Peter van Heusden (he/him) 🗿

New court documents show that Meta has been explicitly scheming to control the scientific narrative about their social media platforms

The DRC has crossed the somber milestone of 10,000 confirmed cases of Ebola in its ongoing outbreak. How does Ebola end this time? substack.com/home/post/p-...

In Hebron, Netanyahu is turning displacement into an election spectacle Israel has expelled 4,000 Palestinians in the past four days, destroying many of their homes and engineering a new reality that we fear will become permanent. By Issa Amro www.972mag.com/hebron-displ...

A court ordered a leading independent Egyptian news site closed after its editor-in-chief was convicted of running the site without a licence and taken into custody pending bail Lina Attalah of the news site Mada Masr, which has won numerous international awards for its reporting, was fined $53,400

The Ebola outbreak in the DRC has now crossed 10,000 cases and is getting close to 5,000 deaths. It is a staggeringly large outbreak and it continues to grow rapidly, with 96 new cases in the last 24 hours alone. #IDsky 🧪 insp.cd/sitrep-n164-...

🌍We are pleased to announce that the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) has joined the Dengue Alliance, making Kenya the first African country part of this global partnership dedicated to advancing dengue treatment research. 👉 More details: dndi.org/press-releas...

The Wikipedia community has built a tool that makes it possible to embed our interactive Our World in Data charts right in any Wikipedia page. I have always admired Wikipedia and all the people contributing to it. And I'm very happy that our work now can get used this way!

Today's quick update [Oct 25]: - RSF drone strikes on Um Ruwaba, North Kordofan. - Local ERR warns of worsening hunger & malnutrition in West Darfur due to war-related food crisis that is being exacerbated by climate-driven crop failure. #KeepEyesOnSudan

Please share and sign: www.universitiesforjustice.eu/sign/ > We call on you, as our responsible university leadership, to join and extend this momentum by: > 1. demanding the suspension of Israel’s participation in Horizon Europe and the EU-Israel Association Agreement;

Israeli forces are preventing Palestinian journalists from covering the military crackdown in Hebron, as the number of affected families has risen to 338, more than 2,000 people, amid forced displacement and movement restrictions.

www.spotlightnsp.co.za/2026/10/23/w... "Between treasuries, health departments, premiers, and the presidency, it is time we stop ignoring the elephant in the room."

Palestinians in Hebron are 'living in fear' with the city closed, while Israeli forces arrest dozens across the West Bank https://aje.news/2ppied

1/3 I'm delighted to share that Amira, a tool I worked on during my PhD, has been published in Genome Biology! 🎉 Genome assembly often struggles to reconstruct AMR markers, meaning we can miss them entirely. Amira detects them more sensitively than existing approaches.

Tweet from the Minister of Health of Nigeria on the recent travel-associated BVD case. Fantastic work from all countries and institutions involved - phylogeeks will know what the clustering means, but I'll let the relevant authorities report on that.

This week, NIH advisors rebuked RFK for harming #NIH and US science. Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported it. Then RFK posted calling her sources anonymous or corrupt. I'll say this hoping it does good: I'm an NIH scientist, I'm not anonymous, and RFK Jr is destroying NIH. More in attachment:

🦠 SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 “Social proximity was a key determinant of infection susceptibility”,* more so than a person’s genetics, at least for the population-at-large.**

Across generations of displacement, struggle, and war in Sudan, ordinary acts of care become a form of inheritance that no violence can erase. africasacountry.com/2026/10/how-...

Paul Barrie, a very nasty piece of work, has taken his ugly secrets to the grave. panafricanvisions.com/2026/10/rwan...

A wild aspect of this gobsmacking piece is the Israeli method of blackmail: they allow a money launderer (Kushner) to set up his illegal bank account in Israeli national bank, then they make it difficult for him to pull out his money unless he does as he is told. www.vanityfair.com/story/jared-...

In her article for the Journal of Palestine Studies, Mais Qandeel examines Israeli settler violence from the lens of this obligation and of the law of state responsibility. Read the article via the Journal of Palestine Studies: doi.org/10.1080/0377...

Today's quick update [Oct 21]: - RSF drone strikes continue, targeting the capital, Khartoum, and Kalogi, South Kordofan. - SAF drone strikes also continue, targeting Nyala (S. Darfur), Aldi'ein (E. Darfur) and Mellit (N. Darfur). #KeepEyesOnSudan

"With new Ebola cases reported in Nigeria and Kenya, the latest outbreak of the deadly virus has become the fastest-growing and most geographically widespread in history, African health officials say." www.theglobeandmail.com/world/articl... via @geoffreyyork.bsky.social ⬇️🤔

TAG’s 2026 Tuberculosis Vaccines Pipeline Report, by Mike Frick, is here. From long-awaited clinical trial results to a major manufacturing milestone, this year brought important developments in TB vaccine research and development.

