Political and religious leaders in Northern Ireland saw early Wednesday morning — with the embers of a long night of violence in Belfast and other parts of the region still smoldering — that their calls for calm had fallen on deaf ears. Cars, buses, phone booths, and trash cans set ablaze. Homes where immigrants — or simply people from ethnic minorities — were believed to live, completely engulfed in flames after violent groups targeted them as places that needed to be “liberated.”

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Chinese espionage in the European Union and neighboring countries reveals its full scope when certain pieces are connected. The May 20 arrest in Germany of a German couple of Chinese origin who were taking military-technology information from universities is a particularly notable case. But it is only one of many. The episode exposes a strategy of large-scale, coordinated infiltration when placed alongside other arrests in EU member states and neighboring countries. In total, around 30 agents and collaborators have been uncovered in Europe and its vicinity in just the past two years; some were arrested, several expelled, and others are awaiting trial. China typically denies all espionage allegations and describes them as slander.

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Recovered from the ice of an Alpine glacier at the end of the last century, almost everything about Ötzi was already known. That he was about 45 when he was killed from behind some 5,300 years ago. A detailed genetic study published three years ago revealed that, besides being bald, he had a dark complexion and likely came from distant Anatolia. We even know what he ate shortly before he was killed by an arrow. Now, a new study identifies the microscopic life he carried inside him. The paper, published in the journal Microbiome, shows that his bacteria were very different from those of people in modern societies. The researchers also found a number of cold-adapted fungi that have awakened thousands of years later and could threaten the mummy’s future.

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Caetano Veloso, in a video call from Lisbon, Portugal, speaks slowly with that blend of intellectual clarity and Bahian melancholy that for six decades has turned each of his interviews into something more like a philosophical conversation than a mere promotion of new albums or concerts. At age 83, the celebrated musician from Brazil is embarking on a tour titled Caetano nos festivais, which will stop in Madrid on June 4 and which he himself describes, without drama but with honesty, as perhaps his last visit to Spain. That is despite the close relationship he has always maintained with Spanish culture. There is no monumental nostalgia in his words; rather a physical weariness, a wise resignation, political concern and a bitter — though not yet defeated — view of the present. He speaks, without losing passion, about the military dictatorship his country suffered, about Silicon Valley, The Beatles, contemporary confusion and a Brazil that, in spite of everything, he still believes can “say something to the world.”

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