Japan’s proportion of elderly people is the highest in the world.

French supermarket Carrefour has put stickers on its shelves this week warning shoppers of “shrinkflation” - where packet contents are getting smaller while prices are not.

A battle is brewing between the city and its booksellers, who have been warned that the kiosks will have to be taken down for the Paris Olympics – an unprecedented move since the book stalls took up full-time residence along the Seine more than 160 years ago.

With the EU voting on new air quality rules, satellite data shows that 98% of people face pollution above limits recommended by the World Health Organization.

Scientists are scouring garbage sites around the world for bacteria, fungi and even insects that harbor enzymes that could be harnessed for breaking down various polymers. It’s early days, but if the efforts can be efficiently scaled-up, such biological recycling could put a dent in the plastic waste problem.

An Italian man has been crushed to death under thousands of wheels of a Parmesan-style cheese, authorities said.

Giacomo Chiapparini, 74, was buried when a shelf broke in his warehouse in the Lombardy region on Sunday, firefighter Antonion Dusi told AFP.

The collapse created a domino effect bringing down thousands of wheels, which weigh about 40kg (84lbs) each.

A new character has stepped onstage in the story of human aging: neural excitation.

The brain’s neural activity, long implicated in disorders ranging from dementia to epilepsy, plays a role in human aging and life span, according to research led by scientists in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School.

The study, published on 16 Oct. in Nature, is based on findings from human brains, mice and worms and suggests that excessive activity in the brain is linked to shorter life spans, while suppressing such overactivity extends life.

Japan’s population declined in all of its 47 prefectures for the first time in a record drop, while its number of foreign residents hit a new high, reaching almost 3 million people, according to government data released Wednesday, highlighting the increasing role that non-Japanese people play in the shrinking and aging country.

The population of Japanese nationals fell by about 800,000 people, or 0.65%, to 122.4 million in 2022 from the previous year, falling for a 14th straight year.

Despite the backlash, expect other cities to copy that.

Banned for a century because of the filthy water, city swimming is set to be one of the major legacies of the Games thanks to a €1.4bn (£1.2bn; $1.6bn) regeneration project universally hailed as a success.

Not only are three Olympic events - triathlon, marathon swimming and paratriathlon - scheduled to take place in the Seine in central Paris, but by 2025 three open-air swimming areas will be accessible from the quayside.

The parliament that emerged from the national election held in Spain this Sunday and which will begin a new term on August 17 will be the closest thing to a political labyrinth.

Together, the two right-wing parties did not win enough seats to form an absolute majority (for which 176 seats are needed), and the possibility that the Popular Party (PP) and the far-right Vox could make pacts with other parties to reach it can be completely ruled out given Vox’s unwillingness to work nationalist formations.

The left-wing bloc that has carried Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government for the past four years did not win the necessary 176 seats either. For the Socialist Party (PSOE) and Sumar (a grouping of 15 small leftist parties) to form a new coalition government, they would have to come to some kind of agreement with Junts, a Catalan nationalist party.

It’s ok 👍

I want to be very clear: this is not my car. An Audi E-tron parked across multiple spots in order to access a Tesla Supercharger.

One of the more threatening aspects of climate change is its potential to unleash feedbacks, or situations where warming induces changes that drive even more warming. Most of those are natural, such as a warmer ocean being able to hold less carbon dioxide, resulting in even more of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

But at least one potential feedback has a very human element: air conditioning.

A lot of the carbon dioxide we emit comes from the production of electricity. The heat those emissions generate causes people to run air conditioning more often, which drives more electricity use, which drives further emissions. It’s a feedback that will remain a threat until we manage to green the electrical grid.

The real reason seems to be clear: data and revenue. Like other automakers, GM is looking to monetize data-driven add-on features and services. They’re hoping to achieve profit margins of over 20% on “new businesses” by 2030, and the all-new subscription-based infotainment system will play the central part.

This is a familiar approach; every automaker now wants to be the next Netflix of the auto industry, where your car becomes another subscription service.

GM’s competitor, Ford, is also vying for a slice of this pie, aiming to create a “software-defined vehicle” with over-the-air updates and paid features.