Several days of bitter sectarian fighting in the south of Syria has brought the fledgling government in Damascus dangerously close to direct conflict with Israel, after Israeli warplanes launched strikes against government buildings in the Syrian capital, Damascus, on July 16.
The United Nations and a number of countries condemned the attacks, which the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, said were “escalatory airstrikes”. Yet Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, triumphantly used the social media site X to post a video of a Syrian news anchor diving for cover during the strikes.
Efforts to agree a ceasefire in the region have faltered and fighting between Druze and Bedouin militias in the southern Syrian province of Sweida is understood to have resumed. The BBC has reported that at least 600 people have been killed in the fighting so far.
The violence was seemingly sparked by a petty crime. On July 11, a Bedouin gang allegedly kidnapped and robbed a Druze merchant and the road between Sweida and Damascus. This prompted a series of tit-for-tat sectarian kidnappings and killings.
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On July 14, Syrian security forces entered the province to restore order, only to be ambushed by Druze fighters. Reports of these fighters executing government forces caused outrage throughout the country. Syria’s government then sent more troops, including tanks and heavy weapons.
But as these reinforcements arrived, they were met by a new challenge: more deadly and prolific Israeli airstrikes against government forces.
Weak central government
This cycle of violence exemplifies the underlying cause of the recent conflict. Syria’s interim central government lacks the credibility and capacity to exert its authority throughout the country.
This is particularly true in Sweida, which has been de facto autonomous for many years. The overstretched Assad regime largely withdrew from the province, during the decade of civil war. When his regime fell, many of the local militias which had served as Sweida’s de facto rulers were reluctant to surrender their weapons.
The recent violence exemplifies why this is a problem. Absent a strong local state, Druze militias took it upon themselves to exact justice, allegedly leading them to attack innocent Bedouins. This led the Bedouins to mobilise in self-defence. There are reports of violence and summary executions on both sides and also by government troops.
Syria’s Druze have good reason not to trust the new regime in Damascus, given the latter’s jihadist roots and history of anti-Druze violence during the civil war. The Sweida Military Council (SMC), a Druze militia led by the Venezualan-born cleric, Hikmet al-Hiji, were hostile to the new government almost from the outset. Other Druze militias in Sweida and elsewhere, however, were in tentative negotiations with Damascus to integrate into government control.
That would be a welcome and necessary step for creating trust in Syria’s new administration and increasing its capacity and capability to rule throughout the country.
But this process has now been derailed. Damascus’s mass mobilisation of troops, tanks and heavy weapons was condemned by all Sweida’s Druze factions, including those formerly close to the government. Some of these groups even fought the advancing security forces.
After government troops withdrew as part of the most recent ceasefire agreement, the province has quickly returned to the same chaotic militia rule that first caused the violence. Bedouin militias have already rejected the ceasefire and resumed hostilities against their Druze rivals.
Israel’s position
The recent violence has not only exacerbated sectarian tensions throughout Syria, it has also disrupted the tentative Israel-Syria peace process. Just one week ago, observers speculated that Israel and Syria might normalise relations. That now looks increasingly unlikely.
When the Assad regime fell in December 2024, Israel occupied swaths of Syrian territory and launched an unprecedented number of strikes throughout the country. Under heavy US pressure, though, Israel moderated its policies. It even began direct negotiations with Syria’s new government.
But as the conflict in southern Syria escalated, Jerusalem warned Damascus that a mass deployment of the state’s security forces within the province would cross a red line, because it would bring Syrian troops close to Israel’s borders. It would also endanger Syria’s Druze, a community that Israel’s government have sworn to protect.
But the fledgling Syrian government has said it aims to be an inclusive, centrally run – rather than a federal – state, so it has to bring Druze and other minorities, such as Syria’s Kurds, into the fold and put an end to the sectarian clashes.
By subsequently escalating its attacks, killing more members of the state security forces than since the Assad regime fell and humiliating the government by destroying its institutions in Damascus, Israel got the result it wanted.
It did so, according to Benjamin Netanyahu, through “forceful actions”. The Israel prime minister told journalists on July 17 that: “We have established a clear policy: the demilitarization of the area south of Damascus and the protection of our brothers, the Druze.”
Israel was faced with a choice: continue imposing its will on Syria militarily, or cooperate with the country’s new government. It has apparently chosen the former.
The fact is that in Sweida, and elsewhere in the fractured country, Syria remains a state with too many guns, gangs, militias and powerful external interests vying for control. Its heterogeneous population increasingly distrust one another and rely on their own ethno-religious groups to fulfil the responsibilities that a weak and distrusted central government cannot.
That distrust continues to flare into open violence in southern Syria. And it appears there is little the fragile central government can do about it.
Rob Geist Pinfold 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.
At the moment, everyone needs to fill in an individual voter registration application at least 12 days before an election. Automatic registration would enable electoral officials to update the electoral rolls without people having to make an application to register to vote. They could use other reliable data to make the electoral register as accurate and complete as possible.
Electoral officials would then write to the potential voter to inform them that they had been added to the register. They would have the opportunity to make any corrections needed.
The details are still to be worked out and the change would not come overnight. The process may be semi-automated to begin with – with the individual process sitting alongside some automation.
Why is automatic registration needed?
Many people don’t register in time for elections. Some don’t intend to vote, but others assume that they’re already registered. Some are also just busy.
The result is that there are around 7-8 million people who are not correctly registered when the polling stations open on election day. A significant number are then turned away. The problem is getting worse as the number of people who are not registered is also rising at an alarming rate.
Estimated number of people missing from the electoral register at UK general elections, 1945-2024.
What is especially troubling is that there are large gaps in registrations by age, gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Nearly all over-65-year-olds are on the register, but younger people are increasingly missing. Only 60% of 18-to-19-year-olds are on the electoral rolls – and 16% of the soon-to-be-enfranchised 16- to 17-year-olds (you can currently register to vote at 16).
Automatic registration will therefore be crucial to making votes at 16 a success. Asking and reminding young people to register would inevitably involve an enormous administrative effort. But if data could be transferred from schools and government departments to election officials to put them straight onto the roll, it would save both time and money – and bring about a higher participation rate.
Does automatic voter registration work?
Roughly half of countries around the around the world use automatic voter registration – including Germany, the Netherlands, Iceland and Finland. Countries which have historically not had automatic registration, such as the US, Malta, Canada and Australia, have all moved to at least partially implement it over recent years.
In a recent report with colleagues, I set out how this can be implemented and suggested a range of datasets that could be securely used.
Electoral rolls could be updated when people apply for a passport, register to pay council tax, update their driving licence details, register at university or claim benefits. Electoral officials could also be authorised to update the electoral rolls with data such as council tax data and information held by the Department for Work and Pensions.
One option would be to register people to vote when they apply for a passport. Shutterstock/ClimbWhenReady
Data sharing is already used in electoral registration. Every time a voter registration application is made, it is checked against another government dataset. There is therefore already the data infrastructure to enable automatic registration to work.
Electoral officials already use such data to register, remove or re-register people. This has enabled a lot of savings and less administrative hassle for many people.
Voter identification changes
The government’s election bill proposals will also extend the forms of identification that voters can present at polling stations to include bank cards. It clears the path for future digital forms of ID to be accepted.
The last government introduced a requirement for everyone to provide photographic identification at polling stations at UK general elections and some local elections. Accepted forms of identification include passports and driving licences but also a range of other options. If citizens don’t have identification, then they can apply for a free voter authority certificate, provided that they do so before the deadline.
However, our research found that many people were turned away in polling stations as they did not have required identification. Poll workers reported that the impact particularly affected some groups, such as students and women.
They may not, however, go far enough. The previous government restricted the independence of the Electoral Commission and these changes have not been reversed by the Labour government. The Electoral Commission will play an important role in automatic registration, so the government could renew its independence to help build confidence and trust in elections.
Nonetheless, the move to automatic registration would be a major step forward for a changing democracy – as long as the government now puts on the afterburners to power the effort needed to make these changes work effectively in time for the next election.
Toby James has previously received funding from the AHRC, ESRC, Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, British Academy, Leverhulme Trust, Electoral Commission, Nuffield Foundation, the McDougall Trust, Unlock Democracy, International IDEA and the Canadian SSHRC.
As summer holidays begin, many travellers are packing more than just swimsuits and sunscreen – for millions, medicines are essential. But taking them abroad isn’t always simple. From legal pitfalls to temperature-sensitive drugs, here’s how to travel safely and legally with your medication.
Know the law
Medicines that are legal in the UK can be restricted or even banned in other countries. Having a valid prescription doesn’t guarantee you can take a medicine into another country.
For example, Nurofen Plus, which contains codeine (an opioid painkiller), is prohibited in countries like Egypt, Indonesia and the UAE.
Even common cold remedies containing decongestants like pseudoephedrine can land you in trouble in places like Japan and South Korea. This is because pseudoephedrine can be used to make methamphetamine (“speed”). Likewise, many stimulant ADHD drugs are also banned from these countries.
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Some countries have restrictions on the amount of medication that you are allowed to bring into the country – usually a maximum of three months supply.
Travellers often overlook how strict customs regulations can be regarding medications. Even if prescribed for a valid medical reason, carrying a prohibited drug can lead to confiscation (leaving you without essential treatment), fines (especially in countries with tough drug laws) and detention or arrest in rare but serious cases.
If you’re travelling with certain controlled drugs – such as opioids, stimulants or psychotropic substances – you may need to apply for an export licence from the UK Home Office. This is typically required when carrying a supply of three months or more. Examples of controlled drugs include diazepam (for anxiety and muscle spasms), codeine and morphine (for pain), amphetamines (for ADHD) and temazepam (for insomnia).
Before you travel, check whether your medicine is affected by any of these restrictions. Use the country’s embassy website or the UK government’s travel advice to check the rules of your destination country.
This should provide guidance on whether you simply need a copy of your prescription, a doctor’s letter or a special import certificate (some countries require official documentation even for personal use).
The UK government advises carrying controlled drugs or any drugs that might be restricted in your hand luggage. You should take along a prescription or a signed letter from your doctor detailing your medication, dosage and travel dates.
Ensure you take sufficient supplies for the duration of your trip and include extras for unexpected delays, damage or loss.
It might be tempting to save space by transferring pills or liquids into smaller containers or pill organisers. While this can be convenient, it’s not always advisable. Customs officials may not recognise unlabelled containers, increasing the chance of delays or confiscation.
Some medications are sensitive to light, air or temperature, and must remain in their original packaging to stay effective. For example, HRT (hormone replacement therapy) sprays like Lenzetto must not be decanted.
These products rely on precise metered dosing and specialised packaging to deliver the correct amount of hormone. Transferring them to another container could result in incorrect dosing or loss of potency.
Similarly, GTN (glyceryl trinitrate) tablets, used to treat angina, should always be stored in their original glass bottle. The active ingredient can evaporate if exposed to air, reducing the tablets’ effectiveness.
You might be worried about the 100ml liquid in hand luggage restriction – with a doctor’s letter certifying the need for this medicine, you should be able to take larger amounts of liquid medicine through security.
Medicines should always be kept in their original packaging with labels intact. When in doubt, ask your pharmacist whether your medication can be safely repackaged for travel.
It’s also important to split your supply of medicines between bags (if more than one is used) in case one is lost. Tablets and capsules can sometimes be placed in a pill organiser for daily use, but always carry the original box or prescription label as backup.
Some medicines require refrigeration – like Wegovy and Ozempic (semaglutide) injections for weight loss or insulin.
Usually, unopened Wegovy pens and insulin preparations should be stored between 2°C and 8°C in a fridge. Once out of the fridge, they can be kept at room temperature (up to 25°C) for up to 28 days, but must be protected from heat and sunlight. High temperatures, such as in direct sunlight or a hot car, can damage insulin.
When travelling, use an insulated travel case or cool pack, but avoid placing pens or other medicines directly next to ice packs to prevent freezing.
Airlines generally do not provide refrigeration or freezer storage for passenger items, including medicines, due to space and liability concerns, but it’s worth contacting them to see if they can help with arrangements for storage. Inspect insulin for crystals after flying – if any are present, it should be discarded.
You can bring needles and injectable medicines like EpiPens (for allergies), insulin or Wegovy in your hand luggage. But it’s important to carry a doctor’s note stating your medical condition and the necessity of the medication, and a copy of your prescription.
You should also declare them at airport security. Security officers may inspect these items separately, so allow for extra time going through security.
Contact your airline for any specific rules on needles and injectable medicines. Always carry such medicines and medical devices in your hand luggage – checked bags can be lost or exposed to extreme temperatures.
Don’t skip doses
Tempting as it may be to leave your medication behind for a short trip, doing so can be risky. Stopping treatment – even temporarily – can lead to relapse or worsening of symptoms (especially for chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension or depression).
For medicines like antidepressants or opioids, people may start feeling withdrawal effects. You’re also at risk of reduced effectiveness if you miss doses of medicines that require consistent levels in your bloodstream.
If you’re considering a break from your medication, consult your doctor first. They can advise whether a short pause is safe or help you plan a travel-friendly regimen.
Take the right documents
While showing your NHS app to border officials may help demonstrate that a medicine is prescribed to you, it’s not always sufficient – especially when travelling with restricted or controlled drugs and injectable medicines.
Most countries require a copy of your prescription, and a doctor’s letter confirming the medication is for personal use. Your doctor is not legally obliged to issue this letter, but most will do so upon request.
It’s best to ask at least one to two weeks in advance, as some practices may charge a fee or require time to prepare the documentation.
Travelling with medication doesn’t have to be stressful, but it does require planning. With the right preparation, you can enjoy your holiday without compromising your health or running afoul of foreign laws.
Dipa Kamdar 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 Deborah Pain, Visiting Academic, University of Cambridge; Honorary Professor, University of East Anglia, University of Cambridge
The UK’s environment minister Emma Hardy has announced a ban on toxic lead ammunition to protect Britain’s countryside. This ban includes the sale and use for hunting of both lead shotgun ammunition (each cartridge of which contains hundreds of small lead pellets called “shot”), used mainly for hunting small game animals like gamebirds, and large calibre lead bullets, used for hunting large game animals like deer.
This is great news for Britain’s birds because the ban will eventually prevent the deaths and suffering of the vast numbers affected by lead poisoning each year after ingesting lead from ammunition.
Waterbirds and land-based gamebirds mistakenly eat these because they look like food or the grit they ingest to help grind up their food. Shot are retained in their gizzards (a muscular part of the stomach), ground up, and the lead dissolved and absorbed into the bloodstream.
Lead poisoning kills an estimated 50,000-100,000 waterbirds annually in the UK. These birds suffer considerably before they die. Many more birds are poisoned, but not killed.
While this additional “sublethal” poisoning does not kill birds directly, they may be more likely to die of other causes. This is because lead poisoning affects the immune system and behaviour.
Gamebirds will no longer be able to be killed using lead shot under a new ban in Britain. AdamEdwards/Shutterstock
The use of lead shot for hunting waterfowl and over certain wetlands is already banned in England and Wales. It is also banned for shooting over all wetlands in Scotland.
However, compliance with the regulations in England is only about 30%, and is also low in Scotland, although has not been measured in Wales. This new comprehensive ban should dramatically improve the situation across all habitats throughout Britain.
Birds of prey, including eagles, common buzzards and red kites ingest lead fragments when they scavenge flesh from animals killed by lead ammunition, or prey on animals wounded by lead ammunition. The acidic conditions in their stomachs help dissolve the lead.
Our research shows that while fewer birds of prey than waterbirds are estimated to die of lead poisoning, it can have a far greater effect on their populations, especially for species that first breed at a later age, produce fewer young, and would otherwise have higher annual adult survival rates.
The lead ban will benefit birds that live in Britain permanently or for just part of the year. But it will not entirely solve the problem for migratory species. If lead shot continues to be used elsewhere, these species may still ingest it on migration or on their breeding or wintering grounds.
Beyond borders
To protect all species, lead ammunition needs to be replaced by non-lead alternatives everywhere. The use of lead shot is already banned in many wetlands globally. Across the EU, a ban on the use of lead shot in or close to wetlands came into force in February 2023.
Now, Britain is set to become the second country to ban most uses of lead ammunition. This has been made possible by the increasing availability of safe, efficient and affordable non-lead ammunition alternatives, primarily steel shot and copper bullets.
In February 2025, the European Commission published a draft regulation banning most uses of lead ammunition and fishing weights. This awaits approval under EU processes – if successful, it will represent a major step forward.
Beyond birds
Birds are particularly susceptible to the effects of ingested lead from ammunition due to their muscular gizzards and stomach acidity. But it also puts the health of many other animals at risk, including pets and people.
The UK government based its decision to ban lead ammunition on a report by the Health and Safety Executive which highlighted risks to the health of young children and women of pregnancy age if they frequently eat meat from game hunted with lead ammunition. Children’s developing nervous systems are particularly sensitive to the effects of lead.
We recently urged the EU’s committee of member states for Reach (the chemicals regulation), the European parliament and council to fully support the European Commission’s proposal to restrict lead ammunition.
We also encouraged the European Food Safety Authority to recommend that the European Commission set a legal maximum level for lead in game meat marketed for human consumption. This maximum level should be similar to the one already set for meat from most farmed animals.
Until this happens, and more countries follow suit by banning all use of lead ammunition for hunting, the health of wildlife, domestic animals and vulnerable groups of people will continue to be threatened by the toxic effects of lead from ammunition.
