Sudan’s revolution could end the conflict in Darfur
Nov 28th 2019EL-FASHERMEN WITH guns fill the town of el-Fasher in western Sudan’s troubled Darfur region. At the airport dozens are boarding or disembarking from planes, wearing uniforms of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a unit formed from Sudan’s murderous militia known as the Janjaweed.Down the road is the headquarters of UNAMID, the UN peacekeeping…
Unconditional handouts benefit recipients—and their neighbours too
Nov 23rd 2019ECONOMISTS HAVE long argued that people should give each other money rather than gifts, since it is hard to know what others truly want. Though they have failed to ruin Christmas, a study in Kenya shows how they are changing the war on poverty by encouraging cash handouts to the poor.Of 142 countries…
Ethiopia’s Sidama people vote for autonomy
Some fret it could lead to a messy break-up of the country’s southern regionNov 23rd 2019THEY ROSE at dawn, quietly assembling in long queues and clasping their voting cards tightly in their excitement. On November 20th more than 2m people from Ethiopia’s fifth-biggest ethnic group, the Sidama, went to the polls to decide whether to…
A former president’s crocodiles are terrorising Ivory Coast’s capital
Nov 21st 2019YAMOUSSOUKROTHE FIRST president of Ivory Coast, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, liked to build monuments to himself. After independence he erected a new political capital on top of his remote home village, Yamoussoukro. No expense was spared. He equipped the city with a Concorde runway, West Africa’s first ice-skating rink, the largest basilica in the world…
Teacher Fired After Smoking Cannabis In Classroom Full Of Students
A North Attleborough High School substitute teacher was fired after reportedly smoking weed in a classroom full of students on Thursday afternoon, an official noted. Students that were in the classroom at the time immediately reported the sub, accordant to Principal Peter Haviland.“The incident at North Attleborough High School was entirely unexpected and unprecedented and…
Male nightingales spend the winter practising
Nov 30th 2019DESPITE THE ideas of Julia Monk and her colleagues on the frequency and normality of same-sex mating behaviour among animals (see article), some species do work hard to attract the opposite sex. That is why birdsong fills the air during the spring and summer breeding season. What has proved vexing to ornithologists is…
Slowly, HIV is being beaten
Nov 28th 2019ON THE PRINCIPLE that no news is good news, the fact that AIDS has dropped out of the headlines is surely a good thing. Nevertheless, it does no harm for the world to be reminded from time to time that the illness has not gone away. To that end, UNAIDS and the World…
How ear bones evolved
Nov 28th 2019EVOLUTION HAS NO foresight. But occasionally it flukes something ideally suited to develop into something else. Biologists call this preadaptation, and it seems to explain the existence of three small bones, known as ossicles, that are found in the ears of mammals. Ossicles evolved from jaw bones, and the fossil evidence indicates this…
An emergency landing system that passengers can activate
Nov 28th 2019ON NOVEMBER 9TH 2018 a Piper Dakota light aircraft flying over Iowa broadcast a distress call. The pilot seemed to have suffered a heart attack. One of the other three people on board, a student aviator, had taken over the controls, but to no avail. The plane crashed shortly afterwards, killing all four.How…
Japan’s economic troubles offer a glimpse of a sobering future
Dec 5th 2019JAPAN ONCE offered a cautionary tale of how macroeconomic mismanagement could transform a juggernaut into a laggard. As weak growth and low interest rates have spread to the rest of the world, however, it looks more like a window into the future. The view it reveals is less bleak than it used to…