Whistleblowers are key to fighting corruption in South Africa. It shouldn't be at their peril

By Monray Marsellus Botha

Numerous corruption scandals have been reported in South Africa in recent times. The extent of corruption in the country has been laid bare at the judicial commission probing allegations of state capture over the past...

What the objections to COVID-19 control measures tells us about personal freedom

By Timothy A. Carey

As the protracted global battle with SARS-CoV-2 continues to rage, objections to the measures being taken to combat the virus are increasing. Protests have been reported in countries such as the US, the UK, Australia,...

Merkel's caution has made Germany the great economic underachiever of our times

By Muhammad Ali Nasir

Germans are taking to the polls on September 26 to elect the members for the 20th Bundestag. For the first time in 16 years, there will be a new chancellor as Angela Merkel steps down. Germany has been through some...

Josh Frydenberg prepares ground for Scott Morrison to commit to 2050 climate target

By Michelle Grattan

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will prepare the way for Scott Morrison to take a target of net zero emissions by 2050 to Glasgow, when he warns on Friday capital inflow will be at risk if Australia is seen as a climate...

Some rich people will love at least one sweetener in Democrats' $3.5 trillion plan

By Brent W Ambrose Et Al

While liberal lawmakers look for ways to raise taxes on the rich to finance their US$3.5 trillion spending package, some House Democrats are aiming to lower them. Specifically, several Democrats from high-tax states...

Colleges must choose whether to let athletes wear school gear for paid promotions

By John Holden

Just days after the NCAA changed it rules in June 2021 to let college athletes seek endorsement deals, a college quarterback in the South announced a sponsorship deal with a beverage company. About the same time,...

Beyond Zoom, Teams and video lectures — what do university students really want from online learning?

By Dilani Gedera Et Al

As any university student, lecturer or tutor can attest, the pandemic has turned learning and teaching upside down. So its important we understand what happens for students when their learning shifts online with little to...

After AUKUS, Russia sees a potential threat — and an opportunity to market its own submarines

By Alexey D Muraviev

The global opinions on the new AUKUS security pact between Australia, the US and the UK have been decidedly mixed. China and France immediately blasted the deal, while others, such as Japan and the Philippines, were more...

Can animals sense when an earthquake is about to happen?

By Anne Quain

Within minutes of Melbourne being rattled by yesterdays earthquake, my Victorian friends reported changes in the behaviour of their animals. One friend wrote on social media that her dog Harvey stood in the hallway...

COVID-19 increases the chance of getting an autoimmune condition. Here's what the science says so far

By Magdalena Plebanski Et Al

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can sometimes cause the immune system to mistakenly attack the persons own body. This process, known as autoimmunity, can damage a number of different organs. After COVID-19,...

Instagram can make teens feel bad about their body, but parents can help. Here's how

By Gemma Sharp Et Al

Last week Facebooks internal research revealed Instagrams toxic effects on some young peoples body image particularly girls. One study by Facebook of teen Instagram users in the US and UK found more than 40% of those...

How will Delta evolve? Here's what the theory tells us

By Hamish McCallum

The COVID-19 pandemic is a dramatic demonstration of evolution in action. Evolutionary theory explains much of what has already happened, predicts what will happen in the future and suggests which management strategies are...

Land of opportunity: more sustainable Australian farming would protect our lucrative exports (and the planet)

By Frank Jotzo Et Al

The European Union is pressing ahead with carbon border levies charges on carbon-intensive goods from countries such as Australia that havent taken strong action to reduce emissions. The EU will impose such measures on a...

Progress stops when we create and dismantle infrastructure programs every federal election

By Kerry Black

According to the most recent Canadian Infrastructure Report Card, the state of our infrastructure is at risk in fact, its failing. And our approach to tackling infrastructure has remained stagnant for decades. Mired in...

Nando’s chicken shortage: how the pandemic has made supply and demand tougher to predict

By John Boylan

Peri-peri chicken fans were disappointed and frustrated when Nandos announced the temporary closure of nearly 50 restaurants. A chicken shortage has been blamed, and while reactions to the closures were satirised on social...

Hospitals often outsource important services to companies that prioritize profit over patients

By Leonard L. Berry Et Al

Hospitals have long embraced the practice of outsourcing some services to specialized companies. Much of this outsourcing is for nonclinical tasks such as laundry, information technology and cybersecurity, and outsourcing...

After India's brutal coronavirus wave, two-thirds of population has been exposed to SARS-CoV2

By Rajib Dasgupta

Cases of COVID-19 are surging around the world, but the course of the pandemic varies widely country to country. To provide you with a global view as we approach a year and a half since the official declaration of the...

