CLIMATE CHANGE: Making a Hot Cup of Rooibos Tea Unaffordable

South Africa’s Rooibos tea has become a popular drink all around the globe. But prices of the herbal brew could shoot up within the next decade, as the Rooibos plant can only grow in one small region in the world – which is severely affected by climate change.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Himalayan Nations Yet to Break the Ice

Chungda Sherpa, a former herder from eastern Nepal, has a warning tale ahead of the United Nations climate change conference in Durban.

Ex-Inspector Rejects IAEA Iran Bomb Test Chamber Claim

A former inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repudiated its major new claim that Iran built an explosives chamber to test components of a nuclear weapon and carry out a simulated nuclear explosion.

INDIA: Dangers of a Lax Nuclear Strategy

On August 26, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan resigned, taking responsibility for the disastrous meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was caused by the March 2011 undersea earthquake and ensuing tsunami.

Unique Mexican Oasis in Danger of Vanishing

A rare wetlands ecosystem in the Chihuahuan desert in northern Mexico that may hold key information about the origins of life on earth – and even about possible life on Mars – is in serious danger of disappearing if water continues to be extracted by agribusiness concerns, local scientists warn.

AFRICA: Change the Donors Climate

When donor-funded horticultural projects failed in Kalacha village at the edge of the Chalbi Desert in North Eastern Province, Kenya, the local pastoralist community proposed their own idea, which turned out to be the solution to their problems.

Q&A: Cuba Advancing Towards a Dengue Vaccine

"We don’t like to talk about our specific goals," says Cuban virologist María Guadalupe Guzmán, as a subtle way to avoid going into too much detail about the research she is heading up to develop a dengue vaccine.

ZIMBABWE: Rural Women Banking By Mobile Phone

Collecting the monthly subscriptions for her co-operative has always been a headache for Thelma Nare, 41. This is because Nare lives in Tshitshi, Plumtree in rural Zimbabwe, about 60 kilometres away from the humdrum of the nearest town centre where banks are located.

AFRICA: Failure to Adopt Technology in Libraries Results in Fewer Users

Simret Mebrahtu has been an infrequent visitor to the National Library of Uganda in the centre of Kampala for nearly two years. A student, she stops by every couple of weeks to use the cheap internet connection if one of the few computers is available.

MIDEAST: Israeli Military Fires Up the Creative Side

War brings economic development, we're told at times. Like the cliché or not, in their case, Israelis have become a successful start-up nation by building a powerful start-up military.

Climate Change Arouses Scientific Curiosity in Mexico

Climate change has inspired dozens of scientists at Mexican public universities to conduct research on its effects and seek ways to confront them.

CANADA: Harper Government Guts Environment Programmes

Canada's Stephen Harper government is spending more than 60 billion dollars on new military jets and warships while slashing more than 200 million dollars in funding for research and monitoring of the environment.

GHANA: Toxic Electronic Waste Contaminates Nearby Areas

Mountains of hazardous waste grow by about 40 million tons every year. This waste, mostly from Europe and North America, is burned in developing countries like Ghana in a hazardous effort to recover valuable metals.

Durban May Be Last Chance to Stabilise Climate Under Two Degrees

The window to limit global warming to less than two degrees C is closing so fast it can be measured in months, a new scientific analysis revealed Sunday.

Gene Patents “Like Trying to Keep Water in a Sieve”

If the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear a case on gene patents, observers say the resulting face-off - between a large genetics testing company and a vocal coalition of breast cancer patient advocates – will have a massive impact because of what is at stake: valuable information about the human genome.

Brazil Active in Effort to Widen Global Access to Medicines

Brazil is keen to take part in the international effort to expand access to medicines and to produce its own drugs, and will start by becoming the world supplier of medicines to treat Chagas disease.

Green Tech Innovation Takes Root in Mexico

Environmental innovation is gaining ground in the academic, private and government sectors in Mexico, with the creation of research and development centres for local good practices and incubators for green production initiatives.

U.S.: ACLU Will Take Gene Patent Case to Supreme Court

When Jaydee Hanson, then-bioethics director for the United Methodist Church, spoke out publicly against gene patents over 15 years ago, some in the biotech industry compared his stance to the Catholic Church's persecution of Galileo, the 15th century astronomer who discovered the moons of Jupiter.

Desert’s Wealth is Wasted in Mexico

The deserts of northern Mexico are home to various plant species that have been largely ignored, despite the considerable social, economic and environmental contributions they could make.

BRAZIL: Homegrown GM Bean Won’t Fight Hunger, Critics Say

Critics complain that a genetically modified bean developed in Brazil, resistant to one of the country's most damaging agricultural pests, was approved without enough debate or guarantees that the crop will not affect human health or the environment.

Concerns Loom over Implications of Enhancement Technology

Imagine a class of 24 children, three of whom take performance enhancing medicines that increase their chances of scoring high on standardized tests. Now quadruple that number, with one half of the pupils popping pills and the other pushing their pencils med free.