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  • Wildfire kills two people in Spain amid European heat wave

    Wildfire kills two people in Spain amid European heat wave

    BARCELONA, Spain — A relentless European heat wave helped fuel a deadly wildfire in Spain while the European Union presented plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under scorching temperatures on Wednesday.

    The blaze that broke out late on Tuesday created an enormous thick plume of ash and smoke that reached 14,000 meters (45,000 feet) of altitude, making it the largest registered by firefighters in Catalonia, a northeastern region of Spain.

    Two farmers were killed while apparently trying to flee in a vehicle, local authorities said Wednesday.

    Firefighters said that the fire spread at 28 kph (17 mph) at one point as it consumed 6,500 hectares (16,000 acres) mostly of grain fields, making it one of the fastest fires registered in Europe.

    “Wildfires today are not like they were before,” Salvador Illa, the regional president of Catalonia, said. “These are extremely dangerous. From the very first moment, it was considered to be beyond the capacity of extinction. I mean that not even with two or three times the number of firefighters, they have told me, it would have been possible to put out.”

    Firefighters credited a rainstorm later on Tuesday for having “quickly changed the situation and helped speed up getting the fire stabilized.”

    Two of the 500 firefighters who deployed needed treatment at a local hospital for their injuries. Some 14,000 residents were ordered to stay indoors for several hours on Tuesday night.

    More hot weather is expected on Wednesday with temperatures in the Lleida region forecast to reach a high of 39 C (102 F).

    The European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts said that it was closely monitoring the abnormally hot temperatures. Weather experts link the heat wave to climate change.

    As much of Europe was scorched by torrid weather, the European Commission unveiled proposals to reduce emissions by 90% by 2040 as the 27-nation bloc aims to be fully carbon-neutral by 2050.

    “We are finally here on a very hot day, and some would call that very timely,” Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told reporters in Brussels.

    The proposals include allowing businesses to use international carbon credits to offset their emissions. Under the plan, international carbon credits could be used — starting in 2036 and limited to 3% of benchmark 1990 EU emissions — to reach the 2040 emission reduction target.

    The proposals have to be approved by the EU’s 27 member states.

    More than two-thirds of the severest heat waves in Europe registered since 1950 have occurred since 2000, the World Meteorological Organization says.

    After Spain already set a record for June air temperatures, Spanish port authorities recorded the hottest ever water temperature readings for June in both the Mediterranean and the part of the Atlantic nearest to France.

    Experts say higher surface temperatures are bad for sea life and make for warmer nights on shore.

    “A much warmer sea around us contributes to the nights not cooling down, which is detrimental to people’s rest,” Manuel Vargas, researcher at the Oceanographic Center of Malaga, told The Associated Press.

    Also in Spain’s southern city of Malaga, the international Red Cross set up an air-conditioned “climate refuge” to help residents. The Spanish Red Cross was itself providing an “assisted bathing service” to help people with reduced mobility to cool down in waters at the beach.

    Heat alerts were issued for 17 Italian cities Wednesday. The corresponding surge in air conditioning was straining the electric grid and causing periodic blackouts. On Tuesday, parts of Florence’s historic center had a blackout following a surge in electricity use, energy company Enel said.

    Italy’s labor ministry, meanwhile, summoned union representatives to a meeting Wednesday to finalize a protocol on protecting farm, construction and other workers who labor outdoors from heat exposure. This came after a construction worker died in Bologna this week.

    On Tuesday, Catholic bishops from Asia, Africa and Latin America met in the Vatican to demand climate justice for the parts of the world most affected by rising temperatures.

    France’s national weather agency kept four departments under red alert on Wednesday after temperatures exceeded 40 C (104 F) in many towns.

    The summit of Paris’ iconic Eiffel Tower remained closed until Thursday for “everyone’s comfort and safety.”

    In Switzerland, one of the two reactors at the Beznau nuclear power plant was shut down as part of efforts to prevent excessive warming of the Aare River, so as not to further burden wildlife and the overall ecosystem in already hot weather, operator Axpo said.

    Hundreds of people in the central town of Soest cooled down on a baking-hot Tuesday night by taking on the local fire brigade in a water fight. Townsfolk were armed with water guns, the first responders with fire hoses.

    ___

    Michael Corder in The Hague, Samuel Petrequin in Paris, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Nicole Winfield in Rome and Teresa Medrano in Madrid contributed.

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  • Any animals standing within 1,500km of the impact would have been instantly vaporised: 10 terrible times to be alive

    Any animals standing within 1,500km of the impact would have been instantly vaporised: 10 terrible times to be alive

    It’s easy to think, given the current geopolitical state of the world, that we’re living through an especially terrible time. Add to that the possibility that Earth may be undergoing its sixth mass extinction and it’s perhaps justified to conclude that the 21st century is the worst time period ever.

    While this may be the case by some definitions, there’s no escaping the fact that we, as a species, have it better than our ancestors and those that came before them ever did. For the majority of Earth’s history, life has simply been a matter of survival. Let’s take a look at some times when staying alive was particularly difficult…

    10 terrible times to be alive

    The time the ocean lost almost all its oxygen

    The Middle Cretaceous may have been a particularly prosperous time for life on land, but under the waves a geochemical storm was slowly brewing – one that would eventually rob the oceans of oxygen and cause the extinction of more than 25% of marine invertebrates, as well as one of the most iconic marine reptiles of the Mesozoic Era, ichthyosaurs.

    This calamitous event is known as the Cenomanian-Turonian boundary event and it’s widely considered to be the most recent, truly global oceanic anoxia event in Earth’s history. It happened roughly 94 million years ago following the eruption of a series of underwater volcanoes in the newly formed Atlantic Ocean. 

    These eruptions released nearly 4 million cubic kilometres of lava (enough to fill the Mediterranean Sea) and enough CO₂ to raise global temperatures by more than 5°C. At the equator during this time, water temperatures exceeded 42°C, which is warmer than those typically experienced in a hot tub! Even water temperatures at the poles were a balmy 20°C.

    This period also witnessed massive plankton blooms – caused by an increase in dissolved nutrients as a result of increased rock weathering. When this plankton died it was eaten by bacteria, which consumed lots of dissolved oxygen from the water column. 

    For more than half-a-million-years, the deeper levels of the world’s oceans were devoid of oxygen, making them inhospitable to almost all forms of life.

    The time a tsunami (may have) submerged part of Europe

    Doggerland: Credit Caroline May

    Not too long ago (around 10,000 years), a land bridge known as Doggerland connected the east coast of the UK to the Netherlands, northwest Germany, and the Danish peninsula of Jutland.

    This lowland area was once inhabited by mammoths, cave lions, sabretooth tigers, and several other iconic ice age animals. It was also home to roaming bands of hunter gatherers, as evidenced by the discovery of several artifacts dredged up during trawling missions in the North Sea – the most famous being a 20cm-long harpoon carved from a deer’s antler.

