With highest number of remandees awaiting trial, Nigeria’s criminal justice system is in itself ‘criminal’
Nigeria’s prison population is more than 76,000, housed in 240 correctional centres. About 70 per cent of these inmates are still awaiting trial. They have been arrested and charged, but not yet convicted or cleared. This is the highest percentage of awaiting-trial prisoners in Africa. World Prison Brief’s latest report...
Arsenal and After-My Story: Ex-Gunners’ midfielder’s memoir details how racism stalks Blacks in English sports
Paul Davis, an Arsenal midfielder who played almost 450 times for the club and swept the board with domestic honours, was one of English football’s black trailblasers. Having emerged from the club’s apprenticeship scheme at the start of the 1980s, Davis came of age during the height of English football’s...
Anti-Taliban revolt: Afghanistan’s shadowy new conflict sets off new displacement, new civilian abuses
Six months ago, Sadullah’s life changed forever. His family, including his eight children, had made do with life under the Taliban. That was until the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF), an armed opposition movement, tried to wrest control from Taliban fighters in Panjshir, and their once-peaceful province became the...
Processed food stigma: Surveys suggest Chinese and Indians are more likely to eat lab-grown meat than Americans
To have a chance of meeting our global climate targets, ending deforestation and protecting the world’s wildlife, we need to eat much less meat. Both plant foods and meat substitutes have a much lower carbon footprint, use much less land and cause less water pollution than meat. The environmental toll...
Use of antibiotics to prevent new sexually transmitted infections in US hits brickwall as gonorrhoea spikes
A health department in the United States has become one of the first to recommend that people who are at high risk of getting a sexually transmitted infection (STI) take a preventive dose of antibiotics after unprotected sex. Clinical trials have shown the strategy can reduce infections such as chlamydia,...
Rumba in the bedroom: Franco may be the Congo music colossus, but his 18 children are no match for Tabu Ley’s 89-plus
Some of the most prolific Congolese musicians who excelled at recording songs that became big hits all over Africa and beyond over the years are, are also reported to have excelled at siring children. Rumba in the bedroom! While many of their offspring did not walk in their footsteps to...
New medical evidence shows having a purpose in life helps people live longer regardless of race or gender
A growing body of evidence suggests that living with purpose helps human beings live longer. Recently, researchers wondered whether this effect would apply equally across genders, ethnicities and races. This was the focus of a new study led by Dr Koichiro Shiba, assistant professor at Boston University’s School of Public...
Global male fertility crisis: When a male born to a woman who smokes, his sperm count reduces by 50 per cent
For years, scientists across the world have gathered evidence showing declines in sperm quality. Now, new research compiling the results of those studies has found that sperm count has dropped dramatically around the world, and the rate of decline is accelerating. In a new analysis, researchers at Mount Sinai Medical...
DR Congo: Unresolved local conflicts, presence of foreign armies and poorly paid soldiers weaken combatants’ trust
A slow rollout of the Disarmament, Demobilisation, Community Recovery and Stabilisation Programme in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been undermined trust. Although President Felix Tshisekedi first called for a new DDR programme in 2019, the initiative is not yet operational, even with provincial and national coordinators appointed over...
Haiti’s forsaken women: They run own gangs for protection or collaborate with men, often with deadly results
While women are forcibly recruited io criminal gangs, others reluctantly join for protection or work, earning money by collecting information or stealing from homes, according to women who have fled gang-controlled areas and others working in such places who spoke on condition of anonymity out of security concerns. Some women...