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Deborah Pain is an Honorary Professor at the University of East Anglia (Biological Sciences) and a Visiting Academic in the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge. She has been an independent scientist since April 2018. She has received no remuneration for research on lead poisoning since that time, but, along with colleagues, has received funding for the costs of research and chemical analysis from a number of sources, as acknowledged in published papers. She was a member of the UK REACH Independent Scientific Expert Pool (RISEP) and within this the Challenge Panel on Lead in Ammunition and received payment for that work. However, her published research on lead poisoning was independent of that process.
Rhys Green has received funding for research from several organisations including the RSPB, where he was principal conservation scientist until 2017. He is now retired. He is an unpaid volunteer research scientist at RSPB and Emeritus Honorary Professor of Conservation Science in the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge. He is a member of the UK REACH Independent Scientific Expert Pool (RISEP), which is an expert group set up by a UK government agency, the Health & Safety Executive. He receives occasional payments for work done on behalf of RISEP. He is on the Board of Trustees of Chester Zoo.
Niels Kanstrup 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.
Suaalii only switched codes from rugby league to rugby union in 2023 and has just five international caps to his name. But despite his lack of union experience, he has been catching attention lately for more than just his powerful runs and physicality. In recent weeks, Suaalii’s unusual pre-match warm-up has also sparked curiosity, most notably, his use of juggling and peripheral awareness drills to prepare his visual system.
For many spectators, seeing a player showing off their juggling skills is more suited to a circus performance than international rugby. But there is science behind his bizarre approach. This preparation could be giving him an edge the Lions should fear.
Growing evidence
Visual performance in elite sport remains an under-applied area of sport science, yet the evidence for its effectiveness is growing.
My own research has found that a county cricket team which underwent six weeks of visual training improved their basic cricket skills more than a control group which did extra cricket skills exercises. This demonstrates that we need to be looking beyond the confines of the sport itself to bring about maximal performance.
Visual skill in sport is about more than just 20/20 vision. Each sport has its own specific demands, and rugby requires skills such as peripheral awareness, depth perception, rapid eye movement, reaction speed, dynamic visual acuity and eye-body coordination.
Combining these visual skills will allow the most accurate information to be sent to the brain for processing – helping players to make the best decisions, even under intense pressure and high levels of fatigue.
By using exercises such as juggling, Suaalii is training several of these visual skills at once. Juggling requires excellent eye-body coordination, the use of the peripheral system and reaction speed. These are all skills which are also used in rugby for catching high balls kicked by opponents, reading attacking threats and spotting the movement of teammates and opposition players.
Juggling has also been shown to bring about positive structural changes in the human brain – particularly in areas linked to processing visual information – and integrating this with motor control.
This demonstrates that this relatively simple exercise can lead to improvements not only in the eyes, but also the brain. In rugby, the visual array will be constantly changing. A shift in the defensive line, a looping support run, a player slightly slow to recover from a ruck, or a spiralling high kick – the ability to spot, process and respond to these visual cues can be the difference between success and failure.
Suaalii is by no means the first rugby player to train his visual system. Former coach Clive Woodward famously brought in a visual performance coach to work with the England team – and they went on to win the 2003 Rugby World Cup.
I also worked with the Harlequins rugby team in the English Premiership as a visual performance coach. We won three trophies in my first three seasons with the team, which is known for free flowing, creative play. This style of play places extremely high demands on the players’ visual systems.
Lions test series
So what particular visual skills can you look out for over this Lions test series and how might they impact the outcome?
When defending close to their own try line, players should be scanning across the width of the pitch to ensure that they do not become outnumbered on either side of the field. Conversely, the attackers should be making rapid scans to quickly identify any mismatch (for example, a slow front row forward versus a swift and agile winger) they can take advantage of.
In these situations, players can often focus too much on the ball, allowing opposition players to craftily reposition themselves unseen. The best players will, wherever possible, be looking at everything, everywhere, all at once, improving their spatial awareness and enabling them to maintain an overview of the game in their minds.
To catch a kicked spiralling highball, a fullback or winger needs exceptional tracking ability and depth perception. Players in this situation are sometimes let down by “convergence issues”, where as the eyes track an object moving towards them, they can drift outwards or become misaligned. This can cause players to mistime their jump, or for the ball to hit their chest before being caught, wasting vital milliseconds. Training these convergence issues has been shown to bring about improvements in sports performance.
As a scrum-half is collecting the ball from a breakdown, they need quickly to scan the positions of teammates on either side of them, and be aware of the depth of the defensive line. Having this visual information will lead to better decisions and creating faster attacking opportunities.
A crunching tackle may seem like a purely strength-based skill. But to ensure it is both perfectly timed and legal, a defender must perfectly anticipate the speed and direction of the oncoming player. They can then use this information to precisely position their own body to impart their full momentum, while using their reaction speed to make last-second adjustments to ensure they do not put their opponent in danger.
Subtle visual advantages, honed through practice, can influence these moments. During this test series, they may well be the difference between winning and losing. Suaalii’s juggling may seem better suited to the circus, but it could be the secret weapon Australia need to secure the series.
Zoe Wimshurst is the owner and director of Performance Vision Ltd, a company which provides visual training and consultancy services.
In 2022, somebody in the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) mistakenly shared a spreadsheet containing the personal information associated with 18,714 Afghans and their family members. This data breach, and the efforts to cover it up, raises serious questions about state secrecy, blame-shifting and accountability.
After discovering the mistake in August 2023, the government covered up their spectacular error with an unprecedented injunction “contra mundum” (against the world). This “superinjunction” prohibited journalists and others in the know – like one author of this article (Professor Sara de Jong) – from reporting the breach and even the very existence of the injunction.
When the superinjunction was finally lifted on July 15, John Healey, the defence secretary, revealed that the MoD had operated a secret resettlement scheme for Afghans whose data had been leaked at risk from the Taliban. To date, 900 Afghans and 3,600 family members have been flown to Britain or are currently in transit via this scheme. A further 600 people and their immediate family members are still in Afghanistan, being promised evacuation. Many thousands of others on the list were already resettled in the UK via two other official routes.
The spectacular nature and impact of this data leak should not distract from the fact that it is not entirely unique. The personal data of Afghan applicants had already been exposed by the MoD in an earlier series of data breaches in September 2021.
The superinjunction is only the latest in a string of silences that have prevented accountability on Afghanistan and other issues to do with national security.
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In the wake of the dramatic Nato withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, the foreign affairs select committee was dependent on whistleblowers to get to the truth about then prime minister Boris Johnson’s prioritisation of an animal charity for evacuation, over others at acute risk. Political accountability over the chaos of the evacuation was compromised by the foreign office who, according to then committee chair Tom Tugendhat, “repeatedly has given us answers that, in our judgement, are at best intentionally evasive, and often deliberately misleading”.
The Ministry of Defence – including Healey in his statement on the data breach – routinely cites the deaths of 457 British soldiers as the “costs of war” in Afghanistan. But the department only released the data on how many Afghan interpreters died alongside them after a freedom of information request by Sara de Jong. The MoD, even after several freedom of information Requests and appeals, refuses to provide further details about the circumstances of their deaths.
Even the latest shocking revelations didn’t end with the lifting of the superinjunction. A secondary injunction was lifted on July 17, revealing that the leaked list also contained the identities of dozens of British officials, including spies and special forces.
Selective secrecy
In the wider context of government leaks and secrecy, critical questions need to be asked about which secrets are kept, by whom and why.
In his judgement lifting the superinjunction, Mr Justice Chamberlain credited media organisations and individual journalists involved with the fact that they had kept the leak confidential. Like Sara, some had become aware of the breach several months before Healey (the then-shadow defence secretary was informed in December 2023). But all kept quiet to keep Afghans at risk safe, not to cover up their own errors.
The government invests in secrecy when it also has its own embarrassment to hide, whether it is an extraordinary superinjunction or secrecy about the prioritisation of a pet charity during the Afghanistan evacuation.
Appeals to national security routinely obstruct media, legal and public access to information to hold the government to account. Meanwhile, many Afghans are left wondering why their and their loved ones’ data was on a spreadsheet that could be emailed around with a click of the wrong button.
Effects on Afghans
The consequences of the cover-up will be felt most acutely by Afghans – those on the leaked list still waiting for evacuation, including family members of Afghans already in the UK, whose own presence may be complicated further by anti-immigration sentiment.
Following the revelations, Healey announced that the secret relocation scheme was now closed, following the sudden decision to close the two official Afghan resettlement schemes.
The decision to shut down the two publicly known resettlement schemes, he claimed, was based on “policy concerns about proportionality, public accountability, cost and fairness”, as well as a commissioned report on the impact of the leak.
He defended his decisions saying that “the taxpayer should be paying £1.2 billion less over the next few years, and that around 9,500 fewer Afghans will come to this country”. In the context of ongoing anti-immigration rhetoric, the mention of costs combined with refugees is as unsurprising as it is inflammatory.
On the day of announcement, affected Afghans were sent a notice by the MoD and a link where they could find out if their data had been compromised. The email said very little about what the MoD could offer, and said a lot about what measures Afghans were now supposed to take: use a virtual private network, limit who can see your social media profiles.
Afghans unlucky enough to be Afghanistan were simply advised that, “If you are outside the UK, please do not try to travel to a third country without a valid passport and visa. If you do so, you will be putting yourself at risk on the journey, and you may face the risk of being deported back to Afghanistan”.
It is almost impossible for Afghans to travel legally without international assistance. And, since the Taliban are not recognised as a legitimate government, embassies are closed for citizens to even obtain legal travel documentation.
Given that the British government recognises the real risk of rights violations in Afghanistan, as well as the ongoing assault on women’s rights by the Taliban, it seems contradictory – and a remarkable abdication of responsibility – to close routes to safety.
Victoria Canning has received funding from UKRI and British Academy.
Sara de Jong has received funding from the British Academy (Mid-Career Fellowship 2022) for research on Afghan interpreters and their claims to protection and rights. She is the chair of the board of trustees of the Sulha Alliance CIO, which advocates for and supports Afghan interpreters employed by the British Army.
With the rise of sustainable tourism (travelling in a way that minimises harm to the environment, and benefits local communities), words such as “sustainable”, “”eco” and “green” appear on countless holiday brochures. From five-star hotels promoting “eco luxury” to airlines pledging to reduce carbon emissions and destinations making various green claims, sustainability is increasingly being used as a marketing tool.
But with so many green claims floating around, it’s hard to know who is really providing sustainable travel and who is just greenwashing. A recent report shows that 53% of green claims are vague, misleading, or unfounded – and half of all green labels offer weak or non-existent verification.
So, how can travellers distinguish genuine sustainability from greenwash that exaggerates environmental claims to attract eco-conscious travellers?
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Sustainability certification is a voluntary, third-party assessment that verifies a product, service, or organisation meets certain environmental, social, or ethical standards. These certifications provide a structure to manage, improve and communicate sustainability performance.
More than 100 sustainable certifications promise that they have vetted tourism businesses so you can have a satisfying and guilt-free holiday.
Yet, not all certifications are made equal, as our recent research shows. Most certification schemes audit actions taken, rather than assessing how effective these are.
They assure you that the hotel you are staying in has an environmental policy or that it is progressively reducing some of its negative effects on the environment, but not that their energy or water consumption is well below that of its competitors, for example.
Choosing a sustainable holiday involves more than just travel to your destination. PhotoSunnyDays/Shutterstock
One major challenge is that consumers are not using these labels to inform their buying decisions. Next time you travel, select businesses certified by an organisation with a proven track record of verification and transparency. There are several things a strong certification should do:
First, it should be third-party verified. This ensures that the green claims are independently checked.
Second, it needs specific and clear criteria. Beware of vague sustainability claims, such as “eco-friendly”. Look for certifications that require transparent reporting on performance for specific environmental actions, such as waste management, or responsible sourcing.
Third, it should go beyond eco-savings. Reducing energy and water consumption saves the hotel money. They should not get a prize for that. Seek evidence of the certification promoting best practice in complex issues like biodiversity conservation and dignity in the workplace.
Examples of sustainable tourism certifications to keep an eye on include Green Key (the largest label in Europe); B Corp (which measures a company’s entire social and environmental impact); The Long Run (a promoter of nature conservation); and Fair Trade Tourism (a promoter of fair working conditions). These certifications require businesses to undergo regular audits to maintain them.
In case you are thinking it’s not your responsibility to find out who is any good – you are right. The EU Green Claims Directive (due to be implemented by 2026) is a new legislation that requires companies to prove their environmental claims and labels, and ensure they are credible and trustworthy. This directive recognises the greenwash problem and will require certification to be based on assessment of actual performance – in tourism, and every other sector of the economy. The directive applies to any business anywhere in the world that sells to consumers from the EU. Expect fewer, but more respected and recognisable labels, that reduce consumer confusion.
Certification is only part of the picture. Your next holiday can make a greater contribution to local communities while minimising its harm to the environment. Take the time to consider how your trip can be part of a larger, positive contribution. Here are more ways to ensure that your holiday supports local communities and the environment:
Make sure you travel shorter and stay longer. Research shows that transport is a major part of the carbon footprint of your trip. Fly less (if at all). Choose flights with lower carbon footprints – various booking sites now tell customers the carbon footprint for each flight at the time of purchase. And stay longer so you spend more locally, for that same flight.
Choose tour operators that prioritise locally owned and small suppliers. Buy souvenirs that are made locally, and you can only find in that country. Travel slow – soak in where you are. Hike, cycle, use local transport. You will see more of the real place you are in.
Choose buses and trains over private cars. Rent electric vehicles and select accommodation that provides charging facilities. And enjoy local and seasonal rather than imported food. Eat everything in your plate, rather than create food waste.
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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Cate Williams, Knowledge Exchange Fellow at Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences, Aberystwyth University
Bluetongue causes illness and death in cattle, sheep, goats and other ruminants.Juice Flair/Shutterstock
A tiny midge, no bigger than a pinhead, is bringing UK farming to its knees. The culprit? A strain of the bluetongue virus that’s never been seen before.
As of July 1, the whole of England has been classed as an “infected area” due to bluetongue virus serotype 3 (BTV-3).
There are movement restrictions and testing in place in Scotland, Wales and the island of Ireland. No animals from England – or that have passed through England – are allowed to attend this year’s Royal Welsh Show on July 21-24, for example.
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The virus, which causes illness and death in sheep, cattle, goats and other ruminants, is spread by biting midges. Although it poses no risk to humans and can’t be transmitted from one animal to another, the latest outbreak is more severe than previous ones. And it could cause lasting damage to UK farming.
Bluetongue isn’t new to the UK, however. A different strain, BTV-8 was detected in 2007 and contained. But BTV-3 is a different story. First detected in the Netherlands in late 2023, it was quickly spotted in the UK, where an early containment effort initially appeared successful.
But the virus made a comeback in autumn 2024 – and this time it spread. On its second attempt, the virus was able to circulate and caused an outbreak. With little existing immunity, BTV-3 has now established itself, prompting concerns about animal welfare, food production and farming livelihoods.
What does the disease do?
Sheep tend to be the most severely affected, though all ruminants are at risk. Clinical signs are species-specific but can include swelling of the face, congestion, nasal discharge, ulcers in the mouth and nose, difficulty breathing and abortion or birth deformities.
Bluetongue can cause the animal’s tongue to swell. It can also turn blue from lack of blood flow – although this is somewhat rare.
Bluetongue disease causes suffering in animals, and while there is a vaccine, there is no treatment for the disease once it’s contracted.
BTV-3 appears to be more lethal than earlier strains. In the Netherlands, vets report that BTV-3 is causing more severe symptoms than BTV-8 did.
Vets in England reported that in some herds 25-40% of cows failed to get pregnant, and there was a high rate of birth defects and stillborn calves. One farm in Suffolk started the calving season with 25% of their cows not pregnant and ended with just 48 calves from 97 cows.
Belgium has seen a fall in calf births, reduced milk deliveries and higher mortality in small ruminants compared to the previous three years.
How is it spread?
Bluetongue virus is transmitted by midges from the Culicoides genus. These are tiny, biting insects that thrive in mild, wet conditions.
Multiple midges can bite the same animal, and it only takes one of them to carry BTV before that animal becomes a host for further transmission. When animals are transported long distances, infected individuals can be bitten again and introduce the virus to previously uninfected midge populations.
Climate change is making outbreaks like this more likely. Milder winters and cooler, wetter summers are ideal for midges, increasing both their numbers and their biting activity.
While there’s no danger to human health, the consequences of BTV-3 are far-reaching. Limitations on movement, exports and imports are being imposed to help prevent the spread of the disease, but this could also hamper farming practices and trade.
The disease and its associated restrictions pose another source of stress for farmers, 95% of whom have ranked mental health as the biggest hidden problem in farming.
Genetic pick and mix
One of the reasons bluetongue is so tricky to manage is its ability to evolve. It has a segmented genome, meaning its genetic material, in this case RNA, is split into ten segments. This characteristic is exclusive to “reassortment viruses” and means that they can easily exchange segments of RNA. It’s like a genetic pick and mix with ten different types of sweets that come in an unlimited number of flavours.
This allows BTV to create new, genetically distinct “serotypes”, which may have a selective advantage or a disadvantage. Those with an advantage will emerge and spread successfully, while those with a disadvantage will not emerge at all. This process, known as “reassortment”, is partly responsible for the numerous influenza pandemics throughout history and has even allowed diseases to jump the species barrier.
