More children are being permanently excluded from their school in England. In the 2023-24 autumn term, over 1,000 more pupils were excluded than in the autumn term the previous year. Rates of permanent exclusion have risen rapidly since the pandemic, with no sign of slowing down.
What is perhaps unexpected is that the rate of permanent exclusionsis rising much faster among girls than boys. Girls are also more at risk of “hidden” or “grey” exclusions – when a pupil stops going to school but isn’t formally excluded. But partly because schools are seen as environments in which girls are more likely to thrive than boys, the issues girls face may be overlooked.
In my research I interviewed 12 girls at risk of permanent exclusion aged between 12 and 16 in two different secondary schools and one pupil referral unit. I found that they struggled with being heard.
Girls in my study were unanimous that they wanted teachers to listen and take time for them, but felt this did not happen. They resorted to shouting before they could be shouted at. “When they shout it doesn’t mean we’re going to listen, we’re going to shout back,” one said.
Girls reported teachers did not know them, listen or allow them to explain and so responded with aggression: “Why should I bother about them when they ain’t bothered about me?”
Consequences of exclusion
Research from Agenda Alliance, a charity, has found that 74% of girls in youth custody were previously permanently excluded, compared to 63% of boys. After permanent exclusion, girls (unlike boys) are more likely to suffer significant mental health issues.
There has been very little progress in managing girls’ behaviour over the last two decades. Research has found consistent reports of girls being sidelined in education as far back as the 1970s.
Research also suggests that girls using their voice in ways that do not fit gender stereotypes – such as being loud and shouting at teachers – was particularly problematic. This damaged relationships with teachers.
In my research, girls believed both male and female teachers were sexist, singling them out for behaviour ignored in boys. This resulted in a deeply held sense of unfairness, particularly when teachers simply linked behaviour to their hormones. “Certain teachers overlook the girls, they pin it on your hormones,” one said.
This results in girls feeling they have no voice, and avoiding some lessons, teachers or situations by truanting – inside school or not attending at all – or by trying to “get in before they [teachers] do” and behaving aggressively.
These two extremes mean girls either end up using their voice in ways schools cannot manage, or remain systematically silenced: not present at school at all. Neither helps them to address the problems they are experiencing and the resulting behaviour.
Appearance and behaviour
I also found that girls struggled with how visible they were at school. Many girls in my study talked about facing sanctions over their uniform. They argued that teachers punished them for minor infringements, and that there was a double standard: teachers could wear two pairs of earrings, for instance, but they could not. One said that staff “don’t care about education it’s about earrings and that”.
Girls felt singled out in ways boys were not, suggesting teachers were sexist and only interested in them looking right.
However, girls told me that modifying their uniform was central to fitting in with peers and not being bullied. This results in girls treading a fine line between not standing out too much to other girls and not attracting the censure of staff.
Girls reported being too visible in other ways. They told me that trips to the toilet were policed by staff standing outside. Girls also felt too visible in class, with significant anxiety expressed in my research about being picked on in class. “My face goes all blotchy and I start shaking, it’s hard to breathe,” one said.
This fear was so significant girls chose to walk out of lessons rather than face embarrassment in front of their peers. “If a teacher picks on me to answer a question I just won’t come to the next lesson,” one girl said. They chose this despite risking being put in isolation – working in seclusion away from the rest of the school and their peers, where they once again became invisible. “It’s like a prison, they boarded up the windows and don’t listen to you.”
With some schools shifting to zero-tolerance approaches, permanent exclusion – once a last resort – may now be perceived as a reasonable response to school improvement drives.
Striking the balance between being appropriately seen and heard is a challenge for many girls in school, even those who appear to manage it successfully. But for those who struggle, the current and widespread problems in schools make it less likely that teachers will “take more notice of how you behave, [because] there might be something behind it”. Without significant and widespread change in schools, more girls will either disappear from the system or be silenced by it.
Emma Clarke received funding in a one off grant from British Educational Research Association. She is a member of Universities and Colleges Union.
Eating undercooked meat is never a good idea – it can give you a nasty case of food poisoning within 24 hours. And there are other, longer-term risks to be wary of too.
Spare a thought for the patient who attended a Florida hospital to be X-rayed following a fall – only to discover he was riddled with parasitic eggs that had turned into thousands of cysts inside his body.
Sam Ghali, an urgent care doctor from the University of Florida, recently shared an image of the X-ray on social media, explaining that the patient had developed the condition after eating undercooked pork infected with tapeworm larvae.
Pork can carry taenia solium larvae, a parasitic tapeworm. After eating infected pork, the larvae get into body tissues where they form cysts – a condition called cysticercosis. The larvae can travel anywhere in the body including muscles, liver, lungs and kidneys before decaying, which can lead to infections.
While in many tissues the larvae may develop undetected, in the skin or muscles noticeable bulges may appear.
Cysticercosis can be diagnosed through a variety of tests, including imaging, blood tests and potentially a lumbar puncture to look at cerebrospinal fluid.
In the final stage of the disease, the cysts degenerate and die, leaving a small calcified scar behind. This remnant often invokes an immune response in the body which can further increase calcification – the buildup of calcium deposits in body tissues. Calcified brain scars can contribute to symptoms including seizures long after the cyst has degenerated.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s claim in his 2012 divorce deposition that previous health issues were “caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died” is a now notorious example of possible neurocysticercosis.
RFK Jr. also described the effects of the parasite in his deposition: “I have cognitive problems, clearly. I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”
Intestinal infection by an adult tapeworm is called taeniasis. In humans, although the tapeworm can cause an upset stomach, it can also be asymptomatic – apart from rice grain-sized eggs in the faeces.
There are three tapeworms that can lead to taeniasis: taenia saginata, taenia solium and taenia asiatica. Taenia saginata is transmitted by cattle whereas taenia solium and taenia asiatica are transmitted by pigs. Once in the intestines, these tapeworms continue to grow. After approximately four months, they release hundreds of proglottids (fertilised eggs) into the host’s gastrointestinal tract. These proglottids are expelled from body in faeces but are instantly infectious.
Anthelmintic drugs, including praziquantel and niclosamide, either kill or paralyse the tapeworm, making it easier for the body to expel it through faeces.
But some studies report that approximately 38% of cysts calcify after taking anthelmintic drugs, worsening symptoms. Anti-inflammatory drugs may be used to treat neurocysticercosis cases, to prevent additional calcification occurring as part of the inflammatory response.
In developing regions of the world, or where some of these drugs are not licensed or less accessible, more traditional remedies may be used to kill tapeworms or expel them from the body, while preventing infectious proglottids from being released. Studies show that eating a combination of pumpkin seeds and areca nuts allowed almost 80% of people with intestinal tapeworms to pass them whole.
To avoid contracting a tapeworm or cysticercosis, observe basic hygiene measures such as regular hand washing. Also wash and peel your vegetables in clean water before eating them.
If seeing the effects of cysticercosis hasn’t put you off pork for good, avoid the risk of infection by ensuring your pork is properly cooked to at least 80°C for ten minutes to kill all tapeworm eggs. Lower temperatures work too, but require longer cooking times. Of course, cooking meat thoroughly like this should also help you avoid any nasty cases of food poisoning.
Adam Taylor 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.
How did Muhammad Ali Jinnah go from being a secular young man appalled by Indian interference in the Ottoman Caliphate crisis to the moving spirit behind the demand for Pakistan – a new Islamic nation which, he claimed, would be capable of defending Muslims abroad?
These are the kinds of questions that kept me awake at night for years. The result of that insomnia is my new book, East of Empire: Egypt, India, and the World Between the Wars.
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These partitions took place barely six months apart, between 1947 and 1948. They remain at the heart of horrific state violence on both continents, not to mention intergenerational trauma and rancorous historical debate.
For much of the period my book deals with, from 1919 until the mid-1930s, the division of territory between religious or ethnic blocs would have been difficult for most people living in the Middle East and South Asia to fathom. There were no obvious frontiers that could be drawn between local communities. Particularly in cities and towns, neighbours of different ethnicities and faiths lived cheek by jowl.
In fact, it was precisely during this time, between the first and second world wars, that Egyptians and Indians came to think of their movements for self-determination as shared across communal divides.
Artists, politicians, activists and intellectuals described a thick and flexible web of interconnections – some spiritual or linguistic, others cultural and geopolitical – which together made up something called the sharq, orient, or “east”. This was said to transcend all kinds of barriers, depending on who you asked – creed, language, ethnicity, nation, gender and class, for starters.
Many historians writing about this period have picked up this “easternism” for closer inspection – only to swiftly place it back down again. They argue it is too vague, amorphous and internally contradictory to be of much use as an analytical category. They are not wrong. Between the 1920s and ’40s, there were many (perhaps even countless) visions of the east in circulation.
There was the east of orientalists – foreign, exotic and “other”. There was the anti-colonial east, a geography of allies in the battle against foreign domination. Then there was the spiritual east, often contrasted with the materialist west. There was the Islamic east, a region populated largely (though never exclusively) by Muslims. There was also the cosmopolitan east, a rich tapestry of cultures bound together by commerce and exchange of ideas. Finally, there was the strategic east, a geopolitical bloc or bulwark that might counter other constellations of power.
It is important to underscore that none of these concepts were mutually exclusive. Instead, proponents of easternism tended to connect several “kinds” of eastern ideas together into a personally appealing hybrid.
Thus in his memoir, Sultan Mahomed Shah, Aga Khan III, revisited his long-cherished dream of an eastern bloc of Muslim nations, serving as both a moral compass to the world and a healthy check on the power of Europe and the United States.
For the Egyptian feminist Huda Shaarawi, the east was unapologetically anticolonial. In the pages of her magazine, l’Egyptienne, it was frequently ancient and exotic – but also, crucially, a stage upon which women from many cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds would together forge the future in their own image.
Given the dizzying array of potential easts, it was never what academics would call a coherent ideology. But this did not prevent it from being a highly prominent feature of both political debate and action in Egypt, India and the broader Arab-Asian region throughout the interwar period.
Beginning in the 1920s and deep into the ’30s, various eastern visions flowed in and out of alignment with one another as headlines changed, alliances evolved, and priorities shifted. With the onset of war in Europe in 1939, however, the stakes of these ideological differences began to spike.
Subjected to the unrelenting pressure of war, the many strands of easternism began to splinter, putting paid to the more fluid and open-ended possibilities that had animated preceding decades.
In their stead emerged postwar ideologies with sharper edges, hardened national frontiers, and – following years of globally cataclysmic violence – little faith in the pacifist and humanist ideals of a bygone era. This almost chemical transformation is the backdrop against which votes affirmed the partitions of India and Palestine in 1947.
Here, then, is the story told in East of Empire: how visions of a transnational, fluid and nonconformist east shaped the interwar politics of India and Egypt, and why these visions gave way to a more rigid, militant nationalism by the end of the second world war.
The book revisits a near-forgotten chapter in the rise of anticolonialism and the end of the British empire across the Middle East and South Asia. And it explains the conditions under which these bold and optimistic visions buckled – unleashing torrents of violence we have yet to staunch, almost 80 years later.
Erin O’Halloran has received funding from the British Academy and UK Research & Innovation.
In 2024, Heathrow was the busiest airport in Europe by passenger numbers and the fourth busiest worldwide. Nearly 84 million passengers passed through its five terminals during the year. These figures highlight the scale of disruption caused by its recent complete closure after a fire at an electricity substation.
Airlines with just a limited number of flights to and from Heathrow are likely to have experienced only minimal disruption – something airlines face regularly as part of standard operations. But the impact on airlines that use Heathrow as a main hub will turn out to be severe. For these airlines, which operate on very slim margins, the associated costs can be so high that they may wipe out several months’ worth of profits.
And this is something airline bosses will have been painfully aware of when news broke of the closure. Their first consideration, however, will have been for safety.
From an operational perspective, the primary objective in a situation like this is to ensure that all flights already in the air can safely complete their journey, either by landing at an alternate airport or returning to their departure airport.
The decision depends on a flight’s position and the amount of fuel the aircraft has left on board. As part of standard procedure all flights have a designated alternate airport – usually chosen based on proximity.
However, in the specific Heathrow case, the sheer volume of diversions quickly saturated the UK’s diversion capacity, forcing many flights to reroute to airports overseas.
This challenge was compounded by the nature of Heathrow’s traffic. As a major hub for long-haul flights operated by wide-body aircraft, these planes can only be diverted to large airports capable of handling their size and requirements. For instance, Heathrow is one of the main hubs for the Airbus A380, the largest passenger aircraft in the world. Due to its size, it can operate at only a limited number of airports.
Although the Heathrow closure came out of the blue, airlines do of course have emergency plans setting out guidelines and procedures for various types of crises, which are regularly updated. Each airline has its own operations control centre, usually within its headquarters, which is responsible for activating and overseeing these plans.
But in the case of a major crisis or disruptive event, such as when a hub like Heathrow shuts down, the company’s top management along with the heads of its operational departments will hold emergency meetings to enable rapid and effective decision-making.
Airlines also have dedicated crisis rooms for this purpose. Throughout the crisis, the situation is continuously monitored and decisions are focused on minimising both operational and financial impact.
Schedules planned months in advance
Of course, when a disruption of the magnitude of the Heathrow shutdown occurs, the entire airline schedule is thrown into disarray.
Planning and scheduling airline operations is a complex, lengthy process that begins up to two months before the day of the flight. It involves numerous operational aspects, including aircraft assignment, crew scheduling and maintenance.
And for legacy air carriers, this process is complicated by the nature of their operations within a global network of often complex connected journeys. These airlines operate a diverse fleet of aircraft with hundreds of connecting flights.
Pilots are qualified to fly only specific aircraft types, and passengers often travel to a hub such as Heathrow to continue their journey to their final destination. These operations are incredibly intricate, so in the event of a major disruption it becomes necessary to restart the process from scratch. This often leads to numerous flight cancellations.
Given the high costs involved – including expenses for passenger rebooking and accommodation – each flight must be analysed individually to determine the most appropriate course of action.
The Heathrow shutdown left hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded or unable to travel. It is a legal priority for the airline to offer them alternative options to reach their destination. Typically, passengers can be rebooked on flights operated by either the same airline or other carriers, or offered hotel accommodation until the next available flight.
In the end, Heathrow was up and running at full capacity again far quicker than many observers anticipated. But a shutdown at such a major global transport hub will leave airlines – and other businesses – counting the costs for some time to come.
Guglielmo Lulli receives funding from Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe programmes.
Young boys play volleyball at an NGO centre in Zaatari camp, Jordan, in 2016.Melissa Gatter
When news of Bashar al-Assad’s downfall broke on December 8 2024, 13 years after the beginning of the Syrian uprising, Syrians around the world rejoiced.
We rejoiced along with them, having spent the last decade in conversation with Syrians displaced to the neighbouring countries of Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, where we research humanitarian aid in refugee camps and revolutionaries in exile.
The days and weeks following Assad’s ousting were spent on the phone with the people we have gotten to know since their lives changed drastically in 2011 – hoping that 2025 would be the turning point in a very long and harrowing odyssey. One of us (Charlotte) also travelled to Syria in January 2025 to see what was happening and speak to people trying to navigate the new reality there.
“Syrians everywhere, inside Syria and outside Syria, did not ever imagine we would reach this stage,” said Qasim, 42, speaking from his home in Zaatari camp, the world’s third largest refugee camp, in northern Jordan. “No one ever expected that Assad would fall and leave the country.”
Like the 80,000 others in the desert camp, Qasim has spent the last decade starting his life over again in Jordan. Since fleeing Daraa, in southwest Syria, in 2013, he worked a series of freelance jobs and created a network of clients. He has put food on the table with cash-in-hand work for aid organisations in the camp and offering painting and plastering services outside the camp.
But in Syria, he said, “There’s no home, there’s no work, there’s nothing.”
His family of four grew to 11, and his daughters who left Syria as young children have entered their final years of high school.
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Now, with Assad gone seemingly overnight – and the revolution marking its 14th anniversary in March – the dream of returning home or simply the possibility to end a decade of exile is suddenly within reach. But this dream now comes with existential, practical and legal questions. After a decade in exile, how do you uproot yourself and your family yet again? How do you explain the return to the youngest, who have only known life outside Syria? What kind of life waits on the other side of the border?
Qasim’s family has outgrown the home he left behind. While life in the camp, with its electricity shortages and economic hardships, is nowhere near perfect, Qasim at least manages to get by.
Returning to Syria also comes at a price – for Qasim’s family of 11, it would cost US$550 just to cross the border – and many Syrians in exile have not been afforded sufficient economic stability to prepare for the costs of return. For many, the return to Syria remains a distant dream they must work to save up for.
