They’re called zombies – but their nature is molecular, not Hollywood Human. Their presence is worldwide. And now new research suggests they’re far more frightening than any horror fantasy. Author Chris Wood writes in his Natural Security column today: In Alberta rivers downstream from certain Intensive Livestock Operations – better-known as feedlots, where hundreds and even thousands of cattle are crowded together in foetid paddocks of manure and urine the more economically to supply North America’s steak and burger-loving consumers – almost all the males have disappeared from key minnow populations. The suspected cause is chemicals used in cattle feed.

International Affairs columnist Jonathan Manthorpe writes today: When a young mainland Chinese women was hit by a truck in Hong Kong and died in hospital on Tuesday, the territory’s social media networks throbbed with messages not of sympathy, but with hatred of everything she represented. Thousands of messages were posted on social media sites saying, with varying degrees of hatred and anger, that Liu Han, a 25-year-old graduate of Hong Kong University who worked in the financial industry, embodied all that is wrong with the way mainland Chinese and the Beijing government use the territory. Manthorpe examines the reaction to

The travails of Alberta after it defaulted on its debt serve as a cautionary tale for American politicians now on the brink. An excerpt of author Brian Brennan’s feature in Facts and Opinions today: On October 17, 2013, the American government could enter unchartered territory. If Congressional Democrats and Republicans cannot agree on raising the statutory borrowing limit known as the “debt ceiling,” the government could be forced to default on its financial obligations. What would that mean for the rest of the world? Nobody knows for certain. Such a crisis scenario is virtually without precedent in modern North America.