    For our ancestors, Doggerland provided some of the continent’s richest hunting grounds, not to mention a bountiful supply of freshwater. However, by 8,000 years ago it had completely disappeared beneath the waves.

    What happened to Doggerland is controversial. Some claim it was suddenly submerged by a tsunami triggered by an underwater landslide just off the coast of Norway 8,200 years ago, while others think it was slowly consumed by rising sea levels.

    In reality, it was likely a combination of both. A 2020 study put forward evidence to suggest that Doggerland had already reduced dramatically in size (as a result of rising sea levels) by the time the tsunami hit. Regardless, anyone who lived in Doggerland 8,200 years ago would have probably given everything they had to be anywhere else.

    The time when insects were massive

    Arthropleura

    If insects make your skin crawl, then the Carboniferous Period (359 to 299 million years ago) would probably be your idea of hell on Earth. This is a period often referred to as the ‘Age of Giant Insects’, and for good reason – during the Carboniferous, Earth was ruled by bugs many times bigger than any alive today.

    The 2m-long, double-duvet sized Arthropleura was the largest of the Carboniferous’ giant bugs. It’s distantly related to today’s millipedes and like its living relatives it also subsisted on a diet of decaying plants and animals. There was also a dragonfly-like insect known as Meganeura that, with a 75cm-wide wingspan, was roughly the same size as a sparrowhawk.

    It’s often said that bugs achieved gigantism during the Carboniferous as a result of increased levels of oxygen in the atmosphere, and while this may be true to some degree it’s more likely they grew so large in response to a lack of competition from vertebrates. At this time, vertebrates were still relatively small and largely confined to environments close to water.

    As a group, vertebrates were dwarfed and outnumbered by bugs during the Carboniferous, but fast forward a few million years to the Permian Period (299 to 252 million years ago) and they soon emerged as the most dominant forms of life on land. The Permian was a period of great diversification for vertebrates. However, while it may have been evolutionary prosperous for some groups, it ended in disaster for others – but more on that later.

    The time fungi towered over everything else

    The first kind of life to really gain a foothold on land wasn’t plants, but fungi. The first fungi were relatively small, but they soon paved the way for giants such as Prototaxites. This tree-like organism lived roughly 400 million years ago and formed huge spires that measured up to 1m in diameter and reached heights of more than 8m.

    It’s unclear exactly what Prototaxites was; it may have been a fungus, or it may belong to a long-lost group of lichens. Whatever its affinities, Prototaxites was by far the largest land-dwelling organism of its time and towered over everything that attempted to grow in its shadows.

    Prototaxites, along with many other early types of fungi, are thought to have been saprotrophic. This is a process whereby fungi release digestive enzymes that break down organic matter, allowing them to extract nutrients from the material they’re growing on. These enzymes are so powerful that, over time, they can break down rock and form fertile soils. It’s this process that researchers think prepared Earth’s surface for the vascular plants that emerged during Prototaxites’ reign

    So, why was this a particularly terrible time to be alive? Well, without large networks of plants producing oxygen, levels of it in the atmosphere were a lot lower than they are today. There was also very little to eat, especially if you weren’t a fan of mushrooms.

    The time a pandemic lasted 18 million years

    From the Early Oligocene (33 million years ago) to the Early Miocene (15 million years ago), an ancient virus known as ERV-Fc plagued dozens of different species of mammals, from dolphins to great apes. The inactive fragments of this virus still live on in many mammals today, including us, and it’s the study of these fragments that have allowed scientists to learn more about it.

    ERV-Fc is what’s known as an endogenous retrovirus – a type of virus that infects cells and inserts itself into its host’s DNA. When this happens in reproductive cells, the viral sequence can be passed from parent to offspring. ERVs are very common in the genomes of vertebrates and are estimated to make up nearly 8% of our own genome.

    A 2016 study revealed that ERV-Fc independently infected many different groups of mammals, rather than a single shared ancestor. This study also found evidence to suggest that the virus jumped species more than 20 times over the course of an 18-million-year-long pandemic that spread across all continents besides Australia and Antarctica.

    It’s unclear exactly how deadly ERV-Fc was, but based on its structure it’s understood to be part of a group of viruses known as gammaretroviruses. Today, this group includes the murine leukemia virus (MuLV) in mice and feline leukemia virus in cats (FeLV), both of which are known to cause cancer.

    The time when Earth was ruled by giants

    The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) may be the largest animal to have ever lived, but on average animals alive today are a lot smaller than those that lived during parts of prehistory.

    The Late Jurassic (162 to 143 million years ago) is a period that’s particularly renowned for its giants. It’s often referred to as the ‘Golden Age’ of not only dinosaurs, but pterosaurs and marine reptiles too – wherever you lived during the Late Jurassic, be it on land, in the sky, or in the oceans, a giant, hungry reptile was never too far away.

    Some of the largest dinosaurs of the time lived in North America and are known from fossils uncovered from the world famous Morrison Formation. This expansive, dinosaur-bearing rock formation has yielded more than 10 different meat-eating theropods, all of them large enough to hunt human-sized animals.

    The king amongst these theropods wasn’t T.rex (that particular species appeared in the Late Cretaceous around 70 million years later), rather Allosaurus – a smaller but arguably more belligerent predator that’s thought to have hunted in packs and been capable of bringing down giant, long-necked dinosaurs known as sauropods. These plant-eating sauropods would have been deadly too, crushing anything unlucky enough to get caught under their feet. 

    The Late Jurassic may have been a great time to be a giant, but for any animal smaller than a Volkswagen Beetle it would have been particularly terrible.

    The time it rained for 2 million years

    The Triassic (252 to 201 million years ago) is widely regarded as one of the hottest and driest periods in Earth’s history. However, during this 51-million-year-long period, there was a 2-million-year-long episode when it rained pretty much non-stop.

    This is known as the Carnian Pluvial Episode (CPE) and it started roughly 234 million years ago. It’s evidenced by thick layers of river rocks, sediments from giant lakes, and evidence of coal swamps sandwiched in between layers of drier rocks more traditionally associated with the Triassic, such as red sandstones. These peculiar layers are signs of increased rainfall and they’re found all over the world, hinting at a global climate shift.

    Some estimates suggest that rainfall quadrupled over this period and as much as 1,400mm of rain was dumped every year – that’s how much a temperate rainforest gets today, but this would have fallen across the entire supercontinent of Pangea!

    This massive amount of rain had a profound impact on the animals that lived during the Middle Triassic, particularly the dinosaurs. In rocks dated to the start of the CPE, dinosaurs make up just 5% of the fossils of terrestrial vertebrates. In rocks dated to the end of this episode, they comprise more than 90%.