Afghanistan: progress on women's rights has been hard fought – now everything is at risk under the Taliban

By Sahar Maranlou

When the Taliban was in power between 1996 and 2001, womens rights to education and employment were brutally violated. They could only go out in public if accompanied by a male relative and, even then, had to be fully...

Pfizer vaccinations for 16 to 39-year-olds is welcome news. But AstraZeneca remains a good option

By Catherine Bennett

Prime Minister Scott Morrison yesterday announced the Pfizer vaccine would become available to all Australians aged 16 to 39 from August 30. This represents a vote of confidence in our vaccine supply, which has been...

'OK Boomer': how a TikTok meme traces the rise of Gen Z political consciousness

By Crystal Abidin

The phrase OK Boomer has become popular over the past two years as an all-purpose retort with which young people dismiss their elders for being old-fashioned. OK Boomer began as a meme in TikTok videos, but our research...

Can a polite sign lead to political change? What kinds of protest work?

By Aidan Ricketts

Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently gave reporters in Canberra a lesson in what kinds of protest he thinks work best. Last week, he condemned Extinction Rebellion protesters who sprayed graffiti on Parliament House...

8 out of 10 teachers think education news is negative and demoralising. Some have even left because of it

By Kathryn Shine

For many teachers, news coverage of education seems to be unrelentingly negative. They say this is particularly noticeable in reporting of results of standardised tests such as NAPLAN and the OECDs Programme for...

How ancient beliefs in underwater worlds can shed light in a time of rising sea levels

By Patrick D. Nunn

The small boat sliced its way through the waveless ocean. The Fiji air was warm and still, the silhouettes of distant islands like sentinels watching our progress. It seemed a perfect day to visit the Solo Lighthouse and...

As the Taliban's grip on Afghanistan tightens, New Zealand must commit to taking more refugees

By Alexander Gillespie

With a Defence Force Hercules now en route to Afghanistan to assist with rescue and evacuation, New Zealand joins a 60-country response to the unfolding calamity. Yet doubt still surrounds just who is eligible for the...

Metabolism may not slow after 20 – so why do we still gain weight?

By Janet Cade

For a long time, it was believed that after the age of 20 your metabolism decreased dramatically making it harder to lose weight and keep in shape. But a recent study has shown our metabolism also known as energy...

How the gig economy could suffer from a labour shortage – but workers may be better off

By John Colley

The long-term impact of COVID-19 on the economy will not be clear for some time. But in the UK, the easing of pandemic related restrictions has coincided with significant labour shortages and the driving up of wages....

Gun control in South Africa: tightening the law, and more

By Guy Lamb

Statistics produced by the police and mortuary surveillance systems in South Africa have consistently shown that firearms are the most commonly used weapons to commit murder and other violent crimes, such as carjacking and...

Climate change: why government failure to act isn't the problem

By Nick Bernards

The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report underscored the dire state of the climate crisis, concluding that immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are needed to...

The US is taking a bite out of its food insecurity – here's one way to scrap the problem altogether

By Craig Gundersen

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is set to permanently increase the value of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits by 25% above pre-pandemic levels in October 2021. Its the biggest change since 1979 to...

When hotter and drier means more – but eventually less – wildfire

By Maureen C Kennedy Et Al

There is abundant evidence that changes in the climate, both increased temperature and reduced precipitation, are making wildfires worse in the western U.S. The relationship between climate and wildfire seems obvious and...

Digital health is a vital tool: here's how we can make it more sustainable

By Maddy Thompson

The pandemic has shown us the extraordinary potential of digital health to fight global health inequalities by providing expanded access to healthcare: as well as by better informing our responses to health...

Indonesia's obsession to maintain social order hinders equal treatment of minority faiths

By A'an Suryana

A few weeks ago, Religious Affairs Minister Cholil Yaqut Qoumas became a target of public criticism and praise for congratulating followers of the minority Bahai faith in Indonesia on celebrating their Nowruz...

Australia's 4.6% unemployment rate hints at what's possible, but it's not the real thing

By Richard Holden

This week provided a first tiny glimpse into the labour-market fallout from Australias recent lockdowns. Australian Bureau of Statistics published the wage price index for the June quarter yesterday, showing sluggish...

Why Twitter’s user-driven experiment to tackle misinformation is complicated

By Eryn Newman Et Al

Over the past year, weve seen how dramatically misinformation can impact the lives of people, communities and entire countries. In a bid to better understand how misinformation spreads online, Twitter has started an...

