Inside Zimbabwe’s sleaze empire: New report details how president’s men are bleeding the country
Reports on corruption and state capture in Zimbabwe are coming out thick and fast. In the latest instalment on governing Zanu-PF government, a new report released last week lays bare the burgeoning offshore business empire owned by Kudakwashe Tagwirei, who is rated as Zimbabwe’s richest businessperson and a close ally...
Mental health: Doctorate students fear visiting counselling centres shared with undergraduates
Although some researchers have supportive mentors and colleagues with whom they can share their struggles, others experience further mental-health challenges owing to hostile work environments. In the 2019 Nature survey of PhD researchers worldwide, 21 per cent of respondents said they had experienced harassment or discrimination in their programmes. Female...
Star-crossed and lovesick Princess Diana had a habit of picking wrong men
Days after the unveiling of Princess Diana Statue in Kensington, London, on what would have been her 60th birthday, the media delved, once again, into her private life and reminded the world of her rarely talked about relationship with Hasnat Khan, a Pakistani surgeon. According to OK, an entertainment magazine,...
Report details how mental health of graduate students is sorely overlooked
Graduate students around the world need more support to manage the mental-health issues, such as depression and anxiety, that they are experiencing at worrying rates, according to a report from two US non-profit organizations. The study was co-produced by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) in Washington DC and the...
Trump Org: Case against developer alleges $1.76m in unreported compensation
Prosecutors this week charged the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer with systematically and illegally evading taxes for years, largely by failing to report compensation. The former president’s development firm and CFO Allen Weisselberg used a variety of schemes to cheat the government, according to an indictment that Manhattan...
UN’s biometric identity cards have brought little but pain to Rohingya refugees
Massive amounts of personal and biometric data are being gathered from hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. This should set off multiple alarm bells. As bystanders to likely crimes against humanity against the Rohingya, the humanitarian community has a particular responsibility to ensure their rights are not violated...
‘Psychedelic drugs and the hallucinations they induce can reveal how brains work’
“Everything became imbued with a sense of vitality and life and vividness. If I picked up a pebble from the beach, it would move. It would glisten and gleam and sparkle and be absolutely captivating,” says neuroscientist Anil Seth. “Somebody looking at me would see me staring at a stone...
How Trumpists weaponised ‘smokescreen trolling’ and waged ideological war
Some of the claims coming out of the Trump camp in recent weeks are laughable: that Joe Biden is the Hamburglar, that Democrats are conspiring to take away the Chick-fil-A sauces of “real” Americans, that socialism is making your burritos more expensive. Some are much more serious, but just as...
‘Every time one of us is rejected, dismissed or murdered, I question why I’m still in academia’
As marchers in the United States and around the world filled the streets this past week to protest against police brutality and racial injustice, Black scientists grieved openly on social media, calling for action on racism in society and in science. Many stated ways in which institutions and colleagues, from...
Journalist’s notebook: I saw a woman gang-raped, uterus burned with hot metal rod, so no Tigrayan womb can give birth
Lucy Kassa is an Ethiopian journalist whose reporting on the war in Tigray has exposed massacres, sexual violence, man-made starvation, and other grave human rights abuses. She has been attacked and threatened for her work, but has refused to stay silent. Here, she reflects on the emotional toll of covering...
