If you’re a professor of literature, writing a novel must be pretty easy, right? Or, hang on, maybe not. Perhaps all that knowledge, expertise and awareness of truly great writing makes putting yourself out there even harder?
That heritage has also informed the choice of venue, a Scottish cafe, deli and bakery, specialising in lorne sausage, well-fired rolls filled with Ayrshire bacon, and who knows, maybe even a Kilmarnock-style pie or two on the day. A big thank you goes out to Gregg Boyd and the Auld Hag team for making The Shoap available to us.
Ok, so I’m biased, but I’ve read The Good Father already, and it’s a fantastic piece of work – a psychological thriller described by Val McDermid as “heart-stopping and heart-rending”. The plot charts the disappearance of a child from a beach and the psychological impact on a family desperate for answers. Liam’s previous novels such as The Heretic and The Quaker have received wide acclaim and landed numerous awards. His novels have earned a reputation for delivering a vivid portrait of Scottish life and culture in eloquent, often darkly humorous, prose.
If the words, “crime fiction, literature, New Zealand and Scotland” catch your eye then do join us at 406 St John Street, Angel, Islington on July 11 for a late afternoon and early evening of seriously laid back discussion. Click here for free tickets. And if you are a long way from London, don’t worry, Liam is also speaking at a number of other venues in Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand and, of course, Scotland. See below for a full list of dates.
My research on Zambian agriculture finds that Chinese land grabbing is a myth. Instead, Chinese investors have preferred different investment models according to the specific rules of land access, transfer and control of three land tenure systems in Zambia.
What ties the three types of Chinese agricultural investments together is this: land institutions matter. Whether it’s central government rules or traditional authority, these systems shape how foreign investment happens and what impact it has.
Each of the three models raises new opportunities and challenges for rural development and land governance. These findings matter because they offer insights into the future of land rights, livelihoods and state-building in African countries.
Not all land is the same
After independence, all land in Zambia was vested in the president, held in trust for the people. Today, the country still operates under a dual land system, as outlined in the 1995 Lands Act. State land, managed by the central government, includes both private and government leaseholds. Customary land, on the other hand, remains under the authority of traditional chiefs. The exact proportion of state and customary land in Zambia is contested, with estimates of customary land ranging widely from 94% to 54%.
This tenure distinction is significant because each type of land is governed by different rules regarding foreign access and ownership, which shape how foreign investors choose their investment models.
Over four months of fieldwork in Zambia, I gathered data on 50 Chinese agricultural projects (41 remained active) through 96 qualitative interviews. These projects were spread across three types of land tenure: private leasehold (37), government leasehold (1), and customary land (3).
Model 1: Commercial farm on private land
My fieldwork data showed that the majority of Chinese agricultural investments in Zambia are located on private leasehold land, typically following the commercial farm model. This type of land functions much like private property, held under 99-year leases that can be bought, sold or transferred. Investors use it for large-scale farming operations, such as maize, soybean and wheat production.
Even in these seemingly privatised spaces, however, state power remains influential. When Zambia proposed a draft National Land Policy in 2017 aimed at tightening rules for foreign land ownership, Chinese investors responded strategically. Many began aligning their projects with Zambia’s development priorities, emphasising contributions to local food security, donating to charities, and promoting themselves as responsible corporate actors.
Model 2: Farm block on government land
In northern Zambia, for example, a Chinese company partnered with the government to develop a farm block on state-owned land that had been converted from customary tenure for national development. Unlike the commercial farm model, the government played a central role, selecting the investor, managing the land and negotiating the deal. The project promised infrastructure and jobs, enhancing the political standing of local officials.
But this kind of state-led development works only when the promises are delivered. In other areas where farm blocks failed to materialise, traditional chiefs reclaimed the land. In the northern case, actual physical infrastructure investment helped reinforce state authority.
Model 3: Contract farming on customary land
The third model is very different. For instance, a Chinese agribusiness company arranged contract farming deals with over 50,000 smallholders in Zambia’s Eastern Province. Instead of buying or leasing land, the company provided seeds and bought cotton from farmers after harvest. This let the company access land informally, without triggering the legal and political risks of converting customary land to leasehold.
Operating on customary land posed challenges for investors. When farmers defaulted on loans or engaged in side-selling, companies had limited legal recourse and often had to negotiate with chiefs and local communities rather than the state. In such contexts, traditional authorities – not the central government – wielded the decisive power over land and its governance.
Why this matters
In a world where land deals are often controversial, understanding how local rules shape global investment is crucial. It’s not just about who buys the land, but under what terms, and how those terms are enforced. African governments are not just passive bystanders; they’re active players who use land institutions to negotiate power and development.
This research urges us to look beyond the headlines about “land grabs” and instead focus on the everyday politics of land. If African states want to steer rural development on their own terms, understanding and strengthening land institutions – both statutory and customary – is key.
This research is developed from Yuezhou Yang’s MRes/PhD project, which is supported by funding from the China Scholarship Council 201708040015.
The Earth of the last Ice Age (about 26,000 to 19,000 years ago) was very different from today’s world.
In the northern hemisphere, ice sheets up to 8 kilometres tall covered much of Europe, Asia and North America, while much of the southern hemisphere became drier as water was drawn into the northern glaciers.
As more and more water was transformed into ice, global sea levels dropped as much as 125 metres from where they are now, exposing land that had been under the ocean.
In southernmost Africa, receding coastlines exposed an area of the continental shelf known as the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain. At its maximum extent, it covered an area of about 36,000km² along the south coast of what’s now South Africa.
This now – extinct ecosystem was a highly productive landscape with abundant grasslands, wetlands, permanent water drainage systems, and seasonal flood plains. The Palaeo-Agulhas Plain was likely most similar to the present day Serengeti in east Africa. It would likely have been able to support large herds of migratory animals and the people who hunted them.
We now know more about how these people lived thanks to data from a new archaeological site called Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1.
The site sits 23 metres above sea level on the southern coast of South Africa overlooking the Indian Ocean. You can watch whales from the site today, but during the Ice Age the ocean was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the site looked out over the vast grasslands; the coast was 75 kilometres away.
Archaeological investigation of the cave began in 2014, led by Naomi Cleghorn of the University of Texas. This work shows that humans have been using the site for much of the last 48,000 years or more. Occupations bridge the Middle to Later Stone Age transition, which occurred sometime between about 40,000 and 25,000 years ago in southern Africa.
That transition is a time period where we see dramatic changes in the technologies people were using, including changes in raw materials selected for making tools and a shift towards smaller tools. These changes are poorly understood due to a lack of sites with occupations dating to this time. Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1 is the first site on the southern coast that provides a continuous occupational record near the end of the Pleistocene (Ice Age) and documents how life changed for people living on the edge of the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain.
Before the Ice Age, people there collected marine resources like shellfish when the coastline was close to the site. As the climate began to cool and sea levels dropped, they shifted their focus to land-based resources and game animals.
I am one of the archaeologists who have been working here. In a new study, my colleagues and I analysed stone tools from the cave that date to about 19,000 to 18,000 years ago, and discussed how the techniques used to make them hint at the ways that prehistoric people travelled, interacted, and shared their craft.
Based on this analysis, we think the cave may have been used as a temporary camp rather than a primary residence. And the similarity of the tools with those from other sites suggests people were connected over a huge region and shared ideas with each other, much like people do today.
Robberg technology of southern Africa
In human history, tools were invented in a succession of styles (“technologies” or “industries”), which can indicate the time and place where they were made and what they were used for.
The Robberg is one of southern Africa’s most distinctive and widespread stone tool technologies. Robberg tools – which we found at the Knysna site – are thought to be replaceable components in composite tools, perhaps as barbs set into arrow shafts, used to hunt the migratory herds on the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain.
We see the first appearance of Robberg technology in southern Africa near the peak of the last Ice Age around 26,000 years ago, and people continued producing these tools until around 12,000 years ago, when climate conditions were warmer.
The particular methods and order of operations that people used to make their tools is something that is taught and learned. If we see specific methods of stone tool production at multiple sites, it indicates that people were sharing ideas with one another.
Robberg occupations at Knysna date to between 21,000 and 15,000 years ago, when sea levels were at their lowest and the coastline far away.
The Robberg tools we recovered were primarily made from rocks that were available close to the site. Most of the tools were made from quartz, which creates very sharp edges but can break unpredictably. Production focused on bladelets, or small elongated tools, which may have been replaceable components in hunting weapons.
Some of the tools were made from a raw material called silcrete. People in South Africa were heat treating this material to improve its quality for tool production as early as 164,000 years ago. The silcrete tools at Knysna were heat treated before being brought to the site. This is only the second documented instance of the use of heat treatment in Robberg technology.
Silcrete is not available near Knysna. Most of the accessible deposits in the area are in the Outeniqua mountains, at least 50 kilometres inland. We’re not sure yet whether people using the Knysna site were travelling to these raw material sources themselves or trading with other groups.
Archaeological sites containing Robberg tools are found in South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini, indicating a widespread adoption by people across southern Africa. The tools from the Knysna site share many characteristics with those from other sites, which suggests people were sharing information through social networks that may have spanned the entire width of the continent.
Yet there are other aspects that are unique to the Knysna site. Fewer tools are found in the more recent layers than in deeper layers, suggesting that people were using the site less frequently than they had previously. This may suggest that during the Ice Age the cave was used as a temporary camp rather than as a primary residential site.
Left with questions
Stone tools can only tell us so much. Was Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1 a temporary camp? If so, what were they coming to the cave for? We need to combine what we learned from the stone tools with other data from the site to answer these questions.
Something we can say with confidence is that we have a very long and rich history as a species, and our innovative and social natures go back a lot further in time than most people realise. Humans living during the last Ice Age had complex technologies to solve their problems, made art and music, connected with people in other communities, and in some places even had pet dogs.
Despite the dramatic differences in the world around us, these Ice Age people were not very different from people living today.
Sara Watson works for the FIeld Museum of Natural History and Indiana State University
June is Pride month. It is a time for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Two-Spirit, intersex and other sexuality- and gender-diverse (LGBTQ+) communities to come together to celebrate identities, build communities and advocate for justice and equality.
His current term has been marked by a growing push to erase LGBTQ+ identities and limit queer expression in public life. Within this month of Pride, the Trump administration is planning to rename the USNS Harvey Milk naval ship, named after the late civil rights leader Harvey Milk.
But with fear also comes hope. Even as events like drag story times have become targets of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and protests, communities continue to organize, resist and affirm their right to public joy and visibility.
Our research, recently funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, explores drag story times with the hope to learn more about how drag story time leaders select books, and how these events can foster best practices in literacy and inclusive education.
At their core, drag story time events offer opportunities for child-centred literacy practices, such as dialogue and interactions throughout the “read aloud,” to encourage children to consider ideas and connect them as the story moves along.
A recent content analysis, by information sciences researcher Sarah Barriage and colleagues of 103 picture books read during drag story times in the U.S. found that few explicitly featured LGBTQ+ identities.
The lead characters were predominantly white, cisgender, heterosexual and able-bodied, with only seven per cent of books featuring trans, non-binary or intersex leads, and another seven per cent portraying same-sex or undefined relationships. While this represents an increase in LGBTQ+ representation compared to other studies of story time books and classroom libraries, the overall percentage remains low.
The findings of this study, while based on a small sample size, suggest that contrary to popular perception, drag story times, while featuring drag artists leading read-aloud sessions, are not consistently grounded in explicitly LGBTQ+ narratives.
This gap highlights the importance of thoughtfully selecting books that reflect a wider range of experiences, including LGBTQ+ main characters and stories. When children are shown diverse characters and stories, they begin to understand the world from multiple perspectives.
Researchers with expertise in children’s early literacy recommend that books for interactive read-alouds with children should reflect both the children’s communities and communities different from their own. Such books can spark meaningful conversations, encourage critical thinking and help cultivate empathy and respect for difference. This prepares young readers for life in a multicultural society and helps build a more inclusive and compassionate world view.
This may come from or be expressed through the euphoria or joy that comes from feeling aligned and authentic in your gender. The idea of “gender euphoria” comes from within the trans community as a way to push back against the narrow narrative that trans lives are defined only by dysphoria, trauma or discomfort.
Instead, gender euphoria highlights the positive side that come with expressing or affirming one’s gender identity. It can look different for everyone, from a quiet sense of contentment to a powerful feeling of joy.
Communities affirm their right to public joy and visibility. Drag Queen Barbada de Barbades, who has led story times, seen in Montréal. (Jennifer Ricard/Wikimedia), CC BY
Queer joy
Queer joy is also a feature of drag story time, and is more than just feeling good. it is about living fully, even in the face of adversity. It is an act of resistance to a world that often tells queer and trans people they should not exist. Children still die because of hateful anti-LGTBQ+ speech.
Together, gender euphoria and queer joy remind us that LGBTQ+ lives can be full of strength, creativity, connection and celebration.
When children see diversity reflective in creative, positive and affirming ways, such as through stories, role models and community engagement, they are more likely to feel a sense of belonging and develop confidence in expressing their own identities. In this way, drag story times contribute meaningfully to both individual well-being and broader efforts towards inclusion.
Best literacy and inclusion practices
As part of our research, we plan to attend drag story times to learn more about current practices in Nova Scotia. At the national level, we will talk with performers about their experiences, practices, support and training needs and their goals and motivations.
Then we’ll co-host a workshop with performers and educators to share knowledge and build skills that combine the artistry of drag with best practices in literacy and inclusive education.
Drag story times can be a healthy and supportive way for children to develop their sense of gender and sexuality identity, both within themselves and others.
Phillip Joy receives funding from The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
Andrea Fraser receives funding from The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
Conor Barker receives funding from the Social Studies and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
Source: The Conversation – USA – By John Nielsen-Gammon, Regents Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A&M University
Hail can be destructive, yet the cost of the damage often isn’t publicly tracked.NOAA/NSSL
On Jan. 5, 2025, at about 2:35 in the afternoon, the first severe hailstorm of the season dropped quarter-size hail in Chatham, Mississippi. According to the federal storm events database, there were no injuries, but it caused $10,000 in property damage.
How do we know the storm caused $10,000 in damage? We don’t.
That estimate is probably a best guess from someone whose primary job is weather forecasting. Yet these guesses, and thousands like them, form the foundation for publicly available tallies of the costs of severe weather.
If the damage estimates from hailstorms are consistently lower in one county than the next, potential property buyers might think it’s because there’s less risk of hailstorms. Instead, it might just be because different people are making the estimates.
We are atmosphericscientists at Texas A&M University who lead the Office of the Texas State Climatologist. Through our involvement in state-level planning for weather-related disasters, we have seen county-scale patterns of storm damage over the past 20 years that just didn’t make sense. So, we decided to dig deeper.
We looked at storm event reports for a mix of seven urban and rural counties in southeast Texas, with populations ranging from 50,000 to 5 million. We included all reported types of extreme weather. We also talked with people from the two National Weather Service offices that cover the area.
Storm damage investigations vary widely
Typically, two specific types of extreme weather receive special attention.
After a tornado, the National Weather Service conducts an on-site damage survey, examining its track and destruction. That survey forms the basis for the official estimate of a tornado’s strength on the enhanced Fujita scale. Weather Service staff are able to make decent damage cost estimates from knowledge of home values in the area.
They also investigate flash flood damage in detail, and loss information is available from the National Flood Insurance Program, the main source of flood insurance for U.S. homes.
Tornadoes in May 2025 destroyed homes in communities in several states, including London, Ky. AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley
Most other losses from extreme weather are privately insured, if they’re insured at all.
Insured loss information is collected by reinsurance companies – the companies that insure the insurance companies – and gets tabulated for major events. Insurance companies use their own detailed information to try to make better decisions on rates than their competitors do, so event-based loss data by county from insurance companies isn’t readily available.
Losing billion-dollar disaster data
There’s one big window into how disaster damage has changed over the years in the U.S.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, compiled information for major disasters, including insured losses by state. Bulk data won’t tell communities or counties about their specific risk, but it enabled NOAA to calculate overall damage estimates, which it released as its billion-dollar disasters list.
From that program, we know that the number and cost of billion-dollar disasters in the United States has increased dramatically in recent years. News articles and even scientific papers often point to climate change as the primary culprit, but a much larger driver has been the increasing number and value of buildings and other types of infrastructure, particularly along hurricane-prone coasts.
Previous estimates can still be retrieved from NOAA’s online data archive, but by shutting down that program, the window into current and future disaster losses and insurance claims is now closed.
Emergency managers at the county level also make local damage estimates, but the resources they have available vary widely. They may estimate damages only when the total might be large enough to trigger a disaster declaration that makes relief funds available from the federal government.
Patching together very rough estimates
Without insurance data or county estimates, the local offices of the National Weather Service are on their own to estimate losses.
There is no standard operating procedure that every office must follow. One office might choose to simply not provide damage estimates for any hailstorms because the staff doesn’t see how it could come up with accurate values. Others may make estimates, but with varying methods.
The result is a patchwork of damage estimates. Accurate values are more likely for rare events that cause extensive damage. Loss estimates from more frequent events that don’t reach a high damage threshold are generally far less reliable.
The number of severe hail reports in southeast Texas listed in the National Centers for Environmental Information’s storm events database is strongly correlated with population. The county with the most reports and greatest detail in those reports is home to Houston. Hailstorms in the three easternmost counties are rarely associated with damage estimates. John Nielsen-Gammon and B.J. Baule
Do you want to look at local damage trends? Forget about it. For most extreme weather events, estimation methods vary over time and are not documented.
