John Magufuli is fostering a climate of fear in Tanzania
PAUL MAKONDA seems a lot more like a flailing moral crusader than the regional commissioner of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s commercial capital. The 36-year-old has come up with a variety of schemes to catch the eye of his patron, President John Magufuli. One is clamping down on supposed vices such as smoking shisha and sleeping…
Libya’s feuds cross the Mediterranean
FOR ONCE Italy’s populist government will be pleased to see a group of Africans cross the Mediterranean. On November 12th the leaders of Libya’s warring factions will gather in Palermo, the capital of Sicily, for a two-day peace conference. Get our daily newsletterUpgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor’s Picks. Italy has…
Chinese medicine is on the rise in Africa
print-edition icon Print edition | Middle East and Africa Nov 8th 2018 | DAKAR IN A HOUSE in central Dakar three Chinese men stand behind a glass screen. The wall is stacked high with pills, teas and powders covered with Chinese symbols and pictures of healthy models. There is something for everyone. Teas for kidney…
Israel’s prime minister visits Oman, an Arab monarchy—and is welcomed
print-edition icon Print edition | Middle East and Africa Nov 3rd 2018 | JERUSALEM TWO UNUSUAL photographs have been making the rounds on Arab social media. The first (pictured) is of Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, being received by Sultan Qaboos of Oman at his palace in Muscat on October 26th. The second, taken three…
Children Hurled In Cow Dung For Good Luck During Festival [Video]
Some, baptize in holy water. Whilst others … baptize in holy cow dung. The power of poop, is real; Photo: GfycatFor “good luck,” children in Madhya Pradesh’s Betul district were placed or tossed in cow dung for Govardhan Puja, a Hindu festival held on Thursday. Participants hope that the kids will be bestowed good health and shielded…
The Unspoken Disturbing Truth Of Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is a reminder of how people often take their blessings for granted … or, is it? Native Americans had ceremonies to give thanks before the infamous 1621 Plymouth feast that is often publicized as the basis for Thanksgiving; Photo: TenorThe holiday, at its most uneasy, is a reminder of why persons feel grateful not to…
To get to the top of the art world, start there in the first place
WELL BEGUN, half done. That proverb, ascribed to Aristotle, seems an apt description of the art market—at least it is if a study of artistic careers, published this week in Science, is to be believed. In this study Albert-László Barabási, a physicist at Northeastern University in Boston, and Samuel Fraiberger, a data scientist at the…
Town-dwelling spiders are not afraid of the light
print-edition icon Print edition | Science and technology Nov 8th 2018 MOST SPIDERS avoid light because, besides being predators, they are also potential prey. But there is a set of circumstances in which living beside a powerful light is an advantage. This is when you are a web-weaving spider. Moths and other insects are attracted…
Mining the deep ocean will soon begin
DIVA AMON, a researcher at the Natural History Museum in London, spotted her first whale skull in 2013, during an expedition to the Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the tropical Pacific. It sat on beige silt, some 4,000 metres beneath the sea’s surface, and was entirely covered in a black coating. Her find was twice…
A new robot system will reopen abandoned, flooded mines
print-edition icon Print edition | Science and technology Nov 8th 2018 | SILVERMINES THE IDEA of underwater mining is not restricted to the ocean floor (see article). High water tables submerge many terrestrial deposits, too. At minimum, this means doing a lot of pumping to make them workable. Sometimes, it makes those deposits altogether inaccessible.…