Millions facing famine in Ethiopia as rains fail
International aid agencies fear that the levels of death and starvation last seen 24 years ago are set to return
The spectre of famine has returned to the Horn of Africa nearly a quarter of a century after the world’s pop stars gathered to banish it at Live Aid, raising £150m for relief efforts in 1985. Millions of impoverished Ethiopians face the threat of malnutrition and possibly starvation this winter in what is shaping up to be the country’s worst food crisis for decades.
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The secret life of sperm is unlocked
Infertile couples may be spared years of fruitless treatment with the discovery that the human egg can read the father’s genetic key and screen out failures
Thousands of infertile couples could be spared the pain, anguish and expense of fruitless IVF treatments, thanks to the discovery of a lock-and-key mechanism between sperm and egg cells.
The research could explain why so many couples with no apparent reproductive problems are unable to conceive. Although more than 40,000 in vitro fertilisation cycles are prescribed in Britain each year, only 10,000 births result. Keep reading this article »
Maori legend of man-eating bird is true
Creature that features in New Zealand folklore really existed, scientists say
A Maori legend about a giant, man-eating bird has been confirmed by scientists. Te Hokioi was a huge black-and-white predator with a red crest and yellow-green tinged wingtips, in an account given to Sir George Gray, an early governor of New Zealand. It was said to be named after its cry and to have “raced the hawk to the heavens”. Scientists now think the stories handed down by word of mouth and depicted in rock drawings refer to Haast’s eagle, a raptor that became extinct just 500 years ago, say the authors of a study in The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
‘The Eagle has landed’: A space geek remembers the moon shot
As a 10-year-old ’space geek’, Paul Rodgers was glued to the television when Neil Armstrong uttered the immortal words, ‘The Eagle has landed.’ Forty years on, he looks back at mankind’s giant leap – and the Cold War politics that turned the space race into a mad dash
The first sign of trouble came when the Eagle was five minutes into its descent, 33,500ft above the Moon’s surface. A shrill alarm rang through the cramped, seatless cabin in which two astronauts stood facing the stars. An error message flashed up on their primitive computer’s tiny read-out: “1202″. Neither Neil Armstrong nor Buzz Aldrin knew what it meant. It was left to Steve Bales, a 26-year-old technician at Mission Control in Houston to decide they should keep going. The error, he was fairly sure, would fix itself, and he repeatedly called “Go!” as the alarm sounded four more times. Keep reading this article »
Europe’s tallest structure to be cut down to size
A planned reduction of a Lincolnshire TV mast has prompted protests
It is more than 1,000ft high, but so unobtrusive that most people in the UK never even realised it existed, let alone that it held a European record. Now, Belmont Transmitting Station, one mile west of the quiet village of Donington on Bain, is about to divest itself of the only thing that made it notable. Keep reading this article »
Juries return to Japanese courts after 66 years
But 99.5 per cent conviction rate may take time to alter
(Co-written with Kyoko Nishimoto)
Japanese popular culture has few courtroom dramas. There is no Rumpole of the Tokyo Bailey, no Perry Mason in Osaka. Juninin no yasashii nihonjin, a 1991 remake of Henry Fonda’s jury-room classic Twelve Angry Men, is a comedy, its title translating as “Twelve Gentle Japanese“. And Shun Nakahara’s film is also a fantasy; for the past 66 years, no jury has sat in Japan.
Screenwriters and defendants alike should therefore embrace the country’s looming judicial reform. Currently, the pinnacle of court excitement comes when the prosecutor files a stack of summarised affidavits with the judge’s clerk. This is trial by paperwork. Oral testimony is rare, and cross-examination all but unheard of. Trials not only lack drama, they give defendants little hope. Prosecutors have a better than 99.5 per cent chance of winning. Keep reading this article »