    The dinosaurs’ distant relatives, the crocodile-line archosaurs, didn’t relish the rain quite as much, which is ironic considering the watery habitats their descendants live in today. They experienced huge losses at this time and never again reached the diversity they had during the Early Triassic.

    The time an asteroid destroyed a dynasty overnight

    Since the emergence of animals some 800 million years ago, Earth has witnessed five major mass extinctions – together these are known as the ‘Big Five’. 

    The event that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago wasn’t the most destructive of the five – that title goes to an event discussed later – but it is the one that wiped out entire families of animals and plants in a matter of days, rather than over the course of millennia.

    This event, known as the K-Pg mass extinction, was caused by the impact of a giant, 15km-wide asteroid that made landfall in what is now the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Based on fish bones found in the impact’s ejecta layer, it’s thought the impact may have taken place during spring.

    The effects of the impact were catastrophic; any animals (or plants) standing within 1,500km at the time of the impact would have been instantly vaporised. Those standing further away weren’t exactly safe and would have arguably faced an even more painful death, being melted by firestorms, catapulted by hurricane-force winds, crushed by blazing debris, or simply suffocated by the poisonous air.

    It’s estimated that the energy released during the impact was equivalent to 10 billion Hiroshima bombs.

    There were some plucky animals that survived this ‘worst day ever’, including our mammalian ancestors, but when the fires finally burnt themselves out and the dust clouds settled, as many as 75% of species on Earth had disappeared.

    The time when humans were prey

    We may be firmly at the top of the food chain today, but for the majority of our existence we were prey for many larger, toothier predators. 

    While they’re not considered a member of our genus (Homo), australopithecines are often referred to as ‘humans’, or at least incredibly close relatives. Later undisputed human species include Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, and – of course – Homo sapiens. These early humans lived alongside some of prehistory’s most terrifying animals, including sabretooth tigers, giant short-faced bears, and baby-eating eagles.

    There’s lots of evidence to suggest that early humans were prey for such animals. The most famous example is the 2.8-million-year-old Taung Child – a fossilised skull of a young Australopithecus africanus that bears a puncture wound in each of its eye sockets. These wounds match those made by the talons of a crowned eagle, suggesting the child was killed and carried off by an airborne predator.

    There’s gruesome evidence of our distant relatives being hunted by big cats too – the remains of a female Paranthropus robustus found in a cave in South Africa show signs of having been bitten and gnawed on by a leopard.

    As humans got larger and, crucially, smarter, it’s likely that more and more predators stopped viewing them as prey. That said, we shouldn’t get too complacent; even today there are animals that, if hungry enough, will target humans, such as tigers, polar bears, and crocodiles.

    The time nearly everything died

    Known fittingly as the ‘Great Dying’, the End-Permian mass extinction is the third of Earth’s ‘Big Five’ and – in terms of how many species were wiped out as a result – the most destructive. This era-defining event almost ended life on Earth entirely and by some estimations may have consigned as many as 90% of species to extinction!

    The impacts of this event were destructive on land, but they were truly cataclysmic in the oceans where entire ecosystems collapsed, never to be seen again. Some of the most diverse groups in preceding periods, such as eurypterids, trilobites, and blastoids, were completely eradicated during this event. Others lost more than 95% of their species (e.g. brachiopods, crinoids, and ammonites) and only narrowly made it through to the following period, the Triassic.

    The ‘Great Dying’ is widely considered to have been caused by the eruption of a huge volcanic system that lay under what is now Siberia, Russia. This eruption released huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which elevated global temperatures and acidified the planet’s oceans. This injection of greenhouse gases raised levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere from 400 ppm to 2,500 ppm. To put that into perspective, current CO₂ levels measure ~430 ppm.

    The ‘Great Dying’ didn’t happen overnight like the extinction event that claimed the lives of the dinosaurs; instead it lasted for nearly 50,000 years and may have taken place in several distinct pulses. Staying alive during this time would have been particularly difficult, though it wasn’t impossible and our existence today is proof that some resilient animals made it through. 

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  • The Right Way to Step Down as CEO

    The Right Way to Step Down as CEO

    HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Leadership, case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts—hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you.

    When a CEO steps down, it can trigger a domino effect of chaos. Boards—often caught off guard—have to jumpstart the search for a successor. And in the process, they sometimes exclude the departing CEO from the search or transition—leading to a loss of institutional knowledge and broken trust. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

    Leadership advisors Rebecca Slan Jerusalim and Navio Kwok say the relationship between a board and CEO can make or break the changing of the guard. They spoke to Curt Nickisch on HBR IdeaCast in 2024 about best practices for CEO transitions.

    CURT NICKISCH: Rebecca and Navio, welcome.

    REBECCA SLAN JERUSALIM: Thank you. We’re thrilled to be here.

    NAVIO KWOK: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

    CURT NICKISCH: Obviously, the CEO transition is super important to a company. Is that importance something that means that people really give it a lot of attention and do it right, or that there’s so much pressure to do it right that people kind of fumble it as they try to manage it well?

    REBECCA SLAN JERUSALIM: Well, I would say there’s tons of work out there looking at the succession process, what parts of the succession process are really critical, and particularly even around CEO succession. What is the right step and cadence to this? What is the board’s involvement? What role does the incoming CEO play?

    And what hasn’t been studied or looked at or really understood is the experience of that person who’s so pivotal to the organization; the person who has been at the helm of the organization, setting the strategy, managing the strategy, creating the organizational culture. How does that person’s experience in transitioning out of the role really impact the organization, the succession experience, as we are really very much focused on the incoming CEO?

    NAVIO KWOK: I think we often also see that there’s a bit of this tension between how urgent something is and how important it needs to be. And so CEO succession for a board and possibly the top team as well is something that is extremely important, but not very urgent, because these decisions tend to happen well in advance unless there was an emergency situation. And so what a board will do is they’re going to focus on the day-to-day, and naturally, non-urgent important things are always going to get pushed off, and I would bucket succession in that category, and as a result, it’s not always top of mind.

    CURT NICKISCH: And then it becomes top of mind very quickly often. In your research, you found that 83% of CEO successions were initiated by the CEO themselves, which kind of surprised me a little bit. You kind of feel like these people are supposed to be in the hot seat and if they’re not performing, they’re out and we need to get somebody else in. And really, it’s kind of mostly largely on their timelines.

    NAVIO KWOK: Yeah. I had seen some research. I think they plotted the performance trajectories of CEOs, those that were performing well and those that weren’t, and then they kind of looked at whether or not they initiated succession or if they were forced out, and actually, that isn’t a strong predictor. So in recent years, the performance of the CEO doesn’t always have that direct contribution to when they step down. And so I think that plays into why mostly, we found in our sample, it’s CEO initiated and it aligns to what you can gather from public CEO data on at least why CEOs or why boards reference CEOs stepping down is it’s a retirement decision.

