Unhealthy sex-for-job scandals rock WHO as probe proves attempts to suppress truth
A damning report has found that the World Health Organization failed to prevent and tackle widespread sexual abuse during the Ebola response in Congo – a probe triggered by an investigation by The New Humanitarian and the Thomson Reuters Foundation has revealed. WHO staff knew of allegations in early May...
Capitol Hill riot underlines ‘You can run, but you can’t hide’ mantra as Google tech unearths suspects
Using a traditional search warrant, the FBI investigators then obtained full geolocation and communication records for some of the suspects’ Google accounts that showed them allegedly travelling to Washington, DC, and admitting in a series of text and picture messages that he had been in the Capitol. One of them...
How secret Google geofence warrant is helping FBI nail down Capitol riot mob
Court documents suggest the FBI has been using controversial geofence search warrants at a scale not publicly seen before, collecting account information and location data on hundreds of devices inside the US Capitol during a deadly invasion by a right-wing mob on January 6. While Google receives over 10,000 geofence...
Journalists in Afghanistan fear being killed ‘every minute of their lives under a religious dictatorship’
Hundreds of journalists working in Afghanistan have fled or gone into hiding in recent weeks following the seizure of power by the Taliban. The leader of one of the IFJ’s affiliates in Afghanistan, who has worked for over 20 years with international media as a reporter and senior editor tells...
While China plans to stop financing new coal plants overseas, its domestic consumption has tripled
China’s pledge to stop financing new coal plants abroad, announced by President Xi Jinping at the United Nations summit last week, has raised hopes that the world could soon wean itself off the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel. But although this is a positive step from the world’s biggest emitter of...
African countries face serious political unrest as rising food prices hit the roof – ISS Africa report
African Governments must act fast to ensure their people are fed and avoid conflict the continent cannot afford, Institute for Security Studies Africa (ISS Africa) reports. In its September report, ISS Africa observes that since the onset of Covid-19, global food prices have rocketed, putting pressure on the world’s most...
Studies: Bats’ virus tolerance is higher than humans’, hence the massive load of pathogens they traffic
When a host, whether bat or human, is infected with a disease-causing pathogen, the ensuing interaction is often described as a battle: The host’s immune system pulls out the big guns to fight and eradicate the invader. In immunology parlance, this is known as resistance; its end-game is destroying the...
Reworking democracy: Goal of ‘ranked-choice voting’ is to produce winners with a mix of the electorate
Ranked-choice voting (here called instant-runoff voting) can also be used for contests that decide several seats at once, such as races for city councils or school boards. The counting is more involved, but the goal is to produce a slate of winners that roughly matches the partisan makeup of the...
Confirmed resistance to front-line malaria drugs in Africa, may put a damper on rising vaccine hopes
Scientists have confirmed that malaria parasites in Africa have developed resistance to a key family of drugs used to protect against them. “We’ve all been expecting and dreading this for quite some time,” says Leann Tilley, a biochemist at the University of Melbourne in Australia, who researches the molecular basis...
DR Congo government slow response to agony of Mt Nyiragongo volcano IDPs frustrating Aid agencies
After DR Congo President Felix Tshisekedi’s visit to Goma, the government pledged to provide 1,000 temporary shelters, to be constructed by the military at a camp called Kanyarucinya. The International Federation of the Red Cross agreed to contribute 500 additional structures at another site, Kibati. Some aid workers who were...
