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A former colonel describes a leadership making cash by any means, from drug factories to illegal arms deals.

Australia’s state of New South Wales has passed its 70% vaccination target, resulting in Sydney easing its 107-day lockdown. Non-essential shops, restaurants, bars, hair and beauty salons have reopened after being forced shut for almost four months. Patrons lined up across the city for the midnight reopening, excited to enjoy their new freedoms. Video by…

World leaders are set to meet at the COP26 conference in Glasgow in three weeks’ time, to try to agree on action to tackle climate change. Prince Charles has been campaigning on climate issues for decades and, ahead of the conference, he met with the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt to discuss what needs to be done,…

Seeds from genetically modified barley plants are being used in a process which creates lab-grown meat. A protein in the seeds, called a growth factor, is harvested, milled and purified before it can be used. While the first growth factors came from animals, it is hoped this barley plant method will be cheaper and scalable….

Countries in West Africa are said to be drowning under the weight of waste shipped to their shores.

Journalist Maria Ressa emphasised the importance of facts in journalism, after winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Speaking to the website she co-founded, Rappler, she said :”When you don’t have facts, you don’t have truth, you don’t have trust”. Ms Ressa was one of two winners of this year’s prize, for using her platform to “expose…

BBC Click’s LJ Rich looks at the best of the week’s technology news stories including: Microsoft launches its latest operating system, Windows 11, as a free upgrade for Windows 10 users Star Trek actor William Shatner will go into space with Jeff Bezos’s space travel company Blue Origin A robotic arm which can recognise and…

The winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature says he thought the phone call telling him he’d won was a cold caller. Luckily, Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah was persuaded not to hang up. Speaking to the BBC’s Ros Atkins, he says he was making a cup of tea when the phone rang, telling the…

Ivermectin was called a Covid “miracle” drug, championed by vaccine opponents, but research has shown that more than a third of 26 major trials of the drug for use on Covid have serious errors or signs of potential fraud. Dr Kyle Sheldrick, of the University of New South Wales, who was one of the group…

Heatwaves are becoming more common in India due to global warming. There’s nowhere to hide especially if you live in a crowded city like Ahmedabad. Shakeela Bano struggles to get her grandson Mohammed to fall asleep in their one room house due to the heat. But as the Life at 50C series on climate change…