Do you want to direct funding to help communities improve resilience to natural disasters where the need is greatest? Forget about it. The places experiencing the largest per capita damages depend not just on actual damages but on the different practices of local National Weather Service offices.
Are you moving to a location that might be vulnerable to extreme weather? Companies are starting to provide localized risk estimates through real estate websites, but the algorithms tend to be proprietary, and there’s no independent validation.
4 steps to improve disaster data
We believe a few fixes could make NOAA’s storm events database and the corresponding values in the larger SHELDUS database, managed by Arizona State University, more reliable. Both databases include county-level disasters and loss estimates for some of those disasters.
First, the National Weather Service could develop standard procedures for local offices for estimating disaster damages.
Second, additional state support could encourage local emergency managers to make concrete damage estimates from individual events and share them with the National Weather Service. The local emergency manager generally knows the extent of damage much better than a forecaster sitting in an office a few counties away.
Third, state or federal governments and insurance companies can agree to make public the aggregate loss information at the county level or other scale that doesn’t jeopardize the privacy of their policyholders. If all companies provide this data, there is no competitive disadvantage for doing so.
Fourth, NOAA could create a small “tiger team” of damage specialists to make well-informed, consistent damage estimates of larger events and train local offices on how to handle the smaller stuff.
With these processes in place, the U.S. wouldn’t need a billion-dollar disasters program anymore. We’d have reliable information on all the disasters.
John Nielsen-Gammon receives funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the State of Texas.
William Baule receives funding from NOAA, the State of Texas, & the Austin Community Foundation.
Humans have been reshaping the environment for at least 10,000 years. But the Anthropocene is the name given to the specific period of Earth history during which humans have had a global effect on the planet’s climate and ecosystems. Despite formal rejection as a geological epoch, it’s widely understood within academic research as useful shorthand for the age of human interference in the Earth system.
Various dates have been proposed for when the anthropocene effectively began, from the early 17th century to the mid-20th century, when the first atomic weapons were detonated. My new research into atmospheric methane concentration supports the idea of an early date, when European arrival in the Americas first had a notable impact on the atmosphere, but slightly before previous estimates.
Ice cores – cylinders of ice drilled from glaciers and ice sheets – provide important evidence of historical changes in the global atmospheric composition. It is from these records that a date for the Anthropocene’s pre-industrial beginnings was first proposed in 2015 by two Earth systems scientists at the University College London, Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin.
They suggested that an unprecedented drop in the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere that was recorded in ice cores – known as the “Orbis spike” – dates back to 1610. This unusually low level reflects additional atmospheric CO₂ absorption into trees from forest regrowth in the Americas following European arrival in the late 1400s.
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From European arrival in 1492 and colonisation in the 1500s, the introduction of disease, mostly smallpox, resulted in demographic collapse of around 50 million people across the Americas. Lewis and Maslin proposed that, as millions of hectares of farmland went untended, forests could regrow and this increased CO₂ removal from the atmosphere.
This happened in sufficient quantities to be recorded in glacial ice. And that change became a global marker for the start of the so-called Anthropocene.
My own research into changing methane concentrations indicates that the Anthropocene began slightly earlier than that, in 1592. Ice core records show a minimum atmospheric methane concentration exactly 100 years after explorer Christopher Columbus first set foot in the Americas. This, I believe, strengthens support for the hypothesis put forward by Lewis and Maslin a decade ago.
In a paper published in Nature Reviews, Earth and Environment, I consider the effects of global fluctuations in how trees and forests exchange methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is around 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Crucially, methane has a short lifetime of just under ten years, so any ice core record will be far more responsive to changes to the methane cycle than that of longer-lived CO₂.
So what’s the link to trees? Trees and their woody bark surfaces, despite their biologically inert appearance when compared to leaves, are important interfaces of methane exchange. In swamps and forested floodplains like the Amazon, they are exit points of methane to the atmosphere from the saturated soils where the methane is formed by anaerobic soil microbes.
This is one of two mechanisms that, together, might explain an unprecedented drop in atmospheric methane concentrations recorded in Antarctic ice cores in the first century following European arrival in the Americas. This would support Lewis and Maslin’s idea that regrowing forests in that period had global effects.
With more trees growing on abandoned farmland, there was more woody tree surface area in contact with the atmosphere. This meant more methane being taken up by the microbes they host.
The second mechanism relates to how trees intercept incoming rainfall. Some rainfall is re-evaporated before reaching the soil. Any rain reaching the soil may then be taken up by tree roots and released back to the atmosphere. The rest moves into the soil or washes off into rivers and wetlands.
It is possible that the spike in forest regrowth led to more evaporation and transpiration. So more water was released by the trees back to the atmosphere and less washed off over the soil surface.
This limited water flowing into wetlands. Those wetlands are a major methane source. So a small shrinkage in wetland area, combined with more trees absorbing atmospheric methane, could have reduced the atmospheric methane concentration and explain the minimum methane levels observed in 1592.
When exactly the Anthropocene began may be an argument that has been overtaken by the decision to not label it a new epoch. Indeed, it’s possible that forest clearance for early agriculture by humans around 5,000-8,000 years ago in the mid-Holocene, (a period of relative climate stability in the Neolithic period) contributed to the atmospheric methane increase observed in Antarctic ice from that time.
As well as an ancient trace of human influence over our forests, the ice core methane records provide a chance to evaluate newly discovered processes operating in the world’s forests. This is something I’m now investigating with my colleague Peter Hopcroft, a palaeoclimate modeller at the University of Birmingham.
Whether through forest clearances for early agriculture or through the effects on forests of massive depopulation of Indigenous peoples following European contact, these traces of our past influence point to something significant: that there has always been an intimate and evolving connection between humanity and the natural world. A connection so fundamental that, for the vast span of our existence as a species, we have been inseparable from nature itself.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Vincent Gauci receives funding from or has received funding from the Natural Environment Research Council, The Royal Society, Spark Climate Solutions, AXA Research Fund, Defra and the JABBS Foundation.
Autonomous technology on the battlefield may not look like ‘killer robots’, but still has huge ethical implications.TSViPhoto/Shutterstock
In an unstable geopolitical climate, the UK’s strategic defence review focused on improving national resilience, from critical infrastructure security to technology and innovation. Many of the review’s recommendations have to do with transforming defence through artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomy, to make the armed forces “ten times more lethal”.
These recommendations and investments – drones, autonomous systems and £1 billion for a “digital targeting web” that would connect weapons systems – may well make the armed forces more lethal. But this comes at a risk to the ethical and legal integrity of the military.
A key part of international humanitarian law is the principle of precautions in attack. This requires that those planning an attack must do everything they feasibly can to ensure that targets are of a military nature. Similar is the principle of distinction, which mandates that civilians must never become a target.
In armed conflict, these principles are meant to protect civilians. They require human judgement — the ability to weigh up context, intent and likely outcomes. But how might they be upheld when humans are embedded in AI systems, which prioritise speed and scale in decision-making and action?
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An AI-enabled digital targeting web, like the one proposed in the strategic review, connects information (sensors) and action (weapons), enabling faster identification and elimination of potential targets. These webs would be able to identify and suggest possible targets considerably faster than humans. In many cases, leaving soldiers with only a few minutes, or indeed seconds, to decide whether these targets are appropriate or legitimate in legal or ethical terms.
One example already in use is the Maven Smart System, which was recently procured by Nato. This system could make it possible for small army teams to make up to “1,000 tactical decisions an hour”, according to a report by the US thinktank the Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
Legal scholars have argued that the prioritisation of speed with AI in conflict “leaves little room for human judgement” or restraint.
Unlike other technologies used in war, AI is more than an instrument. It is part of a cognitive system of humans and machines, which makes human control a lot more complicated than operating a fleet of tanks.
Proponents of autonomous weapons and AI targeting systems often argue that this technology would make warfare more precise, dispassionate and humane. However, military ethics scholar Neil Renic and I have shown how it can instead lead to an erosion of moral restraint, creating a war environment where technological processes replace moral reasoning.
The strategic defence review lauds autonomy as providing “greater accuracy”, but this is complicated by technical and human limitations. Instead of providing greater accuracy in targeting, AI-enabled systems threaten to undermine the principle of distinction and precaution.
AI systems also bear technical challenges for something as complex and dynamic as warfare. AI-supported systems are only as good as the data on which they are trained. Appropriate, comprehensive and up-to-date data is hard to come by in conflict, and dynamics can change quickly.
This is particularly true in urban conflicts. Understanding the complexities of a situation on the ground is difficult enough for human military personnel, without bringing in AI.
New AI models, in particular, bear risks. AI large language models are known to “hallucinate” – produce outputs that are erroneous or made up. As these systems are integrated into defence, the risks of technological failure become more pronounced.
There is also a considerable risk of this technology enabling uncontrolled escalation and conflict at speed – what scholars have described as a “flash war”. Escalation from crisis to war, or escalating a conflict to a higher level of violence, could come about due to erroneous indications of attack, or a simple sensor or computer error.
Consider an AI system alerting commanders of a hostile tank approaching a border area. With potentially only minutes to spare, time for verification of the incoming information is sparse. Commanders may “prioritise rapid response over thorough analysis”. If the tank turns out to be a school bus, this response could have further retaliatory consequences.
Unpredictable systems could also give leaders false impressions of their capabilities, leading to overconfidence or encouraging preemptive attacks. This all may lead to greater global instability and insecurity.
Responsible AI
The UK government has shown that it is aware of some of these risks. Its 2022 report on responsible AI in defence emphasised ethics in the use of AI. It specified that the deployment “of AI-enabled capabilities in armed conflict needs to comply fully with [international humanitarian law]”, including the principles of distinction, necessity, humanity and proportionality.
The report also notes that responsible and ethical use of AI systems requires reliability and human understanding of the AI system and its decisions.
The strategic defence review, on the other hand, notes that the speed with which technologies develop is outpacing regulatory frameworks. It says that “the UK’s competitors are unlikely to adhere to common ethical standards in developing or using them”.
This might be so, but it should not open the door to a less ethical and responsible development or use of such systems by the UK. Ethics is not only about how we treat others, but also about who we are.
The UK still has an opportunity to shape global norms around military AI — before a generation of unaccountable systems becomes the default. But that window for action is closing rapidly.
Elke Schwarz is affiliated with the International Committtee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC)
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Richard Hargy, Visiting Research Fellow in International Studies, Queen’s University Belfast
After returning early from the G7 summit in Canada, Donald Trump met with his national security team to be briefed on the escalating Israel-Iran conflict. It became clear that Trump was considering direct US military support for the Israelis.
This has the potential to cause a split among the president’s supporters between the Republican hawks (traditional interventionists) on one side and the Maga isolationists on the other.
During his three presidential campaigns, Trump condemned former presidents for leading America into “ridiculous endless wars”. This isolationist tilt won him plaudits with his base of those who supported him for his populist promises to “make America great again” (Maga).
In their work on US attitudes to foreign policy and US overseas involvement, Elaine Kamarck and Jordan Muchnick of the Brookings Institution – a non-profit research organisation in Washington – looked at a range of evidence in 2023.
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They found Republicans supporting less global involvement from the US had increased from 40% to 54% from 2004 to 2017. At that time only 16% of voters supported increasing US troop presence abroad, and 40% wanted a decrease, they found. They related this change in attitudes to Trump’s foreign policy position.
Fast forward to his second term, and many in the Maga camp are fiercely opposed to Trump’s current posturing about leading the US into another conflict in the Middle East. Over the past few days the White House has doubled down on the line that Trump keeps repeating: “Iran can not have a nuclear weapon”.
As Trump edges closer to committing the US to joining Israel in air strikes on Iran, Steve Bannon, a staunch Trump ally, argued that allowing the “deep state” to drive the US into conflict with Iran would “blow up” the coalition of Trump support.
Meanwhile, Conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson denounced those Republicans supporting action against Iran as “warmongers” and said they were encouraging the president to drag the US into a war.
Congresswoman Majorie Taylor Greene, in an unusual break with Trump, openly criticised the president’s stance on the Israel-Iran conflict, writing on X: “Foreign wars/intervention/regime change put America last, kill innocent people, are making us broke, and will ultimately lead to our destruction.”
Other prominent Republican senators, including Josh Hawley and Rand Paul, have urged the president to avoid US involvement in an offensive against Iran.
Another Republican congressman, Thomas Massie, has gone even further. He has joined with a coalition of Democrats in filing a House resolution under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which would seek to prevent Trump from engaging in “unauthorized hostilities” with Iran without Congressional consent.
These Republicans may believe their views are popular with their electoral base. In an Economist/YouGov poll in June 2025, 53% of Republicans stated that they did not think the US military should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran.
But Donald Trump does seem to enjoy widespread support in the US for his position that the US cannot allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. According to CNN data analysis, 83% of Republicans, 79% independents, and 79% of Democrats, agree with the president’s position on this issue. This slightly confusing split suggests there could be US voter support for air strikes, but it’s clear there would not be that same support for troops on the ground.
Resistance from ultra-Trump die-hards, however, might put them on the wrong side of the president in the long-term. Greg Sargent, a writer at The New Republic magazine, believes that, “people become enemies of Trump not when they substantively work against some principle he supposedly holds dear, but rather when they publicly criticize him … or become an inconvenience in any way”.
So why is Trump, to the dismay of many from within the Maga faithful, seemingly abandoning the anti-war tenet of his “America first” doctrine? Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest magazine, thinks that “now that Israel’s assault on Iran appears to be successful, Trump wants in on the action”.
The president has several prominent Republican hawks urging him to do exactly that, and order the US Air Force to deploy their “bunker-buster bombs”“ to destroy Iran’s underground arsenals. One of these is Senator Lindsey Graham.
Earlier this week on Fox News, he told Trump to be “all in … in helping Israel eliminate the nuclear threat. If we need to provide bombs to Israel, provide bombs. If we need to fly planes with Israel, do joint operations.”
Former Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell is also advocating US military action. He told CNN: “What’s happening here is some of the isolationist movement led by Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon are distressed we may be helping the Israelis defeat the Iranians,” adding that its “been kind of a bad week for the isolationists” in the party.
Donald Trump talks about potential involvement in air strikes.
The same Economist/YouGov poll mentioned earlier showed that the stance taken by these Republicans – that Iran poses a threat to the US – is a position shared by a majority of GOP voters, with 69% viewing Iran as either an immediate and serious threat to the US, or at least somewhat of a serious threat.
Always an interventionist?
Some believe that Trump’s evolving attitude towards American military involvement in the worsening crisis in the Middle East, however, is not a volte-face on isolationism, or an ideological pivot to the virtues of attacking Iran. Ross Douthat of the New York Times has observed that Trump “has never been a principled noninterventionist” and that “his deal-making style has always involved the threat of force as a crucial bargaining chip”.
It is always difficult to fully determine what Trump’s foreign policy doctrine actually is. It is useful, however, to reflect on some of the president’s overseas actions from his first term.
In April 2018, following a suspected chemical weapons attack by the forces of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in a Damascus suburb, Trump ordered US air strikes in retaliation for what he called an “evil and despicable attack” that left “mothers and fathers, infants and children thrashing in pain and gasping for air”.
This led the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, to describe Trump as “something wholly unique in the history of the presidency: an isolationist interventionist”.
Richard Hargy 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.
People have been celebrating the summer solstice with elaborate rituals since prehistoric times. But humans aren’t the only species to take mark June 21 as a special time. Studies are showing the summer solstice is an important cue for plants too.
Recent studies, including one of my own, have proposed that trees may use the longest day of the year as a key marker for their growth and reproductive cycles. The solstice seems to act like a calendar reminder for trees.
Many people think of plants as nice-looking greens. Essential for clean air, yes, but simple organisms. A step change in research is shaking up the way scientists think about plants: they are far more complex and more like us than you might imagine. This blossoming field of science is too delightful to do it justice in one or two stories.
For example, at the solstice, trees growing in cold places slow down the creation of new wood cells and focus their energy on finishing already formed but still incomplete cells. This ensures trees have time to complete cell construction before winter hits. Incomplete cells are damaged by freezing winter temperatures, rendering them useless for water transport the following year.
Along similar lines, trees use the solstice to fine-tune the “winding down”, or senescence, of their leaves in preparation for autumn. Senescence allows the tree to reabsorb critical nutrients from the leaves before they fall. This process is timed to balance missing out on sunlight from “winding down” too early, against leaving it too late and losing nutrients if still-green leaves are killed by autumn frosts.
Stonehenge has been part of summer solstice celebrations since ancient times. Ria Sh/Shutterstock
Satellite observations of forests, and controlled experiments in greenhouses, reveal that warmer temperatures immediately prior to the solstice cause the onset of leaf browning to start earlier that autumn. In contrast, warmer temperatures just after the solstice slow down the senescence process.
This means a longer transition period from green to fully brown leaves. This fine-tuning enables trees to extend the period of photosynthesis in years when temperatures stay warmer for longer, so they don’t miss out on these favourable conditions.
But not all scientists is convinced. From an evolutionary perspective, the solstice may not be the best seasonal marker for timing these transitions. For example, in forests in the far north, leaves do not appear until early June, only days before the solstice, and the growing season can extend late into October. In these forests, using the solstice to initiate the winding down process makes little sense for trees that have only just started growing for the year.
Nevertheless, there is more consensus about plants using the solstice to synchronise reproduction.
In many plants, especially trees from the temperate mid-latitudes, the number of seeds they produce varies dramatically year on year, known as masting. A large European beech tree can produce hundreds of thousands of seeds in a bumper year (a “mast event”) and forgo reproduction altogether in other years.
