NewsBytes

The French military completed its withdrawal from Senegal on Thursday, its last West African country with a permanent troop presence, amid waning regional influence in recent years. France has faced opposition from leaders of some of its former colonies in Africa over what they described as a demeaning and heavy-handed approach to the continent. The French military handed over Camp Geille, its largest base in Senegal, along with a nearby air facility, to the Senegalese government during a ceremony in the capital, Dakar. General Pascal Ianni, head of French forces in Africa, said the handover marked a new phase in military ties. France's military had been present in Senegal since it gained independence from France in 1960, under military cooperation agreements between the two countries.

Homegrown technology company Zoho announced its proprietary large language (LLM) model designed for enterprises using its suite of products, the latest move reflecting bold ambitions of Indian firms to build and innovate on their own AI stacks in the global tech race. Zoho said it is also rolling out automatic speech recognition models for speech-to-text conversion in English and Hindi. The Chennai-headquartered company plans to further expand the available languages, beginning with other Indian and European languages. Zoho top management said it has not seen these AI advances impact jobs and hirings. Zia LLM has been deployed across Zoho's data centres in the US, India, and Europe. The model is testing for internal use cases across Zoho's broad app portfolio, and will be available for customer use in coming months.

Oral healthcare plays a significant role in enhancing health-related outcomes, including those associated with cancer, researchers from AIIMS Delhi said, underscoring the necessity of integrating oral care practices not only at the primary level but throughout all health management. Emerging evidences indicate that poor oral health is closely associated with several health problems, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, adverse pregnancy outcomes and Alzheimer's disease, oncologists Dr Abhishek Shankar and Dr Vaibhav Sahni from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi said in an article published in The Lancet Regional Health - Southeast Asia earlier this month. Oral hygiene has been implicated in cancer risk and its prediction, particularly in head and neck cancers (HNC). The current literature also suggests a link between periodontal disease, also known as gum disease, and cancers of the digestive tract, prostate, breast, pancreas, oropharynx, uterus, and lungs.

Declining levels of aerosols -- particles that make up smog and air pollution -- could be making heatwaves more common compared to greenhouse gas emissions, especially in populated areas of the world, according to a study. Aerosols, which are being studied for their role in global warming -- the particles can cause a cooling effect by reflecting sunlight back into space -- can also produce a warming effect by absorbing solar radiation and influencing cloud formation. Researchers, led by those at The University of Texas, US, said that recent studies have linked the lowering of aerosols with rising regional temperatures. However, the study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, is the first to look at how aerosols can impact the frequency of heatwaves. The average number of heatwave days globally could rise from 40 per year to about 110 per year by 2080, with regions in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, South America and Western Europe projected to be hit particularly hard, the team said.