Right to privacy: Human rights court rules UK spy laws violated ECHR convention
Surveillance laws permitting GCHQ to operate its Tempura dragnet mass surveillance system broke the law the European Court of Human Rights has ruled. The judgment, handed down on Tuesday morning in Strasbourg, vindicates the Edward Snowden revelations of 2013. The former NSA contractor in the united states revealed that Western...
Ndombe Opetum: DRC celebrates 9th anniversary of TPOK rumba ‘philosopher’
Nine years ago today, Kinshasa bade farewell to rumba legend Ndombe Opetum, the composer and songwriter whose song Nayebi Ndenge Bakolela Ngai had for nearly 30 years been the subject of intense discussion of what the composer intended to convey. It still is. As a result, there is still...
Wastewater gives clue of public health, South Africa narrowing it to unit area
The ability of wastewater testing technology to identify coronavirus hotspots is governed by the service area of the treatment plant: the wider the spread, the harder it is to pinpoint small outbreaks and at least one facility serves more than 850,000 people. The technology can provide an unbiased snapshot of...
US slaps visa restrictions on Ethiopian and Eritrean officials over human rights abuses
The United States has announced visa restrictions on Ethiopian and Eritrean officials accused of fuelling the six-month-old war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, saying those involved had “taken no meaningful steps to end hostilities.” “People in Tigray continue to suffer human rights violations, abuses and atrocities and urgently needed humanitarian relief...
CovidPoops19 Dashboard: How sewage helps keep finger on pulse of coronavirus
Monday is sample-collection day in Cape Town, South Africa and Aqeelah Benjamin is halfway through her shift. At the Green Point wastewater-treatment plant, under the Atlantic coast promenade, she fills a 500-millilitre bottle from a tap of untreated water. She wipes the bottle’s exterior, cleans it with a spritz of...
Why giraffes and some long-necked animals don’t develop hypertension
To most people, giraffes are merely adorable, long-necked animals that rank near the top of a zoo visit or a photo-safari bucket list. But to a cardiovascular physiologist, there’s even more to love. Giraffes, it turns out, have solved a problem that kills millions of people every year: high blood...
Why giraffes and some long-necked animals don’t develop hypertension
To most people, giraffes are merely adorable, long-necked animals that rank near the top of a zoo visit or a photo-safari bucket list. But to a cardiovascular physiologist, there’s even more to love. Giraffes, it turns out, have solved a problem that kills millions of people every year: high blood...
New information on Wuhan researchers’ illness fuels suspicion on origin of Covid
A US intelligence report found that several researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in November 2019 and had to be hospitalised, a new detail about the severity of their symptoms that could fuel further debate about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, according to two people briefed...
How mysterious microbes might have triggered evolution of life on Earth
At some point in evolution, scientists say some archaea assigned the cell-division job to a different set of proteins. This is where cell biologist Buzz Baum’s latest work comes in. Evolutionary biologist David Baum’s group has been studying the archaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius – a protein. In this case, the scientific...
US intelligence community rocked by insider threat – yet again
A federal grand jury has charged an FBI employee for stealing classified documents and keeping them in her home between 2004 and 2017, the FBI announced Friday. The employee, Kendra Kingsley, allegedly took documents that detailed the FBI’s sources and methods the FBI uses to counter cyber threats, as well...