Syria’s critical condition
What is left of Syria in Assad’s wake will take years of recovery. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has warned that Syria is not ready to receive returnees. US president Donald Trump imposed a freeze on US-funded foreign aid in January, affecting up to 90% of humanitarian activities in some areas in Syria, according to the UN’s emergency aid coordination office (OCHA). That has created a devastating ripple effect across Syria and neighbouring host countries.
And yet western powers maintain their sanctions against Syria, where 90% of the population is already living below the poverty line and 70% are in dire need of humanitarian assistance.
Meanwhile, the security situation is still precarious in parts of the country. Things in the northwest have improved since the agreement between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and Damascus’s provisional government, but March was marked by the killing of over a thousand mainly Alawi civilians in the coastal areas after attacks started from Assad loyalists. Israel has expanded its war against Palestine and Lebanon into parts of Syria, even bombing the capital city, as it looks to take advantage of a power vacuum.
At the start of the new year, 115,000 Syrians had already returned home from Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. In December, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) expected 1 million Syrians would return by June, but now predicts only 600,000 to return by September.
Unwelcome guests
Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon are not signatories of the 1951 refugee convention which means they are not obliged to recognise the displaced Syrians in their country as refugees with internationally-protected rights. The governments of these countries recognise displaced Syrians only as “guests”, but that does not necessarily mean they are welcome.
“We were not treated as guests in Turkey, people did not want us there,” Umm Ahmad said. She remembered her life in Gaziantep as one of constant humiliation, where she had to beg for assistance and her son was forced to work shifts of over 12-hours at a time in a clothing factory.
As guests, Syrians face social and legal obstacles in accessing services, education, healthcare, housing and jobs. They are often blamed for waning economies and scarce resources and face xenophobic discrimination as a result. Having to work without protected rights or permissions pushes Syrians like Umm Ahmad’s son to the informal labour market, where they are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.
There are over 3 million Syrian refugees in Turkey and their status is uncertain and or illegal because residency documents are hard to obtain and are not consistently delivered in some areas. “Refugee” status is reserved only for European citizens. If Turkey was long considered the most welcoming host country among Syria’s neighbours for its open-border policy and friendly position towards the Syrian opposition, the situation changed dramatically after the EU-Turkey deal led to the border closure in 2016. Syrians in Turkey have increasingly faced deportation since 2019, and there is no clear path to Turkish citizenship.
Around 1.5 million Syrians live in Lebanon where there is a long history of animosity towards them harking back to Assad’s occupation of Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war. But only 17% of those Syrians have obtained legal residency.
Umm Ayman, who has lived for ten years in Beirut’s Shatila camp, told us: “I can’t wait to go back to Syria. Our life here has been so hard.” But before she returns she wants “to wait to see how the situation evolves and if it’s safe to go back”.
Umm Ayman never managed to obtain legal status, which means having to home-school her children, who could not be admitted to the Lebanese school system – another reason she wants to go back. But she is still worried about the developing political situation that had taken her, as it did most Syrians, by surprise. Not knowing how the caretaker government would rule, and with no close relatives or home to return to in Syria, Umm Ayman is hesitant to commit to a final decision until she can visit her hometown of Homs to see the situation for herself.
In Jordan, where only about 20% of the 1.3 million Syrian refugees are estimated to live in official camps, refugees have felt the decline in international funding directed towards the Syrian crisis in recent years, even before the January US aid freeze. “Recently there’s been scarce aid in the camp,” Qasim said, “so people are only just managing to take care of themselves.” Now, the refugee-run marketplace in Zaatari has grinded to a halt as camp residents save up for the return. As his current job is coming to an end, Qasim is looking for his next one outside Zaatari, “if there is any”.
People driving through Jordan in January, returning to Syria with their belongings piled on the car. Charlotte Al-Khalili
Outside the camps, Syrians toughing it out in Jordanian cities have even less access to aid. And while the 2016 Jordan compact allowed Syrian refugees access to formal employment, it failed to live up to its potential due to the high prices of work permits and social security contributions.
Where is home?
On the other side of the border, however, for millions of people home has been flattened to the ground. So many refugees have nowhere to return to and will need time to save up for rebuilding a house that has been bombed, burned or vandalised.
Only those with the “money and the means”, as Qasim put it, will be able to return. He calculates that reconstructing and expanding his home to accommodate 11 family members will cost around US$5,000. “I don’t have the money to go back, where am I supposed to go, am I supposed to sleep on the street?” he said.
Others like Qasim in Zaatari camp spoke about how much money they have already spent on the upkeep of their caravan shelter (often thousands of dollars) suggesting that they might be able to return if they could sell their caravan or even bring it with them to Syria.
A view of Zaatari camp in Jordan showing how refugees have adapted their ‘caravans’. Melissa Gatter
Maryam, for example, is a schoolteacher living in Zaatari camp with her husband and four-year-old daughter. She explained that the lack of money was the one thing holding them back from the return: “We paid a lot for our caravan, so if someone could take our house in exchange for money, it would help us to go back right away, in a month or less.” But the UNHCR owns the caravans, even those that camp refugees have bought or replaced over years of wear and tear.
Returning to Syria requires transferring temporary ownership of the caravans back to the UNHCR – losing the years of investments they have made to live comfortably in the harsh desert environment. In Azraq camp, southeast of Zaatari, a woman called Shamsa, who has lived in the camp since 2016, believes that access to basic financial assistance in Syria would facilitate the return:
If the UNHCR helped give money for each individual in the family for things like groceries – like they do now in the camp – people say they will return … But they can’t just return us when there’s nothing for us there.
Many people are assessing the state of their homes and hometowns for themselves before committing to a long-term return.
For example, Umm Mohammad, a mother of five in her late fifties currently living in Beirut, plans to send her husband and eldest son first. She wants to ensure that conditions are suitable for the return before giving up what they have fought hard to obtain in the last decade in Lebanon. “If they see that we can all join, we will,” she said.
Work and school
At the front of many Syrians’ minds is the question of work and school. Many of our interviewees noted that critical economic conditions in Syria mean that work is hard to come by, especially for entrepreneurs like Qasim who rely on a steady presence of customers.
While the interim Syrian government has attempted to raise the cap on public sector salaries to stimulate the economy, those we spoke to were not optimistic about their prospects. “The economic situation is on the floor,” Shamsa said from Azraq camp.
Umm Ayman has a low-paying job in Beirut, but her husband, formerly a doctor in Syria, is not allowed to work in Lebanon and can only receive a few patients off the books. Adding to their anticipated costs in Syria is the difficulty of integrating into the job market as her husband approaches retirement age. “He will need to open a practice or find one, and we don’t have this kind of money,” she said.
A plot of empty caravans in Azraq camp’s ‘Village 5’ which has been under security lockdown since 2016 until recently. Melissa Gatter
After the Israeli bombing near their home last October, the family moved into a school sheltering other displaced families in Beirut. Umm Ayman feels that going back to Syria – even with the accompanying price tag – might offer a brighter future.
On the other hand, Rasha, a recent divorcee living in Turkey with her two children, is not ready to take the risk. “I cannot go back now,” she said. “My boys need to finish school first.” Her teenage sons, who are enrolled in Turkish schools, have become fluent in Turkish. Going back to Syria would mean adapting to a new curriculum – and having to learn formal Arabic.
Many Syrians around the age of Rasha’s sons who are enrolled in school also prefer to earn their high school diplomas before making the journey back to Syria. Maryam explained to us that this is not always a straightforward decision for her students because it depends on how many years of schooling remain: “The students are feeling a little lost.”
For Syrian students currently studying the first year of tawjihi (the final two years of high school in Jordan, assessed by exams that determine the direction of a student’s career) they must decide whether to stay in the country for one more year to complete their studies, and if this will be possible. For high school and university students alike, it is unclear how their studies will transfer to the Syrian system.
“But most of my students tell me they don’t want to return at all because they honestly don’t remember anything about Syria,” Maryam said. Like Rasha’s teenagers, Maryam’s students were only toddlers at the start of the war and have spent the majority of their life outside their home country. Maryam wishes for her own daughter to grow up in Syria and receive the same education she and her husband did.
But what kind of future would Syria offer them? A young mother of a toddler explained that there are no nurseries in her hometown of Daraa. As the only woman of her generation from her social circle left in the city, she was struggling to find childcare support and discourages her sister from returning with her children. “At least if she goes to Damascus she will find nurseries and good schools, but here there is nothing.”
Crossing into a ‘void’
For those who do wish to go home, returning to Syria involves committing to a one-way ticket – once you cross the border, there is little possibility of coming back. Host countries have introduced rules that ban re-entry for Syrians without legal status and residency permits (the case for most refugees).
“You exit into a void,” Lina, who returned to Damascus from Beirut, explained. “No one can guarantee you’ll be able to come back.” In December, Syrians returning from Lebanon received only an exit stamp as there was still no one working on the Syrian side of the border.
Ghada, a mother in her mid-30s, fled Shatila camp last October after Israeli bombing in southern Beirut intensified, returning to her village near Aleppo while her husband stayed behind to work in Beirut. She said:
My children are so scared of the jet sound … We left Syria so they would not go through the war there and these horrifying sounds, so I did not want them to live here.
Ghada was among the half a million people who fled Israeli bombing in Lebanon to Syria between October and November. Israel shelled all but one crossing point between Lebanon and Syria. In January, incidents between the Lebanese and newly established authorities in Damascus led to the temporary closing of the border, pushing Syrians to look for other routes back.
By then, Ghada was already planning to come back to Lebanon. She said: “We have a home, my husband works, and the kids have a good school in Beirut.” Life in her Syrian village had been difficult, as access to everyday services was severely limited.
But the Israeli war in Lebanon has not ended, as Israel refuses to respect the ceasefire agreement and parts of the country are still occupied.
In Turkey, crossing the border without the required authorisation to return means losing temporary protection status, as was the case with Umm Ahmad once she left Gaziantep for east Aleppo. She won’t be able to see her daughter, who is as a Turkish passport-holder, for the foreseeable future as she is not allowed entry to Syria.
At the moment, Syrians holding Turkish temporary status (kimlik) or residence permits can enter Syria if they apply for a permit. But the border crossing rules are constantly changing.
Syrians returning from Jordan must pay a US$50 fee and sign an agreement consenting to being banned from re-entry to Jordan for five years. But many in Azraq camp are scared they will be forced to return, even after the UNHCR sent an SMS message to camp residents reassuring them that the decision to return to Syria would continue to be “voluntary, safe, and dignified.”
The full SMS translation reads: “Refugees have the right to return to their homeland when they choose to of their own free will. The return will continue to be voluntary, safe, and dignified. The UNHCR works in cooperation with all concerned parties to address obstacles to refugee return in order to end their displacement.”
SMS message from UNHCR sent to Zaatari residents on December 8. Melissa Gatter
Fear is not a new emotion in Azraq, where a quarter of the camp’s nearly 40,000 residents lived under security lockdown for as many as six of the last ten years while the Jordanian government processed security clearance for each individual, deciding whether to accept or deport them.
Shamsa noted that, while Azraq camp has become less stringent in recent years, “Everyone is still very afraid of forced returns.” Shamsa, who has spent the past eight years trying to find ways out of Azraq, said that staying there would be “more comfortable than it would be to go back right now”.
A dignified return
In January, the town of Darayya, 90% of which had been destroyed by the Assad regime, was alive with people rebuilding their homes. A man perched on the third floor of a very damaged building was putting concrete blocks together, laundry hung to dry on washing lines, and brand new windows sparkled on seemingly uninhabited homes. Lines of cars and minivans packed with bags and furniture entered from the Jordanian border and winded up Syrian roads – Syrians were returning and ready for a fresh start.
Other cities have also seen their inhabitants return. Mohammad, a revolutionary who lived in exile in Turkey until Aleppo’s liberation on December 2, returned looking to reclaim justice and dignity – the core demands of the 2011 revolution. He said:
I can finally seek justice, I can finally look people in the eye, I am going back home with my head held high.
For those who supported the revolution, going back to a free Syria is an immense political and personal victory.
Internally displaced Syrians living in camps in the northwestern region of Idlib have also begun to return to their homes, bringing their tents to live among the rubble as they rebuild. Iman, a woman in her 50s travelling to her home city of Idlib, said that the tents offered more dignified living than the camps: “You have to imagine that in the camps you have no intimacy, you hear everything your neighbours do and say in their tents.”
But even in the relief of Assad’s absence, fear and mistrust is still rampant among refugees living in camps in Jordan. “People are expecting another downfall,” Qasim said, pointing to the number of coups preceding the Assad regime’s nearly 50-year history. What would happen if, upon returning, they must flee again?
“There is still no hope,” Shamsa said wearily over a WhatsApp voice note from Azraq camp. She repeated the words her mother had told her almost ten years ago in their home in northern Syria, encouraging her to try a new life outside: “There’s nothing for us in Syria.”
Drying laundry in the rubble of Darayya in January. Charlotte Al Khalili
Shamsa and her family await a final decision on their resettlement application to the US, which they expect to receive in April, just after the 14th anniversary of the start of the Syrian revolution. Assad’s departure has not changed their plans.
Despite the danger and uncertainty, some people are hopeful about the future of Syria and are taking a leap into the unknown to go back home. Umm Ahmad, a woman in her fifties, had been living in the city of Gaziantep, in southern Turkey, since 2012. She was among the first to go back to Syria. A mother of two martyred and three disappeared sons from the suburbs of Aleppo, Umm Ahmad decided to cross just a day after the fall of the regime, ecstatic to be able to reunite with her siblings who had not left Syria and whom she hadn’t seen for 13 years. With excitement in her voice, she told us:
This is our country, there is no reason to leave it again now that we got rid of Bashar al-Assad. Inshallah [God-willing] we are staying here.
Umm Ahmad’s life in Turkey, where she and her son’s family lived without residence permits, had been laced with hardship and financial insecurity. It did not matter to her that she would not be able to re-enter Turkey – she is happy to be home: “We visited our old flat yesterday. It is damaged but we will work on it with my husband and it should be ready to welcome my son and his family next month.” Back in Syria, Umm Ahmad can begin her quest to find her missing sons.
A few others we spoke to rushed to return to Syria in the same way: revolutionaries who had waited at the border for years to be reunited with family who had stayed behind; relatives of the detained and forcibly disappeared trying to find their loved ones; people with nothing to lose being banned from re-entering a host country who had not given them legal status to begin with.
A new blueprint for the return
Although the figures presented by the UNHCR are high – more than half a million expected to return in six months – the number of returnees from neighbouring countries has reached around 235,000 as of February, with 35,000 coming from Turkey and 22,000 from Jordan, while figures from Lebanon remain unclear.
The decision to return will not be a simple one for most, and the return will probably involve more than a single one-way trip. In many cases, young, single men are making this journey alone to test the waters on behalf of their families.
Syrians abroad have been starting over for the past decade, and an entire generation has grown up in displacement. Kept on a hamster wheel of survival and deprived of the opportunity to prosper in exile, Syrian refugees must be able to make their own informed decisions about making the return – or not – in their own time.
The idea of a “safe, voluntary, and dignified” return must account for the complicated logistical reality that repatriation to a country recovering from 50 years of an oppressive regime will not be a one-way journey for most. Rather than halting refugee programs and attempting to send as many Syrians back as quickly as possible, host countries should grant Syrian refugees freedom of movement to and from Syria.
The return to Syria will ultimately only be possible with international support in rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, services and economy to see a peaceful political transition. Returnees will need financial and material assistance as they re-establish themselves, especially in the fallout of the drastic cuts to US-funded humanitarian aid. Western countries must lift their sanctions and hold Israel to account if they are genuinely interested in the long-term sustainability of Syria and the surrounding region.
This moment is not only an opportunity for exiled Syrians to turn the page on displacement, it is also a rare opportunity for the international community to design a new blueprint for refugee returns in an age of criminalised migration. It is also a rare opportunity, then, for a cautious hope.
“As for me, I’m thinking of getting my PhD from Damascus University,” Maryam said. While living in the camp, she earned a master’s degree at Al Al-Bayt University in the nearby city of Mafraq.
Going back to Syria, her husband could return to his job as an IT engineer, and they could rent a flat while rebuilding their home in Daraa. Her daughter could start first grade in the Syrian school system. She is hopeful.
“We’re seriously considering going back. It’s just a matter of time.”
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Charlotte Al-Khalili receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust
Melissa Gatter 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.
Scientists have long tried to understand the human brain by comparing it to other primates. Researchers are still trying to understand what makes our brain different to our closest relatives. Our recent study may have brought us one step closer by taking a new approach – comparing the way brains are internally connected.
The Victorian palaeontologist Richard Owen incorrectly argued that the human brain was the only brain to contain a small area termed the Hippocampus minor. He claimed that made it unique among the animal kingdom and, he argued, the human brain was therefore clearly unrelated to other species. We’ve learnt a lot since then about the organisation and function of our brain, but there is still much to learn.
