Category: English

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michelle Spear, Professor of Anatomy, University of Bristol

There’s something oddly luxurious about a lie-in. The sun filters through the curtains, the alarm clock is blissfully silent, and your body stays at rest. Yet lie-ins are often treated as indulgences, sometimes framed as laziness or a slippery slope to soft living.

When the holidays arrive and alarm clocks are switched off, or are set later, something else emerges: your body reclaims sleep. Not just more of it, but deeper, richer and more restorative sleep. Anatomically and neurologically, a lie-in might be exactly what your body needs to recover and recalibrate.

Throughout the working year, it’s common to accumulate a chronic sleep debt – a shortfall in the sleep the body biologically needs, night after night. And the body keeps score.

On holiday, freed from early starts and late-night emails, our internal systems seize the opportunity to rebalance. It’s not uncommon to sleep an hour or two longer per night in the first few days away. That’s not laziness; it’s recovery.

Importantly, holiday sleep doesn’t just extend in duration. It shifts in structure. With fewer disturbances and less external pressure, sleep cycles become more regular, and we often experience more slow-wave sleep – the deepest phase, linked to physical healing and immune support.

The body uses this window not only to repair tissue but also to regulate metabolism, dial down inflammation and restore energy reserves.

Our sleep-wake cycle is governed by circadian rhythms, which are controlled by the brain’s master clock – the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the hypothalamus. These rhythms respond to light, temperature and routine. And when we’re overworked or overstimulated, they can drift out of sync with our environment.

A lie-in allows your circadian system to recalibrate, aligning internal time with actual daylight. This re-training leads to more coherent sleep cycles and better daytime alertness.

Holiday lie-ins also owe something to the drop in stress hormones. Cortisol, released by the adrenal glands, follows a diurnal pattern, peaking in the early morning to get us going.

Chronic stress – from work demands, commuting or constant notifications – can raise cortisol levels and disrupt this rhythm. When you take time off, cortisol production normalises. Waking up without a jolt of adrenaline allows the sleep architecture (the pattern of sleep stages) to stabilise, leading to fewer interruptions and more restful nights.

One of the more striking features of holiday sleep is a surge in vivid dreaming – sometimes unsettlingly so. This is because of a phenomenon called REM rebound. When we’re sleep-deprived, the brain suppresses REM (rapid eye movement) sleep to prioritise deep, restorative phases.

Once the pressure lifts – say, during a lazy week in the sun – the brain makes up for lost REM, leading to longer and more intense dream episodes. Far from frivolous, REM sleep is crucial for memory consolidation, mood regulation and cognitive flexibility.

Sleep also affects your body’s structure. When you lie down, your spine gets a break from the constant pressure of gravity. During the day, as you stand and move around, the intervertebral discs – soft, cushion-like pads between the vertebrae – slowly lose fluid and become slightly flatter. A lie-in gives these discs more time to rehydrate and return to their normal shape. That’s why you’re a little taller in the morning – and even more so after a long sleep.

Meanwhile, microtears in muscles, strained ligaments and overworked joints benefit from prolonged periods of cellular repair, especially during deep sleep stages.

Should we all be sleeping in every weekend? Not necessarily. While occasional lie-ins can help with recovery from acute sleep deprivation, habitual oversleeping –especially beyond nine hours a night – can be a red flag. It’s associated in some studies with higher rates of depression, heart disease and early death. Although long sleep might be a symptom, not a cause.

Larks and owls

That said, the occasional lie-in remains anatomically restorative, especially when aligned with your body’s natural chronotype – a biological predisposition that determines when you feel most alert and when you feel naturally inclined to sleep.

Some people are naturally “larks”, who rise early and function best in the morning. Others are “owls”, who tend to feel sleepy late and wake later, with their peak cognitive and physical performance occurring in the afternoon or evening. Many fall somewhere in between.

Chronotype is governed by the same internal circadian system that regulates sleep-wake cycles, and it appears to be strongly influenced by genetics, age and light exposure. Adolescents typically have later chronotypes, while older adults often revert to earlier ones.

Crucially, chronotype doesn’t just affect sleep. It also plays a role in hormone release, body temperature, digestive timing and mental alertness throughout the day.

Conflict arises when social expectations, such as early work or school start times, force people, especially night owls, to adopt sleep-wake schedules that are out of sync with their biology. This mismatch, known as social jetlag, can lead to persistent tiredness, mood changes and even long-term health risks.

So if you find yourself sleeping in until 9 or 10am on the third day of your holiday, don’t berate yourself. Your body is taking the opportunity to repair, replenish and rebalance. The anatomical systems involved – from your brainstem to your adrenal glands, your intervertebral discs to your dream-rich REM phases – are doing what they’re designed to do when finally given the time.

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Michelle Spear does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The anatomy of a lie-in: why you sleep more on holiday – https://theconversation.com/the-anatomy-of-a-lie-in-why-you-sleep-more-on-holiday-260149

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adam Taylor, Professor of Anatomy, Lancaster University

Would you dab perfume on a six-month-old? Paint their tiny nails with polish that contains formaldehyde? Dust bronzer onto their cheeks?

An investigation by the Times has found that babies and toddlers are routinely exposed to adult cosmetic products, including fragranced sprays, nail polish and even black henna tattoos.

While these may sound harmless – or even Instagram-friendly – the science tells a more concerning story. Infant skin is biologically different from adult skin: it’s thinner, more absorbent and still developing. Exposure to certain products can lead to immediate problems like irritation or allergic reactions, and in some cases, may carry longer term health-risks such as hormone disruption.

This isn’t a new concern. A 2019 study found that every two hours in the US, a child was taken to hospital because of accidental exposure to cosmetic products.

Newborn skin has the same number of layers as adult skin but those layers are up to 30% thinner. That thinner barrier makes it easier for substances, including chemicals, to penetrate through to deeper tissues and the bloodstream.

Young skin also has a higher water content and produces less sebum (the natural oil that protects and moisturises the skin). This makes it more prone to water loss, dryness and irritation, particularly when exposed to fragrances or creams not formulated for infants.

The skin’s microbiome – its protective layer of beneficial microbes – also takes time to develop. By age three, a child’s skin finishes establishing its first microbiome. Before then, products applied to the skin can disrupt this delicate balance. At puberty, the skin’s structure and microbiome change again, altering how it responds to products.

The investigation found that bronzers and nail polish were being used on young children. These products often contain harmful or even carcinogenic chemicals, such as formaldehyde, toluene and dibutyl phthalate.

Toluene is a known neurotoxin, and dibutyl phthalate is an endocrine disruptor – a chemical that can interfere with hormone function, potentially affecting growth, development and fertility. Both substances can more easily pass through infants’ thinner, more permeable skin.

Even low-level exposure to formaldehyde, such as from furniture or air pollution, has been linked to higher rates of lower respiratory infections in children (that’s infections affecting the lungs, airways and windpipe).

Irritating ingredients

In the US, one in three adults experiences skin or respiratory symptoms after exposure to fragranced products. If adults are reacting, it’s no surprise that newborns and children with their developing immune systems are at even greater risk.

Perfumes often contain alcohol and volatile compounds that dry out the skin, leading to redness, itching and discomfort.

Certain skincare ingredients have also been studied for their potential to affect hormones, trigger allergies or pose long-term health concerns:

• alkylphenols used in detergents and cosmetics may disrupt hormone activity

• antimicrobials such as triclosan can interfere with thyroid hormones and contribute to antibiotic resistance

• bisphenols, (BPA widely used in packaging are linked to hormone disruption.

• cyclosiloxanes (D4 and D5) may accumulate in the body and affect hormonal balance

• ethanolamines can react with other ingredients to form nitrosamines, some of which are potential carcinogens

• parabens are preservatives that mimic oestrogen, though some studies suggest minimal risk at low doses

• phthalates used in fragrances and plastics are linked to reproductive toxicity, especially in early-life exposures

• benzophenone is found in many sunscreens and some forms may act as allergens and hormone disruptors.

While many of these ingredients are permitted in regulated concentrations, some researchers warn of a “cocktail effect”: the cumulative impact of daily exposure to multiple chemicals, especially in young, developing bodies.

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Read more:
Scroll, watch, burn: sunscreen misinformation and its real‑world damage

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Temporary tattoos

Temporary tattoos, particularly black henna, are popular on holidays but they aren’t always safe. Black henna is a common cause of contact dermatitis in children and may contain para-phenylenediamine (PPD), a chemical approved for use in hair dyes but not for direct application to skin.

PPD exposure can cause severe allergic reactions and, in rare cases, cancer. Children may develop hypopigmentation – pale patches where colour is lost – or, in adults, hyperpigmentation that can last for months or become permanent.

Worryingly, children exposed to PPD may experience more severe reactions later in life if they use hair dyes containing the same compound. This can sometimes lead to hospitalisation or even fatal anaphylaxis. Because of these risks, European legislation prohibits PPD from being applied directly to the skin, eyebrows, or eyelashes.

‘Natural’ doesn’t mean harmless

Products marketed as “natural” or “clean” can also cause allergic reactions. Propolis (bee glue), for instance, is found in many natural skincare products but causes contact dermatitis in up to 16% of children.

A study found an average of 4.5 contact allergens per product in “natural” skincare ranges. Out of 1,651 “natural” personal care products on the US market, only 96 (5.8%) were free from contact allergens. Even claims like “dermatologically tested” don’t guarantee safety; they simply mean the product was tested on skin, not that it’s free from allergens.

Babies and young children aren’t just miniature adults. Their skin is still developing and is more vulnerable to irritation, chemical absorption and systemic effects: substances that penetrate the skin can enter the bloodstream and potentially affect organs or biological systems throughout the body. Applying adult-targeted products, or even well-meaning “natural” alternatives, can therefore carry real risks.

Adverse reactions can appear as rashes, scaling or itchiness and, in severe cases, blistering or crusting. Respiratory symptoms like coughing or wheezing should always be investigated by a medical professional.

When in doubt, keep it simple. Limit what goes on your child’s skin, especially in the early years.

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Adam Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Using cosmetics on babies and children could disrupt hormones and trigger allergies – https://theconversation.com/using-cosmetics-on-babies-and-children-could-disrupt-hormones-and-trigger-allergies-261204

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Hussein Boon, Principal Lecturer – Music, University of Westminster

Spotify currently has 675 million active users. Now, as it expands into video for music streaming and as more people use Spotify, the app’s environmental footprint is set to increase.

In-video advertisements that aim to increase ad revenue involve AI to tap into a users’ preferences. This means lots of individual videos with minor differences requiring additional processing scaled to the user’s streaming resolution.

But while Spotify used to publish data on its environmental costs, its reports have been incomplete since 2021. As American author and scholar, Shoshanna Zuboff points out in her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, many tech companies lack environmental accountability.

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Read more:
Music streaming has a far worse carbon footprint than the heyday of records and CDs – new findings

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The Carbon Trust, a consultancy that helps businesses reduce their carbon footprints, works to globally promote a sustainable future and has calculated the European average carbon footprint for video streaming as producing 55g of CO₂e per hour. This CO₂e or carbon dioxide equivalent is a comparable measure of the potential effect of different greenhouse gases on the climate: 55g of CO₂e is 50 times more than audio streaming and the equivalent of microwaving four bags of popcorn.

