Digis Mak

Smallpox vaccinations may not protect against monkeypox for life, research suggests, with experts saying HIV may play a role in eroding protection from the jab over time.Monkeypox outbreaks are ongoing around the world, with the World Health Organization declaring the disease a public health emergency of international concern. At present, the majority of cases in current outbreaks are among men who have sex with men.Vaccination with a jab initially developed to protect against small pox, a related but more serious disease, is among the measures being taken to control infections. However, while experts stress that it is important for those at risk of monkeypox to take up the offer of a vaccination, as it reduces the chance of symptomatic infection and severe illness, protection offered ...

Across Europe, an area equivalent to one-fifth of Belgium has been ravaged by flames as successive searing heatwaves and a historic drought propelled the continent towards what experts say is likely to be a record year for wildfire destruction.According to data from the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis)659,541 hectares (1.6m acres) of land burned across the continent between January and mid-August, the most at this time of year since records began in 2006.The figure is 56% higher than the previous record in 2017. Then, 420,913 hectares burned over the same period, and 988,087 were consumed by the end of the year. On present trends, more than 1m hectares could be lost to wildfires this year.“The situation in terms of drought and extremely high temperatures has affected all...

Hasina* cannot send her two daughters to school, because they are teenagers and high school is banned for girls in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. But she cannot take them out of the country to finish their education because she is a divorced single mother, and women are barred from long-distance travel without a male “guardian” to escort them.Wazhma* lies awake worrying what she will do if her sick, elderly mother needs emergency medical help at night. Her father de ella is dead, she is unmarried and her sister de ella is a disabled teenager.She is terrified that as women out alone at night, even on their way to a hospital, they would be arrested and harassed by the Taliban.Most Afghan women have had to learn to endure new restrictions and controls over the last year, but there is one grou...

video games and heavy metal music have long shared a passing curiosity with one another. Look no further than the iconography of Doom, or Tim Schafer's Brütal Legend, for evidence of that. But it was in the mid 00s – during the reign of music and rhythm games such as Guitar Hero – that the link was most obvious. Count me among the ranks of those who learned about Pantera and Megadeth by way of the plastic instrument.Which is why this year's Metal: Hellsinger is on my radar. The game is a cross between a first person shooter and a rhythm game: by matching your shooting to the tempo of the music, you build a score multiplier that increases the damage you deal. We've seen this before in BPM: Bullets Per Minutebut Metal: Hellsinger brings its own setting and original heavy metal soundt...

We are talking again about polio – a disease that ran rampant in the 1950s, paralyzing thousands of children every year. The successful introduction of polio vaccine in 1956 into the UK, and later more widely, has resulted in the elimination of this once dreaded disease from Europe and indeed most of the world. After the successful global eradication of smallpox in 1980, polio is the next human disease on the list targeted for eradication.But for all the progress, we are not there yet. the first case of paralytic polio in almost a decade was reported in New York state in July, and a few days later vaccine-derived virus was reported to have been found in sewage in a neighboring county. A related virus has now been reported in multiple samples of London sewage, prompting authorities i...

Anne Heche began acting in her teens, but despite her successes in television and film, and on stage, her career was overshadowed by a life steeped in tragedy and controversy. Heche, who has died aged 53 after a car crash, came to tabloid prominence in the late 1990s as the girlfriend of Ellen DeGeneres, who was then the star of a hit TV comedy series.Heche later blamed the publicity around their relationship for hampering her career, saying Hollywood was not ready for a lesbian star in straight love-interest roles. That was exactly what her first starring role was; in Six Days, Seven Nights (1998), she marooned on a desert island with Harrison Ford. After a string of roles the previous year, including in Volcano and I Know What You Did Last Summer, and critical success in films suc...