Inside the battle against Russian influence at FIFA

Russia’s World Cup caps a decade of unrelenting efforts to speed that nation’s return to sporting superiority, employing some of the same tactics Vladimir Putin has used in politics.

The Politics of Now: The Last World Cup

The evidence for the premise that international sport spreads peace and goodwill has always been fairly thin: every major tournament is dressed up that way but the legacy is more often mothballed stadiums and simmering resentment, as was the case after South Africa 2010 and Brazil 2014. Rarely, though, has a regime so brazenly signalled its indifference to the niceties of international sport, which require at least the pretence that bad behaviour gets put on hold. As the saying goes, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, and this is the currency in which Fifa likes to trade. But Putin isn’t having any of it. He seems to have treated the award of the tournament as a licence to try his luck.

How Not to Scout for Soccer Talent

Two new books raise interesting questions about the ethics and effectiveness of the sport’s selection system, with its early and intense winnowing process for aspiring players.

Coder-Physicists Are Simulating the Universe to Unlock Its Secrets

Computer simulations have become so accurate that cosmologists can now use them to study dark matter, supermassive black holes and other mysteries of the real evolving cosmos.

In her short life, mathematician Emmy Noether changed the face of physics

Noether linked two important concepts in physics: conservation laws and symmetries

Digging for Clues to an Ancient Extinction — and the Planet’s Future

If volcano-driven climate change was behind the Permian-Triassic land extinction, scientists might learn something crucial about our own fate.

The Endling: Watching a Species Vanish in Real Time

On the frontlines of extinction in the Gulf of California, where the vaquita faces its final days.

China Is Genetically Engineering Monkeys With Brain Disorders

A visit to a facility in Guangdong province, where researchers are tinkering with monkey brains in order to understand the most severe forms of autism

The Wounds of the Drone Warrior

Even soldiers who fight wars from a safe distance have found themselves traumatized. Could their injuries be moral ones?

The North Korean Axe Murders That Almost Started a War

In 1976, two American soldiers were axed to death over a poplar tree. What came next threatened to change the course of history.

Note: “10 stories to read this weekend” is a weekly feature of this blog. New issues are published every Friday at 22:00 IST / 16:30 GMT