A small moth, Cydia fagiglandana, lays its eggs in beech flowers. When the grubs hatch, they eat and destroy the developing seeds. Cycles of famine and bumper years help protect their seeds from these moths.
UK beech trees typically lose less than 5% of their seeds to Cydia because the cycles starve the moths into low numbers ready for masting years. But when trees are out of sync, seed loss can increase to over 40%.
For decades we have known that beech mast events happen in the year after a warm summer. These warmer temperatures trigger an increase in the formation of flower buds. More flower buds usually lead to a greater crop of seeds that autumn.
Scientists have long puzzled over how beech trees across Europe seem to use the same seasonal window to control mast events. Their seed production is determined by temperatures in late June and early July, irrespective of where they grow in Europe. But how can a beech tree know the date?
In my team’s 2024 study, we showed that they use the solstice as a seasonal marker. As soon as the days start to shorten after the solstice, beech trees across Europe seem to simultaneously sense the temperature.
Anywhere temperatures are above average in the weeks following the solstice can expect to have a mast event the next year. Weather conditions in the weeks before the solstice, by contrast, seem to be irrelevant. As seen on weather maps, warm and cool spells tend to occur simultaneously over large areas.
This allows beech trees to maximise the synchrony of their reproduction, whether that is investing in a mast year (warm temperatures), or forgoing reproduction for a year (low temperatures). Using a fixed marker like the solstice is the key to achieving this synchrony, and the benefits that come from it.
Note how bumper seed crops and failures tend to be regionally synchronised, and occasionally occur as pan-European events. Andrew Hacket Pain, CC BY-NC-ND
The evidence for this phenomenon has come from observations across dozens of forests across Europe. However, my research group is collaborating with about a dozen other groups in Europe to test this effect by manipulating the temperature of beech branches before and after the solstice at different sites. Ongoing research I am involved with seems to show flowering genes are activated at the summer solstice.
Also, studies into the circadian rhythms of plants show they have mechanisms in their molecules that allow them to detect and respond to tiny changes in day length. This is the basis for that extraordinary scale of synchronised reproduction.
If the weather is warm over the next month or so, then there is a good chance that beech trees in your local area will have heavy seed crops next autumn. What’s more, trees across the UK and into northern and central Europe will probably be doing the same.
Andrew Hacket-Pain has received funding from UKRI, Defra and the British Council.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Meredith Oyen, Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
The U.S. announced plans to scrutinize and revoke student visas for students with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or whose studies are in critical fields, but appears to have reconsidered. The decision and apparent about-face could have a wide-ranging impact on both nations.LAW Ho Ming/Getty Images
President Donald Trump appears to have walked back plans for the U.S. State Department to scrutinize and revoke visas for Chinese students studying in the country.
On June 11, 2025, Trump posted on his social media platform TruthSocial that visas for Chinese students would continue and that they are welcome in the United States, as their presence “has always been good with me!”
The announcement came weeks after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that his department would begin scrutinizing and revoking student visas for Chinese nationals with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, or whose studies are in critical fields.
The contradictory moves have led to confusion among Chinese students attending college or considering studying in the United States.
Over time, Chinese nationals have faced barriers to studying in the U.S. As a scholar who studies relations between the two nations, I argue that efforts to ban Chinese students in the United States are not unprecedented, and historically they have come with consequences.
Student visas under fire
The Trump administration laid out the terms for revoking or denying student visas to Chinese nationals but then backtracked. STAP/Getty Images
Since the late 1970s, millions of Chinese students have been granted visas to study at American universities. That total includes approximately 277,000 who studied in the United States in the 2023-2024 academic year.
It is difficult to determine how many of these students would have been affected by a ban on visas for individuals with Chinese Community Party affiliations or in critical fields.
The “critical fields” at risk were not defined. A majority of Chinese students in the U.S. are enrolled in math, technology, science and engineering fields.
A long history
Since the late 1970s, the number of Chinese students attending college in the U.S. has increased dramatically. Kenishiroite/Getty Images
The Institute for International Education in New York estimated the economic impact of Chinese students in the U.S. at over US$14 billion a year. Chinese students tend to pay full tuition to their universities. At the graduate level, they perform vital roles in labs and classrooms. Just under half of all Chinese students attending college in the U.S. are graduate students.
However, there is a long history of equating Chinese migrants as invaders, spies or risks to national security.
After the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the U.S. Department of Justice began to prevent Chinese scholars and students in STEM fields – science, technology, engineering and math – from returning to China by stopping them at U.S. ports of entry and exit. They could be pulled aside when trying to board a flight or ship and their tickets canceled.
In one infamous case, Chinese rocket scientist Qian Xuesen was arrested, harassed, ordered deported and prevented from leaving over five years from 1950 to 1955. In 1955, the United States and China began ambassadorial-level talks to negotiate repatriations from either country. After his experience, Qian became a much-lauded supporter of the Communist government and played an important role in the development of Chinese transcontinental missile technology.
During the 1950s, the U.S. Department of Justice raided Chinatown organizations looking for Chinese migrants who arrived under false names during the Chinese Exclusion Era, a period from the 1880s to 1940s when the U.S. government placed tight restrictions on Chinese immigration into the country. A primary justification for the tactics was fear that the Chinese in the U.S. would spy for their home country.
Between 1949 and 1979, the U.S and China did not have normal diplomatic relations. The two nations recognized each other and exchanged ambassadors starting in January 1979. In the more than four decades since, the number of Chinese students in the U.S. has increased dramatically.
Anti-Chinese discrimination
The idea of an outright ban on Chinese student visas has raised concerns about increased targeting of Chinese in the U.S. for harassment.
In 1999, Taiwanese-American scientist Wen Ho Lee was arrested on suspicion of using his position at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to spy for China. Lee remained imprisoned in solitary confinement for 278 days before he was released without a conviction.
In 2018, during the first Trump administration, the Department of Justice launched its China Initiative. In its effort to weed out industrial, technological and corporate espionage, the initiative targeted many ethnic Chinese researchers and had a chilling effect on continued exchanges, but it secured no convictions for wrongdoing.
Trump again expressed concerns last year that undocumented migrants from China might be coming to the United States to spy or “build an army.”
The repeated search for spies among Chinese migrants and residents in the U.S. has created an atmosphere of fear for Chinese American communities.
Broader foreign policy context
An atmosphere of suspicion has altered the climate for Chinese international students. J Studios/Getty Images
The U.S. plan to revoke visas for students studying in the U.S. and the Chinese response is being formed amid contentious debates over trade.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Lin Jian accused the U.S. of violating an agreement on tariff reduction the two sides discussed in Geneva in May, citing the visa issues as one example.
Trump has also complained that the Chinese violated agreements between the countries, and some reports suggest that the announcement on student visas was a negotiating tactic to change the Chinese stance on the export of rare earth minerals.
When Trump announced his trade deal with China on June 11, he added a statement welcoming Chinese students.
However, past practice shows that the atmosphere of uncertainty and suspicion may have already damaged the climate for Chinese international students, and at least some degree of increased scrutiny of student visas will likely continue regardless.
Meredith Oyen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Members of law enforcement agencies search for shooting suspect Vance Boelter at a house on June 15, 2025, in Belle Plaine, Minn. AP Photo/George Walker IV
According to media reports, the Minnesota gunman, Vance Luther Boelter, was a deeply religious anti-abortion activist and a conservative who supported President Donald Trump.
The term lone gunman, routinely deployed in the aftermath of mass shootings and political violence – that the suspect was simply acting alone, so there’s no one or nothing else to blame – may offer a comforting explanation, but it’s dangerously simplistic.
It obscures the conditions that made the violence possible in the first place. It casts the perpetrator as an isolated anomaly – mentally unwell, unpredictable, detached from broader movements or ideologies.
But more significant than the historical debate is how the lone gunman label became entrenched in the national psyche. It presents a digestible narrative, one that absolves institutions of responsibility and short-circuits more difficult questions about what conditions produced the attacker in the first place.
More recent examples reveal how this myth continues to serve as a shield against systemic scrutiny.
Robert Bowers’ lawyers claimed in a public court filing that he was suffering from schizophrenia and structural and functional brain impairments. AP Photo/Matt Rourke
This is evident in cases like that of Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. Bowers’ defense attorneys said in a March 2023 court filing that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Though he acted alone, Bowers was deeply embedded in far-right networks on the social media platform Gab, where he echoed white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Similarly, Payton Gendron, who killed 10 Black people in a Buffalo supermarket in 2022, cited previous mass shooters as inspiration and plagiarized sections of a white nationalist manifesto. His radicalization was nourished in extremist online forums on platforms such as 4chan and Discord.
Even attacks without manifestos or explicit ideological tracts often follow recognizable scripts. The El Paso shooter, who killed 23 people in a Walmart in 2019, wrote that he was targeting Hispanics as part of a defense against an “invasion” of immigrants – echoing language used by some conservative analysts, pundits and political figures in mainstream U.S. media and government.
Again and again, attackers are seen to be acting in ways that align with a broader rationalization or ideology, even if they do not carry official membership in a particular group or organization.
The politics of the ‘lone gunman’
Importantly, the lone gunman narrative is applied unevenly, especially along racial lines.
White perpetrators are frequently described as mentally ill or troubled loners. Their violence is compartmentalized as the result of personal demons. In contrast, as the Sentencing Project – which is working to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system – has shown, Black, Muslim or immigrant suspects are often held up as proof of a broader threat: religious, ethnic or cultural.
This double standard not only reinforces racial stereotypes but also shapes how law enforcement and the media view violence committed by white actors – as an aberration rather than a pattern.
The media can play a crucial role in perpetuating the lone gunman myth.
Consider how swiftly the media and politicians labeled the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, perpetrated by Omar Mateen, as an act of Islamist terrorism. Even though Mateen had no meaningful connections to any terrorist groups, his Islamic religious beliefs were used to construct a narrative that he was part of a global threat.
By contrast, the FBI hesitated to call Dylann Roof’s actions “racial terrorism.” Terrorism is defined as a form of political violence, where the threat or use of physical force by individuals or groups is not only intended to influence or disrupt governmental authority but to instill fear and force political change. The FBI designated Roof’s crime as a hate crime perpetrated by a disturbed young man.
This distinction between calling Roof’s attack a hate crime rather than racially motivated terrorism sparked significant criticism from scholars, activists and commentators. Many argued that Roof’s white supremacist motives and the symbolic target, a historic Black church, made it a clear case of racial terrorism.
Moving toward a more honest understanding
This asymmetry matters.
I argue that it shapes public perception, policy responses and resource allocation. It allows white supremacist violence to flourish under the radar, often dismissed until it becomes undeniable – usually after multiple lives have been lost.
At the same time, politicians are frequently reluctant to acknowledge the ideological underpinnings of such violence, particularly when those ideologies overlap with their own rhetoric or voter base.
After the 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo, where the gunman explicitly cited the “Great Replacement theory” in his manifesto, several Republican politicians who had previously echoed similar anti-immigrant rhetoric condemned the violence but avoided addressing the ideology behind it. The Great Replacement theory is a white supremacist conspiracy theory that falsely claims white populations are being deliberately replaced by nonwhite immigrants, especially Muslims, Latinos or Black people, through immigration, higher birth rates and federal government policy.
Despite the shooter’s clear ideological motivation, once again many officials focused on mental illness or the violence as an isolated case of extremism. The impact of the messages about immigration and demographic change in contributing to a climate of racial fear and conspiracy were left unacknowledged.
The Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly identified white supremacist violence as one of the top domestic terrorism threats. Investigations related to domestic terrorism and violence have increased significantly over the past few years. In a 2023 interview with “PBS NewsHour,” Seamus Hughes of the University of Nebraska Omaha’s National Counterterrorism, Innovation, Technology and Education Center said that “the FBI was investigating 850 people three years ago. Now they’re investigating 2,700.”
Yet meaningful, structural reforms, whether in tech and social media regulation, gun control or public education, have remained elusive. I believe connecting the larger social, political and cultural issues that surround extreme violence is critical to building healthy communities.
Art Jipson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
An additional 11,000 people moved into the city in the years 2023 and 2024, a small gain in a city with a population of 645,705 – but one which marked a symbolic shift.
The census data shows just over 1% growth in the past year alone and 0.7% the year before compared with a nearly 25% loss between 2000 and 2010.
As an urban sociologist studying issues related to race and ethnicity, I am interested in how Detroit’s population is changing, and where different groups live in both the city and its suburbs.
Analyzing population trends in the metro Detroit area using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, I wanted to understand how racial, ethnic and socioeconomic trends are unfolding, and what those changes can tell us about the evolution and vitality of Detroit.
Black Detroiters relocate, city diversifies
From 2010 to 2023, Detroit’s racial and ethnic makeup continued to gradually diversify even as the city was declining in population.
While Black residents are still the majority, their proportion of the total number fell from around 84% to 79%.
Other groups, in contrast, increased their share of the city’s population. Between 2010 and 2023, the percentage of Hispanic residents grew from 6.6% to 8.3%, the percentage of white residents grew from 8.2% to 10.7%, and the percentage of Asian residents grew from 1.3% to 1.7%.
These shifts reflect a steady and ongoing diversification of Detroit’s population, indicative of new migration trends and shifting neighborhood dynamics.
Suburbs in flux
In addition to Detroit’s recent population growth, a broader story is unfolding in the city’s suburbs.
The population of the suburban area as a whole increased 0.73% from 2023 to 2024, but growth was not evenly spread. Collectively, the outer-ring suburbs gained almost 20,000 people, increasing by 1%. Communities such as the city of Troy and Macomb Township accounted for a significant share of that growth.
A map of Detroit and the surrounding suburbs, with shading to indicate which areas are considered to be the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ suburbs. Grigoris Argeros, CC BY
Inner-ring suburbs, such as Southfield, Warren and others, grew less vigorously – gaining just 4,000 people, or 0.31%.
These differences highlight the necessity of complicating the conventional city-versus-suburb narrative to acknowledge the many economic and racial divisions across the metropolitan region.
The socioeconomic statuses of residents of the inner- and outer-ring suburbs diverged between 2000 and 2020.
My analysis of census data shows that although both subregions witnessed increases in median household incomes, the rates of change were significantly higher in the outer-ring suburbs, with a 37.7% increase versus a 16.8% increase in the inner rings.
The data shows a similar trend in higher education attainment. Outer ring suburbs gained 7.1% more residents with college degrees or higher during this period, while the inner suburbs lost 7.5%.
Homeownership patterns in the two suburban regions also diverged over those two decades, increasing 18% in the outer rings and decreasing 10% in the inner rings.
The data on poverty and immigration also reveal contrasting results.
According to my calculations of census data, inner-ring suburbs experienced a 77% increase in poverty, while the outer ring experienced a lesser, though considerable, 50.8% bump in poverty during the 2000-2020 period.
Meanwhile, during the same time period, the foreign-born populations in the outer suburbs expanded by 24.9%, with increases of at least 10,000 in places such as Sterling Heights, Novi and Canton. In contrast, the inner suburbs saw more modest gains — around 5,000 in cities such as Dearborn Heights and Warren — while their overall foreign-born share declined by nearly 20%.
Together, the above trends highlight the necessity of not viewing the suburban area as a monolith. These patterns reflect national trends, in which many older, inner-ring suburbs are experiencing socioeconomic stagnation or decline while newer, outer-ring suburbs continue to attract more people who have higher incomes.
Mixed neighborhoods grow
Residential segregation also differentiates inner and outer suburban rings.
Segregation levels remain high in the inner suburbs, especially between white and Black residents. While outer suburbs tend to be more integrated today, the rate of change there has been more modest over the past two decades.
Social scientists measure segregation using a tool called the “dissimilarity index.” The index represents the proportion of one group that would need to move to establish an equal distribution of the population based on their relative numbers. It ranges from 0 to 100. A score of 0 means equal distribution across neighborhoods, while a score of 100 means the two groups live in completely separate areas.
From 2000 to 2020, white-Black segregation across the region decreased from 84.4% to 68.3% on the index, while white-Hispanic segregation decreased from 47.6% to 39.9%. Together, these numbers indicate a broader trend toward more integrated living patterns.
In the inner-ring suburbs, segregation fell across the board. White-Black segregation went down by 15.6%; white-Asian and white-Hispanic segregation dropped even more, by 43.2% and 30.7%, respectively.
These trends suggest that while the outer suburbs currently have lower levels of segregation, the inner suburbs are integrating more rapidly, reflecting shifting patterns of neighborhood change and increasing racial and ethnic diversity.
Detroit has come a long way since exiting bankruptcy in 2014. Its recent population growth and increasing diversity show important signs of renewal.
Grigoris Argeros does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
An additional 11,000 people moved into the city in the years 2023 and 2024, a small gain in a city with a population of 645,705 – but one which marked a symbolic shift.
The census data shows just over 1% growth in the past year alone and 0.7% the year before compared with a nearly 25% loss between 2000 and 2010.
As an urban sociologist studying issues related to race and ethnicity, I am interested in how Detroit’s population is changing, and where different groups live in both the city and its suburbs.
Analyzing population trends in the metro Detroit area using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, I wanted to understand how racial, ethnic and socioeconomic trends are unfolding, and what those changes can tell us about the evolution and vitality of Detroit.
Black Detroiters relocate, city diversifies
From 2010 to 2023, Detroit’s racial and ethnic makeup continued to gradually diversify even as the city was declining in population.
While Black residents are still the majority, their proportion of the total number fell from around 84% to 79%.
