Afghan mercury
The adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs and National Security, Sartaj Aziz, visited Kabul on Sept 4 to relieve tension and revive talks. However, he received a wintry…
New technology aids Brazil’s crackdown on illicit Amazon gold trade
Harley Sandoval, an evangelical pastor, real estate agent and mining entrepreneur, was arrested in July 2023 for illegally exporting 294 kilos of gold from Brazil’s Amazon to the United States,…
In Peru, a gold mining battle rages over registry of ‘impunity’
Thousands of gold miners camped out in the centre of the Peruvian capital and blocked the main highway this week to protest government plans to regulate illegal mining that experts…
Boiling point
ANOTHER heatwave, another slew of alarming headlines. We are better prepared than we were in 2015, when over 2,500 people lost their lives to soaring temperatures. Public awareness has improved,…
Hot and dangerous
THE rise in mercury has a human cost. With each decade getting warmer since 1980, the risk of breaching critical tipping points is getting alarmingly closer. The Intergovernmental Panel on…
The cost of e-commerce
The e-commerce economy is mushrooming rapidly not only in Pakistan but across the world as well. The Covid-19 pandemic posed many financial challenges for the economies of the world and…
Moral suasion isn’t the answer
Whenever the economy is up the creek, as at present, messages start doing the rounds that if each Pakistani shuns foreign products and buys only locally made goods for at…
Reclaiming the air we breathe
Air pollution is not Pakistan’s latest killer, but it has certainly become a serial one. For a country with low emissions on a global scale, our record on air pollution…
Amazon rainforest gold mining is poisoning scores of threatened species
In a camping tent in the Peruvian jungle, four scientists crowded around a tiny patient: An Amazonian rodent that could fit in the palm of a human hand. The researchers…
Plastic planet
It’s summer again in the Northern Hemisphere and with it comes the seasonal dread that grows worse each year. Dread of weather so severe it might make us sick or…