As a music technology and AI researcher, I’m aware of the shift in responsibility that comes with Spotify’s video innovations. While companies’ significant role in generating emissions should not be diminished, the shift of responsibility fromt he platform to users and content creators means that better informed choices about their streaming devices and streaming quality settings larger screens need to be made. Streaming at higher resolutions becomes significant factors in increasing video’s carbon footprint.

This increased responsibility means that end users needs to make better informed choices about their streaming devices and streaming quality settings.

While companies’ significant role in generating emissions should not be diminished, this shift of responsibility to the end user means that larger screens and streaming at higher resolutions become significant factors in increasing video’s carbon footprint.

Location also affects how carbon emissions are managed. Germany has the largest carbon footprint for video streaming at 76g CO₂e per hour of streaming, reflecting its continued reliance on coal and fossil fuels. In the UK, this figure is 48g CO₂e per hour, because its energy mix includes renewables and natural gas, increasingly with nuclear as central to the UK’s low-carbon future. France, with a reliance on nuclear is the lowest, at 10g CO₂e per hour.

There is an absolute burden of responsibility on tech and media companies to reduce their carbon emissions and to be transparent about their efforts to do so. In fact, net zero cannot be achieved without commitments from the major technology companies, many of which are based in the US whose government has not ratified the Kyoto protocol and withdrew from the Paris agreement in 2020 which are both significant global efforts to combat climate change.

Eco-conscious music streaming

A French thinktank called the Shift Project advocates for people and companies to adopt “digital sobriety” (the mindful use of digital tech) to ensure efficiency and sustainability. For example, research shows that the UK could reduce its carbon output by more 16,433 tonnes if each adult sent one less thank you email a day.

Certainly aimless streaming should be avoided because video decoding can account for 35-50% of playback energy on user devices. However, music video is more than mere music. As I have argued in my own work, video “provides a layer of meaning making not present in lyrics or audio alone”.

Video can bring marginalised music makers, cultures and ideas to the foreground by tackling difficult subjects. Like the work of Syrian-American rapper, poet, activist and chaplain Mona Haydar’s Wrap My Hijab or UK grime rapper Drillminister and his critique of neo-liberalism and trickle-down economics Nouveau Riche.

To minimise the environmental footprint of your own music streaming, use Wi-Fi rather than 4G or 5G. If you listen to a song repeatedly, purchase a download to play. Use localised storage rather than cloud-based systems for all of your music and video files. Reduce auto-play, aimless background streaming or using streaming as a sleep aid by changing the default settings on your device including reducing streaming resolution. And turn your camera off for video calls, as carbon emissions are 25 times more than for audio only.

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Hussein Boon 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.

– ref. As Spotify moves to video, the environmental footprint of music streaming hits the high notes – https://theconversation.com/as-spotify-moves-to-video-the-environmental-footprint-of-music-streaming-hits-the-high-notes-259939

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Benjamin Selwyn, Professor of International Relations and International Development, Department of International Relations, University of Sussex

Global supply chains account for 70% of world trade. They are the arteries of global capitalism, moving goods and services across borders multiple times before reaching consumers.

Since the early 1990s — as part of economic globalisation — these networks have enabled mass consumption by delivering cheap goods made using cheap labour and shipped globally at minimal cost. But this convenience comes at a catastrophic environmental price.

The infrastructure that supports global supply chains — ports, highways, railways, data servers — has expanded dramatically, increasing the distance goods travel from production to consumption to disposal. These “supply chain miles” are a major contributor to ecological degradation.

Worse still, managing these sprawling networks depends on energy-intensive digital technologies, produced and distributed through global supply chains. Electronic waste is soaring, reaching 62 million tonnes in 2022 and projected to increase to 82 million tonnes by 2030.

Global supply chains have also driven the expansion of global markets. Argentina’s soy industry is a case in point: production surged from under 30,000 tonnes in 1970 to over 60 million tonnes in 2015, largely to feed the world’s growing livestock population.

Consequently, much of the Argentinian pampas region – previously renowned for its rich biodiversity – has been decimated by soy monocultures.

As an expert on global supply chains, I study what can be done to remedy this environmentally damaging situation. My research shows that this problem runs deeper than logistics.

Global supply chains are a key part of the capitalist system that thrives on endless economic growth. Competitive capital accumulation (where profits are reinvested to generate more profits) drives this cycle.

The global economy is forecast to more than double by 2050. This entails an accelerated use of resources and waste generation, in a world that has already transcended an increasing number of planetary boundaries or safe limits of consumption.

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Read more:
Society needs a systems update to cope with climate crisis – my new film explains why

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While green technologies can hypothetically make supply chains more efficient, enhanced efficiency under capitalism often leads to more production, not less. Efficiency gains can reduce costs, make goods more profitable and stimulate greater investment. Energy-saving lightbulbs and digital tools, for example, have led to broader adoption and higher overall energy use, rather than a decrease in energy demand.

Better tech alone won’t reduce environmental harm. We need a shift toward a low-energy economy that prioritises human and ecological wellbeing over profit.

Public transport, healthcare, open-source software and urban food systems are examples of social provision that are often cheaper, more inclusive and more environmentally sustainable than their profit-orientated alternatives.

Greening supply chains

I’ve identified five practical steps that can reduce the environmental footprint of supply chains.

First, accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to renewables is essential. The Danish Island of Samsø went from fossil fuel dependence to 100% renewable energy by the early 2000s in the space of a decade by constructing and deploying on- and off-shore wind-power and biomass boilers. Scaling up such transitions could power cleaner supply chain infrastructure.

Second, the electrification of shipping means that battery-powered shipping is no longer science fiction. The Yara Birkeland, the world’s first fully electric cargo ship, recently launched with a 100-container capacity. One study suggests that 40% of container traffic could be electrified this decade using existing technology.

Third, by designing for durability and repair, digital and electronic products can be built to last and easy to repair. The “right to repair” movement advocates for consumer rights to fix and repair products rather than having to buy new ones and is gaining traction.

It is challenging corporate control over who can fix what. Six US states have passed laws giving consumers the right to repair their own devices. In the UK, a community initiative called the Restart Project is pushing for stronger regulations and promoting community-based repair initiatives and digital technology sharing.

Fourth, urban transport needs a rethink. Road transport accounts for about 12% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That sector could be streamlined by shifting supply chains from manufacturing millions of cars to investing in efficient and affordable bus, train and bike networks. Car-free cities and expanded electric public transport networks could slash emissions from road transport. This is already happening in places like Ghent in Belgium, Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Lamu Island in Kenya and Fes el Bali in Morocco.

Fifth, supply chains can be shortened by shifting diets. Reducing meat consumption could shrink the global feed-livestock chain the vast complex of animal feed production (such as soy) underpinning the burgeoning world cattle population and its associated transport emissions.

Countries such as Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark have already seen declines in meat consumption over the past decade as plant-based diets have gained popularity. The UK is also experiencing a fall in per capita meat consumption

These strategies are all tiny steps in the right direction. But, as the US author and environmentalist Bill McKibben says, “winning slowly is the same as losing”. We need much greater and more rapid transformations.

So, while parts of supply chains can become more sustainable, any efforts will be counterproductive as long as governments and firms continue chasing endless economic growth. What’s needed now is the political and cultural will to prioritise people and the planet over profit.

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Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

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Benjamin Selwyn 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.

– ref. How to reduce the hidden environmental costs of supply chains – https://theconversation.com/how-to-reduce-the-hidden-environmental-costs-of-supply-chains-259595

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alex Hubbard, Associate lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing, Aberystwyth University

People are becoming more divided and ill informed. In January 2024, a report by the World Economic Forum identified misinformation and disinformation as “the most severe global risk anticipated over the next two years”.

As a result, it predicted “perceptions of reality are likely to also become polarised” – and that unrest resulting from unreliable information may cause “violent protests … hate crimes … civil confrontation and terrorism”. Many people would agree that something is needed to bridge the ever-widening gaps between ourselves.

In my view, this is not just a problem of alternative sets of facts, but a failure to perceive and empathise with that which is outside of our own experiences.

While the smartphone, with its capacity to provide users with sources from across the world, can provide endless opportunity to learn about other perspectives and experiences, research suggests social media increasingly cocoons users within their own interests.

This algorithmically encouraged self-importance means we are stuck in a feedback loop – the echo chamber – where our own experiences, values and desires are seen as the norm.

In contrast, by encouraging people to imagine beyond their own experience, reading poetry can serve as an exercise in seeing things from a different perspective.

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Poetry has always been political. The writer and civil-rights activist Audre Lorde argued it produces “a revelatory distillation of experience”. In other words, by distilling aspects of an experience, poetry can reveal powerful truths about reality.

Lorde’s poem Afterimages (1981) records her memory of turning 21 in the same year that 14-year-old Emmett Till was lynched in Mississippi. The poem’s revelation is a simple one. For black Americans, coming of age means coming to terms with the constant threat of extreme racial violence.

Poetry’s success often relies upon showing people aspects of the world which they might otherwise have ignored, repressed or simply missed.

Some poetry experiments with form itself to produce this revelatory effect. Estate Fragments (2014) is a long poem written by Gavin Goodwin, exploring the Bettws council estate in Newport. It juxtaposes quotations from academic writing alongside interviews with residents – a practice referred to as “found poetry”.

Goodwin attempts to consider the effect that seemingly abstract political decision-making and discussions have on a particular place and community. Take this stanza:

Increased inequality

ups the stakes

‘People that were younger than you

were more dangerous.’

The first two lines quote Common Culture by Paul Willis (1990), a sociological study in the cultures of young people. The latter are from an interview with a resident of the Bettws estate. Together, they tell a story: national economic inequality causes people in a working-class community to fear each other.

Looking closer and looking deeper

More conventional lyric poetry can still reveal sociopolitical realities. Canadian Métis Nation writer katherena vermette’s collection North End Love Songs (2012) explores the North End in Winnipeg, Canada. In a CBC interview, vermette discussed how the local community are:

The people that get picked on [and] blamed … but what I’m trying to do in my work is to go into looking closer and looking deeper … and seeing that they’re not what they seem.

Misinformation and polarisation cause social tension, as particular groups are generalised and blamed. Vermette’s poem indians explicitly explores the devastation caused by preconceptions of peoples and places.

The poem recalls vermette’s brother going missing, before being found in the Red River, a powerful body of water that moves through Winnipeg. It focuses on the apathy of Winnipeg’s police service, who tell the family that there is “no sense looking”, as the man will return when “he gets bored/or broke”. The authorities come to this conclusion not through investigation, but by reducing the speaker’s brother to racist stereotypes.

This is then contrasted with what the family “finds out”. Not only has the brother drowned, but the “land floods/with dead indians”. The speaker discovers the fate of her brother is also the fate of many other Métis people in Winnipeg. This personal experience of loss comes to speak for many other loses:

indians get drunk

don’t we know it?

do stupid things

like being young

like going home alone

like walking across a frozen river

not quite frozen

Vermette links grief to struggles against systematic apathy and oppression. The poem’s sense of politics, people and place are a central part of its poetics.

Such explicitness means the poem meaningfully connects to important political issues – drawing attention to the startlingly high number of missing people found and suspected to be in the Red River. As such, it can also link to important grassroots initiatives like Drag the Red, which aims to “find answers about missing loved ones” which might lie in the river.

While North End Love Songs was published two years before Drag the Red’s formation, the poem and initiative are clearly formed by the same kind of traumatic, sociopolitical events.

