First malaria vaccine is a leap forward, but it is suicidal for the world to stop pumping money into more research
When the World Health Organization endorsed the world’s first malaria vaccine in October 2021, it was a pivotal moment in a very long quest. I was completely overwhelmed with emotion. I tweeted, emailed, texted and called colleagues, friends and family members. Some of us cried. This vaccine, which will be...
Irony of Colombia ‘socialising’ the idea that women victims of armed violence are responsible for their deaths
Many of the women under threat in the Colombian town of Tibú have nowhere to turn, aside from a small handful of human rights defenders. Authorities have lost grip of the rising insecurity that targets women to armed groups in the cocoa-growing region that borders Venezuela. “The women of Catatumbo...
How collapse in Colombian government authority has triggered femicides linked to armed groups
In Tibú, a small town along the border with Venezuela, a rising wave of violence in Colombia’s primary coca-producing region is targeting women, leading to an unprecedented spike in killings and forcing others to flee. Those who flee are often left in precarious economic situations far from their homes, too...
Inside Ukraine-Russia cyber warfare: Information hacking and leaking is ‘weaponised’ to unhinge the enemy
Names, birthdays, passport numbers, job titles – the personal information goes on for pages and looks like any typical data breach. But this data set is very different. It allegedly contains the personal information of 1,600 Russian troops who served in Bucha, a Ukrainian city devastated during Russia’s war and...
Returning ex-child soldiers track Uganda’s LRA rebel leader Joseph Kony’s exile to Darfur Province in Sudan
Former child soldiers who have escaped the clutches of insurgents in northern Uganda are providing new information about the whereabouts of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) founder and leader Joseph Kony. The LRA leader is said to be in the sprawling Darfur province, western Sudan. Darfur is also in the...
‘At the moment we need to recognise that climate crisis in Eastern Africa is actually the new normal’
The current stretch of failed rains in the Horn of Africa has hit a region that had barely begun to recover from the 2016-2017 drought. With no pause to enable pasture and water points to regenerate, estimated 20 million people’s ability to cope has been stripped away. In southern Ethiopia,...
Alarm bells in Horn of Africa are tolling about unprecedented drought with some 20m people at risk of famine
Already struggling after three seasons of failed rains, farmers and pastoralists in the Horn of Africa are facing an unprecedented fourth drought – a catastrophe that will tip more than 20 million people into extreme hunger and, for some, possibly starvation. Rains were expected across the region in March or...
Why climate change policies must tie in with the special needs of women’s bodies and their fates
Links between women’s sexual and reproductive health and the impacts of climate change are made clear in the recent Working Group II report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). For the first time, the authors note the risks pregnant women face in a changing climate. They also...
Why do humans die around 80? Finally, scientists solve the mystery of this longevity in the animal kingdom
The mystery of why humans die at around 80, while other mammals live far shorter or longer lives, may finally have been solved by scientists. Humans and animals die after amassing a similar number of genetic mutations, researchers have found, suggesting the speed of DNA errors is critical in determining...
World’s foremost thinker Noam Chomsky warns that in history Trump has done more to drive the human race to extinction
With the ongoing climate crisis and the looming possibility of nuclear war, Noam Chomsky, 93, often hailed as one of the world’s most important intellectuals alive, warns that “we’re approaching the most dangerous point in human history.” The renowned linguist and social critic has lived through several consequential events of...
