Source: The Conversation – UK – By Marc Fullman, Docotoral Researcher in Organisational Behaviour, University of Sussex Business School, University of Sussex
If your first task of the day is triaging a bulging inbox at 6am, you are not alone. A recent Microsoft report headlined “Breaking down the infinite workday” found that 40% of Microsoft 365 users online at this hour are already scanning their emails – and that an average worker will receive 117 emails before the clock rolls around to midnight.
But that’s not all. By 8am, Microsoft Teams notifications outstrip email for most workers, and the typical employee is hit with 153 chat messages during the day.
The report states that, while meetings swallow the prime 9am–11am focus window, interruptions arrive every two minutes throughout the day. This perpetual work overload means a third of professionals reopen their inbox to answer more emails at 10pm.
In short, Microsoft’s telemetry of this “triple-peak” day (first thing, mid-morning and late at night) paints a vivid picture of a work rhythm that never stops.
From an occupational psychology perspective, these statistics are more than curious trivia. They signal a cluster of psychosocial hazards.
Boundary Theory holds that recovery depends on clear and solid boundaries – both psychologically and in terms of time – between work and the rest of life. Microsoft’s findings show those limits dissolving. This includes 29% of users checking email after 10pm.
Similarly, a four-day diary study of Dutch professionals found that heavier after-hours smartphone use predicted poorer psychological detachment and exhaustion the next day.
This can have wider consequences. When people are busy, rushed or harried, one of the first things to suffer is their regulation of online behaviour. Large-scale survey research shows that ambiguous or curt digital messages occur when we are depleted. These can obviously sap wellbeing in recipients.
In a 2024 study of workers in the UK and Italy, incivility in emails between colleagues predicted work-life conflict and exhaustion via “techno-invasion”, as workers reported being exposed to an ongoing torrent of unpleasant messaging.
So-called ‘techno-invasion’ could lead to work-life conflict and emotional exhaustion. fizkes/Shutterstock
My ongoing doctoral research examines how workers respond to messages they receive, and exposes the nuance on different communication platforms. Among the 300 UK workers involved, identical messages were rated as more uncivil on email than on Teams, particularly when they were informal. Frustration on the part of a recipient (in terms of how they interpret a message) accounted for nearly 50% of perceived incivility on email, but only 30% on Teams.
These findings suggest that choice of platform significantly influences how messages are received and interpreted. Using these insights, organisations can make informed decisions about communication channels, and potentially reduce workplace stress and improve employee wellbeing in the process.
Microsoft suggests that AI “agent bosses” will rescue workers. These tools could summarise inboxes, draft replies and free up humans for higher-order work.
The data, however, exposes a cultural contradiction. Managers tell staff to switch off, yet their appraisal spreadsheets tell a different story. In one set of experiments, the same bosses who praised weekend digital detoxing also ranked the detoxers as less promotable than colleagues who were glued to their inboxes.
Little wonder Microsoft’s own data shows the same late-night peak, despite widespread wellbeing guidance to switch off after hours. Without changing how commitment is signalled and rewarded, faster tools risk accelerating the treadmill rather than dismantling it.
What organisations can do
1. Individual level – let people feel they have control
Encourage “quiet hours” and teach employees to disable non-urgent notifications. Boundary-control research shows that when workers feel they have control over connectivity, it creates a buffer against fatigue caused by after-hours email.
2. Team level – communication charters
Teams should agree explicit norms for communication. This could include capping the numbers invited to meetings and insisting on agendas. Simple charters along these lines restore predictability for workers and cut “decision fatigue”.
3. Organisational level – redesign metrics
Organisations could shift from visibility (green dots and instant replies) to outcome-based metrics for productivity. This removes the incentive for workers to stay online and aligns with evidence that autonomy is a key resource.
4. Technological level – AI for elimination, not acceleration
Workplaces should deploy AI assistants to remove low-value tasks (for example, sorting email or drafting minutes), not just speed them up. Then they should conduct workload audits to ensure the time saved is reinvested in deep work, not simply swallowed up by extra meetings.
The Microsoft dataset is enormous, but there are two important points to note. First, European jurisdictions with “right to disconnect” laws may be missing from the figures. Second, some metrics (for example, interruptions) are calculated on the most active fifth of users, potentially overstating a typical experience.
But if the numbers in Microsoft’s report feel familiar, that is precisely the point. The technology designed to liberate workers is now scripting their day minute-by-minute. Occupational psychology researchers warn that without deliberate boundary setting, rising digital job demands will continue to tax wellbeing and dull performance.
AI can be a circuit breaker, but only if it is accompanied by cultural and structural change that gives employees permission to disconnect.
The infinite workday is not a law of nature, it is a design flaw. Fixing it will take more than faster software – it will demand a collective decision to prize focus, recovery and civility as fiercely as workers currently prize availability.
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Marc Fullman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Travis Van Isacker, Senior Research Associate, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol
On a cold, wet November evening, Issa Mohamed Omar and more than 30 other men, women and children set off from their informal camp near the northern French port city of Dunkirk. They walked through the darkness in near-silence for around two hours, until they reached the beach from where they hoped to start a new and better life.
As they arrived, five men were busy pumping up an inflatable dinghy and attaching an outboard engine. These people smugglers had charged each of their customers more than a thousand euros for a trip that costs someone with the right passport less than a hundred.
The travellers were given life-vests, arranged into rows and counted. “There are 33 of you,” one of the smugglers said. For many on board, this was not their first attempt at reaching England.
Most came from Iraqi Kurdistan, including Kazhal Ahmed Khidir Al-Jammoor from Erbil, who was travelling with her three children: Hadiya, Mubin and Hasti Rizghar Hussein, respectively aged 22, 16 and seven.
A father and son from Egypt were shown how the engine worked and provided a GPS device and directions to Dover, around 35 miles (60km) to the west across the Channel. Mohamed Omar would later recall:
The Egyptian man was put in charge of steering the boat by the smugglers. He was travelling with his son, who looked like he was in his late teens or maybe early 20s. I do not know how they came to be the driver and navigator.
There were also at least three Ethiopian nationals – one of whom, father-of-two Fikiru Shiferaw from Addis Ababa, sent his wife Emebet at home in Ethiopia a final WhatsApp voice message:
We have already boarded the boat. We are on the way. I will turn off my phone now. Goodnight, I will call you tomorrow morning.
These were the last words she would ever receive from her husband.
What happened to Fikiru Shiferaw and the other passengers on the night of November 23-24 2021 has been the subject of the UK’s Cranston Inquiry which, during March 2025, heard from 22 witnesses to the disaster, including officers involved in the UK’s search-and-rescue (SAR) response. Chaired by former High Court judge Sir Ross Cranston, the independent inquiry also heard from Mohamed Omar from Somalia – one of only two survivors – as well as family members of many of the dead and missing.
These hearings not only shed light on the actions of UK Border Force and His Majesty’s Coastguard officers during the failed rescue operation – designated Incident Charlie – in the early hours of November 24, but the agencies’ approach to “small boat crossings” in general dating back to 2017.
According to the testimonies, officers had been operating under extreme pressure in the months leading up to the disaster. Kevin Toy, master of the Border Force ship Valiant which was sent out to search for the missing dinghy that night, explained that in the run-up to the incident, “night after night” he could see his crew were “utterly exhausted” by the end of their shifts.
The evidence shows the British government was aware of the growing risk that Border Force and HM Coastguard could be overwhelmed by the rising number of small boat crossings – and that people might die as a result. In May 2020, a document produced by the Department for Transport acknowledged that “SAR resources can be overwhelmed if current incident numbers persist”. At least three senior HM Coastguard officers identified the same risk in August 2021.
Multiple communication failures have also been exposed by the inquiry – among British officers, with their opposite numbers in France, and between both countries’ emergency services and the increasingly desperate people aboard the sinking dinghy.
Despite numerous distress calls and GPS coordinates being shared via WhatsApp, a rescue boat failed to reach the travellers in time. Amid the confusion, when their calls stopped, the coastguard assumed Charlie’s passengers had been picked up and were safe. In fact, they were perishing in the cold waters of the Channel over more than ten hours.
The Insights section is committed to high-quality longform journalism. Our editors work with academics from many different backgrounds who are tackling a wide range of societal and scientific challenges.
As part of my research into the digital transformation of the UK-France border, I attended the inquiry and have studied the many statements, call transcripts, operational logs, emails and meeting minutes it has made public. Initially, I wanted to understand how the November 2021 disaster became a watershed moment in the UK government’s response to people trying to cross the Channel by small boat or dinghy, catalysing the transformation of the UK’s maritime border into the hyper-surveilled space it is today.
But, after speaking to representatives for Mohamed Omar and the bereaved families as well as migrant rights organisations, larger questions have emerged. In particular, given the inquiry’s singular focus on this one catastrophic event in November 2021, those I spoke to are concerned that its recommendations will be unable to prevent further deaths from occurring in the Channel, which have risen dramatically over the last 18 months.
How ‘small boat crossings’ began
Since the UK and France began operating “juxtaposed” border controls in the early 1990s (meaning border checks occur before departure), asylum seekers trying to reach England have had to make irregular journeys across the Channel. Until 2018, these were typically aboard trains and ferries – after sneaking on to a lorry or through a French port’s perimeter security.
At the time of the “Jungle” camp near Calais in 2015-16, media coverage of collective attempts by its residents to enter French ports spiked UK government investment in the border. Between 2014 and 2018, it gave its French counterpart at least £123 million to “strengthen the border and maintain juxtaposed controls”. These funds paid for French police to patrol the ports and border cities, regularly evict migrants’ living sites, and finance detention and relocation centres.
As admitted by then-home secretary Sajid Javid in 2019, this increased security led people to find other ways across the Channel. Beginning in the winter of 2018, smugglers organised journeys in small, seaworthy vessels they had stolen from marinas along the French coast. These “small boats” continue to lend their name to this migration phenomenon – yet the unseaworthy inflatable dinghies used today, with no keel or rigid hull, are not worthy of the name.
Even in the context of the usual sensationalism surrounding irregular migration to the UK, small boat journeys were met with an especially intense response, both politically and in the media.
When 101 people crossed between Christmas and New Year in 2018, Javid declared it a major incident. Ever since, “stopping the boats” has been one of the UK government’s highest priorities. Despite small boat arrivals making up only 29% of UK asylum claimants in 2018-24, billions of pounds have been spent to try and control the route.
Frosty relations and the ‘pushback’ plan
As Channel crossings rose sharply over 2020-21, worsening relations between France and the UK due to Brexit complicated how the two governments worked together to respond. In his testimony, former clandestine Channel threat commander Dan O’Mahoney – appointed by Javid’s successor, Priti Patel, to “make small boat crossings unviable” – described relations between the two countries as already “very frosty” when he began in August 2020.
After France’s then-interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, axed a plan for UK vessels to take rescued migrants back to Dunkirk, O’Mahoney was tasked by senior ministers to come up with an alternative. The resulting “pushback” plan, called Operation Sommen, involved Border Force officers on jet skis driving into migrant dinghies to turn them back as they crossed the border line into UK waters. When France learned of the plan, O’Mahoney recalled:
They thought it went counter to their and our obligations around safety of life at sea … They objected to it very strongly, and it affected our already quite strained relationship with them further.
Operation Sommen was abandoned in April 2022 before having ever been used in anger. However, preparations were said to have taken up “a very considerable amount of time and resource” at both the Home Office and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency – and had “a detrimental effect” on the UK’s overall SAR response to small boat crossings.
At a meeting of senior officials in June 2021 to discuss Operation Sommen, ministers had made clear that the “numbers of people crossing [was] a political problem” – and that improving SAR capabilities did not “fit with [the] narrative of taking back control of borders”.
Although senior HM Coastguard officers recognised “it is extremely difficult to locate small boats or communicate with those onboard”, the inquiry heard that officers did not recall receiving “any small boat training before November 2021”, other than in the procedure to allow Border Force to push them back to French waters.
The head of Border Force’s Maritime Command, Stephen Whitton, told the inquiry he was under “a huge amount of pressure” to prevent small boat crossings, while also “providing the bulk of the support to search and rescue”. Despite carrying out 90% of all small boat rescues in the Channel and “regularly being overwhelmed”, Border Force Maritime Command received “no additional assets to manage the search and rescue response” before November 2021.
‘The pressure we were under’
When the decision was taken for Border Force – a law enforcement rather than search-and-rescue organisation – to be the primary responders to small boat crossings in 2018, only around 100 people were crossing each month. Yet by the time of the disaster three years later, according to an internal Home Office document, the total for 2021 was “already more than 25,000”.
At the inquiry, O’Mahoney stated: “As 2021 went on, it became much clearer that … frankly, we just needed more [rescue] boats.” Whitton admitted that before the disaster, Border Force, HM Coastguard, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and other support organisations were all “on our knees in terms of the pressure we were under, and it was getting hugely challenging”.
The evidence shows this pressure was acutely felt inside Dover’s Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre, which sits atop the port’s famous white cliffs offering a commanding view of the Channel. Inside, Coastguard officers coordinate SAR operations and control vessel traffic in the Dover Strait – one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
On the night of November 23-24, three coastguard officers were on search-and-rescue duty: team leader Neal Gibson, maritime operations officer Stuart Downs, and a trainee – unnamed by the inquiry – who was officially only present as an observer.
HM Coastguard’s Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre at Dover overlooking the Channel. Travis Van Isacker, CC BY-NC-SA
Staffing appears to have been a longstanding issue at the Dover coastguard station where, according to divisional commander Mike Bill, there was “poor retention of staff” and “experience and competence weren’t the best”. Only the day before the disaster, during a migrant red days meeting – convened when, due to good weather, the probability of Channel crossers is considered “highly likely” – chief coastguard Peter Mizen had warned that only having two qualified officers at Dover on nights “isn’t enough”.
Over recent months, as the station had become busier responding to small boat crossings and in the wake of an unsuccessful recruitment drive, staff were having to work flat-out throughout their shifts, and were being asked to come in on scheduled days off.
On the night of November 23-24, owing to staff shortages, team leader Gibson told the inquiry he had to cover traffic control duties for three hours from 10.30pm. This meant he was away from the SAR desk at 00.41am, when a message arrived from the national rescue coordination centre along the coast in Fareham, stating that the Coastguard’s scheduled surveillance aeroplanes would not be flying over the Channel that night due to fog.
The officers were told they would be “effectively blind” – and should not allow themselves “to be drawn into relaxing and expecting a normal migrant crossing night”. The message warned: “This has the potential to be very dangerous.”
‘Their boat – there’s nothing left’
According to Mohamed Omar, the sea was calm when he and the other passengers departed the French beach around 9pm UK time. Giving his evidence to the Cranston Inquiry from Paris – he still cannot travel to the UK – a ship approached them around an hour into their voyage:
They came up to us to see what we were doing, and shone a light on us. I remember seeing a French flag on the boat. It was a big boat and I am certain it was the French coastguard. I had heard from people I met in the camp in Dunkirk that this happened sometimes, and that the French boat would follow until you reached English waters.
In fact, Mohamed Omar said, the French ship left the travellers again after about an hour. Shortly after this, the problems began.
A French warship patrols the shore of Mardyck in northern France, close to where Charlie is thought to have departed. Travis Van Isacker, CC BY-NC-SA
Around 1am, seawater began entering the dinghy. By now, it was in the vicinity of the Sandettie lightvessel, around 20 miles north-east of Dover. At first, passengers managed to bail out the 13°C water – but soon the flooding became uncontrollable. The dinghy’s inflatable tube began losing pressure, and a couple of the Kurdish men used air pumps to try to keep it inflated. Others tried to prevent panic spreading among the passengers.
Many onboard began to make frantic calls for rescue. What were reported to be leaked transcripts of some of these calls were published by French newspaper Le Monde a year after the sinking. They showed the first distress call from the dinghy was received by the French coastguard at 12.48am. Speaking in English, the caller said there were 33 people on board a “broken” boat.
According to Le Monde, three minutes later, another call was transferred to the French maritime rescue coordination centre at Cap Gris-Nez by an emergency operator who reported: “Apparently their boat – there’s nothing left.” Following procedure, the French coastguard officer asked the caller to send a GPS position by WhatsApp so she could “send a rescue boat as soon as possible”. At 1.05am UK time, the GPS position arrived.
Rather than send a French boat, Le Monde reported that the officer phoned her counterparts in Dover to warn them a dinghy 0.6 nautical miles from the border line would soon be crossing into UK waters. On the other end of the line was the trainee officer, who was handling routine calls that night despite officially only being an observer.
After the call finished, according to Downs’s evidence to the inquiry, the trainee mistakenly told him the dinghy was thought to be “in good condition” – information he recorded in the log for Incident Charlie. This miscommunication may have affected the urgency of the UK’s SAR response, preventing HM Coastguard and Border Force from appreciating the severe distress the “broken” dinghy was in.
Just before 1am, the French coastguard had sent its migrant tracker spreadsheet, containing information on all small boat crossings that night, to HM Coastguard for the first time. It showed four migrant dinghies at sea – which Gris-Nez had been aware of “for many hours”, according to Gibson.
The issue of the French coastguard appearing to withhold information about active small boat crossings had been raised by HM Coastguard’s clandestine operations liaison officer during a July 2021 review. And earlier that very evening, Gibson told one of his colleagues:
Sometimes they just seem to keep it quiet. Like we’ll not get anything – then we’ll get a tracker at three in the morning with 15 incidents, and they go: ‘Mostly these are in your search-and-rescue region.’ Wonderful.
At 1.20am, Downs phoned Border Force Maritime Command in Portsmouth to request a Border Force vessel search for the dinghy Charlie. He provided the GPS position received from his French counterpart and the number of people onboard – but also the incorrect information that “they think it’s in good condition”.
Ten minutes later, the Valiant, Border Force’s 42-metre patrol ship stationed at Dover, was tasked to proceed towards the Sandettie lightvessel. At the same time, the first direct call to the Dover rescue coordination centre came in from Charlie. The distressed caller said they were “in the water” and that “everything [was] finished”.
Around 15 minutes later, at 1.48am, Gibson took a call from 16-year-old Mubin Rizghar Hussein, who spoke good English. Despite the noise and commotion, he managed to provide Gibson with a WhatsApp number – in order to share their GPS position. The transcript of this call records voices shouting in the background: “It’s finished. Finished. Brother, it’s finished.”
A ‘grave and imminent threat to life’
Gibson told the inquiry that after his call with Rizghar Hussein, he had a “gut feeling that this doesn’t feel quite as usual”. By “usual” he meant what was, according to maritime operations officer Downs, a commonly held belief at the Dover coastguard station that with “nine out of ten”“ callers from small boats: “It would generally be overstated that the boat … was sinking, people were drowning … Whatever was going on would be overstated.”
Acting on his gut feeling, at 2.27am Gibson took the unprecedented decision to broadcast a Mayday Relay – denoting a “grave and imminent threat to life”. By maritime law, this alert required other vessels to offer their assistance.
Gibson told the inquiry he did this to get the French warship Flamant to respond. He could see on his radar screen that Flamant was closest to Charlie’s position and was the best vessel to rescue the people if the dinghy really was sinking.
Why the Flamant did not respond is at the centre of an ongoing criminal investigation in France into two of the warship’s officers and five coastguards from Gris-Nez, for “non-assistance of persons in distress”. This investigation’s strict confidentiality obligation means the inquiry was unable to access any information from the French side about their operations that night.
At 2.01 and again at 2.14am, HM Coastguard had received new GPS positions via WhatsApp showing the dinghy to be more than a mile inside UK waters.
Valiant, having been tasked at 1.30am, only exited the port of Dover at 2.22am and would need at least another hour to reach the Sandettie. Despite this, no other vessel was sent to join the search. At 3.11am, when asked during a call by Border Force Maritime Command whether Charlie was “still a Mayday situation”, Gibson replied: “Well, they’ve told me it’s full of water.”
