More than a third of the world’s population are estimated to become video gamers by 2021, enjoying the escape of playing on consoles or with others online. So was the World Health Organization right to classify “gaming addiction” as a disorder? Andrew Reid argues that chart-topping games such as Fortnite provide many positive benefits for players, including being part of something meaningful and exercising freedom of choice. It’s the real world that may need to up its game.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, appears to have taken another step towards concentrating his increasingly autocratic power. But as Alpaslan Ozerdem explains, the snap election that gave him a boost on Sunday also saw Erdoğan fail to secure a parliamentary majority, put an obstacle in way of the Kurdish peace process, and elevated a leading opposition figure.

The gulf between certain groups of feminists on ​how to organise the sex industry is deep and seemingly unbridgeable. Acknowledging just how complex an issue this is, Erin Sanders-McDonagh believes much of the evidence in favour of decriminalising sex work is at risk of being sidelined.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Neanderthals were a lot more advanced than we have historically given them credit for. We now know they actually cared for the vulnerable, buried their dead and even produced art. Annemieke Milks takes a look at new research that shows their hunting skills may also have been more sophisticated than we first thought.

And we say a big welcome to the Spanish edition of The Conversation, which began publishing yesterday. Our new colleagues in Madrid are commissioning a stream of content from leading academics in the Spanish-speaking world, some of which will be translated into English and used across the international network.

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