By Oscar Morton, Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow, University of Sheffield
Chris Bousfield, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Cambridge
The minerals needed for clean energy are driving widespread forest loss across Africa, much of it far beyond the mine itself and largely preventable.
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By Rennie Naidoo, Professor of Information Systems, University of the Witwatersrand
Generative artificial intelligence (AI), and especially large language models deployed as chatbots and digital assistants, are now part of everyday digital life.
These models are being framed as a helpful assistant, a patient tutor, a customer service agent and even a source of emotional support. But what happens when even more human encounters are mediated by machines?
This question matters especially in South Africa, where apartheid not only…
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By Mwangi Chege, Lecturer, American University
More and more of Kenya’s farmlands are coming under the control of people who live and work in urban centres. Over the past two decades, the proportion they control has grown to nearly a third of Kenya’s total agricultural land.
This trend has also been recorded in Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia. Urban residents acquire rural farmlands because they see land as an attractive investment.…
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By Johanna Amaya-Panche, Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Politics, Liverpool John Moores University
Colombia’s president-elect, Abelardo De La Espriella, widely known as “El Tigre”, will inherit a country deeply affected by insecurity.
The Paz Total (total peace) strategy of outgoing president, Gustavo Petro, leaves a difficult legacy. Dialogue with armed groups has
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By Siân Halcrow, Professor of Biological Anthropology, University of Otago
Rebecca Gowland, Professor of Bioarchaeology, Durham University
Trigger warning: this article includes references to infant death and institutional abuse
If you’ve been to a museum about the history of medicine or surgery you’ve probably seen loads of preserved human remains that have been used as teaching aids or in scientific research.
At London’s Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons you can see human tissue like the Evelyn tables from the 1600s. These display the dissected system of arteries, nerves and veins from an unknown adult, which were then pasted on four boards.
But it’s often not just adult…
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By Human Rights Watch
Click to expand Image Zaida Catalán and Michael Sharp. © Instagram/Zaida Catalán; John Sharp The Democratic Republic of Congo’s High Military Court in Kinshasa, the capital, has convicted on appeal the Congolese army Colonel Jean de Dieu Mambweni of the war crime of murder for orchestrating the assassinations of Zaida Catalán and Michael J. Sharp. The United Nations experts were abducted and executed in March 2017 while investigating mass killings in Kasai Central province. The verdict announced on June 5 ends a trial chapter that began nine years ago before a military…
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By Human Rights Watch
Click to expand Image Bangui, Central African Republic. © 2016 Reuters On June 12, the Central African Republic accepted 18 men and women of other nationalities deported from the United States, despite its own fragility as a country recovering from decades of conflict and suffering a protracted humanitarian crisis.The new arrivals included people from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Cameroon, Egypt, and Tunisia, all of whom had US court-ordered protections against deportation to their countries of origin due to fears of persecution or torture.Central…
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By Raffaele De Risi, Associate Professor in Civil Engineering, School of Civil, Aerospace and Design Engineering, University of Bristol
More than 500 people have been killed in Venezuela following powerful back-to-back earthquakes, with many more injured. Rescue teams have also been trying to locate people trapped in collapsed buildings.
Here, Raffaele De Risi, associate professor in civil engineering at the University of Bristol, answered our questions about the role building design may have played in the disaster.
Venezuela is in an active seismic zone. Why do you think there have been so many devastating building collapses?
Indeed, Venezuela is a seismically…
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By Tom Harper, Lecturer in International Relations, University of East London
The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has called for a new Plaza accord to address what he sees as China’s unfair trade practices.
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By Conor Mckeown, Lecturer in Digital Media, University of Stirling
Artists are attempting to make the lives of forced migrants easier to relate to through the creation of video games.
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