Wary minorities say ‘Ethiopia is a federation of ethnicities and everyone deserves to feel safe’
When war broke out in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region in November 2020, residents of the town of Adebay, close to the Eritrean border, woke to the sounds of gunfire and revving engines. Eritrean soldiers were beating up civilians and forcing them onto military trucks, two witnesses say. They estimated that...
Despite progress, fieldwork and research remain a stumbling block for Indian women in science
It was a scorching summer morning in 2018 in rural Purulia in West Bengal, when geologist and palaeobiologist Sanjukta Chakravorti, who was working on her PhD thesis then, had taken a break from her excavations and was approached by two school girls. “Didi, what are you doing?” one of them...
One year after Russian invasion, Ukraine exposes the limits of well-funded international aid
As the power returns following one of the now frequent electricity cuts that ripple across Ukraine, Kylyna Kurochka logs on to her laptop and finds herself faced with dozens of messages, each one begging for help. “I’m 73 years old, my husband 78. We are IDPs (internally displaced people) …...
Long thought to be deaf to auditory stimulus, new research reveals snakes can actually hear
Dare to get close enough to a snake of some kind, you’ll quickly notice there’s no sign of an ear for you to whisper into. Not a flap, flop, or furrow to be seen. So, you might be mistaken to thinking they’re a little hard of hearing. “Snakes are very...
Romance and work: It’s really possible to work with a romantic partner without growing to despise them
Steve and Deonie ‘Dee’ Allen’s fates were sealed when their respective dogs, two kelpies, spotted each other from across a marina in Brisbane, Australia and became friends. The pair were living on boats three berths down from one another – and the rest, as they say, is history. Twenty-two years...
Made to kill: How Big Pharma make and sell cancer – case of GlaxoSmithKline’s Zantac cancer drug
Amid tens of thousands of lawsuits that are pending in state courts all across the US, a new report based on evidence discovered in these court cases reveals Big Pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) had, for decades, concealed evidence showing that Zantac could cause cancer. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, GSK –...
Broken bones, eye trauma, brain injuries – how America’s sketchy ‘less-lethal’ weapons export violence abroad
A crowd of protesters was squaring off against a battalion of riot police on a city boulevard as plumes of tear gas and dust clouded the afternoon light. It could have been Hong Kong or Santiago in 2019, Minneapolis or Portland in the summer of 2020, Tehran or Shanghai in...
Vaccine safety advocate Brandy Vaughan mysterious death sums up Africa’s ‘suicide’ via ‘dirty’ drugs
When Covid ravaged the world between from late 2019 to 2022, Africa looked destined for what had been cast as imminent Armageddon in Africa, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa raised a key concern that African scientists have yet to address: To what extent should Africans trust vaccines manufactured by Big...
State capture to mafia state: Interlinking politics and business in South Africa’s evolution into organised crime centre
A report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (Gitoc) released in September 2022 argues that South Africa has increasingly become a centre of organised crime, transcending national boundaries. The picture emerging from the report is that there are organised networks inside and outside the state that enable, facilitate...
Overuse of antibiotics in animal farming linked to spike in drug resistance among human beings
The use of antibiotics in animal farming – a major contributor to antimicrobial resistance – is expected to grow by 8 per cent between 2020 and 2030 despite ongoing efforts to curtail their use, according to an analysis. Overuse of antibiotics in agriculture is thought to be a major driver...
