New oil and gas finds trigger big investments in Southern Africa
Last spring, the Maersk Voyager, an ultra-deep-water drillship under contract by French supermajor Total, drilled a wildcat well in the deepest water ever – 3,628 meters in Block 48, a massive area with potentially huge oil reserves in the Congo basin offshore Angola. The record-setting achievement was not a success...
Coronavirus recasts attention on public health
Public health — the science of protecting and improving the health of a population — includes everything from setting pollution limits to urging women to get mammograms. It’s investigating salmonella outbreaks, tracking Lyme disease, defining drink-driving, fighting climate change, tackling systemic racism, inspecting restaurants, distributing condoms and every other activity...
Nairobi sucked into ‘fool’s gold’ as the mineral fuels conflict in central Africa
Despite efforts invested licit mineral trade to stifle gold smuggling and money-laundering, East Africa – with Nairobi and Kampala as pivots – still towers other countries in Africa as a major conduit for pirated gold and diamonds from conflict regions in the South and Central Africa. East Africa is in...
‘Technology that identifies people remotely can be used to criminalise them’
To get a wider sense of academic views on facial-recognition ethics, Nature this year surveyed 480 researchers who have published papers on facial recognition, artificial intelligence (AI) and computer science.On some questions, respondents showed a clear preference.When asked for their opinions on studies that apply facial-recognition methods to recognise or...
Ethical questions that dog facial-recognition research
In September 2019, four researchers wrote to publisher Wiley to “respectfully ask” that it immediately retract a scientific paper. The study, published in 2018, had trained algorithms to distinguish faces of Uyghur people, a predominantly Muslim minority ethnic group in China, from those of Korean and Tibetan ethnicity.China had already...
As Kenya mulls facial recognition technology, resistance builds up in Europe, US
In Belgrade’s Republic Square, dome-shaped cameras hang prominently on wall fixtures, silently scanning people walking across the central plaza.It is one of 800 locations in the city that Serbia’s government said last year it would monitor using cameras equipped with facial-recognition software, purchased from electronics firm Huawei in Shenzhen, China.The...
Puzzle of Kenya’s ‘mysteriously low Covid death toll’
One of the first large SARS‑CoV-2 antibody studies in Africa suggests that by mid-2020, the virus had infected four per cent of people in Kenya — a surprisingly high figure in view of Kenya’s small number of Covid-19 deaths.The presence of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 indicates a history of infection with...
ISIS terrorist released by feds in Oregon town after grand jury indictment
An ISIS terrorist indicted by a federal grand jury for providing material support to the militant Islamist group has been released by federal authorities in Oregon in the United States of America.Even for the famously liberal west coast it may seem unbelievable, especially since a Republican appointee heads the Department...
The Big Bang: Franco and Verckys split that reshaped rhumba music forever
A rebellion in Orchestra Oscar Kashama (OK) in 1968 gave Africa rich a cultural diversity that lives on to this day.It happened when OK – later renamed Orchestra Kinshasa – band leader Luambo Luanzo Makiadi (Francois) was away on a business trip in Europe and forever changed the course, tenor...
Key genes evolve surprisingly swiftly – scientists
Essential genes are often thought to be frozen in evolutionary time — evolving only very slowly if at all, because changing or dying would lead to the death of the organism.Hundreds of millions of years of evolution separate insects and mammals, but experiments show that the Hox genes guiding the...