Although bluetongue doesn’t affect humans directly, its spread poses a growing threat to the UK’s livestock sector and food supply. It’s important to learn from other countries that are further along in the BTV-3 outbreak so that the likely effects can be anticipated in the UK.
Cate Williams 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.
At its recent conference in Brighton, the union Unite voted overwhelmingly to expel deputy prime minister Angela Rayner from membership.
The successful motion denounced the way Birmingham’s Labour council has handled a pay dispute with the city’s bin workers, which, it claimed, involved large pay cuts. The motion also condemned the Labour government for supporting the council.
Rayner was suspended because, in the words of Unite general secretary Sharon Graham, she had “backed a rogue council that has peddled lies and smeared its workers fighting huge pay cuts”.
The resolution called upon the union leadership to “re-examine” its relationship with the Labour party. Graham added: “People up and down the country are asking whose side is the Labour government on and coming up with the answer, not workers”.
Rayner’s suspension seems an extraordinary move. The soft-left deputy PM is the most senior pro-union voice in the government and has a long history in the union movement. Crucially, when in opposition, Rayner was primarily responsible for hammering out a package of measures with the unions that was designed to bolster employee rights. These measures are now in the process of being codified in the employment rights bill that is making its way through parliament.
Why Rayner (along with some Birmingham Labour councillors) was selected for expulsion is unclear. Perhaps the union was simply lashing out. The impact of its decision was lessened by the fact that Rayner says she had already resigned from Unite and remains a member of Unison, a union in which she once served as an official.
Unite and Labour
The more significant move was (or appeared to be) the pledge to “re-examine” Unite’s relationship with the party. This should be placed in the context both of recent controversies over attempts to means-test winter fuel payments and cut disability benefits, and of reports of moves to form a new leftwing party under the putative leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana..
Might Unite disaffiliate from Labour and rally behind the new party? Given that Unite, with its 1.2 million members, is Britain’s second largest union (after Unison), and, over the years, has been a generous donor to Labour, such a move would be significant. Support from Unite could give the new leftwing party real heft and allow it to pose a worrying threat to Labour’s electoral prospects.
Unite’s recent history might suggest this as a possibility. With a long tradition stretching back over three quarters of a century, Unite (and its precursor, the TGWU) has been a stalwart of the Labour left. Under its leftwing general secretary, Len McCluskey, Unite made a major contribution to Ed Miliband’s election as party leader in 2010. McCluskey subsequently attacked Miliband for drifting too far to the right.
The union then played a crucial role in sustaining Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership: indeed, without its support, Corbyn might not have survived so long. And as it became evident that Keir Starmer was determined to wrench the party to the right, Unite once more became the centre of leftwing dissent.
McCluskey retired in 2021, but neither of the two candidates affiliated to his “Unite left” faction won the election to succeed him. Unexpectedly, they were both defeated by Graham, another leftwinger who believed that Unite had become too embroiled in internal Labour party matters and was determined to divert resources away from funding the Labour party to industrial activities.
The dog that hasn’t barked
However, Graham’s desire to divest from Labour should not be taken as a sign that she wants to reinvest in another party. The whole thrust of Graham’s leadership is to give much higher priority to industrial than to political concerns.
Even had she not been so explicit about this, union leaders are, above all, realists. They are concerned with the practicalities of protecting the interests of their members and hence averse to risky political experimentation.
And, however contentious a role Unite has played in the Labour party, multiple ties, in terms of history, tradition, ethos and interest, still bind the two together.
The row between Unite and Labour shouldn’t lead us to overlook the fact that, despite all the controversies and disappointments, the other major union affiliates, including Unison, GMB and USDAW, have largely refrained from public criticism of the government.
This is a sign of loyalty. The unions do not wish to add to the massive problems the Starmer government already faces. But it’s also evidence that, however undersold, the Labour government is delivering on the issues that matter to unions. Its employment rights bill promises the most significant enhancement of individual and collective worker rights in a generation. The unions will allow nothing to jeopardise this.
But for Starmer, there is no room at all for complacency. With a stuttering economy, greatly overstretched public services, a cost of living crisis and very difficult public sector pay negotiations, even the most sympathetic union leaders will come under great pressure from a disgruntled rank and file to take a tougher line with the government. The road ahead will be rocky.
Seeking to expand Florida’s role in federal immigration enforcement, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in May 2025 submitted the state’s Immigration Enforcement Operations Plan to the Trump administration.
The plan, endorsed by President Donald Trump, says all of Florida’s roughly 47,000 law enforcement officers have received, or soon will receive, training to act as immigration officers. It’s part of an effort to, as the plan notes, “maintain state-led border security operations in the absence of federal support.”
The DeSantis plan includes a proposal to deputize Florida’s nine National Guard Judge Advocate General’s Corps officers to serve as immigration judges. JAG officers are attorneys who serve as legal advisers, prosecutors, defense counsel and military judges in a wide range of matters specific to the armed forces. That includes courts-martial and civil matters involving the military.
In general, a U.S. noncitizen may face removal from the country based on violations to the immigration laws. Those range from unauthorized entry to committing or being convicted of certain crimes.
Congress designated the Executive Office for Immigration Review, an agency within the Department of Justice that houses the immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals, as the body exclusively responsible for deciding immigration removal cases. The office also details the authority and standards for how immigration judges conduct deportation hearings.
The McCarran-Walter Act also contains several provisions that subject most immigration court decisions such as removal or asylum to judicial review in federal courts. That can happen on direct appeal or as part of habeas corpus petitions that challenge the legality of detention or removal.
The system is far from perfect. But Congress designed it to ensure legal expertise and due process guarantees.
As an immigration scholar, I believe that allowing Florida JAG officers to serve as immigration judges bypasses this framework that is set in law, and violates the constitutionally mandated separation of powers.
JAG officers, including those in Florida’s National Guard, are not governed by the McCarran-Walter Act. They are military lawyers in an entirely separate system, overseen by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which defines the role of military judges. The code retains a unique military character that is substantially different from the judicial appellate system that governs immigration administrative rulings.
Simply put, neither Trump nor DeSantis can create an entirely new system of immigration judges outside of the one already established by Congress.
Federal agencies cannot deputize JAGs
A current immigration provision, known as the 287(g) program, authorizes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to collaborate with local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws.
But this provision only authorizes deputizing local law enforcement to assist “in relation to the investigation, apprehension, or detention” of immigrants – not the arbitration of deportation cases.
In the nearly three decades since 287(g) was enacted, no state or local officials – let alone military officers – have been permitted to act as immigration judges.
DeSantis’ plan seeks to convert Florida’s JAG officers from state to federal officials to function as immigration judges. Trump’s approval of this plan would also exceed the scope of his statutory authority.
An aerial view of the migrant detention center in Ochopee, Florida on July 4, 2025. Alon Skuy/Getty Images
JAGs cannot engage in domestic law enforcement
Even if Florida’s National Guard were federalized, JAG officers still could not legally serve as immigration judges.
The Posse Comitatus Act, enacted in 1878, restricts the use of federal military personal in civilian law enforcement. It reflects a longstanding American principle: The military should not police civilians.
Immigration enforcement – including deciding whether someone is deported – is fundamentally a civilian enforcement function.
The only narrow exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act’s restrictions require a clear statutory basis, such as Trump invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807, a law that would allow the president to rely on the military for domestic enforcement to quell a rebellion or widespread violence.
Due process concerns
The DeSantis plan also compromises constitutionally guaranteed rights to a fair process for immigrants facing removal.
JAG officers, trained primarily in military law, would face immense challenges interpreting and applying immigration statutes. That’s especially true with only weeks of preparation, as DeSantis proposes.
But due process isn’t only about knowledge of legal technicalities. The Fifth Amendment guarantees due process rights to all persons on U.S. soil, regardless of immigration status.
By circumventing established procedures, DeSantis’ plan risks creating a system where expedited deportations come at the expense of accuracy and constitutional rights.
Raquel Aldana 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.
In my writing and rhetoric courses, students have plenty of opinions on whether AI is intelligent: how well it can assess, analyze, evaluate and communicate information.
When I ask whether artificial intelligence can “think,” however, I often look upon a sea of blank faces. What is “thinking,” and how is it the same or different from “intelligence”?
We might treat the two as more or less synonymous, but philosophers have marked nuances for millennia. Greek philosophers may not have known about 21st-century technology, but their ideas about intellect and thinking can help us understand what’s at stake with AI today.
The divided line
Although the English words “intellect” and “thinking” do not have direct counterparts in the ancient Greek, looking at ancient texts offers useful comparisons.
In “Republic,” for example, Plato uses the analogy of a “divided line” separating higher and lower forms of understanding.
A Roman mosaic from Pompeii depicts Plato’s academy in Greece. Wikimedia Commons
Plato, who taught in the fourth century BCE, argued that each person has an intuitive capacity to recognize the truth. He called this the highest form of understanding: “noesis.” Noesis enables apprehension beyond reason, belief or sensory perception. It’s one form of “knowing” something – but in Plato’s view, it’s also a property of the soul.
Lower down, but still above his “dividing line,” is “dianoia,” or reason, which relies on argumentation. Below the line, his lower forms of understanding are “pistis,” or belief, and “eikasia,” imagination.
Pistis is belief influenced by experience and sensory perception: input that someone can critically examine and reason about. Plato defines eikasia, meanwhile, as baseless opinion rooted in false perception.
In Plato’s hierarchy of mental capacities, direct, intuitive understanding is at the top, and moment-to-moment physical input toward the bottom. The top of the hierarchy leads to true and absolute knowledge, while the bottom lends itself to false impressions and beliefs. But intuition, according to Plato, is part of the soul, and embodied in human form. Perceiving reality transcends the body – but still needs one.
So, while Plato does not differentiate “intelligence” and “thinking,” I would argue that his distinctions can help us think about AI. Without being embodied, AI may not “think” or “understand” the way humans do. Eikasia – the lowest form of comprehension, based on false perceptions – may be similar to AI’s frequent “hallucinations,” when it makes up information that seems plausible but is actually inaccurate.
Embodied thinking
Aristotle, Plato’s student, sheds more light on intelligence and thinking.
A 15th-century relief of Aristotle and Plato by Luca della Robbia in the Florence Cathedral in Italy. sailko/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
In “On the Soul,” Aristotle distinguishes “active” from “passive” intellect. Active intellect, which he called “nous,” is immaterial. It makes meaning from experience, but transcends bodily perception. Passive intellect is bodily, receiving sensory impressions without reasoning.
We could say that these active and passive processes, put together, constitute “thinking.” Today, the word “intelligence” holds a logical quality that AI’s calculations may conceivably replicate. Aristotle, however, like Plato, suggests that to “think” requires an embodied form and goes beyond reason alone.
Aristotle’s views on rhetoric also show that deliberation and judgment require a body, feeling and experience. We might think of rhetoric as persuasion, but it is actually more about observation: observing and evaluating how evidence, emotion and character shape people’s thinking and decisions. Facts matter, but emotions and people move us – and it seems questionable whether AI utilizes rhetoric in this way.
Finally, Aristotle’s concept of “phronesis” sheds further light on AI’s capacity to think. In “Nicomachean Ethics,” he defines phronesis as “practical wisdom” or “prudence.” “Phronesis” involves lived experience that determines not only right thought, but also how to apply those thoughts to “good ends,” or virtuous actions. AI may analyze large datasets to reach its conclusions, but “phronesis” goes beyond information to consult wisdom and moral insight.
‘Thinking’ robots?
Today, AI takes on many physical forms, from autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots to health care robotsand drones. If intelligence requires embodiment, as Plato and Aristotle believed, it might seem as if AI is coming closer than ever to human thinking.
AI does take on many forms, but they’re still not bodies; they run on code, algorithms and datasets. Intuitive understanding, emotion, integrity and practical wisdom seem to require an embodied, perishable form that is moved by experience.
Perhaps we should ask AI itself – so I did. When I prompted ChatGPT with the simple question, “Can you think?” it responded: “I can process information, analyze patterns, and generate responses based on data. So in some ways, it might ‘seem’ like I’m thinking. But it’s not thinking like a human does. I don’t have consciousness, emotions, intentions, or awareness. Everything I ‘do’ is based on patterns learned from huge amounts of text and a set of rules and probabilities. I can ‘simulate’ certain aspects of thinking, but I don’t truly think or understand in the human sense.”
That response aligns with Plato and Aristotle’s views. For now.
Ryan Leack 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.
Mike returned home to Philadelphia after a 15-year prison sentence and suffered an emotional breakdown.
“I just couldn’t stop crying … I don’t know. It was the anxiety. It was just a lot,” he said. “I was under a lot of pressure and it just came crashing down.”
Mike, who was in his late 40s when we spoke, told me about his childhood filled with abuse, his first arrest at age 14, and the over 20 years of his life that he spent behind bars.
As a registered nurse and nurse scientist who studies how incarceration affects mental health, I know Mike’s experience after release from prison is not uncommon. Studies show that Black men who have experienced incarceration have higher rates of PTSD, depression and psychological distress compared with Black men who have never been incarcerated.
Working in psychiatric hospitals in Philadelphia, I met many patients in crisis who had been incarcerated at some point in their lives. As a part of my doctoral research, funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research, I interviewed 29 formerly incarcerated Black men to understand how incarceration has affected their mental health.
My peer-reviewed findings were published in the journal Social Science & Medicine. All quotes shared here use pseudonyms to protect the men’s privacy.
Many formerly incarcerated men described experiencing or witnessing violence, including being beaten by correctional officers and witnessing close friends get assaulted or killed.
“You know you are not regular because you come from a traumatic situation, right?” said Thomas, 44, who spent 18 years incarcerated.
The participants expressed that racism was common, especially while incarcerated in facilities located in the rural central and northern regions of Pennsylvania.
“I ain’t gonna sugar coat it – Black people going up into them white people mountains, they call you [n-word] all day long and you basically there to accept it,” Antonio told me.
Incarceration was especially difficult for those who were held for months pretrial without ever being convicted and those incarcerated during COVID restrictions who spent more than 23 hours a day in their cells.
‘Even though I’m free, I ain’t free’
Participants described life on parole or probation, or in transitional housing, as another form of confinement.
Ken, 56, has been out of prison for over a decade but said, “I’m still locked up, even though I’m free, I ain’t free. You just get a whole new set of rules and regulations.”
Men described significant anxiety related to community supervision requirements, including difficulty sleeping the night before a probation appointment.
Participants also described distress caused by “no association” restrictions. These are common parole and probation requirements that prohibit people under supervision from interacting with others who have criminal records, are also under supervision or are currently incarcerated. Violating this requirement can lead to a technical violation and reincarceration.
While these requirements are meant to reduce the risk of reoffending, they often isolate people from supportive relationships and resources, including housing and employment.
“[There are] a lot of smart brothers in there. And it hurts my heart. And that’s where the depression coming in too,” said Reese, who spent six years incarcerated. “I can’t contact them in jail. … That’s just how it is in the system.”
Philadelphia has the highest rate of community supervision – including probation and parole – among the largest U.S. cities, according to a 2019 analysis by The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The men I interviewed said they felt like parts of them never left jail or prison, while others felt that they brought prison or jail home with them.
Tyrese, 34, said he stays home as often as he can.
“I’ve been out of the joint for seven years now and feel like I’m still institutionalized, I guess,” he said. “I know people that don’t even come outside,” referring to other formerly incarcerated men.
Others had dreams that they were back in a cell, or at home still wearing jail clothing. Long after release, many described constant hypervigilance and anxiety.
“I can be walking to the bus station and there be people walking around me, I’m constantly watching them,” said Anthony, who was first incarcerated at age 18 and served 16 years. “I’m watching every movement they’re doing. That’s a habit I had from jail.”
Philly rapper Meek Mill, shown here at a 2018 rally outside a Center City courthouse, was sentenced to probation for 10 years after a conviction on drug and gun charges. He became an advocate of criminal justice reform. Michael Candelori/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
Finding work
People who have been incarcerated often struggle to find employment after release, as many employers are unwilling to hire a person with a criminal record.
At the time of our interview, Tay, 31, was working part-time in carpentry. “Because I had felonies on my record a lot of places won’t hire me,” he said. “And a couple of places that I was working with, they ended up firing me once they did the background check.”
These frustrations can easily spill over into family life.
Mark, 30, also works part-time and said he found himself frequently becoming agitated and snapping at his kids, other family members and his girlfriend. “I can’t get the job I want or the job that I need to do what I need to do for my family and I’ll be frustrated,” he shared.
Participants struggled with having to depend on others for basic needs upon release. Kenny, who is now self-employed as a caterer, recalled his experience a few years earlier. “I was crying. I was a grown man, almost 40 years old, and my mother had to buy me underwear, socks,” he said.
The importance of fatherhood
Despite their many hardships, some of the men spoke with joy about reconnecting with their children.
“I think the most positive thing that happened since I’ve been out of prison is I got custody of my sons,” said Ken, a father of two. “Them kids saved me.”
Like many of the other participants with children, however, he was frustrated about being unable to provide for them and worried about repeating harmful cycles.
“You want to do good, but it makes you think bad stuff when you don’t have the right resources,” he continued. “You don’t want [your kids] to do the same things you did.”
Others struggled to bond with their children after years of separation.
John, 29, explained, “The bonding is kind of awkward, because you wasn’t there, especially during the pandemic when there was no visits allowed.”