Somewhere away from "We'll just win elections and make the big platforms behave!" and "All that matters is winning so we should just use whatever platform gets us the most eyes!" there has to be a recognition that Meta/TikTok/YouTube/X are permanent thumbs on the scale until we crush them.

The death toll from a drone strike on a market in the disputed Abyei region between Sudan and South Sudan has risen to at least 153 people The attack struck Amiet Market on Monday, hitting a fuel depot and igniting fires that burned into the following day. Initial reports said 80 were killed

Annals of a Carefully Ignored War: www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

What can we learn from the speed of the #lenacapavir regulatory approvals in Africa? SA approved #LEN for #HIV #PrEP 4 mo's after the US & Europe, compared w/nearly 3.5 yrs for oral PrEP. Access Bridge explores this & lessons for future PrEP options like #alimatravir. lnkd.in/p/gqWUQCA4

NCDC is well equipped to handle this but it really is shocking how much people in global health just don't want to talk about this outbreak because there's no pundit stuff to say from a distance

BREAKING: Police in Guinea-Bissau say they raided the offices of Bandim, the Danish research project, and seized hepatitis B vaccines at the center of global controversy www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

👀 "Nigeria confirms first Ebola case" apnews.com/article/nige...

Israel's plans to reopen Route 463 to settler traffic will sever surrounding villages from Ramallah, effectively isolating the key Palestinian city:

An insane day of drone warfare. Civilians across the country remain unsafe, and no one in power gives a damn how many of them die.

par @jeansovon.bsky.social pour @globalvoices.org: désinformation à grande échelle, alimentée par l’IA, autor du conflit RDC-Rwanda fr.globalvoices.org/2026/10/19/3... in English: major AI-powered disinformation campaigns, about the DRCongo-Rwanda conflict globalvoices.org/2026/10/19/a...

Selecting The Next WHO Director-General: Learning From Predecessors (Part I) - Health Policy Watch healthpolicy-watch.news/selecting-th...

Morocco reports 15 confirmed diphtheria cases amid concerns over declining vaccination coverage Read more at: https://beaconbio.org/en/report/?reportid=b47a225d-9022-4074-b6a4-9940a6baaa1a&eventid=b5d0df91-17b8-4520-8091-8c53665358ce&utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialpost

Four new Bundibugyo virus disease cases reported in Kenya among quarantined contacts, including three health workers; total reaches seven https://beaconbio.org/en/report/?reportid=f243d643-ebcb-4d40-801e-6a91d971743a&eventid=1a9a0ef4-262f-45a1-9018-aa8f99d93a7c&utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social

humanrightsmonitor.org/news/west-pa... West Papua in flames: Forest fires, land grabs and the human cost of Indonesia’s food and energy push

Award-winning American photojournalist Heidi Levine describes being violently attacked by a mob of Israeli settlers while covering the olive harvest in Turmus Ayya near Ramallah this morning. By Oren Ziv @mekomit.bsky.social

We published 'negative' research findings! Can MALDI-TOF accurately predict whole genome sequencing-based transmission? Nope. 🥲 We hoped it could (faster, cheaper), but alas, it does not work well! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Galaxy Training Academy 2026: A Global Week of Learning Read more at https://training.galaxyproject.org/training-material/news/2026/10/16/gta2026-recap.html @galaxyproject.bsky.social

Excellent Michael Roth piece on the obvious correlation (insurers know, as he notes) between fraternities & sexual assault/dangerous intoxication — and the vast improvement to campus life & safety that followed Wesleyan’s decision to make them go co-ed or shut down. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/o...

Today's quick update [Oct 15]: - 5 children killed, mother injured in SAF drone strike on a home in Abu Zaima, North Kordofan. - Sudan Doctors Network: 6,500 detainees held by RSF in AlGineina, West Darfur, including women and children. #KeepEyesOnSudan

Day 2 Regional Summit on Public Health Emergencies: Slides from Dr Ana Amaya on the BRIDGE study shows how ASEAN’s governance can help or impede responses to public health emergencies, including that the consensus model can impede quick responses during a pandemic. @aseannewstoday.bsky.social #KL

In 1922, insulin co-discoverer Frederick Banting refused to profit from the discovery and offered it to the world as a global public good. Today, many people with diabetes still don't have access to affordable and quality treatment and care.

We found that the most gendered experience wasn’t work-life balance, the focus of most retention efforts. It was feeling devalued, in formal evaluations, but particularly in everyday interactions. Unlike every other topic, the gender gap in devaluation was larger among more senior faculty.

To mark three years since photojournalist Issam Abdallah was killed, the Union of Journalists in Lebanon released two reports examining Israeli crimes against media workers and journalists’ working conditions during the war. youtube.com/shorts/wR8Nf...