With a total of four small boats being shown in the Channel that night by the French tracker spreadsheet, Gibson suggested there could be as many as 110 people on board these dinghies – beyond Valiant’s capacity for taking on survivors. Nevertheless, Border Force and HM Coastguard opted to “wait and see what the numbers are, and whether Valiant can deal with that … We don’t want to call any other assets out just yet.”
In a call with Christopher Trubshaw, captain of the Coastguard rescue helicopter stationed at Lydd on the Kent coast, aviation tactical commander Dominic Golden explained that Border Force was “not prepared to bring in their crews who are pretty knackered” unless “we can convince them there are people in real danger”. He then asked Trubshaw to search the Channel for the small boats shown in the French tracker, as the surveillance aeroplanes had been unable to take off.
In her closing submission to the inquiry, Sonali Naik, a legal representative of the survivors and bereaved families, highlighted Golden’s “dismissive attitude” towards Charlie’s distress when he gave Trubshaw the reason for the request, which included the following:
As usual, the catalogue of phone calls is beginning to trickle in … You know, the classic ‘I am lost, I am sinking, my mother’s wheelchair is falling over the side’ etc. ‘Sharks with lasers surrounding boat’ and ‘we are all dying’ type of thing.
Nevertheless, Golden asked the helicopter crew to pack a liferaft. “I can’t imagine we’re going to need it but … potentially you get to play with one of your new toys.”
While Golden described his words as “unwise” or “flippant”, Naik said they were “more than that” – suggesting they revealed rescuers’ general perceptions of the occupants of small boats and the widely held scepticism towards their distress calls.
‘We are dying. Where is the boat?’
With the water inside rising fast and their dinghy collapsing, Charlie’s increasingly desperate passengers kept trying to get rescuers to appreciate how dire their situation was.
At 2.31am in the Dover rescue coordination centre, Gibson received a second call from Mubin Rizghar Hussein, who pleaded: “We are dying, where is the boat?”
Gibson replied: “The boat is on its way but it has to get …” only to be interrupted by Rizghar Hussein saying: “We all die. We all die.”
“I get that,” Gibson told the terrified teenager, “but unfortunately, you’re going to be patient and all stay together, because I can’t make the boat come any quicker.” He ended the call saying:
You need to stop making calls because every time you make a call, we think there’s another boat out there – and we don’t want to accidentally go chasing for another boat when it’s actually your boat we’re looking for.
Gibson broke down briefly when recounting this second call during his evidence to the inquiry, explaining:
If you don’t understand what’s fully going on and you’re getting ‘we’re all going to die’, it’s quite a distressing situation to find yourself in, sitting at the end of a phone – effectively helpless. You know where they are, you want to get a boat to them, and you can’t.
Call records also show that coastguards on both sides of the Channel passed responsibility for rescuing the sinking dinghy off to one another. According to Le Monde, during one call a passenger told the French coastguard officer he was “in the water” – to which she replied: “Yes, but you are in English waters.”
The transcript of the last call before Charlie capsized, made at 3.12am, reveals that Downs asked “where are you?” 17 times – despite the caller being unable to answer anything beyond “English waters”. The maritime operations officer finished by instructing the caller to hang up and dial 999: “If it won’t connect on 999, then you’re probably still in French waters.”
In her closing submission, Naik pointed to “discriminatory stereotypes and attitudes towards migrants on small boats which fatally affected the SAR response” for Charlie – as rescuers, in her words, “jumped to premature conclusions”. According to survivor Mohamed Omar:
Because we have been seen as refugees … that’s the reason why I believe the rescue, they did not come at all. We feel like we were … treated like animals.
Fatal assumptions
At 3.27am, Border Force’s ship Valiant arrived at Charlie’s last recorded GPS position (from 2.14am) – but found nothing. Its master, Kevin Toy, decided to head north-easterly towards the Sandettie lightvessel, the way the tide was flowing.
En route, Valiant spotted two other dinghies in the darkness using its night vision – one still making its way towards the English coast, the other stopped in the water. The stationary dinghy was in greater danger from the Channel’s shipping traffic, so Valiant went to it and began rescuing those onboard – radioing back that it had “engaged unlit migrant crafts stopped in the water” with approximately 40 people onboard.
In the Dover rescue coordination centre, Gibson assumed this dinghy could be Charlie and gave Mubin Rizghar Hussein’s name and telephone number so Valiant’s crew could verify whether he was on board. At 4.16am, Gibson himself tried calling the WhatsApp number that Rizghar Hussein had shared, but the call failed.
At 4.20am, Valiant completed its first rescue of the morning. Two more followed after the Coastguard helicopter spotted two other dinghies in the Sandettie area – but nobody in the water. A near-capacity Valiant then returned to Dover just after 8am with 98 survivors on board.
None of the three rescued dinghies matched the description of Charlie. All were in good condition, differently coloured, and with disparate numbers of people onboard – yet the misplaced assumption Charlie had been rescued persisted amid the night’s murky information environment. Gibson stated that, while he had soon received additional information matching Valiant’s first rescue to a different dinghy, he was still “fairly certain Charlie had been picked up”.
“Once Valiant had picked up these [three] boats,” he explained, “we no longer received calls from Charlie, and a call to a known phone number on Charlie failed.” As a result, neither Valiant nor the Coastguard helicopter were sent back out to continue searching for the stricken dinghy.
In fact, Gibson’s call to Rizghar Hussein’s WhatsApp number did not fail because Charlie’s passengers had been rescued – nor because they had thrown their phones into the sea when Border Force arrived. Rather, it was because the dinghy had capsized and everyone had fallen into the Channel’s freezing waters.
‘No one came to our rescue’
In harrowing evidence to the inquiry, Mohamed Omar explained how, as one side of the dinghy deflated, the passengers – “hysterical and crying” – panicked and moved to the opposite side. This shift in weight caused the dinghy to capsize:
The screaming when the boat tipped and people fell in the water was deafening. I have never heard anything as desperate as this. I was not thinking about whether we were going to be rescued any more; it was all about how to stay alive.
As the passengers were thrown into the water, the dinghy flipped on top of them. Mohamed Omar described having to swim out from underneath to catch a breath: “It was dark and I could not really see. It was extremely cold and the sea was rough.”
As he surfaced, he saw Halima Mohammed Shikh, a mother of three also from Somalia and travelling alone, struggling as she couldn’t swim. She screamed his name for help, and he tried to get her back to what was left of the dinghy – but couldn’t. “I think she was one of the first people to drown,” he told the inquiry.
Others managed to cling to the broken inflatable, hoping rescue was on its way – but “no one came to our rescue”. Pushed and pulled by the waves, some lost their grip and drifted away before dawn. Mohamed Omar recalled:
All night, I was holding on to what remained of the boat. In the morning, I could hear the people were screaming and everything. It’s something I cannot forget in my mind.
By the time the sun finally rose at 7.26am, he estimated that no more than 15 people were left clinging to the broken dinghy – adrift on the tide in a busy shipping lane:
I do not recall speaking with anyone in the water. Those who were alive were half-dead. There was nothing we could do any more. I could see bodies floating all around us in the water. I presume most people were either already dead or were unconscious.
Shortly afterwards, Mohamed Omar said he let go of the dinghy and began to swim, thinking to himself: “I am going to die [but] I don’t want to die here. At least if I die whilst swimming, I won’t feel it.”
He swam towards a boat he could see in the distance and, as he got closer, began to wave his life jacket for attention. A French woman, out fishing with her family, saw him and jumped in the water to save him.
As he finished telling his story, Mohamed Omar told the inquiry: “I’m a voice for those people who passed away.”
Bodies are found
Around 1pm on the afternoon of November 24, 12 hours after the first distress calls from Charlie, a French commercial fishing vessel began finding bodies in the sea nine miles north-west of Calais. But as the news came in, no one at HM Coastguard or Border Force appears to have made the connection with Incident Charlie.
Days later, when the accounts of Mohamed Omar’s fellow survivor, Mohammed Shekha Ahmad from Iraqi Kurdistan, and a relative of two of the deceased emerged, the Home Office refuted their claims that the dinghy had sunk in UK waters as “completely untrue”.
However, five days after the disaster, Gibson contacted the small boats tactical commander to share his concerns that the reported deaths could be from Charlie. He had read a news article in which “the survivor states a male called Mubin called the emergency services, which could possibly be the ‘Moomin’ [sic] I spoke to”.
On December 1, clandestine Channel threat commander O’Mahoney responded to a question from the UK’s Joint Committee on Human Rights, as to whether the migrants whose bodies had been found in French waters had made distress calls to the UK authorities. O’Mahoney told the committee:
We are looking into that. To manage your expectation, though, it may never be possible to say with absolute accuracy whether that boat was in UK waters [and] I cannot tell you with any certainty that the people on that particular boat called the UK authorities.
Thanks largely to their grieving families tireless pursuit of the truth, however, it is now possible to say definitively that Charlie had been in UK waters – and that a number of its passengers spoke to HM Coastguard officers.
It was only after these families raised concerns that the disaster had involved the UK authorities that the Department for Transport commissioned a safety investigation into the incident in January 2022. A lawyer for the bereaved families suggested to me that without the threat of legal action, the Department for Transport “would likely not have done anything” – despite this being Britain’s worst maritime disaster for decades. Meanwhile, according to inquiry evidence, the Home Office is understood not to have conducted an internal review or investigation into its role in the disaster.
After a frustrating two years of waiting for the survivors and bereaved families, the Marine Accidents Investigations Branch published its report – which both confirmed most of their accounts and substantiated their criticisms of the SAR response.
Soon afterwards, the Cranston Inquiry was announced. Despite no bodies having been recovered in UK waters, it has been run almost like an inquest. In his final report – to be published by the end of 2025 – Sir Ross Cranston has promised to “consider what lessons can be learned and, if appropriate, make recommendations to reduce the risk of a similar event occurring”.
A ‘crucial and unique opportunity’
HM Coastguard and Border Force officers have repeatedly told the inquiry how the UK’s approach to small boat search-and-rescue has changed since the November 2021 disaster. More officers have been hired, Border Force has contracted additional boats to conduct rescues, information sharing has improved, and cooperation with French colleagues is better. Today, there are significantly more rescue ships on both sides of the Channel which can intervene faster when dinghies come to be in distress, and have undoubtedly saved many lives.
There has also been massive investment in drones, aeroplanes and powerful shore-based cameras to reduce the risk that HM Coastguard loses “maritime domain awareness” again if some of its surveillance aircraft are unable to fly. New technology automatically translates coastguard officers’ messages into different languages and extracts live GPS locations and images from travellers’ mobile devices.
Such investments make it unlikely that another dinghy could be lost in the middle of the Channel after its passengers call for help, in the way Charlie so catastrophically was.
Nevertheless, people continue dying while attempting to cross the Channel – with 2024 having been by far the deadliest year yet. At least 69 people lost their lives, according to the Refugee Council. So far in 2025, 24 people are documented as dead or missing at the UK-France border by Calais Migrant Solidarity, amid a record number of attempted crossings for the first half of the year.
Some migrants’ rights NGOs have suggested the UK’s “stop the boats” policies, and European efforts to disrupt the supply chain of dinghies and other equipment used in crossings, has driven such deadly overcrowding.
But it is also unlikely that the circumstances surrounding more recent deaths in the Channel will ever be investigated as thoroughly as Incident Charlie, if at all. Lawyers for the bereaved families have therefore been keen to highlight the Cranston Inquiry’s “crucial and unique opportunity” not only to look back and offer answers about one of Britain’s worst maritime disasters in recent decades – but to look forwards and “prevent the further loss of life at sea”.
The survivors, families and migrants’ rights organisations who contributed their evidence thus hope the inquiry’s recommendations go beyond purely operational and administrative improvements to search-and-rescue, to address the fundamental role that UK, France and European border policies play in why more people are dying in the Channel, despite the improvements to search-and-rescue strategies and resources.
Above all, they ask why only some people are able to travel to the UK in comfort and safety while others must make the journey in precarious, overcrowded inflatable dinghies – and thus entrust their lives to the search-and-rescue services whose success can never be guaranteed. As Halima Mohammed Shikh’s cousin, Ali Areef, told the inquiry:
It makes me feel sick to think about crossing the Channel in a ferry where others including a member of my family lost their lives because there was no other way to cross. I will never take a ferry across the Channel again.
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Travis Van Isacker gratefully acknowledges the support of the Economic and Social Research Council
(UK) (Grant Ref: ES/W002639/1).
Maritime folklore has long been shuffled to the margins of nautical history, presented as the quaint, colourful oddities of a former age. Yet this body of beliefs, practices and stories can offer important insights into how seafarers of the 19th century viewed and understood their working environment.
Beneath the dominant histories of European exploration, heroic naval battles and imperial claims to mastery of the seas, there was the daily reality of working, living and, not uncommonly, dying in a dangerous marine environment.
This folklore – which was exchanged between multinational crews of mariners and carried across the oceans – provides a way into appreciating their everyday fears, longings and hopes. It reveals a rich emotional and psychological engagement with the ocean, a history of sea fearing that does not sit easily with the stereotypical macho image of mariners.
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Much of maritime folklore spoke to anxieties about the temperamental ocean and storms, which boiled down to a fear of disaster and drowning.
To protect themselves from such a fate, 18th- and 19th-century sailors went to sea armoured with magical charms. A popular one was a caul. It was believed owning a caul – the membrane that protects a baby in the womb – would protect a seafarer from drowning.
Such items were openly sold in newspaper advertisements in the 19th century. Three advertised in the Liverpool Mercury in 1873 were priced from 30 shillings to four guineas, no small amount for a common mariner to pay for an idle “superstition”.
Nineteenth-century sailors and fishermen also developed a rich system of omens and predictions. They were attentive to their behaviour and even words (“pig” and “rabbit” being among the worst) that might provoke the ocean or attract bad luck.
Life in the Ocean Representing the Usual Occupations of the Young Officers in the Steerage of a British Frigate at Sea by Augustus Earle (1836). National Maritime Museum
One such example was whistling aboard ships, which was believed to stir winds or gales. The idea that the temperamental winds could be provoked by the smallest actions of the tiny human beings who passed over the ocean’s surface spoke to both mariners’ vulnerability at sea, but also a sense of personal responsibility for the good or bad fortune of their voyage.
That concerns about death haunted seafarers is also seen in a superstitious reluctance to have coffins, dead bodies or clergymen (associated with funerals) aboard ship. As the author and critic William Jones wrote in Credulities Past and Present (1880), the sailor who was fearless in battle or in the face of physical danger, often “shrinks with indescribable apprehension … at the sight of a coffin”.
This was reinforced by maritime ghost stories. Numerous tales of ghost ships, most famously The Flying Dutchman, served as a reminder of the haunting prospect of death at sea.
In telling stories of those who had been lost, seafarers could also express concerns about their present circumstances and future travails. Aboard ships, such tales could also serve as reminders of health and safety concerns. Stories about ghostly crew members who had fallen from the rigging or been washed overboard served as cautionary tales.
The decline and return of maritime folklore
Nineteenth-century critics of mariners’ “superstitions” attempted to debunk their ideas. They pushed the idea that this body of folklore was fading out with the transition from sail to steam power.
No longer reliant on the winds, the steamship symbolised a more rational, mechanical world that had no time for the supernatural whimsy of the age of sail. Yet, indicating its ongoing importance as a way of addressing seafarers fears and concerns, such ideas did not simply disappear. Rather they adapted to the modern world.
The Shipwreck by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1805). Tate
While the price of cauls had dropped in the late 19th century, suggesting declining belief in their protective power, there was a sudden revival in their trade when submarine warfare became a feature of the first world war. Accounts of ghost ships were updated to include steam and later diesel vessels in the 20th century.
Maritime folklore history reminds us that our proclaimed “mastery of the waves” has always been built on rhetoric as much as reality.
In an age of mounting concern about our relationship with the oceans, in which we are having to radically reassess our control over and influence on the natural world, it is perhaps time for this history to resurface.
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Karl Bell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The House of Lords this week approved government legislation that will allow foreign states to hold up to a 15% stake in British newspaper publishers.
This vote clears the way for the American investment company Redbird to take control of the troubled Telegraph newspaper group following two years of uncertainty. An integral element of that bid is a 15% stake by the sovereign investment fund IMI which is owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the vice-president of the United Arab Emirates.
The heated Lords debate raised fundamental questions about who should own newspapers, and the link between ownership and editorial content. On one side were those who argued that Britain’s newspapers faced an “existential threat” without outside investment. On the other were those who warned against the potential influence of a foreign power on one of the UK’s longest standing publishers.
Media mergers and acquisitions are often contentious. But given the parlous state of the newspaper industry, they are likely to become more frequent.
A very different kind of newspaper deal was completed last December, when news website Tortoise Media bought The Observer. Tortoise, which was founded in 2018 by former Times editor and BBC director of news James Harding, startled analysts and journalists alike by taking over a newspaper first published in 1791.
The deal prompted strong opposition from some Observer and Guardian journalists. But from a business perspective, the deal suited both sides.
The Scott Trust, owners of the Observer since 1993, never seemed wholly committed to the Observer. (There was, for example, no dedicated Observer website). Tortoise, meanwhile, was keen to exploit the brand values of an established print product. It saw the Observer as a suitable vehicle for its approach of news analysis and explanation rather than breaking stories.
The media world has also been fixated on the succession story of the Murdoch family and its implications for his UK newspapers. The Sun, News of the World (until its closure in 2011), the Times and Sunday Times have been the bedrock of Rupert Murdoch’s economic and political power in the UK for decades.
In December, he lost the battle to give his eldest son Lachlan exclusive control of his media empire.
Speculation has grown as to whether any of Rupert’s progeny will want to continue the family’s print tradition after his death. His empire has suffered repeated financial and reputational hits since the phone hacking scandal. It is perfectly feasible that, once he goes, all the Murdoch press interests will be up for sale.
These various battles beg the question: why does it matter who owns a newspaper? In short, it matters because ownership, to a large extent, determines content.
Who owns the news?
From the very beginning of printed news, proprietors have exercised control over their title’s political direction and journalistic values. Prewar Britain saw Lord Beaverbrook famously exploiting his Express newspapers to campaign for free trade within the British empire.
Meanwhile, fellow newspaper baron Lord Rothermere turned his Mail newspapers into propaganda sheets for Oswald Mosley’s blackshirts, and cheerleaders for Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini during the 1930s.
The Rothermere family’s continued ownership of the Mail has guaranteed a consistent anti-immigration, anti-Europe rightwing worldview to the present day. How this consistent framing has been transmitted through the Mail’s editors has been well documented by journalist Adrian Addison.
Murdoch’s UK newspaper empire has also pursued his personal free market, anti-EU political vision. He has used his papers to attack the publicly funded BBC and the regulator Ofcom. Murdoch has, however, been slightly more flexible in adjusting his papers’ party political allegiance (guaranteeing a succession of prime ministerial genuflections from Margaret Thatcher through to Keir Starmer).
At the other end of the political spectrum, the Scott Trust – owners of the Guardian – was conceived by the son of C.P. Scott as a vehicle for sustaining his father’s liberal mission for the paper. It has a policy of no editorial interference, apart from continuing the paper’s editorial policy on “the same lines and in the same spirit as heretofore”. Editors are therefore enjoined to focus on the kind of progressive news agenda championed by Scott.
The trust model allows a level of freedom from traditional commercial oversight. Editors can pursue the Guardian’s well-established liberal tradition without worrying about shareholders driven by short-term profit maximisation, or an individual owner with a specific ideological agenda. This partly explains the hostility of Observer journalists to the Tortoise takeover.
Why it matters
The Lords debate focused on the risks of foreign state investment in British newspapers. But all commercial ownership models – and all owners – have their problems. Whether it be greedy shareholders, a power-hungry narcissist, an ideologically-driven family or a foreign state seeking influence in the UK, commercial models all involve editorial compromises.
One approach to the problems raised by commercial ownership is an insistence, through legislation, on a plurality of owners. But this is increasingly difficult in an industry whose traditional advertising-funded business model is under severe pressure. This context is precisely why the Telegraph’s new owner was desperate to access IMI funds.
