Nangarhar province, including its capital Jalalabad, is reported to be the hardest hit. This province also suffered from devastating floods in April. Other affected provinces include Badakhshan, Kunar, Laghman and Nuristan. During the daily press briefing in New York, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric reported that a reception centre at Nangarhar’s Torkham border crossing, a primary entry point for people returning from Pakistan, has been heavily impacted by the storm. “While assessments are ongoing, our humanitarian partners have deployed nine mobile health and nutrition teams, while our health partners have provided medical supplies to Nangahar Regional Hospital and Fatima Zuhra…
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Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com. I have a question about ice on the Moon. How is this possible? – Olaf, age 9, Hillsborough, North Carolina We’re lucky to live on a water world. More than 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered in water. Earth is about 94 million miles from the Sun. That’s within the Goldilocks zone: the place in our solar system where a planet has just the right temperature for water to exist in oceans and rivers…
I’m a palaeontologist. That means I study fossils and learn about the ancient history of life on Earth. People ask me lots of questions about being a palaeontologist. What do palaeontologists do all day? Why do they do it? How can I become a palaeontologist? And, of course, Where can I see some fossils? Here are some answers about being a palaeontologist, and some tips for people who might want to become one. What is a palaeontologist and what do they do? Palaeontologists are scientists who study the history of life on Earth using fossils. Fossils represent the remains or…
Responding to foreign disinformation poses many challenges. Recent revelations about foreign interference in Canada illustrate some of them. Malign foreign entities and witting and unwitting domestic officials have complex roles that are in constant flux. An uncertain government is paralyzed by partisanship and communication problems. Both foreign interference and government confusion threaten to further erode fledgling public confidence in government institutions. My forthcoming article, to be published soon, examines how the Canadian federal government is addressing Russian disinformation pertaining to the war in Ukraine. It reveals the benefits, limits and potential dangers in government responses. It also builds on my…
The Government announced that the 2024 edition of the UK-France Local Government Forum will take place in Leeds on 12 and 13 December, co-hosted by Leeds and Bradford City Councils and supported by the West Yorkshire Mayor. This will be the third edition of the forum, following on from the successful 2022 event in Nancy. The forum is an opportunity for mayors, leaders, cabinet members, councillors and officers from sub-national government – be that district, borough, city, unitary or county councils, as well as combined authorities – to meet and exchange with French counterparts on subjects of common interest,…
Summer 2024’s record heat is creating problems for transportation infrastructure, from roads to rails. New York’s Third Avenue Bridge, which swings open for ship traffic on the Harlem River, was stuck for hours after its metal expanded in the heat and it couldn’t close. Roads have buckled on hot days in several states, including Washington and Wisconsin. Amtrak warned passengers to prepare for heat-related problems hours before a daylong outage between New York and New Jersey; the risks to power lines and rails during high temperatures are a growing source of delays for the train system. It doesn’t help that…
In most mammals, including humans, females have two copies of the X chromosome while males have only one (accompanied by a Y). So you might think females get a double dose of proteins encoded by the 850-odd genes on the X chromosome, while males get only a single dose. How can this be fair? Indeed, this gene dosage difference between men and women would cause genetic mayhem if it were not for a system that balances out the dosage difference. In humans, mice and other mammals, one of the two X chromosomes in females is “silenced”. Silenced genes on this…
Elizabeth Spehar, Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support, was speaking during a meeting on UN collaboration with the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in maintaining international peace and security. Their members span Europe and Asia and include China, Russia, several former Soviet States, India, Pakistan and Iran. Partnership for peace Ms. Spehar noted that the founders of the UN recognized the need for collective efforts to ensure peace in an increasingly complex world, which requires partnership at all levels. “Now, more than ever, a more effective United Nations relies on stronger and deepened cooperation with regional and subregional organizations,” she said. “Today, the stakes for international peace and security…
The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) has confirmed today (Monday 5 August) that 98% eligible farmers have received their first instalment of the new delinked payments. This means that a further £401 million has now been released into the rural economy alongside funding from other schemes. Delinked payments provide continued financial support as Defra encourages farmers and land managers to enter the environmental land management schemes, where they are paid to take actions that will support sustainable food production while protecting the environment. This is the first of two instalments this year. The RPA have also brought forward the second instalment,…
After widespread backlash, Google pulled its “Dear Sydney” Gemini ad from Olympics coverage. The ad featured its generative AI chatbot tool, Gemini, formerly known as Bard. The advertisement featured a father and his daughter, a fan of United States Olympic track and field athlete Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. The father, despite considering himself “pretty good with words,” uses Gemini to help his daughter to write a fan letter to Sydney, saying that when something needs to be done “just right,” Gemini is the better choice. Google and Team USA’s advertisement for Google’s generative AI chatbot Gemini. This advertisement sparked widespread backlash online…