Most studies comparing the human brain to that of other species focus on size. This can be the size of the brain, size of the brain relative to the body, or or the size of parts of the brain to the rest of it. However, measures of size don’t tell us anything about the internal organisation of the brain. For instance, although the enormous brain of an elephant contains three times as many neurons as the human brain, these are predominantly located in the cerebellum, not in the neocortex that is commonly associated with human cognitive abilities.
Until recently, studying the brain’s internal organisation was painstaking work. The advent of medical imaging techniques, however, has opened up new possibilities to look inside the brains of animals quickly, in great detail, and without harming the animal.
We used publicly available MRI data of white matter, the fibres connecting parts of the brain’s cortex. Communication between brain cells runs along these fibres. This costs energy and the mammalian brain is therefore relatively sparsely connected, concentrating communications down a few central pathways.
The connections of each brain region tell us a lot about its functions. The set of connections of any brain region is so specific that brain regions have a unique connectivity fingerprint.
In our study, we compared these connectivity fingerprints across the human, chimpanzee and macaque monkey brain. The chimpanzee is, together with the bonobo, our closest living relative. The macaque monkey is the non-human
primate best known to science. Comparing the human brain to both species meant we could not only assess which parts of our brain are unique to us, but also which parts are likely to be shared heritage with our non-human relatives.
Much of the previous research on human brain uniqueness has focused on the prefrontal cortex, a group of areas at the front of our brain linked to complex thought and decision making. We indeed found that aspects of prefrontal cortex had a connectivity fingerprint in the human that we couldn’t find in the other animals, particularly when we compared the human to the macaque monkey.
A higher value means the brains are more different. JNeurosci/Rogier Mars and Katherine Bryant, CC BY-NC-ND
But the main differences we found were not in the prefrontal cortex. They were in the temporal lobe, a large part of cortex located approximately behind the ear. In the primate brain, this area is devoted to deep processing of information from our two main senses: vision and hearing. One of the most dramatic findings was in the middle part of the temporal cortex.
The feature driving this distinction was the arcuate fasciculus, a white matter tract connecting the frontal and temporal cortex and traditionally associated with processing language in humans. Most if not all primates have an arcuate fasciculus but it is much larger in human brains.
However, we found that focusing solely on language may be too narrow. The brain
areas that are connected via the arcuate fasciculus are also involved in other cognitive functions, such as integrating sensory information and processing complex social behaviour. Our study was the first to find the arcuate fasciculus is involved in these functions. This insight underscores the complexity of human brain evolution, suggesting that our advanced cognitive abilities arose not from a single change, as scientists thought, but through several, interrelated changes in brain connectivity.
While the middle temporal arcuate fasciculus is a key player in language processing, we also found differences between the species in a region more at the back of the temporal cortex. This temporoparietal junction area is critical in processing information about others, such as understanding others’ beliefs and intentions, a cornerstone of human social interaction.
In humans, this brain area has much more extensive connections to other parts of
the brain processing complex visual information, such as facial expressions and
behavioural cues. This suggests that our brain is wired to handle more intricate
social processing than those of our primate relatives. Our brain is wired up to be
social.
These findings challenge the idea of a single evolutionary event driving the
emergence of human intelligence. Instead, our study suggests brain evolution happened in steps. Our findings suggest changes in frontal cortex organisation occurred in apes, followed by changes in temporal cortex in the lineage leading to humans.
Richard Owen was right about one thing. Our brains are different from those of other species – to an extent. We have a primate brain, but it’s wired up to make us even more social than other primates, allowing us to communicate through spoken language.
Rogier Mars receives funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) UK and the Medical Research Council (MRC) UK.
Katherine Bryant 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 Perranporth beach in Cornwall, UK, a local outdoor swimming group called the Perranporth Bluetits is out in force. This group are determined to make the most of another chilly day as they plunge into the Atlantic for a dip. They emerge smiling. Their camaraderie and collective sense of achievement is clear to see.
Invigorating experiences like these have motivated community groups and the voluntary sector to begin to design “blue care” programmes connecting people with the water, and sometimes even more formalised prescriptions of “bluespace” activities from doctors or health professionals.
I, admittedly, stay drier than the Perranporth Bluetits. But my interest in open water swimming and its health benefits has motivated me and a team of researchers to look into these experiences. Previous research shows that open-water swimming and similar activities can be therapeutic.
But might certain swimming activities be particularly beneficial for mental wellbeing? With an international team of environmental psychologists, I have carried out the biggest survey of open-water swimmers to date, looking at data from across the globe. Our recent study, published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, outlines the mental wellbeing benefits of wild swimming, and suggests that satisfying psychological needs might underlie this.
As part of the EU-funded BlueHealth project, we surveyed around 20,000 adults in 19 countries across Europe, the US, Hong Kong, Australia and Canada about their interactions with blue spaces (outdoor aquatic environments) and their health and wellbeing. One thousand two hundred of these people reported swimming on their most recent visit to a blue space – some in open-air pools, others in more natural bodies of water such as lakes, rivers and the sea.
Any kind of outdoor swimming was associated with a wellbeing boost. However, wild swimming seemed to deliver significant benefits. Our study suggests that the key to this effect lies in experiencing feelings of autonomy and competence – freedom and mastery over the swimmer’s environment – two factors that are strongly linked to wellbeing.
Surprisingly though, social connection did not play as big a role in these mental wellbeing effects as we had expected, despite the proliferation of community swimming groups like the Perranporth Bluetits. At least in this international sample, personal achievement seemed to be more influential than community bonding.
There was another surprising nuance too. More skilled swimmers, drawn to adventurous and riskier locations, sometimes reported higher anxiety levels. This suggests that while wild swimming can be deeply rewarding, it may also push people into situations that challenge their comfort zones. As other research has noted, such challenging situations can be part of the appeal.
The findings extend previous research on open-water swimming by showing wellbeing benefits across an international sample of adults, the mechanisms by which these benefits come about and the magnitude of difference between natural waters and man-made outdoor pools. So, should we all be jumping in and prescribing such experiences for a mental health lift?
The research does not quite support that yet. We need to be realistic about some of the other challenges our oceans face in providing such experiences. Alongside ever-present risks such as drowning, polluted waters pose infection risks, something that any swimmer has to carefully negotiate to embrace their hobby.
Perhaps the main takeaway though is in how wild swimming delivers its mental wellbeing benefits – essentially through enhanced feelings of freedom. Perhaps, in a world of growing external pressures, this is the reason wild swimming is becoming so popular.
Swimming, sailing, even just building a sandcastle – the ocean benefits our physical and mental wellbeing. Curious about how a strong coastal connection helps drive marine conservation, scientists are diving in to investigate the power of blue health.
This article is part of a series, Vitamin Sea, exploring how the ocean can be enhanced by our interaction with it.
Lewis Elliott received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 666773.
The UK’s 2015 Modern Slavery Act is ten years old on March 26. When it was passed, it was billed as “world-leading” legislation – the first of its kind to introduce a dedicated legal framework to deal with modern slavery.
But ten years on, the evidence tells a different story. The numbers of people identified as potential victims are higher than they have ever been. Yet very few people have been prosecuted. What went wrong with this “groundbreaking” law?
The Modern Slavery Act was the final piece of legislation under the 2010-15 coalition government. Championed by then home secretary Theresa May, the act was primarily about beefing up the criminal justice approach. While criminal offences like human trafficking, forced labour, slavery and servitude were previously dealt with in different pieces of legislation, the act consolidated them into one place.
The aim was to make it easier to identify and prosecute traffickers (who May referred to as “the slave-drivers”), while offering some protection to their victims.
It also included a role for the private sector through a “transparency” clause. This required bigger businesses to report what they are doing to prevent modern slavery in their supply chains. And, it created an Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner to “encourage good practice”. Other new measures included a legal defence to victims who had been forced to commit crimes, and giving law enforcement new powers to confiscate assets from traffickers.
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However, the act did little to stop modern slavery happening in the first place. The prevention strategy mainly consisted of poster campaigns in airports and immigration processing centres.
Some argued that the act dodged the big issues around work and immigration. For example, by not addressing weaknesses in labour protections and the additional vulnerabilities migrant workers faced thanks to May’s “hostile environment” migration policies.
As prime minister, May touted the UK’s “world-leading” efforts on modern slavery to the global stage at the UN General Assembly. But a decade later, the impacts have been less than stellar.
What has been its impact?
The act has certainly raised the issue’s profile in the last ten years. Businesses now have to report on what steps they are taking to tackle modern slavery. But there are no penalties if they do not comply, and there has been limited progress on exploitation in supply chains. Recent cases involving McDonald’s and other supermarkets prove that businesses are not spotting the signs or acting effectively to prevent the issue.
The number of people identified as potential victims of modern slavery has increased significantly in the last ten years: 19,125 in 2024, nearly six times as many as in 2015. That’s at least partly because the act has improved awareness among frontline responders (organisations who refer potential victims for support).
But while more people who may have experienced modern slavery are being identified, prosecutions are very low. Only 64 adult offenders were sentenced between 2017-19 for over 22,756 potential victims of modern slavery identified over the same period. There are many reasons for this, but one is that victims may not come forward, fearing they may be detained or deported.
Immigration policies passed by the last Conservative government have also rolled back protections for modern slavery victims. In passing the Nationality and Borders Act and Illegal Migration Act, the government argued that people arriving on small boats were abusing the protections offered through the Modern Slavery Act to evade deportation. Far from world-leading, the UK became non-compliant with international anti-trafficking and human rights laws.
Many of the concerns raised during the drafting of the legislation have proven accurate. Despite repeated commitments to create a unified labour inspectorate, successive governments have dodged reform of labour market regulation.
The UK’s immigration and work visa system has also led to the potential for exploitation. Even legal migration routes and the sponsorship visa scheme have created conditions for people to be exploited. For example, in sectors such as agriculture or social care, where intermediaries sell false promises regarding employment and conditions in the UK.
Added to this, the system of support which recognised victims of modern slavery can access is creaking under pressure. It has expanded beyond what was envisaged in its original design, and there are backlogs in decision-making and questions over how appropriate it is. Thousands have declined formal identification and support because they do not feel it is worthwhile or appropriate for them.
Research has also shown that victims are not necessarily getting the support or legal defence they are entitled to. An unknown number of victims are likely to be in the UK’s prisons, where they may be subject to further exploitation.
Stopping modern slavery
The theory behind the Modern Slavery Act was that if you “get tough” on criminals and improve support for victims, you can reduce exploitation. But that hasn’t worked – modern slavery is still a huge problem in the UK.
Changing this means taking prevention seriously, and addressing the conditions and inequalities that lead to exploitation in the first place. Like other global challenges, modern slavery stems from issues like poverty, inequality and discrimination and gender-based violence.
My colleagues and I at the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre recently noted in our report on policy priorities that the government has an opportunity to prevent modern slavery through some of its other crime prevention efforts, as well as in forthcoming legislation such as the employment rights bill.
Without a clear and evidence-based strategy, modern slavery in the UK will persist or even grow, and the Modern Slavery Act will remain an innovative, but ultimately ineffective tool in the fight against exploitation.
Alex Balch is Professor of Politics at the University of Liverpool and is Research Director of the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC) based at the University of Oxford. The Modern Slavery PEC is supported by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council and funds research to improve understanding of modern slavery and inform better policies to address it.
Turkey is in turmoil after Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, a leading opposition figure and potential challenger to Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was arrested on March 19 on charges of corruption.
More than 1,000 people who protested against the arrest have also been detained as hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in anger at what they say is a major blow against democracy. İmamoğlu, who denies all charges against him, has since been endorsed as the candidate for the 2028 presidential elections for the Republican People’s Party (CHP).
Central to the allegations of corruption is what is known in Turkey as “naylon faturacılık”. This literally means “nylon invoicing” and refers to the issuing of fake invoices. It doesn’t refer to simple clerical errors or accounting mishaps, but deliberate attempts to fabricate transactions, inflate expenses, or obscure real beneficiaries.
Technically illegal, the practice is nonetheless widespread in Turkey. It forms part of what many see as the country’s informal economy.
The informal economy in Turkey spans everything from street vending and informal recycling to complex tax evasion schemes involving registered firms. Naylon faturacılık illustrates how corruption doesn’t always sit outside the system, but often thrives from within it.
It exposes a blurry boundary between formal and informal economic activity, revealing how some formal businesses manipulate legal frameworks to appear compliant while engaging in illicit practices. In September 2024, Turkey’s Ministry of Finance uncovered 3 billion Turkish Lira (£61 million) worth of fake invoices in an investigation targeting around 4,500 large taxpayers.
Over the past four years, I’ve interviewed more than 60 business owners, workers, and entrepreneurs across Turkey – from informal micro-enterprises to firms embedded in formal supply chains. One theme surfaced again and again: naylon faturacılık, or fake invoicing.
People described it not as an exception but as “just part of doing business” in an informal economy. In an economy shaped by patchy enforcement and institutional fragility, this practice has become normalised over the past decade. It’s not legally accepted, but has unfortunately become socially expected.
Under Turkish law, issuing or using fake invoices is a serious offence, punishable by three to eight years in prison. Yet many of my interviewees, especially those operating in or alongside the informal economy, saw fake invoicing as a necessary way of doing business. They described it as a viable response to rising costs, bureaucratic hurdles and a system that often punishes formality.
Opposition leaders, including CHP leader Özgür Özel, argue that İmamoğlu’s arrest is politically motivated – an attempt to discredit their candidate ahead of the presidential election. Özel condemned the operation as a “coup attempt” against Turkey’s democratic future.
In a press conference, he revealed that most of the people detained alongside İmamoğlu are linked to companies that won public contracts from the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İBB) under the control of İmamoğlu. Moreover, some of those arrested, he claimed, are students or relatives with no actual involvement in procurement decisions or public bids.
The key accusation is that these companies issued fake invoices – billing for work never done, or for services exaggerated or duplicated. Yet Özel contends that no concrete evidence has been presented thus far and much of the government’s case comprises testimony and vague associations from gizli tanık (secret witnesses).
One such witness reportedly named a communications or media firm that had worked with both İBB and the central government – including on campaigns commissioned by the presidency’s Directorate of Communications that work directly with Erdoğan. When the same activity, individuals or businesses, can be framed as legitimate under one administration and criminal under another, the line between legality and politics becomes dangerously thin.
While opposition mayors in Turkey face swift legal action against corruption, serious corruption allegations against former Ankara mayor Melih Gökçek, which he denies, involving nearly 46 billion Turkish lira in public losses remain uninvestigated. Gökçek was a member of Erdoğan’s government Justice and Development Party (AK).
A total of 97 complaints were filed over alleged misconduct during Gökçek’s tenure as mayor of Ankara until 2017, but nothing was done. Critics say this reflects politically selective justice.
One law for some
This isn’t just a story about fake invoices. It is about contexts where rules are unevenly enforced, where legal grey zones are abundant and where informality becomes a flexible instrument of control. A practice such as naylon faturacılık tolerated in one political moment can become a liability in another. A company can operate legally while it enjoys good relations with the government – and suddenly find itself under suspicion when that changes.
In Turkey today, the question is often not whether an act is legal or illegal. It’s more about who is involved and whose power is being threatened. The lines between formal, informal or illegal is not merely economic – it is profoundly political. That’s why the nylon invoicing issue is so revealing. Far from being a fringe practice, it exposes the everyday intersections of power, legitimacy and corruption.
In a climate of deepening polarisation and eroding institutional trust, many believe that who gets punished for corruption depends less on the act itself and more on which side of the political divide they fall.
Protests in Turkey callling for ‘rights! law! justice!’
Turkey’s democracy and justice system are being tested – not only by corruption, but by how selectively corruption is investigated and enforced. In this uncertain moment, the challenge is not only to hold people accountable, but to rebuild trust in institutions and ensure that justice is applied fairly. The protestors’ slogan“hak, hukuk, adalet” (rights, law, justice) carries a deeper warning: power is temporary, but justice must endure.
As many demonstrators in Turkey are now reminding the Erdoğan government: when the balance shifts, those in power today may find themselves in need of the very fair and independent legal system they are now so determined to undermine.
Tulin Dzhengiz research on the informal economy received funding from Manchester Metropolitan University.
Cannabis legalisation could raise £1.5 billion for the UK economy, according to a recent report from the charity Transform. But aside from this plant’s economic benefits, cannabis also has many ecological advantages.
My research into the potential role of cannabis in shaping a fairer and healthier world never fails to excite me. Cannabis flowers became legally allowed as a medicine in the UK in 2018, but its origins as a medicinal herb in Britain dates back to at least Anglo-Saxon times. Its popularity is evident in the many place names scattered across the country, from Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire to Littlehempston in Devon.