Upmarket publications such as the Financial Times and the Times can monetise subscriptions, but paywalls discourage easy access and diminish journalistic reach. Subscriptions are also a much less attractive proposition for tabloids whose readers are less willing to pay.
Another approach is to diversify ownership models. Non-profit and charitable publishers, such as OpenDemocracy or the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, can leverage donations and are less vulnerable to the whims of corporate owners or powerful individuals. But this model is much less developed in the UK than the US.
I and colleagues have argued elsewhere that there are strong arguments for making charitable journalism easier. These models can enhance journalistic freedom, but they also come with potential downsides that need to be acknowledged.
All these options presuppose, of course, that newspapers and their online sites still have sufficient relevance and reach for us to continue to worry about ownership at all – a topic for another article.
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Steven Barnett is on the management and editorial boards of the British Journalism Review. He is a member of the British Broadcasting Challenge which campaigns for Public Service Broadcasting. He is on the Advisory Board of the Charitable Journalism Project which campaigns for public interest journalism and on the board of Hacked Off which campaigns for a free and accountable press.
The review board is the federal agency that was set up 1987 to ensure that the prices for patented drugs are not “excessive.”
Comparing prices
Up until now, one of the criteria the PMPRB used in making the decision about what was an excessive price was to compare the proposed Canadian price for a new drug with the median price in 11 other countries. The median is the 50 per cent mark; in other words, the price in half of the other countries was below what’s proposed for Canada, and the price in the other half was above the proposed Canadian price. Under the new guidelines, set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2026, the Canadian price can be up to the highest in those other 11 countries.
Right now, the median price in the 11 countries Canada is compared to is 15 per cent below the price of patented drugs in Canada. The highest international price, which will be the new standard, is 21 per cent above the median Canadian price, meaning Canadian prices for new drugs will be significantly higher than they otherwise would have been.
Sometimes a drug is not available in any of the 11 other countries when it comes onto the Canadian market. In that case, the company can price the drug at whatever level it wants and keep it at that price until it comes up for its annual price review. The executive director of the PMPRB told the Globe and Mail that this would incentivize drugmakers to bring their products to the Canadian market first.
Incentivizing drug companies may be a reasonable idea, but that’s not part of the mandate of the PMPRB. As laid out in Section 83 of the Patent Act, its mandate is to ensure drug prices aren’t excessive.
Additional therapeutic value
In the past, one of the factors that the PMPRB took into account in determining if prices were excessive was the additional therapeutic value of a new drug compared to what was already on the market. The lower the value, the lower the price. In this regard, the PMPRB was advised by its Human Drug Advisory Panel, an independent group of experts.
The ranking of new drugs against existing ones was also of significant value to Canadian clinicians. It helped them to decide on the best treatment option for their patients and countered the hype about new drugs that came from the manufacturers.
Since the new guidelines have abandoned looking at therapeutic improvement of new drugs, that leaves only one remaining Canadian source for that type of information, the Therapeutics Letter, a bimonthly publication targeting identified problematic therapeutic issues in a brief, simple and practical manner.
If there is an in-depth review of a new drug’s pricing — a preparatory step to determine whether there should be a formal hearing to investigate if the price is excessive — it is only the manufacturer that is allowed to submit information to the PMPRB. Clinicians who prescribe the drug, patients who take the drug, and organizations and individuals that pay for the drug do not have that same right.
Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs are already threatening to drive up drug prices and make prescription drugs inaccessible to many Canadians. Higher drug prices will also almost certainly affect Canada’s already limited pharmacare program. Higher prices for new drugs will make an expanded pharmacare plan more expensive and less appealing to the federal government. The new PMPRB guidelines help ensure higher drug prices and no pharmacare expansion.
Between 2022-2025, Joel Lexchin received payments for writing a brief for a legal firm on the role of promotion in generating prescriptions for opioids, for being on a panel about pharmacare and for co-writing an article for a peer-reviewed medical journal on semaglutide. He is a member of the Boards of Canadian Doctors for Medicare and the Canadian Health Coalition. He receives royalties from University of Toronto Press and James Lorimer & Co. Ltd. for books he has written. He has received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research in the past.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Kevin Kriese, Senior Wildfire and Land Use Analyst, Centre for Global Studies, University of Victoria
As the summer heat intensifies, people across Canada are facing the full brunt of wildfire season. Communities are being evacuated and properties are being destroyed as fires grow in size.
Over the past decade, wildfires in Canada have broken numerous records, including the area burned in the largest single fire in recent history.
More frequent fires are unsettling communities, causing rapid changes to ecosystems and having a negative impact on society and our economy.
Increased wildfire risk is driven by a variety of factors, including more extreme fire weather (high temperatures, low humidity and powerful winds) made worse by climate change, fire deficits, the accumulation of fuels like trees and other organic materials on the landscape and changing land-use and settlement patterns.
Fire is a natural, necessary and inevitable part of many ecosystems in Canada. Historically, wildfire created a mosaic of diverse ecosystems and habitat conditions, which supported healthy watersheds and contributed to the cultures and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples.
Beneficial fire typically includes Indigenous cultural burning, prescribed fire and managed wildfire. These fires are managed for their ecological, cultural and community benefits, while minimizing adverse effects.
One reason we’re seeing more catastrophic fires now is because of a history of widespread wildfire suppression, which can allow fuels to accumulate. When fuels accumulate, the risk from wildfire increases.
In certain places and contexts, suppression remains the appropriate approach. It will continue to play a critical role in keeping communities safe and conserving ecosystem services like clean water and special places. But suppression alone is not viable or desirable. Instead, a suite of proactive actions from a variety of stakeholders is required.
In British Columbia, Indigenous communities are returning cultural burning to their territories. A burn by the ʔaq̓am First Nation, with support from the BC Wildfire Service and local fire departments, was credited with helping save lives and homes from the St. Mary’s wildfire in summer 2024.
Later in 2024, portions of a wildfire near the Wet’suwet’en community of Witset were allowed to burn while firefighting efforts focused on the part of the fire that threatened the community. This approach protected the village of Witset while still allowing the fire to create ecological benefits.
Despite increasing awareness that some fires are beneficial, community opposition to cultural and prescribed fires — as well as to letting wildfires burn — persists. This opposition stems from a longstanding fears of fire and the very real threats posed to communities, people and property.
A whole-of-society approach
Until people feel safe from wildfire, the ability to return fire to the landscape will be limited and pressure for maximum suppression will likely continue. However, when people feel safe in their homes and communities, they may be more likely to accept more beneficial fire on the landscape.
Risk reduction programs, such as FireSmart, take a holistic approach to wildfire resilience and include practical measures proven to reduce property loss.
Homeowners who live near fire-prone ecosystems (referred to as the wildland-urban interface) can take simple actions, such as removing flammable material within 1.5 metres of buildings, while communities can plan effective evacuation routes.
Experience in other jurisdictions indicates that voluntary measures, like FireSmart, are more effective when combined with mandatory minimum standards for fire-resistant building construction, vegetation management and landscaping.
Reducing risk and increasing beneficial fires requires co-ordinated action from a diverse array of parties. For example, creating home-hardening requirements demands updated provincial building codes and local government plans that consider wildfire resilience.
When a diverse array of entities is required to work towards a common goal, co-ordination and collaboration are vital and a whole-of-society approach is required. This type of approach fosters innovation, local agency and broader accountability — ultimately resulting in better outcomes on the ground.
Crown governments have historically worked in a top-down wildfire management model: provincial and territorial governments are in charge and select partners, such as industry, have been engaged to carry out specific actions.
As Canadians face another intense wildfire season, in which we’ve already experienced loss of life and property, meaningful action across all of society is essential.
Provincial governments must work in collaboration with Indigenous, local and federal governments, as well as industry, civil society, practitioners, local experts and communities.
Individuals can take action to reduce the risk to their homes by managing the vegetation around their homes and using more fire-resistant building materials. Communities can engage in risk reduction and resilience planning. And governments at all levels can facilitate changes in how we manage our landscape to increase beneficial fires.
Taken together, these diverse actions across all of society will be crucial for protecting people and ecosystems as we all learn to live with fire.
Kevin Kriese is a member of the Liberal Party of Canada.
Andrea Barnett receives funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
Oliver Brandes receives funding from Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the BC Real Estate Foundation.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Petra Alderman, Manager of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science
There has been a dramatic escalation in a long-running border conflict between Thailand and Cambodia. On July 23, five Thai soldiers from a border patrol unit in Ubon Ratchathani province were seriously injured after stepping on a land mine – a second such incident in a week.
This prompted the Thai government to expel Cambodia’s ambassador from the country and recall its own ambassador from Cambodia. The following morning, Cambodia retaliated by expelling the Thai ambassador and recalling its embassy staff from Bangkok. Both sides have exchanged increasingly lethal fire.
Cambodia has fired rockets and artillery across the Thai border into several provinces, killing at least 11 civilians and one soldier. Thailand launched air strikes at Cambodia in return, reportedly targeting military bases in the disputed area around the Preah Vihear Hindu temple. Verified information is currently scarce as both sides are blaming each other for starting the fight.
The current flare-up started in late May, when a Cambodian soldier was killed in a exchange of fire between the two armies. But the roots of the conflict date back to the colonial era in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Before European powers expanded their colonial interests to south-east Asia, the concept of a bordered nation-state was alien to local rulers. Life in pre-colonial south-east Asia was organised into loosely structured polities that had no clear boundaries.
There were several larger cities, which served as important centres of power and trade, and many smaller towns and villages that maintained relations with these cities. The further these towns and villages were from the cities, the less control and influence the cities had over them.
The British and French introduced the concept of nations with borders to mainland south-east Asia, drawing the first official maps of Thailand (then known as Siam) and Cambodia. In the case of Thailand, the only south-east Asian nation never to be formally colonised, the mapping was also done at the request of the Siamese kings.
Thailand’s current borders were shaped by several different maps and treaties that followed the 1893 Paknam incident, during which two French gunboats sailed up the Chao Praya River and blockaded Bangkok.
To preserve its sovereignty as an emerging nation, Siam ceded considerable territorial claims to France after this incident. This included several provinces in present-day Cambodia, which are home to ancient temples.
A 1907 map drawn by the French defined these territories, although with a considerable degree of vagueness. The map became a sore point in Cambodia-Thai relations following Cambodia’s independence in 1953, especially in regard to disputes over the Preah Vihear temple.
Preah Vihear temple
Following France’s withdrawal from south-east Asia in 1954, Thailand occupied Preah Vihear. Cambodia raised the issue of Thai occupation with the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ruled in 1962 that the temple belonged to Cambodia based on the French map. Thailand reluctantly accepted the ruling, but continued to dispute the area surrounding the temple.
The conflict flared up again in 2008 when the UN world heritage body Unesco awarded the temple world heritage status. Cambodia’s application initially received support from the then new Thai government of prime minister Samak Sundaravej, a close ally of the recently ousted Thaksin Shinawatra.
Anti-Thaksin groups used the government’s support to drive an ultra-nationalist campaign against the Samak government. This eventually contributed to large-scale domestic political protests that saw Samak’s government and that of his successor, Somchai Wongsawat, both ousted from power in 2008 in a series of judicial coups.
The period from 2008 to 2011 was marked by high tensions between the two countries, with sporadic armed clashes between their respective armies in the areas surrounding the temple.
The newly appointed Thai government of Abhisit Vejjajiva was sympathetic towards the ultra-nationalist anti-Thaksin groups. So there was no de-escalation of the conflict from the Thai side. Hun Sen, who was then Cambodia’s prime minister, also benefited from the conflict as it helped buttress his nationalist credentials.
But a particularly violent round of armed clashes followed in February 2011, resulting in at least eight civilian fatalities, 20 injured soldiers and many displaced civilians on both sides. Hun Sen then raised the issue of Cambodian sovereignty over the temple and its surrounding area with the ICJ.
The ICJ issued a provisional ruling favouring Cambodia and ordered both sides to withdraw military personnel from the area. Despite the initial refusal of Thai troops to leave, the two countries agreed to withdraw their forces in December 2011.
The final ICJ ruling came in late 2013, again affirming Cambodia’s sovereignty of the area. It coincided with another period of domestic political instability in Thailand. The government of Yingluck Shinawatra, Thaksin’s younger sister, was facing mass public protests from anti-Thaksin groups.
While the ruling did not play a decisive role in the eventual downfall of her government, it added fuel to the already explosive political environment. The border conflict went largely dormant after the 2013 ICJ ruling, until the new round of clashes broke out in May 2025.
Thai and Cambodian troops have periodically clashed in the area surrounding the Preah Vihear temple. Kim Za / Shutterstock
Given the history of tensions and armed disputes over territory between Cambodia and Thailand, the recent escalation is not without precedent. What is new, though, is that this round is as much between two countries as it is between two ruling families.
Over the past 20 years, a close personal relationship formed between Hun Sen and Thaksin. But this relationship unravelled when Hun Sen, who remains a hugely influential figure in Cambodian politics, released a private audio recording of his call with Thaksin’s daughter, Paetongtarn. The leak put her premiership on the line.
Paetongtarn has since been suspended from office pending a court ruling, with Cambodia-Thai relations reaching new lows. Given the intermixing of personal animosities, a quick diplomatic resolution to the escalating conflict seems unlikely.
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Petra Alderman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The logic behind these states withdrawing from the treaty is mostly because of the threat posed by Russia. At first glance landmines seem like a cost-effective way to deter or slow an invader. Proponents see them as a necessary evil to protect national sovereignty against the threat from a much larger conventional force deployed by an aggressive neighbour.
But this short-term thinking can be dangerous, because it doesn’t consider the long-term cost of putting explosive devices into the ground. According to the Landmine Monitor for 2024, more than 110,000 people were killed by landmines and explosive remnants of war in the past 25 years, and over 5,700 died just last year. Eight out of ten of those killed were civilians, many of whom were children.
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Although it is cheap to lay landmines, demining is expensive and creates a financial burden for future generations. The UN estimates that it can cost between five and 100 times more to clear a mine than to lay one, depending on the circumstances.
In Angola, for example, demining efforts continue nearly 50 years after the civil war broke out and 23 years after it ended. Encouragingly, Angola has reduced the threat with help of Halo Trust, a UK-based nongovernmental organisation. In 30 years they destroyed over 123,000 landmines. But to get Angola landmine free will require about US$240 million (£177 million) in additional funding.
While Angola aims to be landmine-free within a few years, the current scale of contamination in Ukraine will pose a deadly hazard to civilians for generations, as Sarah Njeri – a landmines expert at SOAS, University of London, wrote in 2023.
Looking through the prism of peace
What Europe needs today is better analysis and more public awareness of the current crisis and its long-term effects. This is a tricky task, especially for the media, because the violence is “asynchronous”. This means that mines can be laid years before anyone is harmed by them. It’s important to have open and honest conversations in public so that both politicians and the public have something clear and trustworthy to rely on when making these fateful decisions.
This means accepting that the concerns of the Baltic nations, Poland and Finland are valid. Their actions are a response the threat posed by Russia and the uncertainty surrounding America’s future role on the world stage. But there’s also an opportunity. Nobody in these countries takes the decision to use landmines lightly. This means, that if their European allies can provide credible security guarantees, these countries might change their plans.
Nevertheless, the Peace Report 2025, compiled by four leading German peace research institutes, highlights that this way of thinking remains rooted in a military mindset. The planned increase in military budgets among Nato countries should be complemented by greater investment in diplomacy, peace research and peace building.
The Peace Report lists nine recommendations for a more peaceful world, which are not pacifist. They recognise the need to close the gaps in European defence capabilities – but this is not enough. To create a peaceful Europe the legitimate security interests of all sides need to be considered. This includes Russia. At the same time, the report emphasises the need to strengthen, not weaken, the rules-based order. Abandoning the Ottawa treaty will further weaken that order.
Withdrawing from the landmine treaty is not just a military calculation, and it affects more than just eastern European countries. It’s an issue that presents a real challenge to Europe as a whole. Laying mines would litter future farmland and forests with an indiscriminate threat that recognises no ceasefire and cannot distinguish friend from enemy, combatant from civilian or adult from child.
If we don’t learn from the past, future reports will still be counting thousands of child casualties, but from the landmines laid in the 2020s.
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Marcel Vondermassen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In the past two months, more than 1,000 people seeking food have been killed, according to the UN Human Rights Office. While the figure has been disputed by Israel and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation which was set up to distribute aid, 28 nations this week condemned the “horrifying” killing of Gazans trying to get food.
For all the talk of a ceasefire – one that is long overdue – there is little hope. Israeli military operations continue and Gazans must risk their lives in search of food and aid.
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Malnutrition is rife. According to the IPC’s report in May – the international organisation that monitors food security – “goods indispensable for people’s survival are either depleted or expected to run out in the coming weeks” with nearly 500,000 people considered to be facing “catastrophe”, with a further 1.1 million in an “emergency” risk category.
For the IPC, the catastrophe category is one of extreme food shortages, critical malnutrition leading to starvation and high death rates. The emergency category is one of severe food shortages, very high malnutrition and even death.
Israeli officials continue to speak of moving Gazans into what has been termed a “humanitarian city” but what former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert described as a “concentration camp”. In the same interview Olmert called decision to move Gazans into the camp as “ethnic cleansing”.
All the while, the world’s leaders look on. Most are apparently content to condemn – but little action has been taken.
The clamour for Israel’s allies to take a harder stance on its actions in Gaza is growing louder by the day. On July 23, a group of 38 former EU ambassadors published an open letter to EU heads of states and senior officials accusing Israel of taking “calculated steps towards ethnic cleansing” and calling out the EU’s failure to “respond meaningfully to these horrific events”.
But what do actions look like? Pressure must be applied to the Netanyahu government. In the UK, both prime minister Keir Starmer and foreign minister David Lammy have been quick to stress that the UK has urged Israel to respect international law.
They point to the sanctions the UK has imposed on Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, two rightwing ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, as a result of their repeated incitements of violence against Palestinians. While Lammy suggests that further sanctions could follow if Israel does not change its behaviour in Gaza and bring about an end to the suffering, the atrocities continue.
Practical steps to pressure Israel
Pressure is growing on the UK government to recognise Palestine as a state – something that I was told by a contact in the Labour government more than a year ago was on Labour’s agenda before October 7. Lammy insists the government is committed to a two-state solution, but this is not diplomatically viable given that the UK only recognises one state involved in these events.
The state of Palestine is recognised as a sovereign entity by 147 other members of the UN. That’s 75% of all members.
Other steps could be a full arms embargo, something that has long been called for but rejected by the UK government, which has banned some, but by no means all arms sales to Israel. A number of countries have properly banned arms sales to Israel since October 2023, including Italy, Spain, Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium and Japan.
There are other more incendiary options. One would be for the UK and others to properly adhere to their obligations under international law.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, in November 2024. There are 125 countries that have signed up to the ICC (the US isn’t one of them). They could arrest Netanyahu if he enters their countries.
There are a range of other things that could be tried. A look at what the international community did to make South Africa a pariah during the later years of apartheid would be worthwhile.
EU should use its diplomatic muscle
As Israel’s biggest trading partner, the EU has the potential to wield considerable clout, so the question must be asked: why has so little been done, beyond mere words.
In June, the EU found Israel to be in breach of its human rights commitments under the terms of the EU-Israel association agreement. Yet to date there have been as yet no moves to suspend trade.
Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief declared that “all options remain on the table if Israel doesn’t deliver” on its pledges. These include full or partial suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, sanctions on members of government, military or settlers, trade measures, arms embargoes, or the suspension of academic cooperation – including the prestigious Horizon Europe Research and Innovation programme.
Of course, getting all 27 member states to agree to such an approach is easier said than done. And national leaders will obviously have to consider that taking steps to put pressure with Israel could damage relations with the Trump administration in the US.
But all the while, the situation on the ground is deteriorating, with the world watching while Gaza burns. The failure by Israel’s allies to take meaningful steps to pressure Israel to prevent the wanton killing and displacement is a stain on humanity.