Other groups, in contrast, increased their share of the city’s population. Between 2010 and 2023, the percentage of Hispanic residents grew from 6.6% to 8.3%, the percentage of white residents grew from 8.2% to 10.7%, and the percentage of Asian residents grew from 1.3% to 1.7%.
These shifts reflect a steady and ongoing diversification of Detroit’s population, indicative of new migration trends and shifting neighborhood dynamics.
Suburbs in flux
In addition to Detroit’s recent population growth, a broader story is unfolding in the city’s suburbs.
The population of the suburban area as a whole increased 0.73% from 2023 to 2024, but growth was not evenly spread. Collectively, the outer-ring suburbs gained almost 20,000 people, increasing by 1%. Communities such as the city of Troy and Macomb Township accounted for a significant share of that growth.
A map of Detroit and the surrounding suburbs, with shading to indicate which areas are considered to be the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ suburbs. Grigoris Argeros, CC BY
Inner-ring suburbs, such as Southfield, Warren and others, grew less vigorously – gaining just 4,000 people, or 0.31%.
These differences highlight the necessity of complicating the conventional city-versus-suburb narrative to acknowledge the many economic and racial divisions across the metropolitan region.
The socioeconomic statuses of residents of the inner- and outer-ring suburbs diverged between 2000 and 2020.
My analysis of census data shows that although both subregions witnessed increases in median household incomes, the rates of change were significantly higher in the outer-ring suburbs, with a 37.7% increase versus a 16.8% increase in the inner rings.
The data shows a similar trend in higher education attainment. Outer ring suburbs gained 7.1% more residents with college degrees or higher during this period, while the inner suburbs lost 7.5%.
Homeownership patterns in the two suburban regions also diverged over those two decades, increasing 18% in the outer rings and decreasing 10% in the inner rings.
The data on poverty and immigration also reveal contrasting results.
According to my calculations of census data, inner-ring suburbs experienced a 77% increase in poverty, while the outer ring experienced a lesser, though considerable, 50.8% bump in poverty during the 2000-2020 period.
Meanwhile, during the same time period, the foreign-born populations in the outer suburbs expanded by 24.9%, with increases of at least 10,000 in places such as Sterling Heights, Novi and Canton. In contrast, the inner suburbs saw more modest gains — around 5,000 in cities such as Dearborn Heights and Warren — while their overall foreign-born share declined by nearly 20%.
Together, the above trends highlight the necessity of not viewing the suburban area as a monolith. These patterns reflect national trends, in which many older, inner-ring suburbs are experiencing socioeconomic stagnation or decline while newer, outer-ring suburbs continue to attract more people who have higher incomes.
Mixed neighborhoods grow
Residential segregation also differentiates inner and outer suburban rings.
Segregation levels remain high in the inner suburbs, especially between white and Black residents. While outer suburbs tend to be more integrated today, the rate of change there has been more modest over the past two decades.
Social scientists measure segregation using a tool called the “dissimilarity index.” The index represents the proportion of one group that would need to move to establish an equal distribution of the population based on their relative numbers. It ranges from 0 to 100. A score of 0 means equal distribution across neighborhoods, while a score of 100 means the two groups live in completely separate areas.
From 2000 to 2020, white-Black segregation across the region decreased from 84.4% to 68.3% on the index, while white-Hispanic segregation decreased from 47.6% to 39.9%. Together, these numbers indicate a broader trend toward more integrated living patterns.
In the inner-ring suburbs, segregation fell across the board. White-Black segregation went down by 15.6%; white-Asian and white-Hispanic segregation dropped even more, by 43.2% and 30.7%, respectively.
These trends suggest that while the outer suburbs currently have lower levels of segregation, the inner suburbs are integrating more rapidly, reflecting shifting patterns of neighborhood change and increasing racial and ethnic diversity.
Detroit has come a long way since exiting bankruptcy in 2014. Its recent population growth and increasing diversity show important signs of renewal.
Grigoris Argeros does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
For centuries, humans have searched for ways to extend life. Alchemists never found the philosopher’s stone, but scientists have consistently shown that a longer life can be attained by eating less – at least in certain lab animals. But can we find a way to live longer while still enjoying our food?
Compounds that mimic the biological effects of dieting could be the answer, and the two most popular diet-mimicking drugs are rapamycin and metformin. In a new study, my colleagues and I found that rapamycin prolongs life almost as consistently as eating less, whereas metformin does not.
Eating less, or dietary restriction, has been the gold standard for achieving a longer life ever since a study nearly a century ago in which laboratory rats that ate less surprised scientists by outliving their well-fed lab mates.
But for many people, sticking to a permanent diet is hard and far from enjoyable. Also, if taken to extremes, it can even be bad for health. That is why we wanted to know whether drugs that are dieting mimics could bring the same benefit of eating less without the unwanted side-effects.
Rapamycin was first discovered in bacteria living in Easter Island soil in the 1970s, and medical professionals now use it to prevent organ-transplant rejection, as it is a powerful immunosuppressant. It works by blocking a molecular switch that tells cells when nutrients are abundant.
Metformin, meanwhile, is a synthetic descendant of a compound found in French lilac (also known as goat’s rue) and is widely prescribed to control blood sugar in type 2 diabetes. Both drugs are involved in the body’s ability to sense nutrients and energy, so biologists like us hoped they might copy the mechanisms activated by eating less.
To find out, we pooled the results of many studies to see if there were any overall patterns. We carefully examined thousands of scientific papers to finally home in on 167 studies on eight vertebrate species, from fish to monkeys, that provided sufficient details on survival and how the study was done. Then we compared three longevity strategies: eating less, taking rapamycin and taking metformin.
We found that eating less still came out on top as the most consistent way to prolong life in all animals but rapamycin was close behind. Metformin, in contrast, showed no clear benefit. The life-extension effect of eating less was the same in both sexes, and it didn’t matter whether the diet plan involved eating smaller portions or intermittent fasting.
That makes rapamycin one of the most exciting leads for new anti-ageing therapies. Ageing might not be considered a disease, but it is a risk factor behind many diseases from cancer to dementia. If we slow that underlying process, the benefit will be extra years of quality life and lower healthcare bills as the world’s population grows older.
Rapamycin was first isolated from bacteria found in the soil on Easter Island. JHVEPhoto/Shutterstock.com
Encouraging early signs, but we’re not quite there yet
However, there are some important points to consider. First, we discovered considerable variation from experiment to experiment with some studies even showing that eating less or taking rapamycin reduced lifespan.
Also, most of the evidence originates from mice and rats that have many of our genes but are clearly not exactly like us.
Finally, rapamycin may have side-effects such as repressing immunity and reproduction. Researchers are now investigating milder doses of rapamycin to see if they provide the advantages without the side-effects.
The preliminary signs are encouraging. In an ongoing human rapamycin trial, volunteers given low, intermittent doses of rapamycin have experienced positive effects on indicators of healthspan. For metformin, the human trial is still in progress and the findings are expected to be out in a few years time.
For now, nobody should run to their doctor asking for prescriptions of rapamycin to live longer. But this drug, extracted from obscure soil bacteria, shows us that interfering with a single molecular pathway can be enough to mimic the benefits of eating less. The challenge is to use this discovery to produce therapies that make us healthier for longer without compromising our quality of life – or our taste for the occasional slice of chocolate cake.
Dr. Zahida Sultanova works for the University of East Anglia and is funded by the Leverhulme Trust. She is a member of European Society of Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Society of Turkey (EkoEvo).
New Zealand has paused $18.2 million in development assistance funding to the Cook Islands after its government signed partnership agreements with China earlier this year.
This move is causing consternation in the realm country, with one local political leader calling it “a significant escalation” between Avarua and Wellington.
A spokesperson for Foreign Minister Winston Peters said the Cook Islands did not consult with Aotearoa over the China deals and failed to ensure shared interests were not put at risk.
On Thursday (Wednesday local time), Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown told Parliament that his government knew the funding cut was coming.
“We have been aware that this core sector support would not be forthcoming in this budget because this had not been signed off by the New Zealand government in previous months, so it has not been included in the budget that we are debating this week,” he said.
The agreements focus in areas of economy, infrastructure and maritime cooperation and seabed mineral development, among others. They do not include security or defence.
However, to New Zealand’s annoyance, Brown did not discuss the details with it first.
Prior to signing, Brown said he was aware of the strong interest in the outcomes of his visit to China.
Afterwards, a spokesperson for Peters released a statement saying New Zealand would consider the agreements closely, in light of the countries’ mutual constitutional responsibilities.
The Cook Islands-New Zealand relationship Cook Islands is in free association with New Zealand. The country governs its own affairs, but New Zealand provides assistance with foreign affairs (upon request), disaster relief and defence.
Cook Islanders also hold New Zealand passports entitling them to live and work there.
In 2001, New Zealand and the Cook Islands signed a joint centenary declaration, which required the two to “consult regularly on defence and security issues”.
The Cook Islands did not think it needed to consult with New Zealand on the China agreement.
Peters said there is an expectation that the government of the Cook Islands would not pursue policies that were “significantly at variance with New Zealand’s interests”.
A spokesperson for Peters said at the time said the New Zealand government noted the mining agreements and would analyse them.
How New Zealand reacted On Thursday morning, Peters said the Cook Islands had not lived up to the 2001 declaration.
Peters said the Cook Islands had failed to give satisfactory answers to New Zealand’s questions about the arrangement.
“We have made it very clear in our response to statements that were being made — which we do not think laid out the facts and truth behind this matter — of what New Zealand’s position is,” he said.
“We’ve got responsibilities ourselves here. And we wanted to make sure that we didn’t put a step wrong in our commitment and our special arrangement which goes back decades.”
Officials would be working through what the Cook Islands had to do so New Zealand was satisfied the funding could resume.
He said New Zealand’s message was conveyed to the Cook Islands government “in its finality” on June 4.
“When we made this decision, we said to them our senior officials need to work on clearing up this misunderstanding and confusion about our arrangements and about our relationship.”
Asked about the timing of Luxon’s visit to China, and what he thought the response from China might be, Peters said the decision to pause the funding was not connected to China.
He said he had raised the matter with his China counterpart Wang Yi, when he last visited China in February, and Wang understood New Zealand’s relationship with the Cook Islands.
Concerns in the Cook Islands Over the past three years, New Zealand has provided nearly $194.6 million (about US$117m) to the Cook Islands through the development programme.
Cook Islands opposition leader Tina Browne said she was deeply concerned about the pause.
Browne said she was informed of the funding pause on Wednesday night, and she was worried about the indication from Peters that it might affect future funding.
She issued a “please explain” request to Mark Brown:
“The prime minister has been leading the country to think that everything with New Zealand has been repaired, hunky dory, etcetera — trust is still there,” she said.
“Wham-bam, we get this in the Cook Islands News this morning. What does that tell you?”
Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown (left) and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters in Rarotonga in February last year. Image: RNZ Pacific/Eleisha Foon
Will NZ’s action ‘be a very good news story’ for Beijing? Massey University’s defence and security expert Dr Anna Powles told RNZ Pacific that aid should not be on the table in debate between New Zealand and the Cook Islands.
“That spirit of the [2001] declaration is really in question here,” she said.
“The negotiation between the two countries needs to take aid as a bargaining chip off the table for it to be able to continue — for it to be successful.”
Dr Powles said New Zealand’s moves might help China strengthen its hand in the Pacific.
She said China could contrast its position on using aid as a bargaining chip.
“By Beijing being able to tell its partners in the region, ‘we would never do that, and certainly we would never seek to leverage our relationships in this way’. This could be a very good news story for China, and it certainly puts New Zealand in a weaker position, as a consequence.”
However, a prominent Cook Islands lawyer said it was fair that New Zealand was pressing pause.
Norman George said Brown should implore New Zealand for forgiveness.
“It is absolutely a fair thing to do because our prime minister betrayed New Zealand and let the government and people of New Zealand down.”
Brown has not responded to multiple attempts by RNZ Pacific for comment.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
New Zealand has paused $18.2 million in development assistance funding to the Cook Islands after its government signed partnership agreements with China earlier this year.
This move is causing consternation in the realm country, with one local political leader calling it “a significant escalation” between Avarua and Wellington.
A spokesperson for Foreign Minister Winston Peters said the Cook Islands did not consult with Aotearoa over the China deals and failed to ensure shared interests were not put at risk.
On Thursday (Wednesday local time), Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown told Parliament that his government knew the funding cut was coming.
“We have been aware that this core sector support would not be forthcoming in this budget because this had not been signed off by the New Zealand government in previous months, so it has not been included in the budget that we are debating this week,” he said.
The agreements focus in areas of economy, infrastructure and maritime cooperation and seabed mineral development, among others. They do not include security or defence.
However, to New Zealand’s annoyance, Brown did not discuss the details with it first.
Prior to signing, Brown said he was aware of the strong interest in the outcomes of his visit to China.
Afterwards, a spokesperson for Peters released a statement saying New Zealand would consider the agreements closely, in light of the countries’ mutual constitutional responsibilities.
The Cook Islands-New Zealand relationship Cook Islands is in free association with New Zealand. The country governs its own affairs, but New Zealand provides assistance with foreign affairs (upon request), disaster relief and defence.
Cook Islanders also hold New Zealand passports entitling them to live and work there.
In 2001, New Zealand and the Cook Islands signed a joint centenary declaration, which required the two to “consult regularly on defence and security issues”.
The Cook Islands did not think it needed to consult with New Zealand on the China agreement.
Peters said there is an expectation that the government of the Cook Islands would not pursue policies that were “significantly at variance with New Zealand’s interests”.
A spokesperson for Peters said at the time said the New Zealand government noted the mining agreements and would analyse them.
How New Zealand reacted On Thursday morning, Peters said the Cook Islands had not lived up to the 2001 declaration.
Peters said the Cook Islands had failed to give satisfactory answers to New Zealand’s questions about the arrangement.
“We have made it very clear in our response to statements that were being made — which we do not think laid out the facts and truth behind this matter — of what New Zealand’s position is,” he said.
“We’ve got responsibilities ourselves here. And we wanted to make sure that we didn’t put a step wrong in our commitment and our special arrangement which goes back decades.”
Officials would be working through what the Cook Islands had to do so New Zealand was satisfied the funding could resume.
He said New Zealand’s message was conveyed to the Cook Islands government “in its finality” on June 4.
“When we made this decision, we said to them our senior officials need to work on clearing up this misunderstanding and confusion about our arrangements and about our relationship.”
Asked about the timing of Luxon’s visit to China, and what he thought the response from China might be, Peters said the decision to pause the funding was not connected to China.
He said he had raised the matter with his China counterpart Wang Yi, when he last visited China in February, and Wang understood New Zealand’s relationship with the Cook Islands.
Concerns in the Cook Islands Over the past three years, New Zealand has provided nearly $194.6 million (about US$117m) to the Cook Islands through the development programme.
Cook Islands opposition leader Tina Browne said she was deeply concerned about the pause.
Browne said she was informed of the funding pause on Wednesday night, and she was worried about the indication from Peters that it might affect future funding.
She issued a “please explain” request to Mark Brown:
“The prime minister has been leading the country to think that everything with New Zealand has been repaired, hunky dory, etcetera — trust is still there,” she said.
“Wham-bam, we get this in the Cook Islands News this morning. What does that tell you?”
Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown (left) and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters in Rarotonga in February last year. Image: RNZ Pacific/Eleisha Foon
Will NZ’s action ‘be a very good news story’ for Beijing? Massey University’s defence and security expert Dr Anna Powles told RNZ Pacific that aid should not be on the table in debate between New Zealand and the Cook Islands.
“That spirit of the [2001] declaration is really in question here,” she said.
“The negotiation between the two countries needs to take aid as a bargaining chip off the table for it to be able to continue — for it to be successful.”
Dr Powles said New Zealand’s moves might help China strengthen its hand in the Pacific.
She said China could contrast its position on using aid as a bargaining chip.
“By Beijing being able to tell its partners in the region, ‘we would never do that, and certainly we would never seek to leverage our relationships in this way’. This could be a very good news story for China, and it certainly puts New Zealand in a weaker position, as a consequence.”
However, a prominent Cook Islands lawyer said it was fair that New Zealand was pressing pause.
Norman George said Brown should implore New Zealand for forgiveness.
“It is absolutely a fair thing to do because our prime minister betrayed New Zealand and let the government and people of New Zealand down.”
Brown has not responded to multiple attempts by RNZ Pacific for comment.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Had Israel not launched its unprovoked attack on Iran on Friday night, in direct violation of the UN Charter, Iran would now be taking part in the sixth round of negotiations concerning the future of its nuclear programme, meeting with representatives from the United States in Muscat, the capital of Oman.
Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu claimed he acted to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb, saying Iran had the capacity to build nine nuclear weapons. Israel provided no evidence to back up its claims.
On 25 March 2025, Trump’s own National Director of Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard said:
“The IC [Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003. The IC is monitoring if Tehran decides to reauthorise its nuclear weapons programme”
Even if Iran had the capability to build a bomb, it is quite another thing to have the will to do so.
Any such bomb would need to be tested first, and any such test would be quickly detected by a series of satellites on the lookout for nuclear detonations anywhere on the planet.
It is more likely that Israel launched its attack to stop US and Iranian negotiators from meeting on Sunday.
Only a month ago, Iran’s lead negotiator in the nuclear talks, Ali Shamkhani, told US television that Iran was ready to do a deal. NBC journalist Richard Engel reports:
“Shamkhani said Iran is willing to commit to never having a nuclear weapon, to get rid of its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, to only enrich to a level needed for civilian use and to allow inspectors in to oversee it all, in exchange for lifting all sanctions immediately. He said Iran would accept that deal tonight.”