Newsfeeds increasingly silo us into comfortable ways of thinking and perceiving. Forty years on, Lorde’s declaration that poetry “is not a luxury” takes on a whole new meaning. Now, it might be a political necessity.

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Alex Hubbard is formerly affiliated with the Labour Party, and Aber Food Surplus, a community hub.

– ref. How poetry can help to fight polarisation and misinformation – https://theconversation.com/how-poetry-can-help-to-fight-polarisation-and-misinformation-255567

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna Matveeva, Visiting Senior Research Fellow, King’s Russia Institute, King’s College London

At a time when Vladimir Putin needs friends in his neighbourhood, he appears instead to be losing them in the South Caucasus. After two centuries of Russian involvement in the region, balancing the historical rivalry and at times acting as mediator between Armenia and Azerbaijan, there is growing speculation that the two countries are preparing a major reset in relations.

When Armenia’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, met the Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, in Abu Dhabi on July 10, they reportedly came close to agreeing a peace treaty. The big question is whether, if these two countries can iron out mistrust and violence born of the territorial conflict, there will still be a role for Russia in the South Caucasus.

To understand the complex geopolitics of the region, you need to go back to the early 19th century, when Azerbaijan and what is now the Republic of Armenia) were ceded to Russia following the Russo-Persian wars. After the Russian revolution, the two countries achieved brief independence between 1918 and 1920 (though not in their present borders) before being incorporated into the Soviet Union.

During the Soviet era, the union republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan both felt that Moscow favoured the other. Armenia was unhappy that the Soviet leadership allocated Nagorno-Karabakh, a majority-Armenian exclave surrounded by Azeri-populated lands, to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan was dissatisfied that its borders denied it a land connection to its population in Nakhchivan, an exclave of ethnic Azeris that could only be reached via southern Armenia.

In the final years of the Soviet Union, as Armenian nationalism began to assert itself during the period of perestroika (restructuring), Nagorno-Karabakh’s legislature passed a law declaring its intention to join Armenia. This move eventually led to armed clashes in the region.

The first Karabakh war, which raged between 1988 and 1994, began before the Soviet break-up but continued after the two countries gained their independence. In 1994, after more than 30,000 casualties, Russia brokered a ceasefire. The settlement favoured Armenia, leaving it in control of Nagorno-Karabakh and another six surrounding Azerbaijani districts.

Things began to change when Putin took power in Russia in 2000. Russia’s relations with Azerbaijan improved, partly due to his personal rapport with the then-president, Heydar Aliyev, and his son Ilham, who would succeed him in 2003. After 9/11, when combating international terrorism became a global priority, Azerbaijan put measures in place to prevent transfer of fighters and weapons through its territory to the war in Chechnya, which further improved relations with Moscow.

At this stage, Azerbaijan was pursuing what it described as a “multi-vector” foreign policy. This allowed it to develop ties with a variety of countries, including the US, Russia and others to whom it sold oil. While remaining in the Commonwealth of Independent States, it did not sign up to the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO).

Nagorno-Karabakh

Armenia, by contrast, was a fully participating member of the CSTO. Having signed an Eternal Friendship Treaty with Russia in 1997, this was a clear strategic choice for Armenia – partly motivated by historical ties.

Russia had traditionally been seen as a defender of Christianity in the days of the Ottomon empire. Many people had fled massacres in Western Armenia (modern-day Turkey) in 1915 to come under the protection of the Russian Tsar. But Armenia also saw Moscow as a vital security guarantor against an increasingly militarised Azerbaijan, which was determined to recover control of Nagorno-Karabakh and other areas occupied by Armenia.

Indeed, it was Nagorno-Karabakh which really soured relations between Armenia and Moscow. In 2020, when – aided by Turkey – Azerbaijan launched its offensive to retake the territory, Russia failed to come to the aid of its CSTO ally. This was expected, given that relations had begun to deteriorate in 2018 when Pashinyan came to power in Armenia.

In hindsight, most commentators believe Russia had become tired of Armenia’s intransigence over the plan, agreed in Madrid in 2007, for it to cede back the six districts surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan.

Instead, Moscow brokered a ceasefire agreement and deployed 2,000 peacekeepers along the Lachin corridor, a strip of land connecting Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. But these troops also failed to intervene when an Azeri offensive retook the whole of Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023, forcing the population of about 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee.

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Read more:
Nagorno-Karabakh: the world should have seen this crisis coming – and it’s not over yet

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Things sour between Moscow and Baku

Relations between Russia and Azerbaijan, meanwhile, have gone downhill rapidly. In December 2024, an Azeri civilian airliner was shot down in Russian airspace. Putin apologised, but Azerbaijan insisted on Moscow disclosing the results of the investigation and paying compensation to the victims.

Things got worse at the end of June, when Russian authorities arrested a group of ethnic Azerbaijanis as part of a decades-old murder case. Two of the men died while being detained. Azerbaijan retaliated by raiding the Baku offices of Russia’s Sputnik news agency and detaining the staff as well as a group of Russian IT workers. When they appeared in court, some of the men appeared to have been beaten in custody.

Azerbaijan also denounced Russia in state media and Russia House, the state-funded Russian cultural agency in Baku, was closed down, with several cultural events cancelled. Security agencies began to enforce documentation checks on all Russian nationals in the country.

At the same time, Azerbaijan and Armenia were already talking about concluding a peace treaty independently, without intermediaries. All this has prompted speculation of a serious loss of influence in the region for Moscow.

However, a complete shutout of Russia in the South Caucasus is unlikely. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan depend on remittance income from their nationals in Russia. Both countries also remain close trading partners with Russia. While Armenia suspended its membership in CSTO, it has not quit the organisation altogether.

Far more likely is that the two countries, mindful of the growing influence of Turkey in the region and the shifts created by Donald Trump in world affairs, are manoeuvring while weighing their options. Geography matters, as Georgia’s example demonstrates – efforts to cut ties with Russia by its former president, Mikheil Saakashvili, have been partially reversed by the current government, which increasingly leans towards Moscow.

In the cases of Armenia and Azerbaijan, economic ties, transport links and human connections still favour a relationship with Russia. So, a temporary breakdown in political relations can be mended – if all three leaders demonstrate enough statesmanship to sail through the troubled waters.

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Anna Matveeva 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.

– ref. Armenia and Azerbaijan are trying to mend fences – what does this mean for Russia? – https://theconversation.com/armenia-and-azerbaijan-are-trying-to-mend-fences-what-does-this-mean-for-russia-261384

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Emily Morris, Research Associate, Institute of the Americas, UCL

Cuba doesn’t have any beggars, according to the country’s minister of labour, Marta Elena Feitó Cabrera. In a speech to the national assembly on July 15, she denied the existence of destitution in the communist country, claiming the problem was actually people “disguised as beggars”.

Her words were greeted by public outcry on social media. They also prompted a swift rebuke from her peers and the president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, who said leadership could not “act with condescension”. The next day, the Cuban government published an official note saying Feitó Cabrera had resigned.

The political vulnerability of the Cuban government explains the urgent need to respond to missteps such as Feitó Cabrera’s. The country is enduring an acute economic crisis, which has seen living standards plummet and over 1 million Cubans leave the country since 2020.

Cubans are leaving en masse:

The recession has severely strained the system of social protection that the government points to as one of its main achievements since taking power more than 60 years ago. Despite food subsidies and the efforts of welfare services, a growing number of people are now going hungry.

Public confidence in the government has been severely weakened as a result, particularly among young Cubans. The risk of escalating popular protest is magnified by the proliferation of social media channels, emanating from inside and outside the country.

These channels air the many complaints about daily frustrations in Cuba and highlight any failings or signs of hypocrisy on the part of officials. So when Feitó Cabrera’s speech went viral, it was met with inevitable public outrage.

Díaz-Canel’s reaction can be seen as urgent damage limitation. But it is also consistent with his broader approach to managing the crisis facing his country. He has worked tirelessly to try and defuse anger through engagement, touring Cuba for local meetings to search for solutions.

In his comments after Feitó Cabrera’s speech, he insisted that officials should acknowledge the scale of hardship being suffered, and “help, support and show solidarity” with the disadvantaged and most vulnerable.

This need to reach out was all the more important given the grim tone of the national assembly meeting where Feitó Cabrera made her remarks. Ministers appeared one after the other to present dismal reports on the state of almost all sectors of the Cuban economy.

The electricity system remains plagued by breakdowns caused by chronic underinvestment as well as difficulties in obtaining fuel and spare parts. The resulting daily power outages ensure that the sense of crisis is ever-present and frustrate all efforts to boost production.

Doubting official data

While full official national income data for 2024 has not yet been released, Cuba’s economy ministry estimates that real national income contracted by 1.1% in 2024. This leaves it more than 10% below its pre-pandemic level, and 2025 is not expected to show much improvement.

The decline in real disposable income for Cuban households since 2021 has, in reality, been far greater. The official inflation rate indicates that consumer prices have risen fourfold over the past five years. At this rate, living costs would have increased broadly in line with salaries.

Consumer prices have risen fourfold since 2020:

But official figures systematically understate the actual increase in prices faced by Cuban households, due to the weightings used. In 2021, for example, research estimated the inflation rate to be between 174% and 700% – well above the government’s estimate (77.3%).

The rising market prices have put many essential goods beyond the reach of most people who depend on state incomes. This has forced many households to depend on remittances or the informal economy to survive.

Thanks to tight fiscal restraint, the official annual rate of inflation eased to 15% in June. But the wide gap between the increase in the actual cost of living and official inflation index continues to compound distrust of the government and the perception that the country’s leaders are out of touch.

A lack of transparency and long delays in the publication of economic data, together with restrictions on the scope for private enterprise, are widely attributed to the government’s incompetence and reluctance to enact liberalising reforms.

Recovery blocked by US sanctions

For these reasons, the government’s insistence that US sanctions are to blame for limiting the possibilities for economic recovery is increasingly regarded with scepticism. However, the constraint on economic growth imposed by US measures is real and severe.

It is also the deliberate aim of US policy. The unilateral sanctions not only block trade, as well as financial and international travel between the US and Cuba. They also severely hamper all kinds of transactions between Cuba and the rest of the world.

Every branch of the Cuban economy has been affected, including the health service, social safety nets, agriculture and industry. And the lack of hard currency has, in turn, limited the scope for the investments and reforms needed for economic recovery.

The easing inflation rate, together with some new investments in renewable energy, an improved fiscal balance and a recent small increase in pensions, may signal that the end of the economic downturn may be approaching. But neither the government nor the population have any confidence that the crisis will come to an end this year.

No one is expecting US sanctions to be lifted while Donald Trump is president. Before Trump first stood for the presidency he hadn’t given Cuba his attention, but as president he has aligned himself firmly with hardliners.

In his first term, Trump reversed the opening with Cuba initiated by Barack Obama. And his current secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is one of the architects and leading proponents of economic sanctions against Cuba. Trade and investment will thus remain depressed, while shortages, power cuts, a lack of transport and crumbling public services will persist.

But by demanding the resignation of the minister of labour, perhaps Díaz-Canel hopes to demonstrate that his government understands what that the economic asphyxiation means for a majority of Cubans struggling to survive.

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Emily Morris 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.

