Capitol Hill riot underlines ‘You can run, but you can’t hide’ mantra as Google tech unearths suspects
Using a traditional search warrant, the FBI investigators then obtained full geolocation and communication records for some of the suspects’ Google accounts that showed them allegedly travelling to Washington, DC, and admitting in a series of text and picture messages that he had been in the Capitol. One of them...
How secret Google geofence warrant is helping FBI nail down Capitol riot mob
Court documents suggest the FBI has been using controversial geofence search warrants at a scale not publicly seen before, collecting account information and location data on hundreds of devices inside the US Capitol during a deadly invasion by a right-wing mob on January 6. While Google receives over 10,000 geofence...
Journalists in Afghanistan fear being killed ‘every minute of their lives under a religious dictatorship’
Hundreds of journalists working in Afghanistan have fled or gone into hiding in recent weeks following the seizure of power by the Taliban. The leader of one of the IFJ’s affiliates in Afghanistan, who has worked for over 20 years with international media as a reporter and senior editor tells...
While China plans to stop financing new coal plants overseas, its domestic consumption has tripled
China’s pledge to stop financing new coal plants abroad, announced by President Xi Jinping at the United Nations summit last week, has raised hopes that the world could soon wean itself off the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel. But although this is a positive step from the world’s biggest emitter of...
World’s largest publishers unite to tackle rising incidence of doctored images in research papers
Some of the world’s largest publishers have come together to tackle the growing problem of image manipulation in scientific papers. They have developed a three-tier classification system that editors can use to flag suspicious content and detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to deal with doctored images. Image-integrity specialists welcome the...
PhD ladder: Ashamed, some Western universities are taking steps to close undergraduate racial award gap
When it comes to explaining the awards gap in undergraduate degrees in the United Kingdom as a whole, student experience might be a factor because Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) students often report experiencing racism on campus, and feeling that they do not fit in or that it’s not...
Why universities in the West must decolonise curricula to remove biases that impede Black students’ progress to PhD
Black students face barriers progressing to PhD programmes, and experience other career setbacks, because they are more likely to receive lower undergraduate degree classifications than their white peers, an analysis by a leading UK university has found. The study, based on exam and coursework data, and published in the journal...
Drone reforestation: Flying Forests plans to plant trees in East Africa and Panama
Like other companies involved in drone reforestation, DroneSeed is reluctant to say how many trees it has planted to date. The company would not disclose the names of customers but says it is working with three of the five largest timber companies in the US, as well as non-profit conservation...
As onslaught of climate change driven by wildfires deepens, companies adopt drone reforestation
Last year’s Castle Fire in California’s Sierra Nevada is estimated to have killed more than 10 per cent of the world’s giant sequoias, the tallest trees on earth. Sequoias can live through many fires over life spans that last thousands of years; their bark is fire-resistant and they rely on...
African countries face serious political unrest as rising food prices hit the roof – ISS Africa report
African Governments must act fast to ensure their people are fed and avoid conflict the continent cannot afford, Institute for Security Studies Africa (ISS Africa) reports. In its September report, ISS Africa observes that since the onset of Covid-19, global food prices have rocketed, putting pressure on the world’s most...