Shawn, who lives in pubic housing, showed me abandoned buildings and boarded storefronts in his neighborhood and described how the environment made rebuilding his life harder.
For many participants, returning to divested communities brought stress. They experienced frequent exposure to substance use, violence and negative police encounters, and they had limited access to basic resources and job opportunities needed to support recovery and stability.
“This is my real life. It’s not fake. It’s not no, ‘Well, why did he go back and do this or that?’” he said. “I live in an underserved, impoverished, danger zone – period.”
Moving forward
The experiences these men shared with me demonstrate how traumatic incarceration is, even many years after release.
Supporting the mental health of formerly incarcerated Black men requires trauma-informed services, such as culturally responsive counseling, peer support and care that acknowledges the lasting effects of incarceration.
It also means helping them build or rebuild their financial resources, reconnect with their children and loved ones, and supporting the broader communities they return to through investment in housing, employment and accessible health and social services.
Helena Addison received funding from National Institute of Nursing Research of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number F31NR020434, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration and American Nurses Association Minority Fellowship Program, the University of Pennsylvania’s Presidential PhD Fellowship, and Jonas Philanthropies to support this study and/or her PhD training. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health, or any other funding organizations or institutions. The views expressed in written training materials or publications and by speakers and moderators do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department and Human Services; nor does mention of trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.
Higher vitamin D levels in a mother’s blood during pregnancy have been linked to higher IQ scores in early childhood and reduced behavioral problems. gpointstudio/iStock via Getty Images
Children whose mothers had higher vitamin D levels during pregnancy scored better on tests of memory, attention and problem-solving skills at ages 7 to 12 compared with those whose mothers had lower levels. That is a key finding of a new peer-reviewed study that my colleagues and I published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
This suggests that vitamin D supplementation may be a promising, low-cost strategy to support brain development while reducing racial disparities. Our study also suggested that vitamin D levels early in pregnancy may be most important for childhood cognitive development, highlighting the importance of early action by health care providers.
We analyzed more than 900 mother-child pairs across the U.S. who participated in a large national study called ECHO, short for Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes. We measured vitamin D in the mothers’ blood during pregnancy and assessed children’s cognitive abilities using a standardized test battery. We also accounted for other important factors that shape childhood development such as the mother’s education, neighborhood conditions and the child’s age and sex.
This new study builds on our earlier findings that higher vitamin D levels during pregnancy are linked to higher IQ in early childhood and with reduced behavioral problems in middle childhood.
Collectively, these studies suggest that vitamin D plays a crucial role in brain development during pregnancy, with lasting benefits for children’s cognitive and behavioral outcomes.
The children of mothers who had higher vitamin D levels during pregnancy scored better on tests of memory, attention and problem-solving skills at ages 7 to 12. Prostock-Studio/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Although we can get vitamin D both from sun exposure and our diets, deficiency is common because these sources don’t meet everyone’s needs. Sunlight isn’t always a reliable source, especially for people with darker skin, those living in northern climates or those who often wear sunscreen or sun-protective clothing. Natural food sources such as fatty fish, egg yolks and certain mushrooms contain some vitamin D, and fortified products such as milk and breakfast cereals help, but not everyone eats enough of these foods to maintain healthy vitamin D levels.
Although current guidelines recommend that pregnant women consume 600 international units, or IUs, of vitamin D daily, higher doses of at least 1,000 to 2,000 IU are often needed to correct deficiency. On average, U.S. women consume only 168 IU from food and beverages, and many prenatal vitamins providejust 400 IU. This highlights an important opportunity for clinicians to improve screening and support around vitamin D supplementation both before and during pregnancy.
If a simple, low-cost strategy such as prenatal vitamin D supplementation can help support brain development, it may yield lasting benefits for children. Long-term studies have shown that higher cognitive scores in childhood are linked to better memory and reasoning in older age, as well as longer lifespan.
What still isn’t known
While our studies have linked higher vitamin D levels in pregnancy to improved cognitive and behavioral development in children, we cannot yet prove that vitamin D is the direct cause.
Therefore, studies called randomized controlled trials – the gold standard of research – are needed to confirm these findings and determine how best to translate them into clinical practice. These studies will be essential for determining the optimal target levels for vitamin D to support brain development in pregnancy.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
Melissa Melough receives funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
These attacks are part of a broader strategy known as affective nationalism. It occurs when leaders use emotions, not just ideas, to build national identity. Feelings such as fear, pride, nostalgia and resentment are deployed to create a story about who belongs, who doesn’t and who’s to blame.
Trump followed Orbán’s playbook. On May 22, 2025, his administration declared that Harvard could no longer enroll foreign students. A U.S. Department of Homeland Security statement claimed that university leaders “created an unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators.” The statement suggested that many of the so-called agitators were foreign students.
These labels – “elite,” “foreign” or “anti-national” – are not neutral. They fuel fear, resentment and powerful narratives that frame universities as threats. Harvard, Central European University and Jawaharlal Nehru University have become symbols of broader national anxieties around identity and belonging.
British-Australian feminist scholar Sara Ahmed’s work on the sticky nature of emotions helps reveal the two emotions that often appear in attacks on universities: nostalgia and resentment.
Consider Trump’s “Make American Great Again” slogan. It implies the nation was once great, has declined and must reclaim its former glory. That’s a powerful emotional story. Nationalism often works this way – by telling a tale of a lost golden age and a future that must be saved.
For that reason, nostalgia is central to populist attacks on universities and institutional reform. U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, for example, evoked Harvard’s symbolic past as part of the American Dream, arguing it has lost its way and “put its reputation in serious jeopardy.”
In India, Modi’s government rejects Western influence, while using nostalgia to revive a Hindu past in higher education. The Modi government promotes national pride on campuses by glorifying military heroes and installing symbolic figures – such as the statue of Swami Vivekananda, a Hindu monk and philosopher, at Jawaharlal Nehru University – to shape student identity and loyalty.
In Hungary, Orbán mobilizes a glorified Christian past to challenge discourses on diversity, inclusion, critical inquiry and academic freedom in higher education. A 2021 bill tasks universities with defending the nation and preserving its intellectual and cultural heritage.
In India, the Modi government has increasingly framed public universities as institutions corrupted by Western ideas. Tomas Cuesta/Getty Images News
Enemies of the nation
Resentment is a powerful emotion often used by states that see themselves as defenders of national unity and values. When Harvard resisted Trump’s reforms, the president framed the university’s stance in a Truth Social post as a betrayal to the nation, denouncing it as “terrorist inspired/supporting ‘sickness.’” Meanwhile, the Department of Education issued a statement that accused the university of a “troubling entitlement mindset.”
Similarly, in India, the Modi government has increasingly framed public universities – especially those with critical voices – as “anti-national” spaces. By casting critical voices as enemies within, the state turns resentment into a political weapon to justify the erosion of academic freedom.
In Hungary, the Orbán government mobilized resentment to portray universities and academics as disloyal elites working against the nation. One example of Hungary’s war on universities is the 2018 ban on gender studies, justified by the Orbán government as rejecting “socially constructed genders” in favor of “biological sexes.” This move reflects how the government uses resentment to assert ideological control over academic institutions.
Universities are under attack for what they represent. Hindustan Times
Emotional battlegrounds?
Universities, especially elite ones such as Harvard and Jawaharlal Nehru University, carry deep symbolic weight. People care because of what the institutions represent.
Harvard, with its elite status, has long been a symbol of academic authority. But more recently, it has been cast as a defender of liberal higher education – making it a Trump administration target.
Jawaharlal Nehru University in India holds similar symbolic weight. It’s historically associated with producing the country’s social elites and is seen, especially in mainstream media, as left-leaning, making it a lightning rod in India’s polarized political landscape.
Universities are under attack not just for what they teach and research, but for what – and who – they represent. These are not just ideological disputes; they are emotional struggles over identity, belonging and public trust.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
When the announcement of Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi’s latest novel Dream Count was made, it was regarded as a major event in African literature. The internationally celebrated Nigerian writer had not published a novel in the past 12 years, and her long-awaited return stirred both anticipation and speculation. In the post-COVID context in which the book comes, so much has changed in the world.
The first leg of her three city homecoming book tour coincided with my stay in Lagos as a curatorial fellow at Guest Artist Space Foundation, dedicated to facilitating cultural exchange and supporting creative practices. After Lagos, Chimamanda took the tour to Nigeria’s capital city Abuja and finally Enugu, where she was born and grew up.
As a scholar of African literature, I arrived here in search of literary Lagos. But my attachment to the city may also just be romantic, a nostalgia born out of years of reading about it in fiction. No doubt, Lagos is a city of imagination and creativity.
Chimamanda’s book event was a reminder that literary celebrity, when it happens in Africa, can exist on its own terms. It’s rooted in a popular imaginary that embraces both the writer and the spectacle.
Lagos superstar
The launch in Lagos took place at a conference centre on the evening of Friday 27 June. The MUSON is a multipurpose civic auditorium located in the centre of Lagos Island which can accommodate up to 1,000 guests. And on this night, the auditorium was packed.
When I arrive, the scene outside is buzzing. A crowd gathers in front of a large canvas banner bearing a radiant image of the author. It’s more than just decoration; it’s a backdrop. It is an occasion for the selfie, a digital marker that you were there. There is even a hashtag for this: #dreamcountlagos. People take turns posing in front of it, curating their presence in the frame of Chimamanda’s aura.
The atmosphere is festive, electric. And yet beneath the surface shimmer is something more urgent: a hunger for story, for presence, for return. Perhaps that explains why people come not just to witness, but to be counted.
Inside the lobby, piles of Chimamanda’s books are neatly arranged on long tables. People are not just buying a copy. They are buying several in the hope that the author will autograph them. The sight is striking, almost surreal. In many parts of the continent, a book launch is often a quiet affair. Writers are lucky to sell a handful of copies. But this is something else entirely. This is not just a book launch, it is a cultural moment.
It would have been easy to mistake the event for a political townhall. There was a VIP section reserved for the who’s who of Lagos, but those class distinctions easily dissolved into the collective energy of the room. The auditorium was filled with genuine enthusiasm.
Even after a delay of more than an hour, when Chimamanda finally walked in, she was met with rapturous applause. She wore a bright yellow dress, an Instagrammable outfit, suited for the many fans who rushed forward to take selfies with her. Chimamanda, no doubt, is as much a fashion icon as she is a literary figure.
On stage, she was joined by media personality Ebuka Obi-Uchendu, widely known as the host of the reality TV show Big Brother Africa. But here, he was also something more intimate: the author’s friend. Chimamanda even credited him with being a “great reader”. This is a rare compliment in a literary world that often separates celebrity from critical engagement.
Their conversation was relaxed and full of laughter, offering the audience both intimacy and insight. Chimamanda addressed the question that had lingered for years: her decade-long silence. She spoke candidly of writer’s block, of the grief that came with losing both her parents in quick succession, and how that loss eventually reignited her desire to write.
Dream Count, she explained, is shaped by that rupture. It is one of the major post-COVID novels from Africa, and centres on the lives of four women. It is a book about love, friendship and independence.
Africans do read
When she spoke about her characters on stage, it was as though she was talking about relatives that the audience recognised. They responded by shouting out the characters’ names, to the delight of the author.
When I asked people about the launch afterwards, many said that it was a very Nigerian event – big, colourful, exuberant, festive. It was indeed a celebration that felt communal, even joyous. It was also a public demonstration of how literature can still command space and attention, not just in private reading rooms or crammed bookstores, but on a civic scale.
This was a remarkable event because it defied the tired cliché that Africans do not read. People, mostly young, came out in their hundreds. They bought books, they took selfies with their “favourite” author, they screamed the names of fictional characters as though greeting friends.
But more significant was Chimamanda’s choice to work with a local publisher, Narrative Landscape Press, which produced the Nigerian edition of Dream Count that is now available and accessible locally, at the same time as its release in Europe and North America. That alone is a radical act.
In returning to Nigeria to launch her book, Chimamanda also disrupts the assumption that African literary prestige must only be validated abroad. Even though she belongs to a cohort of African writers shaped by the diaspora, she actively insists on presence – on homecoming – not as simply nostalgia, but as active engagement.
Of course, Chimamanda is an exception. Her stature as a global literary figure, combined with her deep connection to home, allows her to move between worlds with remarkable ease. Few writers command the kind of multigenerational, cross-class attention she does. I found myself wishing though that more book launches could carry this same sense of occasion, of meaning, of return. That they could gather people in such numbers, not just to celebrate the writer, but to affirm the African book as something still worth gathering for.
And perhaps that is what made this book launch unforgettable: not just the celebrity or the spectacle, but the sense that literature still matters here, and that it belongs to the people.
Tinashe Mushakavanhu 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.
Connie Francis dominated the music charts in the late 1950s and early 1960s with hits like Stupid Cupid, Pretty Little Baby and Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You.
The pop star, author and actor has died at 87, and will be remembered for recording the soundtrack songs of post-World War II America.
Francis photographed around 1963. Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images
An early life of music
Francis was born Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero in Newark, New Jersey, to Italian immigrant parents. At a very early age, Francis was encouraged to take accordion and singing lessons, compete in talent shows, and later she would perform occasionally on the children’s production Star Time Kids on NBC, remaining there until she was 17.
Within these early recordings you can hear her style begin to develop: her tone, great pitching, her versatility in vocal range. Her vocal delivery is technically controlled and stylistically structured, often nuanced – and even at this early stage demonstrating such power coupled with an adaptability for a broad range of repertoire.
At 17, Francis signed a contract with MGM Records.
One of her early recordings was the song Who’s Sorry Now?, written by Ted Snyder with lyrics by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby in 1923. Her version was released in 1957 and struggled to get noticed.
The following year, Francis appeared with the ballad on American Bandstand. This performance exposed Francis’ talent for interpretation and her ability to bridge the teen and adult fanbase.
The song would become a hit.
It’s useful to listen to the original version to gain more insight into Francis’ vocal approach and styling. The original is an instrumental song of its time, with light whimsical call and response motives in a foxtrot feel.
But in Francis’ version, she demonstrates her ability to revitalise a late 1950s pop music aesthetic. In an emotional delivery she croons her own rendition, with the country styling elements of Patsy Cline.
Connie Francis performing in Milan in 1961. Universal Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The voice of a generation
Following Who’s Sorry Now?, Stupid Cupid (1958), Where The Boys Are (1960, the titular song of a feature film starring Francis) and Lipstick on Your Collar (1959) became the soundtrack songs of post-war America.
Francis was supported with songs penned by the some of the best songwriters from the Brill Building, a creative collective in Manhattan that housed professional songwriters, working with staff writers Edna Lewis and George Goehring.
In 1960, Francis released her hit Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool written by Jack Keller and Howard Greenfield. It was a teeny-bopper classic, and she became the first women to top the Billboard Hot 100.
Francis records in the studio with Freddy Quinn at MGM in 1963 in New York. PoPsie Randolph/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Styled after some of the other greats of the time – such as Frank Sinatra (1915–98), Dean Martin (1917–95) and Louis Prima (1910–70) – Francis’ performance on the Ed Sullivan show highlighted her connection to her Italian heritage and ability to draw from a broad repertoire.
On the show, she performed Mama and La Paloma. Each performance is very carefully styled, a thoughtful approach to dynamics, sung in both English and Italian.
Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You, a number one hit from 1962, features Francis’ gorgeous crooning harmonies. Then, the song breaks down into an earnest spoken part and finishes with a powerful belted vocal part of long notes.
The song is full of confidence and hope.
Away from the microphone
Francis had two key roles in films, starring in Where the Boys Are (1960) and the comedy Follow the Boys (1963).
She was an author of two books. The second, Who’s Sorry Now?, became a New York Times bestseller.
Francis was involved with humanitarian causes. She was particularly involved with Women Against Rape, following her own violent rape in 1974, and the Valour Victims Assistance Legal Organisation, dedicated to supporting the legal rights of crime victims. A lesser known song in her repertoire, fitting to include here, is her version of Born Free from 1968.
As a singer, Francis worked at her craft and transitioned effortlessly from one genre to another, performing for over five decades. She will be remembered as a trailblazing solo artist, leaving a strong legacy in popular music culture.
She was the voice of one generation when she was a star. And in her final year she became the voice of a new generation as Pretty Little Baby, released in 1962, went viral on TikTok, with more than 1.4 million videos using her voice to share stories of their lives.
Francis performs in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 2009. Bobby Bank/WireImage
Leigh Carriage 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.
As many countries grapple with ageing populations, falling birthrates, labour shortages and fiscal pressures, the ability to successfully integrate immigrants is becoming an increasingly pressing matter.
However, our new study found that salaries of immigrants in Europe and North America are nearly 18% lower than those of natives, as foreign-born workers struggle to access higher-paying jobs. To reach this conclusion, we analysed the salaries of 13.5 million people in nine immigrant-receiving countries: Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United States. Data was taken from the period of 2016 to 2019.
Immigrants in these countries earned less primarily because they were unable to access higher-paying jobs. Three-quarters of the migrant pay gap was the result of a lack of access to well-paid jobs, while only one-quarter of the gap was attributed to pay differences between migrant and native-born workers in the same job.
Spain has the largest gap, while Sweden’s is the smallest. Author’s own elaboration
The high-income countries we examined in Europe and North America all face similar demographic challenges, with low fertility rates resulting in an ageing population and labour shortages. Pro-natalist policies are unlikely to change this demographic destiny, but sound immigration policies can help.