    REBECCA SLAN JERUSALIM: I would say we were also quite surprised at the number of CEOs who self-initiated the succession. I mean, if you go through any kind of board governance training, you really know that succession is supposed to be really top of mind and not a last minute decision in and around who will be the next successor, but this should be a real process around identifying early, building up the capabilities of internal successors and running through different scenarios to be able to put the right person in the role. And very much a good portion of our sample, and you referenced 83%, many of them self-initiated, and what we found was also fascinating was that they really surprised the board.

    CURT NICKISCH: Yeah. You had a story in the article of a board that met eight times to try to convince the CEO to stay when they needed to be spending that time on not trying to arm twist an unwilling executive to be unhappy longer, but go out and find the replacement.

    REBECCA SLAN JERUSALIM: And some of the reasons that CEOs were initiating the succession were reasons that the board could have and should have had better insight into long before the CEO made that declaration, so things like we talk about temporal reasons, age and tenure in role. Those are easy things that a board can have regular ongoing conversations with the CEO about.

    A couple of the other reasons CEOs announced their readiness for succession were really around, they saw that there were future needs of the organization that they couldn’t necessarily or shouldn’t necessarily be the ones delivering on. And they also recognized that they could potentially be a blocker to succession and that there were people ready or really should be in the process of being ready for that CEO role, and they didn’t want to block their opportunity.

    And so these are two things that really stood out to us because a lot of what has been written about CEO succession speaks to the ego that’s involved in being at the top of the house and not wanting to relinquish that seat for others. And in actual fact, there were some really important and different ideas that came through these conversations that boards should really be talking to the CEOs about and not worried to the same extent that it is purely ego-driven or a hold on power that is keeping these CEOs in place.

    CURT NICKISCH: Yeah, no, I suppose stories of people being CEOs, being forced out, burning it all as they go, right, those are big things that scare boards and scare a lot of people, but it’s probably few and far between when it’s really somebody who just says, “It’s time. I’m getting tired,” right?

    REBECCA SLAN JERUSALIM: They probably make the news more.

    CURT NICKISCH: You’ve outlined the ways that they should be more proactive before this news comes. Once the news comes, what mistakes do you see boards make at that point?

    NAVIO KWOK: One that comes out through that research is the level of CEOs’ involvement in their own succession process. So in our research, we identified five things that they did all the way from just canvassing for candidates all the way to onboarding. And so if we leave aside onboarding, which most CEOs did have some degree of involvement there, we found nearly one in four CEOs were excluded from that process entirely. You know, leave it to us.

    We didn’t use this language in our paper, but it reminds me of the RACI framework when it comes to project management. You’ve got responsible, accountable, consulted and informed, and the board is accountable for succession because the board will be there when the old CEO steps down and new one comes in, but who’s responsible? I think we would say that it should be the outgoing CEO to some extent – more than one in four being excluded entirely. And there’s all these reasons we found why it’s very important actually for the organization.

    CURT NICKISCH: Well, it just stands to reason for any job, right? We’ve all left jobs and known that ideally when you leave a job, it’s a place that’s better than it was before you arrived. And it’s not just the hours of your time doing something that can be replaced, that it’s actually a stronger organization after you leave, but I don’t know, if you overlap with the person who’s replacing you to help train them, that that’s a very positive thing for an organization and it’s almost the same idea for CEOs, it’s just that it’s a lot trickier when you can only have one person in charge, but you go from one person to the next, so how do you handle that transition? So what do you tell CEOs that are in this position? What’s your advice for them?

    REBECCA SLAN JERUSALIM: Listen, ultimately, when done right, there is a role for them to play in the succession process, but that they do also have to recognize that they aren’t going to have full control. The control here will ebb and flow throughout the process. And for them, what the connection is that the control piece, we likened it to or we connected it to mattering, that they are so used to having such a tremendous impact on every decision that the organization makes, that not having the ability to have some control or impact here actually connects to their ability to feel like they matter, like they have value, like they have input. And when they’re not given that kind of opportunity to weigh in, there’s a deeper kind of psychological need in and around wanting to show that they still have some value here to add.

    CURT NICKISCH: It’s kind of an interesting dance, right? Should they offer information? Should they wait until they’re asked? What is the protocol there?

    REBECCA SLAN JERUSALIM: Much of that has to do with how they operate with the board in any other matter. One of the strongest findings that we found is the connection and the strength of relationships between the CEOs and boards were predictive, and I say predictive, predictive, air quotes, this was a qualitative study, not a causative exploration, but the strength of the relationship between the boards and the CEOs really impacted how the overall experience of the CEOs in the succession process.

    NAVIO KWOK: It’s like when you want to ask for a favor from someone in your network, it’s much more helpful and productive if you’ve had an existing relationship with them and then the request comes. But sometimes we have friends in our network where they only come to us when they need something. And that to me, what might be akin to a CEO board relationship, which is there’s quite a bit of a chasm between it, and so they’re only communicating when there are things that need to be discussed, and now you’ve got this big thing that we have to work with in theory together. It’s not the first time they’re meeting, but the relationship is so new and you’re trying to build this relationship at that very tricky point in time where there is so much risk even on a good day and a well-thought-out succession process.

    CURT NICKISCH: Well, it makes it sound like then it’s also incumbent on the outgoing CEO to be communicating with the board earlier so that it isn’t a surprise and that emotions don’t flare up when they do give that announcement.

    REBECCA SLAN JERUSALIM: That’s right. It should be a long ongoing conversation. And CEO succession should not be considered kind of a momentary or moment in time. It should be a years in the making, ongoing conversation between the CEO and the board and real identification and preparation of key successors along the way; should make the board feel confident that they’ve got optionality, that the CEO is on top of this and helping and developing these folks; that the board has visibility to them.

    And so when the CEO then announces their willingness and readiness for succession, the board should really feel like they’ve got a line of sight to who those high potentials and those potential candidates are, that they’ve been built up over the years, that they have clarity around what that profile looks like. And yes, there might be tweaks along the way, but it shouldn’t come as such a shock and surprise that this is happening.

    NAVIO KWOK: I think the implication too for any manager of a team or a leader in an organization is to always have a strong bench. We’re not expecting boards to be not surprised when a CEO says they want to step down. We’re not asking boards to not try and persuade and shift the timeline a little bit, but they should be prepared for that very inevitable outcome. And so for any leader or manager, you should have a deep bench. An example is the Vancouver Canucks were just in a playoff run.

    CURT NICKISCH: This is an NHL hockey team…

    NAVIO KWOK: Yes, NHL hockey team and the goalie was the back-up to the back-up. That was the one who ended up playing because the first goalie was injured and then something happened with the second goalie. So we’re thinking that all sports teams, sports team managers, they have an awareness of where they’re going to pull talent. Now, whether or not it comes to fruition like this case, it’s not always going to be a success story, but at least having an awareness of the key players that you can pull on when needed is very important and when it comes to CEOs, especially so because there is so much that is on their shoulders when they step into that role.

