When COVID hit, healthcare systems around the world were turned upside down. Hospitals cleared beds, routine appointments were cancelled and people were told to stay at home unless it was urgent. In England, visits to family doctors and hospital admissions for non-COVID reasons fell by a third in the early months of the pandemic. Medical…
Oracle chairman Larry Ellison. Robert Galbraith/Reuters Oracle was sued on Wednesday by bondholders who say they suffered losses because the company chaired by billionaire Larry Ellison concealed its need to sell significant additional debt to build out its artificial intelligence infrastructure. The proposed class action was filed in a New York state court in Manhattan…
Africa — NEARLY one million babies are stillborn in Africa every year. Behind every stillbirth is a mother, a family and a story left untold. Most of these are preventable, many unrecorded, and too often invisible. Each number hides a moment of heartbreak, and every uncounted loss represents a missed opportunity to learn and to…
As 2026 opens, conflict remains a permanent global condition, not an exception. More than 185,000 political violence events were recorded in 2025, directly exposing 831 million people—16% of humanity—to violence. The new year has brought no respite: Venezuela’s government collapsed in a U.S. military operation, Russia deployed hypersonic missiles near Ukraine’s NATO border, and Sudan…
The author, Cameron Kyle-Perumal, GM of M-KOPA South Africa and director of international strategy and growth for the group South Africa is home to one of the continent’s most sophisticated financial systems, yet 65% of respondents in a recent survey were declined credit by formal lenders, with rejection rates disproportionately concentrated among lower-income groups –…
If you could, would you pay to live forever? Some Silicon Valley billionaires aren’t just making tech products – they’ve set their sights on immortality. Social media is flooded with influencers promoting peptides, “functional” mushroom powders and other (often non-evidence-based) hacks said to maximise your lifespan. Some even claim to reverse your “biological age“. The…
Key findings Lived poverty and lack of access to water are strongly linked but not perfectly aligned. Clean, piped, and on-compound water access all decrease as lived poverty increases. However, a notable minority of respondents with no lived poverty do lack access to clean water (15%) and piped water (27%), and 20% must collect water…
A French onion delivery made eyes water more than usual when Dutch authorities discovered two hand grenades hidden among the vegetables, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said Wednesday. The grenades, dating from 1925, were found in a consignment of onions heading from France to a factory in the northern Dutch province of…
Nairobi — Raila Odinga’s absence from public limelight continues to spark a storm of speculation regarding his health. Social media is on fire with claims that the 80-year-old ODM leader is hospitalized abroad. Some say he has traveled to Europe for treatment. Others claim doctors have advised him to slow down. Then came the official…
Artificial intelligence systems are thirsty, consuming as much as 500 milliliters of water – a single-serving water bottle – for each short conversation a user has with the GPT-3 version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT system. They use roughly the same amount of water to draft a 100-word email message. That figure includes the water used to…