Across these countries with vastly different labour market institutions and immigrant populations, a common theme emerged: countries are not making good use of immigrants’ human capital.
Stark regional differences
We found that immigrants earn 17.9% less than natives on average, although the pay gap varied widely by country. In Spain, a relatively recent large-scale receiver of immigrants, the pay gap was over 29%. In Sweden – a country where many employed immigrants find work in the public sector – it was just 7%. These results don’t include immigrants who are unemployed or in the informal economy.
Where immigrants were born also mattered. The highest average overall pay gaps were for immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa (26.1%) and the Middle East and North Africa (23.7%). For immigrants from Europe, North America and other Western countries, the difference in average pay compared to natives was a much more modest 9%.
Migrant pay gaps according to region of origin. The minus sign (−) before figures indicates that immigrants earn less than natives. Note that data for second-generation immigrants is unavailable in France, Spain and the US. Author’s own elaboration
Our results suggest that the children of immigrants faced substantially better earning prospects than their parents. For the countries where second-generation data was available – Canada, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden – the gap narrowed over time, and the children of immigrants had a substantially smaller earnings gap, earning an average of 5.7% less than workers with native-born parents.
The struggle to access higher-paying jobs
Beyond quantifying the gap, we wanted to understand the roots of pay disparities. To create better policies, it is important to know whether immigrants are paid less than natives when they’re doing the same job in the same company, or whether these differences arise because immigrants typically work in lower-paying jobs.
By a wide margin, we found that immigrants end up working in lower-paying industries, occupations and companies; three-quarters of the gap was due to this type of labour-market sorting. The pay gap for the same work in the same company was just 4.6% on average across the nine countries.
These differences represent a failure of immigration policy to incorporate immigrants, as immigrants are relegated to jobs where they cannot contribute to their full potential. Our analyses rule out that the lack of access to higher-paying jobs simply reflects a difference in skill between immigrants and native-born workers. We also found that the size of the pay gap and the key role of unequal access to well-paid jobs is similar for immigrants with and without a university education.
This means that the immigrant-native pay gap in large part represents a market inefficiency and policy failure, with significant social consequences for both immigrants and immigrant-receiving countries.
Although equal pay for equal work policies may seem like a viable solution, they won’t close the immigrant pay gap. This is because they only help those who have already secured work, but immigrants face barriers to employment that begin long before even applying for a job. This includes convoluted processes to validate university degrees or other qualifications, and exclusion from professional networks.
The policy focus should therefore be on improving access to better jobs.
To make this happen, governments should invest in programmes such as language training, education and vocational skills for immigrants. They should ensure immigrants have early access to employment information, networks, job-search assistance and employer referrals. They should implement standardised and transparent recognition of foreign degrees and credentials, helping immigrants to access jobs matching their skills and training.
This is particularly important for Europe as it races to attract – and retain – skilled immigrants who may be having second thoughts about the US in the Trump era. In the European Union, around 40% of university-educated non-EU immigrants are employed in jobs that do not require a degree, an underutilisation of skills known as brain waste.
Some countries are already taking steps to remedy this. Germany’s Skilled Immigration Act – which took effect in 2024 – allows foreign graduates to work while their degrees are being formally recognised. In 2025, France reformed its Passeport Talent permit to attract skilled professionals and address labour shortages, especially in healthcare.
These kinds of policies help ensure that foreign-born workers can contribute at their full capacity, and that countries can reap the full benefits of immigration in terms of productivity gains, higher tax revenue and reduced inequality.
If immigrants can’t get access to good jobs, their skills are underutilised and society loses out. Smart immigration policy doesn’t end at the border – it starts there.
Are Skeie Hermansen has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 851149), the Research Council of Norway (grant 287016), and the Center for Advanced Study at The Norwegian Academy of Science
and Letters (Young CAS grant 2019/2020).
Marta M. Elvira receives funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, grant PID2020-
118807RB-I00/AEI /10.13039/501100011033
Andrew Penner no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rachael Kent, Senior Lecturer in Digital Economy & Society Education, Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London
On a sunny afternoon, I was scrolling through social media when I came across a video of a young woman tossing her sunscreen into a bin. “I don’t trust this stuff anymore,” she said to the camera, holding the bottle up like a piece of damning evidence.
The clip had been viewed over half a million times, with commenters applauding her for “ditching chemicals” and recommending homemade alternatives like coconut oil and zinc powder.
In my research on the effect of digital technology on health, I’ve seen how posts like this can shape real-world behaviour. And anecdotally, dermatologists have reported seeing more patients with severe sunburns or suspicious moles who say they stopped using sunscreen after watching similar videos.
Sunscreen misinformation created by social media influencers is spreading and this isn’t just a random trend. It’s being fuelled by the platforms designed to host influencer content.
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In my book, The Digital Health Self, I explain how social media platforms are not neutral arenas for sharing information. They are commercial ecosystems engineered to maximise engagement and time spent online – metrics that directly drive advertising revenue.
Content that sparks emotion – outrage, fear, inspiration – is boosted to the top of your feed. That’s why posts questioning or rejecting science often spread further than measured, evidence-based advice.
Health misinformation thrives in this environment. A personal story about throwing out sunscreen performs well because it’s dramatic and emotionally charged. Algorithms reward such content with higher visibility: likes, shares and comments all signal popularity.
Each second a user spends watching or reacting gives the platform more data – and more opportunities to serve targeted ads. This is how health misinformation becomes profitable.
In my work, I describe social media platforms as “unregulated public health platforms”. They influence what users see and believe about health, but unlike public health institutions, they’re not bound by standards for accuracy or harm reduction.
If an influencer claims sunscreen is toxic, that message won’t be factchecked or flagged – it will often be amplified. Why? Because controversy fuels engagement.
I call this environment “the credibility arena”: a space where trust is built not through expertise, but through performance and aesthetic appeal. As I write in my book: “Trust is earned not by what is known, but by how well one narrates suffering, recovery, and resilience.”
A creator crying on camera about “toxins” can feel more authentic to viewers than a calm, clinical explanation of ultraviolet radiation from a medical expert.
This shift has real consequences. Ultraviolet rays are invisible, constant and damaging. They penetrate cloud cover and harm skin even on cool days.
Decades of research, especially in countries like Australia with high skin cancer rates, show that regular use of broad-spectrum sunscreen dramatically reduces risk. And yet, myths spreading online are urging people to do the opposite: to abandon sunscreen as dangerous or unnecessary.
This trend isn’t driven solely by individual creators. It’s embedded in how content is designed, framed and presented. Algorithms prioritise short, emotionally-charged videos. Interfaces highlight trending sounds and hashtags. Recommendation systems push users toward extreme or dramatic content.
These features all shape what we see and how we interpret it. The “For You” page isn’t neutral. It’s engineered to keep you scrolling, and shock value outperforms nuance every time.
That’s why videos about “ditching chemicals” thrive, even as posts on other aspects of women’s health are shadowbanned or suppressed. Shadowbanning refers to when a platform limits the visibility of content – making it harder to find, without informing the user – often due to vague or inconsistently applied moderation rules.
The system rewards spectacle, not science. Once creators discover that a particular format, like tossing products into a bin, boosts engagement, it’s replicated over and over again. Visibility isn’t organic. It’s manufactured.
Those who throw away their sunscreen often believe they’re doing the right thing. They’re drawn to creators who feel relatable, sincere and independent — especially when official health campaigns seem cold, patronising or out of touch. But the consequences can be serious. Sun damage accumulates silently, raising skin cancer risk with every hour spent unprotected.
The real danger lies in a system that not only allows misinformation to spread, but also incentivises it. A system in which false claims can boost an influencer’s reach and a platform’s revenue.
To resist harmful health trends, we need to understand the systems that promote them. In the case of sunscreen, rejecting protection isn’t just a personal decision – it’s a symptom of a digital culture that turns health into content, and often profits from the harm it causes.
Rachael Kent 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.
When thousands of Afghans were quietly flown to the UK under a secret relocation scheme, few knew it was triggered by an error. A defence official had accidentally leaked the personal data of nearly 19,000 Afghan nationals who had worked with British forces and were at risk of Taliban reprisals.
It has now also been revealed that the leaked list contained the identities of UK special forces and spies.
Even fewer knew that this misstep was being kept from the public by a rare and powerful legal device: a superinjunction. Now, after nearly two years of legal wrangling, the High Court has lifted that order, reopening the conversation about when secrecy in the justice system goes too far.
What is a superinjunction?
An injunction is a court order that stops someone from doing something (like publishing a story) or requires them to do something (like taking down an online post or handing back confidential documents).
A superinjunction goes one step further and does two things: it bans the publication of certain information (usually to protect privacy, safety or national security) and also bans anyone from revealing that the court order even exists.
In essence, it is a tool that provides legal invisibility: the story is hidden and so is the fact that it is being hidden. While an injunction works like a padlock on a filing cabinet, a superinjunction means you cannot even tell anyone the cabinet is even there.
Superinjunctions are exceptionally rare and controversial, precisely because they run counter to the principle of open justice. This is the idea that courts must operate in public, and that their decisions can be seen, scrutinised and questioned. Any derogation from open justice must be continuously justified and treated with considerable caution, especially where media freedom is curtailed.
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Historically, superinjunctions have been used sparingly in cases involving blackmail, risks of violence against witnesses, the protection of children or to prevent tipping-off a subject before an order can be served (such as in fraud investigations), always with the aim of preventing harm or ensuring that justice is done.
The superinjunction committee (which was established in 2010 by Lord Neuberger to review growing concerns about such orders) made clear that the use of these legal tools must meet strict tests of necessity and proportionality. And, that they are only granted where serious harm (for example to life, safety or the administration of justice) is credibly at stake.
Why was a superinjunction granted in the Afghan data breach case?
In this case, the government argued that revealing the data leak could put lives in danger. The leaked spreadsheet contained names, contact details and, in some cases, family information of Afghan nationals who had applied to resettle in the UK. Many feared Taliban retaliation.
So, in September 2023, the Ministry of Defence asked the High Court for an injunction to stop media outlets from reporting on the leak. The judge did not just grant that request, he escalated it to a superinjunction, banning any mention of the case or the fact of the order.
It was described at the time as “unprecedented” in its scope. Journalists, even those who had already discovered the breach, were effectively gagged. The public had no idea any of it was happening.
Why did the court later decide to lift the secrecy?
After multiple hearings and appeals, High Court judge Mr Justice Chamberlain ruled on July 15 2025 that the superinjunction should be discharged once and for all. A government-commissioned review found that the leak may not have spread as widely as initially feared, and that Taliban reprisals were unlikely to be triggered solely by someone appearing on the leaked list.
The judge concluded that while the leak was deeply serious, continued secrecy was no longer necessary, and that the harm of suppressing public debate and scrutiny now outweighed the risks of disclosure. To put it plainly, the balance tipped.
Protection v cover-up
Superinjunctions are not inherently wrong. There are situations where short-term secrecy is essential, for instance for the purposes of shielding vulnerable parties like children or genuinely guarding national security.
But the Afghan case exemplifies the dangers of allowing secrecy to persist too long or too broadly. For nearly two years, the public was kept in the dark about a data breach involving tens of thousands of lives – including British citizens – and a government response that may ultimately cost the taxpayer “several billion pounds”.
In this context, secrecy risked becoming a form of institutional self-protection, shielding the Ministry of Defence and the government from political fallout, legal scrutiny and accountability, rather than safeguarding people from actual harm.
The principle of open justice is at the heart of democratic life. Superinjunctions, by their nature, run directly against that principle. There are times when secrecy might be seen as necessary, but it must always be tightly scoped and justified with evidence while serving the public interest; not convenience or image. By lifting this superinjunction, the courts affirmed that the British public has a right to know not only what went wrong, but that something went wrong at all.
Alexandros Antoniou does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – France – By Mira Manini Tiwari, Research Associate at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute
If you choose to buy a sustainable product at the supermarket, or invest in a sustainable portfolio at your bank, how far does that sustainability reach? Does the product’s “sustainable” label account for the environmental and labour costs where the raw materials were extracted? Does the portfolio include renewable energy in countries where the investment is needed most?
In the EU, whether you are an individual or represent a company or financial institution, these questions are governed by the bloc’s non-financial reporting (NFR) regulations. The latest ones include the European Sustainable Reporting Standards (ESRS), which are gradually coming into force through 2029. The ESRS set out reporting standards and requirements, while the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) determines which companies these standards apply to, to what extent, and when.
These EU regulations also have strong implications for the Majority World, the countries and territories outside Europe and North America where most people live, at a time when global, systemic policy effects are more important than ever. As supply chains become longer and more interconnected, and as communities involved in them confront the fragilities of economic, political and climate shifts, the regulations that govern the sustainability of these chains and that enable or prohibit participation in them must be crafted and implemented to minimise harm to the most vulnerable.
In an article in Environment and Development Economics, my co-authors and I developed a set of proposals to improve the global sustainability of the NFR regulations. These call for collaborative development of regulations across the value chain, better data accessibility, measuring of and accounting for cross-border environmental damage, and greater integrity and engagement from financial actors.
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Cooperation, not compliance
As the ESRS come into force, reporting requirements are being applied to companies’ full value chains. This means that Majority World actors, such as those that extract raw materials for European products, may be indirectly subjected to the NFR regulations. This is important, as it holds companies and consumers, EU and non, accountable for the ethics of the goods and services they rely on. However, when regulations are built without directly involving those they will affect, they risk causing collateral, longer-term damage. For example, reporting requirements that feel inaccessible to smaller organisations can foster distrust and backlash, or cause companies to withdraw from contexts where data are less accessible, taking away key sources of income for communities.
While global climate negotiations have come under public scrutiny for their Minority World dominance, there has been relatively less scrutiny of global organisations governing financial and corporate sustainability standards. On their boards, the Majority World is conspicuous by its absence, demonstrating the dearth of attention to its agency in enabling greater sustainability, both locally and globally. European investors and policymakers are already shifting capital from the Majority World back to the EU in response to the NFR regulations, citing the difficulty of accounting for activities along the length of value chains. The damage falls on livelihoods, industries and essential investments, such as in renewable energy, which can suddenly disappear.
Developing NFR regulations in collaboration with all stakeholders, rather than only at the top, can provide a regulatory landscape that is, from the outset, more implementable, accessible and effective in the long run.
Democratic data and digitalisation
Efficacy in global NFR regulations relies on global data cooperation, which could lower the administrative burden on those reporting and enable greater accountability. The increasing number of EU NFR regulations do not exist in a vacuum: they have been accompanied by shifts in global regulations and a proliferation of national regulations. With regulations expanding to cover the full value chain, actors are increasingly likely to be subjected to multiple regulatory bodies, or have to provide data to reporting entities upstream. The time, financial resources and practical challenges involved in identifying, collecting, processing and sharing data are considerable, both for those submitting data and those receiving and verifying them. This makes divestment or significant losses more likely. Furthermore, the expansion of regulations can result in isolated streams of data and closed-circuit processes, which, in turn, cut out civil society organisations and individuals who use data to help hold firms to account for their social and environmental responsibilities.
Aside from EU calls for a European Single Access Point for corporate data, Majority World contexts offer particularly fertile ground for reimagining and building data infrastructures. Digitalisation in low- and middle-income countries is growing rapidly, and demonstrates the ability to make digital financial and business instruments democratic and accessible to those with the fewest resources. Such efforts should involve statisticians and local data experts from the outset to determine and harmonise appropriate data, along with transnational entities with the mandate of establishing links across data systems.
Support for international emissions accounting
Corporate reporting on environmental impacts must be accompanied by their reduction. Indeed, the work and transparency required to identify impacts in the first place, let alone mitigate them, underpins decisions to simply detach from the system, moving economic activity to local contexts where impacts are more traceable.
Firms that cannot afford to bring their activities onshore must account for emissions that occur from assets not directly under their ownership or control, which are known as Scope 3 emissions. In some cases, these emissions constitute well over half of a firm’s total value chain emissions. However, the implementation of the ESRS has designated the reporting of Scope 3 emissions, and climate impacts in general, to be largely discretionary, under the condition that firms provide evaluations of the economic and material implications of a given activity in their value chains.
The glaring gaps between some firms’ targets, actions and declarations are in part enabled by reporting systems that allow the omission of more distant climate risks and impacts, maintaining the misalignment between climate pledges and actions aimed at achieving them. While the number of firms showing readiness to comply with Scope 3 accounting is increasing, data on global investor preferences suggests that investors do not necessarily prioritise companies’ performance on these emissions when making investment decisions. For ethics to exist on the ground, they must be prioritised in financial flows.
Investment with integrity
In light of the above, financial institutions have a core responsibility to engage with NFR. These institutions’ economic leverage and centrality in the value chains and activities of several sectors give them incentivising power to catalyse a shift from the submission of reports to the building of living data systems and the achievement of fuller value chain accountability. Currently, many investors are not willing to accept reductions in their returns in exchange for the pursuit of social or environmental goals. Surveys suggest this is in part due to perceptions of low quality of environmental information, limited ability to assess the data received, and the difficulty of making investment decisions accordingly. In the current landscape of Minority World-led reporting, such mistrust is likely to be greater with respect to Majority World data, reiterating the need for data systems and reporting mechanisms built on equal footing.
