By Teagan Laszlo, Queensland University of Technology
For Samantha Magick, journalism isn’t just a job. It is a lifelong commitment to storytelling, advocacy, and empowering voices often overlooked in the Pacific.
As the managing editor and publisher at Islands Business, the Pacific Islands’ longest surviving news and business monthly magazine, Magick’s commitment to quality reporting and journalistic integrity has established her as a leading figure in the region’s news industry.
Magick’s passion for journalism began at a young age.
“I wanted to be a journalist when I was like 12,” Magick recalls. “When I left school, that’s all I wanted to study.”
She remembers her family’s disapproval when she would write stories as a child, as they thought she was “sharing secrets”. Despite that early condemnation, Magick’s thriving journalism career has taken her across continents and exposed her to diverse media landscapes.
After completing a Bachelor of Communications with a major in journalism at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, Australia, Magick began her career at Communications Fiji Limited (CFL), a prominent Fijian commercial network.
She progressed over 11 years from a cadet to CFL’s news director.
Guidance of first boss Magick attributes some of her early success to the guidance of her first boss and CFL’s founder, William Parkinson. She considers herself fortunate to have had a supportive mentor who led by example and dared to take risks early in life, such as founding a radio station in his 20s.
After leaving CFL, Magick’s career took her across the globe, including regional Pacific non-government organisations, news publications in Hawai’i and Indonesia, and even international legal organisations in Italy.
Magick, who is of both Fijian and Australian heritage, returned to Suva in 2018, where she began her current role as Islands Business’s managing editor.
“I’ve chosen to make my life in Fiji because I feel more myself here,” Magick says, reflecting on her deep connection to the island nation.
Magick’s vision for Islands Business focuses on delving into the deeper, underlying narratives often overshadowed by breaking news cycles and free, readily available news content.
“We need to be able to demonstrate the value of investigation, big picture reporting rather than the day-to-day stuff,” Magick says.
Magick prides herself on creating a diverse and inclusive newsroom that reflects the communities it serves.
Need for diverse newsroom “You have to have a diverse newsroom,” she emphasises, recognising the importance of amplifying marginalised voices. “For example, there is a conscious effort to make sure our magazine is not full of photos of men shaking hands with other men.”
Magick also believes journalists have a responsibility to advocate for change, as demonstrated by Islands Business’s dedication to tackling pressing issues from climate change to media freedom.
“Why would I give a climate change denier space?” Magick questions when discussing the need to balance objectivity and advocacy. “Because it’s kind of going to sell magazines? Because it’s going to create a bit of a stir online? That’s not something we believe in.”
Despite her success, Magick’s career has not been without challenges. Magick worked through Fiji’s former draconian media restriction laws under the Media Industry Development Act 2010, while also navigating the shift to digital media.
Islands Business managing editor Samantha Magick (right) with Fiji Times reporter Rakesh Kumar and chief editor Fred Wesley (centre) celebrating the repeal of the draconian Fiji media law last year . . . ““Why would I give a climate change denier space?” Image: Lydia Lewis/RNZ Pacific
Magick emphasises the need to constantly upskill and re-evaluate strategies to ensure she and Islands Business can effectively navigate the constantly evolving media landscape.
From learning to capitalise on social media analytics to locating reputable information sources when many of them feared to speak to the journalists due to the risk of legal retribution, Magick believes flexibility and perseverance are crucial to staying ahead in media.
In her early career, Magick also faced sexism and misogyny in the media industry. “When I think back about the way I was treated as a young journalist, I feel sick,” Magick says as she reflects on how she and her female colleagues would warn each other against interviewing certain sources alone.
Supporting aspiring journalists The challenges Magick has faced undoubtably contribute to her dedication to supporting aspiring journalists, as evident through Kite Pareti’s journey. Starting as a freelance writer with no newswriting experience in March 2022, Pareti has since progressed to one of two full-time reporters at Islands Business.
Pareti expresses gratitude for the opportunities she’s had while working at Islands Business, and for the mentorship of Magick, whom she describes as “family”.
“Samantha took a chance on me when I had zero knowledge on news writing,” Pareti says. “So I’m grateful to God for her life and for allowing me to experience this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Magick reciprocates this sentiment. “Recently, I am inspired by some of our younger reporters in the field, and their ability to embrace and leverage technology — they’re teaching me.”
Magick anticipates an exciting period ahead for Islands Business, as she aims to attract a younger, professionally driven, and regionally focused audience to their platforms.
When asked about her aspirations for journalism in the region, Magick says she hopes to see a future where Pacific voices remain at the centre, “telling their own stories in all their diversities”.
Teagan Laszlo was a student journalist from the Queensland University of Technology who travelled to Fiji with the support of the Australian Government’s New Colombo Plan Mobility Programme. This article is published in a partnership of QUT with Asia Pacific Report, Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) and The University of the South Pacific.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Tom Nyirenda, Extraordinary Senior Lecture in the Department of Global Health, Stellenbosch University
The World Health Organization’s 2024 Global Tuberculosis report reveals a sobering reality. Formidable challenges remain in the fight against the world’s most infectious disease: persistent poverty in high burden countries; increased rates of infection among vulnerable populations; the inability to find and treat all missing cases; and funding shortfalls.
The WHO’s report measures progress in two ways: the number of TB-related deaths, and the number of people who become ill. There is still a long battle ahead to eradicate a disease that results in over 10 million patients among those already infected and claims around 1.5 million lives each year. This even though it is preventable and curable.
The good news is that some countries in Africa have made significant progress in reducing infection rates and TB-related deaths.
Global health specialist Tom Nyirenda assesses some of the report’s key findings and messages.
TB can be defeated because we have good diagnostic tools and effective treatment for the commonest forms of the disease. Global funding, which is critical in fighting TB, is not yet up to the scale that is required to stop the disease. Only 26% of the funding committed by global partners to TB prevention, diagnostic and treatment services has materialised so far.
Good diagnostic tools and treatment aren’t the panacea. Almost 87% of TB cases are from 30 high burden poor countries of the world. Slow or lack of economic progress of affected populations is one of the greatest challenges the world continues to face.
On the positive side, progress has been made in reducing TB related deaths in the Africa region. The continent saw the biggest drop in TB related deaths since 2015 of all six regions – 42%. The European region came next with TB deaths down by 38% in the same period.
When it comes to TB infections the WHO African and European regions have made the most progress: a reduction of 24% in Africa and 27% in Europe.
One of the main reasons for the success in Africa has been progress in treating HIV patients. This is because TB is one of the most common opportunistic infections among patients with HIV. (Opportunistic infections occur more often or are more severe in people with weakened immune systems.)
Before antiretrovirals transformed treatment for HIV patients, the African continent had the highest TB-HIV co-infection rates in the world. High mortality was experienced among co-infected patients.
At one stage HIV prevalence among TB patients was estimated to be as high as 90% in some areas of sub-Saharan Africa.
Treating co-infected patients with antiretrovirals has contributed significantly to the drop in TB-related cases and deaths on the continent.
Some countries have increased TB screening among vulnerable groups such as children and those who live in confined areas, such as prisoners and displaced people.
Mixed bag of infection rates
Successes within the African region vary from country to country.
For example Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo are among eight countries that accounted for about two-thirds of the global number of people estimated to have developed TB in 2023. Nigeria has 4.6% of the global new cases and the DRC has 3.1%.
It’s noteworthy that both countries have high levels of poverty; they are vast, with huge populations; and their health services are limited compared to the scale of disease burdens they face.
Sometimes increases in reported cases are not a bad thing. They can be due to improved case finding or better diagnostic procedures. But vigilance is required to maintain the drive towards achievement of global targets.
Barriers to seeking treatment
Families of TB sufferers often have to bear costs such as for medications, special foods, transport, and a loss of income.
Such expenses sometimes discourage TB sufferers from seeking treatment.
The WHO global report estimates families in many countries in Africa are among those facing “catastrophic total costs” as a result of members becoming ill with TB. This is when direct and indirect costs account for more than 20% of a family’s annual household income. The countries where this is the case include Niger, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Tanzania and South Africa.
Vaccine race
The only vaccine against TB, the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccine, has been used for more than 100 years. It is largely effective for children under five, but less so in older people. And it can’t be used on patients who have certain medical conditions.
Development of vaccines is a lengthy and costly exercise. Only one-fifth of the finance necessary for research has been forthcoming to date.
The good news is that of all infectious diseases TB is probably the one that has the most vaccine candidates in the pipeline (about 17). There are currently six vaccine candidates for adults in phase III trials. They could be available within the next five years.
Beating the disease will require an effective primary or recurrent TB prevention vaccine or a therapeutic vaccine for those already infected with the TB bacteria but who have not yet developed the disease.
Future threats
Climate change will affect food security and nutrition, essential for recovery from TB, and also diverting TB resources to epidemics and pandemics associated with it.
Human conflict, migration and displacement are other threats that world faces that will hinder TB infection control and treatment.
These dangers strengthen the case for multi-sectoral collaboration to share rare resources and strive for a meaningful impact. The speed at which COVID-19 vaccines were developed in the middle of a pandemic and global lockdowns shows this is possible in better and worse times.
What needs to be done
Without government support the war against TB will never be won. Every country and every community is different. It is therefore essential that locally relevant economic research is conducted in every situation to guide policies that reduce the economic burden of TB on communities. Generated evidence should guide policy and practice. Above all good financing should be mobilised, with governments leading the course.
Tom Nyirenda is affiliated with European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership -EDCTP.
Throughout accounts of 17th-century witch trials in Europe and North America, physical features alone were considered undeniable proof of witchcraft. The belief was that the devil branded witches’ bodies with symbolic, material marks – such as unusual growths or blemishes. This led to routine bodily inspections in witch trials. The discovery of such marks was thought to be strong medical and scientific evidence of witchcraft and frequently sealed the victim’s fate.
Here are just some of the anatomical features that historically would have been used to label someone a witch:
Are you a woman?
While men were occasionally accused of witchcraft, historical witch hunts overwhelmingly targeted women – particularly women who led an independent lifestyle (such as widows and spinsters) or who were outspoken and didn’t conform to societal norms. Historians estimate that more than 75% of those accused of witchcraft in the 16th and 17th centuries were female.
By this standard, if you identify as female today, you are one of approximately 3.95 billion potential “witches”.
How old are you?
Age was another factor in witch trials. Older women, especially those past childbearing age, were frequently suspected of witchcraft – particularly if they were a widow, owned property or lived alone.
Records suggest that more than half of those accused of witchcraft in Scotland between 1563-1736 were over 40 years old. At this time, the average life expectancy was around 32 years of age.
Today, with around 1.4 billion women globally over 40, many more might have found themselves under similar suspicion by historical standards.
Do you have an extra nipple?
The “witch’s teat” was a common trait witch-hunters used to identify someone as being a witch. This extra nipple was thought to be used by witches to nurse so-called demonic familiars – often imagined to be small animals or imps. Witch-hunters would examine the chest or torso for any irregularity and classify it as a witch’s teat.
In reality, supernumerary nipples (or polythelia) are benign. These form during early embryonic development and in some people do not fully disappear.
Another feature sometimes mistaken for a supernumerary teat was the clitoris. Historical accounts suggest that women were sometimes convicted based on the size of this body part. Pamphlets from the time, which describe the process of identifying a “witches’ teat,” often mention a small protrusion located near a woman’s “fundament” or “privy place” – euphemisms for a woman’s genitals.
It’s estimated that around 5% of the world’s population have at least one extra nipple. They appear more often on the left-hand side of the chest and are more common in men. Harry Styles, who has openly discussed having four nipples, would perhaps have been far less inclined to
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Viktoriia Lapa, Lecturer, Institute for European Policymaking, Bocconi University
The mantra “as long as it takes” has become the European Union’s rallying cry in support of Ukraine’s resistance against Russia. Initially, some experts predicted that Ukraine would fall within three days – yet nearly three years have passed, and Ukraine is still standing. This prolonged struggle has come at an immense human cost.
It’s clear that the decision to resist was made by the Ukrainian population, and they are grateful to the EU for its support. However, hopes that Ukraine can repel the invaders are fading, and there is no clear end in sight. “As long as it takes” for the EU translates, for Ukrainian ears, to “as many of your lives as we can afford to sacrifice”. Ukrainians are weary, even as they hold the front line, but the west has not communicated a commitment to fully engage in stopping Russian aggression and deterring future threats. Instead, it seems focused on a policy of “de-escalation management”. This only emboldens Russia and its allies.
What is even more concerning is the absence of a coherent strategy for managing Russia. What would the EU do in the event that the war were to magically end tomorrow? Is there a plan in place, or will EU leaders simply offer Russia a reset?
The EU has excelled in rhetoric when it comes to Ukraine but has fallen short in delivering military support. It remains reluctant to draw firm red lines for Russia as a response to attacks on European soil or to adopt a more assertive stance.
The supply of shells to Ukraine is a case in point. The EU pledged to supply 1 million rounds of ammunition by March 2024, but by January, Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign affairs chief, admitted that the bloc would only deliver half of that on time while committing to send 1.1 million shells by the year’s end. To address this shortfall, Czech president Petr Pavel proposed an initiative at the Munich Security Conference in February, aiming to provide 800,000 shells to Ukraine by the year’s end, sourcing ammunition globally instead of solely from EU manufacturers. By August 2024, the EU had sent Ukraine only 650,000 shells out of the promised 1 million.
Additionally, the EU has been reluctant to take decisive action, even in response to Russian attacks on its territory. Recent incidents, such as a narrowly avoided plane crash in Germany attributed to suspected sabotage, reflect a troubling increase in aggressive behaviour from Russian saboteurs. The only response so far has been a relatively weak sanctions framework to be used on those involved in such attacks.
A strategy for the future
The EU must adopt a proactive approach to securing peace in Ukraine, recognising that Russia is currently unwilling to negotiate – but would also never negotiate from a position of weakness.
A clear strategy – including security guarantees for Ukraine, preferably through a pathway to Nato membership – could help put pressure on Russia and facilitate negotiations. It’s clear that bringing Ukraine into Nato might take years, but in the meantime, European countries should consider deploying troops to Ukraine as a security guarantee for this interim period.
As the Lithuanian minister of foreign affairs, Gabrielius Landsbergis, rightly said: “At the beginning of the year, Emmanuel Macron hinted at putting boots on the ground. At the end of the year, North Korea had actually done so. We are still on the back foot, reacting to escalation instead of reversing it. Macron’s ideas should now be revisited – better late than never.”
Security agreements do of course exist between Ukraine and its EU and G7 partners, but not a single country has hinted at a possibility of providing, as a guarantee for peace, such a security guarantee as “troops on the ground”. EU countries must consider this seriously.
And with a view to what happens after the Russian aggression in Ukraine, the EU needs at least the beginnings of an idea about what its terms would be for re-engaging with Russia. Otherwise it risks enabling Russia to set its own terms.
The situation on the ground is dire. While the west boasts economic strength, it lacks visionary leadership and political will. It should not allow Russia to take the lead and must adopt a clear strategy for Ukraine’s victory. Otherwise, we are heading toward the scenario described by Timothy Garton Ash in his Financial Times article advocating for Ukraine’s accession to Nato:
Consider the alternative. A defeated, divided, demoralized, depopulated Ukraine, pulsating with anger against the West and – as Zelenskyy hinted last week – probably seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. Moscow triumphant. The rest of the world concluding that the West is a paper tiger. Xi Jinping encouraged to have a go at Taiwan. Biden and Harris going down in history as the leaders who ‘lost Ukraine’.
One could add: the EU faces disintegration, regressing to its pre-union state. Ursula von der Leyen is remembered as the leader whose “as long as it takes” policy resulted in an epic failure to secure a safer future for Europe and Ukraine. Does the west want to see itself in this way?
Viktoriia Lapa is an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for Constitutional Studies and Democratic Development, a research partnership between the School of Law of the University of Bologna and the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy (SAIS Europe).
Source: The Conversation – France – By Amandine Cornille, Research associate professor, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)
There are wild apple orchards across France, including on the Saclay plateau south of Paris.Fourni par l’auteur
The COP16 biodiversity conference opened on October 21, 2024. The UN conference is an opportunity to highlight that biodiversity is crucial for ensuring a sustainable food system. However, it is directly threatened by climate change and its side effects, such as the emergence of parasites. These disruptions, which reduce crop productivity and increase harvest uncertainty, threaten global food security.
Finding solutions to save the viability of our crops is a priority. In this area, the wild relatives and varieties of currently cultivated plants offer a source of genetic diversity for coping with global changes. Indeed, for thousands of years, they have faced major environmental changes. Some wild species have thus contributed to the adaptation of cultivated plants to high altitudes and various climatic conditions.
If we intend to rely on wild relatives to ensure crop diversification, we must characterize their diversity and ability to respond to climate change. Conservation and development programmes for diversity in agrosystems have already been initiated for annual species, such as cereals. Perennial species, like fruit trees, however, remain too neglected, even as human activities threaten their wild relatives. It is high time to come to their rescue!
