FluxDash

9/11: 20 years laterSeptember 11 2001Children who lost a parent that day share a burden of grief, prying questions and ubiquitous footage of the disaster that killed their parents Robyn Higley has always hated September. It’s the month when everything bad happens, when her spirits, generally so bright and bubbly the rest of the year, grow bleak and deflated. She feels sad in September. Though she doesn’t fully understand why.

This is EuropeFrance This article is more than 5 months oldThe joy of citron pressé: why dry July in Paris makes a refreshing changeThis article is more than 5 months oldAlexander HurstGiving up alcohol for a month wasn’t hard, even in the apéritif-loving capital. But it opened my eyes to one of France’s simplest pleasures I’ll admit, it’s much stranger to do a “dry June” or a “dry July” than a “dry January”.

Animals farmedEnvironmentAfter years of burying neighbours’ complaints about illegal spraying of hog manure, state officials suddenly began posting them online. What changed? In September 2016, with Hurricane Hermine bearing down on North Carolina, Kemp Burdette rented a single-engine plane and flew over Duplin county. Burdette, a riverkeeper with the environmental group Cape Fear River Watch, was worried that some of the local pig farmers might try to drain their manure lagoons before the rains hit, to prevent them from overflowing.

And Just Like ThatReviewIt will never live up to Sex and the City, but it’s intensely quotable, brilliantly watchable and packed with hilarious high jinks. Isn’t that enough? The second season of And Just Like That, HBO’s controversial, heavily criticised Sex and the City revival, manages to do the unthinkable: it is even more lavish and unreservedly ridiculous than its first go-around. Here is just a small sample of some of the more daft things that happen in its first seven episodes: Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker) lust after a student at their children’s school; Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) spends a scene mulling over the word “jizz”; Seema (Sarita Choudhury) dates a guy who uses a penis pump; Who’s The Boss?

The science behind the newsScienceDoes a long, hot summer mean a harsh winter ahead?Not at all. Were you to plough through the Met Office's records of the past 50 years, you would find that long, hot summers are just as likely to be followed by a mild winter as a cold one. Winter rainfall is equally hard to predict on the strength of summer weather alone. "As far as we can tell, it's completely random,"

Mike JohnsonSecond-in-line to the presidency, the Republican makes claims about the constitution and Christianity, and his wish to impose his faith on others, that do not withstand serious scrutiny The new House speaker, Mike Johnson, knows how he will rule: according to his Bible. When asked on Fox News how he would make public policy, he replied: “Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.

Readers recommendMusicReaders recommend: songs about ambition - resultsWant to get elected? Make someone love you? Light up the sky like a flame? RR regular magicman does all this and more with a high-achieving selection from last week’s topic A strong desire to do or achieve … from the Latin: ambire “go around, canvassing, for votes”. How timely that Alice Cooper kicks us off with some grandiloquent glam rock from 1972: “I never lied to ya, I’ve always been cool …” Maybe if he’d run for mayor he’d have been Elected.

IsraelHis past was Jewish, but today he sees Israel as one of the most racist societies in the western world. Historian Shlomo Sand explains why he doesn’t want to be Jewish anymore During the first half of the 20th century, my father abandoned Talmudic school, permanently stopped going to synagogue, and regularly expressed his aversion to rabbis. At this point in my own life, in the early 21st century, I feel in turn a moral obligation to break definitively with tribal Judeocentrism.

TheatreReviewJermyn Street theatre, London A strong cast imbue Lillian Hellman’s 1951 play with a keen malaise, though they are shackled by the author’s enervating attitude towards her characters A group of sad people gather in a small guesthouse in the Gulf of Mexico and either confront or evade the illusions on which their lives rest. It sounds like a play by Tennessee Williams. In fact, it is the situation in this 1951 piece by Lillian Hellman now getting its British premiere.