Despite high HIV awareness in western Kenya, cultural taboos undermine progress
While significant gains have been made in the fight against HIV-related stigma and discrimination, prejudiced attitudes still hold back people in rural Kenya from accessing healthcare services. Cultural inhibitions are still at play in the war against sexually transmitted infections (STI) and access to reproductive health services, further multiplying the...
Biden appoints bioethics and social inequality specialist to top science post
During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden pledged that his administration would address inequality and racism. Now that he’s been sworn in as US president, his appointment of a prominent sociologist to the nation’s top science office is raising hopes that the changes will extend to the scientific community. Alondra Nelson,...
Government is neither slavery or freedom: It’s a system that rules beings
Government is neither slavery or freedom; it is a system invented or created to rule human beings by human beings If you have no rules, then someone or somebody has to create them, and then have methods of teaching them and enforcing them and changing them, whether that be physically...
Facebook’s oversight board to decide whether to give Trump bullhorn back
In the wake of this month’s violent insurrection at the US Capitol, Facebook suspended the account of the inciter-in-chief Donald Trump. On January 7, citing the danger that the president’s posts might incite further violence, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company would keep Trump off the platform “indefinitely and for...
Decathlon named official licensee of US basketball league
Decathlon, one of the world’s largest sporting goods retailers, and the National Basketball Association (NBA) has announced a new multiyear merchandising partnership that makes it an official licensee of the NBA in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. The partnership marks Decathlon’s first partnership with a North...
African Free Trade Area now the largest free trade zone in the world ‘by participation’
The start of trading under the African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) agreement on January 1 has created the largest free trade zone in the world by country following the ratification of the agreement by 34 countries. After years of haggling, suspicion and uncertainty the realisation ACFTA has been hailed...
Scientists grapple with what new coronavirus variants mean for schools
The emergence of fast-spreading coronavirus variants has once again put a spotlight on the role of children in the Covid-19 pandemic. Early data on one new variant had suggested that it was spreading more in children than in adults compared with other lineages. But researchers now suggest the variant is...
Africa braces for a digital storm as industries reset their operations
The coronavirus pandemic is accelerating the move to digital, as large proportions of the population work, learn and entertain themselves remotely, while others have trialled services such as remote healthcare for the first time. These were amongst the findings of a recent Amdocs survey of 1,000 consumers in the United...
Pope’s drug trials: History of vaccination replete with tales of poisoning
It was a time of contagion and quacks. A Machiavellian power-broker keen to protect his position defied tradition to sponsor controlled experiments on the most marginalised of people. Therefore, the fear and suspicion by black people and people of colour the world has witnessed over the past few weeks since...
Biden at his inauguration: Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire
Joe Biden was sworn-in on Wednesday as the 46th president of the United States, marking the official start to an administration that must now turn its attention to the global coronavirus pandemic, economic turmoil and deep divisions about the state of American politics and leadership. Forty-eight years after he entered...