The limitations of large seed banks for protecting fruit trees
Faced with the collapse of biodiversity, nearly 2,000 seed banks have been created worldwide. The oldest, a pioneer in conserving the genetic diversity of plants, was established over 100 years ago in Saint Petersburg, Russia, at the Vavilov Institute, named after the scientist who initiated these collections. Another well-known example is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, set up in Norway in 2008. These “bunkers” are essential for preserving the genetic diversity of as many cultivated plant species and their wild relatives as possible. However, they are somewhat challenging to utilise in emergencies for certain plant species.
While new seeds can be obtained within a year for annual cereals, fruit trees can take years to reach sexual maturity and produce flowers and pollen, which presents a major challenge. Crossbreeding wild relatives with cultivated species, necessary to introduce favourable traits such as parasite resistance or climate adaptation, is lengthy. Leveraging the genetic heritage of fruit trees to address immediate challenges requires access to genetic material from mature trees, whose traits are already known and proven under specific environmental conditions. Therefore, genetic resource “bunkers,” while crucial for preserving diversity, are insufficient for fruit trees.
Our access to the genetic diversity of cultivated fruit trees and their wild relatives is currently limited, making it difficult to address the rapid changes occurring globally.
Conservation orchards: the “Noah’s arks” for fruit trees
Fruit trees have played a central role in human history through their economic and cultural value. The genetic exchanges between wild and cultivated fruit trees form the basis for the diversity of shape and taste in our fruits. The wild relatives of these cultivated fruit trees also have a significant role to play, as they have demonstrated resilience to parasites and climate change.
Conservation orchards, or living collections, for fruit trees serve as a means to preserve genetic diversity while making it available in case of emergencies to preempt threats associated with global changes. Unlike seed banks, these collections provide immediate access to the necessary materials (pollen and flowers) for crossbreeding in varietal improvement programmes, as well as for reforestation and the conservation of wild relatives in forests.
These conservation orchards also serve as open-air laboratories to study the response of fruit trees to climate conditions and parasite attacks, as well as the evolutionary and ecological processes that give rise to biodiversity. These spaces of genetic diversity, where different genotypes are planted over several years across a large area, also help limit the emergence of parasites by controlling their populations, thereby maintaining the delicate balance of biodiversity and ensuring dynamic agroecosystems. Finally, they act as venues for outreach and scientific mediation to raise awareness about fruit biodiversity in agroecosystems and ecosystems.
The “poor cousins” in conservation efforts
In France, living collections of cultivated fruit trees, housed by both research institutes and associations such as the “Croqueurs de Pommes” (munchers of apples) represent a valuable genetic heritage. In 2020, 168,400 hectares of orchards were recorded; however, wild fruit tree orchards are less documented and much rarer. This is regrettable, considering that these wild relatives are directly threatened by habitat fragmentation and gene flow from cultivated fruit trees in orchards, even though they are invaluable allies in addressing climate change.
However, there are some notable examples, such as the conservation orchards of wild olive trees at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE) centre in Montpellier, the wild plum orchard in Lorraine, the wild apricot orchards at the INRAE centre in Bordeaux-Aquitaine, and various wild apple orchards across France including on the Saclay plateau [https://x.com/PommierVerger]. These orchards, established with the help of research institutes and local public initiatives, provide a unique opportunity to study the impact of parasite attacks and climate change on cultivated fruit trees and their wild relatives. Many more are being established across Europe, so it’s definitely something to keep an eye on!
Screening local fruit trees to help them adapt to global changes
Public involvement via citizen science is another way to gather information for the conservation of genetic diversity of fruit trees. Individuals can directly collect data from fruit trees near them – whether in their gardens, public parks or nearby fields – to advance research. These valuable contributions help ensure the monitoring of changes in flowering times related to climate change.
This aligns with initiatives launched through Pl@ntNet, an application that allows users to identify plant species using a simple photo, and Tela Botanica, which connects beginners with expert botanists to assist in launching collaborative projects.
By investing in the creation and maintenance of new orchards, strengthening collaboration among research institutes, associations and conservation organisations, and mobilising the public, one can play a role in preserving fruit biodiversity while enhancing fruit trees’ resilience to increasing environmental pressures.
Acknowledgments: Evelyne Leterme, Henri Fourey, Mathieu Brisson, Amandine Hansart, Alexandra Detrille, Mouhammad Noormohamed, the association Les Croqueurs de Pommes, and all project collaborators and participants as well as the general public.
Amandine Cornille (associate professor at New York University Abu Dhabi) has received funding from NYUAD, CNRS (ATIP-Avenir CNRS-Inserm), the European LEADER/FEDER program, the BNP Paribas “Climate and Biodiversity Initiative” Foundation, Institut Diversité Ecologie et Evolution du Vivant (IDEEV), Université Paris Saclay, CNRS, AgroParistech, INRAE, Center for interdisciplinary studies on biodiversity, agroecology, society and climate (C-BASC), CLand Convergence Institute and ANR.
Karine Alix has received funding from AgroParisTech, CNRS, INRAE, ANR and IDEEV.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Linda Yueh, Fellow in Economics/Adjunct Professor of Economics, University of Oxford
For the first time in 14 years, it was a Labour chancellor who delivered the UK budget. And for the first time ever, that chancellor was a woman. But Rachel Reeves faces an almighty task: plugging a £40 billion spending gap in the knowledge that pre-election promises not to raise the main taxes are still fresh in people’s memories.
Growth was the buzzword of the election campaign – Reeves now had to lay her cards on the table. So here’s what our panel of experts made of the plans:
More challenges for employers and small businesses
Shampa Roy-Mukherjee, Associate Professor in Economics, University of East London
The budget introduces £40 billion in tax hikes and, in some areas, spending cuts that will put pressure on the economy and business in particular. But it also reflects the government’s focus on economic growth, with policies intended to stabilise finances while addressing some of the concerns of small businesses.
The chancellor has retained her commitment to preserve the rates of income tax, employee national insurance and VAT. But a notable change is the increase in employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs) from 13.8% to 15%.
There was also a reduction in the secondary threshold, which is the amount at which the employer starts paying NI on each employee, from £9,100 to £5,000. Altogether this will raise £25 billion annually but will significantly impact many businesses that will now face higher wage bills.
The national living wage is also rising by 6.7% to £12.21 per hour in April 2025, boosting incomes for about three million workers but again increasing costs for many businesses. These rising taxes and wage increases, alongside incoming employment regulations, will strain businesses, particularly in sectors with high labour demands.
To offset some of these pressures, the employment allowance, which allows some smaller employers to reduce their NICs, has been raised from £5,000 to £10,500. The chancellor said that over 1 million employers will not see their NICs bill rise as a result.
Small businesses in retail, hospitality and leisure, where profits have been hit as consumers struggle with the cost of living, will benefit from a 40% business rate relief on properties up to £110,000. Other supportive measures include a continued freeze on fuel duty, which will aid logistics and transport costs. Corporation tax remains fixed at 25%.
A downpayment on growth – but probably not quickly
Linda Yueh, Adjunct Professor of Economics, University of Oxford
The chancellor declared that the government will “invest, invest, invest”. This is an important enabler of economic growth.
But, the country’s creditors need reassuring, so Reeves also announced two new fiscal rules that aim to achieve that balance of allowing the government to borrow to invest (and generate growth), but not to pay for day-to-day spending.
Specifically, the investment rule permits borrowing to invest and the stability rule requires day-to-day spending to be paid for by taxes. Both rules support the government’s growth aims while trying to reassure the country’s creditors that the borrowing will pay off by generating future growth – and also higher tax receipts with which to repay that borrowing.
But spending watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has downgraded the UK’s GDP growth outlook from 2% to 1.8% in 2026, and to 1.5% in 2027 and 2028. The OBR’s forecast of slower growth highlights the impact of the £40 billion of tax increases, which dampens economic activity.
This underscores the government’s challenge of investing to grow while at the same having to raise taxes to balance the books when it comes to its daily spending. In particular, the OBR’s assessment of slowing growth towards the middle of this parliament raises questions about how long it will take for the investment-fuelled growth to materialise.
It may be that five years is still too short a period. Many physical investments require planning and those reforms could also take a while. Moreover, getting investment projects under way requires scoping, and private investors will want time to assess before joining the government in energy projects.
But this budget is certainly a start on a much-needed growth strategy.
Good news on public investment – emerging industries could benefit
Phil Tomlinson, Professor of Industrial Strategy, University of Bath
The key budget change related to the chancellor’s fiscal rules. By redefining how public debt is calculated, Reeves has been able to increase public investment by around £100 billion. The new fiscal rules have gone not as far as some economists have advocated – but they are a welcome step in the right direction.
Investment was the core focus of the budget. For decades, the UK has suffered from low investment and weak productivity compared to other leading economies. Since 1990, the UK’s investment gap with the average across rich countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has been around £35 billion a year – the UK now ranks 28th of 31 OECD countries on business investment. British workers are using outdated kit and so are less productive. This has meant a stagnant economy and lower living standards.
So, the budget’s plans to boost investment in the UK’s crumbling infrastructure and public services and to support the new industrial strategy are a positive move. The latter should see additional funding to support emerging tech industries, such as artificial intelligence, cyber and clean energy. And this public investment should “crowd in” additional private investment.
In the long run, these investments should pay for themselves. For instance, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that a sustained increase in public investment of 1% of GDP increases that GDP by 0.5% after five years and more than 2% after ten to 15 years.
The rise in employer national insurance contributions will increase business’s operating costs, especially those in the care and hospitality sectors. But paradoxically, in the long run, it may encourage some businesses (in sectors where it is feasible) to invest in new labour-saving capital equipment.
Karen Bloor receives funding from the NIHR policy research programme to conduct responsive analysis for the Department of Health and Social Care,
Phil Tomlinson receives funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for Made Smarter Innovation: Centre for People-Led Digitalisation.
Rachel Scarfe is a member of the Labour Party.
Jonquil Lowe, Linda Yueh, and Shampa Roy-Mukherjee 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 Linda Yueh, Fellow in Economics/Adjunct Professor of Economics, University of Oxford
For the first time in 14 years, it was a Labour chancellor who delivered the UK budget. And for the first time ever, that chancellor was a woman. But Rachel Reeves faces an almighty task: plugging a £40 billion spending gap in the knowledge that pre-election promises not to raise the main taxes are still fresh in people’s memories.
Growth was the buzzword of the election campaign – Reeves now had to lay her cards on the table. So here’s what our panel of experts made of the plans:
More challenges for employers and small businesses
Shampa Roy-Mukherjee, Associate Professor in Economics, University of East London
The budget introduces £40 billion in tax hikes and, in some areas, spending cuts that will put pressure on the economy and business in particular. But it also reflects the government’s focus on economic growth, with policies intended to stabilise finances while addressing some of the concerns of small businesses.
The chancellor has retained her commitment to preserve the rates of income tax, employee national insurance and VAT. But a notable change is the increase in employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs) from 13.8% to 15%.
There was also a reduction in the secondary threshold, which is the amount at which the employer starts paying NI on each employee, from £9,100 to £5,000. Altogether this will raise £25 billion annually but will significantly impact many businesses that will now face higher wage bills.
The national living wage is also rising by 6.7% to £12.21 per hour in April 2025, boosting incomes for about three million workers but again increasing costs for many businesses. These rising taxes and wage increases, alongside incoming employment regulations, will strain businesses, particularly in sectors with high labour demands.
To offset some of these pressures, the employment allowance, which allows some smaller employers to reduce their NICs, has been raised from £5,000 to £10,500. The chancellor said that over 1 million employers will not see their NICs bill rise as a result.
Small businesses in retail, hospitality and leisure, where profits have been hit as consumers struggle with the cost of living, will benefit from a 40% business rate relief on properties up to £110,000. Other supportive measures include a continued freeze on fuel duty, which will aid logistics and transport costs. Corporation tax remains fixed at 25%.
Higher wages for three million, but it could cost more to get the bus to work
The biggest change for those on low incomes was an increase in the national minimum wage (for 18 to 20-year-olds) of 16.3%, from £8.60 to £10 an hour, and an increase in the national living wage (for employees aged 21 and over) of 6.7%, from £11.44 to £12.21, from April 2025. This will lead to a pay rise for more than 3 million workers.
Business associations warn that this will cause job losses, particularly in hospitality and the care sector, where many employees earn the minimum wage. But a large body of research has not found a negative effect of minimum wages on employment.
There is some evidence that earlier minimum wage rises caused an increase in the number of zero-hours contracts in social care, as firms tried other ways to reduce wages. However, the new employment rights bill introduced earlier in October would limit the use of zero-hours contracts in this scenario.
The budget could have an indirect effect on pay packets though. The effect of the change to employer NICs will be greater in sectors with more low-paid workers, such as hospitality, and employer associations have warned that it will risk jobs. There is also some evidence that in the long term, firms pass some of these costs on to employees by reducing their wages.
However, the minimum wage increase will reduce the capacity for firms to reduce wages. And any long-term effect would also be offset by lower income taxes that will come after 2028 when the chancellor has said she will increase the threshold at which people starting paying tax.
So if wages and profits fall because of increased contributions, then the amount Reeves raises will be lower than expected, because income and corporation tax receipts will be hit.
Another indirect factor affecting incomes is the cost of getting to work. The fuel duty freeze will continue, but the bus fare cap will increase from £2 to £3. Lower-paid workers and jobseekers are much more likely to use the bus than those with higher incomes, who are more likely to drive, but the cost of bus travel increased much more than the cost of train travel or petrol over the last parliament.
The fare cap reversed some of this increase, and some evidence shows that it led to more people travelling by bus. But the new £3 cap will only last until the end of 2025, which may be too soon to see much effect.
A downpayment on growth – but probably not quickly
Linda Yueh, Adjunct Professor of Economics, University of Oxford
The chancellor declared that the government will “invest, invest, invest”. This is an important enabler of economic growth.
But, the country’s creditors need reassuring, so Reeves also announced two new fiscal rules that aim to achieve that balance of allowing the government to borrow to invest (and generate growth), but not to pay for day-to-day spending.
Specifically, the investment rule permits borrowing to invest and the stability rule requires day-to-day spending to be paid for by taxes. Both rules support the government’s growth aims while trying to reassure the country’s creditors that the borrowing will pay off by generating future growth – and also higher tax receipts with which to repay that borrowing.
But spending watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has downgraded the UK’s GDP growth outlook from 2% to 1.8% in 2026, and to 1.5% in 2027 and 2028. The OBR’s forecast of slower growth highlights the impact of the £40 billion of tax increases, which dampens economic activity.
This underscores the government’s challenge of investing to grow while at the same having to raise taxes to balance the books when it comes to its daily spending. In particular, the OBR’s assessment of slowing growth towards the middle of this parliament raises questions about how long it will take for the investment-fuelled growth to materialise.
It may be that five years is still too short a period. Many physical investments require planning and those reforms could also take a while. Moreover, getting investment projects under way requires scoping, and private investors will want time to assess before joining the government in energy projects.
But this budget is certainly a start on a much-needed growth strategy.
Good news on public investment – emerging industries could benefit
Phil Tomlinson, Professor of Industrial Strategy, University of Bath
The key budget change related to the chancellor’s fiscal rules. By redefining how public debt is calculated, Reeves has been able to increase public investment by around £100 billion. The new fiscal rules have gone not as far as some economists have advocated – but they are a welcome step in the right direction.
Investment was the core focus of the budget. For decades, the UK has suffered from low investment and weak productivity compared to other leading economies. Since 1990, the UK’s investment gap with the average across rich countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has been around £35 billion a year – the UK now ranks 28th of 31 OECD countries on business investment. British workers are using outdated kit and so are less productive. This has meant a stagnant economy and lower living standards.
So, the budget’s plans to boost investment in the UK’s crumbling infrastructure and public services and to support the new industrial strategy are a positive move. The latter should see additional funding to support emerging tech industries, such as artificial intelligence, cyber and clean energy. And this public investment should “crowd in” additional private investment.
In the long run, these investments should pay for themselves. For instance, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that a sustained increase in public investment of 1% of GDP increases that GDP by 0.5% after five years and more than 2% after ten to 15 years.
The rise in employer national insurance contributions will increase business’s operating costs, especially those in the care and hospitality sectors. But paradoxically, in the long run, it may encourage some businesses (in sectors where it is feasible) to invest in new labour-saving capital equipment.
The NHS gets a cash injection – but it may not go that far
Karen Bloor, Professor of Health Economics and Policy, University of York
Amid all the gloomy pre-budget talk of tough choices and economic problems, would the government’s plans to improve the NHS cheer up the country (England, at least)? Not entirely.
On the plus side, the chancellor promised a generous spending increase of £22.6 billion in the year 2025 to 2026, with £3.1 billion on capital investment. But solving the problems of the NHS is not just about money, and there will be difficult decisions to come.
Meanwhile, increases in employers’ national insurance contributions, while raising funds, will also have a big impact on the NHS, which employs over 1.5 million people. So the additional spending may be less than it appears.
The new government has said it has three main priorities for healthcare in England: moving care from hospitals to the community, moving resources from treatment to prevention, and changing systems from analogue to digital. None of these ideas are new, and there are good reasons why they haven’t happened already.