Hemp is a colloquial term for the cannabis plant, Cannabis sativa. Hemp often refers to strains of cannabis that have had its main psychoactive chemical, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), bred out of the female flowers.
Due to the negative associations cannabis has picked up over the past 50 years of prohibition, hemp farmers have distanced themselves from using the term cannabis. In the UK, this association has resulted in strict conditions for growing hemp creating a barrier for farmers.
In recent years, cannabidiol (CBD), the main non psychoactive chemical found in female cannabis flowers, has become popular as a wellness product. CBD is abundant in low-THC hemp flowers, so it’s easy for the lines between hemp and cannabis to become blurred.
It’s all cannabis. This plant has some incredible environmental benefits, from improving soil health to storing carbon. Here are five ways that cannabis plants can contribute to a greener planet:
1. Productive harvests
Hemp stems have a woody core, known as shivs, that can be mixed with lime to make hempcrete, a carbon-neutral alternative to concrete. Concrete production is one of the major sources of global greenhouse gas emissions. Hempcrete could be used to build eco-friendly social housing across the UK.
Hemp is ideally suited to agroecology, but it’s not an easy crop to grow in the UK
because licensing laws make it very difficult for hemp farmers to tap into a global market worth billions.
Farmers at one community farm, Hempen in Oxfordshire, sowed their first hemp crop over an area of 30 acres. In 2019, Hempen were forced to destroy their CBD harvest as their licence wasn’t renewed.
In California, THC strains are allowed. One farming community started producing its own CBD-based medicines on just one acre of land. Others use the plant in other interesting ways, from rehabilitating formally incarcerated people to off-grid market gardens.
Hemp offers potential as a fast-growing crop that enriches soil health. MAR007/Shutterstock
A process known as phytoremediation cleans the soil of these toxic contaminants. Hemp’s deep roots have a high tolerance for absorbing dangerous heavy metals. It is also a great break crop – this is a way for farmers to rotate the types of crops they grow to keep the soil healthy.
Bioplastics made from hemp are biodegradable, composting down into organic matter leaving no microplastics. Hemp bioplastics are already being used by a number of commercial companies from building cars to packaging.
Bioplastics do not offer a complete solution, but with the right infrastructure they could help reduce the need to derive more plastics from fossil fuels.
4. Carbon storage
Trees and other plants remove carbon dioxide from the air through the process of photosynthesis. Hemp is great at this, storing twice as much carbon dioxide than trees.
It’s very difficult to store excess energy from renewable sources for use at a later date when the sun might not be shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Big batteries are one solution but these require mining precious metals.
Another solution are supercapacitors – mega-efficient energy storage solutions that can be as small as a coin. Graphene, a flat material stronger than steel, is an essential element in the production of supercapacitors but it’s expensive and energy-intensive to make.
The whole stem biomass (unused plant waste) from cannabis could provide a low-cost way to make graphene. Research shows that supercapacitors using hemp-based graphene perform much more efficiently than current commercial models.
Hemp has many other known uses, from textiles to paper. The UK could lead the way in hemp innovation. The previous UK government did announce some minor changes to hemp licensing. Now, further changes to legislation could help farmers to harness the potential of this wondercrop in the fight against climate change.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Recently, a leaflet was delivered to my home from Nuclear Waste Services, the company that is overseeing the final disposal of some of the most dangerous waste that exists. It reminded me that the small village where I live in Cumbria is one of three proposed locations for the burial of nuclear waste. If realised, it would be a site that has to be secure and safe for at least 100,000 years.
Such a timescale makes the markers around which we otherwise plan our lives (the birthdays, holidays, anniversaries and so on) seem almost infinitely small. This presents a challenge to any attempts to make us take ownership of such waste.
When you think about waste, you probably imagine the mundane leftovers of your everyday experience. Because of their proximity to our daily lives, cultural historians like me can learn a lot from the history of such leftovers.
Contemporary artists like Michael Landy and curators at the EU House of History’s year-long exhibition, Throwaway, have also explored this everyday aspect of waste.
But between such extremes of everyday life and the abstract future, we can find waste everywhere. After spending more than two decades thinking about what waste actually is and what we might learn from it, I have learned that waste, as a thing, an idea, a problem, is always wholly determined from a human standpoint.
There is no waste in nature. And what is waste in human life only remains so if it cannot be reused or reconfigured for human ends or absorbed by nature.
Contemporary waste
If we can say that nuclear waste was a development of the 20th century, then it is clear that we can think of waste through the particular historical forms it has taken. An example of 21st-century waste is the immaterial digital leftovers that we now unconsciously generate. This data waste, generated from the technologies and media platforms that now facilitate much of our work and leisure time, is harvested and recycled by a multitude of corporate, business, government and other interests. Such leftovers will outlive us, but they are more or less invisible to us.
What we can learn from this, as I explore in my new book, The Idea of Waste, is not only that there are forms of waste originating in certain times or places, but that waste is very much a contemporary phenomenon. It is always an idea that is taking new forms, while at the same time continuing to exist in all prior forms.
A new waste consciousness emerged in the late 1960s in response to consumer society and the new packaging wastes it created. It was summed up by the concept of recycling (a word almost unknown before that time).
There was a dual meaning in environmental activist campaign messages such as “Don’t waste waste – recycle!”. The point was that waste was not just a material thing, it was a way of perceiving or thinking about such material things. Promoting notions like zero waste hinges on how we perceive what is valuable or what is worthless, which varies according to our knowledge at any given time.
But even their efforts to minimise or reduce waste to zero still have to face the fact that in any act of making or creating, energy and resources will have been expended. The life cycle of designed or upcycled materials that embody circular ideals will also come to an end, returning us once again to remainders and leftovers. In that sense, zero waste is an ideal that is intended to design a new human consciousness.
The lesson we may draw from all of this is that there can be no history of waste that charts a path of victory. It is impossible to say that we conquered one form of waste and then moved on the next one. Waste is always with us. But it is also always taking new forms and without constant vigilance, it will, in one form or another, overwhelm us.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
John Scanlan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – France – By Jean-Pierre Darnis, Full professor at the University of Côte d’Azur, director of the master’s programme in “France-Italy Relations”. Associate fellow at the Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS, Paris) and adjunct professor at LUISS University (Rome), Université Côte d’Azur
US President Donald Trump’s pivot toward Russia amid its war in Ukraine has collided with the stance of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government, which has always shown unwavering support for Kyiv as well as loyalty to Washington. When Trump came to power, Meloni wanted to appear connected to his administration, hoping to play the role of a bridge with Europe while France and Germany were in unfavourable political cycles. Trump’s pivot led to a revival of France’s role in Europe, while Germany emerged from its electoral period with its likely next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, calling for European defence’s “independence from the USA”.
Meloni’s position is not only weakening within the European context, where France, Germany and the UK play leading roles, but also in Italian politics, as US policy has created rifts within the three-part governing coalition. Meloni’s party, Fratelli d’Italia, supports Ukraine and Europe, as does Forza Italia. But the leader of Lega, Matteo Salvini, has come to embody Trumpism in Italy, taking an openly pro-Russian position and opposing European rearmament. If a break with Lega were to occur, it could call into question the viability of the government, as it would no longer hold an absolute majority in parliament.
Anti-French rhetoric
For her part, Meloni always tends to push back against any “European-only” defence solution proposed by France. This position is a way for Italy to avoid facing the fact that NATO has weakened. It also reactivates an anti-French rhetoric that is a classic refrain among Italian nationalists. Salvini has recently accused French President Emmanuel Macron of being “crazy” and calling for Europe to prepare for nuclear war.
However, Macron has not made any significant missteps toward Italy. Since the first informal emergency meeting in Paris after Trump’s policy shift toward Ukraine (a gathering that included the UK, Germany, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain and Poland), the Italian government has always been involved. Moreover, Macron’s policy convergence with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has dulled criticisms, because Rome is traditionally close to London.
Both Meloni’s government and the opposition have put forward complicated if not unrealistic proposals for the war in Ukraine, such as a UN peacekeeping mission after a ceasefire, and repeatedly reaffirmed their commitment to NATO. In terms of public opinion, a poll published in mid-February – two weeks before Trump scolded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a White House visit – found that 69 percent of Italians “are favourable toward a common European army”.
There is also a growing debate in Italy on nuclear deterrence. This issue had been taboo until now, with Italy benefitting from an arrangement in which US nuclear bombs are stored in bases on Italian soil. While Germany and Poland have expressed interest in an expansion of the French nuclear umbrella, Italian media and policymakers are also beginning to discuss it. The discussion may reflect doubts about US reliability within NATO, including Washington’s commitment to the alliance treaty’s Article 5, which holds that “an armed attack” on one member “shall be considered an attack against them all”.
There are also significant signals coming from Italian industry. While, in recent months, the Italian government appeared to want to use the telecommunications services of Starlink, the satellite network created by Elon Musk, for its defence needs, a contract no longer seems to be on the agenda. Musk’s fluctuating stance about the Starlink service provided to Kyiv, as well as the US decision that temporarily cut aid to Ukraine, introduced questions about reliability. This explains how, in just a few weeks, the French company Eutelsat, which owns the OneWeb constellation, has seen a resurgence of interest, as many countries assess its services as alternatives to Starlink. Following this turmoil, the Italian company Leonardo recently announced that it is planning to launch a constellation of 18 telecommunications satellites for defence purposes.
These developments also tie into Italy’s industrial position in aerospace and defence, because Leonardo and Fincantieri, another large, publicly owned company, do not limit their markets to the Italian armed forces. As part of a European strategy, Leonardo concluded an agreement with the German company Rheinmetall in 2024 to jointly produce battle tanks, and recently announced an agreement with the Turkish company Baykar to produce drones. Leonardo is part-owner, along with French defence company Thales, of Telespazio and of Thales Alenia Space, and is also in discussions with Airbus to form a European satellite production group. In the missile sector, Leonardo’s participation in European joint venture MBDA allowed Italy and France to produce the SAMP/T anti-missile system, which could lead to further developments for the European missile-defence network. In shipbuilding, Fincantieri has expressed interest in merging its activities with the German group Thyssen Krupp Marine Systems. And in aircraft, Italy is participating in the Global Air Combat Programme, which includes the UK and Japan in the production of fighter jets. These examples show that Italian aerospace and defence development is intrinsically linked to European collaborations and export markets.
Both in terms of industrial interests and politics, Italy is firmly anchored in the European camp. The positive stance that the Meloni government took toward Washington does not mean Rome is considering an alternative to EU affiliation. Italy is also facing continuous cyberattacks from Russian groups, which feeds a clear threat perception. The prime minister has stressed her differences with France and the UK during the recent European security summits, but while Italy may be reluctant to deploy peacekeeping troops in Ukraine, it cannot distance itself too much from the future defence architecture of Europe.
Jean-Pierre Darnis 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.
The history of medicine is filled with remedies that, viewed through a modern lens, seem perplexing, misguided or downright macabre. Among these is “mumia” — a medicinal substance derived from mummified human remains.
From the 12th to the 17th century, physicians across Europe prescribed powdered mummy as a cure-all for ailments ranging from internal bleeding and broken bones to epilepsy and melancholia.
Once regarded as a potent elixir infused with the life force of the ancients, mumia was a staple in apothecaries, sought after by the wealthy and recommended by the learned. Yet, as medical knowledge evolved, so too did attitudes toward this unusual remedy, and by the 18th century, it had largely faded into obscurity.
The belief in mumia’s healing power was deeply rooted in prevailing medical theories of the time. One such theory was the doctrine of signatures, which held that natural substances resembled the ailments they were meant to cure.
Mummified flesh, preserved for centuries, seemed an obvious candidate for treating decay, wounds and internal deterioration. Another influential idea was vitalism, the notion that life force could be transferred from one body to another, particularly from a preserved human to a living patient.
Adding to this was the European fascination with the medical traditions of the Islamic world. Arabic physicians such as Avicenna had described the therapeutic use of bitumen – a naturally occurring tar-like substance also called mūmiyā – that had medicinal applications in wound healing.
When these texts were translated into Latin, European scholars mistakenly conflated mūmiyā with Egyptian mummies, assuming that the embalmed dead were imbued with similar restorative properties. The result was a booming trade in ground-up human remains, with mummies sourced from Egyptian tombs, grave robbers and even local execution sites.
Mumia was prescribed for an astonishing array of conditions. Physicians believed it could speed up healing, prevent infection and even cure epilepsy. Ingested in powdered form or mixed into tinctures, it was recommended for internal bleeding, strokes and tuberculosis. Some suggested it could ward off melancholy or restore youthful vitality, making it a popular remedy among the European elite.
Apothecaries stocked mummy powder alongside other human-derived medicines such as powdered skull (cranium humanum) and distilled human fat (axungia hominis).
The more ancient the remains, the more potent they were thought to be. However, as the demand for mumia outstripped the supply of genuine Egyptian mummies, opportunistic traders turned to more recent corpses – some even resorting to robbing the gallows to meet the market’s needs.
Eventual decline
Despite its widespread use, mumia was not without its detractors. By the 16th century, some physicians began to question both its efficacy and its ethical implications. The Swiss physician Paracelsus (1493–1541) argued that only fresh human remains – not ancient, embalmed flesh – had medicinal value, while others dismissed the practice as nothing more than superstition.
The growing emphasis on empirical science in the 17th and 18th centuries further eroded faith in mumia. As anatomy and pathology advanced, the idea that centuries-old preserved tissue could heal the living seemed increasingly implausible. At the same time, public attitudes toward human remains began to shift.
The rise of Egyptology and archaeological interest in mummies reframed them as historical artefacts rather than medical commodities, making their consumption distasteful even to those who had once sworn by their healing properties.
By the early 18th century, mumia had largely disappeared from medical practice, relegated to the annals of history as an example of medicine’s sometimes gruesome past.
Mumia’s decline serves as a reminder of how medical knowledge evolves, shedding once-revered treatments in favour of evidence-based approaches. Yet, while medicinal cannibalism may seem shocking today, the pursuit of miraculous cures continues. From stem cell therapies to longevity supplements, the desire to harness the essence of life itself persists – albeit with more scientific rigour.
Looking back at the use of mummified medicine, we are reminded that the boundary between science and superstition is not always as clear as we might like to believe.
Michelle Spear 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 years, nature has been blamed as a blocker of economic growth. After some ministerial bluster about not letting newts and bats get in the way of growth ambitions, the UK government released more details of its plans to get Britain building again.
The centrepiece of its aspirations to balance both nature and economic growth is a nature restoration fund, to be set up in England through changes to habitat regulations. This should allow developers to stay within their legal obligations towards nature through a payment scheme without delaying their projects.
The broad concept is that, as an alternative to relocating important species or improving habitats on the site of a proposed development, a developer could pay into the nature restoration fund. This would pay for larger, more strategically located schemes to protect the species in question.
The fund simplifies and streamlines the regulations while collecting funds to promote more, bigger, better and increasingly joined-up sites for nature.
Protecting nature is not just about bats and newts. According to trade association the Home Builders Federation (HBF), there are 160,000 homes being delayed by what are known as “nutrient neutrality” measures. These rules were a response to growing public concerns about land and water pollution caused by nutrient loads – pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus – associated with livestock farming and spillages from sewage works.
Government agency Natural Englandadvised 74 local authorities that they should not allow any more house building in their areas unless this pollution could be mitigated. But this has led to lengthy and expensive project-by-project reviews to identify potential damage.
How will a fund help?
The fund will build on some schemes that are already known to work. One such scheme works for the protection of great-crested newts. Another successful scheme is Thames Basin Heaths project, working to protect and enhance heathland sites where rare birds such as nightingales breed. Crucially, this scheme allows new development to go ahead in adjacent areas.
The fund will be run by Natural England, which aims to draw on these experiences to unblock development at a large scale rather than at single-site level, pooling contributions from developers to pay for mitigation measures when there is a risk to nature.
If a particular “blocking” issue is identified, experts from Natural England will produce a plan, which must be approved by the environment secretary. A levy on developers will then pay for mitigation measures “in perpetuity” (often 30 years), allowing the development to get under way.
Environmental experts have cautiously welcomed the general principles and approach of the nature restoration fund. But there has also been concern about whether the plan is well enough thought through. There are also questions on how well it will integrate with other schemes.
A widespread worry is for the future of biodiversity net gain – which includes measures for creating and improving habitat banks using biodiversity units, effectively a form of “nature market”. This approach sets a target of 10% for biodiversity improvement based upon the combined distinctness, condition and significance of affected habitats over the lifetime of the development. But these measures are only just getting started.
The concern is that providers of sites for these habitat banks – which might be councils, landowners, charities or private businesses, for example – might get cold feet and pull out if they can’t be certain that their plans will be compatible with the nature restoration fund.