Financial institutions can operate proactively, using their privileged access to data to bridge Minority and Majority World actors engaging in sustainable practices, such as microfinance bodies, local communities and relevant investors. Doing so could plug, at least in part, an information and trust gap that can hinder Minority World firms’ investment in unfamiliar contexts.
Regulating for whom?
The research underpinning our article initially involved a recommendation on streamlining and supporting reporting by small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which account for more than 60% of the EU’s corporate emissions. For these firms, especially, regulators face a critical balance between lowering the entry barrier of the reporting ecosystem and setting robust environmental targets. The nature, data points and timelines of reporting under the CSRD are currently under review following calls for simplification and greater support, and decision-makers are wrestling with the tension between accessibility and integrity.
Our work also included a recommendation that turns from the supply side, the focus of the preceding proposals, to the demand side: the data and sustainability literacy of the individual who walks into the supermarket to buy that sustainable product, or wants family investments to do more good than harm. Across sectors – public policy, investment and citizen engagement – resources must be dedicated to these literacies, so that actors are better placed to hold each other to account. Regulation becomes easily abstracted, reduced to figures and PDFs, databases and scores. Beneath each regulation is a world of citizens whose homes, livelihoods and health depend on them.
The author was affiliated with the University of Siena during the period in which she and her colleagues did the original work for the scholarly article that is mentioned in this piece. The author’s affiliation came via a project that, overall, was financed by the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR). The scholarly article and the present article were not outputs for the project.
US President Donald Trump has been diagnosed with “chronic venous insufficiency” after experiencing some mild swelling in his lower legs.
According to a letter the White House published from the president’s doctor, the condition is common and not harmful, and the 79-year-old “remains in excellent health”.
But what is chronic venous insufficiency? What causes it, and can it lead to other health problems? Let’s take a look.
When someone has this condition, it becomes more difficult for the blood to flow back to the heart. In other words, blood pools in the legs, rather than travelling up easily through the legs, pelvis and abdomen to the heart.
Blood pooling in the legs creates increased pressure in the veins in the legs and feet. This can cause swelling (called oedema), skin discolouration, varicose veins, and even skin ulcers (the skin stretches because of the increased pressure and becomes weak and can tear).
What causes chronic venous insufficiency?
There are several potential causes of chronic venous insufficiency, including damaged valves inside the veins in the legs.
When we’re standing, blood has to flow back to the heart from the legs against gravity. Veins have valves inside them which ensure this one-way flow and stop blood from running back the wrong way.
When valves in the veins – either the deeper veins or those closer to the skin’s surface – are damaged, this allows blood to flow backwards and pool in the legs.
Damage to the inside lining of the vein wall can also cause chronic venous insufficiency. When the lining is damaged, it becomes less smooth and blood cells can stick to the wall and build up. This can block the inside of the vein and impede the return of blood to the heart. Smoking is a major cause of this, though it also happens naturally with age.
Physical compression of a vein in the pelvis from the outside can also be a factor. Pregnancy, obesity or a tumour can push on a pelvic vein from the outside. This makes it harder for blood to flow through that vein, which causes back up of blood in the veins of the leg.
Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) also increases the risk of chronic venous insufficiency. This is where blood clots form in the deep veins, most commonly in the legs. It can block blood flow or damage the vein wall, and increase blood pooling further down the leg.
In a study I did with colleagues looking at people with chronic venous insufficiency, about 10% had a previous deep vein thrombosis. However, Trump’s doctor said there was no evidence of deep vein thrombosis in his case.
Who gets it?
The data on how many people get chronic venous insufficiency vary, but it is relatively common. In the United States, an estimated 10% to 35% of adults have the condition.
A number of factors increase a person’s likelihood of developing chronic venous insufficiency. Smoking and having previously had a deep vein thrombosis are strongly linked to this condition. Other risk factors include older age, pregnancy, obesity, and prolonged periods of standing still.
Is it dangerous?
On its own, chronic venous insufficiency is not life-threatening, but it is a progressive condition. It increases the risk of other conditions which can be more serious.
Interestingly, while deep vein thrombosis increases the risk of chronic venous insufficiency, people with chronic venous insufficiency also have a higher risk of deep vein thrombosis. This is because pooled blood doesn’t move as much, so it can start to form a clot.
Deep vein thrombosis then increases the risk of pulmonary embolism, blood clots in the lungs, which are life threatening.
In the legs, the most serious consequence of chronic venous insufficiency is developing a venous ulcer. Venous ulcers can be painful, are prone to infection (such as cellulitis), and have a high rate of recurring.
Research has shown 4% of adults aged 65 and older in the US develop venous ulcers as a result of chronic venous insufficiency.
Can it be treated?
Whether and how chronic venous insufficiency can be treated depends somewhat on the cause.
Initial conservative treatment usually involves elevating the legs and wearing compression stockings. Elevating the legs higher than the body means gravity will help blood flow back to the heart. Compression stockings help to push blood from the leg veins towards the heart.
Exercise such as walking also helps because when the muscles in the legs contract, this moves more blood from the legs back to the heart. Exercise and diet changes may also be recommended to address any weight-related issues.
Overall, Trump has been diagnosed with a common condition for someone of his age, and his doctors have ruled out severe underlying disease. But this is a reminder of the importance of healthy veins and of the risk factors for venous disease.
Theresa Larkin 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.
This year is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth and she hasn’t aged a bit as the cultural touchstone of classy romance. Her Pride and Prejudice anti-hero, Mr Darcy, perennially pops up in his breeches in Instagram memes, while Regency feminist, Elizabeth Bennet has been brought to life by a host of contemporary actors.
Along with new screen versions of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (starring Daisy Edgar-Jones) and a Netflix version of P & P, there have been adaptations of her classics Persuasion, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Mansfield Park. And, there are numerous biographies and biopics including a TV drama about Jane’s sister, Cassandra, who burnt most of Jane’s letters.
Review: The Novel Life of Jane Austen: A Graphic Biography –
Janine Barchas, Isabel Greenberg (Hachette)
Now, there is also a graphic biography: The Novel Life of Jane Austen, written by Janine Barchas and illustrated by Isabel Greenberg.
Together, they have co-created a storyboard for the domestic life that framed Austen’s writing, encompassing her closeness to both Cassandra and her brother Frank, who joined the navy and liked to sew.
Unlike a “cradle to grave” biography, Barchas begins with a teenage Jane in London with Frank touring an exhibition about Shakespeare and his work. We then follow her, in illustrative comic boxes and speech bubbles, through her publishing rejections, her breakthrough debut Sense and Sensibility, and her rise to become one of most beloved writers in the canon of English literature.
The book ends beyond the grave, flashing forward to the present, in a scene where contemporary fans – Janeites – visit Jane Austen’s House, the cottage in Hampshire where Austen lived when she revised and published her six novels.
It’s also a sign of subtle structural polish. Now Jane Austen is as deserving of her own gallery as Shakespeare was when we first met Jane as a young, unpublished author.
Thinking in pink
Barchas – an “Austenite”, as Austen scholars are called – is the author of The Lost Books of Jane Austen, a study of the mass market editions of Austen’s work. (The Novel Life touches on Austen’s posthumous appeal with a scene where readers buy Austen books for one shilling at a railway station after her death, aged 41.)
Barchas is the co-creator of the interactive digital exhibition, What Jane Saw, which invites us to visit two art exhibitions witnessed by Jane Austen: the Sir Joshua Reynolds retrospective in 1813 or the Shakespeare Gallery as it looked in 1796. The Novel Life, however, is a more definitive life story. It’s also best read in print (although it is available as an e-book) to appreciate Greenberg’s illustrations and graphic format.
The Novel Life is a gentler, less dramatic style than traditional comics with six-pack superheroes or Japanese manga, similar to Greenberg’s previous literary graphic biography foray, Glass Town, about the Bronte sisters.
For the Novel Life, Greenberg has drawn a world in which Austen is whimsical, with expressive eyes looming under her signature bangs. She and her sister Cassandra appear in bright yellow or blue empire line dresses.
Most scenes are illustrated in a muted palette of yellow, blue and grey. This palette, Barchas reflects in the preface, represents “the relative quiet of her (Austen’s) life”.
When Jane is thinking or writing however, the pages transform into vivid shades of pink to symbolise her imagination and inspiration. In these pages, The Novel Life is at its best, showing graphic biography can be both captivating and deceptively sophisticated.
Archival nods
Is a graphic biography really a biography in the conventional understanding of the genre? It can upset the perceived rules. Anticipating this, in the preface, Barchas reminds us:
Any biography of Austen, and there are many, exists at the intersection of speculation and research.
This book is at this intersection. While the dialogue is largely invented, it is grounded in Barchas’ expertise and there is a glossary of sources at the end.
Throughout, there are also nods to the archive. Barchas begins with a scene of Jane in 1796 writing a letter to Cassandra at a desk while staying in London – one of the few not burnt.
A speech bubble quotes an extract from it:
Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and vice, and I begin already to find my morals corrupted.
There are also Post-it style notes, separate to the bubbles, offering extra biographical context for readers less familiar with the intricacies of Austen’s story. A key scene happens when Jane, 22, receives her first rejection by a publisher for her manuscript “First Impressions” and is comforted by the loyal Cassandra. The note reads:
Jane would carry out more than a decade and a half of revisions before she dared to offer the manuscript to another publisher, who released it in 1813 as Pride and Prejudice.
Because of their visual casualness, importantly the notes don’t interfere with the intimate, engaging tone of the story.
‘Easter eggs’
For Austen’s committed “Janeite” fan base, Barchas promises “cheeky easter eggs” in the preface. Janeites can delight in well-quoted lines from the novels that appear as dialogue or a character’s thoughts.
Look, for instance, for Jane reading at a dinner party from P & P: “It’s a truth universally acknowledged […]” and “she is tolerable but not handsome enough to tempt me […]”.
It’s a truth universally acknowledged too that graphic biography can be confused with the graphic novel, now the third most popular literary genre in sales after general fiction and romance.
But, dear reader, there’s a tradition of life writing in the medium. The Pulitzer Prize winning graphic biography/memoir, The Complete Maus, told Art Spiegelman’s father’s story of the Holocaust to his son, (Art) who struggled to understand his father. Maus portrayed Jewish people anthropomorphically as mice and Nazis as cats. It was described by The New Yorker “as the first masterpiece of comic book history”.
Other high points in graphic biography include Peter Bagge’s Woman Rebel, the story of birth control campaigner Margaret Sanger, published in 2013.
Not everyone will appreciate a work diverging so dramatically from the expectations of a traditional biography. And those who will most appreciate or scrutinise The Novel Life are yes, the Janeites and Austenites.
Regardless, Austen comes to graphic life in the mind and hands of Barchas and Greenberg. More generally, for those of us who like our biographies in vivid colour – literally – and enjoy experiments in nonfiction storytelling, it’s a delightful reading experience, just like Jane Austen.
Kerrie Davies does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
I once leapt out of a train carriage because two strangers were loudly discussing the ending of the last Harry Potter book. Okay – I didn’t leap, but I did plug my ears and flee to another carriage.
Recently, I found myself in a similar predicament, trapped on a bus, entirely at the mercy of two passengers dissecting the Severance season two finale.
But not everyone shares my spoiler anxiety. I have friends who flip to the last page of a book before they’ve read the first one, or who look up the ending before hitting play. According to them, they simply need to know.
So why do some of us crave surprise and suspense, while others find comfort in instant resolution?
What’s in a spoiler?
Spoilers have become a cultural flashpoint in the age of streaming, social media and shared fandoms.
Researchers define “spoiler” as undesired information about how a narrative’s arc will conclude. I often hear “spoilers!” interjected mid-sentence, a desperate protest to protect narrative ignorance.
Hitchcock’s twist-heavy Psycho elevated spoiler sensitivity. Its release came with an anti-spoilers policy including strict viewing times, lobby warnings recorded by the auteur himself, and even real policemen urging “total enjoyment”. A bold ad campaign implored audiences against “cheating yourselves”.
The twists were fiercely protected.
Even the Star Wars cast didn’t know Darth Vader’s paternity twist until premiere night. Avenger’s Endgame filmed multiple endings and used fake scripting to mislead its stars. And Andrew Garfield flat-out lied about his return to Spider-Man: No Way Home – a performance worthy of an Oscar – all for the sake of fan surprise and enjoyment.
But do spoilers actually ruin the fun, or just shift how we experience it?
The satisfaction of a good ending
In 2014, a Dutch study found that viewers of unspoiled stories experienced greater emotional arousal and enjoyment. Spoilers may complete our “mental models” of the plot, making us less driven to engage, process events, or savour the unfolding story.
But we are also likely to overestimate the negative effect of a spoiler on our enjoyment. In 2016, a series of studies involving short stories, mystery fiction and films found that spoiled participants still reported high levels of enjoyment – because once we’re immersed, emotional connection tends to eclipse what we already know.
But suspense and enjoyment are complex bedfellows.
American media psychology trailblazer Dolf Zillmann said that suspense builds tension and excitement, but we only enjoy that tension once the ending lands well.
The thrill isn’t fun while we’re hanging in uncertainty – it’s the satisfying resolution that retroactively makes it feel good.
That could be why we scramble for an “ending explained” when a film or show drops the ball on closure. We’re trying to resolve uncertainty and settle our emotions.
Spoilers can also take the pressure off. A 2009 study of Lost fans found those who looked up how an episode would end actually enjoyed it more. The researchers found it reduced cognitive pressure, and gave them more room to reflect and soak in the story.
Spoilers put the audience back in the driver’s seat – even if filmmakers would rather keep hold of the wheel. People may seek spoilers out of curiosity or impatience, but sometimes it’s a quiet rebellion: a way to push back against the control creators hold over when and how things unfold.
That’s why spoilers are fertile ground for power dynamics. Ethicists even liken being spoiled to kind of moral trespass: how dare someone else make that decision for me?!
But whether you avoid spoilers or seek them out, the motive is often the same: a need to feel in control.
Shaping your emotions
Spoiler avoiders crave affect: they want emotional transportation.
When suspense is part of the pleasure, control means choosing when and how that knowledge lands. There’s a mental challenge to be had in riding the story as it unfolds, and a joy in seeing it click into place.
That’s why people get protective, and even chatter about long-aired shows can spark outrage. It’s an attempt to police the commentary and preserve the experience for those still waiting to be transported.
Spoiler seekers want control too, just a different kind. They’re not avoiding emotion, they’re just managing it. A spoiler affords control over our negative emotions, but also softens the blow, and inoculates us against anxiety.
Psychologists dub this a “non-cognitive desensitisation strategy” to manage surprise, a kind of “emotional spoiler shield” to protect our attachments to shows and characters, and remind us that TV, film and book narratives are not real when storylines hit close to home.
Knowing what happens turns into a subtle form of self-regulation.
So, what did I do when Severance spoilers floated by? Did I get off the bus? Nope, I stayed put and faced the beast. As I tried to make sense of the unfamiliar plot points (The macrodata means what? Mark stays where?), I found the unexpected chance to dive deeper.
Maybe surprise is not the sum of what makes something entertaining and worth engaging with. Spoiler alert! It’s good to have an end to journey towards, but it’s the journey that matters, in the end.
Anjum Naweed 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 – Global Perspectives – By Rachel Fitzgerald, Associate Professor and Deputy Associate Dean (Academic), Faculty of Business, Economics and Law, The University of Queensland
Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming an everyday part of lives. Many of us use it without even realising, whether it be writing emails, finding a new TV show or managing smart devices in our homes.
But apart from a handful of computing-focused and other STEM programs, most Australian university students do not receive formal tuition in how to use AI critically, ethically or responsibly.
Here’s why this is a problem and what we can do instead.
But this does not teach students how these tools work or what responsible use involves.
Using AI is not as simple as typing questions into a chat function. There are widely recognised ethical issues around its use including bias and misinformation. Understanding these is essential for students to use AI responsibly in their working lives.
So all students should graduate with a basic understanding of AI, its limitations, the role of human judgement and what responsible use looks like in their particular field.
We need students to be aware of bias in AI systems. This includes how their own biases could shape how they use the AI (the questions they ask and how they interpret its output), alongside an understanding of the broader ethical implications of AI use.
For example, does the data and the AI tool protect people’s privacy? Has the AI made a mistake? And if so, whose responsibility is that?
What about AI ethics?
The technical side of AI is covered in many STEM degrees. These degrees, along with philosophy and psychology disciplines, may also examine ethical questions around AI. But these issues are not a part of mainstream university education.
This is a concern. When future lawyers use predictive AI to draft contracts, or business graduates use AI for hiring or marketing, they will need skills in ethical reasoning.
Ethical issues in these scenarios could include unfair bias, like AI recommending candidates based on gender or race. It could include issues relating to a lack of transparency, such as not knowing how an AI system made a legal decision. Students need to be able to spot and question these risks before they cause harm.
In healthcare, AI tools are already supporting diagnosis, patient triage and treatment decisions.
For example, if a teacher relies on AI carelessly to draft a lesson plan, students might learn a version of history that is biased or just plain wrong. A lawyer who over-relies on AI could submit a flawed court document, putting their client’s case at risk.
How can we do this?
There are international examples we can follow. The University of Texas at Austin and University of Edinburgh both offer programs in ethics and AI. However, both of these are currently targeted at graduate students. The University of Texas program is focused on teaching STEM students about AI ethics, whereas the University of Edinburgh’s program has a broader, interdiscplinary focus.