Expanding primary and community care often does not translate into reduced demand for hospital services – in fact, it can do the opposite, by uncovering previously unmet needs. And successive governments have failed to address long-standing problems in social care, which is crucial to addressing pressures on the NHS. A successful NHS means people living longer, but often with long-term health problems.
Returns on investment in preventing illness can be substantial, but they vary widely, and can be difficult to achieve. This is particularly true when it comes to interventions needing individual behaviour change, such as increasing exercise or cutting down on alcohol. Even when clearly positive, they take a very long time to generate cost savings.
And there are other aspects of the chancellor’s plans which could arguably harm public health. Abolition of winter fuel payments for example, could affect the health of older people on low incomes.
Rising bus fares could affect people’s ability to attend appointments, and the controversial two-child benefit cap, which can affect child health remains in place.
Finally, while technology should improve the efficiency of services, people need care from people. Capital investment – in scanners, radiotherapy machines and diagnostics – will need to be matched by the cost of the professionals who operate them and interpret their findings.
More reaction to be published soon.
Karen Bloor receives funding from the NIHR policy research programme to conduct responsive analysis for the Department of Health and Social Care,
Phil Tomlinson receives funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for Made Smarter Innovation: Centre for People-Led Digitalisation.
Rachel Scarfe is a member of the Labour Party.
Jonquil Lowe, Linda Yueh, and Shampa Roy-Mukherjee 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.
Hollywood actor Luke Evans writes candidly in his memoir about his experience growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness – and having to deal with religious and homophobic prejudice.
Evans describes a childhood where he was taunted by peers as a “Bible-basher”, and how he endured homophobic bullying. He writes:
I was bullied for being gay before I even understood what it meant. The worst nickname was “Jovey Bender”, because it combined two aspects of my identity that could never be reconciled. It wasn’t possible to be a “Jovey” and a “Bender” because being gay was strictly forbidden by the religion.
As an academic who works on religion and sexualities, my latest research focuses on gay ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses, known for their door-knocking evangelising, pique interest because of the closed nature of their group. They are a fundamentalist and apocalyptic religious group organised into congregations, overseen by male elders – women are not permitted to be elders.
They refer to their beliefs and teachings as “the Truth”. There is a governing body, known as The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, which establishes all doctrine.
Condemnation
The Jehovah’s Witnesses have a distinctive social world. It’s an exclusive religious group that tries to set itself apart from contemporary society and culture. Research refers to Jehovah’s Witnesses as a “high cost” religious group, which means it demands a high level of obedience from its followers – and homosexuality is condemned.
Evans’s interview follows two other memoirs by gay ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses. In 2020, Mendez’s semi-aut0-biographical book Rainbow Milk was released to critical acclaim. Three years later, Daniel Allen Cox’s memoir detailed the ways growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness shaped him: “I spent eighteen years in a group that taught me to hate myself. You cannot be queer and a Jehovah’s Witness – it’s one or the other.”
Cox has a point. The reason these gay men are considered ex-Witnesses is that technically, one cannot be LGBTQ+ and a Jehovah’s Witness. As the official means of sharing Jehovah’s Witness beliefs, the magazine The Watchtower explains:
They gladly conduct Bible studies with homosexuals so these can learn Jehovah’s requirements, and such persons may attend meetings of the Witnesses to listen, but no one who continues to practice homosexuality can be one of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Evans’s interview recounts how he was terrified to go door knocking with his parents, in case one of his school bullies answered and hurled abuse at him. The teachings from the Witnesses affected his wellbeing. He recounts:
Every night in the congregation they read scriptures saying terrible things about the way I was feeling and who I was possibly turning into. All that was in my head was: if I don’t sort this out, I’m going to lose my mum and dad. I’m going to lose everything I’ve ever known and I’m also going to die at Armageddon, so I’m giving myself a death sentence unless I sort this out.
Importance of ex-member testimony
The only documented experiences we have about growing up LGBTQ+ as a Jehovah’s Witness comes from former members, like Evans, who have left – or been forced to leave.
But there’s a double bind here. There is a history of resistance to accounts from those who have been forced to leave, often referred to as “apostates” by the Witnesses. Ex-member testimony has often – and wrongly, I argue – been discredited among scholars of religion, as I highlight in my recent research.
Most importantly for LGBTQ+ people, ex-member testimony is the only glimpse we get into the effect of religious teaching that is hostile to non-heterosexual identities.
For LGBTQI+ former Witnesses, biography and memoir is a tool that allows them to write themselves into existence. Others, who are negotiating or navigating an exit from a high-cost religion, need these stories to help make sense of their own lives and experiences.
Making an exit
The method of exit is important. The terms “disfellowshipping”, “disassociation”, and “fading” represent different methods of exiting a religious organisation. Disfellowshipping involves the forced removal of a congregation member, often resulting in their ostracism and shunning by the community.
Jehovah’s Witness teachings describe disfellowshipping as a “loving provision” that “protects the clean, Christian congregation”.
Disassociation is when a Witness voluntarily resigns from the organisation, typically through a formal written request. For LGBTQ+ people, disfellowshipping or disassociation often leads to being labelled as “sexually immoral”, resulting in their expulsion and subsequent shunning by the congregation, including their close friends and family.
In contrast, fading is a more gradual and discreet approach, allowing Witnesses to distance themselves without going through the formal processes of disfellowshipping or disassociation. This method can be especially important for those who wish to maintain relationships with family and friends still involved in the organisation, as it does not involve an official removal.
Exit – forced or voluntary – for LGBTQ+ former Witnesses results in a number of vulnerabilities relating to housing, finance, emotional and psychological distress among other risks to wellbeing. Psychologists, such as Heather Ransom, have researched the cumulative effect on wellbeing for those who leave the Jehovah’s Witnesses, describing this process as “grief”.
In an interview with the Guardian, Evans recounts how he didn’t see a viable option in reconciling his faith and sexuality. This sentiment underpins the urgency for research about how strict, conservative religious frameworks can stifle personal identity, especially for children and young people who are LGBTQ+.
Chris Greenough 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.
All young people need to have access to high-quality climate education because, when not overwhelming, emotional engagement with the climate crisis can motivate action.
We recently surveyed more than 2,400 school students aged 11-14 in England about their views on climate change and sustainability education. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds were less likely to experience negative emotions related to climate change. Children from more advantaged backgrounds were more likely to want to learn about climate change and sustainability, to want to do more to look after the environment and to believe that adults are doing enough to look after the planet.
The variation in climate literacy and educational opportunities demonstrated through our survey is highly concerning. These inequalities are particularly concerning as children from disadvantaged backgrounds are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. But these children’s limited capacity to engage with climate issues is also understandable considering the state of child poverty in the UK and the more immediate challenges they are probably facing.
Much has been written about young people’s fears about the climate crisis and the associated mental health effects. We know far less about how to introduce these challenging topics to children who are less engaged. How can we reach these young people so they’re not isolated or sent into a panic, but empowered to act? Our research suggests that schools are a critical place to start.
In our survey, students of all socio-economic backgrounds told us that they learned about climate change and sustainability in secondary school. Conversely, children from disadvantaged backgrounds were less likely to have learned about these topics in the news and media, from their families and from extracurricular activities.
These findings are somewhat unsurprising given the algorithms limiting engagement with online content that challenges our existing perspectives. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds also experience many barriers to participating in nature-based activities outside school. These include lack of availability, cultural exclusion and safety concerns.
A chance for change
Based on our survey and earlier research (for example, the pioneering work of psychology professor Maria Ojala), we have identified three ways that schools can address inequalities to reach and connect with all children to deliver quality climate and sustainability education.
First, the education sector should include climate and sustainability learning within a broader range of subjects. Climate change intersects with nearly all aspects of our lives. Therefore, all school subjects offer unique learning opportunities.
If climate and sustainability education was integrated throughout the formal and informal curriculum, children could learn about the issues as part of the subjects that most interest them.
A hybrid nature craft tree incorporating nature products, paper leaves, and circuitry. Andrea Gauthier, CC BY-NC-ND
For example, our colleagues at UCL are developing a new type of crafting activity in schools. It involves combining materials from nature and paper circuits which bring nature to life through light. Through integrating nature, technology and art, these hybrid nature crafts align with many subjects and could appeal to children of all ages.
We must also develop emotionally responsive teaching practices. Building climate awareness is emotionally challenging, particularly for children with little prior knowledge of the issues. It can also be emotionally draining for teachers.
Time for emotional reflection should be included in lesson plans. Students should be encouraged to share their emotions, be it sadness, anxiety or anger. These are valid and natural responses when learning about climate change.
Creative practices can encourage emotional engagement with climate learning. For example, arts-based activities and storytelling. Our research found that students felt happier with their life, spent more time outdoors and were more optimistic about the future after taking part in arts-in-nature experiences.
Schools should also give students opportunities to combat the climate crisis and other environmental issues. This supports their sense of agency which is critical to motivating action. Engaging students in collective action can be particularly effective for empowering them and instilling hope.
In our survey, one student highlighted the benefits of whole-school projects for climate and sustainability education. She said that “a whole community feels more empowered when they know everyone is working towards a goal and therefore, it helps [us] understand the depth of global warming and the long-term and short-term changes we can make.”
However, a word of caution. Limiting climate action to activities that don’t challenge existing power structures (through recycling or buying eco-friendly products, for example) does not go far enough. Instead, we advocate for transformative actions that encourage students to critically evaluate the norms and practices around them. This could include partnerships with local organisations, student-driven whole-school approaches and political activism.
It is essential that schools provide high-quality climate and sustainability education that engages all students and avoids causing disengagement and despair. The strategies we’ve outlined here will help schools do so, thereby equipping the next generation with the skills, knowledge and agency to tackle climate change.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
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.
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are promising big initiatives if elected: tax cuts (and hikes), lots of giveaways, and major pieces of legislation bearing on issues such as abortion, healthcare, the environment and foreign military assistance. Regardless of who wins the presidency, the one thing all these items have in common? They can’t pass without Congress, which comprises the House of Representatives (the lower body) and the Senate (the upper body).
The Senate is currently controlled by Democrats, 51 to 49, while Republicans hold a majority in the House of Representatives, 220 to 212. Website FiveThirtyEight, which aggregates polls, forecasts that the Republicans are far more likely to win the Senate 2024. In the House, the race is expected to be much closer.
Given the numbers, it’s the Senate that most worries Democrats and excites Republicans. Democrats are likely to lose representation in Republican-leaning West Virginia, and could lose additional seats in Ohio, Montana, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. There’s a chance for Democrats to pick up seats in Florida and Texas, but both races are still trending Republican.
Who wins the Senate could constrain the next president, if the party of opposition is in control. In the Senate, the filibuster, a tactic to delay or block legislation, can make it hard to enact many new laws with a simple majority (51 votes). In theory, a simple majority is enough to pass a bill, but if a Senator introduces a filibuster, an extra 60 votes are needed to override it and stop debate so a vote on legislation can be held.
Still, just having a Senate majority is crucial, particularly if there is a tie-breaking vote. (The vice-president is president of the Senate and only has a vote if the vote is tied).
Here are four key ways in which who wins the Senate matters.
1. Legislative agenda
Both the Harris and Trump campaigns have laid out sweeping proposals, especially for the economy, much of which will require Senate backing. While a filibuster-proof 60 votes is usually needed to pass laws, a special process called “budget reconciliation” can (with the consent of the official in charge of the rules, the Senate parliamentarian) be used to approve some budgets – relating to specific tax, spending and debt bills – with a minimum of a tie-breaking majority.
Harris’s plan focuses on building what she calls an “opportunity economy,” which includes US$25,000 (£19,200) in down-payment assistance for first-time homebuyers, US$6,000 tax credits for families with newborns, and federal bans against excessive prices for food and other groceries. Harris has also pledged to raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, and floated taxing unrealised gains – such as the appreciation in equities, real estate and other assets – for the very rich, a 25% minimum tax on total income exceeding US$100 million.
What is the filibuster?
Trump’s economic blueprint includes making his 2017 tax cuts permanent. He’s called for the elimination of taxes on tips, overtime, and social security benefits. Additionally, Trump has vowed to slash the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%. Perhaps Trump’s most consequential economic proposal – imposing 10-20% tariffs on all imports into the US and 60% tariffs on goods from China – could be done unilaterally without Congress.
2. Supreme Court
Some of the biggest battles over the next four years are likely to be fought in, and over, the federal judicial system. The Senate must consent to Supreme Court appointments. During his first term, Trump pushed through three court appointments – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – which helped solidify a six-three conservative supermajority on the bench. Biden named one justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson.
While no justice has signalled an intent to step down soon, either Trump or Harris could have the opportunity – planned or unplanned – to install one or more new justices. The two oldest-serving members of the court are conservatives Clarence Thomas, 76, and Samuel Alito, 74. For Republicans, the next presidential term could offer an opportunity to cement a right-leaning bench for decades to come.
If Trump wins and the Senate goes Republican, there will be pressure from conservative corners for the older right-leaning justices to retire and to replace them with young blood. By contrast, if Harris wins and the Democrats control the tiebreak, they could begin to redirect a court that’s been drifting rightward for years.
3. Future of the filibuster
Left-wing Congress members have advocated for ending the filibuster throughout President Joe Biden’s term. This “nuclear” option would mean doing away with a Senate rule, which was used in the first Congress in 1789. Ending the filibuster would signal an all-out partisan war that would have wide-ranging ramifications on Capitol Hill not only for the next presidency, but further into the future.
The filibuster has already been diluted in recent years by both Democrats and Republicans. In 2013, Democrats removed the 60-vote threshold to confirm many executive branch nominations, a move they said was necessary due to Republican blockading. In 2017, Republicans responded by killing the filibuster over Supreme Court appointments.
If elected, Harris has indicated that she would support ending the filibuster to reinstate reproductive rights that were eliminated after the overturning of Roe v Wade. However, she has talked little about the issue since becoming the Democratic nominee for president. It’s also unclear that more centrist Democrats would support the move.
4. Foreign policy
While there’s bipartisan support in Washington for both aiding Israel’s military and taking a “tough on China” approach, the incoming Senate will be essential in determining if the US approves additional funds to Ukraine.
One important, but less-discussed, issue that may also arise before the Senate is the ratification of a defence pact between the US and Saudi Arabia. Both the Trump and Biden administrations have envisioned a Saudi-Israel deal normalising relations between the two countries, with a US security pact for Saudi Arabia to back the agreement.
Any future treaty would require a two-thirds Senate majority, a high bar to clear. Twenty Democratic senators raised concerns to Biden about the potential deal in 2023, while Republican senators voted to block Trump’s proposed armed sales to the Saudis in 2019.
Both at home and abroad, it’s not just who wins the White House that will determine the political trajectory of the United States. Races in the Senate could have far-reaching implications under either a President Harris or President Trump.
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.
Transcranial direction current stimulation may help improve depression symptoms in hard-to-treat cases.ArtemisDiana/ Shutterstock
Up to a third of people diagnosed with depression do not respond to antidepressants or therapy.
In such cases, patients may be prescribed neuromodulation therapy, which modulates brain activity in order to reduce depression symptoms. One promising form of neuromodulation therapy that researchers are investigating is transcranial direction current stimulation (tDCS).
Transcranial direct current stimulation delivers a weak electrical current to the brain through electrodes that are held to the head by a band or strap. This changes the excitability of the brain tissue located beneath the electrodes. Reducing the excitability of overactive areas and increasing the excitability in underactive areas, especially in regions connected to emotion, can help to improve depression symptoms.
TDCS is a safe, effective treatment, which, in some studies, has been shown to help patients achieve remission and stay symptom-free for up to a month. However, previous clinical trials of tDCS have required patients to visit a clinic or hospital in order to receive the treatment, despite the equipment being quite portable.
But a recent randomised controlled trial has now shown that tDCS – which was delivered by the patient in their own home with online virtual support – can lead to significant reductions in depression.
To conduct their study, the researchers recruited 174 patients in the UK and US who had been diagnosed with major depressive disorder. Around 63% of these participants had been classed with having treatment-resistant depression.
Half the participants received an at-home tDCS treatment. This was delivered for 30 minutes a day, five times a week for three weeks to begin with. Then, they dropped down to three sessions per week for seven weeks. Because these sessions were carried out in the patient’s own home with remote support, this meant no doctor or nurse visits were required.
The other half of the patients were in a control group. These participants were given a sham condition, where they wore the electrode strap but did not receive any electrical stimulation.
After the initial ten-week study, patients in the tDCS group were give the option to continue receiving the treatment three times a week. Those in the sham condition were also offered the active protocol.
The at-home treatment was generally well tolerated. There were only a few reports of adverse reactions (mainly linked to irritation around the stimulation site).
Patients in both groups filled out a depression assessment scale at the start and end of the study. This assessment asks patients a series of questions, then provides them a score.
Any score above ten indicates depression. Both the active tDCS and sham groups improved – however the active tDCS group’s scores decreased significantly more, showing an over a two-point decrease in depression scores compared to the control group.
Neuromodulation therapies
This study has found home-based tDCS shows enormous promise as a cost-effective, convenient and safe means of providing treatment to patients with treatment-resistant depression.