After the horrors of the second world war, Rwanda, Myanmar and Srebrenica, the world said “never again”. Without action, there’s a risk it will shrug its shoulders and say “never mind”.
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Simon Mabon receives funding from Carnegie Corporation of New York and The Henry Luce Foundation.
Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark warned activists and campaigners in a speech on the deck of the Greenpeace environmental flagship Rainbow WarriorIII last night to be wary of global “storm clouds” and the renewed existential threat of nuclear weapons.
Speaking on her reflections on four decades after the bombing of the original Rainbow Warrior on 10 July 1985, she said that New Zealand had a lot to be proud of but the world was now in a “precarious” state.
Clark praised Greenpeace over its long struggle, challenging the global campaigners to keep up the fight for a nuclear-free Pacific.
“For New Zealand, having been proudly nuclear-free since the mid-1980s, life has got a lot more complicated for us as well, and I have done a lot of campaigning against New Zealand signing up to any aspect of the AUKUS arrangement because it seems to me that being associated with any agreement that supplies nuclear ship technology to Australia is more or less encouraging the development of nuclear threats in the South Pacific,” she said.
“While I am not suggesting that Australians are about to put nuclear weapons on them, we know that others do. This is not the Pacific that we want.
“It is not the Pacific that we fought for going back all those years.
“So we need to be very concerned about these storm clouds gathering.”
Lessons for humanity Clark was prime minister 1999-2008 and served as a minister in David Lange’s Labour government that passed New Zealand’s nuclear-free legislation in 1987 – two years after the Rainbow Warrior bombing by French secret agents.
She was also head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 2009-2017.
“When you think 40 years on, humanity might have learned some lessons. But it seems we have to repeat the lessons over and over again, or we will be dragged on the path of re-engagement with those who use nuclear weapons as their ultimate defence,” Clark told the Greenpeace activists, crew and guests.
“Forty years on, we look back with a lot of pride, actually, at how New Zealand responded to the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. We stood up with the passage of the nuclear-free legislation in 1987, we stood up with a lot of things.
“All of this is under threat; the international scene now is quite precarious with respect to nuclear weapons. This is an existential threat.”
Nuclear-free Pacific reflections with Helen Clark Video: Greenpeace
In response to Tahitian researcher and advocate Ena Manuireva who spoke earlier about the legacy of a health crisis as a result of 30 years of French nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa, she recalled her own thoughts.
“It reminds us of why we were so motivated to fight for a nuclear-free Pacific because we remember the history of what happened in French Polynesia, in the Marshall Islands, in the South Australian desert, at Maralinga, to the New Zealand servicemen who were sent up in the navy ships, the Rotoiti and the Pukaki, in the late 1950s, to stand on deck while the British exploded their bombs [at Christmas Island in what is today Kiribati].
“These poor guys were still seeking compensation when I was PM with the illnesses you [Ena] described in French Polynesia.
Former NZ prime minister Helen Clark . . . “I remember one of the slogans in the 1970s and 1980s was ‘if it is so safe, test them in France’.” Image: Asia Pacific Report
Testing ground for ‘others’ “So the Pacific was a testing ground for ‘others’ far away and I remember one of the slogans in the 1970s and 1980s was ‘if it is so safe, test them in France’. Right? It wasn’t so safe.
“Mind you, they regarded French Polynesia as France.
“David Robie asked me to write the foreword to the new edition of his book, Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, and it brought back so many memories of those times because those of you who are my age will remember that the 1980s were the peak of the Cold War.
“We had the Reagan administration [in the US] that was actively preparing for war. It was a terrifying time. It was before the demise of the Soviet Union. And nuclear testing was just part of that big picture where people were preparing for war.
“I think that the wonderful development in New Zealand was that people knew enough to know that we didn’t want to be defended by nuclear weapons because that was not mutually assured survival — it was mutually assured destruction.”
New Zealand took a stand, Clark said, but taking that stand led to the attack on the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour by French state-backed terrorism where tragically Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira lost his life.
“I remember I was on my way to Nairobi for a conference for women, and I was in Zimbabwe, when the news came through about the bombing of a boat in Auckland harbour.
‘Absolutely shocking’ “It was absolutely shocking, we had never experienced such a thing. I recall when I returned to New Zealand, [Prime Minister] David Lange one morning striding down to the party caucus room and telling us before it went public that it was without question that French spies had planted the bombs and the rest was history.
“It was a very tense time. Full marks to Greenpeace for keeping up the struggle for so long — long before it was a mainstream issue Greenpeace was out there in the Pacific taking on nuclear testing.
“Different times from today, but when I wrote the foreword for David’s book I noted that storm clouds were gathering again around nuclear weapons and issues. I suppose that there is so much else going on in a tragic 24 news cycle — catastrophe day in and day out in Gaza, severe technology and lethal weapons in Ukraine killing people, wherever you look there are so many conflicts.
“The international agreements that we have relied are falling into disrepair. For example, if I were in Europe I would be extremely worried about the demise of the intermediate range missile weapons pact which has now been abandoned by the Americans and the Russians.
“And that governs the deployment of medium range missiles in Europe.
“The New Start Treaty, which was a nuclear arms control treaty between what was the Soviet Union and the US expires next year. Will it be renegotiated in the current circumstances? Who knows?”
With the Non-proliferation Treaty, there are acknowledged nuclear powers who had not signed the treaty — “and those that do make very little effort to live up to the aspiration, which is to negotiate an end to nuclear weapons”.
Developments with Iran “We have seen recently the latest developments with Iran, and for all of Iran’s many sins let us acknowledge that it is a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” she said.
“It did subject itself, for the most part, to the inspections regime. Israel, which bombed it, is not a party to the treaty, and doesn’t accept inspections.
“There are so many double standards that people have long complained about the Non-Proliferation Treaty where the original five nuclear powers are deemed okay to have them, somehow, whereas there are others who don’t join at all.
“And then over the Ukraine conflict we have seen worrying threats of the use of nuclear weapons.”
Clark warned that we the use of artificial intelligence it would not be long before asking it: “How do I make a nuclear weapon?”
“It’s not so difficult to make a dirty bomb. So we should be extremely worried about all these developments.”
Then Clark spoke about the “complications” facing New Zealand.
Mangareva researcher and advocate Ena Manuireva . . . “My mum died of lung cancer and the doctors said that she was a ‘passive smoker’. My mum had not smoked for the last 65 years.” Image: Asia Pacific Report
Teariki’s message to De Gaulle In his address, Ena Manuireva started off by quoting the late Tahitian parliamentarian John Teariki who had courageously appealed to General Charles De Gaulle in 1966 after France had already tested three nuclear devices:
“No government has ever had the honesty or the cynical frankness to admit that its nuclear tests might be dangerous. No government has ever hesitated to make other peoples — preferably small, defenceless ones — bear the burden.”
“May you, Mr President, take back your troops, your bombs, and your planes.
“Then, later, our leukemia and cancer patients would not be able to accuse you of being the cause of their illness.
“Then, our future generations would not be able to blame you for the birth of monsters and deformed children.
“Then, you would give the world an example worthy of France . . .
“Then, Polynesia, united, would be proud and happy to be French, and, as in the early days of Free France, we would all once again become your best and most loyal friends.”
‘Emotional moment’ Manuireva said that 10 days earlier, he had been on board Rainbow Warrior III for the ceremony to mark the bombing in 1985 that cost the life of Fernando Pereira – “and the lives of a lot of Mā’ohi people”.
“It was a very emotional moment for me. It reminded me of my mother and father as I am a descendant of those on Mangareva atoll who were contaminated by those nuclear tests.
“My mum died of lung cancer and the doctors said that she was a ‘passive smoker’. My mum had not smoked for the last 65 years.
“French nuclear testing started on 2 July 1966 with Aldebaran and lasted 30 years.”
He spoke about how the military “top brass fled the island” when winds start blowing towards Mangareva. “Food was ready but they didn’t stay”.
“By the time I was born in December 1967 in Mangareva, France had already exploded 9 atmospheric nuclear tests on Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls, about 400km from Mangareva.”
France’s most powerful explosion was Canopus with 2.6 megatonnes in August 1968. It was a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb — 150 times more powerful than Hiroshima.
Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Russel Norman . . . a positive of the campaign future. Image: Asia Pacific Report
‘Poisoned gift’ Manuireva said that by France “gifting us the bomb”, Tahitians had been left “with all the ongoing consequences on the people’s health costs that the Ma’ohi Nui government is paying for”.
He described how the compensation programme was inadequate, lengthy and complicated.
Manuireva also spoke about the consequences for the environment. Both Moruroa and Fangataufa were condemned as “no go” zones and islanders had lost their lands forever.
He also noted that while France had gifted the former headquarters of the Atomic Energy Commission (CEP) as a “form of reconciliation” plans to turn it into a museum were thwarted because the building was “rife with asbestos”.
“It is a poisonous gift that will cost millions for the local government to fix.”
Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Russel Norman spoke of the impact on the Greenpeace organisation of the French secret service bombing of their ship and also introduced the guest speakers and responded to their statements.
A Q and A session was also held to round off the stimulating evening.
A question during the open mike session on board the Rainbow Warrior. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark warned activists and campaigners in a speech on the deck of the Greenpeace environmental flagship Rainbow WarriorIII last night to be wary of global “storm clouds” and the renewed existential threat of nuclear weapons.
Speaking on her reflections on four decades after the bombing of the original Rainbow Warrior on 10 July 1985, she said that New Zealand had a lot to be proud of but the world was now in a “precarious” state.
Clark praised Greenpeace over its long struggle, challenging the global campaigners to keep up the fight for a nuclear-free Pacific.
“For New Zealand, having been proudly nuclear-free since the mid-1980s, life has got a lot more complicated for us as well, and I have done a lot of campaigning against New Zealand signing up to any aspect of the AUKUS arrangement because it seems to me that being associated with any agreement that supplies nuclear ship technology to Australia is more or less encouraging the development of nuclear threats in the South Pacific,” she said.
“While I am not suggesting that Australians are about to put nuclear weapons on them, we know that others do. This is not the Pacific that we want.
“It is not the Pacific that we fought for going back all those years.
“So we need to be very concerned about these storm clouds gathering.”
Lessons for humanity Clark was prime minister 1999-2008 and served as a minister in David Lange’s Labour government that passed New Zealand’s nuclear-free legislation in 1987 – two years after the Rainbow Warrior bombing by French secret agents.
She was also head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 2009-2017.
“When you think 40 years on, humanity might have learned some lessons. But it seems we have to repeat the lessons over and over again, or we will be dragged on the path of re-engagement with those who use nuclear weapons as their ultimate defence,” Clark told the Greenpeace activists, crew and guests.
“Forty years on, we look back with a lot of pride, actually, at how New Zealand responded to the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. We stood up with the passage of the nuclear-free legislation in 1987, we stood up with a lot of things.
“All of this is under threat; the international scene now is quite precarious with respect to nuclear weapons. This is an existential threat.”
Nuclear-free Pacific reflections with Helen Clark Video: Greenpeace
In response to Tahitian researcher and advocate Ena Manuireva who spoke earlier about the legacy of a health crisis as a result of 30 years of French nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa, she recalled her own thoughts.
“It reminds us of why we were so motivated to fight for a nuclear-free Pacific because we remember the history of what happened in French Polynesia, in the Marshall Islands, in the South Australian desert, at Maralinga, to the New Zealand servicemen who were sent up in the navy ships, the Rotoiti and the Pukaki, in the late 1950s, to stand on deck while the British exploded their bombs [at Christmas Island in what is today Kiribati].
“These poor guys were still seeking compensation when I was PM with the illnesses you [Ena] described in French Polynesia.
Former NZ prime minister Helen Clark . . . “I remember one of the slogans in the 1970s and 1980s was ‘if it is so safe, test them in France’.” Image: Asia Pacific Report
Testing ground for ‘others’ “So the Pacific was a testing ground for ‘others’ far away and I remember one of the slogans in the 1970s and 1980s was ‘if it is so safe, test them in France’. Right? It wasn’t so safe.
“Mind you, they regarded French Polynesia as France.
“David Robie asked me to write the foreword to the new edition of his book, Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, and it brought back so many memories of those times because those of you who are my age will remember that the 1980s were the peak of the Cold War.
“We had the Reagan administration [in the US] that was actively preparing for war. It was a terrifying time. It was before the demise of the Soviet Union. And nuclear testing was just part of that big picture where people were preparing for war.
“I think that the wonderful development in New Zealand was that people knew enough to know that we didn’t want to be defended by nuclear weapons because that was not mutually assured survival — it was mutually assured destruction.”
New Zealand took a stand, Clark said, but taking that stand led to the attack on the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour by French state-backed terrorism where tragically Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira lost his life.
“I remember I was on my way to Nairobi for a conference for women, and I was in Zimbabwe, when the news came through about the bombing of a boat in Auckland harbour.
‘Absolutely shocking’ “It was absolutely shocking, we had never experienced such a thing. I recall when I returned to New Zealand, [Prime Minister] David Lange one morning striding down to the party caucus room and telling us before it went public that it was without question that French spies had planted the bombs and the rest was history.
“It was a very tense time. Full marks to Greenpeace for keeping up the struggle for so long — long before it was a mainstream issue Greenpeace was out there in the Pacific taking on nuclear testing.
“Different times from today, but when I wrote the foreword for David’s book I noted that storm clouds were gathering again around nuclear weapons and issues. I suppose that there is so much else going on in a tragic 24 news cycle — catastrophe day in and day out in Gaza, severe technology and lethal weapons in Ukraine killing people, wherever you look there are so many conflicts.
“The international agreements that we have relied are falling into disrepair. For example, if I were in Europe I would be extremely worried about the demise of the intermediate range missile weapons pact which has now been abandoned by the Americans and the Russians.
“And that governs the deployment of medium range missiles in Europe.
“The New Start Treaty, which was a nuclear arms control treaty between what was the Soviet Union and the US expires next year. Will it be renegotiated in the current circumstances? Who knows?”
With the Non-proliferation Treaty, there are acknowledged nuclear powers who had not signed the treaty — “and those that do make very little effort to live up to the aspiration, which is to negotiate an end to nuclear weapons”.
Developments with Iran “We have seen recently the latest developments with Iran, and for all of Iran’s many sins let us acknowledge that it is a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” she said.
“It did subject itself, for the most part, to the inspections regime. Israel, which bombed it, is not a party to the treaty, and doesn’t accept inspections.
“There are so many double standards that people have long complained about the Non-Proliferation Treaty where the original five nuclear powers are deemed okay to have them, somehow, whereas there are others who don’t join at all.
“And then over the Ukraine conflict we have seen worrying threats of the use of nuclear weapons.”
Clark warned that we the use of artificial intelligence it would not be long before asking it: “How do I make a nuclear weapon?”
“It’s not so difficult to make a dirty bomb. So we should be extremely worried about all these developments.”
Then Clark spoke about the “complications” facing New Zealand.
Mangareva researcher and advocate Ena Manuireva . . . “My mum died of lung cancer and the doctors said that she was a ‘passive smoker’. My mum had not smoked for the last 65 years.” Image: Asia Pacific Report
Teariki’s message to De Gaulle In his address, Ena Manuireva started off by quoting the late Tahitian parliamentarian John Teariki who had courageously appealed to General Charles De Gaulle in 1966 after France had already tested three nuclear devices:
“No government has ever had the honesty or the cynical frankness to admit that its nuclear tests might be dangerous. No government has ever hesitated to make other peoples — preferably small, defenceless ones — bear the burden.”
“May you, Mr President, take back your troops, your bombs, and your planes.
“Then, later, our leukemia and cancer patients would not be able to accuse you of being the cause of their illness.
“Then, our future generations would not be able to blame you for the birth of monsters and deformed children.
“Then, you would give the world an example worthy of France . . .
“Then, Polynesia, united, would be proud and happy to be French, and, as in the early days of Free France, we would all once again become your best and most loyal friends.”
‘Emotional moment’ Manuireva said that 10 days earlier, he had been on board Rainbow Warrior III for the ceremony to mark the bombing in 1985 that cost the life of Fernando Pereira – “and the lives of a lot of Mā’ohi people”.
“It was a very emotional moment for me. It reminded me of my mother and father as I am a descendant of those on Mangareva atoll who were contaminated by those nuclear tests.
“My mum died of lung cancer and the doctors said that she was a ‘passive smoker’. My mum had not smoked for the last 65 years.
“French nuclear testing started on 2 July 1966 with Aldebaran and lasted 30 years.”
He spoke about how the military “top brass fled the island” when winds start blowing towards Mangareva. “Food was ready but they didn’t stay”.
“By the time I was born in December 1967 in Mangareva, France had already exploded 9 atmospheric nuclear tests on Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls, about 400km from Mangareva.”
France’s most powerful explosion was Canopus with 2.6 megatonnes in August 1968. It was a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb — 150 times more powerful than Hiroshima.
Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Russel Norman . . . a positive of the campaign future. Image: Asia Pacific Report
‘Poisoned gift’ Manuireva said that by France “gifting us the bomb”, Tahitians had been left “with all the ongoing consequences on the people’s health costs that the Ma’ohi Nui government is paying for”.
He described how the compensation programme was inadequate, lengthy and complicated.
Manuireva also spoke about the consequences for the environment. Both Moruroa and Fangataufa were condemned as “no go” zones and islanders had lost their lands forever.
He also noted that while France had gifted the former headquarters of the Atomic Energy Commission (CEP) as a “form of reconciliation” plans to turn it into a museum were thwarted because the building was “rife with asbestos”.
“It is a poisonous gift that will cost millions for the local government to fix.”
Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Russel Norman spoke of the impact on the Greenpeace organisation of the French secret service bombing of their ship and also introduced the guest speakers and responded to their statements.
A Q and A session was also held to round off the stimulating evening.
A question during the open mike session on board the Rainbow Warrior. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Are you a woman who exercises regularly? If so, here’s a vital question: do you train your pelvic floor muscles as part of your routine?
If the answer is no, now’s the time to start. It’s never too late to protect yourself from pelvic floor dysfunction – and the benefits go far beyond avoiding leaks.
The pelvic floor is a complex hammock of muscles and ligaments stretching from the front of your pelvis to your tailbone. It weaves around the urethra, vagina and anus, supporting the pelvic organs and helping them stay in the right place.
These muscles are essential for bladder and bowel control, sexual function and core stability. In fact, your pelvic floor works alongside the diaphragm, abdominal muscles, and back muscles in what’s known as the “core canister” or “core rectangle.” Together, they help stabilise the spine, protect internal organs, and support movement, especially in high-impact or strength-based activities.
Movements such as jumping, running, landing and breath-holding during exertion all increase intra-abdominal pressure, which pushes down on the pelvic floor. Without proper conditioning, these muscles can become strained or fatigued, especially if they’re weaker than the surrounding core muscles.
Endurance sports can also take their toll, causing the pelvic floor to repeatedly contract under pressure. Like any muscle, the pelvic floor is susceptible to overuse injuries and needs time to recover.
Pelvic floor dysfunction can show up in several ways, including leaking urine or faeces during exercise, coughing or sneezing; disrupted bowel habits; a heavy or dragging feeling in the lower abdomen or vagina; pain during sex; a bulging sensation or visible tissue in the vaginal area; and pelvic organ prolapse.
These symptoms may appear during exercise – or at rest – and often worsen over time without the right support or training.
Exercise can help with pelvic floor dysfunction – only if the pelvic floor is actively and effectively engaged. Many workouts target the abs or general core, but if the pelvic floor isn’t included with the same intensity, muscular imbalances can develop. Combined with gravity and high-impact movement, this puts the pelvic floor at greater risk of dysfunction.
The good news? The pelvic floor responds well to training. With regular, focused practice, these muscles become stronger, more coordinated and more resilient – helping to prevent dysfunction and even aiding recovery after childbirth.
How to train your pelvic floor
Not sure where to start? Here’s a simple exercise:
Imagine you’re holding in wind – gently contract your anus.
