Labour of love: Mastering courage for the first kiss, then an explosion of endless passion
If there is such a thing as an SI Unit for beauty, up until this point in my life, my SI Unit had been one Judy Achieng (not her real name). Back in my second year of secondary school, I had laid my eyes on her at some function in...
As pro-Ethiopia government forces prepare for assault, bodies of Tigrayans float on border rivers
After recent tensions with the Ethiopian government, some aid workers in the Tigray question whether advocacy is now even the right strategy. “The US has come down hard, the EU has come down hard, but is it really helping?” said the second official. “It seems like the Ethiopian government is...
Hundreds of thousands of people in Tigray face starvation after suspension of relief agencies – report
The suspension of two major international relief organisations in Ethiopia could further worsen the humanitarian situation in Tigray, where an aid blockade is still effectively in place, even as conflict spreads into neighbouring regions and hundreds of thousands of people face famine. The blockade, and a cash crunch caused by...
US universities lose billions in revenue, strain financially as foreign students stay away
The Biden administration is hoping to attract tens of thousands of international students who stayed away from US campuses during the coronavirus pandemic. Foreign enrolment plummeted by 20 per cent last year costing nearly $10 billion in lost revenue. Though some students are starting to return, recovery might not be...
How resistance to caste system drove over 60 upper-caste students in India to suicide
In the late 1990s, when Raosaheb Kale became a professor at for Jawaharlal Nehru University, or JNU, he sat on a committee to select junior researchers at the Nuclear Science Centre, about a mile away from the university in New Delhi. Among the candidates was a Dalit researcher named Rajendra...
Scammers could sack you as AI can now create phishing messages in flawless language
Natural language processing continues to find its way into unexpected corners. This time, it is phishing emails. In a small study, researchers found that they could use the deep learning language model GPT-3, along with other AI-as-a-service platforms, to significantly lower the barrier to entry for crafting spear-phishing campaigns at...
India’s casteism: If I make a mistake, it’s not my mistake; it’s labelled the mistake of ‘Untouchables’ community
Raosaheb Kale was born in 1950, three years after India became free from British rule, and the same year India’s constitution came into force. That constitution abolished untouchability and declared caste discrimination illegal. The constitution also introduced reservation policies in public sector jobs, politics and education for marginalised communities, including...
Study of poverty via a child’s eyes reveals stressors that hinder healthy emotional and cognitive growth
In a major shift from traditional data collection on human development, psychologist Seth Pollak says getting to understand what children think of their material status provides important insights into they emotional and cognitive growth. Poverty affects nearly one in seven American children – about 10.5 million kids in total –...
Biden’s burden: Social media platforms turbocharge profits with disinformation, hate speech and conspiracy
There is no way the US government will fix what’s wrong with internet platforms without reducing their profits. President Biden must choose between the happiness of those who own the platforms and the safety and wellbeing of everyone else. Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube turbocharge their profits by using algorithms to...
You’ll still see me around, Eliud Kipchoge assures athletics world as he wins Tokyo Olympics marathon gold
Moments after romping home to take the Tokyo Olympic Games marathon gold, Kenyan’s marathon king Eliud Kipchoge assured the athletics world that “You will see me around.” For a high-achieving man who took the world by storm with the mantra “No human is limited,” the words implied he was not...
