Why does Stephen study whale earwax?

A psychologist with wide-ranging interests, Stephen Trumble studies everything from rats to zebrafish, but these days whale earwax is taking over his Baylor University lab. There are already 30 pieces of it lined up, each requiring about a year’s worth of analysis — and he hopes to obtain five times as many. He’s doing this because hidden in all that wax is information that could tell us how life has been changing for whales and the Arctic in the past 100 years or more.

President Zuma is dangerous and will stoke racial tensions and militarize the state, as he and his party lose popular support, much as Robert Mugabe did in Zimbabwe, the South African opposition leader has warned. Mmusi Maimane, head of the Democratic Alliance, said that Mr. Zuma’s aim was to shore up lucrative state contracts for his enrichment and to install a successor to ensure that he could not be prosecuted for corruption once he left office.