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You.”

Both songs were among about 3,000 titles she published in her lifetime, hundreds of which have been recorded by other artists, including Tina Turner, Norah Jones, the White Stripes, Merle Haggard, RuPaul and Whitney Houston.

Featured in the 1992 movie “The Bodyguard,” Ms. Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You” spent 14 weeks at the top of the pop chart. The song had previously been a No. 1 country single twice, in versions released by Ms. Parton in 1974 and 1982.

With Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette, Ms. Parton blazed a trail for women in country music, inspiring contemporaries like Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris, as well as latter-day hitmakers like Carrie Underwood, Kacey Musgraves and Taylor Swift. She recorded a pair of albums, “Trio” and “Trio II,” with Ms. Ronstadt and Ms. Harris.

“I can’t imagine anybody, especially in country, who doesn’t try to emulate Dolly in some way,” Ms. Harris said on the occasion of Ms. Parton’s Kennedy Center Honors award in 2006.

Ms. Parton was one of country music’s greatest ambassadors, but she also collaborated widely with artists outside traditional Nashville circles, including Mavis Staples, Queen Latifah, Julio Iglesias and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. “Islands in the Stream,” a triple platinum-selling duet Ms. Parton recorded with Kenny Rogers, topped both the country and pop charts in 1983. (The song was written by Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees.)

Stylistically, Ms. Parton’s music ran the gamut: mountain bluegrass and soul-inflected countrypolitan, disco-era pop and covers of classic rock touchstones written by Neil Young and Led Zeppelin — all of it rendered indelible by her irrepressible spirit and alternately keening and gossamer soprano drawl.

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Dolly Parton in 1975. She was likened to the Big Rock Candy Mountain, the Depression-era symbol of abundance. Her music confronted privation and loss even as it radiated possibility and hope. 

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When survivors of trauma recount their experiences, they are often questioned because of how they relay their stories. They may have problems remembering what happened, or their memories may be jumbled or even contradictory. People hearing those stories—attorneys, reporters, healthcare workers, or friends—may expect a clearer, linear narrative.

Those unaffected by trauma may also be surprised to hear how the person acted in the moment. It’s easy to assume that someone experiencing a traumatic event would have a “fight or flight” response, instinctively fighting off a perpetrator or fleeing the scene—but that might not be the case.

Understanding the science of how trauma affects memory and behavior reveals why these responses can actually be expected and are not contradictory.

In both my academic and clinical work as a psychologist, I have witnessed the impact trauma has on people’s memories and behaviors, especially when an event in their present life triggers something from their past.

Research shows that taking a trauma-informed approach, which prioritizes understanding and curiosity about someone’s experience as opposed to judgment or critical evaluation, increases empathy for survivors’ thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

How trauma affects the brain

According to the World Health Organization, approximately 70 percent of people worldwide report experiencing a traumatic event in their lifetime. The majority of these people do not develop PTSD, a clinical diagnosis of symptoms, such as having nightmares and flashbacks about the event, avoiding places that are reminders of it, and increased arousal that can make concentration and sleep difficult. Many survivors don’t meet criteria for PTSD but struggle with feeling distressed, depressed or anxious.

In traumatic situations, people often respond in unexpected ways, and they may second-guess themselves. This may happen particularly when someone experiences a repeated trauma, which is more likely than not due to how many people experience traumatic events.

Trauma also distorts how memories are stored and retrieved.

Research indicates that people experience traumatic memories differently than memories of other significant events, such as sad or positive experiences. Two of the main brain structures scientists believe are involved in storing traumatic memories are the hippocampus—responsible for memory storage—and the amygdala, which is responsible for processing emotions.

During trauma, the amygdala becomes highly active, processing emotions such as fear, and the hippocampus becomes overwhelmed by stress, leading to problems with memory storage.

Traumatic memories do not follow a neat, linear story. Instead, people may experience the memory as disconnected fragments of sensations, emotions, smells, or images. Such memories cause the body to reexperience the past threat as if it is happening in the moment. This may cause a person to feel like running away or fighting back—flight or fight. Or they may freeze.

In other words, people don’t have the distant perspective they often feel with other memories from the past. Rather, they may feel they are reliving the original experience.

