Before I forget…
The Church of England won’t adopt firm criteria on whether to baptize asylum seekers because it was impossible to see into someone’s heart and tell whether they were converting for faith or expediency.
Portugal’s rightist Democratic Alliance plans to spend its way out of having to make deals with the far-right Chega party by proposing tax cuts and wage rises. Even if Portugal isn’t your thing, I recommend this story as a primer on political intrigue. Related: What role do the Azores islands play in all this?
BMW apologized to Chinese drivers after the country’s annual consumer-day TV show singled out the 530Li model’s transmission shaft for producing “disturbing” noises. BMW caught heat at last year’s Shanghai auto show over claims that its booth favored foreign visitors at an ice-cream giveaway.
The Olympic committees of Australia, Brazil, Canada and Norway want air conditioning for their athletes during the Paris Games, prompting the city’s mayor to insist that their residences are designed to be cool without it, and to “trust the science.” The Germans are siding with France on this one.
A study on polyglots’ brains shows that their cerebral-cortex activity increases when they listen to the languages in which they have the most proficiency, but for some subjects, activity falls when listening to their native languages.
