The United States has sanctioned Uganda’s parliament speaker, her husband and others over corruption and rights abuses, but will the imposed restrictions have a wider impact?
After the mysterious disappearance of a Zambia parliamentarian who was later found, opposition politicians fear the country’s democracy is under threat.
And why is there a power tussle between the Cameroon government and the national football federation over who should be head coach of the national team - the Indomitable Lions.
As the Olympic torch makes its way through France, we investigate the fires that continually smoulder and those which are stomped out.
You might expect snow to make a solid fire extinguisher, but in Canada, it is somehow keeping embers alight. These ‘Zombie fires’ keep burning through the winter, releasing huge amounts of carbon into the air and enhancing the tinderbox for summer wildfires.
While wildfires leave trails of destruction, for some plants and animals, they act as a catalyst for life – helping them to spread their seeds or flower. And the extent of these blazes can also be marshalled by nature – with elephants and beavers building natural fire breaks into landscapes to prevent uncontrollable flames.
We hear about when the first fires happened on Earth and how we can study ancient fires which have long since gone out. Plus, we unpick the key to monogamy (in mice), why cicadas love prime numbers as well as your thoughts on snakes...
Presenter: Caroline Steel with Philistiah Mwatee and Chhavi Sachdev
Producer: Alex Mansfield with Florian Bohr, Harrison Lewis, Julia Ravey and Noa Dowling
Sound engineer: Emily Preston
AI is already being used in every branch of science, and will become more and more a feature of future breakthroughs. But with its power to find subtle patterns in massive data sets comes a concern about how we will know when to trust its outcomes, and how to rely on its predictions. Science in Action talks to Alison Noble who just completed a Royal Society report on trust in scientific AI.
With highly pathogenic bird flu infecting around 70 dairy herds across 10 states in the USA, including a herd of alpacas, we get an update from health journalist Helen Branswell of StatNews on the latest science and efforts to get on top of the infection.
Also, from the pioneers of the mRNA vaccines that helped turn around the COVID pandemic, an experimental version that could be rolled out rapidly if the bird flu does cross worryingly into people. University of Pennsylvania’s Scott Hensley described how it works, and how promising it looks.
Science in Action also hears how Europe’s new EarthCARE satellite, equipped to peer deep inside clouds, will tackle one of the biggest unknowns in the science of global warming.
Presenter: Roland Pease
Producer: Jonathan Blackwell
It's one year since Bola Tinubu became Nigeria’s President. Mr Tinubu assumed office during a time of unprecedented challenges for Africa’s most populous country. How are Nigerian's feeling about his promise of a "renewed hope"?
Somalia is the only sub-Saharan country to carry out the death penalty, where according to Amnesty International executions are on the rise. What's the attitude towards the death penalty there?
And Zimbabwe re-launches it's national youth programme, which aims at equipping young people with life skills. What do young Zimbabweans think?
Presenter: Richard Kagoe
Producers: Joseph Keen, Bella Hassan, Yvette Twagiramariya and Patricia Whitehorne
Senior Journalist: Karnie Sharp
Technical Producer: Phillip Bull
Editors: Andre Lombard and Alice Muthengi
It's getting easier to access illegal arms in Kenya which has led to the rise in violent crime, especially in more deprived areas. What's fuelling the rise in gun crime?
Also, why is Ghana turning to nuclear power?
And a documentary explores the reality African students face when they choose to study abroad.
Presenter: Richard Kagoe
Producers: Charles Gitonga, Bella Hassan, Yvette Twagiramariya and Rob Wilson
Senior Journalist: Karnie Sharp
Editors: Andre Lombard and Alice Muthengi
Kenya has been designated the status of non-NATO ally by the US President Joe Biden, making it the first sub-Saharan African country to receive
that designation. Learn what it means for Kenya and more widely for Africa.
How an initiative in West Africa is improving accountability and transparency in the extraction sector, and a Namibian activist who is advocating for the end of fossil fuels in Africa.
The Blue Ridge Parkway is 469 miles of beautiful vistas, a mountainous road that winds from Virginia to North Carolina in the USA. The route is peppered with elevation signs, telling you how many metres above sea level you are. Which has CrowdScience listener Beth wondering: as we are told that sea level is rising, will all the elevation signs need repainting?
It’s a task she’s passed over to the CrowdScience team, who like a difficult challenge. The height of an enormous pile of rock like Ben Nevis, or Mount Everest feels unchangeable. But we measure them relative to the nearest patch of sea, which is where our story becomes complicated. Unlike water in a bath, sea level is not equal around the world. The east coast of America has a different sea level to its west coast. And as host Marnie Chesterton discovers in Finland, in some parts of the world the land is being pushed up, so sea level is actually falling.
In fact, when nothing on earth - not the sea, the shore or the mountains - seems to be stable or constant, the question of what you measure from and to becomes incredibly tricky. But that hasn’t stopped oceanography and geography scientists risking life and fingers to use an ever-evolving array of technologies to find answers. In this show we find out why they care so much, and why we should too.
Featuring:
Dr Paul Bell – National Oceanography Centre, Liverpool, UK
Dr Severine Fournier – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory / California Institute of Technology
Dr Jani Särkkä – Finnish Meteorological Institute
Khimlal Gautam – Mountaineer and Chief Survey Officer, Government of Nepal
Dr Derek van Westrum – National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, USA
Presented and produced by Marnie Chesterton
Editor – Cathy Edwards
Production Co-ordinator – Liz Tuohy
Studio Manager – Steve Greenwood
(Photo: Sea Level Elevation Sign in Death Valley, California. Credit: Mitch Diamond/Getty Images)
The besieged city of El-Fasher in Sudan's Darfur region, is facing a growing risk of genocide as the world's attention is focused on other conflicts, that's the warning from a United Nations expert. Alice Wairimu Nderitu told the BBC, many civilians have been targeted based on their ethnicity in El-Fasher, where fierce fighting has intensified in recent days. What constitutes a genocide?
Also why some of the main political parties in South Africa have raised concern about the rise in illegal immigration ahead of the general elections
And we meet 18 year old Helms Ategeka from Uganda who has broken the internet after being accepted into over 120 colleges in the United States!
Presenter: Richard Kagoe
Producer: Frenny Jowi, Toda Opeyemi, Rob Wilson, Yvette Twagiramariya, Bella Hassan and Sunita Nahar.
Senior Journalist: Karnie Sharp
Technical Producer: Daniela Victoria Varela Hernandez
Editors are Alice Muthengi and Andre Lombard
How would you feel if you spent more and more of your life underground? Could that be how more and more of us live in the future? Presenter Marnie Chesterton and panellists Candice Bailey in Johannesburg, South Africa and Tristan Ahtone in Helsinki, Finland dig into subterranean science. Did you know around a million people live underground in China's capital Beijing? Have you heard of the race to dig the deepest hole in the Earth? In this episode we explore how humans have been digging deep for over 3,000 years explorer Christian Clot tell us why living underground with no contact to the world above was a nicer experience that you might expect.
