By Kambaiz Rafi and Scott Lucas | – In late August 2021, the US completed its withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, ending a 20-year occupation. The Taliban retook the country with shocking speed. The Islamic fundamentalist political group was founded in 1994 and controlled most of Afghanistan until the US-led campaign ousted it in 2001. […]
Plastic trash in the ocean is a global problem, and the US is the top source – a new report urges action
By Matthew Savoca, Anna Robuck, and Lauren Kashiwabara | – Plastic waste of all shapes and sizes permeates the world’s oceans. It shows up on beaches, in fish and even in Arctic sea ice. And a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine makes clear that the U.S. is a big […]
How a Supreme Court decision limiting access to abortion will harm the economy and women’s well-being
By Michele Gilman | – The Supreme Court on Dec. 1, 2021, heard oral arguments in a case that may result in a ruling that overturns Roe v. Wade. But reproductive health isn’t just about abortions, despite all the attention the procedures get. It’s also about access to family planning services, contraception, sex education and […]
Why the Arctic getting more Rain than Snow will be bad news for the whole world
By Richard Hodgkins | – Before the end of this century, most of the Arctic will for the first time receive more rain than snow across a whole year. That’s one of the key findings of a new study on precipitation in the Arctic which has major implications – not just for the polar region, […]
What my 20 years in Afghanistan taught me about the Taliban – and how the west consistently underestimates them
By Sippi Azarbaijani Moghaddam | – It was April 1995, and I was preparing to travel to Afghanistan for my first volunteer post with a UK charity. I had travelled to London to meet the Afghanistan director for the non-governmental organisation (NGO) I was going to be working for and now sat in their tiny […]
Turkey’s currency crisis is a textbook example of what not to do with interest rates
By Gulcin Ozkan | – Central banks around the globe are currently staring at inflation rates unseen in more than 20 years. Supply chain problems and labour shortages arising from the pandemic, combined with sharply rising food and energy prices, have pushed prices up by as much as 6.2% in the US, 4.2% in the […]
Channel deaths of Middle Easterners: the UK has clear legal responsibilities towards people crossing in small boats
By Mariagiulia Giuffré | – At least 27 people have drowned in the English Channel attempting to cross in a small boat. There were three children, seven women, one of whom was pregnant, and 17 men. Although a joint search and rescue operation was seemingly launched in the narrow maritime area between the UK and […]
Electric cars aren’t enough to hit climate targets: we need to develop better public transport too
By Vera O’Riordan | – Transport is responsible for 24% of energy-related carbon emissions worldwide. Half of those emissions are from carrying goods and services, and the other half are from carrying people from A to B – also known as “passenger transport”. Passenger transport has a huge impact on our surroundings, and it’s one […]
What we know about the Omicron Corona Variant So Far
By Prof. Wolfgang Preiser, Cathrine Scheepers, Jinal Bhiman, Marietjie Venter, and Tulio de Oliveira | – Since early in the COVID pandemic, the Network for Genomics Surveillance in South Africa has been monitoring changes in SARS-CoV-2. This was a valuable tool to understand better how the virus spread. In late 2020, the network detected a […]
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