Reclaiming legitimacy: South African presidency and judiciary plan special court rolls for state capture and corruption

Reclaiming legitimacy: South African presidency and judiciary plan special court rolls for state capture and corruption

President Cyril Ramaphosa says discussions are underway with the Judiciary for the creation of special court rolls for state capture and corruption cases unearthed in the first two parts of the report of the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture. The President revealed this in his State of the Nation...

Read more
Tanzania President Suluhu Hassan revokes predecessor’s ban on four newspapers, but censorship remains key concern

Tanzania President Suluhu Hassan revokes predecessor’s ban on four newspapers, but censorship remains key concern

Tanzanian media have welcomed the government’s decision to lift a ban on four newspapers that was imposed by the late President John Magufuli. The government of President Samia Hassan issued new publishing licenses this week to newspapers Mwanahalisi, Mawio, Mseto, and Tanzania Daima. The latter is owned by opposition leader...

Read more
35 years after nuclear leak, some animal and plant species in Russia seem to be faring well after adapting to the radiation

35 years after nuclear leak, some animal and plant species in Russia seem to be faring well after adapting to the radiation

The debate n Chernobyl radiation accident in Russia is largely in the gray area in between: At what radiation levels does significant harm kick in, and for which species? Since different species may respond very differently to radiation, “it’s not black and white,” says radioecologist Christelle Adam-Guillermin of France’s Radioprotection...

Read more
New findings show heart failure and stroke incidence is markedly higher in people who’d recovered from Covid

New findings show heart failure and stroke incidence is markedly higher in people who’d recovered from Covid

Even a mildest case of Covid-19 can increase a person’s risk of cardiovascular problems for at least a year after diagnosis, a new study shows. Researchers found that rates of many conditions, such as heart failure and stroke, were substantially higher in people who had recovered from Covid-19 than in...

Read more
Russian nuclear disaster: No matter the consequences of lingering radiation, there are massive benefits to people leaving

Russian nuclear disaster: No matter the consequences of lingering radiation, there are massive benefits to people leaving

Some other research teams have not found significant radiation effects on the genetic diversity or abundance of certain animals around Chernobyl nuclear disaster scene. In one widely publicised 2015 survey of a Belarus area near the power plant, a team of scientists determined that the numbers of elk, roe deer...

Read more
How unprepared British foreign secretary Truss flew to Moscow with ‘just language’ to stop looming Russia-Ukraine war

How unprepared British foreign secretary Truss flew to Moscow with ‘just language’ to stop looming Russia-Ukraine war

Oh, how I envy Liz Truss her opportunity! Oh, how I regret her utter failure to make use of it! For those who have never heard of her, Truss is the lightweight British foreign secretary who went to Moscow this week to tell her Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, that his...

Read more
Radiation at Chernobyl in Russia have fallen since initial accident, but scientists disagree on its impact on wildlife

Radiation at Chernobyl in Russia have fallen since initial accident, but scientists disagree on its impact on wildlife

Is Chernobyl a radioactive wasteland reeling from chronic radiation, or a post-nuclear paradise with thriving populations of animals and other life forms? Studies don’t always agree about levels of mutations and other ill effects. Thirty-five years after the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine, reports often...

Read more
Kenyan scholar: Right working culture pays dividends when juggling between academia and parenting in Africa

Kenyan scholar: Right working culture pays dividends when juggling between academia and parenting in Africa

In the fifth instalment of an eight-part series about African women in science, Elizabeth Kimani-Murage, head of maternal and child well-being at the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) in Nairobi, describes the importance of quiet hours to write as an early-career public-health researcher. After I earned my master’s...

Read more