This gives it an advantage over other forms of neuromodulation therapy – such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). TMS modulates brain activity by delivering magnetic pulses via an electromagnetic coil held to the skull.
TMS is shown to be effective 50% of the time for patients with treatment-resistant depression when paired with psychotherapy. But a downside of TMS therapy is that it can only be delivered in a clinic or hospital with patients needing to have 30-minute treatments at least five times a week for up to six weeks for TMS to have any effect.
Transcranial direct current stimulation therapy also has significantly fewer side-effects compared to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) which also passes an electric current through the brain. ECT is also far more invasive than tDCS as it requires anaesthesia to perform. In contrast, tDCS passes a weak electrical current through two points of contact in the brain.
However, the authors raise an important point relating to the treatment-resistant status of some of the participants.
Patients that had a history of depression and had been resistant to three or more therapies were excluded from the study. This means future studies will need to investigate the threshold of efficacy when it comes to at-home tDCS – and whether it can also work for patients with more severe forms of treatment-resistant depression.
Another factor that will be important for future studies to investigate is whether the patient’s at-home environment and social support network affect the efficacy of the treatment. The next steps for researchers will be to take into account the variability of why depression occurs, how it manifests itself as well as the differences in terms of acceptance and how it’s dealt with.
It will also be important for future studies to account for the physiological differences related to age, sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and many other factors that can influence the progression of depression.
Still, this study has shown that at-home tDCS delivery leads to significant improvements in mood for people diagnosed with depression who have failed to respond to other treatments.
Amanda Ellison 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.
Here they come: an apron and tattoos that make you look like chef Carmy from The Bear, or weird insect-like accessories resembling the infamous Paris Fashion Week bedbugs – new year, new over-the-top inventive Halloween trends. Thanks to the proliferation of social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, we’re in for a treat for this year’s online Halloween extravaganza.
What used to be a traditional holiday celebrated with reverence by the people remembering the religious meaning of All Hallow’s Eve, or simply an excuse for phantasmagorical parties by those who didn’t, Halloween is now exhibiting a whole new digital layer.
Last year, the hashtag #Halloween was viewed three billion times in a week. We live in a time of “information fatigue”, “information anxiety” or even “infobesity”, as some academics call our oversaturated media environment, with plentiful, often unpleasant stimuli coming from the news and social media.
No one’s 20s and 30s look the same. You might be saving for a mortgage or just struggling to pay rent. You could be swiping dating apps, or trying to understand childcare. No matter your current challenges, our Quarter Life series has articles to share in the group chat, or just to remind you that you’re not alone.
All this badly affects our biological systems, which have not developed as fast as the media environment. As a result, we are overwhelmed, anxious, overstimulated and struggling with processing so much information. It is hard to cut through this noise, whether you’re a journalist, politician, influencer or just someone having fun in a pumpkin latte costume.
In my research on viral journalism, I discovered that even professional communicators struggle to keep up with the changes in social media algorithms and various new functions of these platforms. Many feel discouraged by the non-transparency of social media giants and prefer to rely on classic principles of strong reporting and creative presentation formats. But what are the triggers for media virality for those who still want their posts to explode online?
Not a virus, but a choice
Halloween, like St Valentine’s Day and other annual celebrations, presents a chance to be the new viral sensation, simply because using the hashtag #Halloween instantly grants additional visibility.
Virality stands on two pillars – the opaque algorithms of social networks, and people’s emotional reactions. Unlike viruses, from which the word “viral” originates, virality online is not a malady, but a choice. People instinctively choose content that will satisfy their needs. These can be having something to think about, or a distraction, so we don’t have to think about other things going on in the world.
Engagement with stories online is seldom rational – research has shown that emotions dominate our relationship with news and social media. The feelings of awe, anger and anxiety are the strongest predictors for a post to go viral.
So how, when creating content, do we achieve the coveted reaction of “awe”? This feeling can be described in a variety of ways, from a religious epiphany, to deep appreciation because we’re impressed, to the sense of calm experienced through nature. This is where the theory of memes can help.
Halloween costumes on social media are, essentially, wearable and broadcastable memes. These, as my book Internet Memes and Society explains, are half-baked jokes and weird cryptic artefacts that tempt users to figure out why they are supposed to be funny.
Memes are used as everyday language, political tools, and “fast-food” media. Will a costume based on Only Murders in the Buildings’ Christmas fitness influencer make it to viral stardom? Will it be another take on the brat summer? Or perhaps some twisted commentaries on the cost-of-living crisis?
Theories of humour and Halloween costumes
I predict that virality this season will demand either to go full-on maximalist, or be understated and minimalist. The theories of humour stand on three pillars: humour as release, humour as aggression, and humour as incongruity.
Perhaps we will also see the manifestations of what Plato called comedy as scorn: “Taken generally,” the ancient Greek philosopher mused, “the ridiculous is a certain kind of evil, specifically a vice.” Expect the highest-earning or most influential celebrities to be shoved off their pedestal and roundly mocked in a Halloween costume.
What about incongruity? Some of the more absurd costumes from last year featured a drink coaster and a paper bag, or a man dressed as a ULEZ street camera. These examples generate a reaction of awe, surprise and glee, making the posts worthy of sharing.
And finally, release. Humour is invaluable when it comes to dissipating worries or letting off steam. The recent viral sensation from the music band The Kiffness’ “Eating the cats” ft Donald Trump hilariously reimagined a phrase from the US presidential debate as a soft reggae hit – and a hit it has become, amassing eight million views in a matter of weeks.
This Halloween will surely see a couple of TikTokers dressed as cats, or dogs, or even “a catalogue of other things to eat”. Humour allows us to reveal the ridiculousness of certain political claims, and therefore serves as a soothing tool that unites people and challenges those in power through mockery.
Virality as modern mythology
Virality – memes included – forms the modern mythology. The media informs our collective identities and often the things we think about, which means the themes of this Halloween will most likely reveal what people are scared of as a way to release those fears.
Who will people mock because they feel intimidated by a particular public figure’s power, wealth, talent, influence, looks or profile (aggression). Or who or what do people find awe-inspiring or puzzling this year (incongruity)?
After all, Halloween is the one time of the year that reminds people of the medieval carnivals of the 14th century – the only time jesters and critics could come to the main square and have a go at the king. The digital carnival (as academics like myself sometimes call the digital mockery of the elites) is not limited to a specific time in the year.
The never-ending flow of ridicule, sarcasm and dressing up online never ceases to amaze viral studies academics. But the end of October sees a particular concentration of this subversion, attracting the attention of the digital crowds seeking to laugh at the rich, famous and powerful.
People form and negotiate cultural codes through viral cultures, by choosing what posts to share, like, and comment on. Through these interactions, valuable meanings and identities emerge, and it will be fascinating to see which meanings the collective beehive wants to focus on this Halloween 2024. Whether that’s Carmy Berzatto in his blue apron or the cats and dogs of Springfield.
Anastasia Denisova does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Linda Yueh, Fellow in Economics/Adjunct Professor of Economics, University of Oxford
For the first time in 14 years, it was a Labour chancellor who delivered the UK budget. And for the first time ever, that chancellor was a woman. But Rachel Reeves faces an almighty task: plugging a £40 billion spending gap in the knowledge that pre-election promises not to raise the main taxes are still fresh in people’s memories.
Growth was the buzzword of the election campaign – Reeves now had to lay her cards on the table. So here’s what our panel of experts made of the plans:
More challenges for employers and small businesses
Shampa Roy-Mukherjee, Associate Professor in Economics, University of East London
The budget introduces £40 billion in tax hikes and, in some areas, spending cuts that will put pressure on the economy and business in particular. But it also reflects the government’s focus on economic growth, with policies intended to stabilise finances while addressing some of the concerns of small businesses.
The chancellor has retained her commitment to preserve the rates of income tax, employee national insurance and VAT. But a notable change is the increase in employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs) from 13.8% to 15%.
There was also a reduction in the secondary threshold, which is the amount at which the employer starts paying NI on each employee, from £9,100 to £5,000. Altogether this will raise £25 billion annually but will significantly impact many businesses that will now face higher wage bills.
The national living wage is also rising by 6.7% to £12.21 per hour in April 2025, boosting incomes for about three million workers but again increasing costs for many businesses. These rising taxes and wage increases, alongside incoming employment regulations, will strain businesses, particularly in sectors with high labour demands.
To offset some of these pressures, the employment allowance, which allows some smaller employers to reduce their NICs, has been raised from £5,000 to £10,500. The chancellor said that over 1 million employers will not see their NICs bill rise as a result.
Small businesses in retail, hospitality and leisure, where profits have been hit as consumers struggle with the cost of living, will benefit from a 40% business rate relief on properties up to £110,000. Other supportive measures include a continued freeze on fuel duty, which will aid logistics and transport costs. Corporation tax remains fixed at 25%.
Higher wages for three million, but it could cost more to get the bus to work
Rachel Scarfe, Lecturer in Economics, University of Stirling
The biggest change for those on low incomes was an increase in the national minimum wage (for 18 to 20-year-olds) of 16.3%, from £8.60 to £10 an hour, and an increase in the national living wage (for employees aged 21 and over) of 6.7%, from £11.44 to £12.21, from April 2025. This will lead to a pay rise for more than 3 million workers.
Business associations warn that this will cause job losses, particularly in hospitality and the care sector, where many employees earn the minimum wage. But a large body of research has not found a negative effect of minimum wages on employment.
There is some evidence that earlier minimum wage rises caused an increase in the number of zero-hours contracts in social care, as firms tried other ways to reduce wages. However, the new employment rights bill introduced earlier in October would limit the use of zero-hours contracts in this scenario.
The budget could have an indirect effect on pay packets though. The effect of the change to employer NICs will be greater in sectors with more low-paid workers, such as hospitality, and employer associations have warned that it will risk jobs. There is also some evidence that in the long term, firms pass some of these costs on to employees by reducing their wages.
However, the minimum wage increase will reduce the capacity for firms to reduce wages. And any long-term effect would also be offset by lower income taxes that will come after 2028 when the chancellor has said she will increase the threshold at which people starting paying tax.
So if wages and profits fall because of increased contributions, then the amount Reeves raises will be lower than expected, because income and corporation tax receipts will be hit.
Another indirect factor affecting incomes is the cost of getting to work. The fuel duty freeze will continue, but the bus fare cap will increase from £2 to £3. Lower-paid workers and jobseekers are much more likely to use the bus than those with higher incomes, who are more likely to drive, but the cost of bus travel increased much more than the cost of train travel or petrol over the last parliament.
The fare cap reversed some of this increase, and some evidence shows that it led to more people travelling by bus. But the new £3 cap will only last until the end of 2025, which may be too soon to see much effect.
Jonquil Lowe, Senior Lecturer in Economics and Personal Finance, The Open University
As expected, the budget targeted several wealth taxes, including capital gains tax (CGT), which is charged on profits you make when you “dispose of” (sell or give away) an asset. The first slice of such profits (£3,000 in 2024-25) is tax-free. Profit above that is added to your income to determine what rate will apply: a lower rate for profit covered by the basic income tax rate band and a higher rate on anything more.
Reeves announced that CGT rates on financial assets – things like shares – will immediately increase from 10% to 18% (for the lower rate) and from 18% to 24% (for the higher rate). Financial assets account for around 85% of all disposals within the scope of CGT, but only around 350,000 people a year pay the tax.
This brings the rates on financial assets into line with residential property, such as a second home. (There is no CGT when you sell or give away your only or main home.) But this still leaves wealth taxed less heavily than income.
The government says it is committed to tackling the UK’s housing shortage. So to deter multiple home ownership, it has raised stamp duty for people buying a second (or third or fourth) home. Purchases completed will now incur an extra 5% tax (currently 3%) over and above the normal stamp duty rates.
There were also changes to inheritance tax (IHT). Pension savings left unused at death have in recent years been passed on tax free. But from April 2027, the savings will count as part of the estate and be subject to IHT at a rate of up to 40%.
The first slice of the estate a person leaves, called the nil-rate band, is IHT-free, and that band has been frozen at £325,000 since 2010. Reeves extended the freeze until April 2030.
As a result of these changes, the government expects almost 6% of estates to pay IHT this year, up from fewer than 5% in recent years. People in London and the south east are more likely to be IHT-payers, largely due to higher property values in those areas.
A downpayment on growth – but probably not quickly
Linda Yueh, Adjunct Professor of Economics, University of Oxford
The chancellor declared that the government will “invest, invest, invest”. This is an important enabler of economic growth.
But, the country’s creditors need reassuring, so Reeves also announced two new fiscal rules that aim to achieve that balance of allowing the government to borrow to invest (and generate growth), but not to pay for day-to-day spending.
Specifically, the investment rule permits borrowing to invest and the stability rule requires day-to-day spending to be paid for by taxes. Both rules support the government’s growth aims while trying to reassure the country’s creditors that the borrowing will pay off by generating future growth – and also higher tax receipts with which to repay that borrowing.
But spending watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has downgraded the UK’s GDP growth outlook from 2% to 1.8% in 2026, and to 1.5% in 2027 and 2028. The OBR’s forecast of slower growth highlights the impact of the £40 billion of tax increases, which dampens economic activity.
This underscores the government’s challenge of investing to grow while at the same having to raise taxes to balance the books when it comes to its daily spending. In particular, the OBR’s assessment of slowing growth towards the middle of this parliament raises questions about how long it will take for the investment-fuelled growth to materialise.
It may be that five years is still too short a period. Many physical investments require planning and those reforms could also take a while. Moreover, getting investment projects under way requires scoping, and private investors will want time to assess before joining the government in energy projects.
But this budget is certainly a start on a much-needed growth strategy.
Good news on public investment – emerging industries could benefit
Phil Tomlinson, Professor of Industrial Strategy, University of Bath
The key budget change related to the chancellor’s fiscal rules. By redefining how public debt is calculated, Reeves has been able to increase public investment by around £100 billion. The new fiscal rules have gone not as far as some economists have advocated – but they are a welcome step in the right direction.
Investment was the core focus of the budget. For decades, the UK has suffered from low investment and weak productivity compared to other leading economies. Since 1990, the UK’s investment gap with the average across rich countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has been around £35 billion a year – the UK now ranks 28th of 31 OECD countries on business investment. British workers are using outdated kit and so are less productive. This has meant a stagnant economy and lower living standards.
So, the budget’s plans to boost investment in the UK’s crumbling infrastructure and public services and to support the new industrial strategy are a positive move. The latter should see additional funding to support emerging tech industries, such as artificial intelligence, cyber and clean energy. And this public investment should “crowd in” additional private investment.
In the long run, these investments should pay for themselves. For instance, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that a sustained increase in public investment of 1% of GDP increases that GDP by 0.5% after five years and more than 2% after ten to 15 years.
The rise in employer national insurance contributions will increase business’s operating costs, especially those in the care and hospitality sectors. But paradoxically, in the long run, it may encourage some businesses (in sectors where it is feasible) to invest in new labour-saving capital equipment.
The NHS gets a cash injection – but it may not go that far
Karen Bloor, Professor of Health Economics and Policy, University of York
Amid all the gloomy pre-budget talk of tough choices and economic problems, would the government’s plans to improve the NHS cheer up the country (England, at least)? Not entirely.
On the plus side, the chancellor promised a generous spending increase of £22.6 billion in the year 2025 to 2026, with £3.1 billion on capital investment. But solving the problems of the NHS is not just about money, and there will be difficult decisions to come.
Meanwhile, increases in employers’ national insurance contributions, while raising funds, will also have a big impact on the NHS, which employs over 1.5 million people. So the additional spending may be less than it appears.
The new government has said it has three main priorities for healthcare in England: moving care from hospitals to the community, moving resources from treatment to prevention, and changing systems from analogue to digital. None of these ideas are new, and there are good reasons why they haven’t happened already.
Expanding primary and community care often does not translate into reduced demand for hospital services – in fact, it can do the opposite, by uncovering previously unmet needs. And successive governments have failed to address long-standing problems in social care, which is crucial to addressing pressures on the NHS. A successful NHS means people living longer, but often with long-term health problems.
Returns on investment in preventing illness can be substantial, but they vary widely, and can be difficult to achieve. This is particularly true when it comes to interventions needing individual behaviour change, such as increasing exercise or cutting down on alcohol. Even when clearly positive, they take a very long time to generate cost savings.
And there are other aspects of the chancellor’s plans which could arguably harm public health. Abolition of winter fuel payments for example, could affect the health of older people on low incomes.
Rising bus fares could affect people’s ability to attend appointments, and the controversial two-child benefit cap, which can affect child health remains in place.
Finally, while technology should improve the efficiency of services, people need care from people. Capital investment – in scanners, radiotherapy machines and diagnostics – will need to be matched by the cost of the professionals who operate them and interpret their findings.
Karen Bloor receives funding from the NIHR policy research programme to conduct responsive analysis for the Department of Health and Social Care,
Phil Tomlinson receives funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for Made Smarter Innovation: Centre for People-Led Digitalisation.
Rachel Scarfe is a member of the Labour Party.
Jonquil Lowe, Linda Yueh, and Shampa Roy-Mukherjee 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 Larisa Yarovaya, Director of the Centre for Digital Finance, Associate Professor in Finance, University of Southampton
Crypto traders are waiting anxiously to see whether it will be the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, or his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, who will be sitting in the White House come January 2025.
