June 20, 2024
(Wired) – Extremists across the US have weaponized artificial intelligence tools to help them spread hate speech more efficiently, recruit new members, and radicalize online supporters at an unprecedented speed and scale, according to a new report from the Middle East Media … Read More
June 20, 2024
(New York Times) – South Africa’s public health care system has run out of the human insulin pens that it provides to people with diabetes, as the pharmaceutical industry shifts production priorities to blockbuster weight-loss drugs that use a similar … Read More
June 19, 2024
(The Atlantic) – So youth in English-speaking Canada are becoming sadder faster than those in French-speaking Canada, and measures of teen suicidality are rising in the Anglosphere but less so in similar less-English-speaking countries. What’s the deal with Anglosphere despair? Maybe … Read More
June 18, 2024
(CNN) – Cases of a dangerous and highly fatal bacterial infection have reached record levels in Japan, official figures show, with experts so far unable to pinpoint the reason for the rise. As of June 2, Japan’s Health Ministry had recorded 977 … Read More
June 18, 2024
(Reuters) – China on Tuesday dismissed European Union calls for it to stop alleged human rights violations and said it opposed “double standards” and interference in its internal affairs. The EU said on Monday after an EU delegation visited Tibet and met … Read More
June 17, 2024
(Reuters) – At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus. The clandestine operation … Read More
June 14, 2024
(Associated Press) – Pope Francis challenged leaders of the world’s wealthy democracies Friday to keep human dignity foremost in developing and using artificial intelligence, warning that such powerful technology risks turning human relations themselves into mere algorithms. (Read More)
June 13, 2024
(Nature) – “I had no choice but to commit [research] misconduct,” admits a researcher at an elite Chinese university. The shocking revelation is documented in a collection of several dozen anonymous, in-depth interviews offering rare, first-hand accounts of researchers who … Read More
June 6, 2024
(STAT News) – Finland is preparing to offer vaccines to people at risk of exposure to an avian influenza strain spreading among farmed and wild animals, health officials there said, potentially becoming the first country to take such a step … Read More
May 29, 2024
(NPR) – Antibiotics cannot cure COVID. They don’t help a bit. And yet, new data shows that, during the pandemic, COVID patients were given antibiotics – a lot of antibiotics. That’s bad because the overuse of antibiotics can breed superbugs … Read More
May 29, 2024
(NBC News) – Latin America is experiencing its worst dengue fever outbreak on record. Case numbers in the first 4 ½ months of 2024 are already 238% higher than they were by this time last year, which itself ended with … Read More
May 28, 2024
(Associated Press) – Member countries kicked off the World Health Organization’s annual assembly on Monday with hopes of improving global readiness for deadly outbreaks like COVID-19, after an ambitious “pandemic treaty” ran aground last week. Health officials are racing to … Read More
May 24, 2024
(Wired) – Thousands of law enforcement officials and people applying to be police officers in India have had their personal information leaked online—including fingerprints, facial scan images, signatures, and details of tattoos and scars on their bodies. If that wasn’t … Read More
May 24, 2024
(Associated Press) – Extreme weather events have hit parts of Africa relentlessly in the last three years, with tropical storms, floods and drought causing crises of hunger and displacement. They leave another deadly threat behind them: some of the continent’s … Read More
May 22, 2024
(Wired) – AI projects like OpenAI’s ChatGPT get part of their savvy from some of the lowest-paid workers in the tech industry—contractors often in poor countries paid small sums to correct chatbots and label images. On Wednesday, 97 African workers … Read More
May 20, 2024
(The Guardian) – More than 55% of sperm samples from a French infertility clinic contained high levels of glyphosate, the world’s most common weedkiller, raising further questions about the chemical’s impact on reproductive health and overall safety, a new study … Read More
May 15, 2024
(Axios) – Lawmakers in the House of Representatives on Wednesday are expected to set in motion a massive reordering of how U.S. pharmaceuticals are developed and made, by advancing a contracting ban on five key Chinese research firms. Why it … Read More
May 14, 2024
May 13, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – The world is at a startling demographic milestone. Sometime soon, the global fertility rate will drop below the point needed to keep population constant. It may have already happened. Fertility is falling almost everywhere, for women … Read More
May 13, 2024
(Reuters) – Talks to draw up a global pact to help fight future pandemics have ended without a draft agreement by the expected deadline, but progress has been made, the World Health Organization said on Friday. Negotiators from the World … Read More
May 13, 2024
(NPR) – At one of the last functioning hospitals in Rafah, scenes of horror are conveyed in clinical descriptions as U.S. medical volunteers grapple with the effects of Israeli military operations and border closures after seven months of war in … Read More
May 10, 2024
(Undark) – For centuries, people have dreamed of a world without disease. The myriad medical breakthroughs in the 20th century — which included antibiotics and modern vaccines — made that utopian ideal feel tantalizingly close. Vaccination led to the global … Read More
May 10, 2024
(CNN) – The US Food and Drug Administration is considering a requirement for blood banks to use a new test that can detect the parasites that cause malaria in certain donors’ blood, and it’s seeking the opinion of its independent … Read More
May 10, 2024
(STAT News) – Twenty-seven years ago today, a 3-year-old boy in Hong Kong developed a sore throat, spiked a fever, and started to cough. Six days later, he was hospitalized; six days after that, he died of acute respiratory distress … Read More
May 10, 2024
