The Great Barrier Reef is a natural wonder, home to a quarter of all species in the world's oceans, and a UNESCO World Heritage site. And Australia coal boom is slowly killing it reports Samiha Shafy for Spiegel Online.

John Gaffney for berfrois on the François Hollande government's reign so far: "Only a year into his five year term, François Hollande is close to becoming a lame-duck, if not a dead-duck, President."

A New York Times Op-Doc about Chinese blogger Zhang Shihe, aka 'Tiger Temple'. Every summer, Tiger Temple rides his bicycle through rural China, recording what he sees around him.

Fares Akram reports for the New York Times on KFC smuggled into Gaza by tunnel: "The French fries arrive soggy, the chicken having long since lost its crunch."

Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf gives 7 reasons for the climate chaos we find ourselves in: Reason #1, our entire civilization is built on fossil fuels.

Efraim Halevy for Foreign Affairs on Israel's relationship with Syria: "Israel knows one important thing about the Assads: for the past 40 years, they have managed to preserve some form of calm along the border."

The Globe and Mail's Greg McArthur on the "web of illicit payments" construction giant SNC-Lavalin made to government officials in Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Uganda and elsewhere to secure contracts.

Alexandra Fuller for National Geographic on oppression in Mugabe's Zimbabwe: "In theory, freedom of speech is protected. In practice, a series of imaginatively broad laws attempt to ensure silence."

Ahmed Rashid for the New York Review of Books on the many challenges Nawaz Sharif's new government will face: the economy, the army, the Taliban, other militants, nervous minorities, India, Afghanistan, and the U.S.

Raghu Karnad for n + 1 on the fight for gay rights in India: "The curious position of queer rights in India is this: although it is opposed, it has no clear opponent...the movement battles only against a thick gas of taboo."

Tom Nichols for the Toronto Star points to a reason for the inaction on Syria – partisanship in Washington: "At this point, U.S. foreign policy elites can no longer figure out who should be advocating which policies in Syria."

From the Arctic to the Albert oil sands to Dubai, things ain't what they used to be. And how better to see those dramatic changes than from space. Time and Google team up to bring you Timelapse.

The CBC reports that Canada is abandoning research into how to turn methane hydrates into a new source of energy, just as that research was beginning to see results.

Robert D. Kaplan for The Atlantic on the legacy of Henry Kissinger: "[His] classical realism—as expressed in both his books and his statecraft—is emotionally unsatisfying but analytically timeless."

Alexander Stille for the New Yorker on the aftermath of the Italian election that promised change and ended with a government that "looks very much like those that came before it."