    CURT NICKISCH: What did your research find for the best practices for outgoing CEOs?

    NAVIO KWOK: I’ll share a story. One CEO said to more clearly demarcate their roles and responsibilities and the time at which one person was officially going to be enrolled. So this particular CEO had said they felt they were quite clear that, “I’m still CEO until a certain date, then you’re going to step in,” but it seemed to blur, and in fact, he could see the board members and certain top team members shift their allegiance to the new individual, and so there’s a bit of almost encroaching of responsibilities. So being more clearly demarcating, whose responsibility is going to stop and start when that was fairly notable, and I would say, Rebecca, it’s probably part of the transition phase of succession.

    REBECCA SLAN JERUSALIM: Yeah, I would say two related things. One is many of them talked about taking their successor with them to any meetings, external meetings, vendors, suppliers, board meetings, et cetera, so that they could really get the benefit of the outgoing CEOs’ relationships and the tie to whatever relationship they were fostering.

    This clarity and demarcating roles and responsibilities is true for the board with the CEO and really laying out what that transition plan should be and look like, what the timeline is, what the responsibilities are. And some of them even talked about, and few, but some of them did talk about the board having a role in that being their end of the day performance review of how much have you helped support your successor in transitioning.

    CURT NICKISCH: Now, no matter how clear the role is, it’s still hard, right? You may have a very clearly demarcated when the other person takes over, but then they take over and their priorities are different. The things that you’ve really thought are important as CEO all of a sudden are maybe lower down on the priority list. Even though you want to leave the role, to see somebody else do things differently, there’s got to be tough emotions there.

    REBECCA SLAN JERUSALIM: There is a tremendous amount of emotion throughout the entirety of this process. A real roller coaster, again, buffered by the strong trusting relationship with the board. But I’ll give you a sense of what that roller coaster looked like. The emotions, the outgoing CEOs were very much managing their own emotions as well as the board’s emotions, the senior team’s emotions as well.

    Prior to announcing that the succession process, it can be quite lonely for CEOs, for outgoing CEOs, knowing that they will at some point exiting that role. Lonely, I say, because they’re not necessarily able to share the news that they will be finding a successor initially, and there’s not that many people or places that they can turn to share some of that emotion. It can feel dishonest in some way.

    But post-announcement, there can be excitement about handing over to the next successor. We heard stories of grief and distress in giving up the job. There can be a frustration with lack of involvement. And Navio shared some stories about the senior team kind of turning away from the outgoing CEO, even if they were still in the seat.

    CURT NICKISCH: Sort of a lame duck kind of response?

    REBECCA SLAN JERUSALIM: That’s right. They can feel guilty if they’re blamed for this process going poorly. One of the CEOs who we spoke to even talked about the stages of grief having to give up that seat, and this CEO actually didn’t fully exit from the organization, stayed on in an executive chair role, and so was still tied to the organization in some way, and yet still likened the experience of moving out of that role – it was his decision – but moving out of that role and still feeling like this was a tremendous emotional impact.

    And so when asked about, “How do you deal with that? How do you recognize that?”, he said even just naming the experience and being aware or cognizant that this could and very likely that this roller coaster of emotions is present and can impact you – leaning into that a little bit more. We’re kind of taught there’s no emotions in the boardroom, but in actual fact, this is a very real human experience.

    CURT NICKISCH: Personal, yeah.

    REBECCA SLAN JERUSALIM: It’s very personal. And so it’s really critical to have good trusted advisors to talk through that experience, to recognize that it may very easily happen and have some plan around how you’re going to manage that kind of feeling and emotion.

    NAVIO KWOK: Yeah. I want to give my wife Alana credit for this. She’s a clinical psychologist in training. She says, “name it to tame it,” with regards to emotions, so just simply being able to have a label for it is actually quite impactful in understanding what it is. And emotions in general I think especially in business, we talk about how important emotional intelligence is, but we don’t actually create or facilitate an environment where people are comfortable to talk about their emotions, and so it’s a little paradoxical to expect someone to have that skill, but there’s no opportunity to really kind of practice it.

    And then when there’s something as major as a succession when you probably should be fully ready to utilize those skills, well, you never had any opportunity to practice up until that point, and we’re asking the CEO that they actually can’t talk about at all. So it’s this weird dynamic they have to deal with.

    With that CEO that Rebecca had just mentioned too, he raised a good point that you might want to be aware of just what your triggers are, and you might not know what they are until you see them. So for that individual, what really struck them initially was when their office was no longer in the center of their building. So it was when they were more on the periphery physically, that’s when he felt, “Okay, this is real. This is significant and I’m the old guard leaving.”

    So I think that speaks to an earlier question you had about just what a CEO can do, the outgoing CEO and the incoming CEO, is being aware of the symbolic nature of executive leadership at the top. And so this CEO actually made a concerted effort to move his office away from the center, and still he was hurt. That symbolic nature is very important, and it can both help people support the incoming CEO and sometimes unexpectedly can make it very real for the outgoing CEO that it’s very real and it’s time for you to step down.

    CURT NICKISCH: Yeah. You’ve gone from being a very, very important person; it’s a part of your identity, it’s a big identity change.

    REBECCA SLAN JERUSALIM: It’s interesting you call that out. One of the key questions that we asked our participants is, is CEO something you do or did or something you are? And it’s very hard at the top of the house to really be able to separate an identity. These CEO jobs are 24 hours, seven days a week. You’re all in. And when we asked that question, there was kind of a rough split. 47% said that it is something that they did, and 43% said it was something that they were. The rest were kind of a bit of both.

    And that’s telling. I mean, even for the folks who had what we would say very low ego, kind of salt of the earth, very humble folks who would describe their role as CEO at the bottom of the organization, it was still a very personally challenging roller coaster experience to navigate. And many of them felt it was really helpful to have the reflection, the time to reflect on that experience, because very few people actually, as you’re going through it, you’re not taking the time to reflect on it.

    And then you’ve left the role and there’s very little that people want to know and understand of your experience through that, but yet it was helpful to both understand and then for them in their next role, iteration, whether it’s as another CEO or on a board, to actually have really strong sentiment and feeling about how this should go and what feels right beyond the specific governance of it was helpful and impactful for them.

    CURT NICKISCH: What are some of the best lessons here for other executives or really anybody leaving a job and handing it over to somebody else that you think we all can learn from?

    NAVIO KWOK: I’d say relevant even well before you’re leaving a job is to not fully tie your identity to either your job or a role. I think that has particular implications with AI and its potential risk of displacing certain workers and at a minimum, changing the job that they’re doing in ways that we can’t necessarily forecast.

