China’s minerals-for-infrastructure policy oiled former DR Congo president’s gravy train – Sentry report
When the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) government handed a no-bid contract to a subsidiary of China Railway to rebuild and maintain the road from the mining hub of Lubumbashi to the border with Zambia, with tolls charged to fund the work, it opened further taps for free flow of...
As Western firms give DR Congo’s minerals wide berth, China’s rivers of dollars fill ex-president’s accounts
A leak of 3.5 million documents shows how a Chinese-run company moved millions of dollars to former Congo President Joseph Kabila’s family and allies. The Chinese businessman had walked out of a bank in Kinshasa with 13,624 hundred-dollar bills, 10,001 fifties and 43,000 smaller US notes, despite explicit instructions to...
Omicron threat: Scientists urge patience as they investigate ‘This variant (that) is completely insane’
At 7:30 am on November 24, Kristian Andersen, an infectious disease researcher at Scripps Research, received a message on Slack: “This variant is completely insane.” Andrew Rambaut of the University of Edinburgh was reacting to a new SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence found in three samples collected in Botswana on November 11...
Discovery of heavily mutated coronavirus variant in South Africa puts world on high alert
Researchers in South Africa are racing to track the concerning rise of a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes Covid-19. The variant harbours a large number of the mutations found in other variants, including Delta, and it seems to be spreading quickly across South Africa. A top priority...
Underpaid and under fire: The risky business of monitoring Congo’s volatile Nyiragongo volcano
Editor’s note: The second of two stories on the aftermath of the May volcanic eruption in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The New Humanitarian spent three weeks interviewing displaced people, aid workers and employees at a local observatory tasked with monitoring the volatile Mount Nyiragongo. Read part one here. This...
Sprint for electric vehicles picks up as their batteries outperform what car firms thought they’d do
Plenty of Americans are confused about the basics of electric vehicles (EVs), says Jeff Allen, the executive director of Forth, an advocacy and research organisation focused on electric mobility. A question he still hears from drivers: “Can I take it safely through the car wash? Spoiler: Yes,” he says. Fears...
After years of hesitancy, demand for electric vehicles has soared with used cars tipping the balance
A few years ago, Greg Platt, an electric vehicle salesperson in Portland, Oregon, was having extraordinary success with a particular type of customer: foreigners. For a $250 fee, he’d ship cars north, where they usually crossed to western Canada by ferry. Other interested buyers would fly in from Europe. Platt...
African economies belt up to avoid crash as China’s appetite for large investments abroad wanes
Deep in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, members of the National Youth Service tirelessly swing machetes to clear dense shrubs obscuring railway tracks more than a century old. It’s a distinctly low-tech phase for China’s Belt and Road drive in Africa to create the trade highways of the future. There’s not...
Brainy bunch: How dad and mum in US home-tutored their 10 children into university by age 13
‘Brainy bunch’ family in the US has mastered home schooling, with all 10 children starting university the same year they became teenagers. High school sweethearts Monalisa and Kit Harding, both 53, have made a name for themselves as home schooling experts after getting their 10 children through high school and...
Hedgegrows attract beneficial bird species that eat pests, lure flies and wasps that feast on crop-damaging insects
In recent years, researchers in California have learned that hedges can actually be financially worthwhile. Rather than attracting starlings, which prefer open, treeless habitats, hedgerows of native shrubs and herbaceous plants can attract beneficial bird species that eat pest insects, as well as lure flies and wasps that feast on...
