Wait! Messi and Ronaldo have not exited the grand arena for heirs – Mbappe and Haaland
While there’s plenty of fanfare over Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe taking over at the top of the game, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are far from done yet. Both with new teams (well half-new in Ronaldo’s case) the pair return to the world’s biggest stage in club sport this...
Prodigal tongue: Why dirty or curse words are deliciously a vibrant part of fast language learning
One of the preeminent linguists of our time examines the realms of language that are considered shocking and taboo in order to understand what imbues curse words with such power – and why we love them so much. Profanity has always been a deliciously vibrant part of our lexicon, an...
Salmonella: Beware, $365m danger lurks in that chicken and egg you ravenously eat
Every year, food tainted with Salmonella and Campylobacter bacteria causes nearly three million illnesses in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among those sickened by Salmonella, 26,500 will be hospitalised and 420 will die, accruing an estimated $365 million in direct medical costs. Although Campylobacter...
Healthcare, aid and the Taliban: Fix crumbling health system or risk greater humanitarian catastrophe
The New Humanitarian Interview with Afghanistan’s acting health minister, Dr Wahid Majrooh, on situation after the Taliban takeover in Kabul. International aid donors must find a way to fund Afghanistan’s crumbling health system, or risk an even greater humanitarian catastrophe. This is the warning from the country’s acting health minister,...
Menstrual hygiene: How Syrian refugee women cope with indignity of reusing sanitary towels
A 2020 study commissioned by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) on the social acceptability and practicality of using reusable sanitary pads in Lebanon found a host of challenges. For starters, among the around one million Syrian refugees and the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees are many women who...
Afghan healthcare on life support as the system that proved resilient during 3 waves of Covid crumbles
International aid suspensions could shutter most of Afghanistan’s public health facilities, essentially leaving the country without a working healthcare system, officials and aid groups say. Some 2,000 donor-funded clinics and other health facilities could shut their doors within days, stripping access to primary or secondary healthcare from millions of people....
How systemic racism in US healthcare works against patients with sickle cell disease – Black or Latin
Sickle-cell disease was once a childhood ailment, simply because many children with the condition died before reaching adulthood. But since 1972, when the US National Sickle Cell Disease Programme was founded and specific funding became available, the United States has managed to drastically reduce childhood deaths from the disease. Between...
Quest to raise ‘Wikipedia’ reliability and authenticity: A woman’s mission to rewrite Nazi history
when Ksenia Coffman started editing Wikipedia, she was like a tourist in Buenos Aires in the 1950s. She came to learn the tango, admire the architecture, sip maté. She didn’t know there was a Nazi problem. But Coffman, who was born in Soviet-era Russia and lives in Silicon Valley, is...
Report: To reduce global warming 50 per cent of fossil fuel should remain untapped
Nearly 90 per cent of economically viable global coal reserves must be left in the ground to have even a 50 per cent chance of hitting internationally agreed climate-change goals, according to an updated model of limits to fossil-fuel extraction, published in Nature. For a 50 per cent chance of...
Intriguing: Chinese scientist who discovered Covid causing virus in Wuhan caves studied in France
Founded in 1956 as a branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) initially focused on agricultural pests, a serious concern during the famine that began in 1959. During the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, its research was disrupted, as 229 CAS scientists...