Next, squeeze your urethra as if stopping a flow of urine.
Now, lift upwards through the vagina.
Hold the contraction for a few seconds (or as long as you comfortably can), then release.
That’s one pelvic floor contraction: well done!
Try doing a few reps at a time, and gradually build up. You can incorporate these into your run, add them to your core workout, or practise them during rest days or cool-downs. The goal is to make pelvic floor training a regular part of your routine.
Your pelvic floor deserves just as much attention as your abs, glutes or quads. If you’re a woman who exercises, training these deep core muscles can boost your performance, reduce your risk of injury and support your overall health now and in the future.
So next time you lace up your trainers or hit the gym, don’t forget your pelvic floor. Your body will thank you.
Holly Ingram does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Neeraja Chinchalkar, PhD student, Earth and Planetary Science and Exploration, Western University
A satellite image of the Clearwater Lakes, the site of two large asteroid impacts that struck Earth about 290 million years ago(NASA Earth Observatory)
While most asteroid impacts on Earth happened millions of years ago, their remnants are still preserved across the Earth’s surface. Impact-affected rocks experience intense heat and pressure during the impact.
Zircon is a mineral commonly found in a variety of rock types on Earth and in some rocks on the moon and other planets. It is an incredibly durable, naturally occurring mineral that has been around since as long as the Earth itself. The physical resilience of zircon makes it a useful tool to study natural geological phenomena.
Zircon, when heated enough, begins to break down into its components: zirconia (ZrO₂) and silica (SiO₂). Zirconia has different forms depending on how hot it gets, called polymorphs — these are minerals with the same chemical make up but different crystal structures that adapt to changing physical conditions. One of the polymorphs of zirconia is cubic zirconia, named for its cubic structure.
Finding cubic zirconia in nature is incredibly rare because of the specific conditions it requires to remain structurally stable. Cubic zirconia forms only under extreme conditions where temperatures reach above 2,370 C. On the Earth’s surface, such naturally hot temperatures have only been known to exist during impact crater formation.
At West Clearwater Lake, we found evidence of this natural cubic zirconia preserved in natural glass — a remnant of the intense heat from the ancient asteroid impact. For comparison, active volcanoes such as those in Hawaii reach temperatures in the range of 800 to 1,200 C.
In nature, zirconia exists in several forms, depending on the temperature and pressure it’s exposed to. The three main polymorphs are: monoclinic, tetragonal and cubic.
Monoclinic zirconia is stable at lower temperatures and is the most common form of zirconia found in nature. Tetragonal zirconia exists at moderately high temperatures and is unstable at low temperatures. Cubic zirconia is only stable at extremely high temperatures above 2,370 C, and is also unstable at lower temperatures.
How, exactly, did cubic zirconia end up in these rocks?
When the asteroid hit the West Clearwater Lake region millions of years ago, it generated temperatures hot enough to melt and vaporize some of the surface rock. As the molten rock cooled and solidified, microscopic crystals of zircon, originally present within target material, got caught up in the hot melt and began to transform.
At temperatures above 2,370 C, these zircon crystals started to break down, and some of them turned into cubic zirconia. This provided evidence of the extreme heat, which our research team discovered in our recent study.
This fascinating evidence gives us insights into how hot it can get during a meteorite impact, something that’s hard to measure millions of years after the fact.
Artificial production
Synthetic cubic zirconia is produced artificially by heating zirconium oxide to high temperatures, then cooling it in a controlled environment; the zirconia then forms crystals that resemble diamonds. Synthetic cubic zirconia is a popular substitute for diamonds in jewelry because it is cheap to produce but still sparkles like diamonds.
Synthetic cubic zirconia contains high amounts of stabilizing agents, like the element yttrium, that prevent it from becoming unstable and help it maintain its brilliance over time.
Without the additives used in synthetic cubic zirconia, natural zirconia is much more likely to transform into other forms as it cools down. That’s why finding natural cubic zirconia is so rare — it exists only in places where temperatures were once unimaginably high.
Synthetic cubic zirconia is a popular substitute for diamonds in jewelry because it is cheap to produce but still sparkles like diamonds. (James St. John/Flickr), CC BY
Asteroid impacts
Apart from being a fascinating geological discovery, finding evidence of cubic zirconia in an impact structure gives scientists a better understanding of the conditions created during asteroid impacts. These ancient events weren’t just violent — they fundamentally changed the Earth’s surface in ways that we’re still learning about.
While the discovery of cubic zirconia in West Clearwater Lake is exciting, it’s just one piece of the puzzle. Impact craters are not unique to Earth — they are found on most rocky objects in our solar system. For example, cubic zirconia has been found in moon rocks brought back by astronauts of the Apollo missions.
Meteorite craters like the West Clearwater Lake are only a small part of a larger story of Earth’s history. During its nascent years, Earth was regularly bombarded by asteroids that were remnants of the debris from the formation of the solar system, and these collisions helped shape the planet’s surface. In fact, there is compelling evidence that asteroid impacts may have played a role in the origin of life by creating environments where complex chemicals could form.
Neeraja Chinchalkar is affiliated with the Lunar and Planetary Institute
Gordon Osinski receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Space Agency.
Timmons Erickson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Business, universities, and investors have jointly urged the federal government to commit to cutting the cost of red tape by 25% by 2030, in a submission for next month’s Economic Reform Roundtable.
The push to reduce regulation is in line with action by the EU and the United Kingdom’s Labour government, the submission says.
“Cutting red tape means faster home builds, quicker loan approvals, and lower prices at the checkout,” it says.
“For Australians, it’s the difference between waiting months or days for a service, and it ensures growth isn’t choked by unnecessary or outdated processes that haven’t kept up with the modern world.”
The need to push against red tape is highlighted in the recently-published book Abundance by Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein. The book has impressed Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who has urged his colleagues to read it.
The coalition of 27 groups includes small, medium and large businesses, universities and the investment community. The united approach is an attempt by business to avoid being divided and trapped at the roundtable, as business felt it was at the 2022 Jobs and Skills summit.
On taxation, the submission proposes a three-month review, supported by Treasury, the Productivity Commission, business representatives and other stakeholders to “kick start” comprehensive tax reform.
The exercise would be underpinned by principles that encouraged investment and economic growth.
Business has become concerned the roundtable could be a way of seeking support for tax increases rather than comprehensive tax reform.
The submission says tax reform and the trade offs involved, should not be pursued separately from measures to promote efficiency and spending restraint to “ensure government lives within its means”.
Tax reform should support the dynamism and productivity of Australian individuals and businesses”, the submission says.
Revenue should be raised with the least possible cost to society, and there should be minimum distortions to work, savings and investment.
Among other proposals, the coalition urges a boost to investment and innovation by reforming the handling of R&D.
It says there should be a national strategy to boost Australia’s investment competitiveness.
The submission backs reforming the framework for environmental and planning approvals. It says there should be a “single, predictable, and transparent approval pathway that provides timely and certain decisions.”
“Our economic rule book is out of date. If we don’t fix it, not only will Australians struggle to get ahead in life, but future generations are at risk of missing out on the quality of life we enjoy today,” the joint group of industry associations says.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
There’s no other way of looking at it: Sussan Ley faces a diabolical situation with the debate over whether the Coalition should abandon the 2050 net zero emissions target.
The issue is a microcosm of her wider problems. The Nationals, the minor party in the Coalition, are determined to run their own race on most things. The Liberals have become akin to two parties, split between those eyeing urban seats and younger voters, and right-wingers reflecting the party’s conservative grassroots.
Nobody misses the contrast. The Albanese government is beset by a host of actual issues around the transition to a clean energy economy. The renewables rollout is not going as fast as desirable and is meeting with resistance in some communities. Energy costs are high. But such problems are not putting any pressure on Labor’s unity.
At the same time, the opposition is fractured over an argument about a target that’s a quarter of a century away, when who knows what the technological or political landscape will look like. For the opposition, the internal debate about net zero is about symbols and signals, rather than substance.
The net zero debate exploded within the opposition this week with Barnaby Joyce’s private member’s bill to scrap Australia’s commitment to it. The timing, in parliament’s first week, was extraordinarily inconvenient for Ley. But if not now, it would have erupted later.
On present indications, the Nationals appear likely to ditch the net zero commitment. David Littleproud, anxious to avoid the issue becoming a threat to his leadership, is reading the party room and positioning himself to be in the anticipated majority.
Asked on Thursday whether he supported net zero, Littleproud told the ABC, “well, I have real concerns about it, to be candid. What net zero has become is about trying to achieve the impossible, rather than doing what’s sensible.” But, he insisted, “we’re not climate deniers”.
It is less clear how the debate will pan out in the Liberal Party, once the group under Shadow Energy Minister Dan Tehan produces its report on energy and emissions-reduction policy.
Liberal sources say the issue is now being driven by the party’s grassroots, rather than the parliamentary party. Branches are throwing up motions to get rid of the 2050 target.
The Western Australian Liberal state council will debate a motion this weekend to drop the net zero commitment. The Queensland LNP organisation will consider its position next month. A few weeks ago, the South Australian Liberal state council rejected net zero.
With a policy review underway, Ley and the parliamentary Liberals have left a vacuum on the issue. Some Liberals warn the parliamentarians risk being run over by the party outside parliament. Others point out that on policy, the parliamentarians are independent of the organisation, which often comes up with right-wing motions.
How should Ley best handle the situation? By filling the vacuum with a position sooner rather than later. That means accelerating the Tehan report. Beyond that, ideally she should be taking leadership on the issue herself. But is she in a strong enough position to do that?
One idea being floated would be for the Liberals to retain the net zero target but extend the time frame. This wouldn’t stop the criticism about the shift.
Whether the Coalition could stay as one if its two parties had different positions on net zero may be an open question but it certainly would be messy.
On the other side of politics, the government is rapidly approaching a decision on another key target – the one Australia will put up internationally for cutting emissions by 2035. Inevitably, this will be contentious.
This target must be submitted by September (it was conveniently delayed beyond the election). Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen has yet to receive advice on the target from the Climate Change Authority (advice that will be published). The target is expected to be between 65% and 75%.
The challenge will be to strike a target with sufficient ambition that doesn’t alienate business and the regions.
Next week the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Simon Stiell, will be in Canberra for talks. His comments will be carefully watched.
Last year he told the Sydney Morning Herald, “the world needs countries like Australia to take climate action and ambition to the next level, and it’s firmly in the interests of every Australian that they do so”.
Climate and energy issues will have a place at next month’s economic reform roundtable. Bowen is organising two preliminary roundtables – on electricity, with energy user stakeholders, and on climate adaptation. He told The Conversation’s podcast that adaptation will “be an increasing focus of this government and future governments because, tragically, the world has left it too late to avoid the impacts of climate change”.
The government is waiting, somewhat impatiently, for the decision on whether Australia will be given the nod to host next year’s UN climate conference. The COP meeting, which would be in Adelaide in November 2026, is an enormous event to put on, so the decision is becoming urgent.
Bowen says Australia already has the numbers over Turkey, the other contender. But “one of the things about the process to decide COPs, I’ve learnt, is it’s quite opaque and there’s no particular timeline and no particular rules to the ballot.
“It’s meant to work on a consensus, sort of an old world, sort of gentlemanly sort of approach to say whoever loses will withdraw. That’s not the way it’s panning out. I’ve had multiple meetings with my Turkish counterpart to try to find a ‘win-win’ solution. We haven’t been able to find that yet.”
Stiell’s trip includes Turkey as well as Australia. Bowen will be hoping he may provide some clarity, when they meet, about how the “opaque” process of assigning the COP meeting is going. Bowen will be emphasising how important the proposed co-hosting COP with the Pacific is to the region, with climate change already an existential issue for many Pacific countries.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The manufacturing of African print textiles has shifted to China in the 21st century. While they are widely consumed in African countries – and symbolic of the continent – the rise of “made in China” has undermined the African women traders who have long shaped the retail and distribution of this cloth.
For many decades Vlisco, the Dutch textile group which traces its origins to 1846 and whose products had been supplied to west Africa by European trading houses since the late 19th century, dominated manufacture of the cloth. But in the last 25 years dozens of factories in China have begun to supply African print textiles to west African markets. Qingdao Phoenix Hitarget Ltd, Sanhe Linqing Textile Group and Waxhaux Ltd are among the best known.
We conducted research to establish how the rise of Chinese-made cloth has affected the African print textiles trade. We focused on Togo. Though it’s a tiny country with a population of only 9.7 million, the capital city, Lomé, is the trading hub in west Africa for the textiles.
We conducted over 100 interviews with traders, street sellers, port agents or brokers, government officials and representatives of manufacturing companies to learn about how their activities have changed.
“Made in China” African print textiles are substantially cheaper and more accessible to a wider population than Vlisco fabric. Our market observations in Lomé’s famous Assigamé market found that Chinese African print textiles cost about 9,000 CFA (US$16) for six yards – one complete outfit. Wax Hollandais (50,000 CFA or US$87) cost over five times more.
Data is hard to come by, but our estimates suggest that 90% of imports of these textiles to Lomé port in 2019 came from China.
One Togolese trader summed up the attraction:
Who could resist a cloth that looked similar, but that cost much less than real Vlisco?
Our research shows how the rise of China manufactured cloth has undermined Vlisco’s once dominant market share as well as the monopoly on the trade of Dutch African print textiles that Togolese traders once enjoyed.
The traders, known as Nana-Benz because of the expensive cars they drove, once enjoyed an economic and political significance disproportionate to their small numbers. Their political influence was such that they were key backers of Togo’s first president, Sylvanus Olympio – himself a former director of the United Africa Company, which distributed Dutch cloth.
In turn, Olympio and long-term leader General Gnassingbé Eyadéma provided policy favours – such as low taxes – to support trading activity. In the 1970s, African print textile trade was considered as significant as the phosphate industry – the country’s primary export.
Nana-Benz have since been displaced – their numbers falling from 50 to about 20. Newer Togolese traders – known as Nanettes or “little Nanas” – have taken their place. While they have carved out a niche in mediating the textiles trade with China, they have lower economic and political stature. In turn, they too are increasingly threatened by Chinese competition, more recently within trading and distribution as well.
China displaces the Dutch
Dating back to the colonial period, African women traders have played essential roles in the wholesale and distribution of Dutch cloth in west African markets. As many countries in the region attained independence from the 1950s onwards, Grand Marché – or Assigamé – in Lomé became the hub for African print textile trade.
While neighbouring countries such as Ghana limited imports as part of efforts to promote domestic industrialisation, Togolese traders secured favourable conditions. These included low taxes and use of the port.
Togolese women traders knew the taste of predominantly female, west African customers better than their mostly male, Dutch designers. The Nana-Benz were brought into the African print textile production and design process, selecting patterns and giving names to designs they knew would sell.
They acquired such wealth from this trade that they earned the Nana-Benz nickname from the cars they purchased and which they used to collect and move merchandise.
Nana-Benz exclusivity of trading and retailing of African print textiles cloth in west African markets has been disrupted. As Vlisco has responded to falling revenues – over 30% in the first five years of the 21st century – due to its Chinese competition, Togolese traders’ role in the supply chain of Dutch cloth has been downgraded.
In response to the flood of Chinese imports, the Dutch manufacturer re-positioned itself as a luxury fashion brand and placed greater focus on the marketing and distribution of the textiles.
Vlisco has opened several boutique stores in west and central Africa, starting with Cotonou (2008), Lomé (2008) and Abidjan (2009). The surviving Nana-Benz – an estimated 20 of the original 50 – operate under contract as retailers rather than traders and must follow strict rules of sale and pricing.
While newer Togolese traders known as Nanettes are involved in the sourcing of textiles from China, they have lower economic and political stature. Up to 60 are involved in the trade.
Former street sellers of textiles and other petty commodities, Nanettes began travelling to China in the early to mid-2000s to source African print textiles. They are involved in commissioning and advising on the manufacturing of African print textiles in China and the distribution in Africa.
While many Nanettes order the common Chinese brands, some own and market their own. These include what are now well-known designs in Lomé and west Africa such as “Femme de Caractère”, “Binta”, “Prestige”, “Rebecca Wax”, “GMG” and “Homeland”.
Compared to their Nana-Benz predecessors, the Nanettes carve out their business from the smaller pie available from the sale of cheaper Chinese cloth. Though the volumes traded are large, the margins are smaller due to the much lower final retail price compared to Dutch cloth.
After procuring African print textiles from China, Nanettes sell wholesale to independent local traders or “sellers” as well as traders from neighbouring countries. These sellers in turn break down the bulk they have purchased and sell it in smaller quantities to independent street vendors.
All African print textiles from China arrive in west Africa as an incomplete product – as six-yard or 12-yard segments of cloth, not as finished garments. Local tailors and seamstresses then make clothes according to consumer taste. Some fashion designers have also opened shops where they sell prêt-à-porter (ready-to-wear) garments made from bolts of African print and tailored to local taste. Thus, even though the monopoly of the Nana-Benz has been eroded, value is still added and captured locally.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese actors have become more involved in trading activity – and not just manufacturing. The further evolution of Chinese presence risks an even greater marginalisation of locals, already excluded from manufacturing, from the trading and distribution end of the value chain. Maintaining their role – tailoring products to local culture and trends and linking the formal and informal economy – is vital not just for Togolese traders, but also the wider economy.
Rory Horner receives funding from the British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship. He is also a Research Associate at the Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies at the University of Johannesburg.
Fidele B. Ebia does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
More than 100 humanitarian groups are demanding action to end Israel’s siege of Gaza, warning mass starvation is spreading across the Palestinian territory.
The NGOs, including Amnesty International, Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, warn, “illnesses like acute watery diarrhea are spreading, markets are empty, waste is piling up, and adults are collapsing on the streets from hunger and dehydration.”
Their warning came as the Palestinian Ministry of Health said the number of starvation-related deaths has climbed to at least 111 people.
This is Ghada al-Fayoumi, a displaced Palestinian mother of seven in Gaza City.
GHADA AL-FAYOUMI: “[translated] My children wake up sick every day. What do I do? I get saline solution for them. What can I do?
“There’s no food, no bread, no drinks, no rice, no sugar, no cooking oil, no bulgur, nothing. There is no kind of any food available to us at all.”
AMY GOODMAN: Thousands of antiwar protesters marched on Tuesday in Tel Aviv outside Israel’s military headquarters, demanding an end to Israel’s assault and a lifting of the Gaza siege. This is Israeli peace activist Alon-Lee Green with the group Standing Together.
ALON-LEE GREEN: “We are marching now in Tel Aviv, holding bags of flour and the pictures of these children that have been starved to death by our government and our army.
“We demand to stop the starvation in Gaza. We demand to stop the annihilation of Gaza. We demand to stop the daily killing of children and innocent people in Gaza.
“This cannot go on. We are Israelis, and this does not serve us. This only serves the Messianic people that lead us.”
AMY GOODMAN: This comes as the World Health Organisation has released a video showing the Israeli military attacking WHO facilities in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah. A WHO spokesperson condemned the attack, called for the immediate release of a staff member abducted by Israeli forces.
TARIK JAŠAREVIĆ: “Male staff and family members were handcuffed, stripped, interrogated on the spot and screened at gunpoint.
“Two WHO staff and two family members were detained.”
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, health officials in Gaza say Israeli attacks over the past day killed more than 70 people, including five more people seeking food at militarised aid sites. Amid growing outrage worldwide, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Tuesday the situation in Gaza right now is a “horror show”.
UN SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: “We need look no further than the horror show in Gaza, with a level of death and destruction without parallel in recent times.
“Malnourishment is soaring. Starvation is knocking on every door.”
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. He is a professor of law at University of Oregon, where he leads the Food Resiliency Project.
Israel waging ‘fastest starvation campaign’ in modern history Video: Democracy Now!
Dr Michael Fakhri, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you can respond to what’s happening right now, the images of dying infants starving to death, the numbers now at over 100, people dropping in the streets, reporters saying they can’t go on?
Agence France-Presse’s union talked about they have had reporters killed in conflict, they have had reporters disappeared, injured, but they have not had this situation before with their reporters starving to death.
