Holy weed: Colorado cannabis farms puff out more gases than coal mines
Legal cannabis production in Colorado emits more greenhouse gases than the state’s coal mining industry, researchers analysing the sector’s energy use have found. The production and use of cannabis for medical or recreational reasons is now legal in several US states, which has led to a booming industry. Hailey Summers...
Zimbabwe repatriates 20 poached DRC primates in transit to South Africa
After months of coordinated international effort the Jeunes Animaux Confisqués au Katanga (JACK) sanctuary welcomed 20 monkeys to their new home. The monkeys, natives of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), were confiscated in September 2020 following a surgical strike on an international wildlife crime syndicate that operates between the...
You are always monitored; how to tell emails that remotely track you
Everyone sends emails these days: political parties, your book club, freelance journalists, the social networks you’re signed up to, your parents, that online store that you only bought one item from a decade ago, and many, many more. What do a lot of those email senders have in common? They...
Beware of serious health risks posed by arsenic poisoning in water, food
Arsenic’s potent effect on humans has been known since at least the Roman Empire. For centuries, it was a popular poison for murderers because it can’t be seen, smelled or tasted in food or water. That made it difficult to detect. As chemical detection methods improved, its use as a...
Hashtag: A genie or ally governments around the world cannot rein in?
After Twitter drew world attention to schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram terror group, Nigerian security forces began to arrest protesters and later deployed armed police and water cannons onto the median. That scene would only provide more arresting footage to help drive the story further up the Twitter algorithm. Nigeria...
Social media: Powerful tool for galvanising civilians against dictators and crime
Watching the analytics skyrocket during a dentist appointment in San Francisco, Jack Dorsey was struck by how quickly a hashtag can move. The founder of Twitter had seen people fire off tweets to coordinate protests in Iran in 2009, and the next year, the website had galvanised crowds of millions...
How a hashtag went viral and incited a military intervention in Nigeria
Russell Simmons was finishing his morning yoga routine on a yacht floating in the turquoise Caribbean waters off St Barts, peacefully unaware that he was about to provoke a tidal wave. The man who founded the boom-bap hit machine Def Jam Records in a cramped Manhattan dormitory room and made...
Multitude of coronavirus variants found in the US, but the threat is unclear
For the scientists who have spent the past year poring over hundreds of thousands of coronavirus genomes, the United States has been an enigma. Despite having world-leading genome sequencing infrastructure and experiencing more Covid infections than any other country, the United States has until recently lagged far behind in sequencing...
CDC director approves J&J’s single-shot Covid vaccine, distribution to begin soon
CDC Director Dr Rochelle Walesnky has signed off on Johnson&Johnson’s vaccine. Walensky’s approval allows the federal government to begin shipping the doses to sites across the country. Her approval comes after a CDC panel voted unanimously to recommend the shot for those 18 and older. A J&J executive told lawmakers...
World’s oldest music tool: How early artistes modified conch shell into a ‘flute
Some 18,000 years ago, in a cave in what we now call France, a human being left behind something precious: a conch shell. It was not just any conch shell. Its tip had been lopped off – unlikely by accident, given that this is the strongest part of the shell...