    So Microsoft and LinkedIn came out with a work trends report just very recently, and they found that on LinkedIn’s fastest growing jobs in the U.S., many of them, I think maybe the number was two-thirds, weren’t in existence 20 years ago, so you don’t even actually know what job you might do in the future. And so if you tie your identity and sense of self to what you’re doing right now in the organization you’re in, it’s going to make that process of letting go, stepping down or changing jobs much more difficult.

    So I’m not saying don’t tie it to it, but I’m saying consider it a little bit differently. So what do you tie it to?

    And so I read a story in a book by Dan and Chip Heath, they’re brothers, one of them at least is with Stanford, and they shared a story of Floyd Lee, who was a retired Marine Corps and Army chef. He was 25 years in service, had retired, then the Iraq war happened, so he actually re-enlisted as a chef to help out. And typically, army food is very bland, and the mess hall he was leading was pristine food. Things were beautiful, food tasted great, and people would come from outside of that mess hall on weekends to eat his food. And he said for him, it’s not that he’s in charge of food, he’s in charge of morale.

    And so if you align your identity to that kind of message for you and your role, I’m in charge of morale, then if for whatever reason you can’t be a chef anymore, there are still other ways in which you can satisfy that personal value and need of being in charge of morale. But if you’re tied exclusively to being a chef, an army chef for that individual in particular, then it makes stepping down very hard if that job no longer exists in the future.

    REBECCA SLAN JERUSALIM: I would just add, and we asked this of some of the CEOs, what kind of advice would you have for folks? Part of it is like Navio mentioned, finding your intrinsic purpose. What is the value that you want to add? Where do you get the most joy? Many of the CEOs in our sample did not step down and retire. They went on to do other things.

    There was also this question of avoiding just creating some busy work because you’re kind of worried you’ve got such a full work life and many can step on wanting to keep that pace up, not recognizing that without true planning and recognizing what next – they’re very strategic in their work life, but not very strategic in planning their personal life outside of this key role. And so thinking about that, having regular conversations, planning for it before the last day is really important.

    We also heard about spouse and family renegotiations. What? You’re around now more? What does this look like? Or we said we would travel and now you’ve kind of thrown yourself into all this other-

    CURT NICKISCH: I don’t know you! Yeah.

    REBECCA SLAN JERUSALIM: Yeah. Board work, busy work. So there’s some renegotiation that needs to happen as well, but it does go hand in hand with really purposely thinking about and planning for that next stage.

    CURT NICKISCH: Rebecca and Navio, thanks so much for coming on the show to share your research and to talk about this really important transition.

    NAVIO KWOK: Thank you. It was a pleasure.

    REBECCA SLAN JERUSALIM: Thanks for having us.

    HANNAH BATES:  That was Rebecca Slan-Jerusalim and Navio Kwok of the executive search and leadership advisory firm, Russell Reynolds Associates—in conversation with Curt Nickisch on HBR IdeaCast. Jerusalim and Kwok wrote the HBR article, “The Vital role of the Outgoing CEO.”

    We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about leadership from Harvard Business Review. If you found wthis episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review.

    When you’re ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world’s top business and management experts, find it all at HBR.org.

    This episode was produced by Mary Dooe and Me, Hannah Bates. Curt Nickisch is our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Maureen Hoch, Rob Eckhardt, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.

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  • Process of compulsory registration for Hajj 2026 continuing – RADIO PAKISTAN

    1. Process of compulsory registration for Hajj 2026 continuing  RADIO PAKISTAN
    2. Pilgrims unable to perform Haj to get full refund  Dawn
    3. Hajj 2026: Govt sets July 9 deadline for mandatory registration of pilgrims  Dunya News
    4. 42,000 pilgrims to return to Pakistan on July 2: PIA  Samaa TV
    5. Senate body discusses plight of 67,000 intending pilgrims who could not perform Hajj  Geo.tv

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  • AJK judge arrested for defying Supreme Court order in drug case

    AJK judge arrested for defying Supreme Court order in drug case



    Pakistan


    Judge Imtiaz jailed for releasing narcotics dealer despite top court ruling






    (Web Desk) – The police in Haveli, Kahuta (Azad Jammu and Kashmir) on Wednesday arrested Sessions Judge Raja Imtiaz Ahmad for unlawfully ordering the release of a narcotics dealer, in defiance of a Supreme Court directive.

    The Supreme Court of AJK, led by Chief Justice Raja Saeed Akram Khan, sentenced Judge Imtiaz to three days in jail for contempt of court.

    Judge Imtiaz, serving at the Anti-Narcotics Court in Haveli, had released Raja Dilawar Khan—arrested for possessing a large quantity of heroin—on February 16, 2023. This release came despite a clear Supreme Court ruling rejecting bail and instructing a trial decision within six months.

    Dilawar, originally denied bail by the lower, high, and supreme courts, fled abroad shortly after his release. At the time, his appeal was still pending, and the SC had explicitly directed that any new bail plea be presented to the top court only.

    More to read: SC declares PTI ineligible for reserved seats, upholds review petitions

    Following these events, Judge Imtiaz was suspended a month ago by order of the SC, and a formal inquiry was launched into his conduct. 

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    var i = Math.floor(r_text.length * Math.random());
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  • Queensland Reds 12-52 British and Irish Lions: Tourists score eight tries in Brisbane

    Queensland Reds 12-52 British and Irish Lions: Tourists score eight tries in Brisbane

    Like last weekend in Perth, the Lions toiled in the early exchanges, the Reds setting about them with a vengeance, the outstanding centre Hunter Paisami leading the charge.

    The Lions grew into the game and completely bossed from late in the first half, but they had their issues before the floodgates opened.

    The tourists were wasteful, failing to find their range and dropping ball left, right and centre.

    There was the old chestnut of a botched restart reception; there were forced passes and hesitant defence. It wasn’t great. They knocked on eight times to the Reds’ one in the opening 40 minutes, some of them with the hosts struggling to hold them out.

    First blood went to the Reds, a bust through the Lions midfield by Paisami giving them field position, some heavy carries taking them deeper still. When the line beckoned, Toomaga-Allen lunged and scored.

    Harry McLaughlin-Phillips banged over the extras and the Suncorp rocked to the sound of Reds on the march.

    The Lions responded when Daly put Freeman over and Russell tied it up with the conversion, but it was not a cue for the Lions to take control.

    Rather, it was the precursor for another Reds try, sparked by Porter getting done on the floor. Paisami was involved again before Kalani Thomas’ grubber kick for Josh Flook down the left.

    Van der Merwe hesitated in dealing with the bouncing ball and Flook stole in – 12-7 to the Reds.

    The imperfections, and perhaps desperation, in the Lions game was clear with a couple of missed opportunities, but they eventually started to make stuff stick.