The Thames Basin Heaths scheme has been protecting the breeding grounds of nightingales. Erni/Shutterstock
There is concern, too, about how payments from the nature restoration fund would be calculated. These will need to be locally appropriate and not pit nature restoration and biodiversity net gain against each other if, for example, landowners are forced to choose a particular scheme for their land that they are then committed to for decades. With two parallel systems in play, the relationship between them must be crystal clear, otherwise shared goals could be missed.
Another question is whether Natural England can be both regulator and financial beneficiary of the new scheme. There have been calls from some of those already involved in nature markets for some form of independent oversight.
And it will also be vital that the new scheme respects what’s known as the “mitigation hierarchy”. This hierarchy aims to avoid, reduce and then mitigate any impacts on nature on-site in that order. Then developers should consider off-site measures in areas where there could be greater gains for biodiversity.
But a danger here is that this could disconnect people from nature even further by mitigating ecological loss miles away from the site of the damage. This disconnection is considered to be a critical underlying cause of biodiversity loss.
There is much to like about the nature restoration fund, but there is a risk that little will be achieved without the government showing genuine ambition and allocating enough money and staff to properly monitor and enforce it over the long term. Only time will tell whether it achieves the government’s goal of speeding up development.
At the moment, it is not clear how the fund will complement similar schemes and there is a danger of creating a complex patchwork in nature restoration funding. But if it works well, it could provide a richer funding ecosystem for nature recovery – a much-needed boost for England’s nature-depleted landscape.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stuart Black, Associate Professor, Department of Archaeology, University of Reading
Chimpanzees helped to make PG Tips tea famous with their iconic TV ads in the 1970s. But what happened to these animals afterwards? Our new study, using techniques previously used only on human remains, reveals the fascinating life story of Choppers, a celebrity chimpanzee, also known as Ada Lott from the PG Tips ads.
Zoos have transformed over the last century. They once focused on entertainment, but in the UK zoos now have a greater emphasis on education, conservation, research and welfare. And our new study, led by experts at National Museums Scotland, shows how these changes are written on Choppers’ body.
Choppers died aged 46 in 2016, which is close to the average age for a wild or captive chimpanzee. Following her death, Choppers was donated to the National Museums of Scotland, which enabled an analytical investigation into her life through her remains. Researchers from across the UK created the most comprehensive osteobiography of a zoo animal by bringing together archival, chemical and metric analyses.
Osteobiography involves the analysis of bones and other tissue. It is more commonly used in archaeology to reconstruct the life stories of ancient human subjects, such as Richard III, identifying where and how they lived in remarkable detail.
As a celebrity, Choppers’ life has been extensively documented. This combination of
archival material and osteobiographical analysis provides one of the most complete
assessments of the life of an animal in zoo care.
The findings of our study paint a rich picture of Choppers’ key life events, including evidence of injuries sustained when she was poached from the wild at just six weeks old. Choppers had a broken right arm, which seemed to have healed badly. Her lower arm bones were bowed and much shorter than her left side. She seems to have not been able to bear much weight on this arm, which likely contributed to joint disease here and elsewhere in her skeleton.
It is also likely that many, if not all, of her social group were killed in her capture. The physical trauma would impact her throughout her life, impairing her movement and exacerbating degenerative issues associated with old age.
Analysis of Choppers’ tooth enamel indicates a geographical and dietary shift between the ages of three and four, coinciding with her relocation to the UK from Sierra Leone. In the following three years she played the grandmother character in the PG Tips adverts, which ran in the UK throughout the 70s and 80s and featured a family of tea drinking chimps.
A collection of PG Tips adverts using chimpanzees.
The long-running ads helped PG Tips become the market leader of tea in Britain for 35 years. Her performance career was short, ending before the onset of puberty, and Choppers probably retired at around the age of six or seven. In part this is due to behavioural change as adult chimpanzees become less predictable, but also as a result of human perceptions of the cuteness of adult chimpanzees compared to infants.
Choppers transitioned from a relatively active life with high levels of direct interaction with humans, to a sedentary life with two companion chimpanzees, Noddy and Brooke, who were also retired from the entertainment industry. She was cared for by Twycross Zoo in Leicestershire for the rest of her life.
Choppers’ upper jaw was significantly elongated compared with wild chimpanzees, reflecting an early diet of sugary soft fruit, but also of her performance diet that mimicked that of humans. The PG Tips advertisements followed on from a longstanding trope in the mid-20th century of chimpanzees participating in tea parties, eating cake, drinking “tea” and apeing human behaviour. The chimpanzees drank fruit juice or milk rather than tea during tea parties and advertisements.
In recent years there has been a shift towards tougher, less sugary vegetables in the diets of zoo primates, which is leading to improvements in their health and behaviour.
Later in life, Choppers was housed for a time with another chimpanzee, Bobby. Together they had one daughter, Holly.
Across the world today, there is considerable variation in zoo regulation, management and welfare. Despite accreditation of zoos and improved regulation, the illegal trafficking of chimpanzees and other primates into private collections and disreputable zoos continues. Choppers’ story is testament to the many thousands of chimpanzees that were (and still are) forcibly extracted from the wild for zoos, circuses, laboratories and private collections.
Choppers was not an unusual chimpanzee, but her story is an individual one, which resonates with human attitudes towards wildlife, zoos, entertainment, welfare and quality of life.
Stuart Black receives funding from The Wellcome Trust, UKRI and other research councils.
David Cooper has received funding from The Wellcome Trust.
Juliette Waterman received funding from the Wellcome Trust while this research was carried out.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dominic Davies, Senior Lecturer in English, City St George’s, University of London
Millions of people were abducted from west Africa and forcibly trafficked to the Americas over the 400 years of the transatlantic slave trade, from the 15th to the 19th century.
Slavery treated these people as forms of property. It forced them, with brutal violence, to work on plantations producing commodities such as cotton and coffee, sugar and tobacco. Their labour powered the world economy for several centuries.
While common understanding of this history has improved, less frequently remembered are those who spearheaded resistance against slavery. Revolutionary uprisings led by enslaved people themselves, as well as actions by radical groups such as Quakers and mutinous pirates, challenged slavery long before William Wilberforce and Britain’s abolition movement.
Now, an increasingly popular genre of the graphic novel is building public awareness and memory of these movements. Composing its stories of the past from framed documents, fragmented images and scraps of text, the form of the graphic novel resembles an archive. It is therefore well-placed to bring forgotten histories to life and to reflect on how those histories were recovered.
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Here are three recent graphic novels that can help us to remember resistance against slavery. They follow in the footsteps of historian Rebecca Hall’s collaboration with artist Hugo Martínez, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts (2021), which I would also strongly recommend.
1. Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History
By C.L.R. James, Nic Watts, and Sakina Karimjee (2023)
It dramatised the story of the only successful slave revolt in history, when 100,000 slaves rose up against their white masters and eventually secured independence after almost 15 years of struggle.
James’s play was performed only twice in 1936, with the great African American actor Paul Robeson in the title role. The script was then lost for several decades, until 2005, when the historian Christian Høgsberg discovered a copy in the archives at the University of Hull and published a new edition of the play.
In 2012, graphic artist, Nic Watts and theatre practitioner, Sakina Karimjee, decided to bring James’s play back to life – not on the stage, but in the pages of a graphic novel.
James, who died in 1989, might not have guessed that he would one day be a co-creator of a graphic novel. But he would surely have been impressed with Toussaint Louverture, which takes readers through the Haitian Revolution in almost 300 thrilling pages.
The graphic novel uses its uniquely spatial medium to map the connections between the French Revolution, which proclaimed universal rights for all men, and the slave uprising in Haiti, which sought to realise those rights in France’s colonies. It is packed with powerful symbols and imagery that build a rich picture of the strategies and tactics that led to the uprising’s eventual victory.
2. Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, A Graphic Novel
By David Lester, edited by Paul Buhle and Marcus Rediker (2023)
Historian Marcus Rediker has devoted his career to uncovering early histories of resistance against slavery and sharing them in compelling and accessible formats.
In 2021 he teamed up with the illustrator, David Lester, and longtime graphic historian, Paul Buhle, to translate this work into graphic novels.
The first, Prophet Against Slavery, takes readers back to a Quaker meeting house in the early 1700s. In its dramatic opening scene, Benjamin Lay disrupts the meeting with a piece of performance theatre. He appears to stab his own arm in protest against slavery, though we later learn that the spouting blood was in fact “red pokeberry juice”.
Lay was an innovator of performance protest, and he developed the strategy of boycotting commodities produced by slave labour. As Prophet Against Slavery details, he was one of the earliest and most outspoken abolitionists, campaigning for the end of the transatlantic slave trade almost a century before Wilberforce.
He was also a pioneer of veganism and an advocate for animal rights. Lay saw the parallels between early capitalism’s enclosure of common land in England and slavery’s enclosure of people’s bodies in the US. The claustrophobic borders of Lester’s graphic novel dramatise these acts of property making, even as they document Lay’s stubborn attempts to liberate the oppressed from bondage.
The enslaved themselves do not have a voice in Prophet Against Slavery. But Lester uses powerful charcoal sketches and image-only panels to make sure their presence is never forgotten.
These haunting images remind readers of the human cost of slavery without presuming to speak for those whose voices have been excluded from the written archive.
3. Under the Banner of King Death: Pirates of the Atlantic, A Graphic Novel
By David Lester and Marcus Rediker (2023)
Rediker and Lester teamed up again for Under the Banner of King Death. The title refers to the skull and cross bones flag that flies on the masts of pirate ships.
But this is not your conventional story of evil pirates drinking rum and hunting for gold (although there is some of that). It is rather a portrait of the pirate ship as a space of self-determination and political freedom at a time when, as Rediker puts it, “poor people had no democratic rights anywhere in the world”.
The graphic novel tells the story of John Gwin, an African-American man who escaped from slavery in South Carolina. After being kidnapped by the Royal African Company to labour on a slaving ship, he decides to resist. He rallies his shipmates, liberates the Africans below deck, and leads a mutiny to overthrow Skinner, the tyrannical captain.
With Skinner deposed, the pirates establish a commune at sea: “A world turned upside down,” as Gwin calls it. “All captains and officers elected. All tars [sailors] treated as brothers. No tyranny of the lash.” There is no hierarchy on this ship. Instead, they return to west Africa and begin breaking people out of slave castles along the coast.
Lester’s pen-and-ink sketches and frantic page layouts capture the scattergun nature of pirate life in the 17th century. It was a dangerous existence. Such was the threat posed by pirates to the ruling order that the British Navy worked quickly to capture them and make an example. Under the Banner of King Death starts and ends with hanging scenes, where pirates were put to death in public.
But while the British state could hang the pirates, it couldn’t kill their idea of freedom from slavery. Lester and Rediker recover this history and remind us of the revolutionary spirit that the skull and cross bones flag once represented.
These graphic novels commemorate new histories of resistance to the slave trade, while also reminding us of the historiographic work that must be put into recovering and retelling them, now and in the future.
Dominic Davies 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.
Greenland’s parliamentary election was held on March 11 against a backdrop of repeated calls from the Trump administration for America to annex the island. The poll delivered a momentous shift in Greenland’s political landscape as the pro-business Demokraatit (Democrats) emerged as the biggest winners overturning the two left-leaning parties which had formed the previous government.
Securing nearly 30% of the vote and gaining seven seats for a total of ten in the Inatsisartut (parliament), the party now holds the strongest mandate it has ever had. Close behind was the nationalist Naleraq party, which secured 24.5% of the vote and gained four seats, bringing their total to eight.
While both parties are united in their rejection of Trump’s ambitions and share a vision of Greenlandic independence, their approaches couldn’t be more different. Demokraatit advocates for a gradual, measured process, prioritising economic development. The party considers that economic self-sufficiency and strengthening domestic infrastructure are key preconditions to achieve independence. Naleraq, on the other hand, is pushing for a rapid break from Denmark. Its line is that Greenland will only be able to unleash its potential, economic and otherwise, once independent.
Independence has long been the dominant theme of Greenlandic politics. Ever since the territory gained home rule in 1979, most political parties across the spectrum have championed the idea of full independence from the kingdom of Denmark. Even the two major challengers – the Inuit Ataqatigiit, which lost five seats at the election to drop to seven, and the once-dominant Siumut, which lost six and now holds just four seats – are pro-independence.
But while independence remains a defining issue, the real story of this election is Greenland’s economy. The island is sitting on a treasure trove of rare earth elements, uranium, iron and other minerals critical to global industries. Yet despite decades of interest from foreign investors, strict regulations and environmental concerns have often slowed development.
With Demokraatit’s rise, that could change. The party is pushing for pro-business policies, including tax incentives, streamlined regulations and reduced state intervention in key industries like mining, fisheries and tourism. If successful, these reforms could transform Greenland into a major player in the global supply chain.
Despite its electoral gains, Demokraatit faces a challenge in implementing its economic vision. The party’s potential coalition partner, Naleraq, is deeply sceptical of foreign investment, at least when it comes from Denmark and Europe. While open to partnerships with the US, Naleraq is adamant that Greenland must retain full control over its resources, resisting any foreign influence that could compromise national sovereignty.
This ideological divide could create friction within a potential coalition government. Will Demokraatit’s pro-business agenda be tempered by Naleraq’s nationalistic stance? Or will the promise of economic growth push both parties toward compromise?
Global powers are watching
Greenland’s election came at a time when it was already the focus of world attention. Its strategic location and vast resources have attracted growing interest from global superpowers – none more so than the US. Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in acquiring Greenland, a move widely considered unrealistic, but indicative of Washington’s strategic priorities.
American interest in Greenland isn’t new. The island is home to the Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Base, since the 1950s as a critical part of North American missile defence and whose Arctic position makes it a key player in both American territorial defence and Nato’s security architecture. Pituffik is the only non-Danish military presence in the territory and is the northernmost American military base.
But the White House’s rhetoric has taken a more insistent tone, raising questions about whether the US might attempt to exert greater influence over Greenland’s economic and political future. The interest in Greenland seems guided by at least two factors: its strategic position at the centre of the North Atlantic security complex and its economic potential with hard-to-access but abundant resources.
In both cases, the growing involvement of both Russia and China in the Arctic seem to make the US wary of a potentially independent Greenland getting closer to unfriendly great powers.
Denmark’s central government is walking a diplomatic tightrope when it comes to responding to the US government’s repeated intentions to annex Greenland. Copenhagen has sought to Europeanise the debate, floating the idea of Greenland joining the European Union. Taking this step would provide welcome economic support to the island but could also clash with Greenland’s scepticism toward European interference.
Greenland now stands at a crossroads. Domestically, negotiations between Demokraatit and Naleraq will likely shape the trajectory of the island’s economic and independence ambitions. Internationally, major powers – including the US, the EU and possibly even China and Russia – are positioning themselves to engage with Greenland’s untapped potential.
As the world’s focus on Greenland intensifies, one thing is clear: this Arctic nation is no longer a remote outpost. It is fast becoming a key battleground for economic, political and strategic influence in the North Atlantic.
Nicolas Jouan 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.
Canadian political philosopher George Grant’s Lament for a Nation was published in 1965 — the same year Canada’s iconic Maple Leaf flag was first unfurled on the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill — and unexpectedly inspired many Canadians to feel a sudden sense of pride and confidence that their country could and must stand up to its giant imperialistic neighbour to the south.
Sixty years later, there are calls to “Bring Back Grumpy George” and renew his decades-old warning. There are also attempts to understand Grant’s continued relevance in the 21st century, as well as new volumes on his work.
It “is the sun under which a generation of Canadian nationalists warm themselves,” Andrew Potter writes in his introduction to the 40th anniversary edition of Grant’s most famous work, “but it also casts the long dark shadows in which they must operate.”
One need only wade a little into the volume to see those “the long dark shadows.” The subtitle to Grant’s book says it all: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism. So, far from being a call to arms, Lament for a Nation was, as Grant put it, a “cry out at the death or at the dying of something loved…[to mourn] the end of Canada as a sovereign state.”
In other words, Lament was never intended to whip Canadians into a nationalist fervour, but to spell out Canada’s unfortunate and inevitable disappearance as a nation.
“Canada has ceased to be a nation, but its formal political existence will not end quickly. Our social and economic blending into the empire will continue apace, but political union will probably be delayed. Some international catastrophe or great shift of power might speed up this process.”
Jack Mackenzie, first president of Atomic Energy Control Board, explained in a 1953 address: “Canada is the only country in the world with sizeable atomic energy establishments where no bombs are being made, and where all the thinking and planning is focused on peacetime aspects.”
But in the context of the Cold War, this principled choice was viewed as a sign of weakness by Americans, who worried about Soviet bombers travelling unrestricted over the Arctic.