Harris leads Trump by a slender margin in the national polling averages, but some betting markets have Trump as the favourite to win. According to election gambling site Polymarket, the chance of Trump winning the election is 67% at the time of writing.
These odds will certainly be welcomed by cryptocurrency investors. Trump has previously shown support for crypto, most notably at a Bitcoin conference in Nashville in July, where he vowed to turn the US into the “crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world”.
Indeed, Bitcoin’s price approached a three-month high in October in anticipation of a Trump victory. And cryptocurrency investors believe Bitcoin’s price could surge again, reaching a new high if Trump wins.
It may well be an opportune moment to invest in crypto. But cryptocurrency markets are notorious for their volatility and are prone to several behavioural anomalies that any prospective investor should be aware of.
1. Momentum and reversal effects
Buying crypto stocks that have recently performed well and short selling (selling shares that are falling in value, and then buying them back later at a reduced price) those that have performed poorly is often considered a potentially profitable strategy.
When buying high-performing stocks, investors anticipate that the positive trend will continue, leading to further price increases. And, in the same vein, investors expect prices to continue declining when short selling those that are performing badly. In crypto circles, as well as in finance more generally, this is called the momentum effect.
However, finance theories suggest that the complete opposite strategy can, in some instances, yield even better returns. Stocks that are performing well could also be seen as close to exhausting their growth potential, suggesting that a decline is likely to follow.
So, some investors may instead buy poorly performing stocks in the expectation that their price will rebound. This strategy, which is called the reversal effect, aims to generate substantial profits as the market corrects itself.
By targeting poorly performing cryptocurrencies, large investors in particular can help increase liquidity for these assets. Liquidity can be measured simply by trading volume – the more active traders there are in the market, the easier it is to buy or sell the asset. This should enable greater growth potential.
Bitcoin is performing well in anticipation of a Trump victory. But amateur investors should be aware that larger institutional investors may employ different tactics. It is also important to consider that even robust-looking trends can be reversed at any moment.
2. Salience and recency biases
Events like a US presidential election attract the attention of investors, partly due to something called salience bias. Various studies suggest that crypto investors, in particular, tend to focus on a prominent event or a piece of information that is emotionally striking.
Rational investment decisions should be based on a balanced assessment of the risk and return of investment assets. But, during an election, crypto investors’ attention is likely to be narrowly focused on polling data or media coverage of the candidates.
For newer and less mature markets like cryptocurrency, a reliance on easily accessible information is more common than conducting sophisticated analysis of the underlying financial metrics or economic indicators (fundamentals). This is risky, as all other less prominent yet important information can be easily ignored.
The history of cryptocurrency shows numerous collapses, demonstrating the vulnerability of cryptocurrency as an asset class. In November 2022, for example, the collapse of FTX, a leading crypto exchange, triggered a major collapse across the entire crypto market. This included a significant decline in Bitcoin’s price.
Cryptocurrency markets are subject to significant speculation. Investors hope for big wins, even if the chances are slim. Similar to buying a lottery ticket, investors may buy assets driven by the illusion of lucrative future profits.
This is, of course, also true for some investments in traditional markets. But stories of Bitcoin millionaires and how they quickly made their fortunes create the illusion of the possibility of becoming rich quickly.
Such successes are not necessarily replicable in current market conditions. Regardless of the election outcome, cryptocurrency markets will remain highly volatile, speculative and risky. Just because some people win the lottery does not mean that you will.
4. Anchoring effect
Another behavioural anomaly typical of cryptocurrency markets is the anchoring effect. This is where investors accept and cling to the “anchor” of the first piece of information they receive. For example, if they read an article stating that Bitcoin’s price will rocket after Trump’s victory, they will hold on to this idea regardless of what other sources or information may suggest.
This is, again, because the analysis of fundamentals in crypto markets is very challenging. Unlike traditional stocks, which can be evaluated based on factors such as earnings reports and revenue growth, cryptocurrencies often lack similar financial metrics. Hence, crypto investors are particularly susceptible to believing in discussions in the media and various online forums.
There have been no details on how Trump’s promise to make the US the Bitcoin superpower of the world will be delivered. However, it would be hard for crypto investors to change their minds if they are already anchored to this idea.
Investing is not gambling. Even if you think your decision is entirely rational, it is essential to triple check to ensure you are not subject to any of the aforementioned behavioural biases. You’ll probably be subject to all of them, as will any other human being.
Larisa Yarovaya is affiliated with the British Blockchain Association.
News reports of so-called forever chemicals in drinking water have left people worried about the safety of tap and bottled water. But recent research has shown there are ways to significantly reduce the levels of these harmful chemicals in our water.
Per and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a wide range of synthetic chemicals that are used in many everyday products such as cosmetics, fabrics and food packaging (where they are used to make products resistant to water and grease), as well as in fire-fighting foams.
Unusually in the chemical universe, the structures of PFAS include groups of atoms within the same molecule that imbue them with both water-hating and water-loving properties. They are also resistant to degradation.
While this latter characteristic can improve the quality of the products we buy, it also means it is nearly impossible to break these chemicals down once they escape into the environment. Some PFAS chemicals are are also toxic. For example, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) has been classified as carcinogenic to humans, and has been found to lower immune response to common childhood vaccines.
Concerns about their safety has led numerous jurisdictions to set limits on levels of some PFAS in drinking water. Nevertheless, many news stories have reported on research finding dangerous levels of PFAS chemicals in drinking water sources in England.
With this in mind, my colleagues and I measured concentrations of ten key PFAS in 41 samples of tap water from the West Midlands of the UK and 14 samples from Shenzhen, China. We also measured the same PFAS in 112 samples of bottled water.
We sampled 87 different brands from 15 countries that we bought either from shops or online in the UK and China. The PFAS we tested included many of those regulated in drinking water as well as some others we have found previously in indoor air and dust.
We compared concentrations of PFAS in plastic and glass bottled water, as well as in sparkling versus still water. In neither case did we find significant differences in concentrations of PFAS. In contrast however, in China we found significantly higher concentrations of PFAS in natural mineral water than in bottled purified water.
Crucially, while we found PFAS in every sample analysed, the maximum concentration limits set recently by the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) for some PFAS were only exceeded for PFOA in some samples of tap water from Shenzhen.
Concentrations of PFAS were lower in bottled water than in tap water from the same locality. This finding is in line with studies conducted in other countries like Spain.
It may be reassuring to some extent but our study only examined a relatively small number of tap water samples from two municipalities and cannot be taken as representative of the UK or China overall. There is no room for complacency as the USEPA’s target concentration limits for two of the PFAS we measured are zero.
So, taking note of the lower concentrations we saw in bottled purified water, we examined the effectiveness of boiling and filtration using activated carbon jug filters.
Boiling in a regular kettle reduced concentrations of all ten of the PFAS we tested. The level of reduction varied between different PFAS though. For PFOA and the three other PFAS that we measured for which there are USEPA concentration limits, concentrations reduced by 11%−14% but were much greater (61%-86%) for the more volatile and non-regulated PFAS we examined that are more easily evaporated.
Reductions were greater for all the PFAS we tested (81%−96%) when we passed the water through an activated carbon jug filter. Boiling the water after activated carbon filtration, as sometimes happens in China, reduced concentrations a little further to between 81 and 99.6%.
These results suggest that using a jug water filter can substantially reduce concentrations of some regulated PFAS in our tap water. Boiling water before drinking also reduces PFAS concentrations but is less effective.
Our findings add to those of a 2024 study in Montreal, which suggested that using a filter fitted to the kitchen tap reduced concentrations of 75 PFAS in tap water.
Our findings are a small first step towards reducing our exposure to PFAS. But we should not lose sight of the need to reduce and eliminate such forever chemicals. There’s still a lot we don’t understand about these chemicals but what we’ve learned so far shows that some of them present an urgent threat to the health of both humans and wildlife.
Stuart Harrad has received funding from the Environmental Protection Agency of Ireland and the European Union.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has pledged £1.4 billion to meet a target of rebuilding 50 schools in England a year. The funding boost follows the news of slow progress on the government’s school rebuilding programme. This effort began in 2020 but has been under particular scrutiny since the closure of school buildings made with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) in 2023.
A 2023 report from the National Audit Office estimated that 700,000 students in England are learning in schools that the Department for Education believes require major rebuilding or refurbishment.
These rebuilding programmes have promised to produce state-of-the-art schools. But I believe that the focus in the UK is still too much on the condition of the building, rather than the approach in countries like Finland where the focus is on the relationship between school design and teaching and learning practice.
In Scotland, recent figures highlight that 91.7% of school buildings are in a “good/satisfactory” condition, and 92.0% of pupils are now educated in school environments rated as “good/satisfactory” condition. Here, condition refers to the state of the school fabric – such as state of, the appropriateness of the design, and the health-and-safety requirements.
In the past, researchers have questioned whether there is any need to go beyond this minimum standard and suggested that schools might not need to be any more than adequate.
I believe there should be higher aspirations for the UK’s school estate. To understand why, we need to think about the role of the school environment. It is much more than simply providing a safe, weatherproof building for teaching children and young people.
However, there is disappointingly little research that explores the whole school environment, how it is experienced by students and how it relates to important outcomes, such as exam results.
There are some notable exceptions. A report on primary schools in England, conducted by researchers from the University of Salford in 2015, showed that well-designed classrooms can boost children’s academic performance in reading, writing and maths.
A few aspects were of particular importance. They included naturalness (the light, temperature and air quality), individualisation (classrooms with varied floor plan shapes and breakout spaces, along with elements that pupils can personalise such as coat pegs) and stimulation (appropriate levels of complexity in use of colour and wall displays).
Student experience
My own research with colleagues on secondary schools in Scotland showed that there were substantial improvements in students’ feelings of security and small improvements in behaviour and motivation for learning in newly built schools.
We found that these improvements were long lasting and were not due simply to the effect of their novelty. The improvements in feelings of safety and security seem to be linked to features such as more spacious corridors and staircases with natural daylight and good locker facilities.
We also found that how students experience and evaluate their school environment is related to their academic performance. Students with more positive perceptions of their school environment have better academic performance. This is especially true where pupils feel positive about the physical comfort of the social and teaching spaces in the school.
School rebuilding programmes provide a unique opportunity for educational experts, environmental psychologists and design professionals to collaborate to find out what works and why.
The need to recognise and learn about the role of school buildings in the education process is only likely to increase as we accommodate more students with additional support needs in mainstream schools and strive to create inclusive schools that respond to needs of neurodiverse students.
The government’s ambition for school rebuilding should go beyond simply fixing crumbling schools. As well as supporting learning and teaching, schools should provide an environment that encourages young people in their social development and aims to give them the best start in life possible.
Edward Edgerton received funding from East Dunbartonshire Council for a research project evaluating
its secondary school rebuilding programme (2006-2010).
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Charles Z. Levkoe, Canada Research Chair in Equitable and Sustainable Food Systems, Lakehead University
For more than a year, the Israeli state has been engaged in a massive incursion into Gaza following the October 2023 Hamas attack against Israel.
In March 2024, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, announced: “There are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide…has been met.”
We have come together as a group of critical food systems scholars to examine the parallels between the weaponization of food in Gaza and Canada to bring about the systematic destruction of Indigenous Peoples. But we’ve also observed that food has been a powerful tool of resistance and resurgence.
The Scream, by Kent Monkman (2016), was part of a travelling exhibition in 2017 on colonized Canada entitled ‘Shame And Prejudice: A Story Of Resilience.’ (Courtesy of Kent Monkman)
Israel targets food infrastructure
In the occupied Palestinian territories, Israeli control over land and resources reflects a similar colonial dynamic. Laws like the Absentee Property Law of 1950 facilitated the expropriation of Palestinian land.
Tanks and trucks have decimated orchards, field crops and olive groves.
An estimated 800,000 tonnes of asbestos among the debris of destroyed buildings will result in asbestos-related diseases for generations to come. Under the Geneva Conventions, destruction of civilians’ means of survival and starvation as a tool of warfare is strictly prohibited.
Similarly, Indigenous nations and communities across Canada have used food as a form of resurgence. Alongside land back movements, efforts to revitalize Indigenous food systems — such as hunting, fishing, growing and gathering — are central to movements for Indigenous sovereignty.
Learning about and enacting traditional food practices are important acts of resistance, as these practices sustain communities, strengthen connections to land and assert rights over the unceded territories Indigenous Peoples are fighting to reclaim. By reclaiming and rebuilding their land and food systems on their own terms, they continue to challenge colonial structures.
Food, colonialism and resistance
The destruction of food systems in Gaza and Canada is part of a larger effort of land dispossession and capitalist accumulation. By severing Indigenous Peoples’ connection to their food systems, settlers and colonial regimes have sought to control not only the land but also the people who depend on it.
Yet, through food sovereignty movements, these same populations are reclaiming their right to self-determination and building global networks of solidarity.
The struggle for food sovereignty is inseparable from broader struggles for land, justice and self-determination.
Connecting the dots between the Palestinian territories and Canada provides powerful examples of global colonial relations and struggles for justice and self-determination. It challenges us to critically examine the role of food in these struggles and demand government accountability.
We wish to acknowledge Mustafa Koç, professor emeritus at Toronto Metropolitan University, as a co-author and to thank Max Ajl, Yafa Al Masri and Justin Podur for contributions to this article.
Charles Z. Levkoe receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the the Government of Ontario.
Sarah Rotz receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Tammara Soma receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Martha Stiegman 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.
What’s most important now is not being first but rather being right. In recent decades, Americans have gotten used to media organizations declaring the winners of races in the hours or days after the polls close, but those are not official results. They are projections based on the available unofficial information. The formal results of the election are checked and certified through a process that takes weeks to months – and potentially longer, if lawsuits are filed.
A wrong call could spark violence, particularly because Donald Trump has yet to say that he will accept the results of the 2024 election if he loses.
Media figures and election officials are preparing Americans for the fact that we might have to wait some time to get an accurate call. As in 2020, they’re using metaphor to shape public expectations. But this year, they’re also explicitly trying to define the nation’s perceptions of time, in terms of which results count as on time or as delayed.
A metaphor is a linguistic device that describes something in terms of something else, usually to highlight an important idea. If we see a football team as the Bears, we know they’re not literally animals, but they are ferocious. As a scholar of presidential rhetoric and political campaigns, I know it’s important to notice metaphors because they often shape public perceptions.
As members of the media prepare themselves and the public for an uncertain election night, they’re worried that Americans will be misled by false or incomplete information in the early returns. Fredreka Schouten and Sara Murray of CNN Politics write, “Election officials worry that delays in counting could give the public a false sense of who’s winning the election.” The Republican Pennsylvania secretary of state adds, “It’s obviously a concern.” And so, as they did in 2020, they’re again using the metaphor of “mirage.”
A mirage is an optical illusion, something that looks real but is not. Old adventure movies would show a mirage of water in a desert. Lost explorers with empty canteens would run excitedly toward a sparkling oasis, only to find nothing but sand.
In 2020, no one was quite sure whether the early results would show a red or a blue mirage and so they suggested it could vary by state. For example, some states, such as Florida and Arizona, counted mail ballots as they arrived, even before Election Day. In those states, Vox reported, the early “results might look overwhelmingly favorable to Joe Biden and other Democratic candidates.”
In 2024, the overwhelming expectation is that early returns in this year’s key states will look better for Republicans. Reporter Nick Corasaniti of The New York Times wrote that “Democratic operatives” have come to expect “‘the red mirage,’ the result of far more Democrats than Republicans opting to vote by mail, leading to Democratic votes being counted later.” The editorial board of The Washington Post fretted in September 2024 that Trump “used this so-called red mirage in 2020 to declare victory and insist that the counting stop.” The implication was clear: a fear he might do so again.
People tend to see what they want to see. Those lost explorers want and need water, much as Trump yearns for victory. And mirages are partly self-deception. Partisans want that beautiful picture of triumph, blue or red seas cascading across screens on election night. These feelings explain why the mirage metaphor works well for the media: It signals that campaigns and the public see what they hope for, not what’s there. Wait, the metaphor tells us. Wait until we know it’s real.
To make the waiting easier, the media has also explicitly tried to shape the public’s perceptions of time. This is not a new idea: The ancient Greeks used the term “kairos” to talk about timing in public speech – when we should speak, how we define time in that speech, and what sorts of times we live in.
For example, an NBC report catalogs changes various states have made since 2020 to speed up the counting, but nonetheless notes “in the event of a close race, a handful of key battleground states could keep Americans waiting well beyond Election Day.” In early October 2024, Arizona’s secretary of state told a group at Harvard the results would take “thirteen days and we’re not doing it any sooner because we’re going to get it right.”
At that same Harvard meeting, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt disputed the concept that taking time to count votes constituted a “delay.”
“It’s not a delay at all. It takes time to count millions of votes, with integrity, especially when you can only start at 7 a.m. on election morning,” Schmidt said.