– ref. Cuban government scrambling to deal with outrage about country’s economic crisis – https://theconversation.com/cuban-government-scrambling-to-deal-with-outrage-about-countrys-economic-crisis-261702

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Malte Jauch, Lecturer in Management and Marketing, University of Essex

The retirement age keeps creeping up. In the UK, the state pension is currently paid to people at 66, but that’s set to rise to 67 in the next couple of years, and a move to 68 might come sooner than previously planned after the government launched a review.

Gradually increasing the working lifespan is never going to be popular. But one way of making this policy more palatable could be to give people early access to some of the free time that retirement promises.

After all, sometimes that promise fails to deliver, because many people die before they reach retirement age.

Globally, about 27% of men and 18% women die before the age of 65 (although this proportion also includes deaths before working age). In wealthy countries, the number of people who die prematurely is lower than the global average, but still significant. In the EU, 16% of men and 8% of women die before 65.

For these people, the promise of free time and leisure in old age never materialises. There will also be many whose physical and mental health will have deteriorated by the time they retire, so that they are less capable of enjoying their free time.

So perhaps slogging away until retirement is not an ideal arrangement.

But what if you could transfer some of the time off that retirement promises to an earlier stage of your life, when everything is a rush, crammed with the demands of work and domestic responsibilities?

Luckily, the stark contrast between a time-poor middle age and a time-rich old age is not unavoidable. Governments can choose different approaches that directly affect how free time is distributed across our life stages.

Japan, for example, is a country which has opted to focus on delaying leisure time, and encourages workers to postpone that enjoyment of free time until old age. It does this in part by rewarding workers with wage increases – known as “seniority-based pay” – if they don’t take career breaks.

Japanese employment law also permits companies to force employees to retire at the age 60. As a result, on average, Japanese workers work 1,680 hours per year and retire at 63.

In the Netherlands by contrast, people work less (1,433 hours per year) and retire later – at 67. Labour laws make it easier for employees to decrease their hours, by going part time, for example.

Discrimination between workers based on work hours is prohibited, so that those who opt for part-time work are guaranteed equal treatment with regard to wages and other benefits. But the high legal age of retirement discourages Dutch workers from early retirement.

So how should we assess these different approaches?

Time on your side?

One way to look at retirement is that it compensates us for our previous hard work. The prospect of compensation might lead us to adopt a relaxed attitude toward long work hours. Once we’ve stopped work, we’ll be rewarded with a large chunk of leisure.

But for those who don’t make it to retirement, this promise of a life of leisure turns out to be a cruel joke. Early deaths are also more prominent among those who have already suffered from poverty and other disadvantages.

The same is true for ill health. The disadvantaged are much more likely to suffer from a variety of conditions that prevent them from being able to fully enjoy retirement.

Another risk for those who are healthy when they retire is that relatives or friends may have died. This reduces the value of the retirees’ free time because the loved ones they hoped to share that time with are no longer around.

So perhaps some of that free time could be better used when workers are younger. Raising a family, for example, is extremely time consuming, and there can’t be many parents of young children who don’t wish for a few extra hours a week to call their own.

Even devoting time to hobbies when we’re younger might be considered more efficient than waiting until we have retired. After all, if you learn a new language or how to paint when you’re in your 40s, you may have much more time to enjoy your new skill over the ensuing decades.

My research suggests that for all these reasons, the state should help people take some of their retirement early.

None of us knows how long we will live, or how healthy we will be in the future. Faced with this uncertainty, it makes sense not to gamble with our opportunities for free time and leave it until it may be too late.

Even those who enjoy their work have strong reasons not to postpone a large proportion of their time off, and governments should help us access more of it while we’re younger.

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Malte Jauch 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.

– ref. As the UK reviews the pension age again, could more time off when you’re young compensate for later retirement? – https://theconversation.com/as-the-uk-reviews-the-pension-age-again-could-more-time-off-when-youre-young-compensate-for-later-retirement-259464

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ahmed Elbediwy, Senior Lecturer in Clinical Biochemistry / Cancer Biology, Kingston University

Green tea and red wine may seem like simple dietary choices – but beneath the surface, they harbour compounds with remarkable medical potential. Scientists are uncovering how these everyday drinks might support cancer treatment, not by replacing conventional therapies like chemotherapy or radiotherapy, but by enhancing their effectiveness and reducing their side-effects.

The humble cup of green tea, first enjoyed in first-century China, has long been valued for its cultural significance and traditional health benefits. Tea has historically been used to combat ageing, protect the brain and heart, and aid weight loss. Today, researchers are uncovering a more profound capability – its potential to fight cancer.

The key lies in epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), a potent antioxidant found in this kind of tea. Antioxidants are protective molecules that help shield cells from damage caused by free radicals and environmental stress, but EGCG appears to do much more.

Cancer cells are notoriously disruptive, hijacking the body’s normal energy-systems to fuel their rapid growth. EGCG targets this very process, disrupting how cancer cells generate energy, and attacking the proteins that help tumours grow and divide. By targeting these proteins, it prevents cancer from multiplying, ultimately leading to cell death.

Even more promising is EGCG’s ability to enhance conventional treatments. Early studies suggest it could make cancer cells more vulnerable to chemotherapy and radiation therapy, potentially reducing the need for high doses and their severe side-effects.

For those who prefer their green tea in powdered form, matcha offers even greater protection, as it’s made from whole ground tea leaves and contains significantly more EGCG than regular green tea.

Red wine’s protective power

Red wine, too, offers compelling potential, thanks to a substance called resveratrol. This compound is found in red grapes, blueberries and peanuts, and has been shown to support the heart, liver and brain. Interestingly, resveratrol works through mechanisms distinct from EGCG.

Rather than targeting cancer cells directly, resveratrol focuses on the tumour’s environment. Cancer cells cleverly surround themselves with blood vessels and supportive tissue, creating a protective fortress that aids growth and spread. Resveratrol disrupts this structure, making tumours vulnerable to conventional treatments.

The compound also enhances the immune system’s ability to recognise and attack cancer cells more effectively. Perhaps most significantly, resveratrol prevents tumours from forming new blood vessels – the lifelines they need to obtain nutrients for growth. Without this blood supply, tumours become starved and eventually die.

Beyond the glass

The potential of natural cancer-fighting compounds extends far beyond our favourite beverages. Apigenin, found in parsley, can slow tumour growth, while turmeric contains curcumin, which disrupts cancer-cell survival. And emodin, found in aloe vera and rhubarb, reduces inflammation and inhibits cancer growth.

However, scientists face a significant challenge: many of these natural substances are poorly absorbed by the body. Research in this area is currently focused on developing enhanced delivery systems, such as wrapping the compounds in tiny lipids called nanoparticles. This approach protects the substances and increases their effectiveness against tumours.

The absorption of natural substances are further improved by mixing compounds with each other such as piperine with curcumin. Piperine is found in black pepper and helps curcumin based nanoparticles to have better bioavailabilty in cancer therapy.

While the research remains in its early stages, the possibility that everyday foods and drinks could one day support cancer treatment represents a fascinating frontier in medical science.

So the next time you reach for a cup of green tea or a glass of red wine, consider this: you may be doing more than relaxing – you could be reinforcing your body’s natural defences against cancer.

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Ahmed Elbediwy does 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.

Nadine Wehida 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.

– ref. Unlocking nature’s toolkit: how plant compounds may support cancer therapy – https://theconversation.com/unlocking-natures-toolkit-how-plant-compounds-may-support-cancer-therapy-260225

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sophie Watt, Lecturer, School of Languages and Cultures, University of Sheffield

I have spent the past two years examining the living conditions in informal refugee camps along the northern coast of France as part of an ongoing research project on borders. These sites are where people gather before attempting to cross the Channel to the UK.

The UK government recently announced a returns agreement to discourage people from making the crossing and economic sanctions
against people smugglers, following an increase in funding for border control and a decision to use counter-terrorism tactics in an effort to “smash the gangs”.

But from what I have observed, such policies appear to do little to stop people from making the journey. Quite the opposite – the more police crack down, the more the smuggling networks take risks to get around difficulties.

My fieldwork has been primarily conducted through volunteer work with Salam, a grassroots organisation that provides hot meals and clothing to the main informal camps in Calais and Dunkirk. I have also collaborated with other groups such as Alors on Aide and Opal Exil.

In the past few years, smuggling networks have adjusted their tactics to evade police. While smugglers used to inflate boats on the beaches between Calais and Dunkirk, they are now mostly using “taxi boats”. These leave further north or south on the coast, as far as Le Touquet. They then pick up groups of refugees waiting in the water along the coast, avoiding police intervention.

In response, and in order to intensify the crossings, “microcamps” have emerged – smaller temporary settlements closer to the beach, along the coast between Hardelot and Calais. These microcamps act as connecting points between the larger camps and the coastal departure locations where taxi boats pick them up. They allow for people to make several attempts at crossing without having to return to the large camps, where living conditions are more difficult.

The larger camps (such as Loon Plage and Calais) are the epicentre of the smuggling operations. The camps are evicted at least once a week (every 24 hours in Calais) due to France’s official “zero fixation point” policy. This policy, which bars people from forming long-term settlements, was implemented after the dismantling of the Calais “Jungle” refugee camp in October 2016.

Camp conditions

Police efforts to uphold the zero fixation point policy entail frequent evacuations, restrictions of humanitarian aid and physical site disruption. At Loon Plage, I saw that the sole access to water is a livestock trough.

Official guidance from the UN’s refugee agency states that, irrespective of the informality of these camps, their residents should have access to water, sanitation and shelter.

The non-profit watchdog group Human Rights Observers has documented instances of police violence and seizures of people’s belongings and tents at the camps.

In addition to regular evictions of the larger camps, the microcamps have recently seen more brutal police action. There have been reports of police using teargas, puncturing life jackets and tents, contributing to untenable living conditions. Violence and shootings between smuggling groups have also been reported in Loon Plage camp.

While working with Alors On Aide and photographer Laurent Prum we met around 50 people, including seven children (ages one-17), in a microcamp on the edge of the Ecault forest near Boulogne-sur-Mer. We immediately noted a tension between the group and the gendarmes who were standing watch.

Most of this group had spent a few years in Germany before being refused asylum. They told me they felt they had been forced to come back to France, because of the deportation measures currently being implemented by the German government.

A few confided that this was their fifth and final try at crossing the Channel. This is a new tactic the smuggling organisations use to make more money more rapidly: while refugees used to be able to try as many times as they needed, they now have to pay again after five failed attempts.

The previous day, this group told us they had been chased out of another part of the forest. There, we had found several empty canisters of tear gas – consistent with reports that French police have deployed tear gas in operations against informal camps.

This group had wanted to stay there because they could use a dilapidated shed to shelter themselves and their children from the rain. Eventually, the gendarmes evicted them, forcing them to spend the night in the rain – the field in question was privately owned. Following the eviction, we witnessed that the landowner had covered the area with manure to stop them returning.

A young Sudanese man showed us videos of the altercation. The exchange, during which five people were arrested, was violent. The children were terrified and the video showed the gendarmes using teargas against the group. A Palestinian mother was arrested and taken into custody, forced to leave her two young daughters. Her husband asked me: “Why did they arrest her when they could see she had two children with her?”

Alors on Aide mobilised several of its members to bring clothes, blankets and food for the group, and got the Palestinian woman released from custody, as she had not been charged with any offence.