Defence crisis
This worry led to the so-called defence crisis that dominated the federal 1963 election campaign, fought between Conservative Prime Minister Diefenbaker and Liberal Lester B. Pearson.
A beleaguered Diefenbaker had cancelled the vaunted Avro Arrow program a few years earlier, hesitated to commit the Navy to participate in the blockade of Cuba and then balked at accepting American warheads for the BOMARC interceptor missiles designed to stop those bombers.
The pugnacious Pearson was once a champion of non-proliferation and had shocked his supporters during his infamous Scarborough speech when he announced his surprising agreement that U.S. nukes had to be deployed on Canadian soil in the name of our “commitments for Canada in continental and collective defence,” including NORAD and NATO.
For Grant, Diefenbaker’s defeat to Pearson was a stake through the heart of the Canada from which it would never recover. In 1963, the Royal Canadian Air Force delivered a shipment of nuclear warheads to the BOMARC missile site near RCAF Station North Bay, Ont., just up the road from where I write today.
End of Canadian nationalism?
A few years before his passing in 1988, Grant made it clear in a 1985 interview with Lawrence (Larry) Schmidt, a theologian and a scholar of Grant’s work, that “people have read a little book I wrote called Lament for a Nation wrongly. I was talking about the end of Canadian nationalism. I was saying that this is over and people read it as if I was making an appeal for Canadian nationalism. I think that is just nonsense. I think they just read it wrongly.”
Today, Canadian economic well-being and security are no more in Canada’s control then they were in 1965. Trump is merely saying the quiet part out loud in his craven desire to make Canada the 51st state.
Was Grant wrong?
But, as it turns out, Grant was wrong. Canada is not the zombie nation. It may have been in a bit of daze for the last while, but Canadians have their elbows up again.
Now out of a stupor, Canadians are reviewing the wisdom of purchasing F-35s, buying new radar systems to assert our sovereignty over the Arctic and attempting to drop interprovincial trade barriers.
Mind you, this is nothing new. In the face of American disapproval, Canada trades with Cuba, claims the Northwest Passage as its internal waters and negotiated a successful Acid Rain Treaty. Canada led the charge to ban the use of land mines and refused to participate in the American missile shield plan.
Canada didn’t send its young men to die in the jungles of Vietnam and refused to participate in the ill-conceived Iraq War. And it still protects its fresh water and health care.
New policy for common cause
Still, rather than merely reacting to American insults and pressures, Canada is long overdue to develop contemporary and responsive policy, the very thing Grant thought would allow Canada to become and stay a sovereign country, at least for a while.
While Canadians may be divided at times, they need to use this moment of unity to make sure Canada stays alive and kicking.
David Edward Tabachnick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The ancestors of humans started making tools about 3.3 million years ago. First they made them out of stone, then they switched to bone as a raw material. Until recently, the earliest clear evidence of bone tool making was from sites in Europe, dated to 400,000 years ago. But archaeologists have now found and dated bone tools in Tanzania that are a million years older.
The tools are made from the bones of large animals like hippos and elephants, and have been deliberately shaped to make them useful for butchering large carcasses.
The discovery of bone implements that are the oldest ever found, by far, casts light on human evolution. It shows that our hominin ancestors were able to think about and make this technology a lot earlier than anyone realised.
I am a scientist who co-directs a multidisciplinary research project team at the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, focusing on hominin evolution. Our project’s main goal has been to investigate the changes in hominin technology and behaviour that happened between 1.66 million and 1.4 million years ago.
We’re interested in this time period because it marks a pivotal change in human technology, from the rudimentary stone knives and cores of the Oldowan culture to the more advanced crafted stone handaxes of the Acheulean culture.
We found the Olduvai bone tools in 2018 and recently described them in the journal Nature. They show that by 1.5 million years ago, our ancestors (Homo erectus) had already developed the cognitive abilities required to transfer skills from making stone tools to making bone tools.
This leap in human history was a game-changer because it allowed early hominins to overcome survival challenges in landscapes where suitable stone materials were scarce.
Tools at Olduvai
Olduvai Gorge is a Unesco World Heritage site. It became well known in 1959 through the pioneering work of palaeontologists Louis and Mary Leakey, whose discoveries of early human remains reshaped our understanding of human evolution. The site offers an unparalleled window into human history, spanning nearly 2 million years.
Aside from fossilised bones, it has yielded the most detailed record of stone tool cultures in the world. It has documented the evolution from the simple chopping tools and stone knives of the Oldowan industry (about 2 million years ago) to the more advanced Acheulean tools (1.7 million years ago), such as handaxes, cleavers, picks and spheroids and then on – through arrowheads, points and blades (about 200,000 years ago) to the micro-blades of the Later Stone Age (about 17,000 years ago).
All these tools provide a glimpse into the ingenuity and cultural advancements of our early ancestors.
And now the picture has new detail.
Our team uncovered 27 ancient bone tools during excavations at the T69 Complex, FLK West site at Olduvai. We know how old they are because we found them securely embedded underground where they had been left 1.5 million years ago, along with thousands of stone artefacts and fossilised bones. We dated them using geochronological techniques.
Unlike stone, bone shafts crack and break in a way that allows the systematic production of elongated, well-shaped artifacts. Flaking them by hitting them with another object – a process called knapping – results in pointed tools that would be ideal for butchering, chopping and other tasks.
The knapped tools we found were made from large shaft fragments that came from the limb bones of elephants and hippos, and were found at hippo butchery sites. Hominins likely brought elephant bones to the site on a regular basis, and obtained limb bones from butchered hippos at the site itself.
What Homo erectus knew
The find shows that 1.5 million years ago, Homo erectus could apply knapping skills to bone. Homo erectus, regarded as the evolutionary successor to the smaller-brained Homo habilis, left a lasting imprint on history. Its fossils, found at Olduvai, offer a glimpse into a span of about a million years, stretching from 1.5 million to roughly 500,000 years ago.
Now we know that these hominins not only understood the physical properties of bones but also knew about skeletal anatomy. They could identify and select bones suitable for flaking. And they knew which animals had skeletons large enough to craft reliable tools after the animals’ death.
We don’t know exactly why they chose bones as a raw material. It may have been that suitable stone material was scarce, or they recognised that bones provided a better grip and were more durable.
Why haven’t such old bone tools been found before? The answer is likely that they are destroyed by weathering, abrasion from water transport, trampling and scavenger activity. Organic materials don’t always get time to fossilise. Also, analysts were not used to looking for bone tools among fossils.
This discovery will likely encourage researchers to pay closer attention to the subtle signs of bone knapping in fossil assemblages. This way we will learn more about the evolution of human technology and behaviour.
Jackson K Njau 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.
Death threats, kidnapping, unlawful detention, torture and assassination are some of the crimes being committed against journalists in Nigeria, according to a recent report. Another recent report details how the police and politicians are responsible for 70% of these harassment cases.
They point to the increased level of threats that Nigerian journalists endure in their fourth estate role, serving as the voice of the people and holding government to account.
This isn’t new. The harassment of journalists is baked into Nigerian history. But today journalists are also attracting online threats and harassment from members of the public.
I teach and research media and politics, with a focus on online journalism in Nigeria. What’s clear is that the digital age has brought with it a complex relationship not just between journalists and the state, but also with citizens.
All these parties need to turn down the heat, in the interests of free and fair information, particularly in a young democracy like Nigeria.
A long history of violence
The history of Nigerian journalism is characterised by violence from British colonial powers, from 1859 when the first newspaper was established, and also from indigenous politicians. There’s always been a suspicion that a free press could empower ordinary citizens and cause a shift in the power base.
This isn’t unfounded. Journalism contributed to ending colonialism. But, after independence in 1960, the political class feared that an unfettered press would be difficult to control. Particularly when the country came under oppressive military rule from 1966 to 1999.
There was always a fair amount of goodwill towards the press from citizens. But the ownership and control of major media houses by prominent Nigerian politicians, alongside the rise of social media, has changed the picture.
The public used to act as the buffer for journalists, defending them from the attacks of government officials. Now some Nigerians have joined in attacking and harassing journalists in Nigeria.
Online harassment
We know that journalists in Nigeria under-report the harassment they receive. Many don’t view acute forms of harassment – verbal abuse, online disrespect and maltreatment – as an issue. One of our studies found they regard this as mere online banter, verbal sparring and attention seeking. But dismissing harassment doesn’t make it go away or stop. It just makes it worse in frequency and form.
Our studies indicate that online harassment of journalists is prevalent and escalating. This type of harassment is usually sustained and it often moves from one social media platform to another.
In some cases, it spills from online to offline. The burning of the Television Continental station in Lagos in 2020 is just one example. The harassment is usually personal. Threats to the lives and safety of journalists are becoming common.
Data Boys and corruption
Nigerian journalists have reported that the harassers particularly target investigative and political reports, as well as perceived unethical conduct by journalists.
The result is that political reporting is becoming difficult. A critical report about a politician makes the journalist an enemy of the politician. The politician will then unleash their supporters and paid influencers (known as “Data Boys”) to harass and hassle the journalist.
The Data Boys phenomenon as we know it today began during Nigeria’s 2015 general elections. Data Boys are groups of young people on a politician’s payroll. They help to promote the politician’s image online and generally do their bidding. The politician sends them money to buy internet data and shares promotional “news” about themself. The Data Boys are also paid to attack any perceived enemy of the politician.
It’s an increasingly successful political tactic in Nigeria. As a result, journalists have started censoring themselves.
Data Boys aside, we asked ordinary Nigerians who reported engaging in online harassment why they picked on journalists. They indicated that perceived journalistic malpractice was their main reason. They accused journalists of being part of the problem because they believed many were corrupt and in the pay of politicians. Adding fuel to the fire is that Nigerian politicians are also often media owners.
Some solutions
One of the reasons that a culture of harassment continues is the failure of law enforcement. Those who harass journalists are not made to account for their actions. Strengthening harassment laws in Nigeria would give law enforcement the tools needed to curb it.
There are no explicit laws around online harassment in Nigeria, just sexual and physical assault laws. This has to change if journalists are to be protected. All respondents in our studies, both journalists and the public, highlighted the law as a cardinal factor to fight harassment.
Another solution is that journalists need to be accountable, transparent and ethical. Journalists themselves have raised these concerns about their profession.
Yet in our studies journalists did not highlight transparency or an improved code of conduct as ways to improve the harassment situation in Nigeria.
Their detachment can come off as arrogant and has the potential to worsen hostility towards them. All the suggested solutions to online harassment made by journalists in our studies were external to them, like media sensitisation campaigns, improved workplace security and proper punishment for offenders. Their attitudes, we found, could be misconstrued as lacking self-reflection or empathy.
Journalists, their harassers and politicians will all need to make changes or be brought to book if the problem is to be solved. Until then, online harassment is harming journalism as a profession in Nigeria. And this has the potential to have a negative impact on democracy.
Temple Uwalaka 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.
Having diabetes has serious consequences for health and is associated with increased risk of developing diseases related to damage to the heart (heart attacks), blood vessels (strokes, foot ulcers), kidneys (chronic kidney failure), and the nervous system (blindness, loss of sensation).
When it comes to nerve damage, it typically affects long nerve fibres that supply the feet and can sometimes affect fibres that supply the hands too (a so-called glove and stocking distribution).
It is the nerve fibres that detect sensations such as touch and temperature that are often worst affected, resulting in numbness. The numbness that develops can be a nightmare for people and is often described as their “feet feeling dead”.
A peculiarity of this numbness is that it may be accompanied by intractable pain. This type of pain, resulting from damage to sensory nerve fibres, is called neuropathic pain.
The predictors of developing nerve damage are well established. Older age, increased duration of diabetes, and poor control of blood glucose concentration are the main culprits. What determines whether the nerve damage is associated with pain is largely unknown.
Neuropathic pain is often described as a “burning” pain, and is frequently
accompanied by other sensations such as “pins and needles”, and pain that feels like stabbing, shooting, electric-like shocks, and deep aching.
In some people there is very little or no numbness. In these people pain can often be triggered by gentle touch and movement across the skin (for example, bed sheets brushing across a foot, putting on socks), and cool and warm temperatures that are not normally felt as painful.
Sometimes my feet will hurt really badly and I can’t get up and can hardly walk. – Anonymous patient
Having such intractable pain has devastating consequences for quality of life.
Pain sufferers have less social interaction with family and friends, and find it much more difficult to enjoy their favourite activities. Sleep is significantly disrupted.
Having neuropathic pain is associated with high rates of anxiety and depression. To make matters worse, the sleep disruption, anxiety and depression may feed back into a vicious cycle to worsen and maintain the pain.
There are days when I’d really like to go somewhere or do something and just
don’t go. I know it will hurt. There’s no point in doing it. – Anonymous patient
Medications to manage the pain
Neuropathic pain is not responsive to the medications used to treat conditions such as headaches and joint pains (for example, paracetamol and ibuprofen).
Instead, neuropathic pain is responsive to medications that in some cases are also used to treat conditions such as depression and epilepsy.
So, often finding the correct treatment is a trial-and-error approach, which can be frustrating for both patients and doctors.
Coping mechanisms
Chronic pain management is also about teaching people to cope with their pain so that they get back to enjoying their lives and are no longer consumed by the pain.
Such interventions include the practice of mindfulness, cognitive behavioural therapy, and other self-management activities specifically designed for people with chronic pain.
With the rapidly growing number of individuals with diabetes, it is more important than ever that we detect and treat the pain caused by nerve fibre damage.
Public education and increased awareness of this painful consequence of diabetes will hopefully encourage affected people to seek early medical attention, thus allowing management of the condition, maintaining well-being and restoring function.
Peter Kamerman receives funding from the National Research Foundation of South Africa. He is the sole proprietor of Blueprint Analytics, and consults for Partners in Research.
Andreas C Themistocleous receives funding from UK Medical Research Council.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Andrew Heffernan, Climate Associate at the Information Integrity Lab and Adjunct Professor in Political Studies, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
Prime Minister Mark Carney has called an April 28 federal election, setting the stage for a campaign where climate policy could be a central issue.
The public remains concerned about environmental issues, yet many are worried that bold climate policies have damaged the economy. This tension between environmental responsibility and economic growth will shape how each party formulates and communicates their climate policies in the upcoming campaign.
The Liberals: Navigating the middle ground
For Carney and the Liberal Party, the challenge is twofold. First, the Liberals must present a new climate plan after the collapse of the consumer carbon rebate, which has faced widespread public opposition in recent years.
While the new Liberal leader has already terminated the the carbon rebate, it still remains unclear what exactly his comprehensive climate plan will look like. Carney’s website states that his strategy will: “Provide incentives for consumers. Put more of the burden on big polluters. And help us build the strongest economy in the G7.”
This suggests his climate policy will hinge more on positive incentives for consumers to invest in sustainable approaches rather than putting a cost on polluting.
Carney will have to make a convincing case that his policy will create jobs, stimulate innovation and provide a clear path toward a greener, more sustainable economy.
On the opposite end of the political spectrum, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has made axing the carbon rebate a central part of his platform.
Framing the carbon rebate as an economic penalty, Poilievre has played into populist sentiments by promising to “axe the tax” and relieve financial pressures on Canadian families and businesses.
Poilievre’s populist rhetoric may resonate with voters who feel economically squeezed, but it’s unlikely to be enough to win over voters concerned about the climate crisis — especially as he has voted against environmental and climate action in Parliament over 400 times in his career, a point his opponents will be sure to raise repeatedly.
Poilievre will need to clearly articulate how his policies will preserve Canada’s environmental future without stifling economic growth or inflating costs for the average Canadian.
NDP and Green Party
A key piece of the future of climate policy in Canada will be the NDP and Green Party, who are generally considered left-of-centre parties alongside the governing Liberals.
The NDP, which can siphon progressive votes away from the Liberals — which sometimes benefits Conservatives — have been clear as mud when it comes to their climate policy for the next election.
Meanwhile, the Green Party, which has historically played a less significant role in electoral outcomes in terms of vote splitting, has generally maintained its support for the carbon rebate. Its website suggests the party supports the polluter-pays principle. However, the Greens have yet to take a clear stance on the shifting climate grounds on which this election could partially be fought.
Political communication the key to success
In the coming years, the future of climate policy in Canada will be less about crafting the perfect policy and more about crafting a message that addresses how people are feeling.
The Liberal Party has been open about the demise of the carbon rebate being a combination of a lack of their own effective communication strategy, mixed with harmful disinformation campaigns that led to the demise of their signature climate policy.
For the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP and Greens alike, the road to effective climate policy will lie in this communication. Political leaders will need to balance ambition and pragmatism, ensuring their policies align with Canadians’ economic interests.
With 71 per cent of Canadians suggesting they want the next government to do more to address climate change, leaders who can articulate a vision for a sustainable, prosperous future while addressing the immediate concerns of Canadians will be the ones who have the best chance of winning the public’s trust — and the next election.