Inside Iran as Trump presses for nuclear deal. Video: NBC News
Shamkhani died on Saturday, following injuries he suffered during Israel’s attack on Friday night. It appears that Israel not only opposed a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear impasse: Israel killed it directly.
A spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Esmaeil Baghaei, told a news conference in Tehran the talks would be suspended until Israel halts its attacks:
“It is obvious that in such circumstances and until the Zionist regime’s aggression against the Iranian nation stops, it would be meaningless to participate with the party that is the biggest supporter and accomplice of the aggressor.”
On 1 April 2024, Israel launched an airstrike on Iran’s embassy in Syria, killing 16 people, including a woman and her son. The attack violated international norms regarding the protection of diplomatic premises under the Vienna Convention.
It is worth noting how the TheNew York Times described the occupation of the US Embassy in November 1979:
“But it is the Ayatollah himself who is doing the devil’s work by inciting and condoning the student invasion of the American and British Embassies in Tehran. This is not just a diplomatic affront; it is a declaration of war on diplomacy itself, on usages and traditions honoured by all nations, however old and new, whatever belief.
“The immunities given a ruler’s emissaries were respected by the kings of Persia during wars with Greece and by the Ayatollah’s spiritual ancestors during the Crusades.”
Now it is Israel conducting a “war on diplomacy itself”, first with the attack on the embassy, followed by Friday’s surprise attack on Iran. Scuppering a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear issue appears to be the aim. To make matters worse, Israel’s recklessness could yet cause a major war.
Trump: Inconsistent and ineffective In an interview with Time magazine on 22 April 2025, Trump denied he had stopped Israel from attacking Iran’s nuclear sites.
“No, it’s not right. I didn’t stop them. But I didn’t make it comfortable for them, because I think we can make a deal without the attack. I hope we can. It’s possible we’ll have to attack because Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.
“But I didn’t make it comfortable for them, but I didn’t say no. Ultimately I was going to leave that choice to them, but I said I would much prefer a deal than bombs being dropped.”
— US President Donald Trump
In the same interview Trump boasted “I think we’re going to make a deal with Iran. Nobody else could do that.” Except, someone else had already done that — only for Trump to abandon the deal in his first term as president.
In July 2015 Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) alongside the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and the European Union. Iran pledged to curb its nuclear programme for 10-15 years in exchange for the removal of some economic sanctions. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also gained access and verification powers.
Iran also agreed to limit uranium enrichment to 3.67 per cent U-235, allowing it to maintain its nuclear power reactors.
Despite clear signs the nuclear deal was working, Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA and reinstated sanctions on Iran in November 2018. Despite the unilateral American action, Iran kept to the deal for a time, but in January 2020 Iran declared it would no longer abide by the limitations included in JCPOA but would continue to work with the IAEA.
By pulling out of the deal and reinstating sanctions, the US and Israel effectively created a strong incentive for Iran to resume enriching uranium to higher levels, not for the sake of making a bomb, but as the most obvious means of creating leverage to remove the sanctions.
As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Iran is allowed to enrich uranium for civilian fuel programmes.
Iran’s nuclear programme began in the 1960s with US assistance. Prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran was ruled by the brutal dictatorship of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahavi.
American corporations saw Iran as a potential market for expansion. During the 1970s the US suggested to the Shah he needed not one but several nuclear reactors to meet Iran’s future electricity needs. In June 1974, the Shah declared that Iran would have nuclear weapons, “without a doubt and sooner than one would think”.
In 2007, I wrote an article for Peace Researcher where I examined US claims that Iran does not need nuclear power because it is sitting on one of the largest gas supplies in the world. One of the most interesting things I discovered while researching the article was the relevance of air pollution, a critical public health concern in Iran.
In 2024, health officials estimated that air pollution is responsible for 40,000 deaths a year in Iran. Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raisi said the “majority of these deaths were due to cardiovascular diseases, strokes, respiratory issues, and cancers”.
Sahimi describes levels of air pollution in Tehran and other major Iranian cities as “catastrophic”, with elementary schools having to close on some days as a result. There was little media coverage of the air pollution issue in relation to Iran’s energy mix then, and I have seen hardly any since.
An energy research project, Advanced Energy Technologies provides a useful summary of electricity production in Iran as it stood in 2023.
Iranian electricity production in 2023. Source: Advanced Energy Technologies
With around 94.6 percent of electricity generation dependent on fossil fuels, there are serious environmental reasons why Iran should not be encouraged to depend on oil and gas for its electricity needs — not to mention the prospect of climate change.
One could also question the safety of nuclear power in one of the most seismically active countries in the world, however it would be fair to ask the same question of countries like Japan, which aims to increase its use of nuclear power to about 20 percent of the country’s total electricity generation by 2040, despite the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated that Iran’s uranium enrichment programme “must continue”, but the “scope and level may change”. Prior to the talks in Oman, Araghchi highlighted the “constant change” in US positions as a problem.
Trump’s rhetoric on uranium enrichment has shifted repeatedly.
He told Meet the Press on May 4 that “total dismantlement” of the nuclear program is “all I would accept.” He suggested that Iran does not need nuclear energy because of its oil reserves. But on May 7, when asked specifically about allowing Iran to retain a limited enrichment program, Trump said “we haven’t made that decision yet.”
Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in a May 14 interview with NBC that Iran is ready to sign a deal with the United States and reiterated that Iran is willing to limit uranium enrichment to low levels. He previously suggested in a May 7 post on X that any deal should include a “recognition of Iran’s right to industrial enrichment.”
That recognition, plus the removal of U.S. and international sanctions, “can guarantee a deal,” Shamkhani said.
So with Iran seemingly willing to accept reasonable conditions, why was a deal not reached last month? It appears the US changed its position, and demanded Iran cease all enrichment of uranium, including what Iran needs for its power stations.
One wonders if Zionist lobby groups like AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) influenced this decision. One could recall what happened during Benjamin Netanyahu’s first stint as Israel’s Prime Minister (1996-1999) to illustrate the point.
In April 1995 AIPAC published a report titled ‘Comprehensive US Sanctions Against Iran: A Plan for Action’. In 1997 Mohammad Khatami was elected as President of Iran. The following year Khatami expressed regret for the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 and denounced terrorism against Israelis, while noting that “supporting peoples who fight for their liberation of their land is not, in my opinion, supporting terrorism”.
The threat of improved relations between Iran and the US sent the Israeli government led by Netanyahu into a panic. The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported that “Israel has expressed concern to Washington of an impending change of policy by the United States towards Iran” adding that Netanyahu “asked AIPAC . . . to act vigorously in Congress to prevent such a policy shift.”
20 years ago the Israeli lobby were claiming an Iranian nuclear bomb was imminent. It didn’t happen.
Netanyahu’s Iran nuclear warnings. Video: Al Jazeera
The misguided efforts of Israel and the United States to contain Iran’s use of nuclear technology are not only counterproductive — they risk being a catastrophic failure. If one was going to design a policy to convince Iran nuclear weapons may be needed for its own defence, it is hard to imagine a policy more effective than the one Israel has pursued for the past 30 years.My 2007 Peace Researcher article asked a simple question: ‘Why does Iran want nuclear weapons?’ My introduction could have been written yesterday.
“With all the talk about Iran and the intentions of its nuclear programme it is a shame the West continues to undermine its own position with selective morality and obvious hypocrisy. It seems amazing there can be so much written about this issue, yet so little addresses the obvious question – ‘for what reasons could Iran want nuclear weapons?’.
“As Simon Jenkins (2006) points out, the answer is as simple as looking at a map. ‘I would sleep happier if there were no Iranian bomb but a swamp of hypocrisy separates me from overly protesting it. Iran is a proud country that sits between nuclear Pakistan and India to its east, a nuclear Russia to its north and a nuclear Israel to its west. Adjacent Afghanistan and Iraq are occupied at will by a nuclear America, which backed Saddam Hussein in his 1980 invasion of Iran. How can we say such a country has no right’ to nuclear defence?’”
This week the German Foreign Office reached new heights in hypocrisy with this absurd tweet.
Iran has no nuclear weapons. Israel does. Iran is a signatory to the NPT. Israel is not. Iran allows IAEA inspections. Israel does not.
Starting another war will not make us forget, nor forgive what Israel is doing in Gaza.
From the river to the sea, credibility requires consistency.
I write about New Zealand and international politics, with particular interests in political economy, history, philosophy, transport, and workers’ rights. I don’t like war very much.
Joe Hendren writes about New Zealand and international politics, with particular interests in political economy, history, philosophy, transport, and workers’ rights. Republished with his permission. Read this original article on his Substack account with full references.
Had Israel not launched its unprovoked attack on Iran on Friday night, in direct violation of the UN Charter, Iran would now be taking part in the sixth round of negotiations concerning the future of its nuclear programme, meeting with representatives from the United States in Muscat, the capital of Oman.
Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu claimed he acted to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb, saying Iran had the capacity to build nine nuclear weapons. Israel provided no evidence to back up its claims.
On 25 March 2025, Trump’s own National Director of Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard said:
“The IC [Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003. The IC is monitoring if Tehran decides to reauthorise its nuclear weapons programme”
Even if Iran had the capability to build a bomb, it is quite another thing to have the will to do so.
Any such bomb would need to be tested first, and any such test would be quickly detected by a series of satellites on the lookout for nuclear detonations anywhere on the planet.
It is more likely that Israel launched its attack to stop US and Iranian negotiators from meeting on Sunday.
Only a month ago, Iran’s lead negotiator in the nuclear talks, Ali Shamkhani, told US television that Iran was ready to do a deal. NBC journalist Richard Engel reports:
“Shamkhani said Iran is willing to commit to never having a nuclear weapon, to get rid of its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, to only enrich to a level needed for civilian use and to allow inspectors in to oversee it all, in exchange for lifting all sanctions immediately. He said Iran would accept that deal tonight.”
Inside Iran as Trump presses for nuclear deal. Video: NBC News
Shamkhani died on Saturday, following injuries he suffered during Israel’s attack on Friday night. It appears that Israel not only opposed a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear impasse: Israel killed it directly.
A spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Esmaeil Baghaei, told a news conference in Tehran the talks would be suspended until Israel halts its attacks:
“It is obvious that in such circumstances and until the Zionist regime’s aggression against the Iranian nation stops, it would be meaningless to participate with the party that is the biggest supporter and accomplice of the aggressor.”
On 1 April 2024, Israel launched an airstrike on Iran’s embassy in Syria, killing 16 people, including a woman and her son. The attack violated international norms regarding the protection of diplomatic premises under the Vienna Convention.
It is worth noting how the TheNew York Times described the occupation of the US Embassy in November 1979:
“But it is the Ayatollah himself who is doing the devil’s work by inciting and condoning the student invasion of the American and British Embassies in Tehran. This is not just a diplomatic affront; it is a declaration of war on diplomacy itself, on usages and traditions honoured by all nations, however old and new, whatever belief.
“The immunities given a ruler’s emissaries were respected by the kings of Persia during wars with Greece and by the Ayatollah’s spiritual ancestors during the Crusades.”
Now it is Israel conducting a “war on diplomacy itself”, first with the attack on the embassy, followed by Friday’s surprise attack on Iran. Scuppering a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear issue appears to be the aim. To make matters worse, Israel’s recklessness could yet cause a major war.
Trump: Inconsistent and ineffective In an interview with Time magazine on 22 April 2025, Trump denied he had stopped Israel from attacking Iran’s nuclear sites.
“No, it’s not right. I didn’t stop them. But I didn’t make it comfortable for them, because I think we can make a deal without the attack. I hope we can. It’s possible we’ll have to attack because Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.
“But I didn’t make it comfortable for them, but I didn’t say no. Ultimately I was going to leave that choice to them, but I said I would much prefer a deal than bombs being dropped.”
— US President Donald Trump
In the same interview Trump boasted “I think we’re going to make a deal with Iran. Nobody else could do that.” Except, someone else had already done that — only for Trump to abandon the deal in his first term as president.
In July 2015 Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) alongside the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and the European Union. Iran pledged to curb its nuclear programme for 10-15 years in exchange for the removal of some economic sanctions. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also gained access and verification powers.
Iran also agreed to limit uranium enrichment to 3.67 per cent U-235, allowing it to maintain its nuclear power reactors.
Despite clear signs the nuclear deal was working, Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA and reinstated sanctions on Iran in November 2018. Despite the unilateral American action, Iran kept to the deal for a time, but in January 2020 Iran declared it would no longer abide by the limitations included in JCPOA but would continue to work with the IAEA.
By pulling out of the deal and reinstating sanctions, the US and Israel effectively created a strong incentive for Iran to resume enriching uranium to higher levels, not for the sake of making a bomb, but as the most obvious means of creating leverage to remove the sanctions.
As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Iran is allowed to enrich uranium for civilian fuel programmes.
Iran’s nuclear programme began in the 1960s with US assistance. Prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran was ruled by the brutal dictatorship of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahavi.
American corporations saw Iran as a potential market for expansion. During the 1970s the US suggested to the Shah he needed not one but several nuclear reactors to meet Iran’s future electricity needs. In June 1974, the Shah declared that Iran would have nuclear weapons, “without a doubt and sooner than one would think”.
In 2007, I wrote an article for Peace Researcher where I examined US claims that Iran does not need nuclear power because it is sitting on one of the largest gas supplies in the world. One of the most interesting things I discovered while researching the article was the relevance of air pollution, a critical public health concern in Iran.
In 2024, health officials estimated that air pollution is responsible for 40,000 deaths a year in Iran. Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raisi said the “majority of these deaths were due to cardiovascular diseases, strokes, respiratory issues, and cancers”.
Sahimi describes levels of air pollution in Tehran and other major Iranian cities as “catastrophic”, with elementary schools having to close on some days as a result. There was little media coverage of the air pollution issue in relation to Iran’s energy mix then, and I have seen hardly any since.
An energy research project, Advanced Energy Technologies provides a useful summary of electricity production in Iran as it stood in 2023.
Iranian electricity production in 2023. Source: Advanced Energy Technologies
With around 94.6 percent of electricity generation dependent on fossil fuels, there are serious environmental reasons why Iran should not be encouraged to depend on oil and gas for its electricity needs — not to mention the prospect of climate change.
One could also question the safety of nuclear power in one of the most seismically active countries in the world, however it would be fair to ask the same question of countries like Japan, which aims to increase its use of nuclear power to about 20 percent of the country’s total electricity generation by 2040, despite the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated that Iran’s uranium enrichment programme “must continue”, but the “scope and level may change”. Prior to the talks in Oman, Araghchi highlighted the “constant change” in US positions as a problem.
Trump’s rhetoric on uranium enrichment has shifted repeatedly.
He told Meet the Press on May 4 that “total dismantlement” of the nuclear program is “all I would accept.” He suggested that Iran does not need nuclear energy because of its oil reserves. But on May 7, when asked specifically about allowing Iran to retain a limited enrichment program, Trump said “we haven’t made that decision yet.”
Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in a May 14 interview with NBC that Iran is ready to sign a deal with the United States and reiterated that Iran is willing to limit uranium enrichment to low levels. He previously suggested in a May 7 post on X that any deal should include a “recognition of Iran’s right to industrial enrichment.”
That recognition, plus the removal of U.S. and international sanctions, “can guarantee a deal,” Shamkhani said.
So with Iran seemingly willing to accept reasonable conditions, why was a deal not reached last month? It appears the US changed its position, and demanded Iran cease all enrichment of uranium, including what Iran needs for its power stations.
One wonders if Zionist lobby groups like AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) influenced this decision. One could recall what happened during Benjamin Netanyahu’s first stint as Israel’s Prime Minister (1996-1999) to illustrate the point.
In April 1995 AIPAC published a report titled ‘Comprehensive US Sanctions Against Iran: A Plan for Action’. In 1997 Mohammad Khatami was elected as President of Iran. The following year Khatami expressed regret for the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 and denounced terrorism against Israelis, while noting that “supporting peoples who fight for their liberation of their land is not, in my opinion, supporting terrorism”.
The threat of improved relations between Iran and the US sent the Israeli government led by Netanyahu into a panic. The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported that “Israel has expressed concern to Washington of an impending change of policy by the United States towards Iran” adding that Netanyahu “asked AIPAC . . . to act vigorously in Congress to prevent such a policy shift.”
20 years ago the Israeli lobby were claiming an Iranian nuclear bomb was imminent. It didn’t happen.
Netanyahu’s Iran nuclear warnings. Video: Al Jazeera
The misguided efforts of Israel and the United States to contain Iran’s use of nuclear technology are not only counterproductive — they risk being a catastrophic failure. If one was going to design a policy to convince Iran nuclear weapons may be needed for its own defence, it is hard to imagine a policy more effective than the one Israel has pursued for the past 30 years.My 2007 Peace Researcher article asked a simple question: ‘Why does Iran want nuclear weapons?’ My introduction could have been written yesterday.
“With all the talk about Iran and the intentions of its nuclear programme it is a shame the West continues to undermine its own position with selective morality and obvious hypocrisy. It seems amazing there can be so much written about this issue, yet so little addresses the obvious question – ‘for what reasons could Iran want nuclear weapons?’.
