How new 'consumer duty' rules for financial products could reduce debt-related stress

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How new 'consumer duty' rules for financial products could reduce debt-related stress     New “consumer duty” rules introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) aim to set clear standards for the protection of financial consumers. Banks, building societies, investment and insurance firms, as well as many other types of business, are being told to “put their customers’ needs first”. The timing couldn’t be better. Amid a cost of living crisis, the UK regulator’s new rules should hopefully address the increasing recognition by consumer groups that people cannot always solve the financial problems they face. Consumers are under pressure and need more support. Yet, trust in financial services is low: the FCA recently found that just 36% of UK adults see most financial providers as honest and transparent in how they treat customers. Continued here

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Ukrainian Is My Native Language, but I Had to Learn It     With Russian imperialism on full display, reviving Ukrainian, and expanding it to encompass new speakers and experiences, has become a national project.Growing up in the bilingual city of Kyiv in the 1990s, I studied the Ukrainian language like a museum object—intensely, but at a distance, never quite feeling all of its textures or bringing it home. Back then, in that part of the country, Ukrainian was reserved for formal settings: schools, banks, and celebrations, often infused with a performative flare of ethnic pride. Russian dominated the mundane and the intimate: gossiping with friends during recess, writing in a journal, arguing with parents. I straddled both languages with my grandmother, who spoke surzhyk, a colloquial mix of the two. Continued here

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The Atlantic is at risk of circulation collapse - it would mean even greater climate chaos across Europe     Amid news of lethal heatwaves across the Northern Hemisphere comes the daunting prospect of a climate disaster on an altogether grander scale. New findings published in Nature Communications suggest the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, or Amoc, could collapse within the next few decades – maybe even within the next few years – driving European weather to even greater extremes.The Amoc amounts to a system of currents in the Atlantic that bring warm water northwards where it then cools and sinks. It is a key reason why Europe’s climate has been stable for thousands of years, even if it’s hard to recognise this chaotic summer as part of that stability. Continued here

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How to Be a Purpose-Driven Leader Without Burning Out     The idea of servant leadership — putting your team’s needs ahead of your own — brought us to a more compassionate, human-centered work environment. But in today’s environment, it’s a recipe for burnout. Instead, the authors suggest a more impact-driven philosophy called “noble-purpose leadership,” that ties leaders and teammates to the pursuit of a shared goal that positively impacts constituents. In servant leadership, the message is: You’re in your role to serve others, making it tempting to focus on pleasing others and difficult to say no. In noble-purpose leadership, the message is: You’re in your role to make an impact. This requires more strategic thinking in terms of where to place your efforts. The authors offer three areas where managers can shift their lens to noble-purpose leadership.When Robert Greenleaf coined the phrase “servant leadership” in a seminal 1970 essay, it was a much-needed improvement over the traditional command-and-control leadership model that had prevailed for centuries. Continued here

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Bank account closures don't just affect 'politically exposed persons' - sex workers have struggled with financial exclusion for years     The fallout over the closure of Nigel Farage’s bank account has shed light on how financial institutions handle “politically exposed persons”, whom they may view as high-risk clients. Farge, the former Ukip leader, who held a bank account at the NatWest-owned private bank Coutts, obtained and published a dossier showing that the bank closed his account after identifying him as a reputational risk. The internal report stated that Farage’s views “do not align with our values”. Two executives at NatWest banking group – CEO Alison Rose and Peter Flavel, head of the bank’s Coutts division – have since resigned. Continued here

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It's Too Soon to Buy TP-Link's First Wi-Fi 7 Mesh     If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDTP-Link’s Deco BE85 is the first Wi-Fi 7 mesh system I have tested. These tri-band routers come in packs of two or three and promise new heights for the 6-GHz band, though they are also fully backward compatible. For folks with large properties craving the fastest possible speeds, the BE85 will be tempting. But paying top dollar for a system like this does not make sense for many people today. Continued here

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Israel's Avalanche     Israel’s democracy is still intact, but the country has already lost something essential.As Israel nears the end of a week of turmoil, its democracy remains intact. On Monday, the country’s Benjamin Netanyahu–led ruling coalition—the most hard-right government in Israel’s history—passed one component of its planned judicial overhaul. The proposed legislation has inspired months of outcry from Israelis, many of whom believe, with good reason, that these changes would swiftly erode the country’s democracy. This past spring, my colleague Yair Rosenberg explained some of the most concerning aspects of the overhaul: Continued here

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The end of Twitter - how Elon Musk's rebrand to X could foster the platform's dark side     Course Director, Psychology of Advertising Masters Programme, Lancaster University Alas, poor Twitter; we knew it well. Or, at least, we thought we did. Despite never occupying more than 10% of social media’s online presence, western audiences are very aware of the platform. That’s not least because of the way that the mass media echoes and amplifies the controversies and outrage born on Twitter. Continued here

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America Is Drowning in Packages     When UPS delivery workers last went on strike, in 1997, the nature of their job was very different. Amazon, then merely an online bookstore, was barely two years out from its very first sale. Buying jeans, or new furniture, or really anything, still required most people to get in their car and head to the local mall. By the time the International Brotherhood of Teamsters announced on Tuesday that it had reached a tentative agreement with UPS that would avoid a strike and keep hundreds of thousands of union members on the job, those workers’ role in American life had changed fundamentally.The new contract, which still needs to be ratified by the union’s members, came not a moment too soon. UPS handles a quantity of stuff so enormous that the company estimates its workers put their hands on roughly 6 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, and the company delivers nearly a quarter of all American packages. Internet retail and the volume of delivery services required to fill it have made America ever more dependent on the difficult, labor-intensive work of what’s known as last-mile package delivery. The country’s infrastructure and workforce are still struggling to catch up. Continued here