Andrew Heffernan is affiliated with the Liberal Party of Canada.
Canadians head to the polls on April 28. Like other recent general elections, both in Canada and around the world, this federal election campaign is sure to be characterized by polarized misinformation.
But perhaps we can approach these conversations as an opportunity to push back against growing polarization in our communities.
My research shows that polarization and misinformation often go hand in hand, and when they do, the information being spread is strongly resistant to being corrected by way of evidence.
But when we truly begin to listen to the people who believe misinformation, we can often help counter false claims. So in this upcoming election, how can we push back against election misinformation when we hear it? Let’s examine some strategies.
Most people think that others who believe misinformation will change their minds if provided with the right evidence, but that’s simply not true.
People have good reasons for not wanting to change their minds, even when confronted with contradictory facts. One of the key personality traits linked to the belief in misinformation turns out to be anxiety. This can manifest in ways that resist correction.
For example, most of us feel anxious when we have to hold two conflicting beliefs at the same time. So if we already believe misinformation and are confronted with evidence to the contrary, we may reject the evidence to avoid the dissonance of managing both beliefs.
Additionally, people might believe something because others in their social group believe it, meaning there is social anxiety associated with rejecting the group’s belief, even if it’s wrong.
Finally, anxiety about the future can drive people to accept misinformation that helps to relieve those fears.
Taken together, this means that correcting political misinformation, which involves all three of the above triggers — self, social and future anxiety — cannot be accomplished solely by providing evidence. We need to mitigate these anxieties while engaging in gentle correction since outright correcting can make the anxieties worse.
The ‘AIMS’ method
Motivational interviewing is a proven method of pushing back against another type of polarizing misinformation: health misinformation.
One particular approach to motivational interviewing, known as the AIMS method, has been successfully tested in Canada for countering vaccine misinformation.
AIMS stands for Announce, Inquire, Mirror and Secure. It provides a way to address misinformation while building the sort of connection and trust that people need to reduce the anxiety that is the trigger for believing misinformation in the first place.
The first step, Announce, is where the topic is approached. In the medical world, this usually occurs when a doctor announces that it’s time for a vaccine, but in the world of political misinformation, the announcement doesn’t have to come from a professional.
Inquire is the step where motivational interviewing really begins to differ from a conventional approach of simply providing evidence to back up a false claim. In this second step, it’s important to ask questions, and approach the misinformation with a sense of curiosity.
Basically, as you probe more and more deeply, you’re trying to understand the anxieties that are driving the misinformation belief.
As you ask questions, you begin to also engage in the third step, Mirror. Mirroring means checking in, and repeating what you’re hearing so that the person you are talking to recognizes they’re being heard. At this stage, you can begin to introduce pieces of evidence that disprove the claims being made, but only after you truly understand the person’s concerns and can reflect them back.
It’s also important to manage how you introduce contradictory evidence. It must be done with compassion and a gentle but reassuring manner.
Finally, when all the concerns have been addressed, you can begin the final step, which is to Secure trust. Here you can follow up on the announcement that sparked the discussion — the original piece of misinformation — and see if the person you’re talking to now feels differently than they did before.
Importantly, you may not be successful at securing this step in just one conversation, but if you have conducted the other steps properly, you will have built important trust that, over time, is more likely to help you counter future misinformation with the person you’re talking to.
Preserving relationships
Combating any misinformation, and especially political misinformation, is not a quick or easy process. It may have to take place in repeated discussions over a long period of time.
Political misinformation is particularly difficult to counter because political views are often tied deeply to people’s self-identity, and also because political misinformation is often shared within social groups.
But if you engage in motivated interviewing this election season, you may make a small difference. At the very least, you will help to preserve relationships with friends and loved ones that are often frayed when political misinformation enters the picture.
Jaigris Hodson is funded through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s Canada Research Chairs Program.
Rising prices and market volatility have led to food costs climbing to 11.4% of American’s disposable income, the largest percentage since 1991.
Arresting these rising costs, as I argue in my 2023 book, means reinventing supply chains to address the growing supply, demand and price volatility that has created uncertainty for consumers since the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020.
I have described global supply chains, and supply chains in the U.S. in particular, as “efficiently broken.” By this I mean that they aspire to offer low prices from economies of scale but lack sufficient resiliency to create stability.
Without addressing the systemic weaknesses in supply chains, I believe major health and economic disruptions will continue to happen in Colorado, nationally and around the world.
Cage-free eggs
Colorado faces a double whammy where egg prices are concerned.
It’s one of nine states with a cage-free egg mandate, which requires all eggs sold in the state to come from cage-free facilities. The regulation has been shown to increase the price of eggs by as much as 50%.
Over the past two decades, cage-free egg laws have been passed in states as consumers have grown more concerned with the welfare of farm animals. What that means varies from state to state because the term cage-free isn’t regulated by a federal agency. In Colorado, egg-laying hens must be housed in a cage-free system and must have a minimum of 1 square foot of usable floor space per hen.
But cage-free laws are not the main driver of increasing egg prices, as I’ve noted in my research. Like many others, the egg supply chain needs to be reinvented to balance price, scale, resiliency and stability.
Supply chain issues
What is driving up the prices of eggs and other consumer goods is the concentration of producers. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed just how vulnerable prices and supply chains are.
In 2022, a major product recall of Similac led to a baby formula shortage in the U.S. The baby formula market is highly concentrated, with four companies responsible for approximately 90% of the domestic market. A large-scale facility that produced the baby formula was found to have unsanitary conditions and contaminated products. Pulling this one facility offline at the same time the nation was coping with pandemic-related supply chain issues led to the shortage.
Then at the beginning of 2024, supplies of insulin ran short due to production issues at Eli Lilly, one of the three companies responsible for over 90% of the U.S. insulin market.
And in the second half of 2024, hospitals couldn’t get enough IV fluid due to damage caused by Hurricane Helene to a Baxter factory in North Carolina that manufactures approximately 60% of IV fluids in the U.S. This factory had been relocated to North Carolina from Puerto Rico due to the supply impact from Hurricane Maria that damaged the island in 2017.
In all of these cases, the supply chain was easily interrupted due to a reliance on a few large producers. In 2025, bird flu and eggs are just another example of America’s “efficiently broken” supply chain.
But this scale and efficiency comes at the price of resiliency during something like a bird flu outbreak. Larger farms create a higher risk of viral outbreak, which leads to the need for culling millions of birds and a heightened risk of viral replication and mutation.
The solution may increase prices
Policymakers want to reduce the spread of disease at American egg factories to mitigate the spread of bird flu. But these measures are expensive.
Factory farms increase the potential for viruses to spread rapidly and even mutate. Therefore, bird flu is a more serious precursor of supply chain disruption than a hurricane or product recall because it has the potential to create a public health crisis.
Following Canada’s lead wouldn’t result in egg prices as low as giant factory farms, but it would protect American consumers from the periodic price shocks caused by disease or localized weather events that disrupt supplies.
Despite the threat of a public health crisis, American consumers don’t want to pay more for eggs – and their leaders have promised they won’t have to.
Jack Buffington 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.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Carlos A. Suárez Carrasquillo, Associate Instructional Professor in Political Science, Center for Latin American Studies, University of Florida
The Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny is one of the biggest stars of the music world. After becoming Spotify’s most-streamed artist for three years in a row – the first and only artist ever to do so – he sold out all 49 dates of his 2024 U.S. tour, netting US$211 million.
That agency, Discover Puerto Rico, was founded in 2017 to market the island to both tourists and investors. Established during the administration of Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, it was part of a broader effort to professionalize Puerto Rico’s place branding and underscored the importance of tourism to the island’s economy.
As a scholar of Puerto Rican politics and place branding – and a native Puerto Rican – I think this case study raises interesting public policy questions: Who gets to brand Puerto Rico? Why does it matter if a place has a brand anyway? And if political leaders are dissatisfied with an agency whose sole purpose is to market the island, what comes next?
It’s not just a place – it’s a brand
Historically, place-branding campaigns have been led by governments seeking to attract tourism and investment. One of the most iconic examples was the “I Love New York” campaign, launched in 1977 as a collaboration between New York City and private partners. Similar public-private models became more common in the decades that followed.
Puerto Rico has seen various branding efforts over the years. Early boosterism efforts emerged during the first half of the 20th century, and in 1970, the Puerto Rico Tourism Company was created to promote the island as a
tourist destination. By the 1990s, many Puerto Rican municipalities had begun adopting different place branding strategies.
During Puerto Rico’s deepening fiscal crisis in the 2010s, branding efforts remained a bipartisan priority. But the two dominant political parties – the pro-territory Partido Popular Democrático, and the pro-statehood Partido Nuevo Progresista – each rebranded the island every time a new administration took office, raising concerns about consistency. The last major government-led initiative before Discover Puerto Rico was the “Isla Estrella” campaign, which included a sponsorship deal with Spain’s Sevilla FC soccer team.
The ‘Discover Puerto Rico’ era
In 2017, Discover Puerto Rico took control over the island’s place-branding efforts. However, its performance has been polarizing, with critics pointing to significant blunders. For example, an early ad in its “Live Boricua” campaign sparked backlash for featuring a family that didn’t look like most Puerto Ricans.
Beyond its marketing blunders, Discover Puerto Rico has struggled to navigate Puerto Rico’s politically charged place-branding landscape. In fact, it has been contested from the start, and remains so, as recently elected Gov. Jennifer González evaluates its future. It remains unclear to what extent efficiency and economic development will serve as the main criteria for evaluating its success, and to what extent party politics will influence the decision-making process.
Just a day before Mayor Romero made his remark about Bad Bunny, Discover Puerto Rico’s CEO, Brad Dean, resigned, taking a similar role in St. Louis. Dean has argued that during his tenure, Discover Puerto Rico has driven significant increases in tourism and tourism spending. While these self-reported figures suggest success, they don’t address a critical issue – the long-standing political controversy surrounding Puerto Rico’s branding.
Pop culture carries the weight
At the same time the future of Discover Puerto Rico remains uncertain, the island has gained unparalleled international attention thanks to popular music.
Reggaetón, an urban genre that originated in Puerto Rico in the 1990s, has amassed a massive global fan base, extending beyond Puerto Rico and Latin America to the rest of the world. In 2017, Daddy Yankee and Luis Fonsi’s video for the worldwide hit “Despacito” turned La Perla, a working-class barrio in Old San Juan, into a magnet for tourists from all over the world.
“Despacito” prompted a surge of visits to La Perla, as the French news agency AFP noted.
More recently, in January 2025, Bad Bunny released his latest album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” which taps into traditional Puerto Rican music genres such as bomba, plena and música jíbara that aren’t usually associated with reggaetón. It charted at No. 1. Bad Bunny also announced a Puerto Rico-exclusive concert series, with some dates reserved for locals and others open to fans worldwide.
The success of Puerto Rican reggaetón artists raises an important question: Why have these organic cultural movements been so effective – perhaps even more so than the official expert-driven place-marketing agency – in promoting Puerto Rico as a brand?
I think the answer probably lies in authenticity. Unlike government-led initiatives, reggaetón’s global appeal stems from its cultural resonance and emotional connection with audiences worldwide, regardless of politics.
At this critical juncture for the island’s tourism agency, perhaps Discover Puerto Rico should rebrand itself as “Discover the Birthplace of Reggaetón.”
Carlos A. Suárez Carrasquillo 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.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Monica Hubbard, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Administration, Boise State University
Over 730,000 people visit Colorado National Monument each year. It was established in 1911 under the Antiquities Act.Gordon Leggett, CC BY-SA
America’s public lands, from its majestic national parks to its vast national forests, are at the heart of the country’s identity.
They cover more than a quarter of the nation and large parts of the West. Some are crisscrossed by hiking trails and used by hunters and fishermen. Ranchers graze cattle on others. In many areas, the government earns money through oil, gas, timber and mining leases.
These federally managed public lands have long enjoyed broad bipartisan support, as have moves to turn them into protected national parks and monuments. Research consistently shows that a majority of Americans want their congressional representatives to protect public access to these lands for recreation. One avenue for protection is the creation of national monuments.
Presidents have expanded and contracted national monuments, as the U.S. saw with Bears Ears National Monument in Utah over the course of the past three presidencies. The rules for the use and maintenance of various public lands can also change, and that can affect surrounding communities and their economies.
The U.S. is likely to see changes to public lands again under the second Trump administration. One of the new administration’s early orders was for the Department of Interior to review all national monuments for potential oil and gas drilling and mining. At least two national monuments that President Joe Biden created in California are among the new administration’s targets.
The avenue for many of these changes is rooted in one century-old law.
The power and vagary of the Antiquities Act
The Antiquities Act of 1906, signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt, gave Congress or the president the authority to establish national monuments on federal land as a means of protecting areas for ecological, cultural, historical or scientific purposes.
From Theodore Roosevelt on, 18 of the 21 presidents have used the Antiquities Act to create, expand or contract national monuments through a presidential proclamation.
By using the Antiquities Act to create, expand or reduce national monuments, presidents can avoid an environmental impact statement, normally required under the National Environmental Policy Act, which also allows for public input. Supporters argue that forgoing the environmental impact statement helps expedite monument creation and expansion. Critics say bypassing the review means potential impacts of the monument designations can be overlooked.
The Antiquities Act also offers no clarity on whether a president can reduce the amount of area protected by prior presidents. The act simply states that a president designates “the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.” This has led to the shifting of national monument boundaries based on the priorities of each administration.
An example is Bears Ears, an area of Utah that is considered significant to several tribes but also has uranium, gas and oil resources. In 2016, President Barack Obama designated Bears Ears a national monument. In 2017, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation reducing Bears Ears by 80% of its total designated size. The monument’s size and scope shifted a third time when President Joe Biden reestablished Bears Ears to the boundaries designated by Obama.
In the span of just over five years, the monument was created, reduced, then restored to the original monument designation.
The uncertainty about the long-term reliability of a designation makes it challenging for federal agencies to manage the land or assure Indigenous communities that the government will protect cultural, historical and ecological heritage.
Public lands can be economic engines
National parks and monuments can help fuel local economies.
A 2017 study by Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit research group, found that Western rural counties with more public land have had greater economic growth, including in jobs and personal income, than those with little public land. National monuments can also benefit neighboring counties by increasing population, income and employment opportunities.
Even small national monuments provide economic benefits for their surrounding communities. Visitors to Fort Stanwix National Monument in Rome, N.Y., spent $5.3 million in nearby communities in 2023, according to a National Park Service report. National Park Service via Wikimedia Commons
While many counties adjacent to public lands may be dependent on natural resource extraction, the establishment of a national monument can open up new opportunities by expanding tourism and recreation. For example, four national parks and monuments in southeastern Utah, including Natural Bridges, drew about 2.4 million visitors who spent nearly US$400 million in surrounding communities.
However, when there is uncertainty over whether public lands will remain protected, communities may be hesitant to invest in that future, not knowing whether it will soon change.
What Congress and the courts could do
There are a few ways to increase the certainty around the future of national monuments.
First, lawsuits could push the courts to determine whether the president has the authority to reduce national monuments. Since the Antiquities Act doesn’t directly address presidential authority to reduce monument size, that’s an open question.
Advocacy groups sued the government over Trump’s authority to shrink Bears Ears National Monument, but their cases were put on hold after Biden expanded the monument again. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear other cases in 2024 that argued that a president’s authority to declare and expand national monuments should be far more limited under the law.
Second, Congress could permanently protect designated national monuments through legislation. That would require presidential approval, and the process would likely be slow and cumbersome. Creating White Clouds Wilderness in Idaho, for example, took decades and a public campaign to have it designated a national monument before Congress approved its wilderness designation.
Third, Congress could take new steps to protect public lands. For example, a bipartisan bill titled Public Lands in Public Hands Act could block privatization of public lands and increase and maintain access for recreation. One of the bill’s lead sponsors is U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Republican from Montana who served as Interior secretary during the first Trump administration. Whether the bill will pass and gain the president’s approval remains to be seen.
Public lands have widespread support
The Antiquities Act has led to the creation of 163 terrestrial and marine monuments and subsequently the protection of land and waters that hold cultural, scientific or historic significance.
These monuments tend to have broad support. During the first Trump administration, there were over 650,000 public comments on Trump’s review of national monument creation. An analysis found that 98% of the comments expressed broad support for both the creation and expansion of national monuments.