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Read more:
I’ve spent time with refugees in French coastal camps and they told me the government’s Rwanda plan is not putting them off coming to the UK

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Slashing boats

While living conditions in camps and the capacity of the French asylum system make staying in France difficult, police are also taking firmer action against boats attempting the crossing.

As part of a coastal patrol (helping refugees after a failed crossing attempt), we arrived on the beach in Équihen at around 7am on July 4 to find that French police had just punctured a boat in the water.

The UK government praised French police for this action, performed in front of international media. The UK and France have also discussed allowing coastguards to intercept taxi boats up to 300 metres off the coast.

This would be a marked change from current regulations, which prohibit French police from intervening offshore except when responding to passengers in distress. Even the border police have doubts about the legal basis for this measure and its practical implications at sea, particularly given the heightened risk of accident.

Trapped between hounding by police on the beaches and constant evacuations from the informal settlements, the refugees have no choice but to try to cross the Channel at any cost. A record number of 89 refugees died at the Franco-British border in 2024. Thirteen deaths at sea have already been recorded in 2025.

In my view, the recently announced French-British measures to intensify policing and border enforcement are unlikely to deter people from attempting dangerous crossings. Instead, they will create an incentive for more dangerous tactics by smugglers, putting more lives at risk and violating human rights. Any agreement to return asylum seekers, restrict their access to asylum or force people back across borders will exacerbate the dangers already experienced by those seeking refuge.

Sophie Watt receives funding from the University of Sheffield and the British Academy / Leverhulme Small Research Grants.

– ref. Channel crossings: life in ‘microcamps’ on the French border, and how they are changing crossing attempts – https://theconversation.com/channel-crossings-life-in-microcamps-on-the-french-border-and-how-they-are-changing-crossing-attempts-260843

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stuart Fox, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of Exeter

When we look at how people vote in elections and why they choose certain parties, analysis often focuses on age, education, location or socioeconomic status. Less discussed in Britain is religion. But close to two-thirds of its adults are still religious – expressing either a religious identity, holding religious beliefs, or taking part in religious activities.

For the one-in-three adults in Britain who are Christian, this identity remains an important influence on their political behaviour. New polling, published here for the first time, shows how Reform UK is disrupting our previous understanding of how Christians vote in British elections.

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The relationship between Britain’s Christian communities and the major political parties goes back centuries. The Conservative party has been very close to English Anglicanism since its emergence in the mid-19th century. Catholics and free-church Protestants (such as Baptists and Methodists) have tended towards the Labour and Liberal/Liberal Democrat parties. Even as Britain has become more secular, these relationships have persisted.

Anglicans, for example, have tended to vote Conservative even when the party was in dire straits. In the 2024 election, 39% of Anglicans voted Tory even as the party’s national vote share fell to 24%.

Since the 1980s and particularly in elections since 2015, however, we have started to see changes to the Christian vote. The traditional Catholic attachment to Labour has deteriorated, as has Labour’s appeal to other Christian communities such as Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians.

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Read more:
Britain’s changing religious vote: why Catholics are leaving Labour and Conservatives are hoovering up Christian support

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Instead, driven by the rising salience of social values (attitudes towards immigration, social change and national identity) as a determinant of political support, the socially conservative leanings of some Christians of all stripes has led to increased support for the Conservatives. And those who traditionally did so – the Anglicans – have become even more supportive. The result has been a steady coalescing of the Christian vote behind the Conservatives.

But now, new polling by YouGov (on June 23-24 2025) for the University of Exeter reveals that this realignment is being disrupted by the growing popularity of Reform UK.

Instead of asking who people would vote for tomorrow, a nationally representative sample of 2,284 adults was asked how likely they were to ever vote for each major party, on a scale from zero (very unlikely) to ten (very likely).

While not the same as a direct question about how someone would vote in an election, the likelihood question provides a much richer measure of the strength of their support for all of the major parties.

Among Anglicans, Labour remains deeply unpopular: over half gave the party a 0. In contrast, the Conservatives still enjoy strong support among Anglicans, with 35% giving them a vote likelihood of seven or higher – the kind of support associated with voting for the party in an election.

Reform, however, has caught up. Despite only 15% of Anglicans voting Reform in 2024, 38% now rate their likelihood of voting for the party as high. That’s the same as the proportion who are strongly opposed to Reform – showing that while the party polarises Anglicans more than the Conservatives, Reform could win as much Anglican support as the Tories in an election.

Catholics show a similar trend. Labour’s traditional support is eroding: 40% of Catholics said they had zero likelihood of voting Labour, while 29% are strong supporters. As with Conservatives for the Anglican vote, Reform is almost level-pegging with Labour for the Catholic vote at 28%. It has even supplanted the Conservatives, of whom 22% of Catholics are strong supporters.

It is not yet clear why this is happening. The distinction of Christian (and non-Christian) voting patterns is not an artefact of age – there are many studies that prove this is the case.

It may be that Reform’s stances on issues such as immigration resonate with Christians’ concerns to the extent that they are willing to set aside their historic party loyalties. Or it may be that Christians are as prone as other British voters to turn to Reform out of frustration with the performances of Labour and the Conservatives in office.

Swing voters and party competition

This data also shows the extent to which voters’ support for parties overlaps or is exclusive. In other words, which voters have a high vote likelihood for only one party (and so are likely committed to backing that party in an election), which do not have such high likelihoods for any party (and so will probably not vote at all), and which have similarly high likelihoods for more than one party (effectively swing voters, persuadable one way or the other).

Among the religiously unaffiliated, 29% aren’t strong supporters of any party. For Catholics, it’s 26%. Anglicans are more politically anchored, however, with only 20% in this category.

While traditionally, we would have expected this to reflect Anglicans’ greater tendency to support the Tories, only 17% of Anglicans are strong supporters of only that party, compared with 21% who are firmly behind Reform. These aren’t swing voters; they’ve switched sides.

A further 12% of Anglicans have high vote likelihoods for both the Tories and Reform. These are swing voters that the two parties could realistically expect to win over.

Catholics are even more fragmented. Only 13% are strong supporters of Labour alone, along with 12% and 17% who are strong supporters of the Conservatives and Reform alone, respectively.

Few Catholics are torn between Labour and the other parties, but 5% are swing voters between the Conservatives and Reform: the Tories’ gradual winning over of Catholics over the last 50 years is also being challenged by the appeal of Reform.

The party has provided a socially conservative alternative to the Conservatives, with the result that the Christian vote has become more fragmented. The Tories are no longer the main beneficiaries of Labour’s loss of its traditional Catholic vote.

In addition, Reform is as popular as the Conservatives among Anglicans, and as popular as Labour among Catholics. This suggests it is appealing across the traditional denominational divide more successfully than either of the major parties.

If there is to be a single party that attracts the bulk of Britain’s Christian support, at this point it is far more likely to be Reform than anyone else.

This article was based on analysis by Dr Stuart Fox (University of Exeter), Dr Ekaterina Kolpinskaya (University of Exeter), Dr Steven Pickering (University of Amsterdam) and Prof Dan Stevens (University of Exeter), connected to the research project Investigating the individual and contextual role of religion in British electoral politics, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Stuart Fox also receives funding from the British Academy.

– ref. New polling: Reform is winning over Britain’s Christian support – https://theconversation.com/new-polling-reform-is-winning-over-britains-christian-support-260751

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Emily Gray, Assistant Professor of Criminology, University of Warwick

“We’re actually facing, in many parts of our country, nothing short of societal collapse.” This was the dire warning from Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, in setting out his party’s goal of halving crime.

In an op-ed in the Daily Mail and a press conference, Farage framed Britain as a nation in crisis from rising crime and lawlessness. But, he said, Reform had the solution: mass deportation of foreign offenders, the construction of prefabricated “Nightingale” prisons, and a wholesale crackdown on offending.

He insisted that British streets were out of control (although recent rises in crime come mainly from online fraud and shoplifting, according to the latest data), pledged to simultaneously increase prison sentences and reduce overcrowding, and vowed to restore order with a “higher and physically tougher standard of police officer”.

Speaking after a weekend of violent anti-immigration protests in Epping, Farage also tied Britain’s supposed lawlessness to migration: “Many break the law just by entering the UK, then commit further crimes once here – disrespecting our laws, culture and civility. The only acceptable response is deportation.”

Invoking crime as a threat, and the politician as its solution, is a tried-and-tested political manoeuvre. We’ve seen it deployed from both left and right, in many parts of the world, for decades. Stuart Hall and colleagues famously examined this phenomenon in the 1970s in their seminal book Policing the Crisis.

Our own analysis suggests that the accuracy of crime statistics often matters less than how politicians frame public anxieties – through media, public rhetoric and policy initiatives. In short: the public often responds to emotion as much as evidence.

One tension in England and Wales is that there are two major sources of crime data. The first – on which Farage leans heavily – is police-recorded crime. But, as is widely understood, that data provides only a partial picture of the true extent of crime. Many people, especially those from marginalised or vulnerable groups, choose not to report their experiences of crime.

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Read more:
Most crime has fallen by 90% in 30 years – so why does the public think it’s increased?

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Moreover, the consistency and accuracy with which police forces record these offences has been questioned over time. Indeed, police-recorded crime statistics are not designated as official national statistics.

The other (and more robust) source is the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), which asks a representative sample of the public about their experiences of crime over the past 12 months. Notably, it includes those incidents that were not reported to the police.

Running since the early 1980s, the CSEW has demonstrated long-term declines in incidents of theft, criminal damage and violence (with or without injury) since the mid-to-late 1990s. Curiously, Farage told reporters that the CSEW was “based on completely false data”, without providing any evidence.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS), and most criminologists, regard the CSEW as the more accurate metric of long-term crime trends. (The Conversation asked the CSEW to comment but hadn’t received a response when this article was published.)

The political weight of crime

Crime has electoral value. It allows parties and political campaigners to project strength, decisiveness and control. Farage’s rhetoric is designed to provoke urgency and anxiety. It’s a well-worn script. Margaret Thatcher’s government leveraged fears of law and order. New Labour made “anti-social behaviour” a central point of focus at a time when crime was, in fact, falling.

In research conducted with colleagues, we examined how people’s fears about specific crimes are shaped not just by actual crime rates, or by the person’s age, gender or ethnicity, but also by the political context in which they grew up.

Using data from the CSEW and a method called age-period-cohort analysis, we explored how different “political generations” developed and retained distinct concerns about crime.

We found clear patterns. Those who grew up during the James Callaghan era in the mid-to-late 1970s – when politicians repeatedly warned of “muggings” – were more likely to report anxieties about street robbery over time.

Thatcher’s generation, who came of age during a sharp rise in property crime, were more likely than other groups to express long-term fears about burglary. And those who grew up under New Labour – during the height of the “anti-social behaviour” agenda – reported persistent concerns about neighbourhood disorder, even as recorded incidents declined.

In other words, the political rhetoric people are exposed to during their formative years leaves a lasting impression on their relationship to crime. Debates about crime become embedded in personal and generational memory.

Crime is real and victims suffer. But distorting its nature and prevalence can erode public trust in the institutions tasked with protecting us. It can foster punitive and ineffective policy responses. And it can leave whole communities feeling targeted, criminalised or unsafe, based on selective and often sensational narratives.

We absolutely need to talk about crime. But we also need to talk about how we talk about crime. Who frames the debate, which statistics are used, who and how many are left out of the official records, whose fears are being amplified, and who is looking to exploit crime?

