Johann Mader/Shutterstock In recent years, the global trade in elephant ivory has faced significant restrictions in an effort to protect dwindling elephant populations. Many countries have stringent controls on the trade of elephant ivory. The sale of mammoth ivory, sourced primarily from long-extinct species, however, remains unregulated. But it’s a significant challenge for customs and law enforcement agencies to distinguish between ivory from extinct mammoths and living elephants. This is a process that is both time-consuming and requires destroying the ivory. Now our new study, published i ..read more

A reckless experiment in Earth’s atmosphere caused a desert metropolis to flood. That was the story last week when more than a year’s worth of rain fell in a day on the Arabian Peninsula, one of the world’s driest regions. Desert cities like Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) suffered floods that submerged motorways and airport runways. Across UAE and Oman, 21 people lost their lives. The heavy rain of Tuesday April 16 was initially blamed on “cloud seeding”: a method of stimulating precipitation by injecting clouds with tiny particles that moisture can attach to – those droplets then mer ..read more

The Scottish government’s decision to row back on its 2030 climate pledge illustrates the crux of any target: it’s easy to set one with a big political flourish, but harder to follow through with a careful plan to achieve it. Does that mean that targets for reducing the emissions of greenhouse gas driving climate change are worthless? Not necessarily. There are two types of climate target: the empty promise and the calculated ambition. Only one of these works. Empty promises abound in climate policy. Such targets deflect criticism – look, they say, we take climate change seriously, we have a s ..read more

Coffee is one of Ethiopia's main exports, but EU deforestation rules could cost the country US$1 billion a year. Yaroslav Astakhov / shutterstock The EU parliament has just approved sweeping new rules that will require companies to avoid and mitigate human rights and environmental abuses in their supply chains. These are noble aims. They have been a long time coming. But without careful design and more proactive support for business and suppliers in the developing world, there are real risks of well-intentioned policies putting the poorest countries in a “green squeeze”. The current concerns ..read more

Rishi Sunak's claims of a sicknote culture are nothing new. Muhammad Aamir Sumsum/Shutterstock Prime minister Rishi Sunak has announced a crackdown on sickness and disability benefits in order to end a “sicknote culture” and “over-medicalising the everyday challenges and worries of life”, in part because he claims that “good work” can actually improve mental and physical health. He instead wants to focus on “what people can do with the right support in place, rather than what they can’t do”. Taxpayers and recipients of sickness and disability benefits might feel like they’ve heard all this bef ..read more

Accusations about Israeli censorship of the media went mainstream in the US recently when the New York Times published an opinion piece headlined: The Israeli Censorship Regime is Growing. That Needs to Stop.. In the piece Jodie Ginsberg, the chief executive of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), wrote: “The high rate of journalists’ deaths and arrests, including a slew in the West Bank; laws allowing its government to shut down foreign news outlets deemed a security risk, which the prime minister has explicitly threatened to use against Al Jazeera; and its refusal to permit foreign jo ..read more

Recent reports of a series of drone strikes on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) have demonstrated the serious safety and security concerns at Europe’s largest nuclear power station. It has not been confirmed who is responsible for the strikes. Both Russia, which occupied ZNPP in March 2022, and Ukraine have pointed the finger at each other. But Russia has recently announced plans to restart the plant. This would greatly increase the danger of a nuclear accident, as operating reactors allow much less time before an accident occurs if they are damaged or their safety systems are ..read more

Spotmatik Ltd / Shutterstock Today’s NHS faces severe time constraints, with the risk of short consultations and concerns about the risk of misdiagnosis or delayed care. These challenges are compounded by limited resources and overstretched staff that results in protracted patient wait times and generic treatment strategies. Staff can operate with a surface level view of patient data, relying on basic medical histories and recent test results. This lack of comprehensive data interferes with their ability to fully understand patient needs and compromises the accuracy and individualisation of di ..read more

The financial crisis of 2008 showed just how much the world depends on banks being well run. Since then, regulators have been given new powers to keep some of the biggest institutions on a much shorter leash to stamp out risk, greed and corruption. But this approach hasn’t worked everywhere. On April 11 2024, a businesswoman in Vietnam was sentenced to death for taking out US$44 billion (£35bn) in fraudulent loans from one of the country’s biggest banks. Truong My Lan took the money – most of which is unlikely to be recovered – out of Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) by bypassing a Vietnamese law ..read more

Flickr/UK Parliament, CC BY-NC-ND Polls ahead of the UK election not only point towards defeat for the government, but a veritable trouncing. With some showing below 20% support, the Conservatives have never polled worse. Some multiple regression and post-stratification (MRP) polls, which enable seat-level analysis, suggest record margins of defeat. One has the Conservatives winning fewer than 100 of 650 seats in the House of Commons. Political scientists also point out that we might witness the largest two-party swing between elections ever recorded, the largest drop in support any party has ..read more