Taken together, the two persuasive strategies urge patience. A mirage will appear, but it is false, alluring and dangerous. It does not reflect reality. Reality will come in time, the proper time, in its season. This isn’t a delay, because it takes time to get things right. This election poses enough dangers, these officials and the media believe. All Americans need to take – or give – the time to get the count right.
Some of the material in this article was previously published on Nov. 3, 2020.
John M. Murphy 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.
Here they come: an apron and tattoos that make you look like chef Carmy from The Bear, or weird insect-like accessories resembling the infamous Paris Fashion Week bedbugs – new year, new over-the-top inventive Halloween trends. Thanks to the proliferation of social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, we’re in for a treat for this year’s online Halloween extravaganza.
What used to be a traditional holiday celebrated with reverence by the people remembering the religious meaning of All Hallow’s Eve, or simply an excuse for phantasmagorical parties by those who didn’t, Halloween is now exhibiting a whole new digital layer.
Last year, the hashtag #Halloween was viewed three billion times in a week. We live in a time of “information fatigue”, “information anxiety” or even “infobesity”, as some academics call our oversaturated media environment, with plentiful, often unpleasant stimuli coming from the news and social media.
No one’s 20s and 30s look the same. You might be saving for a mortgage or just struggling to pay rent. You could be swiping dating apps, or trying to understand childcare. No matter your current challenges, our Quarter Life series has articles to share in the group chat, or just to remind you that you’re not alone.
All this badly affects our biological systems, which have not developed as fast as the media environment. As a result, we are overwhelmed, anxious, overstimulated and struggling with processing so much information. It is hard to cut through this noise, whether you’re a journalist, politician, influencer or just someone having fun in a pumpkin latte costume.
In my research on viral journalism, I discovered that even professional communicators struggle to keep up with the changes in social media algorithms and various new functions of these platforms. Many feel discouraged by the non-transparency of social media giants and prefer to rely on classic principles of strong reporting and creative presentation formats. But what are the triggers for media virality for those who still want their posts to explode online?
Not a virus, but a choice
Halloween, like St Valentine’s Day and other annual celebrations, presents a chance to be the new viral sensation, simply because using the hashtag #Halloween instantly grants additional visibility.
Virality stands on two pillars – the opaque algorithms of social networks, and people’s emotional reactions. Unlike viruses, from which the word “viral” originates, virality online is not a malady, but a choice. People instinctively choose content that will satisfy their needs. These can be having something to think about, or a distraction, so we don’t have to think about other things going on in the world.
Engagement with stories online is seldom rational – research has shown that emotions dominate our relationship with news and social media. The feelings of awe, anger and anxiety are the strongest predictors for a post to go viral.
So how, when creating content, do we achieve the coveted reaction of “awe”? This feeling can be described in a variety of ways, from a religious epiphany, to deep appreciation because we’re impressed, to the sense of calm experienced through nature. This is where the theory of memes can help.
Halloween costumes on social media are, essentially, wearable and broadcastable memes. These, as my book Internet Memes and Society explains, are half-baked jokes and weird cryptic artefacts that tempt users to figure out why they are supposed to be funny.
Memes are used as everyday language, political tools, and “fast-food” media. Will a costume based on Only Murders in the Buildings’ Christmas fitness influencer make it to viral stardom? Will it be another take on the brat summer? Or perhaps some twisted commentaries on the cost-of-living crisis?
Theories of humour and Halloween costumes
I predict that virality this season will demand either to go full-on maximalist, or be understated and minimalist. The theories of humour stand on three pillars: humour as release, humour as aggression, and humour as incongruity.
Perhaps we will also see the manifestations of what Plato called comedy as scorn: “Taken generally,” the ancient Greek philosopher mused, “the ridiculous is a certain kind of evil, specifically a vice.” Expect the highest-earning or most influential celebrities to be shoved off their pedestal and roundly mocked in a Halloween costume.
What about incongruity? Some of the more absurd costumes from last year featured a drink coaster and a paper bag, or a man dressed as a ULEZ street camera. These examples generate a reaction of awe, surprise and glee, making the posts worthy of sharing.
And finally, release. Humour is invaluable when it comes to dissipating worries or letting off steam. The recent viral sensation from the music band The Kiffness’ “Eating the cats” ft Donald Trump hilariously reimagined a phrase from the US presidential debate as a soft reggae hit – and a hit it has become, amassing eight million views in a matter of weeks.
This Halloween will surely see a couple of TikTokers dressed as cats, or dogs, or even “a catalogue of other things to eat”. Humour allows us to reveal the ridiculousness of certain political claims, and therefore serves as a soothing tool that unites people and challenges those in power through mockery.
Virality as modern mythology
Virality – memes included – forms the modern mythology. The media informs our collective identities and often the things we think about, which means the themes of this Halloween will most likely reveal what people are scared of as a way to release those fears.
Who will people mock because they feel intimidated by a particular public figure’s power, wealth, talent, influence, looks or profile (aggression). Or who or what do people find awe-inspiring or puzzling this year (incongruity)?
After all, Halloween is the one time of the year that reminds people of the medieval carnivals of the 14th century – the only time jesters and critics could come to the main square and have a go at the king. The digital carnival (as academics like myself sometimes call the digital mockery of the elites) is not limited to a specific time in the year.
The never-ending flow of ridicule, sarcasm and dressing up online never ceases to amaze viral studies academics. But the end of October sees a particular concentration of this subversion, attracting the attention of the digital crowds seeking to laugh at the rich, famous and powerful.
People form and negotiate cultural codes through viral cultures, by choosing what posts to share, like, and comment on. Through these interactions, valuable meanings and identities emerge, and it will be fascinating to see which meanings the collective beehive wants to focus on this Halloween 2024. Whether that’s Carmy Berzatto in his blue apron or the cats and dogs of Springfield.
Anastasia Denisova does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The world’s first superstar hippo lives in a zoo in Thailand. Moo Deng shot to fame soon after she was born in July this year, thanks to viral videos that showed off her cute expressions and chirpy demeanour. Yet the story of her species is less happy, and reveals the close links between the extinction and climate change crises.
Moo Deng is a pygmy hippo, a species native to the forests of west Africa. Unlike their bigger and significantly scarier cousins (regular hippos), the pygmys are secretive creatures, who like to conceal themselves in swamps and dense vegetation.
Today, pygmy hippos are officially listed as endangered. Huanyuan Zhang-Zheng and Sulemana Bawa, conservationists at the University of Oxford, point out that 80% of their native forests have been lost. Just 2,500 remain in the wild.
“Cocoa production is probably the biggest cause of forest loss,” they write, “then gold mining and unsustainable logging. These activities now encroach on forest reserves and other supposedly protected areas.”
You probably didn’t want to hear this (I certainly didn’t) but it seems chocolate is helping wipe out the pygmy hippo. This pressure is unlikely to let up any time soon: the Ivory Coast, home of most of these hippos, is also the world’s number one cocoa exporter.
But it was another passage in their article which really caught my eye. Zhang-Zheng and Bawa wrote: “West Africa’s forest loss is particularly heartbreaking as research shows that a remaining patch may be the most productive on Earth, surpassing even the Amazon rainforest.” (Productive, in this context, refers to how much plant growth there is).
Before extensive fieldwork beginning in 2016, researchers had underestimated the value of west African forests, particularly their capacity to store carbon and thereby offset global warming. This oversight was partly the result of these forests being hidden by clouds, which makes satellite observation difficult, and their relative neglect by western researchers compared with other ecosystems elsewhere.
This made me wince. Has The Conversation been part of this neglect? After all, Jack and I have edited dozens of articles on the Amazon and its role in the climate system, but relatively few on forests in Africa.
Researchers are doing their best to highlight how important these forests are for the climate. Here’s one of them, Michele Francis of Stellenbosch University in South Africa, writing about her research on a “sacred forest” in Togo, west Africa: “My calculations showed that one hectare of forest [about two and a half football pitches] is able to permanently remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as is released by a power station burning nearly 16 tonnes of coal.”
African forest elephants, like this one in the Republic of Congo, are smaller than their cousins on the savanna. Roger de la Harpe / shutterstock
But Africa’s biggest forest by far is found a thousand miles to the south east, in the Congo Basin. The world’s second largest rainforest is almost half the size of the Amazon yet has only a small portion of its global fame.
As the forest is underresearched, there are still huge discoveries to be made. Back in 2017, Simon Lewis and Greta Dargie of the University of Leeds lead a UK-Congolese team who first mapped out an England-sized tropical peatland – the world’s largest – under marshy wetlands deep in the jungles of Congo. They wrote about this for The Conversation at the time:
After 17 days, covering just 1.5km a day, we finally reached the centre of the swamp between two of the major rivers. Our reward was not only the knowledge that these peatlands are indeed vast. We also found ever-deeper peat, reaching up to 5.9m, roughly the height of a two-storey building.
Peat is made of partially-decomposed plant matter and can store extraordinary amounts of carbon. Lewis and Dargie “found 30 billion metric tonnes of carbon stored in this new ecosystem that nobody knew existed. That’s equivalent to 20 years of current US fossil fuel emissions.”
This rainforest, and its huge carbon stores, are under threat. In 2022, Lewis, writing with his Leeds colleague Bart Crezee, warned that plans to drill for oil in the Democratic Republic of Congo could be “the beginning of the end for these peatlands”.
They updated their map of Congolese peatlands and overlayed it on a map of proposed oil concessions. They discovered:
The upcoming sale of rights to explore for fossil fuels includes close to 1 million hectares of peat swamp forest. If destroyed by the construction of roads, pipelines and other infrastructure needed to extract the oil, we estimate that up to 6 billion tonnes of CO₂ could be released, equivalent to 14 years’ worth of current UK greenhouse gas emissions.
In late 2023, DR Congo postponed its plans to drill for oil. It seems the scientists really were listened to – for the time being at least.
Yet oil drilling is only one threat, in one corner of a vast forest. Researchers lead by Judith Verweijen of the University of Antwerp have written about the armed conflicts and industrial mining affecting the eastern end of the same Congo Basin.
The mines, for instance, degrade the soil and pollute the water, and trees must be cleared to make way for them.
But Verweijen and colleagues say there are also indirect effects that “stem from the construction of new roads to make mining sites accessible, and population growth in the vicinity of mines. This leads to further natural resource exploitation, such as fuel and construction wood extraction, bushmeat hunting and shifting agriculture.”
None of this has caused the same global outcry as fires in the Amazon or palm oil deforestation in Indonesia. What might fix that?
Back to Moo Deng. Many conservation academics will tell you that a single well-known species can be the key to saving an entire ecosystem and its often boring-but-crucial biodiversity. Protect the tigers, pandas or pygmy hippos, and you’ll also ensure the survival of the worms, ants and peat bogs.
If it takes a viral hippo to at least cast some attention on the disappearing rainforests of Africa, then so be it.
The NFL has avoided overt political messages since former 49er Colin Kaepernick’s anthem protests against police brutality against Black Americans. But what are the implications of a white player displaying an overt political message right before the United States presidential election?
U.S. athletes Tommie Smith, centre, and John Carlos extend gloved hands skyward in racial protest during the playing of national anthem at the 1968 Olympics. (AP Photo)
In turn, Kaepernick’s protest against police brutality and historic inequalities was seen as unpatriotic, and faced significant criticism.
Will Bosa face a similar backlash? It seems highly unlikely, especially since Bosa’s support for Trump will probably be framed as patriotic due to the former president’s populist rhetoric about returning America to greatness.
Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) and outside linebacker Eli Harold (58) kneel during the playing of the national anthem before an NFL football game against the Atlanta Falcons in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
But when Bosa donned a piece of campaign merchandise on national television a little over a week out from a contentious presidential election, it was overtly political — arguably just as overtly political as taking a knee during the national anthem.
Rather, they don’t want to see political views they oppose being platformed in professional sports spaces.
If they agree with the politics, sporting events are seemingly just another stop on the campaign trail.
Noah Eliot Vanderhoeven 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.
One-third of patients with irritable bowel syndrome aslo have disordered eating habits and perceptions about food that may cause symptoms in and of themselves.(Shutterstock)
Many people find that wheat or gluten cause them to react in some way: Some people have a wheat allergy, some have the autoimmune condition celiac disease, but the majority find they have some sort of intolerance or sensitivity to wheat and gluten.
This is challenging to diagnose because there still aren’t any reliable biomarkers to confirm gluten or wheat sensitivity, and clinicians typically rely on patient self-reports.
In irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), patients experience gastrointestinal symptoms without any visible damage to the digestive tract. Many patients with IBS believe that specific foods, like gluten or wheat, trigger their symptoms, prompting them to exclude these foods from their diets without consulting a dietitian or their doctor.
Unsurprisingly, about a third of IBS patients develop disordered eating habits and perceptions about food that may cause symptoms in and of themselves, such as orthorexia, or an unhealthy preoccupation with healthy eating. This may cause a “nocebo effect,” where patients experience symptoms due to their beliefs and expectations about a substance they assume is causing their issues but is actually inert — a “nocebo.”
Identifying the true sensitivities for patients with IBS is a controversial research area, with some studies finding gluten avoidance to be beneficial versus others finding it to have [no significant effect. (Shutterstock)
As a nutrition researcher at McMaster University’s Farncombe Institute, I’m a member of a team that ran a clinical trial to find out whether wheat, gluten or a gluten-free nocebo caused symptoms in IBS. And the results were surprising: even though some patients experienced worse symptoms from gluten or wheat, they weren’t very different from the nocebo, with similar proportions of patients reacting to each.
These results are similar to other published studies. Identifying the true sensitivities for patients with IBS is a controversial research area, with some studies finding gluten avoidance to be beneficial versus others finding it to have no significant effect.
Researchers from the United Kingdom and the Netherlands published an innovative study from the Lancet medical journal. Patients with reported gluten sensitivity were divided into four groups: Two groups were given gluten-free bread, but one of these groups was told it contained gluten and one was told it didn’t. Two other groups were given bread that did contain gluten, with one group believing it was gluten-free and the other believing it contained gluten.
The results showed that the patients who ate gluten and were also told they were eating gluten had significantly worse symptoms than the other three groups.
Why are people concerned about gluten?
Patients with IBS are often left to navigate conflicting online resources and test new diets to treat their symptoms. (Shutterstock)
Given the controversial evidence that not only gluten, but other wheat components like fermentable carbohydrates or immune-stimulating proteins, may exacerbate IBS symptoms, it’s possible for this hot topic to get blown out of proportion or taken out of context, contributing to nutrition misinformation.
All of these factors — that it is often diagnosed by excluding all other options, the significant psychological component, the division in the scientific community and clinicians who often discount patients’ experiences — make treatment difficult for patients with this disorder.
As a result, patients with IBS are often left to navigate conflicting online resources and test new diets to treat their symptoms.
How patients respond to evidence
When researchers challenge patients with gluten, wheat or a nocebo, they rarely report the personalized results back to the patients and see how this information impacts patient behaviour.
At McMaster University, we wanted to see how presenting personalized nutrition information would affect our patients. After providing them with personal results about their gluten and wheat reactions, we followed up with patients after six months or more to see how this impacted their beliefs, behaviours and symptoms.
Again, we were in for a surprise! Patients largely kept similar beliefs about gluten, maintained a gluten-free diet and had consistent symptoms even after learning that most of them did not react to gluten or wheat. This begs the question: when people more generally learn new information that conflicts with an existing belief, what may help them to change accordingly?
The role of psychology in treating IBS
IBS has been long understood as a disorder of the gut-brain interaction. Psychological treatments are being increasingly investigated to minimize patient fears of foods, or nocebo effects, and to treat IBS symptoms more generally. At Harvard, a recent study found that exposure-based cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) showed promise to improve IBS symptoms in five sessions with a nurse practitioner.
However, IBS is a complex disorder which may be exacerbated due to many different causes, and psychological treatment will likely be only one component of an effective treatment plan for many patients.
Diet plays an important role in human health, but how it does so — especially among those with gastrointestinal diseases — becomes complicated by the emotional aspects of eating and the real needs for people to have nutritious, well-balanced diets without risking malnutrition. If you have concerns that certain foods, like gluten, trigger your symptoms, it’s a good idea to consult your doctor or a registered dietitian.
Caroline Seiler receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Walled up in our silos, we fear what the people in the other silo might inflict on us. The frightening visions have different names and faces, but everyone seems to fear the future.
Halloween’s ghoulish displays seem to have generated more sales than ever this year, inflation be damned. What with school shootings, random violence and a general atmosphere of threats, one would think we didn’t need to scare ourselves more.
But as psychologist Sarah Kollat has recently written, Halloween thrills and chills can feel warming and reassuring. People who have survived a frightening shared ordeal, be it a hurricane or flood or fire or war or even, apparently, a haunted house, feel significantly connected to those who have experienced the same fearful event alongside them.
Our fear can bring us together. It can also tear us apart.
Halloween provides the language to talk about threats, real or imagined. “The zombies have arrived, and we have to figure out how to navigate around them,” a citizen of a Vermont town was recently quoted as saying. She was talking about homeless people.
‘Treachery, Rage and black Fear’
It’s both easy and helpful to personify fear as something outside of us – to give it, in Shakespeare’s phrase, “a local habitation and a name.”