Emily Gray has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.

Stephen Farrall has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.

– ref. Fear of crime is a useful political tool, even if the data doesn’t back it up – https://theconversation.com/fear-of-crime-is-a-useful-political-tool-even-if-the-data-doesnt-back-it-up-261777

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Elizabeth Chappell, Affiliated Researcher, The Open University

I’m not sure if it was the effect of the atomic bomb, but I have always had a weak body, and when I was born, the doctor said I wouldn’t last more than three days.

These are the words of Kazumi Kuwahara, a third-generation hibakusha – a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan 80 years ago.

Kuwahara, who still lives in Hiroshima, was in London on May 6 this year to give a speech at a Victory Over Japan Day conference organised and hosted by the University of Westminster. Now 29, she told the conference that she felt she had been “fighting illness” throughout her 20s. When she was 25, she needed abdominal surgery to remove a tumour which post-surgery tests showed was benign.

When she found out about the operation, her grandmother, Emiko Yamanaka – now aged 91 and a direct survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima – told her: “I’m sorry, it’s my fault.” Kuwahara explained:

Ever since I was young, whenever I became seriously ill, my grandmother would repeatedly say: ‘I’m sorry.’ The atomic bombing didn’t end on that day and the survivors – we hibakusha – continue to live within its shadow.

Kuwahara came to stay with me ten years ago during a study abroad break after I had interviewed her grandmother for my doctoral research. When I’d made a film about Yamanaka in 2012, I immediately noticed her reluctance to share her harrowing experience. But she then invited me to interview her in Hiroshima – the first of ten trips I made there for research which would become an interview archive.

I wanted to research hibakusha like Kuwahara and her grandmother as they continue to confront the physical, social and psychological effects of the atomic bombs dropped on August 6 and August 9 1945, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively.

The 16-kiloton bomb dropped on Hiroshima at 8.15am by a US B-29 bomber was codenamed “Little Boy” by the Americans. It exploded about 600 metres above the Shima Hospital in the downtown area of Nakajima – a mix of residential, commercial, sacred and military sites. The bomb emitted a radioactive flash as well as a sonic boom. A gigantic fireball formed (about 3,000–4,000°C), as well as an atomic mushroom cloud which climbed up to 16km in the air.

In Japan in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, people couldn’t even utter the phrase “atomic bomb” due to censorship rules initially enforced by the Japanese military authorities, up until the day of surrender on August 15. The censorship was reinstated and expanded by the US during its occupation of the Japanese islands from September 2 1945.

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For decades, the hibakusha have faced discrimination and difficulty in obtaining work and finding marriage partners due to a complex combination of suppression, stigma, ignorance and fear around the dropping of the atomic bombs and their aftereffects.

Wartime propaganda in Imperial Japan precluded free speech while also imposing bans on luxury goods, western language and customs (including clothes) and public displays of emotion.

However, the US occupation – which lasted until the San Francisco treaty was signed on April 28 1952 – went further, establishing an extensive Civil Censorship Department (the CCD) which monitored not only all newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, books, films and plays but also radio broadcasts, personal mail, as well as telephone and telegraph communications. Little wonder the scars of the bomb remained untreated, for generations.

Emiko Yamanaka’s story

Yamanaka was 11 years old when she was exposed to the atomic bombing, just 1.4km from ground zero.

She told me about her experiences of surviving on the bank of the River Ota, which divides into seven rivers in the estuary of Hiroshima. Yamanaka was the oldest of five siblings in 1945. Although the family had been evacuated to an island near Kure 25km away, she returned to their home on the outskirts of the city with her mother and nine-year-old brother early on the morning of August 6, so she could attend an appointment with an eye-doctor for a case of conjunctivitis.

Making her way into the city by herself, the tram she was travelling on needed to stop due to an air-raid warning. It was a “light” warning as just two B-29s had been spotted approaching the mainland (a third photography plane was not yet visible on the horizon), so Yamanaka needed to continue her journey on foot. She recalled:

When I got to Sumiyoshi shrine, the strap of one of my wooden geta [Japanese clogs] had snapped off. I tried to fix it with a torn piece of my handkerchief in the shade of a nearby factory building. Then a man came out of the factory and gave me a string of hemp. He advised me to enter the doorway because the sun was very hot already.

When I was repairing my strap, there was a flash. I was blinded for a moment because the light was so strong, as if the sun or a fireball had fallen down over my head. I couldn’t tell where it came from – side, front or behind. I didn’t know what had happened to me. It felt like I was mowed down, pinned or veiled in by something very strong. I couldn’t exhale.

I cried out: “I can’t breathe! I’m choking! Help me!” I fainted. It all happened in a matter of seconds. I heard something rustling nearby and suddenly recovered my senses. “Help me. Help me,” I cried.

A man wearing what seemed like an apron, tattered gaiters and ammo boots came towards her and called out: “Where are you? Where are you?” He pushed aside the debris and extended his arm to Yamanaka:

When I caught his hand, the skin of his hand stripped off and our hands slipped. He adjusted his hand and dragged me out of the debris, grabbing my fingers … I felt a sense of relief, but I forgot to say thank you to him. Everything happened in a moment.

Yamanaka started to run back the way she had come along the river, as “the city was not yet burning”. She saw the shrine just beyond Sumiyoshi bridge, not far from the river. But the bridge had been damaged by the bomb, so she couldn’t cross it.

Yamanaka’s family home was at Eba across the river. In those days, the River Ota was used for river transport and business, and there were huge stone steps going down to the river for loading. She said:

I wanted to get across to the other side. Then the city started to burn: the fires were chasing me and I had to run along the riverbank. I had to keep running as fast as possible until I finally reached Yoshijima jail. I was so scared but the area was not burning yet. I felt so relieved, I lost my consciousness.

She awoke hearing shouts of “is there anyone who is going back to Eba from Funairi?” and recognised a neighbour. She asked him to take her across, but he couldn’t recognise her. “I shed big tears when I heard his voice,” she told me. There were about ten people in a small wooden boat, all with “big swollen grotesque faces and frizzy hair. I thought they were old people. Maybe I also looked like an old woman,” she added.

After crossing the river in the small boat, Yamanaka ran to her Eba home which, even though it was 3km from ground zero, had collapsed. She couldn’t find her mother. Someone told her to go to the air-raid shelter nearby, but there were too many people to fit inside.

When she finally found her mother, she was barely recognisable, wrapped in bandages from her injuries. Yamanaka herself had to go to hospital as tiny pieces of glass from the factory windows where she had been exposed were lodged in her body.

She told me how some shards of glass still emerge from her body occasionally, secreting a chocolate-coloured pus. The family – Yamanaka, her mother and her younger brother (her father, grandparents and the other siblings had remained evacuated) – stayed up all night in a shelter on Eba hill, listening to the sounds of the burning city, the cries for mothers, the sounds of carts filled with refugees.

“All those sounds horrified me,” Yamanaka recalled – decades on from the day that changed everything.

The day the world changed

The immediate effects of the bomb, including heat, blast and radiation, extended to a 4km radius – although recent studies show the radioactive fallout from “black rain” extended much further, due to the winds blowing the mushroom cloud. And some survivors told me they witnessed the blast effects of the bomb, including windows blown out or structures disturbed, in outlying towns and villages up to 30km away.

But the closer you were to ground zero, the more likely you were to suffer severe effects. At 0.36km from ground zero, there was almost nothing left; about 4km away, 50% of the inhabitants died. Even 11km away, people suffered from third-degree burns due to the effects of radiation. The neutron rays also penetrated the surface of the earth, causing it to become radioactive.

The mushroom cloud was visible from the hills of neighbouring prefectures. Those who were beyond the immediate blast radius may not have shown any external injuries immediately – but they commonly became sick and died in the days, weeks, months and years that followed.

And those outside the city were exposed to radiation when they tried to enter to help the injured.

Radiation also affected children who were in the womb at the time. Common radiation-related diseases were hair loss, bleeding gums, loss of energy (“no more will” in Japanese) and pain, as well as life-threatening high fever.

About 650,000 people were recognised by the Japanese government as having been affected by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While most have now passed away, figures held by the Ministry of Labour, Health and Welfare from March 31 2025 show there are an estimated 99,130 still alive, whose average age is now 86.

In a radio broadcast following the atomic bombings, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender and called on the Japanese people to “bear the unbearable”, referring to the “most cruel weapons” that had been used by the Allied forces without directly identifying the nuclear attack. Due to ill-feeling about the defeat, shame over Japan’s imperial past and role in the war, plus censorship and ignorance about the reality of nuclear weapons, the idea grew that the dead and injured hibakusha were simply “sacrifices” (‘生贄 になる’) for world peace.

Generations affected

It took Yamanaka around seven years to recover her strength enough to lead a relatively normal life, so she barely graduated from high school. She has subsequently been diagnosed with various blood, heart, eye and thyroid diseases as well as low immunity – symptoms that can be related to radiation exposure.

Her daughters also suffered. In 1977, when her eldest daughter was 19, she had three operations for skin cancer. In 1978, when her second daughter was 14, she developed leukaemia. In 1987, her third daughter suffered from a unilateral oophorectomy (a surgical procedure to remove one ovary).

I interviewed Yamanaka’s daughters, granddaughter and several other survivors repeatedly, beginning with experiences prior to the atomic bombing and then continuing up to the present day.

While these interviews generally started in the official location of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, I also conducted walking interviews and went to sites of special importance to their personal memories. I shared car journeys, coffees and meals with them and their helpers, because I wanted to see their lives in context, as part of a community.

Their trauma and suffering are dealt with socially. For the relatively few survivors who tell their stories in public, it is through the help of strong local networks. While I was at first told I would not find survivors who wanted to share their stories, gradually more came forward through a snowball effect.

Returning to interview Yamanaka in August 2013, we travelled by car to her former home of Eba, pausing at the site where she had alighted after her journey across the river. There, Yamanaka struck up conversation with a fellow survivor who was passing on his bicycle. His name was Maruto-San. They had attended the same temple-based elementary school.

The two hibakusha, who had both been exposed when young (part of a category known as jakunen hibakusha) exchanged stories about their experiences after “that day” (ano hi) – as August 6 and 9 are still known in the atomic-bombed cities.

They talked about how just one or two friends were still alive – one survivor ran a well-known patisserie in the local department store. Yamanaka informed Maruto-San that she had met a few friends from childhood on a reunion coach trip, during which they had tried to retrieve some happier pre-bomb memories. The meeting offered a rare glimmer of recognition and reconnection.

Keisaburo Toyanaga’s story

In 2014, I travelled to the childhood home of hibakusha Keisaburo Toyanaga, a retired teacher of classical Japanese who was nine on August 6 1945. After visiting his original home in east Hiroshima, we took the route he, his mother, grandfather and three-year-old younger brother had travelled, fleeing Hiroshima towards his grandfather’s house in the suburb of Funakoshi, about 8km away. He told me:

I remember coming this way on that day … My family was just one of many others, we were all travelling with our belongings on push-carts.

The family set up home in this poor suburb, which was shared with many Korean families who could not find a way out of poverty due to historic discrimination. Korea was annexed by Imperial Japan, and Koreans had been recruited en masse into Japan’s war effort. An estimated 40,000-80,000 were in Hiroshima in 1945.