Misinterpreting victims’ behaviors

With this understanding, consider someone who experiences a trauma at the hands of a professional during an appointment. They may appear outwardly calm while it happens and then leave the session as they typically would—checking out, providing payment, and possibly even scheduling the next appointment. While their response to act normally may seem odd, such behavior makes sense for someone trying to escape a threat.

Fight, flight or freeze responses have become widely known in popular culture. In a freeze response, a person’s mind goes blank and they may be unable to speak, leading to a “deer in the headlights” behavior.

On the other hand, a person may act paradoxically—perhaps by going on about their day as if nothing happened. They may not report the event or may question whether the incident even occurred. This represents another survival response—the lesser-known fawn response. This way of handling stress occurs when someone acts calm, appeases the threatening person, and retreats to de-escalate the situation. Instead of literally backing away, in this example, the person metaphorically backs away by completing the session and exiting as expected without further conflict.

Outsiders may misconstrue these behaviors as evidence that a trauma did not actually happen or that a survivor lacks credibility. But that logic reflects common misconceptions about how people “should” remember or respond to trauma.

If this was the person’s first experience with a traumatic situation, afterward they are likely to feel afraid, disoriented or hyperalert. However, if they had previous similar experiences, this scenario may trigger past memories in the moment. This can muddy the experience even further, making it difficult to recall the incident later, especially under stressful circumstances.

When a survivor reports an incident and ultimately testifies against someone who harmed them, memory recall might be uniquely affected. Most people in this situation would be highly stressed, especially if the perpetrator were in the room.

To make matters worse, the feeling that the recalled memory is actually happening in the moment and not in the past may cause a survivor to convey a more fragmented story. They may also have either a more intense or detached emotional experience, depending on their own trauma responses.

Legal and other professionals unaware of the range of natural responses to trauma can easily misinterpret these behaviors as signs of lying or malingering.

In reality, the percentage of people who falsely report sexual assault, for example, is low—between 2 percent and 10 percent.

Providing better support

Research shows that people who better understand nuances of trauma and mental health in turn are more empathetic toward survivors. Some healthcare settings have adopted a trauma-informed approach to prevent retraumatization and build safety. Studies show that even being attentive to word choice can help ensure effective care for patients that avoids victim blaming.

A trauma-informed approach can also improve legal and justice systems so victims are better supported. This includes understanding why accounts aren’t linear and not equating memory inconsistencies with lying.

Research also shows that trauma-informed responses are equally important in everyday relationships. In friendships and close relationships, or in the workplace, patience and empathy convey a sense of respect, safety and trustworthiness. These offer a strong foundation for positive social and working relationships, which can lower a survivor’s distress and support their healing.

When people have a greater understanding of how trauma affects the brain, they gain insight into how survivors think, act and process their memories. What initially looks confusing or inconsistent is actually behavior that flows logically from a traumatized brain.

Having a trauma-informed perspective helps people to be better friends, co-workers, and professionals. By extension, responding from this awareness may even help survivors understand their own reactions and experiences, which may ultimately aid their healing and ability to lead fulfilling lives.

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“By the grace of God, I’m still here,” Glasgow said. But Kenya and Kennedi could not be saved.

Margate Police said in a press release that first responders immediately performed CPR on Kenya and Kennedi when they arrived at the home and sent them to the hospital. But the two died shortly after they arrived.

“Worst feeling in the world, and to turn around and see your wife and your daughter there lifeless is even worse,” Glasgow recalled of the moments after the lightning strike.

While roughly 37 million lightning strikes hit the ground in the U.S. each year, the odds of being struck are less than one in a million, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s even rarer to die from a lightning strike, as nearly 90 percent of victims survive.

“The biggest heart in the world, puts everybody before herself, everybody. My daughter, my wife, amazing, amazing people,” he said. The father also gushed about Kennedi’s love of musician Benson Boone and how she could sing his songs word for word. Glasgow is now left to pick up the pieces of his life and stay strong for his surviving two-year-old daughter, Kensli.

“I just lost my best friend. My daughter just lost her best friend,” Glasgow wrote in a Facebook post Monday. “After I lost my father a few years ago I learned a very valuable lesson and that’s to never question God.”