Fear looms and fades; visits at night; thrives in certain conditions. In his epic “The Aeneid,” the Roman poet Virgil describes the war god, Mars, as accompanied by his posse: “the god’s retainers – Treachery, Rage, and black Fear – pound beside him.”
This nightmare troika has a contemporary ring. If by treachery we understand traps, tricks, ambushes, we can plug in political debate, rife with accusations of mendacity; tricks and rage also characterize a good deal of public discourse. And isn’t anger the opposite side of the coin of fear?
Virgil, a great psychologist of many kinds of unease, also depicts a less aggressive manifestation of fear: “Up on the wall stood frightened mothers, gazing/After the dust cloud and the bronze-bright squadrons.” Uneasy spectators, helpless to protect their loved ones, they watch their sons marching to war. In a similar passage, “mothers, the unarmed commons,/And weak old men came pouring out to fill/Towers and roofs.”
Those of us not on a battlefield are in a position of tense watching and waiting.
We feel powerless to affect the outcome; the stakes are high; we fear the worst.
Love and heroism in short supply
Fear is linked to love. In Homer’s “Iliad,” Achilles is reluctant to fight for the Greek side not because he’s afraid of death, even though he knows his life may be short. Rather, he’s too angry to sacrifice his life for a cause and commanders he no longer believes in – until his beloved Patroklos is killed by Hector. Only then do Achilles’ mood and motivation change; he eagerly rejoins the fight.
Characters in Greek tragedies can make terrible decisions, be subject to madness, destroy themselves and others – but they are rarely afraid. The fear and pity Aristotle ascribes to tragedy are the emotions of the spectator.
In connection with fear, one of the only characters in Greek tragedy who readily comes to mind is Admetus, the husband of Alcestis in Euripides’ play of that name. Informed that he is fated to die, Admetus scrambles frantically for a substitute to die in his place. His own father huffily refuses, but his wife Alcestis volunteers.
When at the end of the play a veiled, silent figure we presume to be Alcestis reappears, there’s relief, as well as some nervous laughter. This play, with its – sort of – happy ending, turns out not to be a tragedy after all. It’s closer to dark comedy.
In our own time, rather than fear of death, fear of loss looms large – fear of isolation, humiliation, status; fear of poverty; fear of change. Elsewhere in “the Aeneid,” a character in the underworld makes a resonant remark about the afterlife: “Each bears his own ghosts.”
Maybe each of us has our own flavor of fear. There’s not much love or heroism in evidence these Halloween and preelection days. Anger and treachery, fear’s companions, are on daily display.
Rachel Hadas 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.
As Election Day arrives, people’s feelings of eagerness and anxiety can intensify. It’s normal to want to know the results, but it’s also important to make sure that when the results are announced, they’re accurate.
The Conversation U.S. has covered many aspects of the election, including the mechanics of tallying and reporting the votes. Here are selections from some of those articles:
1. How long did it take to count votes in 2020?
In 2020, Election Day was Nov. 3. While some results emerged that evening and over the subsequent days, it was not until four days later, Nov. 7, that The Associated Press called the race for Joe Biden over Donald Trump.
Waiting can be unsatisfying, wrote John M. Murphy, a communications scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, but it’s key to getting accurate results.
Murphy warned: “People tend to see what they want to see. … Partisans want that beautiful picture of triumph, blue or red seas cascading across screens on election night.” But, he observed, that might be a mirage – and realizing it’s a mirage means one thing: “Wait. … Wait until we know it’s real.”
Election officials count ballots at the Allegheny County elections warehouse in Pittsburgh in 2020. Jeff Swensen/Getty Images
2. Why do candidates’ leads change as the results emerge?
Every state counts votes slightly differently. Some, like Colorado, allow election workers to begin counting absentee ballots in advance of Election Day, while in other states, like Illinois, the count can’t even start until the polling places close at the end of Election Day.
In addition, various communities report their results in different ways. Some may release preliminary results every so often while the counting continues, while others may wait until counting is fully complete before announcing any results.
That’s why vote counts change over time: Partial results are updated, and additional results are added to statewide tallies. In a 2020 article, Kristin Kanthak, a political science professor at the University of Pittsburgh, went through the whole process, including the release of partial results:
Election officials take their jobs very seriously and work hard to count all the eligible votes accurately while under great pressure. They have specific rules and processes for how to handle ballots and vote-counting.
Derek Muller, an election-law scholar at the University of Notre Dame, explained those steps in detail, highlighting the focus on verifiable facts rather than people’s opinions about the process:
“Certifying an election is a rather mundane task. … It is little more than making sure all precincts have reported and the arithmetic is correct. But it is an important task, because it is the formal process that determines who won the most votes.”
Washoe County employees in Nevada open ballots as they begin processing mailed ballots in the 2024 primary election. AP Photo/Andy Barron
4. Who invented the Electoral College?
Of course, the candidate who gets the most votes doesn’t necessarily win the presidency. The official decision is made by the Electoral College.
Phillip VanFossen, a civics educator at Purdue University, explained that the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787 came up with three ideas, but couldn’t agree. Determined to find common ground, even if it was imperfect, the delegates told 11 men to come up with a solution, which was the Electoral College.
VanFossen explained that “with this compromise system, neither public ignorance nor outside influence would affect the choice of a nation’s leader. (The delegates) believed that the electors would ensure that only a qualified person became president. And they thought the Electoral College would serve as a check on a public who might be easily misled, especially by foreign governments.”
5. Why does the US still have an Electoral College?
Other nations were inspired by the U.S. Constitution, but not for long, as Westminster College political scientist Joshua Holzer explained:
“None have been satisfied with the results. And except for the U.S., all have found other ways to choose their leaders.”
Many people in the U.S. also aren’t satisfied with the Electoral College, and Holzer identifies one effort under way to replace it without amending the Constitution. But even that won’t ensure that the person who becomes president is supported by at least half of the people who cast ballots.
This story contains spoilers about ‘A Different Man.’
A Different Man, a new film by Aaron Schimberg, offers a complex and nuanced portrayal of disability, one that both disabled and non-disabled audiences can learn from.
The film premiered at notable festivals and is now playing in select theatres.
In an era where disability is receiving long-overdue attention in cinema and films are under greater scrutiny to authentically represent disability, A Different Man pushes the conversation. It does so by emphasizing disability is not merely a challenge to overcome — but an integral part of the human experience.
It’s crucial for audiences to seek out this film, as its limited release means that many may miss out on Schimberg’s provocative exploration of the tensions between identity, performance and societal expectations.
The story centres on Edward (played by Sebastian Stan), a man with neurofibromatosis — a condition that causes tumours to grow on nerves.
After living for a long time with the condition, Edward seeks out an experimental drug meant to “fix” his appearance. The drug is successful and overnight, Edward transforms from disfigured to conventionally attractive.
The narrative hinges on Edward’s struggle with self-esteem issues that stem from societal perceptions of his disability. However, the change in his outward appearance only deepens his internal conflict: although Edward physically transforms, his struggles with self-perception and societal rejection persist.
Trailer for ‘A Different Man.’
This highlights a critical point made by disability studies scholars, including Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, who argue that our culture pressures disabled individuals to conform to non-disabled norms. Norms about how to look, sure, but also norms about how to behave, communicate and even think.
Even when the visible markers of disability are removed, the underlying societal pressures and biases remain, illustrating that the true challenge lies not in the body itself, but in the societal structures that dictate what is considered an acceptable life.
Embracing one’s identity
This message, however, is turned on its head when audiences meet Oswald, played by Adam Pearson.
Oswald, who has the same disability that Edward was just cured of, embodies a different relationship with his appearance; he is confident and self-assured, fully embracing his identity without the desire to conform to societal expectations.
Oswald’s confidence is evident in how he navigates the world unapologetically, refusing to hide or downplay his appearance, a stark contrast to Edward’s desire for transformation. Pearson plays Oswald with a larger-than-life charisma, reminiscent of an Austin Powers type — loud, brash and fully aware of his own charm.
This boldness not only serves as comic relief but also positions Oswald as a character who owns every room he walks into, subverting what disability studies scholars David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder argue are expectations of disabled people as passive or self-conscious figures.
His character challenges audiences to rethink the value society places on external appearance, demonstrating that self-acceptance can be far more powerful than fitting into conventional standards of beauty or normalcy.
Through Oswald’s defiant approach, A Different Man invites viewers to question whether the real issue lies in disability or in society’s limited perceptions of what it means to live fully. Perhaps more than that, for disabled viewers, Oswald’s character offers a refreshing alternative — a model of self-acceptance that defies the pressure to overcome, and instead embrace, radical difference.
Appearance and conformity
This contrast raises important questions about the value society places on appearance and conformity. Through Oswald, the film critiques the prevailing belief that a “normal” life — a non-disabled life — is synonymous with happiness or fulfilment.
Schimberg pushes back against reductive portrayals of disability that have long been seen in the film industry that either elicit pity or offer a misguided sense of inspiration. A Different Man offers a more nuanced and honest representation, capturing the complexity that disability can be: simultaneously challenging and liberating, visible yet invisible, empowering yet stigmatizing.
With Edward and Oswald as richly developed characters, each embodies distinct relationships with their disabilities — neither character “incorrect” in their interpretation of their lived experience. These contradicting portrayals illustrate it is possible to craft authentic narratives that reflect the realities of disabled life, while also challenging our perception of disability, and highlighting the real struggles that disabled people overcome.
Questions of identity
One of the most striking aspects of A Different Man is how it handles identity. After Edward’s transformation, he adopts the name “Guy” and begins living a double life, even wearing a replica of his old face as a mask for a theatre role.
This surreal detail critiques the performance of disability in the film industry — a theme Schimberg also explored in his 2018 film, Chained for Life.
In A Different Man, the relationship between how disabled individuals are perceived by others and their own lived experiences raises crucial questions about authenticity in disability representation.
Such questions and a shift toward complexity is critical as audiences and filmmakers increasingly recognize the need for inclusive storytelling that goes beyond race and gender to encompass disability.
As disability studies scholars Mitchell and Snyder argue, narratives that embrace multifaceted identities can disrupt the status quo, offering new insights into how society views disabled individuals outside of the cinema.
A Different Man serves as a roadmap for these richer portrayals, inviting viewers to engage with the complexities of identity, societal expectations and the human body. The film signifies a reimagining of cinema’s potential to elevate marginalized voices and foster a deeper understanding of diverse experiences that shape people’s stories about disability.
Billie Anderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Amélie Cloutier, Professor of Strategy and Innovation, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)
Leadership can emerge from unexpected places, especially during times of crisis. One such example occurred during the 2018 rescue of a group of 12 young soccer players and their coach, who were trapped in a cave in northern Thailand after heavy rains blocked their exit route.
The 17-day rescue operation involved a co-ordinated response from thousands of people, including 2,000 soldiers, 200 divers and personnel from 100 government agencies. The success of the operation was largely due to an unconventional group of leaders: an international group of cave divers whose unique expertise was vital to the rescue effort.
Our recent research on the rescue aimed to explore how leadership can emerge outside of the traditional chain of command. To do this, we analyzed a documentary and news coverage about the rescue, along with scientific literature and online searches, including LinkedIn profiles.
We wanted to better understand development of leaders who don’t adhere to the stereotypical image of heroic or charismatic leaders. These atypical leaders challenge our conventional ideas about what a leader should look like, or how they should act.
From advisers to leaders
Tham Luang Nang Non is a cave located beneath Doi Nang Non, a mountain range on the border between Thailand and Myanmar. On June 23, 2018, a group of 12 boys from a local soccer team and their assistant coach became trapped in the cave after heavy rainfall blocked their way out.
On June 25, Royal Thai Navy SEAL divers arrived and began searching the cave for the team, but the flooding made it impossible to locate them. Initially, civilian cave divers were brought in as advisers to the Navy SEALs. However, when the SEAL divers failed to locate the trapped team, the cave divers took the lead.
Following the discovery, the Thai Navy SEAL divers attempted to reclaim their roles as primary rescuers, believing they had the ability to complete the mission. However, their overconfidence and underestimation of the challenges ahead led to a critical setback: those who reached the children were unable to return with them due to a lack of oxygen.
With the situation worsening, the cave divers successfully persuaded the conventional leaders in place — Governor Narongsak Osatanakorn, Lt. Gen. Bancha Duriyapunt, Rear-Admiral Apakorn Youkongkaew and Capt. Anan Surawan — to allow them to take over the mission.
The cave divers assembled a new team of expert cave divers from around the world. The extraction began on July 8, and by July 10, everyone had been rescued.
The ‘Rudolph Effect’
The rescue operation demonstrates how individuals with specialized skills and social capital can step up to lead effectively, even in the most challenging situations.
Before the rescue, many viewed cave diving as odd, and even abnormal. In the documentary The Rescue, cave diver Josh Bratchley acknowledged that being in a pitch-black cave underwater is “probably some people’s worst nightmares.” But for cave diver Jim Warny, “once I get underground, that all disappears.”
For these self-described unconventional individuals, their love for cave diving and exploration serves as a form of escape and empowerment, while accepting that they stand apart from the norm.
However, their knowledge of navigating cold and dark waters underground, combined with their capital within the cave diving community, made the cave divers effective leaders. This case study demonstrates how leadership can emerge unexpectedly, and how atypical skills like cave diving, if valued and encouraged, can lead to innovative solutions.
In our study, we coined the term the “Rudolph Effect” to describe how outcasts and unconventional individuals can become key leaders when given opportunities. Like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the term’s namesake, these leaders can guide their teams through extreme situations effectively, using skills and perspectives that traditional leaders might not possess.
Unconventional and trustworthy helpers can transform into leaders, leveraging their unique skills, knowledge and social capital to manage extreme situations. But this transformation is only possible if they have the chance to demonstrate their abilities.
Cultivating unconventional leaders
The need for these unique leaders isn’t limited to extreme situations. By highlighting an extreme example, we aim to show that managers should create more opportunities for unconventional thinkers to contribute, even in day-to-day situations.
Managers should identify and nurture leadership potential in individuals from diverse backgrounds and experiences. By doing this, organizations can not only improve their ability to handle crises, but also widen their pool of potential leaders. This diversity strengthens companies, making them more resilient and adaptable when facing unexpected challenges.
This case study serves as a reminder for managers to constantly reassess and adjust their resources to achieve their goals. In tough situations, it can be beneficial to bring in leaders who think outside the box.
Managers should be aware of the unique skills and connections within their teams to identify these unconventional leaders during their risk planning. They should also have backup plans ready in case initial solutions prove ineffective.
Amélie Cloutier receives funding from FRQSC.
Andrew Webb receives funding from SSHRC and le Secrétaire du Conseil du Trésor du Québec.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jabari M. Evans, Assistant Professor of Race and Media, School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of South Carolina
Toronto rapper Top5 appearing in his music video ‘Movie’ featuring the rappers Why G and Bundog. The Crown recently stayed murder charges against Top5 after a judge ruled his lyrics and social media content could not be used as evidence. (YouTube/Top5)
In May, I was in my office grading papers when an email came through from Arika, a paralegal working for Toronto lawyer Gary Grill. They were reaching out to me about potentially serving as an expert witness in a murder trial. The case involved Hassan Ali, better known as the rapper Top5, who was charged in 2021 with first-degree murder in the shooting of 20-year-old accounting student Hashim Omar Hashi.
Arika mentioned that they had come across my research on drill rap and hoped I could testify on the inadmissibility of rap lyrics and music videos as criminal evidence. Without hesitation, I agreed.
Drill music is a subgenre of hip-hop that originated in Chicago, characterized by its gritty, raw lyrics focused on street life, violence and survival, often reflecting the harsh realities of inner-city environments.
Lyrics as evidence
In September, a judge ruled that Top5’s social media posts, music videos and lyrics were inadmissible as evidence, recognizing that much of what he posted was part of his artistic persona. As a result, the charges against him were stayed.
The Canadian legal system, like its U.S. counterpart, has allowed these forms of creative expression to be weaponized against artists. This was evident in the case of Chael Mills and Lavare Williams, where rap lyrics were used as evidence contributing to their convictions for murder. That case (and others like it) opened the door for rap lyrics to be used against artists in court, further entrenching harmful stereotypes about Black men and violence. This practice is unjust and perpetuates racial biases.
Though Top5’s lyrics didn’t explicitly threaten the victim in this case, the prosecution used songs and social media posts in which he alludes to the Go Getem Gang (his crew) being a criminal group. In 2023, he appeared in a music video while in prison where he said: “I was 18 when I bought a gun, 22 when I shot your son.”
However, when I delved into Top5’s online presence, I was struck by just how sensational his persona was. Beyond the music videos, he is an avid vlogger and live streamer, frequently discussing recent shootings, open cases involving his friends and making overt threats toward his rivals — all while name-dropping his connections, including Drake. He was using social media in a way that blurred the line between artistic performance and self-incrimination.
This placed me in a difficult moral position. Reviewing all the evidence and seeing Top5’s brazen online behaviour made me wonder whether defending him would undermine my larger argument: that rap lyrics and videos shouldn’t be used as evidence because they are artistic expressions, not confessions.