    Porter drove over after a close-range tap penalty from his Leinster and Ireland front-row pal Ronan Kelleher. Russell converted.

    Next, Van der Merwe finished off a terrific move in the corner with the help of Ollie Chessum and Jack Conan. Russell launched the conversion from somewhere close to Caxton Street. A pearler.

    At the break, the Lions led 21-12. Could have been better, could have been worse.

    It improved early in the new half when smart work from Jamison Gibson-Park drew the heat and then slipped an inside pass for Itoje to crash over.

    Russell, who could have kicked them over with his eyes closed, did it again – 28-12 Lions. Getting there.

    Farrell made big changes at that point, replacing his front-row and his half-backs.

    Not many fireworks from the Russell-Gibson-Park axis but more than enough to get excited about.

    The rest is a sea of red. Morgan, doing his mightiest to make a statement, which he did, went over from an Alex Mitchell pass. The Lions were now playing with an intensity that the Reds could not deal with.

    Freeman got a second, with Morgan heavily involved at the start of that play, then Jones gathered a daft chip ahead from Tim Ryan and ran more than half the length of pitch to score.

    A final try came in the last breath, Ringrose scampering over to bring up the half-century.

    It was a pleasing night’s work for the Lions, but the sight of Daly in pain in the aftermath was a troubling one.

    Like last weekend with Tomos Williams, the Lions are sweating on a medical call.

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  • Sandvik wins major mining equipment order in Mongolia

    Sandvik has received a major underground mining equipment order from Oyu Tolgoi LLC, to be used at the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine in Mongolia’s South Gobi Desert. The order is valued at approximately SEK 270 million and was booked in the second quarter, 2025.

    The order includes loaders and trucks, and deliveries are expected to begin in October 2025 and continue through November 2026. Oyu Tolgoi, one of the world’s largest known copper-gold deposits, is jointly owned by Rio Tinto and the Government of Mongolia.

    “Sandvik loaders and trucks have consistently delivered industry-leading performance for Oyu Tolgoi, and we are very pleased to be able to continue to support safety, productivity and cost efficiency in the mining operations,” says Mats Eriksson, President of business area Mining.

    Stockholm, July 2, 2025
    Sandvik AB

    For further information, contact Louise Tjeder, VP Investor relations, phone: +46 (0) 70782 6374 or Johannes Hellström, Press and Media Relations Manager, phone: +46 (0) 70721 1008

    Sandvik wins major mining equipment order in Mongolia (PDF)

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  • Wabtec Announces Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Release Date

    Wabtec Announces Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Release Date

    Transportation solutions that revolutionize the way the world moves

    At Wabtec, we help our customers overcome their toughest challenges by delivering rail and industrial solutions that improve safety, efficiency and productivity.

    Wabtec Corporation

    30 Isabella Street
    Pittsburgh, PA 15212 – USA
    Phone: 412-825-1000
    Fax: 412-825-1019

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  • VS Code’s Open Source AI Revolution: A New Chapter for Developers

    VS Code’s Open Source AI Revolution: A New Chapter for Developers

    The development landscape has just undergone a dramatic shift. Microsoft’s VS Code team has taken a bold step toward democratizing AI-powered coding by open-sourcing its GitHub Copilot Chat extension under the MIT license. This milestone represents more than just another code release; it’s a fundamental reimagining of how AI tools should be developed and deployed in the developer ecosystem.

    Breaking Down Barriers to Innovation

    The decision to make VS Code an open-source AI editor addresses a growing concern in the developer community: The black-box nature of AI coding assistants. Until now, developers have been using powerful AI tools without understanding their inner workings, from prompt engineering techniques to context handling strategies. This transparency gap has hindered innovation, making it challenging for developers to fully optimize their AI-assisted workflows.

    By open-sourcing the Copilot Chat extension, Microsoft has lifted the veil on these critical components. Developers can now examine exactly how agent mode functions, understand what context gets sent to large language models and study the prompt engineering strategies that make these tools effective. This level of transparency transforms AI coding from a mysterious process into something developers can understand, modify, and improve.

    Community-Driven AI Development

    The open source approach leverages the same community dynamics that made VS Code itself a success. Over the past decade, VS Code has evolved from a Microsoft project into a community-driven platform, with thousands of extensions and contributions from developers worldwide. Now, the VS Code team is applying this proven model to AI functionality.

    This community-centric approach promises to accelerate innovation in ways closed development cannot match. When developers can see precisely how AI features work, they can identify areas for improvement, fix bugs, and adapt functionality to meet specific needs. The collective intelligence of the open-source community often surpasses what any single organization can achieve, regardless of its resources.

    Practical Benefits for Development Teams

    The immediate practical implications are significant. Development teams can now audit AI functionality to ensure it meets their security and compliance requirements. Organizations with strict data governance policies can examine exactly what information is transmitted to language models and modify their behavior accordingly.

    For individual developers, this transparency enables more effective prompt engineering and a better understanding of AI behavior. Instead of treating AI coding assistants as unpredictable tools, developers can study successful patterns and apply them more systematically. The ability to examine system prompts and implementation details provides insights that can improve AI-assisted productivity across entire teams.

    “This marks Microsoft’s follow-through to open source GitHub Copilot Chat, announced at Microsoft Build 2025,” said Mitch Ashley, VP practice lead of software lifecycle engineering at The Futurum Group. “GitHub Copilot Chat serves as the direct interface between the developer and the underlying AI code generation and agent capabilities available through VS Code and GitHub Copilot Agent. This transparency helps build trust with developers as AI takes on increased workloads for developers.”

    Technical Architecture and Integration Strategy

    The VS Code team’s technical approach demonstrates thoughtful planning for long-term sustainability. Rather than keeping AI functionality in a separate extension indefinitely, they plan to integrate components directly into VS Code’s core. This integration strategy ensures that AI becomes a first-class citizen in the editor, rather than an afterthought.

    The decision to maintain issue tracking in the central VS Code repository further reinforces this integration philosophy. It signals that AI functionality isn’t a side project but a central part of VS Code’s future direction. This architectural approach provides a foundation for more sophisticated AI features while maintaining the editor’s performance and reliability standards.

    Industry Implications and Future Outlook

    This move represents a broader shift in how technology companies approach AI development. As AI becomes integral to software development workflows, the traditional closed-source model creates dependencies that many organizations find uncomfortable. Microsoft’s decision to embrace transparency could pressure other AI tool providers to follow suit.

    The implications extend beyond individual developer productivity. Educational institutions can now use real AI implementations to teach prompt engineering and AI integration techniques. Researchers gain access to production-quality AI coding systems for academic study. Security researchers can audit AI tools for potential vulnerabilities or biases.

    Challenges and Considerations

    Open-sourcing AI functionality presents its challenges. The VS Code team must strike a balance between transparency, performance optimization and consistency in user experience. Managing community contributions while maintaining code quality requires significant investment in review processes and documentation.