DR MICHAEL FAKHRI: Amy, the word “horror” — I mean, we’re running out of words of what to say. And the reason it’s horrific is it was preventable. We saw this coming. We’ve seen this coming for 20 months.
Israel announced its starvation campaign back in October 2023. And then again, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced on March 1 that nothing was to enter Gaza. And that’s what happened for 78 days. No food, no water, no fuel, no medicine entered Gaza.
And then they built these militarised aid sites that are used to humiliate, weaken and kill the Palestinians. So, what makes this horrific is it has been preventable, it was predictable. And again, this is the fastest famine we’ve seen, the fastest starvation campaign we’ve seen in modern history.
AMY GOODMAN: So, can you talk about what needs to be done at this point and the responsibility of the occupying power? Israel is occupying Gaza right now. What it means to have to protect the population it occupies?
DR FAKHRI: The International Court of Justice outlined Israel’s duties in its decisions over the last year. So, what Israel has an obligation to do is, first, end its illegal occupation immediately. This came from the court itself.
Second, it must allow humanitarian relief to enter with no restrictions. And this hasn’t been happening. So, usually, we would turn to the Security Council to authorise peacekeepers or something similar to assist.
But predictably, again, the United States keeps vetoing anything to do with a ceasefire. When the Security Council is in a deadlock because of a veto, the General Assembly, the UN General Assembly, has the authority to call for peacekeepers to accompany humanitarian convoys to enter into Gaza and to end Israel’s starvation campaign against the Palestinian people.
AMY GOODMAN: People actually protested outside the house of UN Secretary-General António Guterres yesterday. People protested all over the world yesterday against the Palestinians being starved and bombed to death. Those in front of the UN Secretary-General’s house said they don’t dispute that he has raised this issue almost every day, but they say he can do more.
Finally, Michael Fakhri, what does the UN need to do — the US, Israel, the world?
DR FAKHRI: So, as I mentioned, first and foremost, they can authorise peacekeepers to enter to stop the starvation. But, second, they need to create consequences.
The world has a duty to prevent this starvation. The world has a duty to prevent and end this genocide. And as a result, then, what the world can do is impose sanctions.
And again, this is supported by the International Court of Justice. The world needs to impose wide-scale sanctions against the state of Israel to force it to end the starvation and genocide of civilians, of Palestinian civilians in Gaza today.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Michael Fakhri, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, speaking to us from Eugene, Oregon.
Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock has fleshed out the central bank’s thinking behind its surprise decision to keep interest rates on hold this month.
But the Reserve Bank is waiting for confirmation that underlying inflation has actually moved back towards the mid-point of its 2% to 3% target band:
We still think it will show inflation declining slowly towards 2.5%, but we are looking for data to support this expectation.
The governor was pleased to see the progress on inflation did not come at the cost of jobs growth. Employment has remained around an all-time high as a proportion of the population. Comparable countries have not managed as well as this.
The Reserve Bank has cut interest rates twice this year, and said policy is leaning towards further cuts by the end of the year.
The dual mandate
The Reserve Bank’s 2-3% inflation target is well known. But it is not the sole focus of policymakers. The bank actually has a dual mandate of inflation and employment, which was the topic of Bullock’s annual speech to Sydney’s financial community.
The Reserve Bank Act charges the bank’s monetary policy board with setting monetary policy:
in a way that, in the Board’s opinion, best contributes to:
(i) price stability in Australia; and
(ii) the maintenance of full employment in Australia.
Full employment has been enshrined in legislation as a goal of the central bank since the 1940s.
Last week, the monthly employment report unexpectedly showed a jump in unemployment to 4.3% in June after five months as 4.1% as more people looked for work.
In her speech, Bullock said while some of the coverage suggested the increase was a shock, the employment figures over the whole of the June quarter were in line with the bank’s forecasts.
She did not think it would have meant a different decision at the last board meeting if it had been known then.
In the long run, there is no conflict between these goals. In the governor’s words:
Low and stable inflation – or price stability – is a prerequisite for strong and sustainable employment growth because it creates favourable conditions for households and businesses to plan, invest and create jobs without having to worry about inflation.
Even in the short run, the two goals often involve no conflict. When the economy is overheating, inflation is high and unemployment low, so it is clear interest rates should be raised. During a recession, inflation is low and unemployment high, so it is clear interest rates should be lowered.
But there are times when the implications from the two goals clash. A surge in oil prices, for example, could lead to both higher inflation (suggesting interest rates should be raised) and weaker economic activity (suggesting interest rates should be lowered).
The governor said the bank’s response may depend on the likely longevity of such a shock:
If a supply disruption is temporary and modest, monetary policy should mostly ‘look through’ it. Raising interest rates makes little sense if inflation is expected to ease once temporary supply disruptions are resolved – it would only weaken the job market.
By contrast, when a supply shock is likely to have a longer lasting effect on the economy and inflation there may be stronger grounds for monetary policy to respond.
The outlook
In its latest published forecasts, in May, the bank said that if, as markets expected, it lowers its cash rate target to 3.4% by the end of the year, then unemployment would rise marginally, to 4.3%, while its preferred measure of underlying inflation drops to 2.6%.
The Reserve Bank will release its updated forecasts after its next policy meeting on August 12, when it is also expected to cut interest rates.
Better monthly inflation data on the way
The Reserve Bank governor has made clear she regards the quarterly inflation series as a better guide than the current monthly series. At her May press conference she said:
We get four readings on inflation a year.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics has announced it is upgrading the monthly consumer price index (CPI) with effect from the October 2025 reading. It will then have the same coverage as the current quarterly CPI. But it will still be a more volatile measure than the quarterly.
The bank will go through a learning experience becoming familiar with the new monthly series.
Yarramalong Weir is one of many barriers to the passage of fish in the Murray-Darling Basin.Geoff Reid, One Basin CRC
A report card into the A$13 billion Murray–Darling Basin Plan has found much work is needed to ensure the ecology of Australia’s largest river system is properly restored.
The assessment, by the Murray–Darling Basin Authority, is the most comprehensive to date.
The authority says the river system is doing better now than it would have without the plan, which aims to ensure sustainable water use for the environment, communities and industries. But it found there is more to be done.
We are water, economics and environmental researchers with many years of experience working in the Murray-Darling Basin. We agree more work is needed, but with a more local focus, to restore the basin to health.
This requires more than just more water for the environment. Coordinated local efforts to restore rivers and the surrounding land are desperately needed. There’s so much more to the river system than just the water it contains.
Preparing for the 2026 Basin Plan Review (Murray–Darling Basin Authority)
What’s the plan?
The Murray-Darling Basin is Australia’s food bowl. But for too long, the health of environment was in decline – rivers were sick and wildlife was suffering. The river stopped flowing naturally to the sea because too much water was being taken from it.
Poor land management has also degraded the river system over time. Floodplain vegetation has been damaged, the river channel has been re-engineered, and pest plants and animals have been introduced.
The Murray-Darling Basin Plan was established in 2012. It aimed to recover water for the environment and safeguard the long-term health of the river system, while continuing to support productive agriculture and communities. It demanded more water for the environment and then described how this water would be delivered, in the form of targeted “environmental flows”.
Since 2012, the allocation of water to various uses has gradually changed. So far, 2,069 billion litres (gigalitres) of surface water has been recovered for the environment. Combined with other earlier water recovery, a total of about 28% of water previously diverted for agriculture, towns and industry is now being used by the environment instead.
A mixed report card
The evaluation released today is the first step towards a complete review of the plan next year. The 2026 review will make recommendations to Environment and Water Minister Murray Watt. It will then be up to him to decide whether any changes are needed.
It is a mixed report card. Ecological decline has been successfully halted at many sites. But sustained restoration of ecosystems across the basin is yet to be achieved, and native fish populations are in poor condition across 19 of the basin’s 23 catchments.
Climate change is putting increasing pressure on water resources. More intense and frequent extreme climate events and an average 20–30% less streamflow (up to 50% in some rivers) are expected by mid-century.
The evaluation also called for better policy and program design. Specifically, flexible programs have proven more effective than prescriptive, highly regulated programs.
Finally, the report also highlights that the cost of water reform is increasing.
Direct buybacks of water licences, mostly from irrigators, account for around two-thirds of the water recovered for the environment under the basin plan. Buybacks are the simplest and most cost-effective way to recover water but are controversial because of concerns about social and economic impacts.
Much of the remaining water has been recovered through investment in more efficient water supply infrastructure, with water savings reserved for environmental use.
The authority suggests different approaches will be needed for additional water recovery.
Having plenty of native vegetation on river banks is important for river health. Geoff Reid, One Basin CRC
Healthy rivers need more than water
For the past two decades, measures to restore the Murray-Darling Basin have focused largely on water recovery. But research suggests attention now needs to be paid to other, more local actions.
In March, one author of this article – Samantha Capon – identified nine priority actions to restore Australia’s inland river and groundwater ecosystems at local levels. They included:
revegetating land alongside waterways
retiring some farmland
modifying barriers to fish movements
installing modern fish screens on irrigation pumps.
The study estimated such actions would cost around A$2.9 billion a year, if completed over the next 30 years.
Works to restore vegetation or other environmental conditions at these critical habitats will only occur with landholders, as well as Traditional Owners.
That’s because most of the basin’s wetlands and floodplain areas are on private property, including in irrigation districts.
Irrigator involvement is needed to place fish screens on private irrigation pumps or retire farmland. There is a growing interest and some early experience in using private irrigation channels to deliver environmental water. This also requires local partnerships.
The basin plan should include targets for environmental outcomes, not just water recovery. This will allow the benefits from local restoration measures and environmental flows to be included when tracking the plan.
Such ecosystem accounting tools already exist. Research is urgently needed to make these tools both locally relevant and suitable for the basin plan.
Time for a local approach
To date, water for the environment under the basin plan has been recovered largely through centralised government-led programs. Decisions around the delivery of environmental flows are also largely in the hands of government agencies.
But other local restoration actions are also needed.
A business-as-usual approach would leave responsible agencies struggling to complete these vital local measures with limited funding, resources and accountability.
Michael Stewardson is a member of the Advisory Committee on Social, Economic and Environmental Science, which advises the Murray Darling Basin Authority,, although he is not representing the views of this committee in this article. The committee is established under Section 203 of the Water Act 2007.
Michael Stewardson is the CEO of the One Basin CRC, which is jointly funded under the commonwealth Cooperative Research Centre Program and by its partners listed here: https://onebasin.com.au/
These partners include: state and federal government agencies including the Murray Darling Basin Authority; irrigation infrastructure operators (government owned and non-government), natural resource management agencies (government and non-government); agriculture businesses, industry organisation and R&D organisations; local government organisations; consulting companies in the water sector; technology companies; education and training organisations; and research organisation. Partners contribute to the One Basin CRC in the form of in-kind and cash contributions. The One Basin CRC is also funded by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Office under its FlowMER program. The views in this article do not necessarily represent the views of these partner and funding organisations.
Michael Stewardson has previously received research funding from the Australian Research Council and both state and federal government agencies.
Neville Crossman is a Program Leader for Adaptation and Innovation in the One Basin CRC. He is a past employee of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (2018-2024). He has worked closely with a range of State and federal government agencies and many researchers, industry and community members in the Murray-Darling Basin throughout his career.
Samantha Capon receives funding from the federal Department of Climate Change, Energy Efficiency, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW), NSW DCCEEW, the Cotton Research and Development Corporation. She is a member of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s Advisory Committee for Social, Economic and Environmental Science (ACSEES), but is not representing the view of this committee in this article. Samantha has worked closely with NRM agencies, a range of State and federal government agencies and many researchers, industry and community members in the Murray-Darling Basin throughout her career.
Seth Westra is the Research Director for the One Basin CRC. He receives funding from the federal Department of Climate Change, Energy Efficiency, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW), NSW DCCEEW and the South Australian Department for Environment and Water (DEW). Seth is Research Director of the One Basin Cooperative Research Centre, Director of the Systems Cooperative, and has worked closely with NRM agencies, a range of State and federal government agencies and many researchers, industry and community members in the Murray-Darling Basin throughout his career.
Climate change “imperils all forms of life” and countries must tackle the problem or face consequences under international law, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has found.
The court delivered its long-awaited advisory opinion overnight. The momentous case opens the door for countries impacted by climate disasters to sue major emitting countries for reparations.
And citizens could seek to hold governments to account for a failure to safeguard their human rights if their own or other countries fail to take adequate action to ensure a safe climate.
Here’s what the court ruled – and the global ramifications likely to flow from it.
Vanuatu’s Climate Change Minister Ralph Regenvanu delivers a speech at a demonstration before the International Court of Justice issued its first advisory opinion on state’s legal obligations to address climate change. John Thys/AFP
Climate change breaches human rights
The ICJ case was instigated by law students at the University of the South Pacific in Vanuatu in 2019. They successfully launched a campaign for the court to examine two key issues: the obligations of countries to protect the climate from greenhouse gases, and the legal consequences for failing to do so.
The court found a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is essential for the enjoyment of many other human rights. As such, it found, the full enjoyment of human rights cannot be ensured without the protection of the climate system and other parts of the environment.
The ruling confirms climate change is much more than a legal problem. Rather, the justices concluded, it is an:
existential problem of planetary proportions that imperils all forms of life and the very health of our planet.
Most nations have signed up to global human rights agreements such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The ICJ ruling means parties to those agreements must take measures to protect the climate system and other parts of the environment.
An advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice is not legally binding. But it is an authoritative description of the state of the law and the rights of countries to seek reparations if the law is breached. As such, it carries great legal weight.
Just as climate science assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have become the gold standard for understanding the causes and impacts of climate change, the court’s ruling provides a clear baseline against which to assess countries’ action, or inaction, on climate change.
Keeping 1.5°C alive?
In recent years, many states’ emissions reduction targets under the Paris Agreement have seemed to “settle” at levels which would hold global temperature increases to 2°C at best.
But the International Court of Justice ruled the much more ambitious 1.5°C goal had become the scientifically based consensus target under the Paris Agreement.
Some countries argued formal emissions targets should be left to the discretion of each government. However, the court found against this. Rather, each nation’s targets had to be in line with – and make an adequate contribution to – the global goal of holding heating to 1.5°C.
The court found each state’s emissions reduction pledges should be judged against a stringent “due diligence” standard. The standard takes into account each country’s historical contributions to emissions, level of development and national circumstances, among other factors.
The ruling means rich countries, such as Australia, will be required under international law to make more ambitious emission-reduction pledges under the Paris Agreement, such as for the 2035 target currently under consideration by the Albanese government.
The court decision also provides a measure of climate justice for small island states, which have historically low emissions but face a much higher risk of damage from climate change than other nations.
Holding states accountable for inaction
Because climate change is global, it is difficult – but not impossible – to attribute damage from extreme weather to the actions of any one nation or group of nations.
On this question, the court said while climate change is caused by the cumulative impact of many human activities, it is scientifically possible to determine each nation’s total contribution to global emissions, taking into account both historical and current emissions.
If a nation experiences damage caused by the failure of another nation, or group of nations, to fulfil international climate obligations, the ruling means legal proceedings may be launched against the nations causing the harm. It may result in compensation or other remedies.
For small, climate-vulnerable nations such as those in the Alliance of Small Island States, this opens more legal options in their efforts to encourage high-emitting nations to properly address climate change.
Importantly, the court made clear nations can be legally liable even if damage from climate change comes from many causes, including from the activities of private actors such as companies.
That means nations cannot seek an exemption because others have contributed to the problem. They must also act to regulate companies and other entities under their jurisdiction whose activities contribute to climate change.
One line of argument put to the court by Australia and other states was that climate treaties represented the only obligations to tackle climate change under international law.
But the court found this was not the case. Rather, other international laws applied.
The United States pulled out of the Paris Agreement earlier this year. The court’s opinion means the US and other nations are still accountable for climate harms under other international laws by which all countries are bound.
Could this lead to greater climate action?
The International Court of Justice has produced a truly historic ruling.
It will set a new baseline in terms what countries need to do to address climate change and opens up new avenues of recourse against high-emitting states not doing enough on climate change.
Jacqueline Peel receives funding from the Australian Research Council under her Australian Laureate Fellowship and Kathleen Fitzpatrick Award on ‘Transforming International Law for Corporate Climate Accountability’.
The Albanese government has today confirmed it will lift biosecurity restrictions on beef imports from the United States. The timing of this decision has raised some eyebrows.
Back in April, US President Donald Trump had singled out what he characterised as an Australian “ban” on US beef as he announced 10% baseline tariffs on imports from Australia.
Responding to today’s announcement, Nationals leader David Littleproud said it appeared the restrictions have been “traded away to appease Donald Trump”.
But Trade Minister Don Farrell said there was “nothing suspicious about this”. And some Australian industry groups have since expressed their confidence in the decision.
So, has Australia’s beef industry been sold out for the benefit of a trade deal? Or is it just a poorly timed announcement at the end of a review into Australia’s restrictions?
Biosecurity concerns
Australia’s biosecurity rules, particularly around beef products, have long been a source of friction with the United States. These rules date back to the late 1990s and were strengthened following a US mad cow disease scare in 2003.
In 2019, a ban was lifted on beef products from cattle that had been born, raised and slaughtered in the US. However, a ban remained on any products from cattle originating in Mexico or Canada that had been slaughtered in the US.
This was a cause for some tension, because the traceability requirements in the US were not as stringent as in Australia. That meant it wasn’t always possible to determine the origins of US products. So the 2019 change effectively only applied to shelf-stable products – not fresh meat.
Last month, the Albanese government made assurances Australia’s biosecurity rules wouldn’t be compromised in trade negotiations. But it also confirmed a review of the rules was underway.
The National Farmers’ Federation acknowledged the government’s decision in a statement today:
The report released today is the result of a long-standing, science-based review by the Australian Government into the biosecurity risks posed by cattle raised in Canada and Mexico, but processed in and exported from the US.
Speaking on ABC Radio, Cattle Australia chief executive Will Evans acknowledged “a lot of people” may feel “blindsided” by the government’s decision, but expressed his confidence in the government’s process.
That poses the question: how much do we actually need beef from the US? Is it even worth lifting this ban, if it will impact so few people?
The beef industry might be fair to question whether this is for the benefit of their industry, when it seems the existing 10% baseline tariffs have had no impact on the volumes of beef being exported from Australia. Quite the opposite.
In addition, it is important to recognise the US tariffs on beef would theoretically be absorbed by the consumer, rather than the exporter.
The trade war rages on
Theory suggests that international trade is a good thing (though not everyone is a “winner”). Where there is trade between nations, competitive pricing is encouraged and consumers may enjoy more product variety.
Most restrictions on trade are viewed unfavourably by economists, but there are some notable exceptions. The health and safety of food products and assurance of biosecurity standards are such concerns.
Overnight, comments from the Trump administration suggest the 10% tariffs on imports from Australia could be raised, with a new baseline tariff rate of 15%.
Consequently, any new US tariff would violate these terms, threatening a trade relationship that has seen beef exports to the US flourish.
Is our reputation on the line?
It is important to note that the biosecurity rules in Australia and the traceability requirements for our producers are a point of national pride.
Central to Australia’s biosecurity framework is the Biosecurity Act 2015 and the National Livestock Identification System, which ensures traceability, food safety, disease control and animal welfare.
This imposes strict requirements on Australian beef producers – and as a result, imposes costs. It also means Australian beef is considered a premium product in much of the world.
Australians should hope the evidence from the government’s review fully supports this action.
Given the unpredictability of the Trump administration, it remains to be seen whether lifting these restrictions will win Australia any concessions on trade anyway.
Felicity Deane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milad Haghani, Associate Professor & Principal Fellow in Urban Risk & Resilience, The University of Melbourne
So what was once a niche summer thrill has become a more mainstream recreational activity, particularly for young Australians.
As the number of jet skis on our waterways grows, so too will the risks.
How often do accidents happen?
