Turning adversity into opportunity: How female refugee scientists cope in foreign lands
Unsurprisingly, female refugee scientists can face extra challenges – including gendered, cultural and socio-political barriers to academia. At the Council for At Risk Academics (CARA), a London-based charity that helps academics to continue their work at one of 124 partner universities and institutions in the United Kingdom or in other...
Keeping the faith in face of adversity: Trials and triumphs of refugee scientists
The Institute of International Education (IIE), a non-profit organisation based in New York City that supports international researchers, estimates that thousands of displaced scientists from nations such as Syria, Iraq and Yemen are now living as refugees elsewhere. Its figures are based on refugee counts, pre-war higher-education data from the...
How splits in one of South Sudan’s ruling SPLA factions may refuel war in Malakal oilfields
Malakal’s conflict in South Sudan has been frozen in place for years: a consequence of the Padang Dinka’s influence in Juba, which is partly due to their success in keeping Upper Nile’s oil fields – one of the government’s few foreign exchange earners – running. But a split within First...
In a flashpoint South Sudanese town of Malakal, women peacemakers try to bridge the divide
More than 18 months into a power-sharing government between South Sudan’s rival leaders, local conflicts still simmer, undermining a fragile peace accord. But in the northern flashpoint town of Malakal, a group of women peacemakers is trying to reverse that narrative by healing ethnic divisions to head off another bout...
Tale of 31 Mexican scientists facing charges of ‘organised crime’ and money laundering
When the son of astrophysicist José Franco answered the door at their home in Mexico City in June, he didn’t know why an agent from Mexico’s federal prosecutor’s office was asking for verification that his father lived at that address. When he confirmed it, the agent left without explanation. Franco,...
Aid agencies won’t listen, they’ve adopted racism – now coded as ‘capacity building’ and ‘competence’
Allegations of discrimination and inequality based on race, gender or regions are consistent with the findings of a recent survey of 15 prominent international NGOs by the Centre for Global Development, which found that fewer than two per cent of board members had been impacted by a humanitarian crisis, and...
Covid super-immunity mysteries: Patients who recover develop antibodies capable of ‘defanging’ variants
Around a year ago – before Delta and other variants entered the Covid-19 lexicon – virologists Theodora Hatziioannou and Paul Bieniasz, both at the Rockefeller University in New York City, set out to make a version of a key SARS-CoV-2 protein with the ability to dodge all the infection-blocking antibodies...
First mission to Jupiter lifts off from Florida, to spend next 12 years studying outer Solar System
A NASA spacecraft began its journey to a realm of the outer Solar System that has never before been visited: a set of asteroids orbiting the Sun near Jupiter. The rocks are “the last unexplored but relatively accessible population of small bodies” circling the Sun, says Vishnu Reddy, a planetary...
Aided racism: Workers say equality in humanitarian agencies doesn’t go beyond colourful rhetoric
Several aid agencies have reported taking action to improve diversity, equity and inclusion since last year’s renewed push for racial justice, but aid workers say they haven’t felt the effects, according to two questionnaires circulated by The New Humanitarian. The questionnaires assessed changes made within aid agencies since the Black...
British government, scientists made ‘fatalistic’ decisions that led to many Covid deaths – parliament
The British government and scientists made a fatalistic decision by backing a strategy that amounted to “herd immunity” in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, costing many thousands of lives in “one of the most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced”, a parliamentary inquiry has...