Implementing AI ethics in Australian universities will require thoughtful curriculum reform. That means building interdisciplinary teaching teams that combine expertise from technology, law, ethics and the social sciences. It also means thinking seriously about how we engage students with this content through core modules, graduate capabilities or even mandatory training.
It will also require investment in academic staff development and new teaching resources that make these concepts accessible and relevant to different disciplines.
Government support is essential. Targeted grants, clear national policy direction, and nationally shared teaching resources could accelerate the shift. Policymakers could consider positioning universities as “ethical AI hubs”. This aligns with the government-commissioned 2024 Australian University Accord report, which called for building capacity to meet the demands of the digital era.
Today’s students are tomorrow’s decision-makers. If they don’t understand the risks of AI and its potential for error, bias or threats to privacy, we will all bear the consequences. Universities have a public responsibility to ensure graduates know how to use AI responsibly and understand why their choices matter.
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.
In the thrilling finale of the TV series The Americans, set during the Reagan administration, deep-cover KGB operatives Philip and Elizabeth Jennings are faced with a difficult decision. Posing as an ordinary American married couple, for decades they have raised children, filed tax returns and slipped effortlessly into the rhythms and routines of everyday suburban existence in Washington, D.C.
All the while, they’ve been spying – gathering intelligence and surreptitiously feeding it to their communist masters in Soviet Moscow. Now, with the FBI closing in and their cover on the brink of collapse, they must decide whether to stay and face arrest or flee the country they’ve come to call home. There’s also their teenage children to consider.
The story seemed too incredible to be true – but in fact it was based in part on Donald Heathfield and Ann Foley, subsequently outed as Andrei Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova, a Russian couple who had spent more than 20 years masquerading as Canadians. At the time of their unmasking, they were living quietly in the United States with Tim and Alex, their two sons.
Review: The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West – Shaun Walker (Profile)
A new book, The Illegals, tells of a network of Russian agents operating across the US, during the late 20th and early 21st centuries – including Bezrukov and Vavilova. It opens with their dramatic 2010 arrest, part of ten Russian spies (mostly illegals like them) detained by the FBI.
Author Shaun Walker, the Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent, draws on declassified archival material and first-hand interviews. The result is an engrossing, eye-opening account of the secret world of the Soviet “illegals programme”: embedded spies who lived surreptitiously in the West without the safety blanket of diplomatic protection.
As Walker explains, “legals” were Russian operatives working under official cover – as diplomats or embassy staff, privy to diplomatic immunity. By contrast, “illegals” operated off the grid. They crept silently into Western countries under false identities, often stolen from the dead. This made them harder to detect, but left them far more vulnerable if exposed.
One of the most high-profile figures in the 2010 spy bust was Anna Chapman. Unlike many other illegals, Chapman didn’t even bother to disguise her Russian identity. Instead, as Walker recounts, she entered America using a British passport – acquired through a brief marriage to a UK citizen – and worked as a New York real estate broker.
Her photogenic looks and media-friendly persona made her the public face of the scandal. After being deported, Chapman reinvented herself as a television host, runway model and pro-Kremlin influencer.
The real Americans
Walker outlines how Bezrukov and Vavilova first met in the early 1980s, as history students in Siberia. There, KGB “spotters” identified them for potential recruitment. Later, he adds,
they progressed to an arduous training programme lasting several years, moulding their language, mannerisms and identities into those of an ordinary couple. They left the Soviet Union separately in 1987, staged a meeting in Canada, and began a relationship as if they had just met.
Having married under their assumed names, Andrei and Elena adopted the habits and customs of an ordinary middle-class life. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the couple were cut off from Moscow, but by the end of the decade they were reactivated by the SVR, Russia’s new foreign intelligence agency. Around this time, Andrei won a place at Harvard’s Kennedy School, allowing the family to move to Massachusetts and integrate further into American society.
As Andrei networked in academic and policy circles, Elena maintained the illusion of domestic normality, fashioning herself as a doting “soccer mom”, raising the kids and keeping house. Meanwhile, she was secretly decoding encrypted radio messages in the back room.
This went on for years. Then, one day, an unexpected knock on the door as they celebrated their son Tim’s 20th birthday brought the charade crashing down. FBI agents burst in, handcuffed the couple in front of their sons and marched them out into the street.
Soon after their arrest, Andrei and Elena were deported to Russia in a high-profile spy swap. They were awarded state honours by Vladimir Putin and briefly became minor celebrities in Moscow. Their sons, both born in Canada, were left reeling.
In 2016, Walker tracked the sons down for a piece he was writing for The Guardian: they were in the process of suing the Canadian government to have their citizenship reinstated, having been stripped of it when everything kicked off. In 2019, a court ruled Tim and Alex (who was 16 when the FBI arrested his parents) could keep their citizenship. Both insisted they had known nothing about their parents’ espionage work.
Alex Valivov, son of Russian ‘illegal’ spies disguised as Americans, talked to the media after he won a court bid to keep his Canadian citizenship.
Putin ‘beside himself’
As Walker recounts, the raid had been coordinated by then-FBI director Robert Mueller. It had been timed to avoid derailing a carefully planned diplomatic summit.
In 2009, Barack Obama launched a high-profile “reset” of relations with Russia. Obama wanted to woo Dmitry Medvedev – a moderate political figurehead standing in for Putin, who remained the real power behind the scenes in Russia.
A planned summit in Washington intended to cement the spirit of renewed cooperation. But as the scale of Russia’s covert operation became apparent, the White House was faced with a dilemma: how to respond without jeopardising the reset.
According to Walker, Obama was irked by the whole situation. He quipped that it felt like something out of a John Le Carré novel. Eventually, a compromise was reached: the arrests would happen, but only after Medvedev’s visit, so as not to cause undue embarrassment.
Colonel Aleksandr Poteyev, deputy head of Directorate “S” of the SVR, was the man overseeing the illegals scheme. After the arrests were made, he quietly walked out of the agency headquarters in Yasenevo for the last time. He was the mole who had tipped off the Americans. From there, he made his way to Ukraine, where the CIA could safely extricate him to the US. On hearing the news, Putin was reportedly beside himself with rage, Walker writes.
Intrigued by this “twisted family story”, Walker started to look into the illegals venture in greater depth. He quickly realised “there was nothing quite like it in the history of espionage”. At times, various intelligence agencies had deployed operatives as foreign nationals, “but never with the scope or scale of the KGB programme”.
A century of dramatic, bloody history
The illegals were, in Walker’s reckoning, something uniquely Russian, rooted in the country’s complex historical experience. The more he read, the more he came to view the programme as a lens through which he could “tell a much bigger story, of the whole Soviet experiment and its ultimate failure, a century of dramatic and bloody history”.
To understand how the illegals project came about, Walker winds the clock all the way back to 1917, when the Bolsheviks seized power – and espionage became a cornerstone of the nascent Soviet state. He reminds us while Lenin and his comrades had won formal control of the nation, “they still faced the colossal task of implementing and retaining it across the vast Russian landmass”.
Lenin was sure that state institutions would eventually wither away, the evolving worker’s paradise rendering them meaningless. However, to achieve this happy end point, he believed an interim period of ruthless state violence was required.
The Cheka: precursor to the KGB
This helps to explain why he established the Cheka, a secret police force tasked with crushing counterrevolutionary activity and enforcing Bolshevik rule. At its head was Feliks Dzerzhinsky, a fanatical Polish ideologue who had spent years in Siberian exile. Far from a temporary measure, the Cheka “quickly grew to a huge fighting force that could be unleashed on political and class enemies”, Walker writes.
Feliks Dzierzynski was the head of the Cheka, the Russian secret police force that preceded the KGB. Wikimedia Commons
The Cheka was an important player in the Russian Civil War, which pitted Lenin’s Reds against the Whites – a loose alliance of pro-tsarist regiments and foreign mercenaries, often united by little more than their implacable hatred of Bolshevism. The situation on the ground was chaotic and unpredictable; both sides engaged in ruthless violence.
Here, in this blood-drenched crucible, the Bolsheviks honed their clandestine methods – konspiratsiya (subterfuge) – perfecting the use of disguises, false identities and underground communication. In areas where the Whites gained a territorial foothold, agents were ordered to stay behind and coordinate resistance, laying the groundwork for what would become the illegals programme.
When the Bolsheviks emerged victorious in 1921, the Cheka was not disbanded – but repurposed. The practice of planting operatives deep inside enemy lines survived the war and expanded in scope. Lenin’s idea of combining legal diplomatic work with illegal undercover infiltration became a defining feature of how the Soviet Union would run its intelligence services for the next 70 years.
Stalin’s secret police
Under Lenin’s successor, Joseph Stalin, the secret police was transformed into an all-encompassing instrument of surveillance, repression and domination.
Purges consumed the party. Ideological fervour curdled into show trials and murderous terror. And paranoia became an organising principle of Soviet political life. The demand for vigilance intensified – not just at home, where informants and denunciations became routine, but also abroad. Real and purported enemies were seen lurking in the democratic institutions of the West.
Ironies abound here. The very methods that helped to sustain the early Soviet state – secrecy, trickery, duplicity – soon became grounds for suspicion on Stalin’s watch. The generation of illegals trained and embedded during the 1920s and early 1930s were among those earmarked for liquidation, Walker writes. Stalin, ever wary of plots against him, came to view his own spies as potential traitors.
He ignored – or wilfully dismissed – much of the intelligence they had risked their lives to gather, often with disastrous consequences. When advance warnings of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s secret plan to betray Stalin and launch a massive invasion of the Soviet Union, landed on his desk in 1941, for instance, they were waved away as provocation or outright fabrication. In some cases, he had his spies tortured or shot. Loyalty was no protector against paranoia.
Dmitry Bystrolyotov was a legend in Soviet intelligence circles. Alchetron
Among the casualties was Dmitry Bystrolyotov, who Walker describes as “perhaps the most talented illegal in the history of the programme”. A truly chameleonic figure, Bystrolyotov was a dashing and multilingual agent whose exploits in Western Europe made him a legend in Soviet intelligence circles. “His speciality was the recruitment of agents who had access to diplomatic codes and ciphers,” the Russian scholar Emil Draitser attests, “and his modus operandi involved women”.
Through a series of painstakingly crafted affairs, Bystrolyotov gained access to confidential dispatches, internal memos and state secrets. His work offered Stalin a rare glimpse into the inner workings of Europe’s ruling elite. But when The Great Terror rolled around in 1937, none of it mattered. He was arrested, sentenced and dispatched to the Gulag, callously tossed aside by the system he had served with such distinction.
Walker emphasises:
the history of the illegals offers a neat reflection of the story of Russia itself. The early programme, with its soaring ambition, its obsession with subterfuge, and its disregard for the well-being of individuals, holds up a mirror to the fiery utopianism of the early Soviet Union.
Did the Cold War really end?
These were people expected to vanish into enemy territory, sacrifice their identifies and live double lives, all in service of a revolutionary vision. But by the time the Soviet Union spluttered to an ignominious halt in 1991, that dream had long since died.
As Walker shows, most of the operatives who followed in the footsteps of Bystrolyotov were not darkly romantic infiltrators scaling embassy walls or charming secrets out of countesses. They were “sleepers” – often efficient, occasionally incompetent – blending quietly into Western cities and suburbs, awaiting a call to action that, in many cases, never came. The glitz had given way to the grind.
The Americans ends with Phillip and Elizabeth, the couple based on Bezrukov and Vavilova, gazing out across the Moscow skyline. Two weary spies coming in from the cold, they have returned to a rapidly unravelling motherland that may not understand – let alone appreciate – the sacrifices they have made in the service of its ideology.
As Walker discovered, Berzukov, when he isn’t being paid handsomely by an oil company, now lectures in international relations at one of Russia’s most prestigious universities. Vavilova, fittingly enough, now writes spy fiction.
Yet in real life, the story doesn’t end quite there. Under Putin, a former KGB officer who cut his teeth in the culture of espionage, Russia’s intelligence services have returned to the illegals programme with a renewed sense of purpose (though stripped of the ideological zeal that once propelled it).
Walker is careful not to indulge in idle speculation, but he points to compelling evidence suggesting the illegals programme has evolved rather than vanished. High-profile attacks on UK soil – including the poisoning of form spy Sergei Skripal – suggest Russian intelligence agencies remain willing to operate far beyond their national borders.
In the same breath, Walker describes what might be termed the digital turn of the illegals programme. In the place of suburban sleepers decoding radio signals, Russia has backed teams of online operatives – “troll illegals” – tasked with wrecking havoc across Western social media platforms.
These paid agents don’t gather intelligence so much as sow discord. They stoke culture wars, amplify political divisions and undermine trust in democratic institutions. Walker offers Russia’s meddling in the rancorous 2016 American election as an illustrative case in point.
In Putin’s merciless autocracy, secrecy has once again became a virtue – and the spy, far from being a dusty relic of the 20th century, is once again a symbol of national strength.
In that sense, The Illegals is not just a history of espionage. It is a timely reminder that, at least for some, the Cold War never really ended. It just burrowed deeper underground.
Alexander Howard 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 kettle is a household staple practically everywhere – how else would we make our hot drinks?
But is it okay to re-boil water that’s already in the kettle from last time? While bringing water to a boil disinfects it, you may have heard that boiling water more than once will somehow make the water harmful and therefore you should empty the kettle each time.
Such claims are often accompanied by the argument that re-boiled water leads to the accumulation of allegedly hazardous substances including metals such as arsenic, or salts such as nitrates and fluoride.
This isn’t true. To understand why, let’s look at what is in our tap water and what really happens when we boil it.
What’s in our tap water?
Let’s take the example of tap water supplied by Sydney Water, Australia’s largest water utility which supplies water to Sydney, the Blue Mountains and the Illawarra region.
From the publicly available data for the January to March 2025 quarter for the Illawarra region, these were the average water quality results:
pH was slightly alkaline
total dissolved solids were low enough to avoid causing scaling in pipes or appliances
fluoride content was appropriate to improve dental health, and
it was “soft” water with a total hardness value below 40mg of calcium carbonate per litre.
The water contained trace amounts of metals such as iron and lead, low enough magnesium levels that it can’t be tasted, and sodium levels substantially lower than those in popular soft drinks.
These and all other monitored quality parameters were well within the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines during that period. If you were to make tea with this water, re-boiling would not cause a health problem. Here’s why.
It’s difficult to concentrate such low levels of chemicals
To concentrate substances in the water, you’d need to evaporate some of the liquid while the chemicals stay behind. Water evaporates at any temperature, but the vast majority of evaporation happens at the boiling point – when water turns into steam.
During boiling, some volatile organic compounds might escape into the air, but the amount of the inorganic compounds (such as metals and salts) remains unchanged.
While the concentration of inorganic compounds might increase as drinking water evaporates when boiled, evidence shows it doesn’t happen to such an extent that it would be hazardous.
Let’s say you boil one litre of tap water in a kettle in the morning, and your tap water has a fluoride content of 1mg per litre, which is within the limits of Australian guidelines.
You make a cup of tea taking 200ml of the boiled water. You then make another cup of tea in the afternoon by re-boiling the remaining water.
On both occasions, if heating was stopped soon after boiling started, the loss of water by evaporation would be small, and the fluoride content in each cup of tea would be similar.
But let’s assume that when making the second cup, you let the water keep boiling until 100ml of what’s in the kettle evaporates. Even then, the amount of fluoride you would consume with the second cup (0.23mg) would not be significantly higher than the fluoride you consumed with the first cup of tea (0.20mg).
The same applies to any other minerals or organics the supplied water may have contained. Let’s take lead: the water supplied in the Illawarra region as mentioned above, had a lead concentration of less than 0.0001mg per litre. To reach an unsafe lead concentration (0.01mg per litre, according to Australian guidelines) in a cup of water, you’d need to boil down roughly 20 litres of tap water to just that cup of 200ml.
Practically that is unlikely to happen – most electric kettles are designed to boil briefly before automatically shutting off. As long as the water you’re using is within the guidelines for drinking water, you can’t really concentrate it to harmful levels within your kettle.
But what about taste?
Whether re-boiled water actually affects the taste of your drinks will depend entirely on the specifics of your local water supply and your personal preferences.
The slight change in mineral concentration, or the loss of dissolved oxygen from water during boiling may affect the taste for some people – although there are a lot of other factors that contribute to the taste of your tap water.
The bottom line is that as long as the water in your kettle was originally compliant with guidelines for safe drinking water, it will remain safe and potable even after repeated boiling.
Faisal Hai 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 – Global Perspectives – By Mathieu Duval, Adjunct Senior Researcher at Griffith University and La Trobe University, and Ramón y Cajal (Senior) Research Fellow, Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH)
Fossils are invaluable archives of the past. They preserve details about living things from a few thousand to hundreds of millions of years ago.
Studying fossils can help us understand the evolution of species over time, and glimpse snapshots of past environments and climates. Fossils can also reveal the diets or migration patterns of long-gone species – including our own ancestors.
But when living things turn to rock, discerning those details is no easy feat. One common technique for studying fossils is micro-computerised tomography or micro-CT. It’s been used to find the earliest evidence of bone cancer in humans, to study brain imprints and inner ears in early hominins, and to study the teeth of the oldest human modern remains outside Africa, among many other examples.
However, our new study, published today in Radiocarbon, shows that despite being widely regarded as non-destructive, micro-CT may actually affect fossil preservation and erase some crucial information held inside.
