World News

A new approach that can calculate the cost of damage caused by flooding is to be presented at the International Conference of Flood Resilience: Experiences in Asia and Europe at the University of Exeter this week. The method combines information on land use with data on the vulnerability of the area to calculate the cost of both past and future flooding events.

Climate change, along with increased building on flood plains, has led to both a greater likelihood and a higher impact of flooding across the globe.

The method has already been employed to estimate the damage caused...

The American author Elmore Leonard, who wrote the crime novels, Get Shorty and Out Of Sight, has died at the age of 87 according to a brief statement on his website. He had been recovering after a recent stroke.

Born in New Orleans, Elmore John Leonard Jr. began writing westerns in the 1950s, before becoming one of the most popular and critically acclaimed crime writers of his generation. He also wrote a number short stories - several also adapted for the screen - and screenplays for film and television.

Several of his crime novels were adapted for the big screen, including...

Romanian policeman, Petrescu Vasile from Constanta, received an award through The Donkey Sanctuary’s Romanian project, for recognition of his contribution to animal welfare, after he rescued a severely neglected donkey and informed The Donkey Sanctuary of the animal cruelty he had witnessed. The donkey was found by a roadside in Constanta, collapsed on one side having being repeatedly beaten. He was unable to get up or pull his owner’s cart, with infected wounds on his legs from frequent beatings. The donkey now named Jonny is currently in the care of The Donkey Sanctuary. Donkey Sanctuary...

Last week, in St Petersburg, Russia, four students from the University of Exeter, won a worldwide technology competition hosted by Microsoft, triumphing over 71 other countries and scooping the first prize reward of $50,000.

Supported by the University of Exeter Students’ Guild entrepreneurial programme IGNITE alongside SETsquared, the four students aged between 20 – 23-years-old, created the winning app idea in Exeter earlier this year, when the regional heats were held at Exeter’s Streatham Campus. The students went on to win the UK finals in London with their idea and, having...