Fears Covid will hit children harder has lowered vaccination age limit
On 21 June, Israel’s Ministry of Health recommended that all individuals aged 12-15 be vaccinated against Covid-19 – making the nation one of the few that have so far approved vaccinations for younger adolescents. The decision came in response to a trend that many countries with high rates of vaccination...
Ordinary Chinese drive ecotourism, central government provides incentives to create jobs
Terry Townshend, a wildlife conservationist and biodiversity adviser to Beijing’s government, has since 2017 been training yak herders in Qinghai in the kinds of skills that ecologists hope could be a model for sustainable development since 2017. In 2016, he met the official responsible for Zaduo, a county in Qinghai...
Tigray crisis: UN agency apathetic as trucks ferry Ethiopian refugees to Libyan horror camps
A donor letter that highlights the plight of Tigrayan refugees in Sudan lays the blame more squarely on UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), which it accuses of having failed to ensure the presence of experienced, senior staff members in the camps and transit sites. The staffing problems have led...
Deepfake technology concerns trigger urgent search for answers among journalists, crime investigators
Deepfake video methods can digitally alter a person’s lip movements to match words that they never said. As part of an effort to grow awareness about such technologies through art, the MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality created a fake video showing former US President Richard Nixon giving a speech about...
Scientists probe immune systems of bats to fathom how they host lethal viruses
For several weeks in March, Arinjay Banerjee would eat breakfast at 6am and then drive the empty roads of Toronto to a restricted-access lab. Then he’d ready himself for work, donning three layers of gloves, a helmeted mask kitted with an air-purifying respirator, and a surgical-style gown. The interlocked doors...
Massive tree projects must address scientific, political, social and economic concerns – experts
Trees are symbols of hope, life and transformation. They’re also increasingly touted as a straightforward, relatively inexpensive, ready-for-prime-time solution to climate change. When it comes to removing human-caused emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from Earth’s atmosphere, trees are a big help. Through photosynthesis, trees pull the gas out...
Kashmir women Covid vaccine rejection: To live with stigma of not having a child is to die every day
Rashida Jan, a nurse who works in the Covid-19 ward at a hospital in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district, treats people suffering from the deadly virus every day. But when it was her turn to be vaccinated, she refused. “I am getting married in the next few months,” Jan said. “My...
After ‘pregnant’ male rat experiments, Chinese scientists plan to try pregnancy in men
An experiment to impregnate male rats stitched to female rats, by researchers at the Naval Medical University in Shanghai, has stirred debate in China and beyond about the ethics of the work. Researchers say the experiment was highly contrived and unnecessarily distressing to the animals, and that it offers few...
In-person learning: Schools don’t seem to be environments where Covid transmission is rampant
On a bright, crisp morning in March, Salah Goyut said goodbye to his stuffed tiger, Stripes and his cat, Meowington and started walking the two short blocks to Herbert Schenk Elementary School in Madison, Wisconsin. He had started kindergarten there months ago, but he had only seen his teacher on...
Tigray crisis: ‘I have never seen a humanitarian response with such little human dignity’
Tens of thousands of refugees who fled the conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region are facing security risks and assistance shortfalls in camps in Sudan, according to a group of Western embassies and donors who have criticised the UN-led relief operation in a letter in or possession. Addressed to the...
