Category Archives: World

18Mar/23

Iraq 20 years on: researchers assess how US invasion shapes lives today – podcast

Mend Mariwany and Nehal El-Hadi, The Conversation

On March 19, 2003, the United States led an unlawful invasion into Iraq — at the time, the reason given was the search for weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. occupation of Iraq lasted over eight years, until the official withdrawal of troops throughout 2011.

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14Mar/23

Climate ‘danger zone’

By Megan Rowling | Just Transition Editor

Climate scientists and government officials are gathered in Switzerland this week to agree the final summary for policymakers in the latest blockbuster series of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on global warming and how to keep it in check.

Coming before an important review of global progress on climate goals at the end of this year, it doesn’t take a PhD to work out that the key message will be along the lines of “must do better”.
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14Mar/23

IQAir World Air Quality Report 2022 Finds Only 5% of Countries Meet WHO PM2.5 Air Pollution Guideline

The 5th Annual World Air Quality Report reveals alarming details of the world’s most polluted countries, territories, and regions in 2022. For this year’s report, data from more than 30,000 air quality monitoring stations across 7,323 locations in 131 countries, territories, and regions was analyzed by IQAir’s air quality scientists. Read more

10Mar/23

NEW REPORT: Global Freedom Declines for 17th Consecutive Year, but May Be Approaching a Turning Point

Global freedom declined for a 17th consecutive year in 2022 as 35 countries suffered deterioration in their political rights and civil liberties, according to a new report released today by Freedom House. A total of 34 countries made improvements during the year, however, meaning the gap between the numbers of countries that improved and declined was the narrowest it has ever been since the negative pattern began. The report suggests that the struggle for democracy may be approaching a turning point, and offers recommendations on how democratic governments and societies should work together to roll back authoritarian gains. Continue reading

21Feb/23

15-minute cities: how to separate the reality from the conspiracy theory

Alex Nurse, University of Liverpool; Alessia Calafiore, The University of Edinburgh, and Richard J. Dunning, University of Liverpool

Conspiracy theories aren’t a new thing, and for as long as they’ve been around they’ve ranged from the benign to the absurd. From the six moon landings being faked to the Earth being flat, or our ruling class being lizards, we’ve all probably come across them in one form or another.

Yet, in a surprise twist, the hottest conspiracy theory of 2023 comes from an unlikely corner: town planning. This relates to the idea of “the 15-minute city” and has even gone so far as to be mentioned in UK parliament by an MP who called the idea “an international socialist concept” that will “cost us our personal freedom”.

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07Feb/23

Turkey-Syria earthquakes: a seismologist explains what has happened

Jenny Jenkins, Durham University

An extremely large earthquake has occurred in the southeast of Turkey, near the border with Syria. Data from seismometers which measure shaking of the ground caused by earthquake waves suggest this this event, in the early morning of February 6, was a magnitude 7.8 out of 10 on the moment magnitude scale. Seismic waves were picked up by sensors around the world (you can watch them ripple through Europe) including places as far away as the UK.

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31Jan/23

Ukraine war: attitudes to women in the military are changing as thousands serve on front lines

Jennifer Mathers, Aberystwyth University and Anna Kvit, UCL

Thousands of women have voluntarily joined Ukraine’s armed forces since 2014, when Russia’s occupation of Crimea and territories in eastern Ukraine began. Over the past nine years, the number of women serving in the Ukrainian military has more than doubled, with another wave of women joining after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

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24Jan/23

Researchers from University of Birmingham, U.K., show novel adaptation for existing furnaces could reduce steelmaking emissions by 90%

Researchers from the University of Birmingham, U.K., have designed a novel adaptation for existing iron and steel furnaces that could reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the steelmaking industry by nearly 90%.

This radical reduction is achieved through a ‘closed loop’ carbon recycling system, which could replace 90% of the coke typically used in current blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace systems and produces oxygen as a biproduct. Continue reading

18Jan/23

Matteo Messina Denaro: arrest of mafia boss after 30 years on the run is the end of an era – but not the end of the Cosa Nostra

Felia Allum, University of Bath

Matteo Messina Denaro, one of the leaders of the Sicilian mafia, the Cosa Nostra, has finally been detained after 30 years on the run. His arrest came as around 100 police officers surrounded the private Maddalena clinic in Palermo where they had discovered he was receiving treatment.

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