What the world is reading

So,what then is it about cats,asks Lewis-Kraus. Among smart quips and improbable theories,one scientific study from Missouri University of Science and Technology takes up the probable cause of a link between internet and depression. Their examples of depressive Internet activity indicated that many of the depressive users were watching cat videos.

Tennis.com-Missing Rafa

Amid the vast morass of news,one piece of tennis information—that Rafael Nadal won’t play the US Open—stood out,writes Steve Tignor. Mostly there has been speculation whether this is the ‘beginning of the end’ for Rafa,whether he’ll need to alter his style,find a new treatment,or just hang up his racquet,writes Tignor.

Nadal’s problem didn’t originate in his on-court pounding or even in his knees. It began in his foot,where a congenital disease had deformed its bridge. Nadal might bounce back by January,but his chasing down every ball like a moment of life and death in a high emotion will be missed at Flushing Meadows. His fans certainly miss him,as is evident by their absence at the US Open this year,commentators miss him,and even Roger Federer misses him.

New York Observer-Red in the face

After the post on the Harvard cheating scandal last week,a student implicated in the investigation offered another side of the story. Nearly 279 students of an undergraduate course at Harvard were accused of academic dishonesty on take-home final exam. A Teaching Fellow noticed that the students collaborated on the exam despite instructions prohibiting the same.

Our source,writes Patrick Clark,said that while collaboration may have been expressly forbidden,it was widely practised by the students and even teaching fellows.

The extent of the cheating has not been identified by the University,but from the source’s comments it doesn’t seem like an impossible scenario in which students sharing answers thought their behaviour was acceptable. After a summer long on cheating scandals—from Jonah Lehrer,and Fareed Zakaria to Lance Armstrong—there is no cheating scandal so terrible to surprise us,writes Clark. But,he observes,it is a tricky situation for the Harvard administration on the message it will send to the community.

The Telegraph-Paralympics Big Bang

Opening ceremonies of the Paralympics in the past have been hastily-constructed afterthoughts,writes Jim White. Insipid and sans humour,these ceremonies have been weakly scripted affairs. Not this time. “Indeed no one could accuse the London Paralympics Opening ceremony of being po-faced. 62,000 paying customers were treated to three hours of colourful bolshie brouhaha,” writes White.

With a choreographed Big Bang loud enough to disturb the peace on moon,Stephen Hawking kicked off his brightest,busiest lecture yet,urging audiences to “look up at the stars.” Britain can take pride in the crucial part it played in the development of the event,says White,as it was Sir Ludwig Guttmann,the pioneering spinal surgeon,who staged an archery competition for his patients to run in conjunction with the 1948 London Olympics. In fact,the ‘para’ in the title had nothing to do with paraplegic; it was short for ‘parallel’.