BBC’s push for neutrality turns into unscheduled Match of the Day as pundits support legend Gary Lineker
The Match of the Day controversy unravelled so quickly on Friday night that its presence on television screens this weekend is a long way from certain. It was last removed from them 30 years ago because of a strike by technical staff, though this is something more visceral and elemental,...
Ivory Coast defender: It takes sacrifice and strong mentality to get results in football, fend for family
“My brother was murdered but two days later I played for Tottenham before flying home to comfort my grieving mother,” are words that provide a peek into Nottingham Forest’s right wingback Serge Aurier’s strong mentality and filial connection. Never more so than when he put his own personal pain and...
Britain plans to surrender its last colony in Africa – Chagos Islands – to Mauritius in Indian Ocean
Could the protracted dispute over the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean finally be drawing to a close? Britain steadfastly insisted for decades that it was the rightful owner of what it called the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). But it did an apparent about-turn on November 3, 2022, when...
Report: Drought has killed 11 million livestock and over 6,000 iconic wildlife species in East Africa
Surrounded by kilometres of dried land and what remains of his famished livestock, Daniel Lepaine is a worried man. Dozens of his goats in Ngong, a town in southern Kenya, have died after three years of harrowing drought in East and Horn of Africa. The rest are on the verge...
South Sudan president meets deputy in capital Juba as fears of slide back into civil war resurface
South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir and his first deputy, Riek Machar met on Friday (today) at the State House in the capital, Juba, to discuss the recent dismissal of Defence Minister Angelina Teny. The eagerly anticipated meeting happens a week after Kiir unilaterally sacked the Defence and Veterans Affairs minister...
Congress sub-committee on health told NIH allowed American entities to ‘conduct risky research on novel coronaviruses’
National security chair of the subcommittee Brad Wenstrup (Republican-Ohio), notes that the Wuhan Institute has a poor track record when it comes to biosafety and was conducting this research at only a level two lab (BSL2 lab) – “described as the ‘Wild West’ by Dr Jeremy Farrar, a virologist from...
Revelations: ‘No doubt’ US National Institutes of Health funded research that resulted in creation of Covid
Dr Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), on Wednesday said he has “no doubt” the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Dr Anthony Fauci funded gain-of-function research that likely resulted in the creation of Covid-19 and its subsequent leak. Redfield made the statement...
US Congress puts virologists on the defence on why they did not to seriously consider Covid lab leak theory
The virologists behind the “proximal origin” article have strongly denounced accusations that they were improperly swayed by the participation of influential funders of scientific research. They have asserted that they seriously considered the lab leak theory but that evidence accumulated in favour of a natural origin, assuaging their earlier concerns...
Email leaks: How senior US, British scientists coerced virologists to write influential article to deny Covid was manufactured
Virologists who worked to squelch consideration of a lab origin of Covid-19 in early 2020 worked in tandem with leaders in scientific research funding, according to their private emails. Leaders of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US and the Wellcome Trust in the UK played an undisclosed...
UN Security Council votes to retain arms embargo imposed on Sudan over violence in Darfur region
The UN Security Council on Wednesday approved a resolution to renew an arms embargo and other sanctions imposed over violence in Sudan’s western Darfur region that began in 2004. Thirteen of the 15 council members voted for the resolution. Russia and China abstained, arguing that the Darfur conflict is largely...