Addressing Kenya and Kennedi, Glasgow said, “We will make you both our story and take it one day at time because I know you both are guiding us.”

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Florida father Kameron Glasgow has been left heartbroken after his wife, Kenya, and two-year-old daughter, Kennedi, were killed in a lightning strike over the weekend (Kameron Glasgow via Facebook)

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A divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to move forward with plans to restrict mail-in voting before the midterm elections.

In an emergency order, the justices said President Trump could proceed with implementing an executive order he had signed, which directed the U.S. Postal Service to help decide which voters should receive mail-in ballots. Under the executive order, the Department of Homeland Security will also create lists of U.S. citizens that the administration believes could be used to monitor voter rolls for noncitizens.

The decision means the administration can move ahead with planning for restricting the use of mail ballots even as a lower court continues to weigh the legality of Mr. Trump’s executive order. But with little more than two months until Election Day — and considerably less before early voting begins in many states — it remains unclear whether the White House’s rules will be in effect for a midterm election in which control of both chambers is at stake.

The order by the court was unsigned, as is typical in such emergency rulings. The majority wrote that it agreed with the government’s argument that it should be able to move forward with its plans, finding that the Trump administration was “likely to suffer irreparable harm” unless the justices lifted a freeze that had been imposed by lower courts.

The three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warning that the majority “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.”

The majority said the states that challenged the president’s order could not demonstrate that they were sufficiently harmed by voting rules that had not yet taken effect. The justices cautioned that their order was preliminary and not a final decision about whether the administration’s order “will necessarily be lawful” once the plans are complete. “On that score, time will tell,” the majority said in the 10-page, unsigned order.

That could mean the legal battle will return to the justices, perhaps quickly, as the administration moves to implement the president’s order before the midterms.

Mr. Trump signed the executive order in March as part of his broader attempts to curtail voting by mail. It directed federal agencies to create “state citizenship lists” of people who will be 18 or older as of Election Day. Federal officials were then directed to send those names to state election officials, who administer the vote, purportedly so they could use them to purge voter registration lists of anyone who is not a citizen. The order also instructed the Postal Service not to mail ballots on behalf of anyone whose name was not on the approved list.

Several court challenges immediately followed, including a lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts brought by Democratic state attorneys general. The challengers argued that the president exceeded his authority because the Constitution gives Congress and the states power over elections, not the executive.

In late June, Judge Indira Talwani, a Federal District Court judge in Massachusetts, temporarily blocked the president’s order, finding that it violated the Constitution’s separation of powers. She also determined that Congress had not delegated authority to the Postal Service to determine which voters should receive mail ballots, and that the executive order did not allow enough time before November for the Postal Service to follow the legally required process for agencies when they adopt new rules.

Judge Talwani issued a separate broader ruling in a related case this month, blocking any enforcement of the executive order for the 2026 midterms. She again emphasized that the Constitution does not grant authority over elections to the executive branch. She also noted that, contrary to Mr. Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud, the government had not provided “evidentiary support of illegal or fraudulent absentee voting.”

A federal appeals court earlier upheld Judge Talwani’s temporary block. At that point, Trump administration lawyers filed an emergency application asking the justices to step in. Several Republican state attorneys general filed a separate, parallel request.

In a brief to the court, the Democratic state attorneys general wrote that the executive order “would allow the federal government to rush out an unprecedented, legally indefensible voter-verification and ballot-interception program that would, among other things, give the U.S. Postal Service far-reaching new powers and responsibilities.”

They also argued that allowing the order to be implemented would mean a chaotic rollout not long before states begin to send out absentee ballots.

And they wrote that voters could be confused and disenfranchised, given that the federal government was likely to make errors in compiling citizen lists and that valid voters would have little time to challenge the government’s determinations.

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Volunteers processing mail-in ballots on Nov. 5, 2024, in Dearborn, Mich. Credit…Nick Hagen for The New York Times

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The melting of the Greenland ice sheet is causing more extreme heat in Europe, contributing to the major heatwaves experienced there so far this year.