Most jet ski crashes occur in daylight hours, are twice as likely on weekends, and tend to spike during warmer months. Injuries typically happen close to shore (often within 50 metres) where crowded conditions increase the risk of colliding with other vessels, swimmers or fixed obstacles.
Fatal jet ski accidents in Australia have claimed the lives of riders, passengers, swimmers and kayakers.
Across New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, there are up to three deaths per 100,000 licence holders. There are an estimated 19–26 serious injuries per 100,000 licence holders, depending on the state.
But these figures likely understate the true picture as many non-fatal injuries go unreported unless hospitalised.
For example, data from research sponsored by the United States Coast Guard suggest that for every moderate injury captured in accident reports, more than 30 actually occur. For every severe injury, it’s likely 1.65 actually occur.
Recreational riders often typically travel at 60–80 kilometres per hour. But these machines can reach speeds above 100km/h. This can generate immense force in the event of a collision.
In a crash, riders are ejected from the jet ski or collide directly with water, the craft, another vessel or fixed objects. So the leading causes of death and serious injury on jet skis are from these traumatic impacts.
A study from a US trauma centre looked at 127 people injured in jet ski incidents and found most injuries involved broken bones. The legs were most commonly affected, followed by arms, spine and hips.
Hitting the handlebars was a major cause of open fractures (when a broken bone pierces the skin), some of which later became infected.
Children also face unique and often severe risks. A US study looked at 66 children hospitalised in jet ski accidents. It found most were boys with the average age of around 12 years old, and nearly three-quarters operated the jet ski themselves. About 70% of injuries involved collisions with another vessel or object. Four children died, all from head trauma after crashing into stationary objects. More than 40% were left with some degree of disability.
What now?
The risks from jet skis are real and too often underestimated. But many injuries can be prevented:
we need public education campaigns to remind riders of the risks and to promote better behaviour. This would remind riders to slow down in congested areas, avoid reckless turns, and be especially careful with passengers. As alcohol is a common factor in crashes, drinking in moderation before riding should also be stressed
women are recommended to wear neoprene protective shorts, or wetsuits, instead of ordinary swimwear. A growing number of medical professionals are now backing this as essential safety gear, not optional, to reduce the risk of perineal injuries from water jets
manufacturers can redesign handlebars to reduce the severity of impact injuries. They can also build in safeguards that reduce jet pressure when no one is seated at the rear (to safeguard the health of a passenger who falls off backwards)
states also need consistent rules on minimum rider age, training and licensing. The laws vary widely. These inconsistent regulations create confusion and loopholes, especially when riders cross borders.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Balinese officials have begun the demolition of more than 40 businesses at Bingin Beach, a popular tourist spot in the Uluwatu region.
In June, the Balinese House of Representatives determined the settlement is on public land, and is therefore illegal and needs to be demolished. But I’d argue it doesn’t.
The ‘illegal’ settlement
The Bingin Beach coastal settlement began development in the 1970s as an informal surfer hub at the base of a steep escarpment. The beach is a few hundred metres long and largely disappears at high tide.
Originally lined with a string of makeshift warungs (small food stores) and cheap accommodations, the settlement has grown incrementally over the decades, up and along the escarpment, with an intensive mix of surf shops, restaurants and small hotels.
The steepness of the slope precludes vehicle access. The only public access is via two somewhat narrow pedestrian stairways.
While it initially served the surfer community, the settlement now caters to a broader tourist market, with some rooms going for upwards of US$150 per night.
But after more than 50 years of incremental development, the House of Representatives has declared the settlement was illegally constructed on state land, and has ordered the demolition of 45 buildings – effectively the entire settlement.
While most of the buildings seem highly durable, the demolition order is based on illegality, and not durability. A spokesperson for the traders argues most of the businesses are locally owned, and livelihoods are at stake.
The ‘legal’ settlement
The former farmland at the top of the escarpment is also covered with tourist developments that mostly emerged since 2010, and now extend up to a kilometre inland. This is a much more familiar landscape for Bali: a mix of walled hotel compounds and private villas, with manicured gardens and swimming pools.
However, one could scarcely call this larger settlement “planned”. Shops and restaurants emerge wherever they can find a market along the narrow roads. There are no sidewalks and pedestrians are constantly engaged in an anxious game of negotiated passing.
The infrastructure of roads and lanes has also been designed incrementally, across the former farm fields, as the settlement developed. The resulting street network is convoluted and largely unwalkable. The most common street sign is “no beach access this way”.
What is informality?
I’m an academic, architect and urban planner who studies informal settlements and informal urbanism more generally. In this context “informal” can mean illegal, makeshift and unplanned, but it can also mean incremental, adaptive and inventive.
Informal settlement is the means by which a large proportion of Indonesians produce affordable housing. It is also the most traditional form of indigenous housing globally.
After many decades of governments trying to demolish such settlements, the overwhelming consensus across the United Nations Human Settlements Programme is that wholesale demolition is rarely an answer. On-site formalisation and upgrading is the more sustainable pathway.
When engaging with informal settlements, we need to preserve the infrastructures that work and only demolish where necessary. The Bingin Beach escarpment settlement has proven sustainable and has become an integral part of the local heritage.
Its demolition will destroy livelihoods and displace the surfing market, while feathering other nests.
So why is it being demolished? Perhaps to clear the ground for the next round of up-market resorts – what urban studies research calls “accumulation by disposession”. Bingin is widely seen as a major real estate hotspot for investment.
What is overdevelopment?
One of the key dangers of informal settlement is “overdevelopment”. Without
formal planning codes, density can escalate to destroy the very attraction that produced the settlement.
Most buildings along the Bingin Beach escarpment are two to four storeys, and step back with the slope of the escarpment. The exception is the 2019 addition of the Morabito Art Cliff hotel that rises more than six storeys, obscuring the natural landscape, blocking views, and setting a precedent for more of the same.
If everyone in the area built like this, the Bingin settlement would be replaced with a cliff of buildings. To demolish this one building would set a useful precedent of containing the settlement to a sustainable scale.
The Impossibles dream
A few hundred metres south-west of Bingin Beach, a different story unfolds near the beach known as Impossibles. Here, a precarious limestone cliff largely precludes access to the beach, and the clifftop has long been lined with low-rise tourist compounds.
An aeriel view of the Uluwatu coast shows Bingin Beach and the Impossibles. Map data: Google, 2025 Maxar Technologies
This earlier layer of development is now being demolished and replaced with larger, denser resorts as part of the Amali project which claims a “rare cliff-front location”. The location is “rare” because about half of the 50-metre-high cliff has been excavated to construct villa units quite literally in the cliff.
This excavation was well underway when, in May 2024, it caused much of the remaining natural cliff face to collapse onto the beach and into the ocean. It remains unclear whether the excavation was formally approved. Either way, it prompts the question: what if everyone did that?
The Bingin escarpment and the Impossibles cliff face represent very different kinds of development. One is incremental, irregular and geared to its social and environmental context, while the other is large-grain and environmentally destructive. It makes no sense to demolish the former in order to make way for the latter.
It is imperative to not only save the Bingin Beach settlement, which is part of Bali’s surfing heritage, but also to awaken from the impossible dream of building more and more villas on this fragile and limited coastland.
Kim Dovey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The world’s highest court says countries are legally obliged to prevent harms caused by climate change, in a ruling that repudiates Australia’s claims it is not legally responsible for emissions from our fossil fuel exports.
The landmark ruling overnight by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) will reverberate in courts, parliaments and boardrooms the world over.
In a closely watched case at The Hague, the judges were asked to clarify the legal obligations countries have to protect the Earth’s climate system for current and future generations. They were also asked to clarify the legal consequences for nations that fail to do this.
But the court disagreed. It found countries have additional obligations to protect the climate and take action to prevent climate harm inside and outside their boundaries. These obligations arise in human rights law, the law of the sea, and general principles of international law.
This clear statement will have groundbreaking consequences. It means Australia must set a 2035 emissions reduction target in line with the best available science, as required under the Paris Agreement. But it must also go further, by regulating the fossil fuel industry to prevent further harm.
While weighing up the obligations of countries to address the climate crisis, the court heard legal arguments from almost 100 countries, making it the largest case ever heard by the ICJ.
The case threatened major implications for fossil-fuel producers such as Australia, which is heavily reliant on coal and gas exports.
In his oral presentation to the ICJ, Australian Solicitor-General Stephen Donaghue told the court only the Paris Agreement should apply when it comes to mitigating climate change. Under the Paris rules, countries must set targets to cut domestic emissions, but they are not required to report emissions created when their fossil fuel exports are burned overseas.
Donaghue and the Australian delegation also suggested responsibility for harms caused by climate change could not be pinned on individual states. Australia also argued protecting human rights does not extend to obligations to tackle climate change.
The ICJ largely rejected these arguments.
The ICJ judges largely rejected Australia’s arguments. Pictured: ICJ President Yuji Iwasawa (third from right) and members issuing their advisory opinion. JOHN THYS/AFP via Getty Images
Fossil fuel era is over
The court found Australia, and other fossil fuel producers, are obliged under international law to prevent fossil fuel companies in their territory from causing significant climate harm.
This will essentially require a managed phase out of fossil fuel production. As the ICJ ruling says:
Failure of a State to take appropriate action to protect the climate system from [greenhouse gas] emissions – including through fossil fuel production, fossil fuel consumption, the granting of fossil fuel exploration licences or the provision of fossil fuel subsidies – may constitute an internationally wrongful act which is attributable to that State.
Australia has approved hundreds of oil, gas and coal projects in recent decades. Dozens more are in the approvals pipeline. Final federal approval is still pending for Woodside’s massive Northwest Shelf gas project – which is set to add millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions every year, for decades.
The Australian government must heed the message from the Hague. The days of impunity for the fossil fuel industry are coming to an end.
Woodside’s massive Northwest Shelf gas project is set to add millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions every year. GREG WOOD/AFP via Getty Images
A spark of hope from the Pacific
Today’s ruling is remarkable for where it originated.
In 2019, 27 law students at the University of the South Pacific in Vanuatu were given a challenge: find the most ambitious legal pathways towards climate justice.
Each year, Vanuatu faces the prospect of cyclones, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, flooding rain and drought. Climate change compounds the risk to island communities – people who have done the least to contribute to the problem.
The students decided to file a case with the world court. And so began a legal campaign that travelled from Vanuatu’s capital, Port Vila, through the halls of the United Nations in New York and to the world court in the Hague.
In 2023 Vanuatu and other island nations succeeded in passing a UN General Assembly resolution. It asked the ICJ to give an advisory opinion on countries’ obligations to protect the climate system and legal consequences for states causing “significant harm” to Earth’s climate.
This week’s ruling delivers poetic justice to Vanuatu and other vulnerable island states.
The ruling delivers poetic justice to Vanuatu and other vulnerable island states. Pictured: representatives of Pacific states outside the International Court of Justice in December 2024. Michel Porro/Getty Images
A new era for climate justice
The court’s findings are likely to influence a wave of climate litigation worldwide. It could shape legal reasoning in Australia, too.
Last week, a Federal Court judge found the Australian government has no legal duty of care to protect Torres Strait Islanders from climate change. If that case is appealed, a superior court may revisit the government’s obligations – and have regard to the ICJ ruling in doing so.
The ICJ decision will also be relevant for the Queensland Land Court, which this week began hearing a challenge to stop a greenfield mine proposed by Whitehaven Coal – citing environmental and human rights impacts of the project’s emissions.
Clarified international law obligations should also guide policymakers in the Australian parliament. With a huge majority in the House of Representatives and a climate-friendly Senate crossbench, the Albanese government has a mandate to implement policy in line with Australia’s international law obligations.
Wesley Morgan is a fellow with the Climate Council of Australia
Gillian Moon is a regular donor to the Australian Conservation Foundation, which is a party in the Whitehaven Coal case.
ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on July 24, 2025.
World’s highest court issues groundbreaking ruling for climate action. Here’s what it means for Australia Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wesley Morgan, Research Associate, Institute for Climate Risk and Response, UNSW Sydney JOHN THYS/AFP via Getty Images The world’s highest court says countries are legally obliged to prevent harms caused by climate change, in a ruling that repudiates Australia’s claims it is not legally responsible for emissions
Politics with Michelle Grattan: Chris Bowen on why it’s ‘a little frustrating’ bidding for COP 31 Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Energy and climate issues are front and centre for both sides of politics. The government is struggling with pushback from some regional communities against the rollout of transmission lines and wind farms. At the same time, it will soon have
Cycling’s governing body is introducing new rules to slow down elite riders. Not everyone’s happy Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Popi Sotiriadou, Associate Professor of Sport Management – Director Business Innovation, Griffith University MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP via Getty Images Most sports look to support their athletes to become “faster, higher, stronger” – in reference to the Olympic Games’ original motto – so it is perhaps surprising that cycling’s
Swirling nebula of two dying stars revealed in spectacular detail in new Webb telescope image Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Pope, Associate Professor, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University The day before my thesis examination, my friend and radio astronomer Joe Callingham showed me an image we’d been awaiting for five long years – an infrared photo of two dying stars we’d requested from
UN’s highest court finds countries can be held legally responsible for emissions By Jamie Tahana in The Hague for RNZ Pacific The United Nations’ highest court has found that countries can be held legally responsible for their greenhouse gas emissions, in a ruling highly anticipated by Pacific countries long frustrated with the pace of global action to address climate change. In a landmark opinion delivered yesterday in
Five arms, no heart and a global family: what DNA revealed about the weird deep-sea world of brittle stars Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim O’Hara, Senior Curator of Marine Invertebrates, Museums Victoria Research Institute A brittle star of the species _Gorgonocephalus eucnemis_. Lagunatic Photo / Getty Images You may have read that the deep sea is a very different environment from the land and shallow water. There is no light,
Birds use hidden black and white feathers to make themselves more colourful Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Griffith, Professor of Avian Behavioural Ecology, Macquarie University The green-headed tanager (_Tangara seledon_) has a hidden layer of plumage that is white underneath the orange feathers and black underneath the blue and green feathers. Daniel Field Birds are perhaps the most colourful group of animals, bringing
Is sleeping a lot actually bad for your health? A sleep scientist explains Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charlotte Gupta, Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Appleton Institute, HealthWise Research Group, CQUniversity Australia Walstrom, Susanne/Getty We’re constantly being reminded by news articles and social media posts that we should be getting more sleep. You probably don’t need to hear it again – not sleeping enough is bad
From grasslands to killing fields: why trees are bad news for one of Australia’s most stunning birds Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gabriel Crowley, Adjunct Associate Professor in Geography, University of Adelaide JJ Harrison/Wikimedia, CC BY Picture this. A small, rainbow-coloured chick emerges from its nest for the first time. It stretches its wings and prepares to take flight. But before the fledgling’s life in the wild has begun,
As seas rise and fish decline, this Fijian village is finding new ways to adapt Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Celia McMichael, Professor in Geography, The University of Melbourne Celia McMichael, CC BY-NC-ND In the village of Nagigi, Fiji, the ocean isn’t just a resource – it’s part of the community’s identity. But in recent years, villagers have seen the sea behave differently. Tides are pushing inland.
After 70 years, twisted gothic thriller The Night of the Hunter remains as disturbing and beguiling as ever Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, University of Adelaide United Artists/Getty Images In 1955, director Charles Laughton crafted one of the darkest, strangest fairytales ever to come out of Hollywood. The Night of the Hunter remains visually exquisite and profoundly unsettling. Shortly before Ben Harper is
Almost a third of NZ households face energy hardship – reform has to go beyond cheaper off-peak power Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kimberley O’Sullivan, Senior Research Fellow, He Kainga Oranga – Housing and Health Research Programme, University of Otago Igor Suka/Getty Images The spotlight is again on New Zealand’s energy sector, with a group of industry bodies and independent retailers pushing for a market overhaul, saying the sector was
How the UK’s immigration system splits families apart – by design Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nando Sigona, Professor of International Migration and Forced Displacement and Director of the Institute for Research into International Migration and Superdiversity, University of Birmingham arda savasciogullari/Shutterstock The letter that arrived for eleven-year-old Guilherme in June 2025 was addressed personally to him. The UK Home Office was informing
4.48 Psychosis revival: the play’s window into a mind on the edge is as brutal as ever Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Sidi, Associate Professor of Health Humanities, UCL Under bright lights, the audience looks at a bare stage on two planes. Below, a small stage is white and empty, occupied only by a table and two chairs. Above, a huge, slanted mirror reflects a bird’s-eye view of
Togo’s ‘Nana-Benz’: how cheap Chinese imports of African fabrics has hurt the famous women traders Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fidele B. Ebia, Postdoctoral fellow, Duke Africa Initiative, Duke University The manufacturing of African print textiles has shifted to China in the 21st century. While they are widely consumed in African countries – and symbolic of the continent – the rise of “made in China” has undermined
2 ways cities can beat the heat: Which is best, urban trees or cool roofs? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Smith, Research Scientist in Earth & Environment, Boston University Trees like these in Boston can help keep neighborhoods cooler on hot days. Yassine Khalfalli/Unsplash, CC BY When summer turns up the heat, cities can start to feel like an oven, as buildings and pavement trap the
Indonesian military set to complete Trans-Papua Highway under Prabowo’s rule By Julian Isaac The Indonesian Military (TNI) is committed to supporting the completion of the Trans-Papua Highway during President Prabowo Subianto’s term in office. While the military is not involved in construction, it plays a critical role in securing the project from threats posed by pro-independence Papuan resistance groups in “high-risk” regions. Spanning a total
View from The Hill: Nationals’ mavericks ensure the Coalition is the issue in parliament’s first week Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra For almost as long anyone can remember, the Nationals have caused the Coalition grief on climate and energy policy. Still, for Barnaby Joyce to bring on a fresh load of trouble – with a private member’s bill to scrap Australia’s
Childcare centres will have funding stripped if they’re not ‘up to scratch’. Is this enough? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erin Harper, Lecturer, School of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney Maskot/Getty Images Childcare centres will lose their eligibility for fee subsidies if they don’t meet safety standards, according to a new bill introduced to parliament on Wednesday. As Education Minister Jason Clare told parliament: it
ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on July 24, 2025.
World’s highest court issues groundbreaking ruling for climate action. Here’s what it means for Australia Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wesley Morgan, Research Associate, Institute for Climate Risk and Response, UNSW Sydney JOHN THYS/AFP via Getty Images The world’s highest court says countries are legally obliged to prevent harms caused by climate change, in a ruling that repudiates Australia’s claims it is not legally responsible for emissions
Politics with Michelle Grattan: Chris Bowen on why it’s ‘a little frustrating’ bidding for COP 31 Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Energy and climate issues are front and centre for both sides of politics. The government is struggling with pushback from some regional communities against the rollout of transmission lines and wind farms. At the same time, it will soon have
Cycling’s governing body is introducing new rules to slow down elite riders. Not everyone’s happy Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Popi Sotiriadou, Associate Professor of Sport Management – Director Business Innovation, Griffith University MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP via Getty Images Most sports look to support their athletes to become “faster, higher, stronger” – in reference to the Olympic Games’ original motto – so it is perhaps surprising that cycling’s
Swirling nebula of two dying stars revealed in spectacular detail in new Webb telescope image Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Pope, Associate Professor, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University The day before my thesis examination, my friend and radio astronomer Joe Callingham showed me an image we’d been awaiting for five long years – an infrared photo of two dying stars we’d requested from
UN’s highest court finds countries can be held legally responsible for emissions By Jamie Tahana in The Hague for RNZ Pacific The United Nations’ highest court has found that countries can be held legally responsible for their greenhouse gas emissions, in a ruling highly anticipated by Pacific countries long frustrated with the pace of global action to address climate change. In a landmark opinion delivered yesterday in
Five arms, no heart and a global family: what DNA revealed about the weird deep-sea world of brittle stars Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim O’Hara, Senior Curator of Marine Invertebrates, Museums Victoria Research Institute A brittle star of the species _Gorgonocephalus eucnemis_. Lagunatic Photo / Getty Images You may have read that the deep sea is a very different environment from the land and shallow water. There is no light,
Birds use hidden black and white feathers to make themselves more colourful Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Griffith, Professor of Avian Behavioural Ecology, Macquarie University The green-headed tanager (_Tangara seledon_) has a hidden layer of plumage that is white underneath the orange feathers and black underneath the blue and green feathers. Daniel Field Birds are perhaps the most colourful group of animals, bringing
Is sleeping a lot actually bad for your health? A sleep scientist explains Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charlotte Gupta, Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Appleton Institute, HealthWise Research Group, CQUniversity Australia Walstrom, Susanne/Getty We’re constantly being reminded by news articles and social media posts that we should be getting more sleep. You probably don’t need to hear it again – not sleeping enough is bad
From grasslands to killing fields: why trees are bad news for one of Australia’s most stunning birds Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gabriel Crowley, Adjunct Associate Professor in Geography, University of Adelaide JJ Harrison/Wikimedia, CC BY Picture this. A small, rainbow-coloured chick emerges from its nest for the first time. It stretches its wings and prepares to take flight. But before the fledgling’s life in the wild has begun,
As seas rise and fish decline, this Fijian village is finding new ways to adapt Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Celia McMichael, Professor in Geography, The University of Melbourne Celia McMichael, CC BY-NC-ND In the village of Nagigi, Fiji, the ocean isn’t just a resource – it’s part of the community’s identity. But in recent years, villagers have seen the sea behave differently. Tides are pushing inland.