Preserving precious specimens
Fossils are rare and fragile by nature. Scientists are constantly evaluating how to balance their impact on fossils with the need to study them.
When palaeontologists and palaeoanthropologists (who work on human fossils) analyse fossils, they want to minimise any potential damage. We want to preserve fossils for future generations as much as possible – and technology can be a huge help here.
Micro-CT works like the medical CT scans doctors use to peek inside the human body. However, it does so at a much smaller scale and at a greater resolution.
This is perfect for studying small objects such as fossils. With micro-CT, scientists can take high-resolution 3D images and access the inner structure of fossils without the need to cut them open.
These scans also allow for virtual copies of the fossils, which other scientists can then access from anywhere in the world. This significantly reduces the risk of damage, since the scanned fossils can safely remain in a museum collection, for example.
Micro-CT is popular and routinely used. The scientific community widely regards it as “non-destructive” because it doesn’t cause any visual damage – but it could still affect the fossil.
Jaw bone of the human fossil species Homo antecessor from Spain. Left: micro-CT scan with a cutting plane to visualise the inner structures, bone and teeth; right: 3D reconstruction based on the high-resolution micro-CT images. Laura Martín-Francés
How does micro-CT imaging work?
Micro-CT scanning uses X-rays and computer software to produce high-resolution images and reconstruct the fossil specimens in detail. Typically, palaeontologists use commercial scanners for this, but more advanced investigations may use powerful X-ray beams generated at a synchrotron.
The X-rays go through the specimen and are captured by a detector on the other end. This allows for a very fine-grained understanding of the matter they’ve passed through – especially density, which then provides clues about the shape of the internal structures, the composition of the tissues, or any contamination.
The scan produces a succession of 2D images from all angles. Computer software is then used to “clean up” these high-resolution images and assemble them into a 3D shape – a virtual copy of the fossil and its inner structures.
Example of micro-CT results on a hominin fossil known as Little Foot, from southern Africa.
But X-rays are not harmless
X-rays are a type of ionising radiation. This means they have a high level of energy and can break electrons away from atoms (this is called ionisation).
However, despite what we know about the impact of X-rays on living cells, the potential impact of X-rays on fossils through micro-CT imaging has never been deeply investigated.
What did our study find?
Using standard settings on a typical micro-CT scanner, we scanned several modern and fossil bones and teeth from animals. We also measured their collagen content before and after scanning.
Collagen is useful for many analytical purposes, such as finding out the age of the fossils using radiocarbon dating, or for stable isotope analysis – a method used to infer the diet of the extinct species, for example. The collagen content in fossils is usually much lower than in modern specimens because it slowly breaks down over time.
After comparing our measurements with unscanned samples taken from the same specimens, we found two things.
First, the radiocarbon age remained unchanged. In other words, micro-CT scanning doesn’t affect radiocarbon dating. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that we did observe a significant decrease in the amount of collagen present. In other words, the micro-CT scanned samples had about 35% less collagen than the samples before scanning.
This shows micro-CT imaging has a non-negligible impact on fossils that contain collagen traces. While this was to be expected, the impact hasn’t been experimentally confirmed before.
It’s possible some fossil samples won’t have enough collagen left after micro-CT scanning. This would make them unsuitable for a range of analytical techniques, including radiocarbon dating.
What now?
In a previous study, we showed micro-CT can artificially “age” fossils later dated with a method called electron spin resonance. It’s commonly used to date fossils older than 50,000 years – beyond what the radiocarbon method can discern.
This previous study and our new work show that micro-CT scanning may significantly and irreversibly change the fossil and the information it holds.
Despite causing no visible damage to the fossil, we argue that in this context the technique should no longer be regarded as non-destructive.
Micro-CT imaging is highly valuable in palaeontology and palaeoanthropology, no doubt about that. But our results suggest it should be used sparingly to minimise how much fossils are exposed to X-rays. There are guidelines scientists can use to minimise damage. Freely sharing data to avoid repeated scans of the same specimen will be helpful, too.
Mathieu Duval receives funding from the Spanish State Research Agency (Agencia Estatal de Investigación). He is currently the recipient of a Ramón y Cajal fellowship (RYC2018-025221-I) funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by ‘‘ESF Investing in your future”. This work is also part of Spanish Grant PID2021-123092NB-C22 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER, UE, and by ‘‘ERDF A way of making Europe”.
Laura Martín-Francés receives funding from Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions of the EU Ninth programme (2021-2027) under the HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01-Project: 101060482.
Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Nicole Rinehart, Nicole Rinehart, Professor, Clinical Psychology, Director of the Neurodevelopment Program, School of Psychological Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University
Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects how people’s brains develop and function, impacting behaviour, communication and socialising. It can also involve differences in the way you move and walk – known as your “gait”.
Having an “odd gait” is now listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as a supporting diagnostic feature of autism.
What does this look like?
The most noticeable gait differences among autistic people are:
toe-walking, walking on the balls of the feet
in-toeing, walking with one or both feet turned inwards
out-toeing, walking with one or both feet turned out.
spending longer in the “stance” phase, when the foot leaves the ground
taking more time to complete each step.
Autistic people show much more personal variability in the length and speed of their strides, as well as their walking speed.
Gait differences also tend to occur alongside other motor differences, such as issues with balance, coordination, postural stability and handwriting. Autistic people may need support for these other motor skills.
The basal ganglia are broadly responsible for sequencing movement including through shifting posture. It ensures your gait appears effortless, smooth and automatic.
The cerebellum then uses visual and proprioceptive information (to sense the body’s position and movement) to adjust and time movements to maintain postural stability. It ensures movement is controlled and coordinated.
Developmental differences in these brain regions relate to the way the areas look (their structure), how they work (their function and activation) and how they “speak” to other areas of the brain (their connections).
While some researchers have suggested that autistic gait occurs due to delayed development, we now know gait differences persist across the lifespan. Some differences actually become clearer with age.
In addition to brain-based differences, the autistic gait is also associated with factors such as the person’s broader motor, language and cognitive capabilities.
People with more complex support needs might have more pronounced gait or motor differences, together with language and cognitive difficulties.
Not all differences need to be treated. Instead, clinicians take an individualised and goals-based approach.
Some autistic people might have subtle gait differences that are observable during testing. But if these differences don’t impact a person’s ability to participate in everyday life, they don’t require support.
An autistic person is likely to benefit from support for gait differences if they have a functional impact on their daily life. This might include:
increased risk of, or frequent, falls
difficulty participating in the physical activities they enjoy
physical consequences such as tightness of the Achilles and calf muscles, or associated pain in other areas, such as the feet or back.
Some children may also benefit from support for motor skill development. However this doesn’t have to occur in a clinic.
Given children spend a large portion of their time at school, programs that integrate opportunities for movement throughout the school day allow autistic children to develop motor skills outside of the clinic and alongside peers. We developed the Joy of Moving Program in Australia, for example, which gets students moving in the classroom.
Our community-based intervention studiesshow autistic children’s movement abilities can improve after engaging in community-based interventions, such as sports or dance.
Community-based support models empower autistic children to have agency in how they move, rather than seeing different ways of moving as a problem to be fixed.
Where to from here?
While we have learnt a lot about autistic gait at a broad level, researchers and clinicians are still seeking a better understanding of why and when individual variability occurs.
We’re also still determining how to best support individual movement styles, including among children as they develop.
However there is growing evidence that physical activity enhances social skills and behavioural regulation in preschool children with autism.
So it’s encouraging that states and territories are moving towards more community-based foundational supports for autistic children and their peers, as governments develop supports outside the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
Nicole Rinehart receives funding from: Moose Happy Kids Foundation, MECCA M-Power, the Grace & Emilio Foundation, Ferrero Australia, as part of the global Kinder Joy of moving program, Aspen Pharmacare Australia Pty Ltd, Jonathan and Simone Wenig, Adam Krongold, the Grosman Family Foundation, the Shoreline Foundation, the Victorian Department of Education, the NSW Department of Education, and the Department of Social Services – Information, Linkages and Capacity Building (ILC) Program, and has worked in partnership with the Australian Football League.
Chloe Emonson works on projects that receive funding from: Moose Happy Kids Foundation, MECCA M-Power, the Grace & Emilio Foundation, Ferrero Australia, as part of the global Kinder Joy of moving program, Aspen Pharmacare Australia Pty Ltd, Jonathan and Simone Wenig, Adam Krongold, the Grosman Family Foundation, the Shoreline Foundation, the Victorian Department of Education, the NSW Department of Education, and the Department of Social Services – Information, Linkages and Capacity Building (ILC) Program, and has worked in partnership with the Australian Football League.
Ebony Lindor works on projects that receive funding from: Moose Happy Kids Foundation, MECCA M-Power, the Grace & Emilio Foundation, Ferrero Australia, as part of the global Kinder Joy of moving program, Aspen Pharmacare Australia Pty Ltd, Jonathan and Simone Wenig, Adam Krongold, the Grosman Family Foundation, the Shoreline Foundation, the Victorian Department of Education, the NSW Department of Education, and the Department of Social Services – Information, Linkages and Capacity Building (ILC) Program, and has worked in partnership with the Australian Football League.
Breakups hurt. Emotional and psychological distress are common when intimate relationships break down. For some people, this distress can be so overwhelming that it leads to suicidal thoughts and behaviours.
This problem seems especially the case for men. Intimate partner problems including breakups, separation and divorce feature in the paths to suicide among one in three Australian men aged 25 to 44 who end their lives.
Men account for three in every four suicides in many nations worldwide, including Australia. So improving our understanding of links between relationship breakdown and men’s suicide risk has life-saving potential.
Our research, published today, is the first large-scale review of the evidence to focus on understanding men’s risk of suicide after a breakup. We found separated men were nearly five times more likely to die by suicide compared to married men.
What did we find?
We brought together findings from 75 studies across 30 countries worldwide, involving more than 106 million men.
We focused on understanding why relationship breakdown can lead to suicide in men, and which men are most at risk. We might not be able to prevent breakups from happening, but we can promote healthy adjustment to the stress of relationship breakdown to try and prevent suicide.
Overall, we found divorced men were 2.8 times more likely to take their lives than married men.
For separated men, the risk was much higher. We found that separated men were 4.8 times more likely to die by suicide than married men.
Most strikingly, we found separated men under 35 years of age had nearly nine times greater odds of suicide than married men of the same age.
Some men’s difficulties regulating the intense emotional stress of relationship breakdown can play a role in their suicide risk. For some men, the emotional pain tied to separation – deep sadness, shame, guilt, anxiety and loss – can be so intense it feels never-ending.
Overall, our research found relationship breakdown may lead to suicide for some men because of the complex interaction between the individual (emotional distress) and interpersonal (changes in their social network and availability of support) impacts of a breakup.
Many of these impacts don’t seem to feature in the paths to suicide after a breakup for women in the same way.
Breakups also impact social networks
As intimate relationships become more serious, we tend to spend less time investing in our friendships, especially if juggling the demands of a career and family.
This can create a risky situation if relationships break down, as it seems many men are left with little support to turn to. This rang true in our research, as men’s social disconnection and loneliness seemed to increase their suicide risk following relationship breakdown.
We also know people can struggle to know how to support men after a breakup. Research has found some men who ask for support are told to just “get back on the horse”. Such a response invalidates men’s pain and reinforces masculine stereotypes that relationship breakdown doesn’t affect them.
So, what can we do?
There is no simple answer to preventing suicide following relationship breakdown, but a range of opportunities exist.
We can embed support groups and other opportunities for connection and peer support in relationship services that are regularly in contact with those navigating separation, to help combat loneliness.
We can ensure mental health practitioners are equipped with the skills necessary to engage and respond effectively to men who seek help following a breakup, to help keep them safe until they can get back on their feet.
Most importantly, if men come to any of us seeking support after a breakup, we can remember that time is often a great healer. The best we can do is sit with men in their pain, rather than try and get them to stop feeling it. This connection could be life-saving.
Support and information is available at Relationships Australia and MensLine Australia. If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Michael Wilson works for The University of Melbourne and consults to Movember. He receives funding from the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship, provided by the Australian Commonwealth Government and the University of Melbourne.
Jacqui Macdonald receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council’s Medical Research Future Fund and the Australian Research Council. She convenes the Australian Fatherhood Research Consortium and she is on the Movember Global Men’s Health Advisory Committee.
Zac Seidler has been awarded an NHMRC Investigator Grant. He is also the Global Director of Research with the Movember Institute of Men’s Health. He advises government on men’s suicide, masculinities, violence prevention and social media policy.
Tourists in Kathmandu are tempted everywhere by advertisements for trekking expeditions to Everest Base Camp. If you didn’t know better, you might think it’s just a nice hike in the Nepalese countryside.
Typically the lower staging post for attempts on the summit, the camp is still 5,364 metres above sea level and a destination in its own right. Travel agencies say no prior experience is required, and all equipment will be provided. Social media, too, is filled with posts enticing potential trekkers to make the iconic journey.
But there is a real risk of creating a false sense of security. An exciting adventure can quickly turn into a struggle for survival, especially for novice mountaineers.
Nevertheless, Sagarmatha National Park is deservedly popular for its natural beauty and the allure of the world’s highest peak, Chomolungma (Mount Everest). It is also home to the ethnically distinctive Sherpa community.
Consequently, the routes to Everest Base Camp are among the busiest in the Himalayas, with nearly 60,000 tourists visiting the area each year. There are two distinct trekking seasons: spring (March to May) and autumn (September to October).
High mountains require everyone to be properly prepared. Events which under normal conditions might be a minor inconvenience can be magnified in such an environment and pose a serious risk.
Even at the start of the trek in Lukla (2,860m), one is exposed to factors that can directly or indirectly affect one’s health, especially altitude mountain sickness or unfamiliar bacteria.
We interviewed 24 trekkers in May this year, as well as 60 residents and business owners in May 2023, to explore some of the safety issues anyone considering heading to base camp should be aware of.
Life at high altitude
First, it’s vital to choose goals within one’s technical and physical capabilities. While the human body can adapt to altitudes of up to 5,300m, the potential risk of altitude mountain sickness can occur at only 2,500m – lower than Lukla.
Proper acclimatisation above 3,000m means ascending no more than 500m a day and resting every two to three days at the same altitude. The optimal (though rarely followed) approach is the “saw tooth system” of climbing during the day but descending to sleep at a lower level.
Residents of the Khumbu region (on the Nepalese side of Everest) are familiar with the problem of tourists not acclimatising, or not paying attention to their surroundings. As one hotel owner said, pointing to a trekker setting out:
He’s going uphill and it’s already late. It’s going to get dark and cold soon. He won’t make it to the next settlement. We have to report this to the authorities or go after him ourselves.
Inexperienced trekkers should hire a local guide. Several we interviewed had needed medical evacuation, including a woman in her mid-20s who had to leave base camp after one night. She found her guides – not locals – online. But they never checked her vital signs during the trek:
[The doctors] said that I had high-altitude pulmonary edema […] it was just really important to come down the elevation. And if I had tried to go higher, it probably would have been really bad.
Health checks throughout the trek are imperative. This includes assessing the four main symptoms of altitude mountain sickness: headache, nausea, dizziness and fatigue. If they appear, the trekker shouldn’t go higher and might even need to descend.
A Sherpa woman at the market in Namche Bazar, Nepal: respect the culture, eat local food. Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
Take time to adapt
Using a reputable local trekking agency might be more expensive, but it will help ensure safety and also familiarise the visitor with the local culture, helping avoid negative impacts on the host community.
Too often, the primary goal of trekkers is a photo on the famous rock at base camp. Once obtained, many simply take a helicopter back to Kathmandu. As a helicopter tour agency owner said:
They don’t want to get back on their feet. The goal, after all, has been achieved. In general, tourists used to be much better prepared. Now they know they can return by helicopter.
Helicopter travel can be dangerous on its own, of course. But this tendency to view the trek as a one-way trip also affects host-guest relations and can irritate local communities.
It’s also important to monitor your food and drink intake and watch for signs of food poisoning. Diarrhoea at high altitudes is particularly dangerous because it leads to rapid dehydration – hard to combat in mountain conditions.
Low air pressure and reduced oxygen exacerbate the condition, weakening the body’s ability to recover. Also, the symptoms of dehydration can resemble altitude mountain sickness.
When travelling in other climate zones or countries with different sanitary standards, there is inevitable contact with strains of bacteria not present in one’s natural microbiome.
A good solution is to spend a few days naturally adapting to bacterial flora at a lower altitude in Nepal before heading to the mountains. Also, try to eat the local food, such as daal bhat, Nepal’s national dish. According to one hotel owner in Pangboche:
Tourists demand strange food from us – pizza, spaghetti, Caesar salad – and then are angry that it doesn’t taste the way they want. This is not our food. You should probably eat local food.
Most of the trekkers we interviewed during this spring season reported experiencing gastrointestinal issues, often for several days.
In the end, the commonest cause of failure or accident in the mountains is overestimating one’s abilities – what has been called “bad judgement syndrome” – when the route is too hard, the pace too fast, or there’s been too little time spent acclimatising.
A simple solution: walk slowly and enjoy the views.
Michal Apollo receives funding from the National Science Centre NCN Poland, the small-scale project awarded by the Institute of Earth Sciences, and the Research Excellence Initiative of the University of Silesia in Katowice. He is affiliated with the Global Justice Program, Yale University, and Academics Stand Against Poverty.
Heike Schanzel 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.
