By Amnesty International
Responding to news that five law enforcement officers in Georgia have been arrested and charged over attacks in 2024 on three people attending anti-government protests, Denis Krivosheev, Amnesty International’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia Deputy Director, said: “Accountability for the widespread abusive use of force by police against peaceful protesters, journalists and government critics during […] The post Georgia: Justice and accountability require more that criminal charges against five police officers for assaulting protesters appeared first on Amnesty International. ]]>
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By Ebru Işıklı, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Sociology, University College Dublin
When earthquakes struck Turkey and Syria in February 2023, more than 50,000 people were killed and thousands more were injured.
One month after the disaster, a bank employee named Efe Demir died by suicide in İstanbul. Before his death, he had sent an email to colleagues questioning the actions and motivations of his employer,…
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By Roja Hadianamrei, Senior Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Science, University of Portsmouth
The first ever avian influenza vaccine recently started trials in the UK. This marks a milestone in the prevention of bird flu infections in humans.
The vaccine targets the H5N1 flu strain, which causes severe infections in bird populations worldwide. However, this strain of bird flu virus is also able to spread to humans in rare cases through direct contact with infected birds or poultry…
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By Michelle Spear, Professor of Anatomy, University of Bristol
I wouldn’t say that I’m afraid of heights. I can stand on a cliff path or look out from a tall building without the rush of panic people often associate with vertigo. What I really dislike is something much harder to explain: the peculiar feeling in my feet.
It’s a sensation that’s difficult to describe. It isn’t numbness, it isn’t tingling either. The closest I can come is a strange awareness in the soles of my feet – a kind of buzzing.
For a long time I assumed this was just an odd personal quirk. But many people report something similar when standing near a drop. Around…
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By Santiago Zuluaga Castañeda, JdlC Researcher, Departamento de Ecología Evolutiva, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (MNCN-CSIC)
Arjun Amar, Associate Professor, FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, University of Cape Town
Megan Murgatroyd, Biologist, University of Cape Town
Birds of prey and vultures (raptors) play a vital role in ecosystems, both as top predators and key scavengers. However, compared to many other bird species, raptor populations are declining faster. This is because they need large areas to live in, have low population densities, and reproduce slowly. For these reasons they are vulnerable to human impacts like farming with pesticides, electrocution, collision with wind turbines, or poaching.
In many cases, by the time scientists and conservationists…
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By Fiona Cross, Researcher in Animal Cognition, University of Canterbury
As a child, the mere glimpse of a spider used to send me screaming and running for cover. I was convinced that spiders were my enemies. I thought they were out to get me.
These days, I run towards spiders, not away from them. I can partly thank a spider for helping me with that. This is a special spider affectionately known as the mosquito terminator.
Mosquito terminators (Evarcha culicivora) are small spiders, about 5mm long. They are a species…
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By Freya Gowrley, Lecturer in History of Art and Liberal Arts, University of Bristol
As celebrity shrinking dominates the red carpet, the Met’s Costume Art exhibition bucks the trend with body shapes that signal acceptance and inclusion.
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By Julia Buxton, Professor in the School of Law and Justice Studies, Liverpool John Moores University
Four months have passed since US forces captured Venezuela’s sitting president, Nicolás Maduro, and ousted him from power. Maduro’s vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, quickly moved into the top job and has, under US tutelage, begun a process of reversing her country’s experiment with socialism.
Venezuela’s pivot towards socialism began under the leadership of Hugo Chávez. After entering office in 1999, he initiated a programme of sweeping nationalisations, state-led oil wealth redistribution and increased social spending. Chávez called this process the Bolivarian…
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By Viraj Nair, Lecturer in Financial Management, Royal Docks School of Business and Law, University of East London
In the shadow of the 2008 global financial crisis, trust in the financial system was at a historic low. Banks had failed, markets had collapsed, and confidence in central institutions had been deeply shaken.
It was in this moment of uncertainty that an anonymous figure, Satoshi Nakamoto, published the Bitcoin white paper – a nine-page document that quietly introduced a radical new idea: a financial system that would not rely on trust in institutions at…
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By Jacqueline Boyd, Senior Lecturer in Animal Science, Nottingham Trent University
I recently lost one of my cocker spaniels, Bobbi. She was fit, healthy and active, but had a catastrophic diagnosis of oral melanoma two months before I had to make the decision that anyone with deeply loved pets dreads.
It is easy to presume that only humans have a true concept of death and what it means. However, death is universal in biology and many animals experience death within their social groups, and even as an intrinsic part of…
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