Africa

"The escalating armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has had significant — and overlooked — environmental impacts. The rate of tree cover loss in Kahuzi-Biega and Virunga National Parks has sharply increased since the conflict reignited in late 2021."

"An unidentified illness has killed scores of people and infected hundreds in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization has reported, with preliminary investigations tracing the outbreak to three children who in January ate a bat and died."

"It turns out that the Indri Indri lemurs of Madagascar can carry a tune. Researchers have found that these furry, tree-dwelling creatures use music to communicate with one another, likely for generations. ... The finding that these “singing lemurs” produce rhythmic calls provides an evolutionary pathway that may explain the origin of music."

"Nobel Prize-winning peacemaker Jimmy Carter spent nearly four decades waging war to eliminate an ancient parasite plaguing the world’s poorest people."

"Despite two weeks of U.N.-sponsored talks in Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh, the participating 197 nations failed to agree early Saturday on a plan to deal with global droughts, made longer and more severe by a warming climate."

"Malaria killed almost 600,000 people in 2023, as cases rose for the fifth consecutive year, according to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO). Biological threats such as rising resistance to drugs and insecticides, and climate and humanitarian disasters continue to hamper control efforts, world health leaders warned."

"Nestled in eastern Congo’s Ituri province, the Chinese-run gold mine is rapidly encroaching on an area that many say it shouldn’t be operating in at all - the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, an endangered World Heritage site."

"Restoring the world's degraded land and holding back its deserts will require at least $2.6 trillion in investment by the end of the decade, the U.N. executive overseeing global talks on the issue told Reuters, quantifying the cost for the first time."