“As Simon Jenkins (2006) points out, the answer is as simple as looking at a map. ‘I would sleep happier if there were no Iranian bomb but a swamp of hypocrisy separates me from overly protesting it. Iran is a proud country that sits between nuclear Pakistan and India to its east, a nuclear Russia to its north and a nuclear Israel to its west. Adjacent Afghanistan and Iraq are occupied at will by a nuclear America, which backed Saddam Hussein in his 1980 invasion of Iran. How can we say such a country has no right’ to nuclear defence?’”
This week the German Foreign Office reached new heights in hypocrisy with this absurd tweet.
Iran has no nuclear weapons. Israel does. Iran is a signatory to the NPT. Israel is not. Iran allows IAEA inspections. Israel does not.
Starting another war will not make us forget, nor forgive what Israel is doing in Gaza.
From the river to the sea, credibility requires consistency.
I write about New Zealand and international politics, with particular interests in political economy, history, philosophy, transport, and workers’ rights. I don’t like war very much.
Joe Hendren writes about New Zealand and international politics, with particular interests in political economy, history, philosophy, transport, and workers’ rights. Republished with his permission. Read this original article on his Substack account with full references.
On Wednesday, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley will front the National Press Club. So why is that a big deal?
For one thing, her predecessor Peter Dutton never appeared there as opposition leader. For another, it’s a formidable forum for a new leader.
It could all go badly wrong, but she’s right to make the early appearance. It sends a message she is not risk-averse.
Ley wants to establish a better relationship with the Canberra Press Gallery than Dutton had. He saw the gallery journalists as part of the despised “Canberra bubble” and bypassed them when he could. That didn’t serve him well – not least because he wasn’t toughened up for when he had to face daily news conferences (with many Canberra reporters) on the election trail.
Ley’s office has set up a WhatsApp group for gallery journalists, alerting them to who’s appearing in the media, and also dispatching short responses to things said by the government (such as links to ministers’ former statements). This matches the WhatsApp group for the gallery run by the Prime Minister’s Office. One of Ley’s press secretaries, Liam Jones, has also regularly been doing the rounds in the media corridors of Parliament House, something that very rarely happened with Dutton’s media staff.
To the extent anyone is paying attention, Ley has made a better start than many, including some Liberals, had expected. She came out of the tiff with the Nationals well, despite having to give ground on their policy demands. Her frontbench reshuffle had flaws but wasn’t terrible. She’s struck a reasonable, rather than shrill, tone in her comments on issues, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s failure thus far to get a meeting with US President Donald Trump.
Her next significant test will be how she handles at the Press Club questions she and her party are confronting. So here are a few for her.
One (the most fundamental): How is she going to thread the needle between the two sides of the Liberal Party? Howard’s old “broad church” answer no longer holds. The church is fractured. In an era of identity politics, the Liberals have a massive identity crisis. The party’s conservatives are hardline, have hold of the party’s (narrow) base, and will undermine Ley if they can. Its moderates will struggle to shape its key policies in a way that will appeal to small-l liberal voters in urban seats.
Two: How and when will she deal with the future of the Coalition’s commitment to net zero emissions by 2050? She has put all policies on the table (but made exceptions for several Nationals’ core policies). There is a strong case for her staking out her own position on net zero, and getting the policy settled sooner rather than later. With younger voters having eschewed the Liberals, Ley told The Daily Aus podcast this week,“I want young people to know first and foremost that I want to listen to them and meet them where they are”. One place they are is in support of net zero by 2050. If the Liberals deserted that, they’d be making the challenge of attracting more youth votes a herculean one.
For the opposition. net zero is likely THE climate debate of this term – and such debates are at best difficult and at worst lethal for Liberal leaders.
Three: Won’t it be near impossible for the Liberals to get a respectable proportion of women in its House of Representatives team without quotas? Over the years, Ley has been equivocal on the issue. She told The Daily Aus: “Each of our [Liberal state] divisions is responsible for its own world, if you like, when it comes to [candidate] selections”. This is unlikely to cut it: she needs to have a view, and a strategy. Targets haven’t worked.
Four: Ley says she wants to run a constructive opposition, so how constructive will it be in the tax debate Treasurer Jim Chalmers launched this week? Ley might have a chat with John Howard about the 1980s, when the Liberals had internal arguments about whether to support or oppose some of the Hawke government’s reform measures. Obviously, no total buy-in should be expected but to oppose reforms for the sake of it would discredit a party trying to sell its economic credentials.
More generally, how constructive or obstructive will the opposition be in the Senate? This raises matters of principle, not just political opportunism. In the new Senate the government will have to negotiate on legislation with either the opposition or the Greens. If the opposition constantly forces Labor into the arms of the Greens, that could produce legislation that (from the Liberals’ point of view) is worse than if the Liberals were Labor’s partner. How does that sit with them philosophically?
Five: Finally, how active will Ley be in trying to drive improvements in the appalling Liberal state organisations, especially in NSW (her home state) and Victoria?
The Liberals’ federal executive extended federal intervention in the NSW division this week, with a new oversight committee, headed by onetime premier Nick Greiner. But the announcement spurred immediate backbiting, with conservatives seeing it advantaging the moderates. Ley is well across the NSW factions: her numbers man is Alex Hawke – whom she elevated to the shadow cabinet – from Scott Morrison’s old centre right faction, and she has a staffer from that faction in a senior position in her office. The faction has also protected her preselection in the past.
In Victoria, the factional infighting has been beyond parody, with former leader John Pesutto scratching around for funds to avoid bankruptcy after losing a defamation case brought by colleague Moira Deeming. Some Liberals think the state party could even lose what should be the unlosable state election next year.
That’s just the start of the questions for Ley. Meanwhile, the party this week has set up an inquiry into the election disaster, to be conducted by former federal minister Nick Minchin and former NSW minister Pru Goward. Identifying what went wrong won’t be hard for them – mostly, it was blindingly obvious. Recommending solutions that the party can and will implement – that will be the difficult bit.
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.
On Wednesday, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley will front the National Press Club. So why is that a big deal?
For one thing, her predecessor Peter Dutton never appeared there as opposition leader. For another, it’s a formidable forum for a new leader.
It could all go badly wrong, but she’s right to make the early appearance. It sends a message she is not risk-averse.
Ley wants to establish a better relationship with the Canberra Press Gallery than Dutton had. He saw the gallery journalists as part of the despised “Canberra bubble” and bypassed them when he could. That didn’t serve him well – not least because he wasn’t toughened up for when he had to face daily news conferences (with many Canberra reporters) on the election trail.
Ley’s office has set up a WhatsApp group for gallery journalists, alerting them to who’s appearing in the media, and also dispatching short responses to things said by the government (such as links to ministers’ former statements). This matches the WhatsApp group for the gallery run by the Prime Minister’s Office. One of Ley’s press secretaries, Liam Jones, has also regularly been doing the rounds in the media corridors of Parliament House, something that very rarely happened with Dutton’s media staff.
To the extent anyone is paying attention, Ley has made a better start than many, including some Liberals, had expected. She came out of the tiff with the Nationals well, despite having to give ground on their policy demands. Her frontbench reshuffle had flaws but wasn’t terrible. She’s struck a reasonable, rather than shrill, tone in her comments on issues, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s failure thus far to get a meeting with US President Donald Trump.
Her next significant test will be how she handles at the Press Club questions she and her party are confronting. So here are a few for her.
One (the most fundamental): How is she going to thread the needle between the two sides of the Liberal Party? Howard’s old “broad church” answer no longer holds. The church is fractured. In an era of identity politics, the Liberals have a massive identity crisis. The party’s conservatives are hardline, have hold of the party’s (narrow) base, and will undermine Ley if they can. Its moderates will struggle to shape its key policies in a way that will appeal to small-l liberal voters in urban seats.
Two: How and when will she deal with the future of the Coalition’s commitment to net zero emissions by 2050? She has put all policies on the table (but made exceptions for several Nationals’ core policies). There is a strong case for her staking out her own position on net zero, and getting the policy settled sooner rather than later. With younger voters having eschewed the Liberals, Ley told The Daily Aus podcast this week,“I want young people to know first and foremost that I want to listen to them and meet them where they are”. One place they are is in support of net zero by 2050. If the Liberals deserted that, they’d be making the challenge of attracting more youth votes a herculean one.
For the opposition. net zero is likely THE climate debate of this term – and such debates are at best difficult and at worst lethal for Liberal leaders.
Three: Won’t it be near impossible for the Liberals to get a respectable proportion of women in its House of Representatives team without quotas? Over the years, Ley has been equivocal on the issue. She told The Daily Aus: “Each of our [Liberal state] divisions is responsible for its own world, if you like, when it comes to [candidate] selections”. This is unlikely to cut it: she needs to have a view, and a strategy. Targets haven’t worked.
Four: Ley says she wants to run a constructive opposition, so how constructive will it be in the tax debate Treasurer Jim Chalmers launched this week? Ley might have a chat with John Howard about the 1980s, when the Liberals had internal arguments about whether to support or oppose some of the Hawke government’s reform measures. Obviously, no total buy-in should be expected but to oppose reforms for the sake of it would discredit a party trying to sell its economic credentials.
More generally, how constructive or obstructive will the opposition be in the Senate? This raises matters of principle, not just political opportunism. In the new Senate the government will have to negotiate on legislation with either the opposition or the Greens. If the opposition constantly forces Labor into the arms of the Greens, that could produce legislation that (from the Liberals’ point of view) is worse than if the Liberals were Labor’s partner. How does that sit with them philosophically?
Five: Finally, how active will Ley be in trying to drive improvements in the appalling Liberal state organisations, especially in NSW (her home state) and Victoria?
The Liberals’ federal executive extended federal intervention in the NSW division this week, with a new oversight committee, headed by onetime premier Nick Greiner. But the announcement spurred immediate backbiting, with conservatives seeing it advantaging the moderates. Ley is well across the NSW factions: her numbers man is Alex Hawke – whom she elevated to the shadow cabinet – from Scott Morrison’s old centre right faction, and she has a staffer from that faction in a senior position in her office. The faction has also protected her preselection in the past.
In Victoria, the factional infighting has been beyond parody, with former leader John Pesutto scratching around for funds to avoid bankruptcy after losing a defamation case brought by colleague Moira Deeming. Some Liberals think the state party could even lose what should be the unlosable state election next year.
That’s just the start of the questions for Ley. Meanwhile, the party this week has set up an inquiry into the election disaster, to be conducted by former federal minister Nick Minchin and former NSW minister Pru Goward. Identifying what went wrong won’t be hard for them – mostly, it was blindingly obvious. Recommending solutions that the party can and will implement – that will be the difficult bit.
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.
Every year, some 100 billion garments are produced worldwide, and 92 million tonnes of clothing waste end up in landfills. Given this enormous amount of waste, it is logical to think that the only way forward is to degrow fashion. But can fashion and degrowth co-exist?
Degrowth is defined as the planned reduction of production and consumption in a way that ensures equitable living. Degrowth principles, such as sufficiency, cooperation and care, clash with growth principles of maximization, commodification and efficiency. For the fashion industry, which is responsible for immense resource extraction and waste creation, reducing resource throughput and ensuring equitable value creation pose enduring challenges.
While some governments and corporations encourage consumers to shop responsibly and reduce waste, collective responsibility is needed to facilitate a degrowth transition, which urges a fundamental shift in the way designers, manufacturers and brands approach fashion waste. Will circular practices help create a just and equitable industry? Is it possible to produce clothing locally and differently than “fast fashion” retailers?
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Upcycling as a radical rethinking of our relationship with waste
In a recent study, we explored how the circular fashion practice of upcycling – creative and caring transformation of discarded or waste clothes into something of higher value – pushes industry actors to rethink their relationship to fashion waste and give it value as a resource compatible with degrowth values. We examined how upcycling is practiced across institutions – brands, manufacturers, designers and NGOs – in Turkey, one of Europe’s largest textile producers.
It is important to note that while conversations about recycling – the practice of breaking down textile waste into raw material through mechanical or chemical processes – are prevalent in the fashion world, the painful fact is that only 1% of clothes are recycled into new garments, meaning the majority of fashion waste is doomed to remain as waste. Through upcycling, on the other hand, waste is treated as a resource. Rather than viewing clothes as disposable, upcycling enables us to understand and care about our clothes’ journey and the people and ecosystems behind them. Converting discarded food into natural dyes for colouring fabric, or using sailcloth to make handbags, creates value through the creativity, materials, skill sharing, and caring involved.
As part of green-growth efforts, some circular fashion actors treat waste as a commodity and try to maximize growth through efficient waste reduction. However, this is incompatible with degrowth. We need to reduce production of textiles and make use of existing textile waste, not just discard textile waste efficiently.
Relational ways of working with waste, technology, nature and people
Our research highlights the importance of the socio-ecological value of waste in industry upcycling practices. Such value is generated through social and solidarity networks of relations around waste, including between designers, manufacturers and upcycling brands, and involving nature and technology.
We emphasise the growing interest in the story of waste material, which is reinforcing strong connections to waste and its origins. Upcycling designers highlight local and material heritage in the production of upcycled clothes, which is necessary to foster the ecological and material consciousness required for a degrowth transition. Designers we interviewed evoked the idea that “nature doesn’t waste anything”, and mentioned being inspired by and mimicking nature’s cycles in the design process.
We also reflect on the kind of technology needed to support more relational, localised systems. The practices of upcycling designers and small brands highlight the value of the creation of waste-sharing platforms among industry actors. These platforms serve as waste libraries and provide opportunities to purchase different kinds of textile waste for upcycling.
Making waste valuable
Industry actors we interviewed said they are not simply trend chasers focused on profit, but seeking to build alternative ways of working with each other, nature, waste and technology. For example, designers partnered with local women in rural areas in Erzurum, Mugla and Kilis provinces to upcycle discarded fabrics into handwoven garments, preserving cultural heritage. A brand collected food waste to create natural textile dyes, collaborating with local cafés and friends in Istanbul. During the Covid-19 crisis, solidarity networks emerged between hospitals, textile manufacturers and designers to make upcycled uniforms for doctors and nurses. We have observed that manufacturers also repurpose waste to give gifts to employees, children and others. These practices aim to reduce waste and reconnect people to waste material, and enable the sharing of local knowledge and skills.
Our data also demonstrates a concern over lack of circular literacy among industry actors. Currently, access to upcycling knowledge and skills, as well as waste material, happens through knowledge hubs and waste-sharing platforms. For example, working with sectoral representatives and local governments, one knowledge hub created a circular economy guide to raise industry awareness about ways to revalue and reduce textile waste.
Upcycling is still a niche circular practice, and access to waste resources for initiatives, as well as lack of public funding and policy support for projects, remain important concerns. Nonetheless, when it is grounded in local communities, new narratives about materials, and care, upcycling can foster degrowth values in fashion.
Handan Vicdan ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
SPECIAL REPORT:By Saige England in Ōtautahi and Ava Mulla in Cairo
Hope for freedom for Palestinians remains high among a group of trauma-struck New Zealanders in Cairo.
In spite of extensive planning, the Global March To Gaza (GMTG) delegation of about 4000 international aid volunteers was thwarted in its mission to walk from Cairo to Gaza to lend support.
The land of oranges and pyramids became the land of autocracy last week as peace aid volunteers — young, middle-aged, and elderly — were herded like cattle and cordoned behind fences.
Their passports were initially seized — and later returned. Several New Zealanders were among those dragged and beaten.
While ordinary Egyptians showed “huge support” for the GMTG, the militant Egyptian regime showed its hand in supporting Israel rather than Palestine.
A member of the delegation, Natasha*, said she and other members pursued every available diplomatic channel to ensure that the peaceful, humanitarian, march would reach Gaza.
Moved by love, they were met with hate.
Violently attacked “When I stepped toward the crowd’s edge and began instinctually with heart break to chant, ‘Free Palestine,’ I was violently attacked by five plainclothes men.
“They screamed, grabbed, shoved, and even spat on me,” she said.
Tackled, she was dragged to an unmarked van. She did not resist, posed no threat, yet the violence escalated instantly.
“I saw hatred in their eyes.”
Egyptian state security forces and embedded provocateurs were intent on dismantling and discrediting the Global March activists. Image: GMTG
Another GMTG member, a woman who tried to intervene was also “viciously assaulted”. She witnessed at least three other women and two men being attacked.
The peacemakers escaped from the unmarked van the aggressors were distracted, seemingly confused about their destination, she said.
It is now clear that from the beginning Egyptian State forces and embedded provocateurs were intent on dismantling and discrediting the GMTG.
Authorities as provocateurs The peace participants witnessed plainclothed authorities act as provacateurs, “shoving people, stepping on them, throwing objects” to create a false image for media.
New Zealand actor Will Alexander . . . “This is only a fraction of what Palestinians experience every day.” GMTG
New Zealand actor Will Alexander said the experience had inflated rather than deflated his passion for human rights, and compassion for Palestinians.
“This is only a fraction of what Palestinians experience everyday. Palestinians pushed into smaller and smaller areas are murdered for wanting to stand on their own land,” he said.
“The reason that ordinary New Zealanders like us need to put our bodies on the line is because our government has failed to uphold its obligations under the Genocide Convention.
“Israel has blatantly breached international law for decades with total impunity.”
While the New Zealanders are all safe, a small number of people in the wider movement had been forcibly ‘disappeared’,” said GMTG New Zealand member Sam Leason.
Their whereabouts was still unknown, he said.
Arab members targeted “It must be emphasised that it is primarily — and possibly strictly — Arab members of the March who are the targets of the most dramatic and violent excesses committed by the Egyptian authorities, including all forced disappearances.”
