IT’S MIDWAY THROUGH the week and you want to get up to speed on the latest news topics and catch up on opinions and insights.

We’re here to help you do just that, with our three midweek longreads.

1. Building a mystery

Hafeez Contractor is building an “alternate India”, of green zones and skyscrapers – and wants to redevelop Mumbai’s slums. But Daniel Brook writes that Contractor is also the architect Indian intellectuals love to hate.

(NY Times Magazine, approx 29 minutes reading time, 5791 words)

While Contractor claims his structures, with their reliable utilities and sewage treatment, model best practices for the rest of India, critics like Das worry that giving India’s most influential citizens high-quality infrastructure amid India’s poverty removes the political will to make basics like reliable power and potable tap water universal.

2. The droning

A mysterious sound is having a serious effect on a lot of people – but what is causing it? Jared Keller investigates.

(Policy Mic, approx 16 minutes reading time, 3264 words)

“The Hum” refers to a mysterious sound heard in places around the world by a small fraction of a local population. It’s characterized by a persistent and invasive low-frequency rumbling or droning noise often accompanied by vibrations. While reports of “unidentified humming sounds” pop up in scientific literature dating back to the 1830s, modern manifestations of the contemporary hum have been widely reported by national media in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia since the early 1970s.

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3. Whistleblowing in Ireland

The Government is preparing a ‘whistleblowers’ bill – but Fergal Crehan argues that it falls down in one particular area.

(TheJournal.ie, approx 6 minutes reading time, 1011 words)

The act also provides that compensation will be 25% less where the whistleblowing was not motivated entirely by a wish to investigate wrongdoing. In reality, whistleblowers are often driven partly by personal grievances as well as by an ethical motivation. Things they might have been inclined to turn a blind eye to can become intolerable once they are mistreated by a supervisor or passed over for promotion.

Want some more longreads? Then check out Sitdown Sunday>