30 September 2024 (World Bank) – Domestic food price inflation remains high in many low- and middle-income countries. Inflation higher than 5 percent is experienced in 77.3 percent of low-income countries (18.2 percentage points higher since the last Update on June 27, 2024), 54.3 percent of lower-middle-income countries (8.7 percentage points lower), 44% of upper-middle-income […]
By Maurice Tamman, Laura Gottesdiener, and Stephen Eisenhammer 25 July 2024 (Reuters) – A cardboard box half the size of a loaf of bread bore a shipping label declaring its contents: “Adapter.” It was delivered in October to a Reuters reporter in Mexico City. There was no adapter inside that package. Instead, sealed in a […]
By Brianna Abbott 11 January 2024 (The Wall Street Journal) – Meilin Keen was studying for the bar exam and preparing to move to New York City last June when she started throwing up blood. Keen, 27 years old, learned days later that she has gastric cancer. She postponed the bar exam. Brain fog from […]
By Finn Cohen 27 June 2024 (Healthline) – As cases of dengue fever rise worldwide, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an advisory for physicians, public health authorities, and the public in the United States to be alert to the trend. So far in 2024, cases of dengue fever in countries in the Americas have reached record-breaking […]
By Damian Carrington 10 June 2024 (The Guardian) – Microplastic pollution has been found in all human semen samples tested in a study, and researchers say further research on the potential harm to reproduction is “imperative”. Sperm counts in men have been falling for decades and 40% of low counts remain unexplained, although chemical pollution has been implicated by many […]
By Will Oremus 6 June 2024 (The Washington Post) – In the week after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Twitter suspended some 70,000 accounts associated with the right-wing QAnon radicalized movement, citing their role in spreading misinformation that was fueling real-world violence. A new study finds the move had an immediate and widespread impact on the overall spread […]
By Bianca Nogrady 21 May 2024 (Nature) – As a vocal advocate of vaccinations for public health, Peter Hotez was no stranger to online harassment and threats. But then the abuse showed up on his doorstep. It was a Sunday during a brutal Texas heatwave in June 2023 when a man turned up at Hotez’s […]
By Alissa Zhu, Nick Thieme, and Jessica Gallagher 23 May 2024 (The New York Times) – People in Baltimore have been dying of overdoses at a rate never before seen in a major American city. In the past six years, nearly 6,000 lives have been lost. The death rate from 2018 to 2022 was nearly […]
By Katherine Dillinger 27 April 2024 (CNN) – The number of measles cases around the world nearly doubled from 2022 to 2023, researchers say, presenting a challenge to efforts to achieve and maintain elimination status in many countries. There were 171,153 cases globally in 2022, according to Dr. Patrick O’Connor of the World Health Organization, […]
By Sarah Kuta 30 January 2024 (Smithsonian) – More than 2,000 years ago, climate change may have played a role in deadly pandemics that swept through the Roman Empire. Scientists have discovered a link between cold, dry periods and devastating bouts of fatal illness between 200 B.C.E. and 600 C.E. in Roman Italy, according to a […]