    The partial approach, open-sourcing chat functionality while keeping inline completions closed, reflects these complexities. This staged rollout allows the team to learn from community feedback before expanding the open-source scope to more complex features.

    The Path Forward

    The VS Code team’s roadmap demonstrates a commitment to gradually expanding open-source AI functionality. Plans to provide inline completion capabilities through the open-source extension demonstrate long-term dedication to the transparency vision. A partnership with the broader open-source AI community suggests that the success of this initiative depends on ecosystem-wide collaboration.

    This milestone represents more than a technical achievement; it’s a fundamental shift toward more democratic, transparent and community-driven AI development. As artificial intelligence reshapes software development, having open, auditable and modifiable AI tools becomes increasingly important for maintaining developer agency and innovation.

    The future of coding is undoubtedly AI-assisted, but Microsoft’s approach ensures that the future remains open, transparent and community-controlled. For developers who value understanding their tools and shaping their evolution, this represents a significant step toward a more empowering development environment.


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  • Porsche is expanding its range of all-wheel-drive versions of the 911

    Porsche is expanding its range of all-wheel-drive versions of the 911




    911 Targa 4S (preliminary values): Fuel consumption* combined (WLTP) 11.0 – 10.8 l/100 km, CO₂ emissions* combined (WLTP) 248 – 244 g/km, CO₂ class G , CO₂ class weighted combined G ,
    911 Carrera 4S (preliminary values): Fuel consumption* combined (WLTP) 11.0 – 10.5 l/100 km, CO₂ emissions* combined (WLTP) 249 – 237 g/km, CO₂ class G , CO₂ class weighted combined G , 
    911 Carrera 4S Cabriolet (preliminary values): Fuel consumption* combined (WLTP) 10.9 – 10.7 l/100 km, CO₂ emissions* combined (WLTP) 247 – 242 g/km, CO₂ class G , CO₂ class weighted combined G

    With the debut of the new 911 Carrera 4S – as coupé, cabriolet and Targa 4S – a total of six derivatives of the sports car are now available with all-wheel drive. In addition, in the 60th anniversary year of the 911 Targa, there is now a choice of two variants of the body style that was originally introduced to the US market as the ‘safety cabriolet’. 


    Porsche is expanding its 911 series with three models. The latest edition of the Carrera 4S is being launched as a coupé and cabriolet. Together with the Targa 4S, they expand the model lineup beneath the significantly more powerful GTS models. This premiere doubles the number of all-wheel-drive variants of the 911, bringing the total to six. Its extensively revised powertrain gives the all-wheel-drive sports car a significant boost in emotionality compared to its predecessor models. Additional individualisation options and an expanded list of standard equipment round off the overall package.

    About half of all customers who choose the S variants of the 911 opt for all-wheel drive, and for good reason: it ensures maximum traction in poor weather. Particularly in regions with changeable climates or demanding road conditions, the 911 with all-wheel drive inspires additional confidence behind the wheel. Like all the all-wheel-drive models of the 911, the S variants are also designed with rear-biased driving dynamics. If required, the Porsche Traction Management (PTM) system provides more drive torque to the front axle, thereby increasing traction and driving stability. As with predecessor models, the clutch assembly in the front differential, which is still water-cooled, is controlled electromechanically. Only the gear ratio has been slightly adjusted. The 911 Targa body style is available exclusively with all-wheel drive.

    Improved driving performance

    The new all-wheel drive variants of the 911 adopt the upgraded drive system of the Carrera S. Its 3.0-litre twin-turbo six-cylinder boxer engine produces 353 kW (480 PS, 911 Carrera S: Fuel consumption* combined (WLTP) 10.8 – 10.3 l/100 km, CO₂ emissions* combined (WLTP) 244 – 232 g/km, CO₂ class G , CO₂ class weighted combined G ). That is 22 kW (30 PS) more than in the predecessor model. This increase in performance is partly due to the optimised intercooler system, the design of which is carried over from the 911 Turbo. An eight-speed Porsche dual-clutch transmission (PDK) transmits power to all four wheels. The 911 Carrera 4S Coupé accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h in 3.3 seconds (with Sport Chrono Package) and to a top speed of 308 km/h. 

    911 Targa 4S, 2025, Porsche AG





    Sixty years of the 911 Targa: an idea with a history

    For 60 years, the 911 Targa has combined the pleasure of a convertible with the year-round comfort of a coupé. The original version of this model was Porsche’s response to discussions and concerns in the US market regarding the safety of traditional convertibles. The Targa body style made its debut in September 1965 at the IAA in Frankfurt am Main and was dubbed as the ‘safety cabriolet’.

    911 Targa 4S, 2025, Porsche AG




    Like so many Porsche innovations, the elegant, wide roll bar is inspired by motorsport. With a removable roof and folding rear window, the car provided safety-conscious drivers the sensation of travelling in a full convertible. Porsche derived the Targa name from the famous Sicilian endurance race, the Targa Florio.

    Today, the Porsche 911 Targa is an icon in its own right, constantly further developed in terms of engineering and design over six decades. With the introduction of the 993-generation 911 Targa in 1993, there was no longer a need to remove the roof manually. Since 2006, the 911 Targa has been available exclusively with all-wheel drive.

    From 2014 onwards, fully automatic roof mechanisms have been used: in 19 seconds, the coupé-like sports car is transformed into an open-top vehicle in a spectacular choreographed sequence. The glass rear window folds backwards and the roof segment folds elegantly. The wide roll bar and the wraparound rear window are a clear reminiscence of the original model. The roof module of the current Targa is available in four colours: black, blue, red and brown.

    Enhanced equipment

    The standard equipment has been significantly upgraded compared to the previous models. This includes 20/21-inch staggered-fitment Carrera S wheels with an updated design, Porsche Torque Vectoring Plus (PTV+) and a sports exhaust system with a distinctive sound typical of the 911.

    911 Carrera 4S, 2025, Porsche AG





    Equipped as standard is the braking system carried over from the GTS models, with red brake callipers and 408-millimetre discs at the front and 380 mm at the rear. The 911 Targa 4S features rear-wheel steering as standard. While the Cabriolet and Targa are equipped with rear seats, Porsche delivers the coupé as a two-seater as standard. A rear seat system can be configured at no extra cost.

    Porsche equips the interior of the all-wheel-drive sports car with a leather package. In addition, matrix LED headlights and wireless smartphone charging are also included as standard. Other features include electrically folding exterior mirrors with mirror surround lighting, the Light Design Package, automatically dimming interior and exterior mirrors with integrated rain sensor, and lane departure warning. A wide range of other options for individualisation are available on request, including a wide variety of colour and material combinations as well as sound, assistance and roof systems.

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