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How Diversification Helps Banks Lend More, Cut Risk, and Boost the Economy     A new study reveals manifold benefits of banks growing their footprint geographically and across business segments, amid fears that such diversification increases financial fragility and systemic risk.Banks in the U.S. that expanded beyond their geographical roots and into new business segments were able to lend more (especially to small businesses), reduce risk, and stabilize their revenue streams, according to a new paper, titled “Bank Diversification and Lending Resiliency.” Such diversification increased the resilience of banks, allowing them to maintain lending even during economic downturns, eventually benefitting local economies with higher employment levels, the paper noted. Continued here

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Communal stargazing using your phone: The Unistellar eQuinox 2, reviewed     When we reviewed the Unistellar eVscope a couple of years ago, we came away impressed. It offered a communal stargazing experience that takes our ubiquitous smartphones and turns them into a way to view the heavens. Unistellar's newest offering is the eQuinox 2, a lower-cost alternative to eVscope 2, taking all of the features from its original telescope, improving the technology, and dropping the price to $2,499. Continued here

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Innovation chief says "pressure test" your pet hypothesis. It's guaranteed to be wrong.     Imagine trying to invent something as earth-shaking as the atomic bomb. That massive, ambitious project took place during World War II under Robert Oppenheimer’s leadership, an event at the center of Christopher Nolan’s new film “Oppenheimer.” For Astro Teller — the grandson of Edward Teller, who was on Oppenheimer’s team and later helped create the even more powerful hydrogen bomb — this era contains a valuable lesson about the difficulty of steering innovation to socially beneficial ends.Astro, who now leads Alphabet’s pioneering moonshot division known as X, believes that if we’d focused more on using nuclear energy for good, we might not be facing one of today’s greatest global crises. Continued here

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Why Roger Ebert Wanted You to Go to the Movies     “If the movie is a good one, you allow yourself to be absorbed in its fantasy, and its dreams become part of your memories.”This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning. Continued here

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The 2023 Porsche Cayman GT4 RS is the best sports car on sale today     Judging by recent projects like the Mission R and 718 Cayman GT4 ePerformance, Porsche looks poised to introduce an electrified version of the Cayman in the not-too-distant future. While it's likely that such a sports car will raise the bar for certain measures of performance, it's also safe to assume that the driving experience will be altered significantly. Thus far, high-performance EVs have struggled to deliver the kind of emotional connection that enthusiasts have grown accustomed to from their ICE-motivated counterparts—a factor that's undoubtedly top of mind for the designers who are working on the next generation of the automaker's lineup. In the meantime, though, the folks in Porsche's GT division have ensured that the current era of the Cayman will not go gentle into that good night. Continued here

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The Misunderstood Reason Millions of Americans Stopped Going to Church     The defining problem driving people out is ... just how American life works in the 21st century.Nearly everyone I grew up with in my childhood church in Lincoln, Nebraska, is no longer Christian. That’s not unusual. Forty million Americans have stopped attending church in the past 25 years. That’s something like 12 percent of the population, and it represents the largest concentrated change in church attendance in American history. As a Christian, I feel this shift acutely. My wife and I wonder whether the institutions and communities that have helped preserve us in our own faith will still exist for our four children, let alone whatever grandkids we might one day have. Continued here

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Channel 4's shocking Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat owes much to Swift and his gruesome satire     Vice President and Head of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Sheffield There wasn’t much advertising ahead of the release of Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat, which was touted as a documentary about the food industry. Continued here

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Fixing the global childhood obesity epidemic begins with making healthy choices the easier choices - and that requires new laws and policies     The global childhood obesity epidemic has exploded. Over the past four decades, the world has witnessed a tenfold increase in obesity in children and adolescents between 5 and 19 years old. More than 124 million children across the world are currently considered to be obese. In children under age 5, obesity used to be nearly unheard of. Now, more than 38 million young children live with this condition. Continued here

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What Machine Learning Reveals About Forming a Healthy Habit     Contrary to popular belief, behaviors don’t become habits after a “magic number” of days. Wharton’s Katy Milkman shares what machine learning is teaching scientists about habit formation.Wharton experts used machine learning to help uncover the secret formula for successful healthy habit formation, and it turns out there’s no one formula. Continued here

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As suicides rise in the US, the 988 hotline offers hope - but most Americans aren't aware of it     July 2023 marks the one-year anniversary of the national launch of the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Currently, more than 200 call centers throughout the U.S. are responding to 988 calls. But few people know it exists. SciLine interviewed Dr. Emmy Betz, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado, who discussed the critical need to raise awareness about 988, the increasing numbers of suicide deaths in the U.S. and the signs that someone is thinking about suicide. Below are some highlights from the discussion. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity. Continued here

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4 literary masterpieces that make you despise the protagonist by the end     Many of world literature’s most unlikable protagonists start unlikeable and end unlikeable. From the very beginning of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, it is clear that the titular Gray is a narcissist who’ll do anything to inflate his already monstrous ego. The same goes for Humbert Humbert from Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel Lolita, a pedophile with a silver tongue who conjures up excuses for his inexcusable actions.But these characters form only the tip of the iceberg. A different yet equally interesting species of unlikable protagonist is the protagonist who starts off sympathetic but becomes more and more unsympathetic as the story develops. Though they appear similar, this type of character is not to be confused with other archetypes such as the tragic hero or antihero. The former (Oedipus, Hamlet) are good people who make bad decisions due to fate or circumstance, while antiheroes (Jack Sparrow, Batman) are morally ambiguous individuals who, in spite of their flaws, possess notable heroic qualities. Continued here