Gold Butte National Monument covers nearly 300,000 acres of remote and rugged desert landscape in southeastern Nevada and is popular with hikers. Bureau of Land Management
Public lands are more than just physical places. They are spaces where our ideals and values around public land unify us as Americans. They are quintessentially American – and in many ways define and shape the American identity.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ronald S. Green, Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Coastal Carolina University
Kyojuro Rengoku, also known as the Flame Hashira, is a central character in the ‘Demon Slayer’ series.Deviant Art, CC BY-ND
I have spent years studying and teaching Japanese anime, exploring how its narratives intertwine with cultural, philosophical and religious traditions. One of the most compelling aspects of Japanese anime is its ability to merge thrilling action with deep spiritual and ethical questions.
“Demon Slayer: Mugen Train,” which shattered Japanese box-office records for earnings and ended up as 2020’s highest-grossing film in the world, is a prime example of how anime engages with these profound themes. With “Demon Slayer” continuing its global success, it is an opportune time to examine how it intertwines Buddhist, Shinto and samurai traditions into a narrative of heroism, impermanence and moral struggle.
Spiritual themes in anime
Anime often explores spiritual and philosophical questions by drawing on Japan’s religious traditions to examine themes of fate, self-sacrifice and the struggle between desire and duty.
Hayao Miyazaki’s “Princess Mononoke,” for example, follows Prince Ashitaka, who is cursed by a demon and must journey to find a cure. His quest leads him into a conflict between the industrialized Irontown, which seeks to expand by clearing forests, and the spirits of the natural world, including the Deer God, a divine being that governs life and death.
The film reflects Shinto principles by portraying nature as sacred and inhabited by “kami,” or spiritual beings. It emphasizes harmony between humans and the environment and the consequences of disrupting this balance.
A still from ‘Spirited Away’ in which 10-year-old Chihiro must learn to navigate an unseen world. GoodFon.com, CC BY-NC
Similarly, his 2001 animated film “Spirited Away” reflects animist ideas in Japanese culture, where spirits are believed to inhabit natural elements and even everyday objects. Set in a mysterious Japanese bathhouse filled with “kami,” 10-year-old Chihiro, once shy and afraid of change, learns to navigate this hidden world and transforms along the way.
A key moment in the film is the arrival of a polluted river spirit, which appears as a filthy, sludge-covered creature but is revealed to be a once-pristine river god, burdened by human waste. This scene embodies the animist belief that natural entities have their own spirit and must be respected. It also reinforces an environmental message: When nature is polluted or mistreated, it loses its vitality, but with care and reverence it can be restored.
“Neon Genesis Evangelion,” a landmark Japanese anime television series that aired from 1995 to 1996, engages with deep philosophical ideas, particularly existentialist questions of identity and purpose. Set in a postapocalyptic world, the series follows 14-year-old Shinji Ikari, who is recruited to pilot a giant biomechanical weapon called an evangelion to defend humanity against mysterious beings known as Angels.
As Shinji and his fellow pilots struggle with their roles, the series explores themes of isolation, self-worth and the challenges of forming close, meaningful relationships. It draws from both Buddhist and Gnostic thought, which emphasize a focus on inner spiritual knowledge and the belief that clinging too tightly to the material world causes suffering. Evangelion portrays suffering as arising from attachment and the inability to form meaningful relationships.
Rengoku: The embodiment of selfless heroism
What sets “Mugen Train” apart is its focus on the internal conflicts of its characters, symbolized by their battles with demons. These demons represent human suffering and attachment, themes deeply influenced by Buddhist thought. At the heart of the film is Kyojuro Rengoku, a demon slayer who embodies unwavering selflessness and honor.
Rengoku’s flame-breathing forms.
Rengoku’s fire-based fighting style is deeply symbolic. In Japanese culture, fire represents both destruction and renewal. The Kurama Fire Festival, held annually on Oct. 22 in Kyoto, is a Shinto ritual where large torches are carried through the streets to ward off evil and purify the land.
Similarly, Buddhist goma fire ceremonies involve priests burning wooden sticks in sacred flames to symbolize the eradication of ignorance and desire. Rengoku’s own techniques reflect this duality: His flames cleanse the world of evil while signifying his unwavering spirit.
Goma fire ritual.
Bushido, the samurai code of honor, underpins Rengoku’s character. Rooted in Confucian ethics, Zen Buddhism and Shinto beliefs, this code emphasizes loyalty, self-sacrifice and duty to protect others. His mother’s teaching – “The strong must protect the weak” – guides his every action, reflecting the Confucian value of filial piety and the moral obligation to serve society.
Bushido’s connection to Zen Buddhism, with its focus on discipline and acceptance of impermanence, further shapes Rengoku’s unwavering resolve, while its Shinto influences reinforce his role as a guardian upholding a sacred duty.
Even approaching death, Rengoku remains steadfast, accepting impermanence, or “mujō,” a fundamental Buddhist principle that sees beauty in life’s transience. His sacrifice teaches that true strength lies in selflessness and moral integrity.
Akaza: A manifestation of attachment and suffering
Opposing Rengoku is Akaza, a demon who embodies the destructive consequences of clinging to power and immortality. Once human, Akaza became a demon in his obsession with strength, unable to accept the impermanence of life.
His refusal to acknowledge death aligns with Buddhist teachings that suffering arises from attachment and desire. Scholars such as Jacqueline Stone have explored how Buddhist texts portray clinging to existence as a fundamental source of suffering, a theme vividly reflected in Akaza’s character.
Visual elements reinforce Akaza’s symbolism. His body is covered in tattoos reminiscent of “irezumi,” traditional Japanese body art historically associated with crime and hardship. In Edo-period Japan, tattoos were often used to mark criminals, branding them as outcasts from society. Even today, irezumi remains stigmatized in many parts of Japan, with some public bathhouses, gyms and swimming pools barring individuals with visible tattoos due to their historical association with the yakuza. In contemporary anime, tattooed characters frequently symbolize a troubled past or inner turmoil, reinforcing Akaza’s role as a figure trapped by his own suffering and destructive path.
Akaza’s irezumi visually conveys his entrapment in cycles of suffering, reinforcing his contrast with Rengoku’s liberating flames.
A battle about human struggles
The battle between Rengoku and Akaza is more than a fight between good and evil; it is a clash between two worldviews – selflessness versus egoism, acceptance versus attachment. “Mugen Train” taps into universal human struggles, making its themes resonate far beyond Japan.
The film’s exploration of impermanence, moral duty and the pursuit of meaning contributes to anime’s broader legacy as a medium that entertains while provoking deep philosophical reflection.
As “Demon Slayer” continues to captivate audiences worldwide, evidenced by social media buzz around its new projects and the ongoing enthusiasm of fans, its success underscores anime’s ability to blend action with profound themes.
Whether through Rengoku’s selfless courage or Akaza’s tragic downfall, “Mugen Train” offers a timeless meditation on what it means to live with purpose and integrity.
Ronald S. Green 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.
That’s the key finding of my recent study, published in February 2025 in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
Peripartum cardiomyopathy can occur in pregnant or postpartum mothers during late pregnancy up to five months after birth. The disease is difficult to identify and is often misdiagnosed. Multiple studies estimate that 7% to 20% of U.S. mothers who have it don’t survive.
As a nurse scientist with a research focus on maternal health equity, I wanted to learn more about the factors that cause peripartum cardiomyopathy.
My team and I examined more than 7.3 million birth records in California between 1997 and 2019. By using the neighborhood deprivation index, which measures socioeconomic disadvantage in a geographic area, we linked hospital discharge and vital records information up to 12 months postpartum follow-up on each woman. From that data, we developed a more complete picture on why women developed the illness.
We found that living in poor neighborhoods with fewer resources was associated with a 20% to 70% increased risk of developing this disease. Those in the most under-resourced neighborhoods – areas with less access to nutritious food, stable housing and quality health care – had the highest risk. This was true even after accounting for other factors, like income, race, high blood pressure and obesity.
But living in highly stressed neighborhoods explained only part of the reason for the higher rates of peripartum cardiomyopathy in Black women. We found that even if they lived in better neighborhoods, Black women were still more than three times as likely to develop the condition than others.
Why it matters
Our findings suggest deeper issues are contributing to the increase in the disease, particularly in Black women.
A better understanding of these factors can help policymakers develop effective interventions for all women at risk and reallocate resources – and dollars – to prevent disparities in maternal health outcomes.
Pregnancy itself causes increased stress on the heart.
What still isn’t known
Our study only points to neighborhood disinvestment and chronic high blood pressure as contributors to the risk of peripartum cardiomyopathy. Unanswered questions remain about the other causes.
More research is needed to fully understand how social determinants of health, which are the environmental conditions where people are born, live, work and play, affect health outcomes.
My future work will focus on further identifying the key factors that influence peripartum cardiomyopathy risk, such as economic stability and the effects of environmental stressors, like pollution.
I’ll also track the long-term health of peripartum cardiomyopathy survivors to understand how social factors affect recovery. My ultimate goal is to inform policies and practices that reduce disparities and improve maternal heart health for all.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
The Marshall Plan used $13.3 billion in U.S. funds – roughly $171 billion in today’s dollars – to rebuild war-torn Western Europe from 1948 to late 1951. It is often evoked as a solution for reconstruction following global crises. Yet as a military historian and curator, I find that the Marshall Plan is not well understood.
For the U.S., the economic gains of the Marshall Plan did not come from European countries’ repaying loans or allowing the U.S. to extract their raw materials. Rather, the U.S. has benefited enormously from a half-century of goodwill, democratic stability and economic success in Europe.
European nations turn inward
After World War II ended in 1945, Western Europe faced a staggering burden of destruction and upheaval.
The United Kingdom, Italy, France, Germany and other European governments were buried in debt after so many years of war. They could not afford to rebuild on their own. Yet rather than cooperating on their mutual economic reconstruction, European nations looked inward, focusing primarily on their own political challenges.
The continent was politically and militarily divided, too. Europe’s western half was influenced by the democratic, capitalistic forces led by the U.S. Eastern Europe was beholden to the communist, command-economy forces of the Soviet Union.
In a 1946 speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill articulated Europe’s growing postwar divide. Over the ruins of proud nations, he said, “an iron curtain” had “descended across the continent.”
US looks abroad
Unlike Europe, the U.S. emerged from World War II as the wealthiest nation in the world, with its territory intact and unharmed. Its steel and oil industries were booming. By 1947, the U.S. was the clear successor to Great Britain as the world’s superpower.
But President Harry Truman feared the ambitions of the war’s other great victor – the Soviet Union. In March 1947, he announced a new doctrine to contain communist expansion southward across Europe by giving $400 million in military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey.
Around the same time, U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall met with Soviet officials to plan Germany’s future. Following the Nazis’ surrender in May 1945, Germany had been divided into four occupied zones administered by U.S., British, French and Soviet forces.
Marshall hoped that the Soviets would cooperate, but Soviet ruler Josef Stalin preferred extracting reparations from a prostrate Germany to investing in its recovery. A vibrant German economic engine, the Soviets felt, could just as easily rearm to attack the Russian countryside for the third time that century.
The Truman administration chose to unilaterally rebuild the three western Allied sectors of Germany – and Western Europe.
Marshall outlined his plan at a commencement address at Harvard University in June 1947. American action to restore global economic health, he said, would provide the foundation for political stability and peace in Europe. And an economically healthy Western Europe, in turn, would inhibit the spread of communism by plainly demonstrating the benefits of capitalism.
“Our policy is not directed against any country,” Marshall said, “but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.”
Marshall’s plan
Marshall invited all European nations to participate in drafting a plan to first address the immediate humanitarian aid of Europe’s people, then rebuild its infrastructure. The U.S. would pay for it all.
For nearly bankrupt European nations, it was a lifeline.
It would take a masterful legislative strategy for the Democratic Truman administration to persuade the Republican-led Congress to pass this $13 billion bill. It succeeded thanks to the dedicated effort of Republican Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, who convinced his isolationist colleagues that the Marshall Plan would halt the expansion of communism and benefit American economic growth.
Along with economic stability, the Truman administration recognized that Europe needed military security to defend against communist encroachment by the Soviet Union.
Since 1947, NATO has steadily expanded eastward to include Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and other former Soviet satellite states directly bordering Russia.
Ukraine, which declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, is not yet a NATO member. But it desperately wants to be.
Modern-day Ukraine mirrors the Western European countries of the Marshall Plan era in meaningful ways.
It suffers from the physical devastation of war, with its major cities heavily damaged. The threat of military attack from hostile neighbors remains urgent. And it has a functional, democratic government that would – in peacetime – be capable of receiving and distributing aid to develop the nation’s economic growth and stability.
Outright American taxpayer financing of Ukraine’s reconstruction seems impossible. Any plan to reconstruct the country after war will likely require public funding from multiple nations and substantial private investment. That private investment could well include mineral extraction and refinement ventures.
Ultimately, Ukraine’s recovery will most likely involve Ukraine and neighboring nations reaching agreement to restore its economic and military security. The European Union, which Ukraine also seeks to join, has the bureaucratic and economic resources necessary to reconstruct Ukraine, restore peace and ease tensions on the continent.
Any future Marshall Plan for Ukraine will probably be European.
Frank A. Blazich Jr. 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.
How many types of insects are there in the world? – Sawyer, age 8, Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina
Exploring anywhere on Earth, look closely and you’ll find insects. Check your backyard and you may see ants, beetles, crickets, wasps, mosquitoes and more. There are more kinds of insects than there are mammals, birds and plants combined. This fact has fascinated scientists for centuries.
One of the things biologists like me do is classify all living things into categories. Insects belong to a phylum called Arthropoda – animals with hard exoskeletons and jointed feet.
All insects are arthropods, but not all arthropods are insects. For instance, spiders, lobsters and millipedes are arthropods, but they’re not insects.
Instead, insects are a subgroup within Arthropoda, a class called “Insecta,” that is characterized by six legs, two antennae and three body segments – head, abdomen and the thorax, which is the part of the body between the head and abdomen.
Most insects also have wings, although a few, like fleas, don’t. All have compound eyes, which means insects see very differently from the way people see. Instead of one lens per eye, they have many: a fly has 5,000 lenses; a dragonfly has 30,000. These types of eyes, though not great for clarity, are excellent at detecting movement.
What is a species?
All insects descend from a common ancestor that lived about about 480 million years ago. For context, that’s about 100 million years before any of our vertebrate ancestors – animals with a backbone – ever walked on land.
A species is the most basic unit that biologists use to classify living things. When people use words like “ant” or “fly” or “butterfly” they are referring not to species, but to categories that may contain hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of species. For example, about 18,000 species of butterfly exist – think monarch, zebra swallowtail or cabbage white.
Basically, species are a group that can interbreed with each other, but not with other groups. One obvious example: bees can’t interbreed with ants.
Each species has a unique scientific name – like Bombus griseocollis for the brown-belted bumblebee – so scientists can be sure which species they’re talking about.
Counting the exact number of insect species is probably impossible. Every year, some species go extinct, while some evolve anew. Even if we could magically freeze time and survey the entire Earth all at once, experts would disagree on the distinctiveness or identity of some species. So instead of counting, researchers use statistical analysis to make an estimate.
One scientist did just that. He published his answer in a 2018 research paper. His calculations showed there are approximately 5.5 million insect species, with the correct number almost certainly between 2.6 and 7.2 million.
Beetles alone account for almost one-third of the number, about 1.5 million species. By comparison, there are “only” an estimated 22,000 species of ants. This and other studies have also estimated about 3,500 species of mosquitoes, 120,000 species of flies and 30,000 species of grasshoppers and crickets.
The estimate of 5.5 million species of insects is interesting. What’s even more remarkable is that because scientists have found only about 1 million species, that means more than 4.5 million species are still waiting for someone to discover them. In other words, over 80% of the Earth’s insect biodiversity is still unknown.
Add up the total population and biomass of the insects, and the numbers are even more staggering. The 22,000 species of ants comprise about 20,000,000,000,000,000 individuals – that’s 20 quadrillion ants. And if a typical ant weighs about 0.0001 ounces (3 milligrams) – or one ten-thousandth of an ounce – that means all the ants on Earth together weigh more than 132 billion pounds (about 60 billion kilograms).
That’s the equivalent of about 7 million school buses, 600 aircraft carriers or about 20% of the weight of all humans on Earth combined.
For every person on Earth, it’s estimated there are 200 million insects.
Many insect species are going extinct
All of this has potentially huge implications for our own human species. Insects affect us in countless ways. People depend on them for crop pollination, industrial products and medicine. Other insects can harm us by transmitting disease or eating our crops.
Most insects have little to no direct impact on people, but they are integral parts of their ecosystems. This is why entomologists – bug scientists – say we should leave insects alone as much as possible. Most of them are harmless to people, and they are critical to the environment.
It is sobering to note that although millions of undiscovered insect species may be out there, many will go extinct before people have a chance to discover them. Largely due to human activity, a significant proportion of Earth’s biodiversity – including insects – may ultimately be forever lost.
Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.
And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.
Nicholas Green 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.
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