Masks and toddlers

Pandemic babies talked later. Nobody measured how much of what they heard came through a mask

In Ireland, Japan and a review of eight studies, children born during the pandemic were slower to talk than those born before, and in nothing else: not in moving, not in solving problems, not in getting on with people. Many parents and carers blamed the masks worn by the adults around them. The figures confirm the delay but cannot separate it from lockdowns, closed nurseries and anxious parents, because the one thing that would settle it was never written down.

Assisted dying

Canada files them into Track 1 and Track 2. In Track 2, nearly half said they were lonely

Track 1 is for people who are going to die soon anyway. Track 2 is for people with something incurable that will not kill them. In Track 1, one in five gave loneliness as a reason. In Track 2, 44%. The public argument is about where the line goes. The figure that breaks it open is not on the line at all.

Plastics treaty

Nobody will say what "national security" covers. That is not a detail of the plastics treaty — it is the treaty

Every version of the rule on the table has a door in it. None of the drafts says how wide any door is, and the argument about who holds the handle is the only argument that matters.

Extreme heat

Los Angeles beat its 1886 record by a third of a degree. The number that would matter is one nobody collects

How many households have no air conditioning? Nobody knows. Three reasons why nobody knows came out of the argument, and none of them is that it would be difficult.

Police accountability

The one national figure everybody quotes does not cover what happened in Phoenix. Nothing does

Three rules were broken on 5 August, and all three already existed. There was no missing policy — and no national count that would tell you how often the same three get broken.