UN Day of the Dead: By November 1 Covid’s true death toll was millions more than official counts
Last year’s Day of the Dead marked a grim milestone. On November 1, the global death toll from the Covid-19 pandemic passed five million, official data suggested. It has now reached 5.5 million. But that figure is a significant underestimate. Records of excess mortality, a metric that involves comparing all...
5G networks now available for millions of American but aviation firms are wary it’ll disrupt airport operations
The activation of C-Band frequencies by AT&T and Verizon means that improved 5G networks are now available for millions of Americans. The long-anticipated rollout began on January 19, but with one caveat: Both companies temporarily pushed back plans for 5G networks near certain airports after criticism from the Federal Aviation...
How Danish authorities use ‘doctored’ reports to deny refugees residency permits, force them out
After Syrians began having their residency permits revoked, nearly every person the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) interviewed on the record for the report spoke out against it. Eight of the sources released a joint statement last March criticising the document as “flawed” and flagging their contributions as “underappreciated”. “I was...
Living in a limbo: Syrian refugees can’t be repatriated because Denmark has no diplomatic ties with Damascus
A week after the publication of the Country-of-Origin Information” (COI) report by the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), the Danish Immigration Service said it would start refusing to extend residency permits for refugees from Damascus. DRC criticised the decision, as it had the 2015 Danish law establishing temporary protection, which it...
Human rights: Denmark strips Syrian refugees of residency permits, orders them to return home
Denmark is the first European country to tell large numbers of Syrian refugees to go home. While it hasn’t begun deportations, nearly 400 Syrians from in and around the capital, Damascus, have been stripped of their residency permits and the right to work since 2019. Few of those affected have...
African giraffe populations grows reversing ‘a silent extinction’ of the gorgeous species in the wild
Giraffe numbers have increased across Africa, new research shows, a rare spot of good news in the conservation world. According to a recent analysis of survey data from across the African continent, the total giraffe population is now around 117,000, approximately 20 per cent higher than it was thought to...
There is growing volume of data that shows Covid vaccines safely protect pregnant women
Covid-19 can strike hard and fast – especially when you are pregnant. Alison Cahill, a specialist in maternal-foetal medicine at the Dell Medical School in Austin, Texas, vividly remembers a patient from the first wave of the pandemic who was 26 weeks pregnant and woke up one morning with a...
Technology: British takes Internet blimps to Zanzibar in a fragile market where Google flopped, pulled out
The Tanzanian islands of Zanzibar and Pemba are about to become a test site for a mobile internet network its creators hope will not just revolutionise lives there, but possibly across sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. Only around 20 per cent of Tanzanians use the internet, according to the World Bank....
US federal agencies consider creation of integrity council to shield science from political meddling after Trump missteps
US federal agencies need to strengthen the policies that protect science used in government decision-making. They should also create a scientific-integrity council spanning many agencies, to help address political meddling by government officials. Those are some of the top conclusions of a long-awaited report from a taskforce convened by US...
Human rights: The minute the word gender enters dialogue, some regions get up and leave conference room
Since the beginning of the war in Tigray in November last year, more than 1,300 incidents of rape have been reported, while many argue that more cases went unreported due to societal stigma surrounding the topic. A high number of cases of gender-based violence including gang-rape and other atrocities were...