Global March to Gaza activists being attacked . . . the genocide cannot be sustained when people from around the world push against the Israeli regime and support the people on the ground with food and healthcare. Image: GMTG screenshot APR
This did, however, continuously add to the mounting sense of stress, tension, anxiety and fear, felt by the contingent, he said.
“Especially given the Egyptian authorities’ disregard to their own legal system, which leaves us blindsided and in a thick fog of uncertainty.”
Moving swiftly through the streets of Cairo in the pitch of night, from hotel to hotel and safehouse to safehouse, was a “surreal and dystopian” experience for the New Zealanders and other GMTG members.
The group says that the genocide cannot be sustained when people from around the world push against the Israeli regime and support the people on the ground with food and healthcare.
“For 20 months our hearts have raced and our eyes have filled in unison with the elderly, men, women, and children, and the babies in Palestine,” said Billie*, a participant who preferred, for safety reasons, not to reveal their surname.
“If we do not react to the carnage, suffering and complete injustice and recognise our shared need for sane governance and a liveable planet what is the point?”
Experienced despair Aqua*, another New Zealand GMTG member, had experienced despair seeing the suffering of Palestinians, but she said it was important to nurture hope, as that was the only way to stop the genocide.
“We cling to every glimmer of hope that presents itself. Like an oasis in a desert devoid of human emotion we chase any potential igniter of the flame of change.”
Activist Eva Mulla . . . inspired by the courage of the Palestinians. Image: GMTG screenshot APR
Ava Mulla, said from Cairo, that the group was inspired by the courage of the Palestinians.
“They’ve been fighting for freedom and justice for decades against the world’s strongest powers. They are courageous and steadfast.”
Mulla referred to the “We Were Seeds” saying inspired by Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos.
“We are millions of seeds. Every act of injustice fuels our growth,” she said.
Helplessness an illusion The GMTG members agreed that “impotence and helplessness was an illusion” that led to inaction but such inaction allowed “unspeakable atrocities” to take place.
“This is the holocaust of our age,” said Sam Leason.
“We need the world to leave the rhetorical and symbolic field of discourse and move promptly towards the camp of concrete action to protect the people of Palestine from a clear campaign of extermination.”
Saige England is an Aotearoa New Zealand journalist, author, and poet, member of the Palestinian Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (PSNA), and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
*Several protesters quoted in this article requested that their family names not be reported for security reasons. Ava Mulla was born in Germany and lives in Aotearoa with her partner, actor Will Alexander. She studied industrial engineering and is passionate about innovative housing solutions for developing countries. She is a member of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).
New Zealand and other activists with Tino Rangatiratanga and Palestine flags taking part in the Global March To Gaza. Will Alexander (far left) is in the back row and Ava Mulla (pink tee shirt) is in the front row. Image: GMTG screenshot APR
SPECIAL REPORT:By Saige England in Ōtautahi and Ava Mulla in Cairo
Hope for freedom for Palestinians remains high among a group of trauma-struck New Zealanders in Cairo.
In spite of extensive planning, the Global March To Gaza (GMTG) delegation of about 4000 international aid volunteers was thwarted in its mission to walk from Cairo to Gaza to lend support.
The land of oranges and pyramids became the land of autocracy last week as peace aid volunteers — young, middle-aged, and elderly — were herded like cattle and cordoned behind fences.
Their passports were initially seized — and later returned. Several New Zealanders were among those dragged and beaten.
While ordinary Egyptians showed “huge support” for the GMTG, the militant Egyptian regime showed its hand in supporting Israel rather than Palestine.
A member of the delegation, Natasha*, said she and other members pursued every available diplomatic channel to ensure that the peaceful, humanitarian, march would reach Gaza.
Moved by love, they were met with hate.
Violently attacked “When I stepped toward the crowd’s edge and began instinctually with heart break to chant, ‘Free Palestine,’ I was violently attacked by five plainclothes men.
“They screamed, grabbed, shoved, and even spat on me,” she said.
Tackled, she was dragged to an unmarked van. She did not resist, posed no threat, yet the violence escalated instantly.
“I saw hatred in their eyes.”
Egyptian state security forces and embedded provocateurs were intent on dismantling and discrediting the Global March activists. Image: GMTG
Another GMTG member, a woman who tried to intervene was also “viciously assaulted”. She witnessed at least three other women and two men being attacked.
The peacemakers escaped from the unmarked van the aggressors were distracted, seemingly confused about their destination, she said.
It is now clear that from the beginning Egyptian State forces and embedded provocateurs were intent on dismantling and discrediting the GMTG.
Authorities as provocateurs The peace participants witnessed plainclothed authorities act as provacateurs, “shoving people, stepping on them, throwing objects” to create a false image for media.
New Zealand actor Will Alexander . . . “This is only a fraction of what Palestinians experience every day.” GMTG
New Zealand actor Will Alexander said the experience had inflated rather than deflated his passion for human rights, and compassion for Palestinians.
“This is only a fraction of what Palestinians experience everyday. Palestinians pushed into smaller and smaller areas are murdered for wanting to stand on their own land,” he said.
“The reason that ordinary New Zealanders like us need to put our bodies on the line is because our government has failed to uphold its obligations under the Genocide Convention.
“Israel has blatantly breached international law for decades with total impunity.”
While the New Zealanders are all safe, a small number of people in the wider movement had been forcibly ‘disappeared’,” said GMTG New Zealand member Sam Leason.
Their whereabouts was still unknown, he said.
Arab members targeted “It must be emphasised that it is primarily — and possibly strictly — Arab members of the March who are the targets of the most dramatic and violent excesses committed by the Egyptian authorities, including all forced disappearances.”
Global March to Gaza activists being attacked . . . the genocide cannot be sustained when people from around the world push against the Israeli regime and support the people on the ground with food and healthcare. Image: GMTG screenshot APR
This did, however, continuously add to the mounting sense of stress, tension, anxiety and fear, felt by the contingent, he said.
“Especially given the Egyptian authorities’ disregard to their own legal system, which leaves us blindsided and in a thick fog of uncertainty.”
Moving swiftly through the streets of Cairo in the pitch of night, from hotel to hotel and safehouse to safehouse, was a “surreal and dystopian” experience for the New Zealanders and other GMTG members.
The group says that the genocide cannot be sustained when people from around the world push against the Israeli regime and support the people on the ground with food and healthcare.
“For 20 months our hearts have raced and our eyes have filled in unison with the elderly, men, women, and children, and the babies in Palestine,” said Billie*, a participant who preferred, for safety reasons, not to reveal their surname.
“If we do not react to the carnage, suffering and complete injustice and recognise our shared need for sane governance and a liveable planet what is the point?”
Experienced despair Aqua*, another New Zealand GMTG member, had experienced despair seeing the suffering of Palestinians, but she said it was important to nurture hope, as that was the only way to stop the genocide.
“We cling to every glimmer of hope that presents itself. Like an oasis in a desert devoid of human emotion we chase any potential igniter of the flame of change.”
Activist Eva Mulla . . . inspired by the courage of the Palestinians. Image: GMTG screenshot APR
Ava Mulla, said from Cairo, that the group was inspired by the courage of the Palestinians.
“They’ve been fighting for freedom and justice for decades against the world’s strongest powers. They are courageous and steadfast.”
Mulla referred to the “We Were Seeds” saying inspired by Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos.
“We are millions of seeds. Every act of injustice fuels our growth,” she said.
Helplessness an illusion The GMTG members agreed that “impotence and helplessness was an illusion” that led to inaction but such inaction allowed “unspeakable atrocities” to take place.
“This is the holocaust of our age,” said Sam Leason.
“We need the world to leave the rhetorical and symbolic field of discourse and move promptly towards the camp of concrete action to protect the people of Palestine from a clear campaign of extermination.”
Saige England is an Aotearoa New Zealand journalist, author, and poet, member of the Palestinian Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (PSNA), and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
*Several protesters quoted in this article requested that their family names not be reported for security reasons. Ava Mulla was born in Germany and lives in Aotearoa with her partner, actor Will Alexander. She studied industrial engineering and is passionate about innovative housing solutions for developing countries. She is a member of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).
New Zealand and other activists with Tino Rangatiratanga and Palestine flags taking part in the Global March To Gaza. Will Alexander (far left) is in the back row and Ava Mulla (pink tee shirt) is in the front row. Image: GMTG screenshot APR
Faced with the choice in their daily lives, their work or their politics, why do some people decide to keep quiet, to censor themselves in anticipatory obedience, even if they’re not ordered to do so?
In this episode of The Conversation Weekly, we talk to self-censorship expert Daniel Bar-Tal about what drives people to censor themselves, and its consequences for society.
It was Daniel Bar-Tal’s experiences serving in the Israeli army that prompted him to begin studying self-censorship. “ I was observing all kind of phenomenon that are going on within a country that is engaged in intractable conflict,” he told us.
Bar-Tal, an emeritus professor in the school of education at Tel Aviv University, began to notice that self-censorship was essential in societies, like Israel, living in conflict. He explains:
There are all kind of directives which develop censorship, in the army, in school, teachers are told what they should do and say. But self-censorship is going beyond this. So it means that nobody tells you that you must say A or B or C, but you feel an obligation by yourself to say certain things without any order from above.
Bar-Tal assembled a team of researchers from different disciplines to examine how self-censorship plays out across different sectors of a society, from politics to academia to journalism. They found three main motivations why people self-censor: as a defence mechanism for their in-group; out of fear; and to win rewards.
Listen to Bar-Tal talk about his research into self-censorship on the latest episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, which includes an introduction from Beth Daley, executive editor at The Conversation U.S. about self-censorship currently happening in parts of American academia.
This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Katie Flood with assistance from Mend Mariwany. Gemma Ware is the executive producer. Mixing and sound design by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl.
Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Daniel Bar-Tal 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.
For centuries, humans have searched for ways to extend life. Alchemists never found the philosopher’s stone, but scientists have consistently shown that a longer life can be attained by eating less – at least in certain lab animals. But can we find a way to live longer while still enjoying our food?
Compounds that mimic the biological effects of dieting could be the answer, and the two most popular diet-mimicking drugs are rapamycin and metformin. In a new study, my colleagues and I found that rapamycin prolongs life almost as consistently as eating less, whereas metformin does not.
Eating less, or dietary restriction, has been the gold standard for achieving a longer life ever since a study nearly a century ago in which laboratory rats that ate less surprised scientists by outliving their well-fed lab mates.
But for many people, sticking to a permanent diet is hard and far from enjoyable. Also, if taken to extremes, it can even be bad for health. That is why we wanted to know whether drugs that are dieting mimics could bring the same benefit of eating less without the unwanted side-effects.
Rapamycin was first discovered in bacteria living in Easter Island soil in the 1970s, and medical professionals now use it to prevent organ-transplant rejection, as it is a powerful immunosuppressant. It works by blocking a molecular switch that tells cells when nutrients are abundant.
Metformin, meanwhile, is a synthetic descendant of a compound found in French lilac (also known as goat’s rue) and is widely prescribed to control blood sugar in type 2 diabetes. Both drugs are involved in the body’s ability to sense nutrients and energy, so biologists like us hoped they might copy the mechanisms activated by eating less.
To find out, we pooled the results of many studies to see if there were any overall patterns. We carefully examined thousands of scientific papers to finally home in on 167 studies on eight vertebrate species, from fish to monkeys, that provided sufficient details on survival and how the study was done. Then we compared three longevity strategies: eating less, taking rapamycin and taking metformin.
We found that eating less still came out on top as the most consistent way to prolong life in all animals but rapamycin was close behind. Metformin, in contrast, showed no clear benefit. The life-extension effect of eating less was the same in both sexes, and it didn’t matter whether the diet plan involved eating smaller portions or intermittent fasting.
That makes rapamycin one of the most exciting leads for new anti-ageing therapies. Ageing might not be considered a disease, but it is a risk factor behind many diseases from cancer to dementia. If we slow that underlying process, the benefit will be extra years of quality life and lower healthcare bills as the world’s population grows older.
Rapamycin was first isolated from bacteria found in the soil on Easter Island. JHVEPhoto/Shutterstock.com
Encouraging early signs, but we’re not quite there yet
However, there are some important points to consider. First, we discovered considerable variation from experiment to experiment with some studies even showing that eating less or taking rapamycin reduced lifespan.
Also, most of the evidence originates from mice and rats that have many of our genes but are clearly not exactly like us.
Finally, rapamycin may have side-effects such as repressing immunity and reproduction. Researchers are now investigating milder doses of rapamycin to see if they provide the advantages without the side-effects.
The preliminary signs are encouraging. In an ongoing human rapamycin trial, volunteers given low, intermittent doses of rapamycin have experienced positive effects on indicators of healthspan. For metformin, the human trial is still in progress and the findings are expected to be out in a few years time.
For now, nobody should run to their doctor asking for prescriptions of rapamycin to live longer. But this drug, extracted from obscure soil bacteria, shows us that interfering with a single molecular pathway can be enough to mimic the benefits of eating less. The challenge is to use this discovery to produce therapies that make us healthier for longer without compromising our quality of life – or our taste for the occasional slice of chocolate cake.
Dr. Zahida Sultanova works for the University of East Anglia and is funded by the Leverhulme Trust. She is a member of European Society of Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Society of Turkey (EkoEvo).
The history of the dead – or, more precisely, the history of the living’s fascination with the dead – is an intriguing one.
As a researcher of the supernatural, I’m often pulled aside at conferences or at the school gate, and told in furtive whispers about people’s encounters with the dead.
The dead haunt our imagination in a number of different forms, whether as “cold spots”, or the walking dead popularised in zombie franchises such as 28 Days Later.
The franchise’s latest release, 28 Years Later, brings back the Hollywood zombie in all its glory – but these archetypal creatures have a much wider and varied history.
Zombis, revenants and the returning dead
A zombie is typically a reanimated corpse: a category of the returning dead. Scholars refer to them as “revenants”, and continue to argue over their exact characteristics.
In the Haitian Vodou religion, the zombi is not the same as the Hollywood zombie. Instead, zombi are people who, as a religious punishment, are drugged, buried alive, then dug out and forced into slavery.
The Hollywood zombie, however, draws more from medieval European stories about the returning dead than from Vodou.
A perfect setting for a ‘zombie’ film
In 28 Years Later, the latest entry in Danny Boyle’s blockbuster horror franchise, the monsters technically aren’t zombies because they aren’t dead. Instead, they are infected by a “rage virus”, accidentally released by a group of animal rights activists in the beginning of the first film.
This third film focuses on events almost three decades after the first film. The British Isles is quarantined, and the young protagonist Spike (Alfie Williams) and his family live in a village on Lindisfarne Island. This island, one of the most important sites in early medieval British Christianity, is isolated and protected by a tidal causeway that links it to the mainland.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Alfie Williams star in the new film, out in Australian cinemas today. Sony Pictures
The film leans heavily on how we imagine the medieval world, with scenes showing silhouetted fletchers at work making arrows, children training with bows, towering ossuaries and various memento mori. There’s also footage from earlier depictions of medieval warfare. And at one point, the characters seek sanctuary in the ruins of Fountains Abbey, in Yorkshire, which was built in 1132.
The medieval locations and imagery of 28 Years Later evoke the long history of revenants, and the returned dead who once roved medieval England.
Early accounts of the medieval dead
In the medieval world, or at least the parts that wrote in Latin, the returning dead were usually called spiritus (“spirit”), but they weren’t limited to the non-corporeal like today’s ghosts are.
Medieval Latin Christians from as early as the 3rd century saw the dead as part of a parallel society that mirrored the world of the living, where each group relied on the other to aid them through the afterlife.
Depiction of the undead from a medieval manuscript. British Library, Yates Thompson MS 13
While some medieval ghosts would warn the living about what awaited sinners in the afterlife, or lead their relatives to treasure, or prophesise the future, some also returned to terrorise the living.
And like the “zombies” affected by the rage virus in 28 Years Later, these revenants could go into a frenzy in the presence of the living.
Thietmar, the Prince-Bishop of Merseburg, Germany, wrote the Chronicon Thietmari (Thietmar’s Chronicle) between 1012 and 1018, and included a number of ghost stories that featured revenants.
Although not all of them framed the dead as terrifying, they certainly didn’t paint them as friendly, either. In one story, a congregation of the dead at a church set the priest upon the altar, before burning him to ashes – intended to be read as a mirror of pagan sacrifice.
These dead were physical beings, capable of seizing a man and sacrificing him in his own church.
A threat to be dealt with
The English monastic historian William of Newburgh (1136–98) wrote revenants were so common in his day that recording them all would be exhausting. According to him, the returned dead were frequently seen in 12th century England.
So, instead of providing a exhausting list, he offered some choice examples which, like most medieval ghost stories, had a good Christian moral attached to them.
William’s revenants mostly killed the people of the towns they lived, returning to the grave between their escapades. But the medieval English had a method for dealing with these monsters; they dug them up, tore out the heart and then burned the body.
Other revenants were dealt with less harshly, William explained. In one case, all it took was the Bishop of Lincoln writing a letter of absolution to stop a dead man returning to his widow’s bed.
These medieval dead were also thought to spread disease – much like those infected with the rage virus – and were capable of physically killing someone.
Depiction of the undead from a medieval manuscript. British Library, Arundel MS 83.
The undead, further north
In medieval Scandinavia and Iceland, the undead draugr were extremely strong, hideous to look at and stunk of decomposition. Some were immune to human weapons and often killed animals near their tombs before building up to kill humans. Like their English counterparts, they also spread disease.