Some high-ranking Koreans were accepted by the Japanese – for example, royals like Prince Yi U who was said to have been astride his horse at the time of the bombing. But ordinary Koreans had to refrain from using their language or wearing Korean clothes in public. Even after the war was over, they needed to use Japanese names outside the home. After the war, Koreans in Hiroshima took menial agricultural work – in Funakoshi, they kept pigs.

Confronted with discrimination in the classroom where he taught at the Electricity Workers’ school, Toyanaga became a campaigner for the right of repatriated South and North Koreans to be officially recognised as hibakusha from the 1970s onwards. He showed me the wooden talisman he wore around his neck, awarded by the Korean community for his support.

The ghosts of Hiroshima

When I was living and working in Japan from 2004, before I started my academic research, I was advised to stay away from the atomic-bombed cities because speaking of the atomic bombings was considered “kanashii” (悲しい) “kowai” (怖い) and “kurushimii” (苦しみい) – sad, scary and painful. Some Japanese friends even expressed horror when I first went to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to do research. They seemed to feel it was like an act of self-harm. A young student I met warned me that the ghosts of the victims of Hiroshima rise at night to take over the city.

On my first visit in 2009, I stayed for one night in a youth hostel beside the railway tracks and the Hiroshima Carp baseball stadium. That night, a friend and I went for a drink with a couple, both second-generation hibakusha or “hibaku nisei”.

This couple, Nishida San and his wife Takeko, were involved in organising the annual Hiroshima Peace Memorial ceremony. Takeko sang in a choir that had been involved in several exchange visits to Europe, including visiting Notre Dame in Paris and Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford.

She said her parents had never told her about their experiences of the bomb, even though her father had been exposed close to ground zero. I was surprised to discover that hibakusha were reluctant to share their stories even within their own families, often for fear of physical and psychological harm being passed through the family line.

After our meeting in the bar, we went to eat okonomiyaki (“delicious food”), a pancake with cabbage, egg, pork and noodles, in a building known as “okonomiyaki mura” or okonomiyaki village. To me, it recalled a New York tenement block with an outdoor staircase serving as the entrance to all floors – the outlines of unbuilt rooms decorating its temporary facade. Such temporariness had lasted from the 1950s when concrete blocks like these went up around the city centre to service a whole new population after Hiroshima’s near-erasure. Since 1945, most inhabitants come from outside the city.

‘Flash … boom’

I was sitting with Nishida San on makeshift bar seats in front of a counter with a huge, heated iron plate. The chef, Shin San, took our order and as we chatted, one of our Hiroshima friends asked him if he remembered the atomic bomb. Shin replied: “Of course I do.”

Then he spread his arms wide and a strange expression appeared on his face, as he said: “Pikaaaaa… doon.” This translates as “flash… boom” – two onomatopoeic words that encapsulate so much for Hiroshima people. Many survivors, especially those downtown, only experienced the flash. Others, usually at some distance, experienced the sonic boom. So these two words were used in place of “gembakudan” (原爆弾) – meaning atomic bomb – due to censorship.

Nobel prize-winning author Kenzaburo Ōe, in his 1981 work Hiroshima Notes, wrote, ‘For 10 years after the atomic bomb was dropped there was so little public discussion of the bomb or of radioactivity that even the Chugoku Shimbun, the major newspaper of the city where the atomic bomb was dropped, did not have the movable [kanji] type for the words “atomic bomb” or “radioactivity.”’ To support this, I noticed how some monuments for those who died in downtown Hiroshima bear the simple inscription E=MC², Einstein’s formula for relativity – the source of the science that created the bomb, but not the actual words for “atomic bomb”.

Keiko Ogura: ‘40 years of nightmares’

The older generation often told me how they dreaded visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and its surrounding park, as they are built over ground zero. However, some found that after encountering visiting foreigners there who had also experienced mass suffering, such as the Holocaust or a nuclear test, they were more able to open up.

Keiko Ogura, now aged 87, was eight on August 6 1945 and was exposed to black rain at her home in Ushitamachi, 5km from the centre of Hiroshima. She said:

For 40 years, I had nightmares and did not want to tell the story. Growing up, our mothers did not speak of the atomic bombing as they were afraid of discrimination and prejudice. Getting older, we started to worry about our children and grandchildren’s health. After the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission was established in 1947, some people expected to be cured of ABI [atomic bomb injury] … but in fact, the doctors there were just gathering blood and data.

Ogura had thought, as a child, that she would never find a partner due to the discrimination against hibakusha, but she was also acutely aware that other survivors had suffered more than her.

However, when Robert Jungk, a Holocaust survivor, came to research his book Children of the Ashes with the help of Kaoru Ogura – a bilingual American who had been interned during the second world war and would become Keiko’s husband – things started to shift for her. Finding out about the Holocaust lent a new dimension to her own experiences of discrimination.

Jungk – along with Robert J. Lifton, a genocide historian – wrote their interview-based studies of Hiroshima in the 1950s and ‘60s, when ordinary citizens around the world were largely ignorant of the enormity of what had happened in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the nuclear test sites. Lifton, originally a military psychiatrist, explained that after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, he had been motivated to study in Hiroshima as he was afraid the world was in danger of “making the same mistake again”.

However, the link between Hiroshima and the Holocaust was first made by Otto Frank, Anne Frank’s father, who organised for an Anne Frank rose garden to be planted in the Peace Memorial Park in honour of an 11-year-old girl, Sadako Sasaki, who died from leukaemia nine years after the bomb.

One autumnal afternoon in 2013, after my third round of interviews with my cohort of hibakusha, I visited Mitaki Temple Cemetery, about 6km outside Hiroshima. The graveyard is dedicated to hibakusha, many of whose ashes are kept there. The hibakusha headstones are engraved with haiku written by family members. However, many of the headstones which existed prior to 1945 have been left at jagged angles – positioned as they were after being upset by the seismic effects of the atomic bombing.

In among the recent graves, I was shown some Jewish hanging mobile memorials – gifts from Oświęcim in Poland, location of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The temple’s former head priest had been involved in the Hiroshima-Auschwitz Peace Committee, an interfaith group which had started with a walk around the world to link atomic bomb survivors with Holocaust and other war victims.

Making the connection was important to hibakusha who were accused, then as now, of highlighting the atrocities of the bomb but downplaying the importance of Japan’s role in the war. When visiting Japan’s former colonies and elsewhere, hibakusha still offer apologies for Japanese behaviour in the second world war.

For institutions in Hiroshima, it’s important to change the narrative around nuclear weapons – not only through more and better medical research, but by disseminating hibakusha stories. The local newspaper, Chugoku Shimbun, aims to strengthen informal networks of hibakusha who meet up to share memories of that day. Some local journalists I met, Rie Nii and Yumi Kanazaki, help young people to interview their grandparents’ generation, building up a valuable archive of experiences.

There are two ways the younger generation can carry these stories forward: either by training as denshōsha (ambassadors) or by interviewing family members.

Kazumi Kuwahara decided to do both. When she was just 13, she wanted to pass on her grandmother’s story, becoming the winner of a prefecture-wide speaking competition about the bomb. In her 20s, after graduating from university, she also decided to train as a denshōsha and peace park guide, a role that requires intensive training over a six-month period. As the youngest guide to the Hiroshima Peace Park, she says:

Each visitor has a unique nationality and upbringing and, as I interact with them, I constantly ask myself how best to share Hiroshima’s significant history.

Toward the end of my field work, having gained interviews with three generations of survivors as well as their helpers, I realised this was just the beginning of a much larger conversation.

John Hersey, author of the Pulitzer-prize winning 1946 work Hiroshima, said: “What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has been the memory of what happened at Hiroshima.”

However, as our memories get more spotty with the passing of time, and as more survivors’ names are added to the roll of the dead at the cenotaphs of Japan’s atomic-bombed cities, perhaps our greatest hope is to grow the cohort of today’s listeners – so that tomorrow’s storytellers may emerge.

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For you: more from our Insights series:

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• Engineering hope: how I made it my mission to help rebuild Ukraine’s critical infrastructure
  

• Inside Porton Down: what I learned during three years at the UK’s most secretive chemical weapons laboratory
  

• Ignored, blamed, and sometimes left to die – a leading expert in ME explains the origins of a modern medical scandal
  

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Elizabeth Chappell 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.

– ref. ‘Then the city started to burn, the fires were chasing me’ – 80 years on, Hiroshima survivors describe how the atomic blast echoed down generations – https://theconversation.com/then-the-city-started-to-burn-the-fires-were-chasing-me-80-years-on-hiroshima-survivors-describe-how-the-atomic-blast-echoed-down-generations-260645

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Naomi Joseph, Arts + Culture Editor

The feelings that surged through the pub that I watched the women’s Euro 2022 cup final in were electric. England had won. My friends were in tears. Strangers were shaking hands, patting each other on the back, smiling goofily at anyone who would catch their eye. It was wonderful. I’m hoping for repeat scenes this Sunday when the Lionesses face Spain in the 2025 Uefa European Women’s Championship.

Whether they win or not, the journey has been a joy. I watched the quarter-final between England and Sweden at a pub hosting an Irish trad folk night. With every England goal, the fiddlers celebrated with a rowdy song. The street I was watching the semi-final on erupted as different pockets of fans celebrated as Chloe Kelly scored the goal that would send the Lionesses into the final.

Women’s football has gone from strength to strength since that monumental win in 2022. Many of the Lionesses are now household names (Kelly, Lucy Bronze, Ella Toone and Beth Mead to name a few). As someone who attends women’s games, I’ve never seen the stands so full. You’ve also never been able to see so many games broadcast.

The situation for players has also massively improved with female footballers earning more than ever. In this piece, sports financing expert Christina Philippou, celebrates these many wins but also highlights where there is room for improvement.

A lot of the gains made in women’s football in England can be attributed to that win in 2022. Here’s hoping that on Sunday we see another win, which leads to many more strides for women’s football.

The 2025 Uefa European Women’s Championship final will be available to watch on the BBC at 5pm, July 27.

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Read more:
Euro 2025: women’s football has exploded – here’s how it can grow even more

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On Sunday, the Lionesses will march onto the pitch wearing their all-white home kit. The purpose of such clothing is to unite the players, to show they are a team and representatives of a country. In this, we can see how, as the philosopher Kate Moran writes in her new book, clothes are much more than just what we put on.

In A Philosopher Looks at Clothes, Moran shows that what we choose to wear is a worthy topic of deep philosophical inquiry.

Our reviewer, Sarah Richmond, a philosophy expert, found the book an engaging and unpretentious exploration of an ubiquitous aspect of daily life. Clothing provides Moran with fertile ground for ethical, political, aesthetic and identity-related reflections.

A Philosopher Looks at Clothes by Kate Moran is out now

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Read more:
A Philosopher Looks at Clothes by Kate Moran is engaging and unpretentious – we need more philosophy books like this

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Also challenging how we have historically seen things is the new book by writer and curator Alayo Akinkugbe. In Reframing Blackness, Akinkugbe invites the reader to challenge art history and its approach to blackness.

How has the teaching of art history excluded blackness? How does such teaching then affect the creation and curation of art in relation to blackness.

Wanja Kimani, a curator herself, found the book engaged with many of the issues that black artists and those teaching and working in the arts have been grappling with since at least the 1960s in a clear-eyed and refreshingly optimistic manner.

