Firms tasked with defusing credit crises are getting into trouble

Also on the daily podcast: is America still lovin’ burgers and 15 hours of Wagner

Couples should be allowed to select embryos on the basis of both disease resistance and IQ

Efforts to get Scots off drugs need to be stepped up

Russia’s authorities are increasingly fearful of the slightest sign of dissent

Can past success ever be rekindled?

$12.5bn price tag is highest ever for an American sports team

The Taliban represent the farthest end of a global continuum of restrictions on female lives, writes Sarah Little

Its leaders are starting to mention an alternative route to joining the EU

Turkish arms producers may be the first beneficiaries

Freedom of navigation is worth preserving

Some workers are going back to the farm

Even court orders to protect them are ignored

Scientists are trying to figure out whether algorithms could one day wake up and feel

Even if they don’t, they might be treated as such—to humanity’s great cost

But a new superintelligence may be coming, and it would upend humanity’s hierarchy of moral concern, thinks Susan Schneider

Some experts believe computers will need biological aspects to become self-aware

Yuval Noah Harari is a big-ideas guy. He’s known for penning tomes that tackle broad sweeps of history. (They reach big audiences, too. Sapiens, Mr Harari’s most popular book, has sold 25m copies.) The historian-cum-philosopher has now turned his attention…

Whatever the company’s flaws, its critics have taken a worryingly illiberal turn

The WNBA has become a culture-war battleground