'Super-Earths' might be better than our planet. But are they reachable?

Housing protests are spreading across Portugal, La Repubblica reports. According to Eurostat, Portugal has recorded the highest rise in house prices in Europe: between 2015 and 2025, prices rose by 180 percent, and they keep increasing now in the second half of 2026. Rents have also soared. Publico reports that "The cap on affordable rents has risen by more than 50% in some municipalities". The capital Lisbon is the most expensive city in the country in terms of rent. And with rent increases and growing inflation, anger among the population is growing. Dario de Noticias reports that "63 percent of Portuguese people have put projects on hold due to the rising cost of living". They are pausing health-related spending and even reducing meals. 

Next, in Germany, police have had to intervene because of a humanoid robot that allegedly sexually assaulted a teenage girl in Cologne, The Times reports. The 16-year-old girl was standing outside a burger restaurant when the machine approached her from behind and groped her. Its owner, also 16, livestreamed the offence on social media. The robot is a Chinese model that can be bought for around €5,000 in Germany. It can either be programmed to move in a certain way or manually controlled with a remote. The girl immediately told the police and the robot was confiscated. What happens next is uncertain, because this might be one of the first cases of its kind. 

We turn next to some science news. New research sheds light on how we can learn languages faster. The Guardian says that we need to "stop making sense". Research suggests that if we want to learn any language faster, we shouldn’t start with dry vocabulary and grammar, but focus on how the language sounds instead. And when we do listen to the language, we need to approach it as a whole new sound, instead of trying to make sense of it by comparing it to our native language. 

In other science news, The New York Times reports that worlds more habitable than Earth are out there. Life there might be even more abundant and sustainable than the one we have here. The only problem: they are outside our solar system. These planets are called "super-Earths" by scientists, and they orbit K-dwarf stars – orangey stars that are cooler and burn slower than our sun. Scientists simulated the light coming from these K-dwarf stars and found that some leaves grow faster under that type of light compared to our sun’s light. So what would life look like on these far-away planets? Scientists describe it as paradise: better weather, a smoother surface, water flowing everywhere and an abundance of plants and animals (or aliens, perhaps). 

Finally, after all that hard science, Cosmopolitan helps us with something harder to quantify: dating and relationships. It helps readers find out if they are dating a "loser". Cosmopolitan says that "even the brightest and the hottest of us have fallen victim" to dating a loser. The magazine explains how to spot loser behaviour and what to do to remedy it.

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