But according to the Eyrbyggja saga, an anonymous 13th or 14th century text written in Iceland, all it took was a type of community court and the threat of legal action to drive off these returned dead.
It’s a method the survivors in 28 Years Later didn’t try.
The dead live on
The first-hand zombie stories that were common during the medieval period started to dwindle in the 16th century with the Protestant Reformation, which focused more on individuals’ behaviours and salvation.
Nonetheless, their influence can still be felt in Catholic ritual practices today, such as in prayers offered for the dead, and the lighting of votive candles.
We still tell ghost stories, and we still worry about things that go bump in the night. And of course, we continue to explore the undead in all its forms on the big screen.
Christopher White 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.
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex is back in the news this week in a podcast discussing her viral “baby mama” video.
The video was made four years ago when she gave birth to daughter Lilibet, but only released recently. It shows the duchess in hospital, heavily pregnant, dancing and twerking to bring on labour. Her husband, Prince Harry, dances too.
Both of our children were a week past their due dates […] so when spicy food, all that walking, and acupuncture didn’t work – there was only one thing left to do!
So does the Duchess of Sussex have a point? Can dancing really bring on labour?
First, how about dancing during pregnancy?
Exercise is recommended during pregnancy, and while some higher-impact exercises may need to be moderated, it carries minimal risk for healthy women and their babies. In fact, evidence shows regular exercise during pregnancy is associated with a variety of benefits.
Exercise can lead to a lower risk of gestational diabetes, caesarean section, the use of forceps and vacuum during birth and perinatal mental health problems, as well as quicker postpartum recovery.
While pregnant women might more often gravitate towards a brisk walk, some laps in the pool, or a group exercise class, dancing is a good option too. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has even listed dance as one of the forms of exercise found to be safe and beneficial during pregnancy.
The movements of dance involve the hips and pelvic area (especially twerking) which may help the baby get into a more optimal position and tone the pelvic floor, though the evidence for this is lacking.
Choose any form of dancing you like – even belly dancing. In a small qualitative study with two pregnant women, belly dancing was found to be joyful and empowering, boosting feelings of wellbeing.
You can dance any time during pregnancy but you may need to adapt your dance moves as the pregnancy advances and your growing belly gets in the way.
If you have risk factors such as bleeding it’s best to be cautious and discuss any planned dancing with your health-care provider.
Exercise is recommended during pregnancy – so why not try dancing? sandsun/Shutterstock
What about dancing to induce labour, and during labour?
Meghan is not the first woman to report dancing to induce their labour, but this is all anecdotal. There’s no scientific evidence to show dancing is an effective way to bring on labour.
There is perhaps slightly more evidence suggesting benefits once labour has started.
Many women seek non-pharmacological options (not involving medications) during labour. Especially early in labour, dancing may decrease the intensity of pain and lead women to feel more satisfied and in control of their labour.
In one study, 60 women were randomly allocated to either dance during labour, or not. The dancing group had significantly lower pain scores and higher satisfaction than the control group.
And again, music can lower levels of pain in early labour. So combining relaxing music with some movement could be a good thing.
Dancing to your comfort levels during labour could be helpful due to the combination of pelvic movements, being upright, moving the body rhythmically and changing the position of the body frequently.
Being upright and moving could also help transfer some pressure from the baby’s head onto the cervix, which can stimulate prostaglandin, a key chemical involved in progressing labour.
It’s been suggested dancing during labour could help get the baby into a better position for delivery and therefore help labour to proceed more smoothly and quickly. But ultimately we don’t have reliable evidence to substantiate these hypotheses.
So, did Meghan induce her labour with dance?
It’s unclear if dancing helped to induce the duchess’ labour as she was in hospital and may have later had a medical or surgical induction.
Labour can be medically induced with hormones, by using a balloon-shaped catheter placed in the woman’s cervix to open it up, or by breaking the bag of water around the baby.
Alternatively, Meghan’s labour may have eventually begun naturally without her dancing having played a role if she chose to wait another few days.
However, the joy on her face and connection and support of her husband Prince Harry is a good way to increase oxytocin, a hormone that stimulates contractions. This could have helped too.
Meghan may have been on the right track, but we need more research before we can confidently recommend dancing to bring on or during labour.
In the meantime, while there’s no evidence to show dancing is effective for inducing labour, it’s highly unlikely to have any downsides – and it may contribute to a more positive childbirth experience. So, if you feel inclined, I say dance away.
Hannah Dahlen receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council.
The history of the dead – or, more precisely, the history of the living’s fascination with the dead – is an intriguing one.
As a researcher of the supernatural, I’m often pulled aside at conferences or at the school gate, and told in furtive whispers about people’s encounters with the dead.
The dead haunt our imagination in a number of different forms, whether as “cold spots”, or the walking dead popularised in zombie franchises such as 28 Days Later.
The franchise’s latest release, 28 Years Later, brings back the Hollywood zombie in all its glory – but these archetypal creatures have a much wider and varied history.
Zombis, revenants and the returning dead
A zombie is typically a reanimated corpse: a category of the returning dead. Scholars refer to them as “revenants”, and continue to argue over their exact characteristics.
In the Haitian Vodou religion, the zombi is not the same as the Hollywood zombie. Instead, zombi are people who, as a religious punishment, are drugged, buried alive, then dug out and forced into slavery.
The Hollywood zombie, however, draws more from medieval European stories about the returning dead than from Vodou.
A perfect setting for a ‘zombie’ film
In 28 Years Later, the latest entry in Danny Boyle’s blockbuster horror franchise, the monsters technically aren’t zombies because they aren’t dead. Instead, they are infected by a “rage virus”, accidentally released by a group of animal rights activists in the beginning of the first film.
This third film focuses on events almost three decades after the first film. The British Isles is quarantined, and the young protagonist Spike (Alfie Williams) and his family live in a village on Lindisfarne Island. This island, one of the most important sites in early medieval British Christianity, is isolated and protected by a tidal causeway that links it to the mainland.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Alfie Williams star in the new film, out in Australian cinemas today. Sony Pictures
The film leans heavily on how we imagine the medieval world, with scenes showing silhouetted fletchers at work making arrows, children training with bows, towering ossuaries and various memento mori. There’s also footage from earlier depictions of medieval warfare. And at one point, the characters seek sanctuary in the ruins of Fountains Abbey, in Yorkshire, which was built in 1132.
The medieval locations and imagery of 28 Years Later evoke the long history of revenants, and the returned dead who once roved medieval England.
Early accounts of the medieval dead
In the medieval world, or at least the parts that wrote in Latin, the returning dead were usually called spiritus (“spirit”), but they weren’t limited to the non-corporeal like today’s ghosts are.
Medieval Latin Christians from as early as the 3rd century saw the dead as part of a parallel society that mirrored the world of the living, where each group relied on the other to aid them through the afterlife.
Depiction of the undead from a medieval manuscript. British Library, Yates Thompson MS 13
While some medieval ghosts would warn the living about what awaited sinners in the afterlife, or lead their relatives to treasure, or prophesise the future, some also returned to terrorise the living.
And like the “zombies” affected by the rage virus in 28 Years Later, these revenants could go into a frenzy in the presence of the living.
Thietmar, the Prince-Bishop of Merseburg, Germany, wrote the Chronicon Thietmari (Thietmar’s Chronicle) between 1012 and 1018, and included a number of ghost stories that featured revenants.
Although not all of them framed the dead as terrifying, they certainly didn’t paint them as friendly, either. In one story, a congregation of the dead at a church set the priest upon the altar, before burning him to ashes – intended to be read as a mirror of pagan sacrifice.
These dead were physical beings, capable of seizing a man and sacrificing him in his own church.
A threat to be dealt with
The English monastic historian William of Newburgh (1136–98) wrote revenants were so common in his day that recording them all would be exhausting. According to him, the returned dead were frequently seen in 12th century England.
So, instead of providing a exhausting list, he offered some choice examples which, like most medieval ghost stories, had a good Christian moral attached to them.
William’s revenants mostly killed the people of the towns they lived, returning to the grave between their escapades. But the medieval English had a method for dealing with these monsters; they dug them up, tore out the heart and then burned the body.
Other revenants were dealt with less harshly, William explained. In one case, all it took was the Bishop of Lincoln writing a letter of absolution to stop a dead man returning to his widow’s bed.
These medieval dead were also thought to spread disease – much like those infected with the rage virus – and were capable of physically killing someone.
Depiction of the undead from a medieval manuscript. British Library, Arundel MS 83.
The undead, further north
In medieval Scandinavia and Iceland, the undead draugr were extremely strong, hideous to look at and stunk of decomposition. Some were immune to human weapons and often killed animals near their tombs before building up to kill humans. Like their English counterparts, they also spread disease.
But according to the Eyrbyggja saga, an anonymous 13th or 14th century text written in Iceland, all it took was a type of community court and the threat of legal action to drive off these returned dead.
It’s a method the survivors in 28 Years Later didn’t try.
The dead live on
The first-hand zombie stories that were common during the medieval period started to dwindle in the 16th century with the Protestant Reformation, which focused more on individuals’ behaviours and salvation.
Nonetheless, their influence can still be felt in Catholic ritual practices today, such as in prayers offered for the dead, and the lighting of votive candles.
We still tell ghost stories, and we still worry about things that go bump in the night. And of course, we continue to explore the undead in all its forms on the big screen.
Christopher White 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.
Myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is as complex as its name is difficult to pronounce. It’s sometimes referred to as simply “chronic fatigue”, but this is just one of its symptoms.
In fact, ME/CFS is a complex neurological disease, recognised by the World Health Organization, that affects nearly every system in the body.
The name refers to muscle pain (myalgia), inflammation of the brain (encephalomyelitis), and a profound, disabling fatigue that rest can’t relieve.
However, the illness’s complexity – and its disproportionate impact on women – means ME/CFS has often been incorrectly labelled as a psychological disorder.
What is ME/CFS?
ME/CFS affects people of all ages but is most commonly diagnosed in middle age. It is two to three times more common in women than men.
While the exact cause is unknown, ME/CFS is commonly triggered by an infection.
The condition has two core symptoms: a disabling, long-lasting fatigue that rest doesn’t relieve, and a worsening of symptoms after physical or mental exertion.
This is known as post-exertional malaise. It means even slight exertion can make symptoms much worse, and take much longer than expected to recover.
This varies between people, but could mean simply having a shower or attending a social event triggers worse symptoms, either immediately or days later.
These symptoms include pain, sleep issues, cognitive difficulties (such as thinking, memory and decision-making), flu-like symptoms, dizziness, gastrointestinal problems, heart rate fluctuations and many more.
For some people, symptoms can be managed in a way that allows them to work. For others, the disease is so severe it can leave them housebound or bedridden.
Symptoms can fluctuate, changing over time and in intensity, making ME/CFS a particularly unpredictable and misunderstood condition.
Not just ‘in your head’
A growing body of scientific evidence, however, clearly shows ME/CFS is a biological, not mental, illness.
Neuroimaging studies have revealed differences in the brain activity and structure of people with ME/CFS, including poor blood flow and lower levels of neurotransmitters (chemical messengers in the nervous system).
Other research indicates the condition affects how the body produces energy (the metabolism), fights infection (the immune system), delivers oxygen to muscles and tissues, and regulates blood pressure and heart rate (the vascular system).
Issues with criteria
To diagnose ME/CFS, a clinician will also exclude other possible causes of fatigue, which can be a lengthy process. A patient needs to meet a set of clinical criteria.
But one of the major challenges in researching ME/CFS is that the diagnostic criteria clinicians use vary worldwide.
Some criteria focus solely on fatigue and include people with alternate reasons for fatigue, such as a psychiatric disorder.
Others are more narrow and may only capture ME/CFS patients with more severe symptoms.
As a result, it can be very difficult to compare across different studies, as the reasons they include or exclude participants vary so much.
Most commonly, they follow the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners’ clinical guidelines to diagnose and manage ME/CFS. These are based on the Canadian Consensus Criteria which are considered more stringent than other ME/CFS diagnostic criteria.
They include post-exertional malaise and fatigue for more than six months as core symptoms.
However, these guidelines are outdated and rely heavily on controversial studies that assumed the primary cause of ME/CFS was “deconditioning” – a loss of physical strength due to a fear or avoidance of exercise.
These guidelines recommend ME/CFS should be treated with cognitive behavioural therapy – a common psychotherapy which focuses on changing unhealthy thoughts and behaviours – and graded exercise therapy, which gradually introduces more demanding physical activity.
While cognitive behaviour therapy can be effective for some people managing ME/CFS, it’s important not to frame this condition primarily as a psychological issue.
Graded exercise therapy can encourage people to push beyond their “energy envelope”, which means they do more than their body can manage. This can trigger post-exertional malaise and a worsening of symptoms.
In June 2024, the Australian government announced A$1.1 million towards developing new clinical guidelines for diagnosing and managing ME/CFS.
Leading organisations have scrapped the recommendation of graded exercise therapy in the United States (in 2015) and the United Kingdom (in 2021). Hopefully Australia will follow suit.
What can people with ME/CFS do?
While we wait for updated clinical guidelines, “pacing” – or working within your energy envelope – has shown some success in managing symptoms. This means monitoring and limiting how much energy you expend.
Some evidence also suggests people who rest in the early stages of their initial illness often experience better long-term outcomes with ME/CFS.
This is especially relevant after the COVID pandemic and with the emergence of long COVID. Studies indicate more than half of those affected meet stringent clinical criteria for ME/CFS.
In times of acute illness we should resist the temptation to push through. Choosing to rest may be a crucial step in preventing a condition that is much more debilitating than the original infection.
Sarah Annesley receives funding from The Judith Jane Mason & Harold Stannett Williams Memorial Foundation and ME Research UK (SCIO charity number SCO36942).
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Dahlen, Professor of Midwifery, Associate Dean Research and HDR, Midwifery Discipline Leader, Western Sydney University
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex is back in the news this week in a podcast discussing her viral “baby mama” video.
The video was made four years ago when she gave birth to daughter Lilibet, but only released recently. It shows the duchess in hospital, heavily pregnant, dancing and twerking to bring on labour. Her husband, Prince Harry, dances too.
Both of our children were a week past their due dates […] so when spicy food, all that walking, and acupuncture didn’t work – there was only one thing left to do!
So does the Duchess of Sussex have a point? Can dancing really bring on labour?
First, how about dancing during pregnancy?
Exercise is recommended during pregnancy, and while some higher-impact exercises may need to be moderated, it carries minimal risk for healthy women and their babies. In fact, evidence shows regular exercise during pregnancy is associated with a variety of benefits.
Exercise can lead to a lower risk of gestational diabetes, caesarean section, the use of forceps and vacuum during birth and perinatal mental health problems, as well as quicker postpartum recovery.
While pregnant women might more often gravitate towards a brisk walk, some laps in the pool, or a group exercise class, dancing is a good option too. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has even listed dance as one of the forms of exercise found to be safe and beneficial during pregnancy.
The movements of dance involve the hips and pelvic area (especially twerking) which may help the baby get into a more optimal position and tone the pelvic floor, though the evidence for this is lacking.
Choose any form of dancing you like – even belly dancing. In a small qualitative study with two pregnant women, belly dancing was found to be joyful and empowering, boosting feelings of wellbeing.
You can dance any time during pregnancy but you may need to adapt your dance moves as the pregnancy advances and your growing belly gets in the way.
If you have risk factors such as bleeding it’s best to be cautious and discuss any planned dancing with your health-care provider.
Exercise is recommended during pregnancy – so why not try dancing? sandsun/Shutterstock
What about dancing to induce labour, and during labour?
Meghan is not the first woman to report dancing to induce their labour, but this is all anecdotal. There’s no scientific evidence to show dancing is an effective way to bring on labour.
There is perhaps slightly more evidence suggesting benefits once labour has started.
Many women seek non-pharmacological options (not involving medications) during labour. Especially early in labour, dancing may decrease the intensity of pain and lead women to feel more satisfied and in control of their labour.
In one study, 60 women were randomly allocated to either dance during labour, or not. The dancing group had significantly lower pain scores and higher satisfaction than the control group.
And again, music can lower levels of pain in early labour. So combining relaxing music with some movement could be a good thing.
Dancing to your comfort levels during labour could be helpful due to the combination of pelvic movements, being upright, moving the body rhythmically and changing the position of the body frequently.
Being upright and moving could also help transfer some pressure from the baby’s head onto the cervix, which can stimulate prostaglandin, a key chemical involved in progressing labour.
It’s been suggested dancing during labour could help get the baby into a better position for delivery and therefore help labour to proceed more smoothly and quickly. But ultimately we don’t have reliable evidence to substantiate these hypotheses.
So, did Meghan induce her labour with dance?
It’s unclear if dancing helped to induce the duchess’ labour as she was in hospital and may have later had a medical or surgical induction.
Labour can be medically induced with hormones, by using a balloon-shaped catheter placed in the woman’s cervix to open it up, or by breaking the bag of water around the baby.
Alternatively, Meghan’s labour may have eventually begun naturally without her dancing having played a role if she chose to wait another few days.
However, the joy on her face and connection and support of her husband Prince Harry is a good way to increase oxytocin, a hormone that stimulates contractions. This could have helped too.
Meghan may have been on the right track, but we need more research before we can confidently recommend dancing to bring on or during labour.
In the meantime, while there’s no evidence to show dancing is effective for inducing labour, it’s highly unlikely to have any downsides – and it may contribute to a more positive childbirth experience. So, if you feel inclined, I say dance away.
Hannah Dahlen receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council.