However, this internal debate led me to reaffirm my stance: the very assumptions I was grappling with were precisely what I had been fighting against. Even if Top5 seemed to push the boundaries, it was still unjust for the legal system to interpret his art and social media as literal truths.
‘Heard of Me’ by Top5 featuring Why G.
Clout chasing
What became clear to me was that Top5, like many young rappers, was caught in the grip of clout chasing — a phenomenon driven by the need for attention and validation in today’s social media age.
Clout chasing isn’t just about gaining followers; it reflects deeper issues in society, especially among Black youth.
As sociologist Elijah Anderson described, the tension between earning respect in the streets and striving for middle-class success is central to understanding drill rappers like Top5. On one side, Black youth are encouraged to adopt “decency” as defined by white society and achieve upward mobility through socially acceptable means.
On the other, they must navigate the “code of the streets,” where respect is earned through fearlessness and survival, often in defiance of mainstream societal norms.
Top5’s rise illustrates this tension vividly. His strategy for visibility online relied heavily on broadcasting the most sensational aspects of his life — threats, rivalries and bravado — all while crafting a persona as a street entrepreneur.
However, Top5’s lyrics, videos and social media posts exist in a gray area between reality and performance art. What Hassan Ali creates as Top5 is a carefully constructed character, not a confession to crimes.
This distinction is crucial in understanding why these forms of expression should not be used as evidence in court. The very nature of rap as a genre involves exaggeration, metaphor and artistic license, and treating it as literal truth is both unjust and misleading.
The broader implications of clout chasing and the digital age on legal proceedings are significant. Top5’s use of digital clout is, in many ways, a symptom of what some scholars have called “emotional illiteracy” among some young Black men — a kind of bravado or fearlessness that manifests as aggression or recklessness online.
Yet, this behaviour is often misunderstood. It’s not about incriminating oneself. It’s about asserting one’s worth and survival in a society that has long marginalized young Black voices.
A trailer for ‘As We Speak: Rap Music on Trial,’ a documentary that explores the weaponization of rap lyrics in the U.S. criminal justice system.
Legal implications
The judge’s decision in Top5’s case was groundbreaking. It underscored that even in an era of social media oversharing, courts must be careful not to conflate performance with reality. For the first time, a court acknowledged that an artist’s social media content could be as much a part of their creative self-expression as their lyrics or music videos.
This ruling was not only significant for rap and hip-hop artists who have long been subjected to legal scrutiny based on their work. It also signals a growing recognition that creative expression — whether in the form of lyrics, videos or even Instagram posts — cannot be treated as literal fact without risking injustice.
As rap music continues to evolve and engage with social issues, it’s imperative that the legal system evolves alongside it, developing a more nuanced understanding of artistic expression in the digital age.
Using rap music as evidence in criminal trials is not just a legal issue but a cultural one. It speaks to how society views Black art and Black lives. By treating rap lyrics as confessions, the legal system perpetuates harmful stereotypes about Black men as inherently violent or criminal.
The decision in Top5’s case represents a step forward, but the fight for justice is far from over. We must remain vigilant in protecting the creative freedoms of all artists, regardless of how controversial their work may seem.
Jabari M. Evans 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.
Weight-loss injectables don’t address the many core reasons for why weight gain and unemployment occur in the first place.oleschwander/ Shutterstock
Prime Minister Keir Starmer and health secretary Wes Streeting have recently discussed plans to trial weight-loss injections for around 250,000 people with obesity who are unemployed in a bid to get them back into work, ease pressure on the NHS and boost the economy.
Obesity is estimated to cost UK society around £35 billion annually. This is due to lower productivity and higher NHS treatment costs.
Around 26% of the English adult population (approximately 15 million) are considered obese. However, it’s not known what proportion of unemployed people are obese.
While weight-loss injections have proven to be very effective in helping people who are obese to lose weight and lower their risk of certain chronic diseases, there are many reasons why these drugs alone won’t help tackle obesity and unemployment rates in the UK.
1. Lack of capacity
The majority of UK people who are obese are likely to meet the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s eligibility criteria for weight-loss injections.
But prescribing these drugs is just one part of the equation. Eligible patients will require support from specialist services who provide guidance in making the appropriate lifestyle changes (such as to their diet) to successfully lose weight while on these drugs. This is crucial, as all of the weight-loss injection trials to date have involved a behaviour change component. This may potentially be key to the successful weight losses observed in these studies.
However, current demand for weight-loss services is already outstripping capacity. Nearly half of eligible patients in England are unable to get an appointment with a specialist team. Weight-loss injections can only be prescribed through such services currently. If the government is to roll out the proposed programme, they will need to rethink the way weight-loss services are delivered so all eligible patients can access support.
2. Won’t work for everyone
Weight-loss jabs don’t necessarily work for everyone. One study found that 9-15% of participants who took the drug tirzepatide (Mounjaro) did not lose clinically significant amounts of weight.
Weight-loss jabs may also cause intolerable side-effects for some. Trials have shown between 4-8% of participants couldn’t tolerate the side-effects, causing them to drop out of the study. Constipation, diarrhoea and nausea are some of the most commonly reported.
People with certain health conditions may be unable to use weight-loss injections – such as those with inflammatory bowel disease and pancreatitis. In such cases, weight-loss jabs may worsen symptoms or interact with the prescription drugs used to manage these conditions, increasing risk of harm.
Additionally, some people may not want to take an injection – whether that’s simply due to personal preference or even fear of needles.
3. Obesity is a complex issue
There are many complex factors that contribute to weight gain – such as opportunities for physical activity, access to healthy foods and levels of deprivation in a community. Prescribing weight-loss jabs to help people lose weight may not be effective long-term if the rest of these factors are not also addressed.
A more effective way of seeing significant, sustainable reductions in obesity levels across a population is by using a “whole systems approach”. This would address to the multiple environmental, social and economic factors that contribute to obesity.
Where whole systems approaches have been embedded in healthcare design and delivery, they have led to improvements in services and patient outcomes – including obesity-related metrics (such as patients making healthier food choices and being more active).
However, one limitation to whole systems approaches is challenges in measuring impact. This can reduce political will to implement these approaches.
4. Obesity stigma
Obesity stigma in the workplace is a huge barrier to satisfactory employment and leads to poor wellbeing and burnout.
Obesity stigma in the workplace perpetuates harmful weight-based stereotypes that overweight and obese people are lazy, unsuccessful, unintelligent and lack willpower. As a result, people with obesity are more likely to be in insecure and lower-paid jobs than those who may be considered of a healthy weight.
It’s also well-evidenced that regular exposure to stigmatising, isolating and degrading prejudices has long-term consequences on physical and mental health – and may lead to problems such as binge eating and depression.This can lead to a loss of productivity, absenteeism and loneliness.
Prescribing weight-loss jabs to help a person lose weight doesn’t address the core reasons for why they may have been absent from work or unemployed in the first place. Nor does it help to address the mental health struggles they may still harbour as a result of discrimination they might have experienced.
Current prescribing restrictions also limit some injections to a maximum of 24 months (although further trials are ongoing). This means that even if a person has successfully lost weight, they may regain that weight again when they stop using the drug. This could mean any health problems they experienced prior to losing weight (and which may have prevented them from being in employment) could reemerge.
There are better ways of getting people back into work than prescribing weight-loss jabs. Flexible working approaches, for instance, may make it easier for someone who is unemployed due to caring responsibilities or health problems to transition back into employment. Supportive policies and workplace wellbeing programmes may be a more cost-effective way of helping people to overcome barriers, improve their health and transition back into work.
Lucie Nield has received funding from The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) for evaluation of children’s weight management services.
Lucie Nield sits on the Board of Trustees for Darnall Wellbeing (a local community service organisation).
Source: The Conversation – France – By David W. Versailles, Professor, strategic management and innovation management, co-director of PSB’s newPIC chair, PSB Paris School of Business
The headquarters of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Virginia.ajay_suresh/Flickr, CC BY
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is often held as a model for driving technology advances. For decades, it has contributed to military and economic dominance by bridging the gap between military and civilian applications. European policymakers frequently reference DARPA in discussions, as outlined in the 2024 Draghi Report, but an EU equivalent has yet to materialise. To create such an agency, the governance and management of European innovation programmes would need drastic changes.
DARPA supports disruptive innovation
Founded in 1958, DARPA operates under the US Department of Defense (DoD) with a straightforward mission: to fund high-risk technological programmes that could lead to radical innovation. DARPA provides support throughout the innovation process, focusing on environments where new uses for technology must be invented or adapted. Although part of the DoD, DARPA funds projects that promise technological and economic superiority whether they align with current military priorities or not. DARPA has backed projects like ARPANET, the precursor to the internet, and the GPS. Today, DARPA shows interest in autonomous vehicles for urban areas and new missile technologies.
As part of its core mission, DARPA accepts high financial risks on exploration projects and makes long-term commitments to these projects. Many emblematic successes explain why DARPA is a reference agency. However, the list of failed projects is even longer. Both failures and successes feed the exploration process in emerging industrial sectors. They represent opportunities to learn together and build collective strategies in innovation ecosystems.
Five key principles of DARPA
DARPA’s success stems not just from its stability but from adhering to five organisational principles that allow it to explore deep tech in an open innovation context:
Independence: DARPA operates independently from other military services, research & development centres and federal agencies, allowing it to explore options outside dominant research paradigms. While cooperation is possible, its decisions and directions are not influenced by other parts of the federal administration.
Agility: The agency’s flat organisational structure minimises bureaucracy. Its independent decision-making processes and streamlined contracting allow it to pivot quickly, test new concepts and collaborate with academic or private sector partners. Agility also enables DARPA to test new exploration or experimentation methods that are often based on user-centric approaches. Potential military or civilian end-users are involved very early in innovation projects to discuss potential uses and applications. This approach has recently led DARPA to absorb the Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO), where officers from the different military services (Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines) and all military ranks test new technological solutions (from different maturity levels), fostering co-creation processes with military innovators and expanding the agency’s impact.
Sponsorship: High-ranking executives within the DoD and other federal administrations (NASA, Department of Energy) endorse, but do not commission, DARPA’s projects. This sponsorship model increases a project’s potential impact and allows for swift adaptation if a project fails.
Community building: DARPA creates innovation communities with a mix of diverse expertise. By bringing different perspectives together, it fosters collective strategies essential for disruptive innovation.
Diverse leadership: Project managers come from a range of backgrounds, including civilian experts, military officers and private-sector professionals. All have demonstrated scientific and technological expertise and a solid capability to bridge dreams and foresight with reality. All have a perfect command of risk and complexity management. Managers serve three- to four-year terms focused on driving technological disruption and building new innovation ecosystems. Their diverse expertise sets DARPA apart from other federal agencies.
The challenge of a European DARPA
The Draghi Report on European competitiveness suggests that a European DARPA could help bridge technological gaps, reduce dependencies and accelerate the green transition. However, implementing this model would require a seismic shift in how European agencies operate. Creating a new agency would be ineffective without ensuring that all principles underlying the success of DARPA are implemented in Europe.
Even if Europe actively promotes deep tech and devotes significant budgets to it, European public policies and ways of working prevailing in national and European agencies are hardly consistent with the DARPA model. European agencies do not have much autonomy in their decisions about the exploration of new ventures or human resource management. They clearly demonstrate an outcome-focused orientation inconsistent with DARPA’s approach to risk.
Two main challenges
European agencies often lack the stable missions, scope and ambition seen at DARPA. The European Space Agency (ESA), the European Defence Agency (EDA) and Eurocontrol highlight the difficulties in developing cohesive, cross-border innovation ecosystems. A European DARPA would require a unified ambition among EU member states, a challenging feat given the institutional and geopolitical divides within Europe. The debates around the European Defence Fund illustrate how complex it is to reach consensus on shared objectives and funding.
Adopting DARPA’s five organisational principles would represent a cultural revolution for European agencies in relation to EU bureaucratic norms and the budgetary controls of individual member states. Implementing these changes would also disrupt the existing power balance between countries. The DARPA model is inconsistent with the European “fair returns” model that refers to proportionality rules between funding, research operations and then industrial repartition during the production phase between member states in each project. The DARPA model would only focus on existing competencies, excellence, risk-taking approaches and entrepreneurial mindsets.
Establishing a European DARPA would require a fundamental rethinking of public policy management in Europe. Its success would depend on whether European stakeholders are willing to adopt DARPA’s core principles, including its independence, agility and willingness to accept failure. Creating an agency is one thing; ensuring it adheres to the structures that make DARPA effective is another. The question remains: Is Europe ready for this transformation?
David W. Versailles has received funding from the French Ministry of Defence to develop this research.
Valérie Mérindol has received funding from the French Ministry of the Armed Forces to develop this research.
South Africa has been struggling for decades to reduce poverty, inequality and unemployment and raise the rate of economic growth.
Economic growth has been slow since a recession in 2008. The annual growth rate averaged 1.1% between 2009 and 2021, slowing to 0.6% in 2023.
Unemployment remains stubbornly above 30%. It was 32.9% in the first quarter of 2024.
The country’s Gini coefficient, a measure of how income is distributed across the population, is estimated to be 0.63, one of the worst in the world. Poverty levels remain high too. A large number of people live in extreme poverty. According to Statistics South Africa, an estimated 40.0% of the population (or 25 million people) have a monthly consumption expenditure of below R9,096 (which is used as the lower-bound poverty line). And 55.5% of the population falls within the upper-bound poverty line, with monthly consumption expenditure of below R13,656.
This is despite government’s extensive spending on social assistance and other support mechanisms. In the 2023/24 fiscal year, there were 18.8 million social grant beneficiaries (about 35% of the population) with an annual cost to the fiscus of R217.1 billion (US$12.2 billion). This is expected to increase to R259.3 billion (US$14.6 billion) in 2026/27.
Social support also includes spending on health, education, social protection, community development and employment programmes which protect the most vulnerable groups. In addition, the government has extended the Social Relief of Distress Grant which was introduced during the COVID pandemic.
Based on my research as an economist for the last 20 years, I believe the government won’t make much progress in reducing unemployment, inequality and poverty unless it adopts a different strategy – one that targets extreme poverty reduction explicitly.
In a recent paper, colleagues and I identify key conditions for reducing extreme poverty through social transfers. We designed an economic simulation model to track the effect of increasing social grants to very poor South Africans to move them out of extreme poverty. This would be done by transferring an average of R4,020 (US$225) to every extremely poor South African. Based on our assumptions, about 25 million individuals would be eligible for this social transfer.
Moving about 25 million South Africans out of extreme poverty would cost on average US$6.5 billion per year. We argue that this cost is worth carrying. Our model also showed that, under certain conditions, poverty-alleviation social transfers can be good for the broader economy.
Additional benefits
We know that social grants are important instruments to fight poverty and inequality in South Africa. They can produce sizeable multiplier effects in the economy.
But we wanted to know more about how society benefits when a large share of the public budget is transferred to poor households.
What makes the model we built to explore this different is that we simulated the economic implications of a hypothetical South Africa with lower poverty and inequality outcomes. More precisely, we set the poverty headcount rate at the lower-bound poverty line at 5.0% under both unconstrained and constrained scenarios. This is the conventionally accepted definition of extreme poverty eradication.
The tool combined a macroeconomic model to project the economic impacts and a micro-simulation model to work out the poverty and inequality effects.
We tested a combination of policy options, including social grants, and their multiplier effects and funding implications. We considered two financing scenarios: one that involved a budget deficit and one which was budget-neutral.
Under a budget-neutral scenario, funding for interventions would be taken from budgets allocated for other purposes and put towards poverty alleviation instead.
Key findings
The model showed that the South African economy, measured by the level of gross domestic product (GDP), would grow faster (by 0.5 percentage points) when the transfer was designed to support poor people’s progressive engagement in economic participation rather than simply providing them with a basic cash grant. This can be done, for instance, by expanding and upgrading the current social assistance schemes such as the public work programmes. These have been shown to have positive outcomes for economic participation.
When people who receive income transfers are able to work, they contribute to a higher supply of goods and services as well as to higher demand.
The inflationary effects, in particular food price increases, are limited under this scenario.
On the other hand, GDP deteriorates by 1 percentage point when there is no requirement or condition for participation (when grant recipients still don’t have a job). Under this scenario food demand increases and related price increases contribute to reducing consumers’ purchasing power.
What needs to be done
Our model shows how poverty-alleviation social transfers can have positive economic outcomes under two conditions.
First, the expansion of the grant lifting approximately 25 million South Africans above the lower-bound poverty line of R9,606 has to be done under a budget-neutral funding arrangement.
Second, the transfer has to be made with a requirement that there is an increase in the economic participation of extremely poor beneficiaries. In other words, the grant only has a positive effect if the very poor beneficiaries can find work or are required to participate in a certain kind of public work activity.
The fiscal cost of the poverty alleviating grant transfer would be around 1.6% of GDP or 4.9% of public expenditure. This would mean increasing social spending by 4.9%. Alternatively, spending on other areas would have to be cut by the same proportion.
In either scenario, the findings show that this constraint might even be relaxed if the fiscal transfer enabled poor people to get work or if the cash transfer was conditional on recipients doing certain work.
In our view the benefits of this are massive in terms of extreme poverty eradication.
Ramos Emmanuel Mabugu 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.
