By Rudi Keller, Derek Kravitz, and Smarth Gupta 1 December 2021 (Missouri Independent) – Mask mandates saved lives and prevented COVID-19 infections in Missouri’s biggest cities during the worst part of the delta variant wave, an analysis by the state Department of Health and Senior Services shows. But the analysis, conducted at the request of Gov. […]
By Manuela Andreoni 19 November 2021 RIO DE JANEIRO (The New York Times) – Brazil’s pledge this month to end illegal deforestation in eight years drew much praise from global leaders, but an official report this week cast doubt on that commitment after it showed that the rate of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest was at its […]
By Jennifer Dunham 28 October 2021 (CPJ) – Somalia remains the world’s worst country for unsolved killings of journalists, according to CPJ’s annual Global Impunity Index, which spotlights countries where members of the press are singled out for murder and the perpetrators go free. The index showed little change from a year earlier, with Syria, […]
By Claire Marshall 13 September 2021 (BBC) – A record number of activists working to protect the environment and land rights were murdered last year, according to a report by a campaign group. 227 people were killed around the world in 2020, the highest number recorded for a second consecutive year, the report from Global […]
By Sam Courtney-Guy 15 May 2021 (MetroUK) – A huge chunk of the world’s solar panels production depends on forced labour from China’ Uighur Muslims, according to new research. An investigation by Sheffield Hallam University estimates almost half of global supplies of polysilicon are produced by Uighurs under conditions ‘tantamount to enslavement’ in their home […]
By Dan Diamond 9 April 2021 (The Washington Post) – Trump appointees in the Department of Health and Human Services last year privately touted their efforts to block or alter scientists’ reports on the coronavirus to more closely align with President Donald Trump’s more optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to newly released documents from congressional investigators. […]
By Bret Schafer, Amber Frankland, Nathan Kohlenberg, and Etienne Soula 6 March 2021 (ASD) – When Vladimir Putin announced last August that Russia had granted regulatory approval for Sputnik V, the world’s first coronavirus vaccine, it signaled—albeit perhaps prematurely—not only a potential turning point in the fight to end the coronavirus pandemic but also a new phase in […]
By A. Tarantola 26 March 2021 (Engadget) – The internet was supposed to set us free. Yet in the past two decades, authoritarian regimes have quickly adapted long-held tactics to the digital age, leveraging social mechanisms and mores to maintain their grip on captive populaces. While the internet and social media revolutions may have empowered […]
By Sam Levine 24 March 2021 (The Guardian) – The US has fallen to a new low in a global ranking of political rights and civil liberties, a drop fueled by unequal treatment of minority groups, damaging influence of money in politics, and increased polarization, according to a new report by Freedom House, a democracy watchdog group. The […]
By Luana Souza 24 March 2021 (Bloomberg News) – Illegal gold and diamond mining is proliferating in Brazil’s Amazon rain forest and threatening South America’s largest group of native people who still live in relative isolation, the Yanomami. Criminal mining groups are encroaching on the indigenous territory that straddles Brazil and Venezuela, polluting rivers, bringing diseases […]
