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...
Covid holocaust that never was: Africans now carry masks ‘to protect my pocket’ against the police
At a busy market in a poor township outside Harare this week, Nyasha Ndou kept his mask in his pocket, as hundreds of other people, mostly unmasked, jostled to buy and sell fruit and vegetables displayed on wooden tables and plastic sheets. As in much of Zimbabwe, here the coronavirus...
Belarus decision to clear camps of refugees has sparked fears asylum seekers will soon be deported
Many of the Iraqi refugees who have attempted to reach the European Union through from Belarus are from the Kurdish ethnic group that makes up the majority of the population in the north of the country. Along with people of other nationalities taking the route, many saw it as an...
Showdown between EU and Belarus escalating tensions on Europe’s eastern border
For weeks, a fast-evolving showdown between the European Union and Belarus has been fuelling a humanitarian crisis on Europe’s eastern border, with thousands of asylum seekers and migrants being used as pawns in a geopolitical dispute. Tension escalated last week as somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 asylum seekers and migrants...
Longevity: Wowed scientists parse rockfish long life, how its genes can enable humans live up to 500 years
Few groups of animals encapsulate the extremes of longevity more than fish. While coral reef pygmy govies survive for less than 10 weeks, Greenland sharks can endure more than 500 years. So, when a team of biologists at the University of California, Berkeley, wanted to explore the genetics of aging,...
Kenya’s pastoralists wary of middlemen lying in wait to make a killing as they wallow in misery
Although pastoralism is the bedrock of the economy in the arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL), the potential of commercialisation is blunted by a weak value-chain – from a lack of abattoirs and market access to only limited production of hides and skins, which effectively relegates pastoralism to a subsistence level....
For Kenya’s pastoralists climate crisis hurt them and their livestock, ranches are killing their economy
Kargi is an isolated settlement, two-hours’ drive from the northern Kenyan town of Marsabit, across an ancient volcanic plain of jagged scree and basalt rock. As inhospitable as the terrain seems, Kargi does have a borehole, and that makes it something of an oasis for pastoralists trying to get their...
UN releases $40 million for Ethiopians ‘living on knife-edge as humanitarian crisis grows deeper and wider’
The United Nations says it has released emergency funds to help provide life-saving humanitarian assistance and protection to civilians caught up in Ethiopia’s spiralling conflict. UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said on Monday that he had released a total of $40 million aimed at scaling up emergency operations in the...
Analysis of climate commitments suggest ‘the world can save $300 billion annually if a global carbon market were in place’
Minister from the 200 countries that took part in the 26th conference of Climate Change (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, face stinging criticism for failure to agree on whether to create a “loss and damage” fund, a kind of insurance policy that would compensate climate-vulnerable countries for damage resulting from emissions...