Plan to build a global network of floating power stations on oceans
Early last year, just a few weeks before the pandemic brought life in the United States to a standstill, Yi Chao and a small team of researchers dropped a slender metal tube into the Pacific Ocean off the Hawaiian coast. After nearly two decades as an oceanographer at NASA’s Jet...
$6.5 billion lined up for Great Green Wall initiative in the Sahel region
Barely hours after 100 actors from Africa and Europe signed a charter in support of pastoralism and livestock development in the Sahel, the African Development Bank unveiled plans to raise $6.5 billion to fund the region’s Great Green Wall Initiative. The funds will mitigate losses wrought by the coronavirus in...
House Democrats introduce article of impeachment against Donald Trump
House Democrats introduced an article of impeachment against President Donald Trump on Monday for “incitement of insurrection,” in the wake of last week’s deadly riot at the US Capitol. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Democratic-Md) told Punchbowl News that he expects a vote on the article could come as early...
100 African, European actors sign a charter to promote pastoralism in the Sahel
More than 100 European and African actors have signed a charter committing to the development of the agro-pastoralism in Africa, particularly in the Sahel. The charter is inspired by the resilience of Africans against coronavirus compared with other races. Pastoralism is a key economic activity of the Sahel, a vast...
South, West Africa dominate ‘More Than a Mother Africa’ media awards
Winners of ‘More Than a Mother’ Africa media awards for 2020 have been announced. The awards, intended to recognise African journalists for excellence in reporting on health, culture and humanitarian issues were announced on in Zimbabwean capital, Harare, on Monday. The awards were announced by Merck Foundation chief executive Rasha...
Mystery of beetles depending on moon, sun light for orientation
Scientists know that bees, ants and many other insects can orient themselves using polarised sunlight, but dung beetles are the first known to orient themselves using the million-times-dimmer polarised light that emanates from the moon. Neurobiologist Marie Dacke of Lund University in Sweden, entomologist Marcus Byrne at the University of...
Ancient Egyptians believed dung beetles controlled the movement of the sun
Placed over the heart in the wrappings of Egyptian mummies, archaeologists have often found carved amulets of scarab beetles, a species of dung beetle. The amulets, many with spells inscribed on them, were intended to help the dead in a final judgment by the jackal-headed god of death, Anubis, who...
In bizarre American drama, fiction preserves systemic structures of imbalance
Fiction is a useful currency in the stories we tell ourselves. In the arts especially, fiction is fundamental to awakening universal, human truths – be it your favourite prestige TV thriller, the dystopias of Ray Bradbury’s imagination or one of the countless parodies posted on TikTok every day. In real...
Anti-secrecy activists publish a trove of ransomware victims’ data
For years, radical transparency-focused activists like WikiLeaks have blurred the line between whistle-blowing and hacking. Often, they’ve published any data they consider to be of public interest, no matter how questionable the source. But now one leak-focused group is mining a controversial new vein of secrets: the massive caches of...
Zuckerberg to Trump: Go away quietly, don’t undermine law and order
As of Thursday morning, following a day in which a mob of the president’s supporters violently invaded the US Capitol, the president’s Twitter account was temporarily frozen. YouTube had taken down his latest video and most remarkably, Mark Zuckerberg had announced that Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts were suspended indefinitely....
