By Steve Urlich, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Management, Lincoln University, New Zealand
Hamish Rennie, Associate Professor in Planning and Environmental Management, Lincoln University, New Zealand
As each new environmental assessment shows, the impacts on New Zealand’s natural and urban areas are only compounding.
The government’s most recent national snapshot describes polluted rivers and coastal waters, declining biodiversity, poor air quality in some communities and greenhouse gas emissions that remain high by international standards.
Increasingly…
(Full Story)
|
By Gento Okawa, PhD student, Linguistics, Simon Fraser University
Lin Lu, PhD student, Applied Linguistics, Concordia University
Mary Grantham O'Brien, Professor of Linguistics; Vice-Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies, Simon Fraser University
Ryuichi Suzuki, PhD student in Education (Applied Linguistics), Concordia University
People who speak with an accent know it can lead to discrimination. It can cost them in job interviews, at work and in everyday exchanges. But what they usually have to go on is anecdote: their own experiences and those of people they know.
Interestingly, research demonstrates that listeners can often understand accented speech well. Yet those findings rarely reach accented speakers themselves or the practitioners who make important decisions that affect their lives, such as hiring managers.
That disconnect…
(Full Story)
|
By Logan S. James, Postdoctoral Researcher in Biology, McGill University; The University of Texas at Austin
Jon Sakata, Professor, Department of Biology and Integrated Program in Neuroscience, McGill University
Kendra Oudyk, Master of Library and Information Studies student; Graduate Academic Assistant in Digital Scholarship, University of British Columbia
A new study compares the songs of 367 bird species with song and speech from 52 human languages to reveal shared acoustic patterns.
(Full Story)
|
By Andrew Nicholas Kadykalo, Adjunct Professor, School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability (SERS), University of Waterloo; Trent University
Elizabeth Ann Nyboer, Assistant Professor, Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, Virginia Tech
Steven J Cooke, Canada Research Professor, Conservation Physiology, Carleton University
Nearly 200 countries recently came together in Armenia for the 2026 United Nations Biodiversity Conference to review progress toward halting and reversing biodiversity loss. Many of these governments will soon convene again in Turkey to discuss efforts to tackle climate change at COP31.
In 2022, parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity adopted the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework aimed…
(Full Story)
|
By Louis Bherer, Professor, Université de Montréal
Billions of dollars are being spent on research to find a molecule that will cure Alzheimer’s disease. Yet, as Dr. Louis Bherer explains, adopting certain lifestyle habits could significantly reduce the risk of developing symptoms, in some cases by up to half.
Dr. Bherer is a professor in the Department of Medicine at the Université de Montréal and researcher and director at the EPIC Centre, the preventive medicine and physical activity centre at the Institut de Cardiologie de Montréal (Montreal Heart Institute). His work focuses on the impact of lifestyle, physical exercise…
(Full Story)
|
By Human Rights Watch
Click to expand Image The Adelaide Women’s Prison, South Australia, 2026. © 2026 Dean Faulkner/ABC News Prison authorities in the Australian state of South Australia are harming people with disabilities by using solitary confinement.Solitary confinement has a disproportionately harmful impact on people with disabilities and can amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and even torture. Australia’s federal and state governments should take urgent action to ensure proper independent oversight of prisons and invest in alternatives to incarceration.(Sydney) — Prison authorities…
(Full Story)
|
By Lauren Johnston, Associate Professor, China Studies Centre, University of Adelaide
The demand for donkey hides has grown exponentially over the past 15 years, driven mainly by demand from China. Lauren Johnston is a specialist on China trade with Africa. She has spent several years looking into the donkey trade, and has just published a book, China, Africa and the Market for Donkeys. She answers questions about what she found.
What drives the demand? Which countries have the biggest markets?
The demand is driven almost exclusively by China. The…
(Full Story)
|
By Lotfi Sour, enseignant-chercheur, Université Mustapha Stambouli de Mascara
Algeria recently announced it would deploy its army into neighbouring Niger. This marks a departure from its long-standing reluctance to deploy its military outside its borders. It last sent forces to support Egypt during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.
On 25 October 2026, both chambers of Algeria’s parliament approved…
(Full Story)
|
Saturday, October 31, 2026
The UN human rights chief on Saturday demanded an independent investigation into the death of a Yemeni colleague held by the Houthis for more than two years, whose family learned of his death only weeks after it happened.
(Full Story)
|
Saturday, October 31, 2026
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is building factories and hospitals, rolling out smartphones and mobile banking, and passing new laws at an unprecedented rate. But its people are more cut off from the outside world than at any point in the country’s history.
(Full Story)
|