Could sending humans to sleep for a year help solve the climate crisis? A new play, Hibernation, asks this question

By Sarah Peters

Review: Hibernation by Finegan Kruckemeyer, State Theatre Company South Australia What lengths would you go to in order to save the planet from climate crisis? Stop eating meat and start composting? Recycle and make do,...

BHP is selling its dirty oil and gas assets, but hold the applause

By Jeremy Moss

When BHP announced it would sell its stake in its oil and gas business to Woodside Petroleum to form a merged oil and gas business, it appeared welcome news. A big miner finally takes climate change seriously. But...

Individual dietary choices can add – or take away – minutes, hours and years of life

By Olivier Jolliet Et Al

Vegetarian and vegan options have become standard fare in the American diet, from upscale restaurants to fast-food chains. And many people know that the food choices they make affect their own health as well as that of the...

Feedback from supervisors can be a good or bad experience. Here’s how to get it right

By Ritesh Chugh Et Al

Giving good feedback is an art. It can be challenging for supervisors and managers, whether in an educational setting or any other workplace. Our newly published review of the past decades research on this issue confirms...

The Taliban's conquest of Kabul threatens the lives and safety of girls, women and sexual minorities

By Deeplina Banerjee

The world watched in shock as Ashraf Ghani, the president of Afghanistan, fled the country on Aug. 15. The Taliban occupied Kabul, the countrys capital, and international news channels and social media began to be flooded...

We trained AI to recognise footprints, but it won't replace forensic experts yet

By Matthew Robert Bennett Et Al

We rely on experts all the time. If you need financial advice, you ask an expert. If you are sick, you visit a doctor, and as a juror you may listen to an expert witness. In the future, however, artificial intelligence...

An Afghan American scholar describes his fear-filled journey from the chaos at Kabul airport to a plane bound for home in the US

By Hanif Sufizada

Editors note: Afghan scholar Hanif Sufizada, who works at the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha, got caught in Kabul during the chaos of the U.S. military pullout, when thousands of Afghans...

How politicians use French rap to stoke divisions

By Marie Sonnette

In 2021, two cases have put rap at the heart of media debates in France. The first concerns the rapper Médine. On 18 February, MP Aurore Bergé, a member of President Emmanuel Macrons governing party,...

Repairing ozone layer is also reducing CO₂ in the atmosphere – new study

By Paul Young1

Spring 2060. In dark glasses, a wide sunhat and with what little exposed skin left caked in sun cream, a child stares at the woodland across from their house. It looks scraggly and stunted, and with far fewer leaves than...

Incel culture: what we've learned from investigating Plymouth attacker's digital footprint

By Blyth Crawford Et Al

In the wake of a mass shooting in Plymouth, England, fresh questions are being asked about incel culture and whether crimes committed by its adherents should be considered terrorism. Jake Davison went on a shooting...

How older people are mastering technology to stay connected after lockdown

By Carolyn Wilson-Nash Et Al

Its a well-worn stereotype: the image of an elderly person fiddling with technology that leaves them completely bamboozled. The media often depict older people struggling to use or manage digital technology. While this is...

Can health insurance companies charge the unvaccinated higher premiums? What about life insurers? 5 questions answered

By Kosali Simon Et Al

The current COVID-19 wave in the U.S. is mostly affecting unvaccinated Americans, who represent more than 95% of current cases of hospitalization and death. Given the average cost of a COVID-19 hospitalization in 2020...

BHP's offloading of oil and gas assets shows the global market has turned on fossil fuels

By John Quiggin

The announcement by BHP, the worlds second-largest mining company, that it will shift its oil and gas assets into a joint venture with Australian outfit Woodside is a clear indication the Big Australian is getting out of...

How machine learning is helping us fine-tune climate models to reach unprecedented detail

By Navid Constantinou

From movie suggestions to self-driving vehicles, machine learning has revolutionised modern life. Experts are now using it to help solve one of humanitys biggest problems: climate change. With machine learning, we can...

Afghanistan only the latest US war to be driven by deceit and delusion

By Gordon Adams

In Afghanistan, American hubris the United States capacity for self-delusion and official lying has struck once again, as it has repeatedly for the last 60 years. This weakness-masquerading-as-strength has repeatedly...

India is preparing for another COVID surge but low vaccine coverage leaves it vulnerable

By Ankur Mutreja Et Al

The first wave of COVID-19 in India in the summer of 2020 was efficiently flattened by a rapid country-wide lockdown. A consistent drop in case numbers from September 2020 to February 2021 allowed a cautious but smooth...