Archive by category | International Relations

Nobel laureates call for release of Iranian physicist

Nobel laureates call for release of Iranian physicist

Eighteen Physics Nobel laureates have signed an open letter addressed to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, calling for the release of Omid Kokabee, a 32-year-old physicist who has spent the last 3 years and 8 months in a Teheran prison.  Read more

UN Security Council says Ebola is security threat

UN Security Council says Ebola is security threat

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is “a threat to international peace and security,” the UN Security Council said on 18 September, in a resolution calling for a massive increase in the resources devoted to stemming the virus’s spread.  Read more

Ban all ivory sales for 10 years, says conservationist

Ban all ivory sales for 10 years, says conservationist

The international community should ban all sales of ivory — including seized tusks and antique pieces that were created when trade was legal — for at least 10 years, argues a peer-reviewed essay published today in Conservation Biology. Without such measures, the epidemic corruption and high demand will ruin attempts to save African elephants, the author says.  Read more

Iranian student awarded human-rights prize while in prison

Iranian student awarded human-rights prize while in prison

Omid Kokabee, a physics PhD student jailed in Iran since January 2011, was awarded yesterday the 2014 American Physical Society’s Andrei Sakharov Prize for “his courage in refusing to use his physics knowledge to work on projects that he deemed harmful to humanity, in the face of extreme physical and psychological pressure.”  … Read more

Scaled-back proposals for Antarctic protection draw fire

After Russia blocked ambitious marine-conservation proposals for Antarctica earlier this summer, the United States and New Zealand are now floating a somewhat more modest version of plans that could create the world’s largest marine reserve.  Read more

Russian meteor blast was the largest ever recorded by CTBTO

The blast on 15 February over the Urals Mountains of a fireball that had entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the Kazakh-Russian border was the largest explosion ever recorded by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CNTBTO), according to the first detailed analysis of the event.  Read more

Cutbacks kick off kerfuffle over Spanish-German observatory

Spain’s National Research Council (CSIC) and Germany’s Max Planck Society agreed late last month to major budget cuts at the Hispano-German Astronomical Observatory at Calar Alto, Spain.  Read more