WHO published its World health statistics report 2025, revealing the deeper health impacts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on loss of lives, longevity and overall health and well-being. In just two years, between 2019 and 2021, global life expectancy fell by 1.8 years—the largest drop in recent history— reversing a …
A recent UNESCO report indicates that India has the largest number of endangered languages in the world. A matter of concern, besides the absolute numbers, is the distribution of these endangered languages across number of speakers. The languages under threat include both scheduled, non-scheduled as well as official languages of …
Oxford University is asking for help in deciphering ancient Greek texts written on fragments of papyrus found in Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of images have gone on display on a website which encourages armchair archaeologists to help catalogue and translate them. Researchers hope the collective effort will give them a …
A canvas depicting Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama standing face-to-face getting ready to battle with their penises. Glass cases with Soviet condoms and old Russian pamphlets on “women’s illnesses”. Titillation is not the objective of Moscow’s first sex museum, Tochka G (G Spot) but that’s exactly the reason it is …
Taiwan is stopping the use of Chinese characters—the script used in mainland China—on official websites. Taiwan used the traditional but more complicated Chinese script. It switched to a simplified script used in mainland China three years after opening its doors to tourists from mainland. Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou has argued …
Work on a dictionary that promises to improve our knowledge of an ancient civilisation has been completed 90 years after it began, outliving nearly 100 lexicographers who worked on it. The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary decodes the Akkadian language spoken thousands of years ago in what is now Iraq, in parts …
American Egyptologist Sarah Parcak’s methods might seem placid compared to Indiana Jones’. But they are far effective. The tinsel character had to battle snakes and Nazis to find the lost ancient Egyptian city of Tanis, while the University of Alabama Egyptologist pored over satellite images to uncover not just Tanis …
It is a legal victory with ramifications beyond small English town South Tyneside, where the local government claims Twitter released information about the tweeter who allegedly made libellous statements. The South Tyneside Council petitioned a court in California, US, to identify the user of the site after three councillors and …
A collection of documents from Britain’s colonial past are to be made public for the first time through the UK’s National Archives. The files were sent to the UK from various former territories, mostly at the time they achieved independence. The documents emerged when four people who had participated in …
It took the keen eye of a stamp collector to spot the mistake. A United States Postal Service stamp bearing a picture of New York’s iconic Statue of Liberty was in fact a photo of a replica statue at a Las Vegas casino. The stamp, which shows a low-angled close-up …
Remains of 138 Indigenous people from the Torres Strait Islands in Australia will be repatriated from London’s Natural History Museum. British explorers collected them during 19th century. “They are somebody’s ancestors, but they are also a source of great knowledge,” says the museum’s director of science, Richard Lane. “By understanding …
Ultraviolet rays are behind some of the bright yellows in Vincent van Gogh’s paintings turned brown. The finding is a first step to understanding how to stop some of the Dutch master’s paintings from fading. Two chemists, Koen Janssens from Antwerp University and Letizia Monico of Peruga University in Italy, …
On February 2, University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology called off a much-advertised exhibition at the eleventh hour. “Secrets of the Silk Road” was advertised as “an extraordinary collection of mummies excavated at desert burial sites in the far western reaches of China”. Pam Kosty, the museum’s spokesperson …
Five crates of Scotch whisky were recovered by a team from New Zealand restoring an Antarctic hut used in 1909 by polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. Ice cracked some of the bottles but restorers from New Zealand’s Antarctic Heritage Trust said they are confident the crates contain intact bottles.” The whisky …
Rock paintings found in Western Australia’s Bradshaw region show traces of life. Paleontologist Jack Pettigrew of University of Queensland and his team discovered that the art is resplendent with colourful bacteria and fungi, which constantly replenish the art’s colour. So they still look fresh after 40,000 years. Pettigrew termed the …
Sri Lanka’s government has decided to change the names of all state institutions still bearing the nation’s former British colonial name, Ceylon. The decision to use the country’s modern name comes 39 years after the country was renamed Sri Lanka.The energy minister submitted a cabinet memo in January to change …
CIA supported modern art whose proponents in the US were once communists. The American espionage agency’s documents of late 1940s revealed a new artistic movement. Russian art could not compete and was dismayed at the appeal communism still had for intellectuals and artists in the West. The newly formed CIA …
In the final years of the Roman Republic, the Senate kept the masses happy by distributing cheap food and staging big spectacles known as the circus games to get votes. In his satires, the Roman poet Juvenal observed witheringly that governance had been reduced to panem et circenses (bread and …
What is common to vuvuzela and carbon capture? The monotone drone heard during the football World Cup and the technique to check climate change are new additions to Oxford Dictionary. The dictionary defines the horn as a long plastic instrument, which makes a very loud noise when blown and is …
In May 1833, Daniel Wilson, Calcutta's Lord Bishop, wrote to his family in England: "The weather is perfectly suffocating. None can pity us but those who know our sufferings. The mind, body, functions, tempers, words, and feelings are all morbidly affected…a constant heat which unnerves, depresses, annihilates the European mind …
Once in the late 1950s, the then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru was to address the students of Delhi School of Economics. On such formal occasions, the head of the Delhi School, V K R V Rao, expected students to wear silver-grey, buttoned- up coats with the institution's crest. On the …