After 70 years, twisted gothic thriller The Night of the Hunter remains as disturbing and beguiling as ever Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, University of Adelaide United Artists/Getty Images In 1955, director Charles Laughton crafted one of the darkest, strangest fairytales ever to come out of Hollywood. The Night of the Hunter remains visually exquisite and profoundly unsettling. Shortly before Ben Harper is
Almost a third of NZ households face energy hardship – reform has to go beyond cheaper off-peak power Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kimberley O’Sullivan, Senior Research Fellow, He Kainga Oranga – Housing and Health Research Programme, University of Otago Igor Suka/Getty Images The spotlight is again on New Zealand’s energy sector, with a group of industry bodies and independent retailers pushing for a market overhaul, saying the sector was
How the UK’s immigration system splits families apart – by design Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nando Sigona, Professor of International Migration and Forced Displacement and Director of the Institute for Research into International Migration and Superdiversity, University of Birmingham arda savasciogullari/Shutterstock The letter that arrived for eleven-year-old Guilherme in June 2025 was addressed personally to him. The UK Home Office was informing
4.48 Psychosis revival: the play’s window into a mind on the edge is as brutal as ever Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Sidi, Associate Professor of Health Humanities, UCL Under bright lights, the audience looks at a bare stage on two planes. Below, a small stage is white and empty, occupied only by a table and two chairs. Above, a huge, slanted mirror reflects a bird’s-eye view of
Togo’s ‘Nana-Benz’: how cheap Chinese imports of African fabrics has hurt the famous women traders Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fidele B. Ebia, Postdoctoral fellow, Duke Africa Initiative, Duke University The manufacturing of African print textiles has shifted to China in the 21st century. While they are widely consumed in African countries – and symbolic of the continent – the rise of “made in China” has undermined
2 ways cities can beat the heat: Which is best, urban trees or cool roofs? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Smith, Research Scientist in Earth & Environment, Boston University Trees like these in Boston can help keep neighborhoods cooler on hot days. Yassine Khalfalli/Unsplash, CC BY When summer turns up the heat, cities can start to feel like an oven, as buildings and pavement trap the
Indonesian military set to complete Trans-Papua Highway under Prabowo’s rule By Julian Isaac The Indonesian Military (TNI) is committed to supporting the completion of the Trans-Papua Highway during President Prabowo Subianto’s term in office. While the military is not involved in construction, it plays a critical role in securing the project from threats posed by pro-independence Papuan resistance groups in “high-risk” regions. Spanning a total
View from The Hill: Nationals’ mavericks ensure the Coalition is the issue in parliament’s first week Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra For almost as long anyone can remember, the Nationals have caused the Coalition grief on climate and energy policy. Still, for Barnaby Joyce to bring on a fresh load of trouble – with a private member’s bill to scrap Australia’s
Childcare centres will have funding stripped if they’re not ‘up to scratch’. Is this enough? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erin Harper, Lecturer, School of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney Maskot/Getty Images Childcare centres will lose their eligibility for fee subsidies if they don’t meet safety standards, according to a new bill introduced to parliament on Wednesday. As Education Minister Jason Clare told parliament: it
Most sports look to support their athletes to become “faster, higher, stronger” – in reference to the Olympic Games’ original motto – so it is perhaps surprising that cycling’s world governing body is trying to slow down elite riders.
However, there’s good reason the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) recently announced new rules to slow riders down.
These rules – which apply to elite road and cyclo-cross mass-start events for men and women such as the Tour de France – come into place shortly and are aimed at improving rider safety.
From August 1, a new bicycle gearing regulation will kick in.
Professional cyclists will only be allowed to use a 54-tooth front chainring with an 11-tooth rear cog.
This replaces the current common setup of 54-10.
To put this into context, a 54-tooth chainring is the big front gear on a bike and the 11-tooth cog is a small rear gear. Moving to a slightly bigger cog (54-11) makes it harder to hit top speeds: the change from a 54-10 to a 54-11 gear setup could reduce the top speed by about 2.4 kilometres per hour.
Then, from January 1, 2026, handlebars must become wider, increasing from a minimum 350–360 millimetres width (depending on the event) to at least 400mm wide.
The handlebar width affects how a rider controls their bike: narrower bars reduce frontal surface area, making a rider more aerodynamic which again means a faster ride.
This is especially useful in time trials or sprints.
Wider bars offer better stability and control, helping navigate tight turns, peloton traffic, or crosswinds.
The UCI has also announced plans to introduce a formal helmet approval protocol in 2027, which will include separate standards for helmets used in mass-start events and time trials.
This shift suggests helmets may soon be subject to the same pre-race approval process as frames and wheels, potentially leading to safer, more regulated head protection.
As a result, high-speed crashes, especially downhill or in crowded sprint finishes, have become more common and more dangerous.
The UCI maintain the new regulations are part of a broader strategy to mitigate speed-related risks, enhance safety and uphold the integrity of the sport.
However, these measures have sparked debate within the cycling community.
Some elite cyclists, particularly those who have suffered severe crashes and injuries, suggest it is time safety caught up with technology.
Wout van Aert, who suffered a severe knee injury in September 2024 during a wet descent, said:
Limiting the number of gears would make the sport much safer.
The Professional Cycling Council supports testing gear ratio limits.
It is also likely these changes could limit cutting-edge innovations that only wealthy teams can afford. This would in turn narrow technological disparities across teams.
Former pro Michael Barry though believes gear restrictions are not the answer, and the UCI should instead focus on improved course design and inspection, better barriers and crash protective clothing.
Technology experts agree, arguing speed is determined more by a rider’s power output and aerodynamic drag than by gear ratios. To enhance safety, they propose alternative solutions such as real-time rider tracking, crash-protective clothing, improved course design and inspection and faster medical response.
The wider handlebar rule has also stirred controversy, especially among smaller-framed riders, many of whom are women, who typically ride with 360–380mm handlebars for better comfort and control.
Under the new regulation, those forced to use bars that exceed their optimal fit range could end up suffering from poor wrist alignment, increased fatigue and a higher risk of repetitive strain injuries.
Despite the growth of women’s cycling, the UCI has not made exemptions for smaller riders, raising concerns a one-size-fits-all solution may compromise inclusively and safety.
Even though regular riders can continue to use the equipment they prefer, what happens in the pro world often shapes non-elite rider preferences and trends, and the bikes sold in stores. If narrower bars are banned at the top level, manufacturers may stop offering them.
Historically, advancements in aerodynamics, gear ratios and component weights seen in the pro peloton have become standard features on consumer bikes.
A delicate balance
The UCI’s new regulations mark a likely shift towards standardised equipment and heightened safety. This deliberate emphasis on safety naturally elevates awareness among all cyclists about the crucial link between equipment choices and rider wellbeing.
While these restrictions may foster a more level playing field, they also risk curbing the sport’s long-standing tradition of engineering innovation.
The very appeal of professional cycling has often been intrinsically tied to the relentless pursuit of technological advancements that yield even fractional competitive advantages.
Striking a balance between ensuring safety and preserving this spirit of ingenuity remains a crucial challenge for the sport’s future.
Popi Sotiriadou does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Energy and climate issues are front and centre for both sides of politics. The government is struggling with pushback from some regional communities against the rollout of transmission lines and wind farms. At the same time, it will soon have to produce its 2035 target under the Paris climate agreement.
Meanwhile, the opposition is fractured over whether to stick by its commitment to net zero emissions by 2050.
We’re joined on this podcast by the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen.
Bowen remains upbeat about the energy transition:
I think it’s going well. We can always do more, and there’s always more effort needed, and the job is far from done. But when you consider what we’ve achieved over the first three years, I would say pleased but not yet satisfied. We are, by and large, on track for our 43% emissions reduction. Just in the last couple of days, [we saw] some excellent figures about the amount of new renewable electricity connected to the grid.
So all this is a very significant turnaround from 2022, but I’m far from mission accomplished. There’s still a lot more to do. This is the biggest economic transition our country has undertaken, and you don’t sort of do three years’ work and put your feet up. This is a constant effort, and that’s an effort on which I’m entirely focused.
Just now, Bowen is also focused on preliminary work for Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ Economic Reform Roundtable in August.
Bowen announces he’ll be hosting two roundtables of his own, feeding into the broad August 19-21 meeting:
I’ll be holding two roundtables, one on electricity and one on climate adaptation which is going to be an increasing focus of this government and future governments because tragically the world has left it too late to avoid the impacts of climate change. We can hopefully avoid the worst catastrophic impacts of more than 1.5 and two to three degrees.
On Australia’s bid to host COP in 2026, Bowen says Australia has the votes against the other contender, Turkey, but the decision-making process is informal:
So one of the things about the process to decide COPs I’ve learnt is it’s quite opaque and there’s no particular timeline and no particular rules to the ballot. I will say, I’ve said before, we’ve got very strong support. So it’s not a matter of going out and getting more votes.
But there’s no agreed time or process for a ballot. It’s meant to work on a consensus, sort of an old world, sort of gentlemanly approach to say whoever loses will withdraw.
Despite the delay, Bowen says Australia will be ready if the bid is successful:
Having said that, the last COP, the one last year, in Azerbaijan, I accept Azerbaijan is a very different country to Australia, but they found out a year in advance as well. And logistically, physically, they put on a very good COP, that can be done. And I know the Premier of South Australia is a very, very enthusiastic supporter of hosting the COP.
On the Coalition potentially dropping its commitment to net zero by 2050, Bowen calls the target “the basic bare minimum of action”:
It’s what the IPCC has recommended as what is absolutely necessary to avoid […] the worst catastrophic impacts of [climate change]. To be debating net zero 2050 in Australia this year is like debating whether the sun should come up. It’s the most basic framework. It’s nowhere near enough.
I think it’s got strong support, and it’s retaining that. I mean, the election result shows that. That we were told to get on with it. Keep going basically.
I’ll just say this. At least Peter Dutton had net zero as a policy objective. I mean, Sussan may be indicating maybe she won’t. I used to say Peter Dutton would be the worst prime minister for climate than Tony Abbott, and I was correct at the time, but now it’s starting to look like Sussan Ley would be even worse.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Pope, Associate Professor, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University
The day before my thesis examination, my friend and radio astronomer Joe Callingham showed me an image we’d been awaiting for five long years – an infrared photo of two dying stars we’d requested from the Very Large Telescope in Chile.
I gasped – the stars were wreathed in a huge spiral of dust, like a snake eating its own tail.
The coils of Apep as captured by the European Space Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. ESO/Callingham et al., CC BY
We named it Apep, for the Egyptian serpent god of destruction. Now, our team has finally been lucky to use NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to look at Apep.
If anything could top the first shock of seeing its beautiful spiral nebula, it’s this breathtaking new image, with the JWST data now analysed in twopapers on arXiv.
Violent star deaths
Right before they die as supernovae, the universe’s most massive stars violently shed their outer hydrogen layers, leaving their heavy cores exposed.
These are called Wolf-Rayet stars after their discoverers, who noticed powerful streams of gas blasting out from these objects, much stronger than the stellar wind from our Sun. The Wolf-Rayet stage lasts only millennia – a blink of the eye in cosmic time scales – before they violently explode.
Unlike our Sun, many stars in the universe exist in pairs known as binaries. This is especially true of the most massive stars, such as Wolf-Rayets.
When the fierce gales from a Wolf-Rayet star clash with their weaker companion’s wind, they compress each other. In the eye of this storm forms a dense, cool environment in which the carbon-rich winds can condense into dust. The earliest carbon dust in the cosmos – the first of the material making up our own bodies – was made this way.
The dust from the Wolf-Rayet is blown out in almost a straight line, and the orbital motion of the stars wraps it into a spiral-shaped nebula, appearing exactly like water from a sprinkler when viewed from above.
We expected Apep to look like one of these elegant pinwheel nebulas, discovered by our colleague and co-author Peter Tuthill. To our surprise, it did not.
The ‘pinwheel’ nebula of the triple Wolf-Rayet star system WR104. Peter Tuthill
Equal rivals
The new image was taken using JWST’s infrared camera, like the thermal cameras used by hunters or the military. It represents hot material as blue, and colder material in green through to red.
It turns out Apep isn’t just one powerful star blasting a weaker companion, but two Wolf-Rayet stars. The rivals have near-equal strength winds, and the dust is spread out in a very wide cone and wrapped into a wind-sock shape.
When we originally described Apep in 2018, we noted a third, more distant star, speculating whether it was also part of the system or a chance interloper along the line of sight.
The dust appeared to be moving much slower than the winds, which was hard to explain. We suggested the dust might be carried on a slow, thick wind from the equator of a fast-spinning star, rare today but common in the early universe.
The new, much more detailed data from JWST reveals three more dust shells zooming farther out, each cooler and fainter than the last and spaced perfectly evenly, against a background of swirling dust.
The Apep nebula in false colour, displaying infrared data from JWST’s MIRI camera. Han et al./White et al./Dholakia; NASA/ESA
Han’s paper reveals how the nebula’s dust cools, links the background dust to the foreground stars, and suggests the stars are farther away from Earth than we thought. This implies they are extraordinarily bright, but weakens our original claim about the slow winds and rapid rotation.
In White’s paper, he develops a fast computer model for the shape of the nebula, and uses this to decode the orbit of the inner stars very precisely.
He also noticed there’s a “bite” taken out out of the dust shells, exactly where the wind of the third star would be chewing into them. This proves the Apep family isn’t just a pair of twins – they have a third sibling.
An illustration of the cavity carved by the third star companion in the Apep system. White et al. (2025)
Understanding systems like Apep tells us more about star deaths and the origins of carbon dust, but these systems also have a fascinating beauty that emerges from their seemingly simple geometry.
The violence of stellar death carves puzzles that would make sense to Newton and Archimedes, and it is a scientific joy to solve them and share them.
Benjamin Pope receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Big Questions Institute.
The United Nations’ highest court has found that countries can be held legally responsible for their greenhouse gas emissions, in a ruling highly anticipated by Pacific countries long frustrated with the pace of global action to address climate change.
In a landmark opinion delivered yesterday in The Hague, the president of the International Court of Justice, Yuji Iwasawa, said climate change was an “urgent and existential threat” that was “unequivocally” caused by human activity with consequences and effects that crossed borders.
They were frustrated at what they saw was a lack of action to address the climate crisis, and saw current mechanisms to address it as woefully inadequate.
Their idea was backed by the government of Vanuatu, which convinced the UN General Assembly to seek the court’s advisory opinion on what countries’ obligations are under international law.
The court’s 15 judges were asked to provide an opinion on two questions: What are countries obliged to do under existing international law to protect the climate and environment, and, second, what are the legal consequences for governments when their acts — or lack of action — have significantly harmed the climate and environment?
The International Court of Justice in The Hague yesterday . . . landmark non-binding rulings on the climate crisis. Image: X/@CIJ_ICJ
Overnight, reading a summary that took nearly two hours to deliver, Iwasawa said states had clear obligations under international law, and that countries — and, by extension, individuals and companies within those countries — were required to curb emissions.
Iwasawa said the environment and human rights obligations set out in international law did indeed apply to climate change.
‘Precondition for human rights’ “The protection of the environment is a precondition for the enjoyment of human rights,” he said, adding that sea-level rise, desertification, drought and natural disasters “may significantly impair certain human rights, including the right to life”.
To reach its conclusion, judges waded through tens of thousands of pages of written submissions and heard two weeks of oral arguments in what the court said was the ICJ’s largest-ever case, with more than 100 countries and international organisations providing testimony.
They also examined the entire corpus of international law — including human rights conventions, the law of the sea, the Paris climate agreement and many others — to determine whether countries have a human rights obligation to address climate change.
The president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Yuji Iwasawa, delivering the landmark rulings on climate change. Image: X/@CIJ_ICJ
Major powers and emitters, like the United States and China, had argued in their testimonies that existing UN agreements, such as the Paris climate accord, were sufficient to address climate change.
But the court found that states’ obligations extended beyond climate treaties, instead to many other areas of international law, such as human rights law, environmental law, and laws around restricting cross-border harm.
Significantly for many Pacific countries, the court also provided an opinion on what would happen if sea levels rose to such a level that some states were lost altogether.
“Once a state is established, the disappearance of one of its constituent elements would not necessarily entail the loss of its statehood.”
Significant legal weight The ICJ’s opinion is legally non-binding. But even so, advocates say it carries significant legal and political weight that cannot be ignored, potentially opening the floodgates for climate litigation and claims for compensation or reparations for climate-related loss and damage.
Individuals and groups could bring lawsuits against their own countries for failing to comply with the court’s opinion, and states could also return to the International Court of Justice to hold each other to account.
The opinion would also be a powerful precedent for legislators and judges to call on as they tackle questions related to the climate crisis, and give small countries greater weight in negotiations over future COP agreements and other climate mechanisms.
Outside the court, several dozen climate activists, from both the Netherlands and abroad, had gathered on a square as cyclists and trams rumbled by on the summer afternoon. Among them was Siaosi Vaikune, a Tongan who was among those original students to hatch the idea for the challenge.
“Everyone has been waiting for this moment,” he said. “It’s been six years of campaigning.
“Frontline communities have demanded justice again and again,” Vaikune said. “And this is another step towards that justice.”
Vanuatu’s Climate Change Minister Ralph Regenvanu (cenbtre) speaks to the media after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rulings on climate change in The Hague yesterday. Image: X/CIJ_ICJ
‘It gives hope’ Vanuatu’s Climate Minister Ralph Regenvanu said the ruling was better than he expected and he was emotional about the result.
“The most pleasing aspect is [the ruling] was so strong in the current context where climate action and policy seems to be going backwards,” Regenvanu told RNZ Pacific.
“It gives such hope to the youth, because they were the ones who pushed this.
“I think it will regenerate an entire new generation of youth activists to push their governments for a better future for themselves.”
Regenvanu said the result showed the power of multilateralism.
“There was a point in time where everyone could compromise to agree to have this case heard here, and then here again, we see the court with the judges from all different countries of the world all unanimously agreeing on such a strong opinion, it gives you hope for multilateralism.”
He said the Pacific now has more leverage in climate negotiations.
“Communities on the ground, who are suffering from sea level rise, losing territory and so on, they know what they want, and we have to provide that,” Regenvanu said.
“Now we know that we can rely on international cooperation because of the obligations that have been declared here to assist them.”
The director of climate change at the Pacific Community (SPC), Coral Pasisi, also said the decision was a strong outcome for Pacific Island nations.
“The acknowledgement that the science is very clear, there is a direct clause between greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and the harm that is causing, particularly the most vulnerable countries.”
She said the health of the environment is closely linked to the health of people, which was acknowledged by the court.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