The surge of cold meltwater into the North Atlantic is altering ocean temperatures and shifting the jet stream to favour heatwaves in western Europe and the Mediterranean, a study undergoing peer review has found. As Greenland ice loss accelerates, Europe may suffer more frequent and intense heatwaves than climate models currently predict.

This newly discovered “atmospheric bridge” played a major role in the unprecedented heatwaves this summer, according to Marilena Oltmanns at the UK’s National Oceanography Centre, who is one of the study’s authors.

“Europe heats up faster. This is because of the jet stream shift,” she says. “In future years… it will be even more extreme. In the future we will think this [year’s heatwave] was not a heatwave; this was nice.”

The steady rise in global temperature has increased heatwaves. But it’s still debated whether changes in prevailing weather patterns are also contributing.

In the past 30 years, high-pressure ridges – large areas of elevated air pressure that look like a ridge or upside-down U on weather maps – have been forming more frequently over Europe, the study finds, leading to sunny skies and extreme heat. These ridges are caused by waviness in the jet stream, the band of strong winds that circles the northern hemisphere. When the more or less straight-flowing jet stream meanders northward around western Europe, it allows warm air from the central Atlantic and Sahara desert to pour into the ridge that’s been created.

Years with extensive high-pressure ridges over Europe have resulted in heatwaves like the one that killed 70,000 people in 2003.

The researchers say the formation of the ridges can be traced back to Greenland through a cascade of climate events. In the summer before years of extensive ridging, an average of 81 billion tonnes more meltwater rushes off the ice sheet, they found. The cold meltwater lowers sea surface temperatures as it spreads through the North Atlantic in the autumn and winter. Its freshness inhibits mixing with saltier, warmer deep layers, further cooling the surface.

These pulses of meltwater cooling come on top of the “cold blob,” a long-term decline in ocean temperatures in the North Atlantic that some scientists blame on the weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) system of currents. Together, they create a sharp temperature front between the cold waters and the warmer surface waters further south in the Atlantic.

As warm air masses rise to the south of the front and cold masses descend to the north of it, they begin to swirl and generate cyclones. This makes the jet stream wavier. It tends to meander southward of these cyclones, then back northward over western Europe, creating the persistent, high-pressure ridges and heatwaves there.

Most worryingly, climate models don’t fully capture this process, according to Oltmanns.

“This is a big problem,” she says. “It’s going to be even more intense in terms of heatwaves and droughts, in particular in the Mediterranean region, so the weather extremes are likely underestimated.”

A study in July found that the jet stream has shifted southward in the Atlantic in recent decades, similar to the pattern shown in the study. But it concluded that this was due to natural fluctuations in the climate and would eventually reverse.

Meltwater from Greenland could be forcing the jet stream to meander, according to John Methven at the University of Reading, UK, who was one of the authors of the July study. But the weakening of the AMOC or changes in atmospheric circulation over the North Atlantic could also be causing this shift.

“That’s the weak link as far as I’m concerned; the link between the cold blob and whatever’s melting in Greenland is not established, and there might be other things going on,” he says.

If North Atlantic cooling continues to affect the jet stream, it could cause not just heatwaves but also other extreme weather, according to Oltmanns. The research linked it to an unprecedented derecho, a stream of thunderstorms and strong winds, in the Mediterranean in 2022. Winds reached more than 60 metres per second, and fist-sized hail killed 12 people.

“We [will] have more droughts at some locations, flooding events at others, and the variability on top of this increases,” she says.

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The diplomats’ letter states: ‘Nothing justifies Israel’s systematic policy of destruction of Gaza and its population.’ Photograph: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters

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The U.S. federal debt has hit $40 trillion. Add the debt owed by U.S. states, corporations and consumers, and the figure rises to about $77 trillion in debt, set against an annual G.D.P. of about $32 trillion. The interest on all of it is compounding constantly. It’s not just the U.S., either. Globally, there is $350 trillion in debt, roughly treble global G.D.P. It’s like snowpack on a mountainside. It may look stable right now, but it’s creating the conditions for an avalanche. We are past the point where we can deal with our current debts in normal ways. The options open to us are extremely unlikely or highly destructive: Grow our way out of it, raise taxes, inflate the debt away, or wait for the economic fallout.

