Thousands of exhausted South Sudanese refugees leap ‘out of the frying pan, into the fire’ at home
Years of fighting between government and opposition forces in South Sudan killed almost 400,000 people and displaced millions until a peace agreement was signed nearly five years ago. Enacting a solid peace has been sluggish: The country has yet to deploy a unified military and create a permanent constitution.
Rest in power: Glowing tributes flow in as pop idol Tina Turner, 83, returns to the pavilion – forever
Sometimes nicknamed the “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Turner won six of her eight Grammy Awards in the 1980s. In that decade she landed a dozen songs in the Top 40, including “Typical Male,” “The Best,” “Private Dancer” and “Better Be Good to Me.”
Obesity industry: How Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Media and Big People make a killing from overweight
FAIR reported that every doctor interviewed by “60 Minutes” for its segment on obesity had received money from Novo Nordisk, maker of the drugs effectively being advertised on the show. None of the doctors mentioned the serious side-effects associated with the drugs, Novo Nordisk’s massive profits from the drugs or the lobbying the drugmaker is doing to get insurance to pay for weight-loss drugs.
Mind-reading technology: With brain-machines now in use human, rights may expand to cover thought crime and thought data violations
For the first time, mind-reading technology looks viable by combining two technologies that are readily available — albeit with a hefty price tag. MRI machines currently cost anywhere between $150,000 and $1 million.
In-demand Danish baby industry thrives because sperm donors are vetted vigorously for genetic abnormalities
Julie Paulli Budtz, director of brand and communications at the European Sperm Bank said: “In the past, the recipients and later the children didn’t get any information about the donor, but now we give a full description of him, his interests and his family.”
Why British women are shunting their fussy midgets and shopping for ‘Viking babies’ in Dutch sperm banks
Customers, whether single women or couples, can log in to the website and choose their donor at leisure. They are provided with a photograph of the donor as a child, often an audio file of his voice talking about himself, and a run-down of his physical qualities such as eye and hair colour, height, weight and educational standard.
‘Dogs are better suited for cancer studies than lab mice as they’re exposed to similar living environments as humans’
Dogs also respond to treatments in similar ways to humans, as several clinical studies in recent years have shown. In 2019, scientists at Colorado State University completed a trial of 28 dogs with osteosarcoma that had spread to the lungs. In addition to a commercially available cancer drug, they prescribed the dogs a common blood pressure drug, losartan, which acts on the immune system by blocking the recruitment of a type of white blood cell that stimulates tumour growth.
Foreign military sales and direct commercial sales data show US is selling weapons to world’s autocracies
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been the world’s biggest weapons dealer, accounting for about 40 per cent of all arms exports in a given year. In general, these exports are funded through grants or sales. There are two pathways for the latter category: foreign military sales and direct commercial sales.
Explaining suicide decline: Restricted access to dangerous pesticides, but firearm suicide rates surge in US
Means restriction works in part because suicide is often an unplanned act. The time between a suicidal impulse arising and a person acting on that impulse can be as little as five minutes. A person who dies by suicide has traditionally been represented as someone at the end of a long, tortured battle with depression, but this is generally not the case.
Sudan war forces South Sudanese to return to a country unable to support them, itself riddled with fighting
More than 40,000 people – mostly South Sudanese – have crossed the border since Sudan erupted in conflict nearly a month ago. Many are returning to areas unable to support them and still riddled with fighting. Five years of war and unprecedented floods have pushed South Sudan into a dire situation with more than 75 per cent of the nation’s 12 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and nearly three million on the brink of starvation.