Ancient societies had another method to deal with debt. It was called an amargi — a blanket declaration of public debt cancellation. All public debts written off. Disappeared. It sounds laughable, I know. But, really, that’s just because the idea has been buried so deeply in history you’ve probably never heard of it. In the ancient world, it presented a pragmatic solution to an intractable problem. And now, faced with impossible-to-repay debts that are weighing down our economy, is the time to look at the amargi and the lessons it offers about how to think about finance.

The ancient Mesopotamians are credited with inventing money. They invented loans and compound interest. They understood this system and its propensity for breakdowns when debts spiraled. That’s why they invented something else, too. About 4,400 years ago, a Mesopotamian king named Enmetena issued an edict. Essentially all public debts, he declared, were canceled. (Amargi typically left debts between merchants in place.) People who had been sold into bondage were freed. Similar edicts gave back land to farmers who had lost it to creditors. The campaign itself was called “return to mother,” the origin of the Sumerian word “amargi.” The word loses something in the translation across eons and languages, but essentially it’s a synonym for “freedom.” The concept was codified in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, which decreed a “year of the Lord’s favor” every 50 years.

The amargi was a response to a persistent problem that was recognized in the ancient world: Debt compounded until it destabilized society. Get enough citizens sold into slavery and enough abandoned farms and society crumbles. Nobody to grow the crops. Nobody to serve in the armies. The amargi was a relief valve, a final rebalancing tool. It was declared in the ancient Near East regularly when new rulers came to power. These actions were magnanimous but also practical. They allowed society to reset rather than being forced into monetary collapse.

People who were owed money were, predictably, not always happy about the amargi. In Athens, the ruler Solon instituted a series of reforms around 594 B.C. that canceled debts. The changes were bitterly opposed by the ruling elite. Solon managed to make the reforms stick, but only after leaving town for a decade and making his people promise not to change the new laws in his absence. Three centuries later, a Spartan king wiped out debt by dragging all the city’s records into the public square and burning them. The city’s elite, aghast, had him arrested and hanged — along with his mother and grandmother. Another two centuries later, the Roman Gracchi brothers were both killed, largely in response to their proposed social reforms. After centuries of elite opposition, the amargi disappeared into obscurity.

The reason the practice often worked in the first place was because the ancient world understood something about our monetary system we have mostly forgotten: Money is an invented social construct. It isn’t real, not in the way a tree or a stone is real. The system of money and credit is a thing humans made up. It’s a record-keeping device for distributing resources. And since money is a human creation, we can alter it when needed.

It’s hard to predict what will happen if we don’t address our debt, but it’s not hard to predict that the outcome will be bad. Governments can borrow to cover up other problems only for so long. Sometimes what comes next is a hyperinflationary spiral and economic collapse, as in Zimbabwe or Weimar Germany. Sometimes it’s a national default that rocks financial markets, such as in Egypt and Anatolia under the Ottoman Empire in the 1870s. And sometimes it’s just a steadily slipping quality of life as debt saps people’s ability to build their own wealth.

Money represents resources, or at least access to resources. When so much of it is going to debt repayment, it means money that could be spent on goods or services is diverted. The federal government now spends over $1 trillion a year on debt interest — money that could otherwise be spent on roads, schools or health care. Rising debts also result in investors demanding higher interest rates to buy that debt; higher government debt rates push up rates across credit markets, including for mortgages. Public debt financing contributes to inflationary pressure, too.

Widespread public debt forgiveness should be taken seriously, at least as a mechanism to reframe economic thinking. While its recent track record is patchy — including both failed debt relief for developing countries and the extremely positive debt relief for the defeated Axis powers — it is an important tool for policymakers to consider. We are unlikely to see a modern amargi, but as a set of principles for reconsidering our relationship with money, its applicability is rich.

Our debts aren’t going to just disappear. Absent a conscious effort, we are just waiting for an increasingly likely economic meltdown. The ancient world had a different understanding of the nature of money, which is why debt forgiveness became a standard feature of their cultures. We need to start seeing money and debt the way people saw it back then: As a system to distribute resources that, like any system, can be periodically reset.

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Illustration by The New York Times

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