Reframing Blackness by Alayo Akinkugbe is out now

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Read more:
In Reframing Blackness, Alayo Akinkugbe challenges museums to see blackness first

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For at least the last ten years there has been a growing trend for exhibitions that tackle climate change and the collapse of nature. Pandora Syperek, an expert in design, and Sarah Wade, an expert in museums, have been great supporters of the ability of such curation to communicate the urgency of such issues.

Putting their research into practice, the pair have put on their first exhibition entitled Sea Inside. Asking the question “can the sea survive us?” the show features art works that show how connected humanity is to the ocean.

These works are, as they write, emotive, imaginative and often very funny. From an aquarium full of tears to videos of jelly fish having sex in a lab, these works hope to move us closer to a care and understanding for fragile sea ecosystems.

Sea Inside is on at Sainsbury Centre in Norwich until 26 October, 2025

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Read more:
Nipple-covered sea creatures and aquariums filled with tears – Sea Inside’s alternative perspective on oceans in crisis

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At The King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace you can explore the glamour of the Edwardian age through some of Britain’s most fashionable royal couples – King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, their son George V and his wife Mary of Teck.

As our reviewer, professor of modern British history Jane Hamlett notes, one of the most interesting things about The Edwardians: Age of Elegance is what it reveals about the personal taste of the royals. Featuring more than 300 objects from the Royal Collection – almost half for the first time – it is fascinating to see what they chose to collect. You’ll get the chance to see work by recognisable artists of the period, including Carl Fabergé, John Singer Sargent and William Morris.

The Edwardians: Age of Elegance is on at The King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace until 23 November, 2025.

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Read more:
The Edwardians: Age of Elegance – a glimpse into royal patronage of the arts in the early 20th century

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This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

– ref. A big night for women’s football – what you should watch, see and read this week – https://theconversation.com/a-big-night-for-womens-football-what-you-should-watch-see-and-read-this-week-261886

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Natasha Lindstaedt, Professor in the Department of Government, University of Essex

As climate change drives rising temperatures and changes in rainfall, Mexico and the US are in the middle of a conflict over water, putting an additional strain on their relationship.

Partly due to constant droughts, Mexico has struggled to maintain its water deliveries for much of the last 25 years, in keeping with a water-sharing agreement between the two countries that has been in place since 1944 (agreements between the two regulating water sharing have existed since the 19th century).

As part of this 1944 treaty, set up when water was not as scarce as it is now, the two nations divide and share the flows from three rivers (the Rio Grande, the Colorado and the Tijuana) that range along their 2,000-mile border. The process is overseen by the International Boundary and Water Commission.

Mexico must send 430 million cubic metres of water per year from the Rio Grande to the US, while the US must send nearly 1.85 billion cubic metres of water from the Colorado River to support the Mexican border cities of Tijuana and Mexicali.

Water deliveries are measured over a five-year cycle, and the current one ends in October. Mexico struggled to deliver its water “debt” in the last cycle which ended in 2020, using waters from reservoirs at the last minute to fulfil its obligations. This left northern Mexico with severely depleted water levels.

Due to growing tensions over water, the Biden administration tried to negotiate and work with the Mexican government to improve the speed with which Mexico’s water deliveries were taking place in 2024.

But with Donald Trump’s return to office, the US has taken a more aggressive stance with Mexico to address its water debts to the US. For the first time in over 50 years, in March of 2025, the US refused to send water from the Colorado River to Tijuana – a city of nearly 2 million people – in order to force Mexico to send more water to Texas.

Mexico has since responded by transferring 75 million cubic metres of water, but this is just a drop in the bucket, as Mexico remains 1.5 billion cubic metres in debt. And this did little to satisfy the Trump administration, which threatened to withhold more water from Mexico. It also demanded the resignation of Maria-Elena Giner, who led the International Boundary and Water Commission, in April.

Rather than looking at diplomatic solutions, Trump has accused Mexico of stealing Texans’ water and has promised to keep escalating consequences if it doesn’t deliver on the treaty terms.

For farmers in Texas, the water shortage has left them unable to plant their crops as they don’t have enough irrigated water to do so. A year ago, the last sugar mill in southern Texas shut down due to the lack of water being delivered by Mexico.

But Mexican farmers believe that the agreement is binding only when Mexico has enough water to satisfy its own needs – and with drought conditions, this means that no excess available water can be sent. Continuing drought conditions in Mexico have plagued farmers in the north, who also rely on water for their crops. Reductions in rainfall in recent years have also left Mexico struggling with water supplies for its own citizens in urban areas.

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Read more:
Farewell to summer? ‘Haze’ and ‘trash’ among Earth’s new seasons as climate change and pollution play havoc

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No running water

In recent years, drought has particularly affected the city of Monterrey in northern Mexico. In 2022, taps ran dry with many of its five million residents without running water for months. Flushing toilets, laundering clothing, washing dishes, bathing all required hauling water by hand from wells.

Locals protested the fact that the best water infrastructure went to factories, not residents. One factor is that water demand has skyrocketed due to more manufacturing in border cities in Mexico.

While increased manufacturing poses one problem, an even bigger problem lies with agriculture, and the types of plants being planted, as well as the way they have traditionally been watered. For example, avocados require 91 litres a day – four times more water than the production of oranges, and ten times more than the production of tomatoes.

Alfalfa is another thirsty crop being mass produced in drought-prone states, such as Texas, California and even Arizona.

As much as 80% of the Colorado River basin’s water is used for agriculture and about half of that goes towards the production of alfalfa. Even more concerning is that most of the water is going to feed these thirsty crops. And in the dry south-west states of the US half of its water goes to towards the production of beef and dairy cattle.

This has an impact on cities who are completely dependent on the Colorado River. In the case of Tijuana in Mexico, the Colorado River supplies 90% of its water, while US cities such as Los Angeles and Las Vegas receive 50% and 90% of their water supplies from the Colorado River and basin, respectively.

This is a major concern as both the Colorado River and the Rio Grande are experiencing record low levels of water. And getting more water from Mexico is not a long-term solution.

Though the Biden administration was criticised by farmers for not threatening Mexico, by withholding water, its approach largely focused more on the long-term challenges.

For the previous US administration the solution was to invest more in the Colorado River basin, incentivising California, Arizona and Colorado to conserve three million acre-feet of water through 2026 in return for US$1 billion (£741,000,000) in federal funding.

What drives this conflict?

But under Trump, federal funding for tackling climate change is being slashed. Increased polarisation in US domestic politics and growing tensions between the US and Mexico will make resolving this crisis all the more difficult.

This is a missed opportunity. Even though conflicts over water are becoming more frequent, water scarcity can also be a potential driver of cooperation.

Meanwhile, the US’s relationship with Mexico continues to be rocky. Trump has threatened to put new 30% tariffs on Mexico from August 1, after he claimed it hadn’t done enough to tackle drug cartels.

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has said her government was destroying drug laboratories every day, and that the US must control weapons travelling over its border into Mexico which were being used for criminal purposes. Meanwhile, high tariffs on Mexican goods are likely to affect US consumers as Mexico is currently the US’s biggest trading partner.

Cooperation, and acknowledging the role played by climate change, and unsustainable forms of development in both agriculture and manufacturing are key to resolving this cross-border water crisis – but these are things that the Trump administration is unlikely to acknowledge, or address.

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Natasha Lindstaedt 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.

– ref. Water wars: a historic agreement between Mexico and US is ramping up border tension – https://theconversation.com/water-wars-a-historic-agreement-between-mexico-and-us-is-ramping-up-border-tension-261492

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Geraldine Lublin, Associate Professor in Spanish, Swansea University

The first Welsh settlers landed on the shores of what is today the Province of Chubut, in Argentinean Patagonia, on 28 July 1865. Carried on the ship Mimosa, this was the first of a series of immigrant contingents to create the Welsh settlement known as Y Wladfa.

The many chronicles and accounts about it have imbued the settlement with a mythical sheen. Today, Y Wladfa is home to the most famous Welsh-speaking community outside Wales. It is often touted in Britain as a little Wales across the sea. In fact, “Welsh Patagonia”, as it’s also known, was established precisely with the aim of preserving the language and culture.

A major aspect of the settlement that is celebrated is the unique friendship with the Indigenous Tehuelche that the Welsh immigrants would have struck up. However, with the commemoration of 160 years of that first group of settlers, the story about this connection is being challenged in a recently launched digital exhibition: Problematising History: Indigenous perspectives on Welsh settlement in Patagonia.

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Rather than attempting to undo the past, the project aims to address a glaring omission in historical accounts which results in an incomplete understanding of the impacts of the settlement – the lack of indigenous perspectives.

The new trilingual (Spanish, Welsh and English) exhibition challenges romanticised views about the myth of friendship between the Welsh settlers and the Indigenous Tehuelche in Patagonia. Bringing together four Mapuche Tehuelche creative projects, it reflects critically on how the story of Welsh colonisation in Chubut is told by providing a platform for voices previously unheard in Britain.

Little Wales across the sea

In Welsh Patagonia you can see quaint casas de té gales (Welsh tea houses), the ever-present dragons and strangely familiar Welsh street names. You will also see the Welsh language in towns like Gaiman, Trevelin or Trelew. To find a language that is only spoken by less than 20% in Wales itself be so present in this corner of Latin America can make for an odd experience.

The stories of how this place came to be are typical of settler colonial settings. These rose-tinted tales describe the encounter between the Welsh and the Indigenous Tehuelche as a harmonious meeting of cultures that led to a lasting friendship. The assumption is that the largely peaceful coexistence was due to the inherent Welsh benevolence rather than the result of negotiation and relationship building on both sides.

The overlooking of Indigenous agency and resistance is partly due to virtually all of the historical records available in Welsh or English being created by Welsh or European people. Even those appearing to foreground indigenous voices were recorded by non-Indigenous rapporteurs and often include at least one layer of translation.

As voices in the project Puel Willi Mapu Mew: Taiñ Zungun have said about the “Welsh rifleros” (the first Welsh explorers to “go West”):

“Their arrival is commemorated as an epic legend and they are inscribed as heroes who ‘discovered’ our land, silencing our pre-existence as Tehuelche Mapuche people, and leading to the violence of the successive evictions and removals of our lof (community).”

The incorporation of indigenous perspectives on Welsh settlement to the collections of the National Library of Wales represents a groundbreaking development. It is about time that space has been made for Mapuche Tehuelche memories about forced displacement, territorial dispossession and heritage appropriations.

Changing perceptions

The early pioneers were invited by the Argentinean government to settle in the area around the Chubut river. They were then pretty much left to their own devices to endure in the unforgiving and harsh terrain. The Indigenous Tehuelche would have not only provided them with meat but taught them to hunt and survive in their new environment.

An aspect of that good will can be traced to the Chegüelcho agreement, which the Argentine government drew up with the leaders of local Indigenous communities. The agreement stipulated that, provided the Welsh settlement was left to develop on the lands in question, the central government would send regular rations to the communities and provide animals and clothing.

However, the nuances of the coexistence have been removed, leaving a flattened historical narrative. In reality, the relationship was the result of continuous renegotiation of practical necessities and pursuit of reciprocal benefit – but was also fraught.

The Welsh outpost was beneficial to Patagonian indigenous populations in providing a convenient outlet for trading their animal skins and ostrich feathers. However, Y Wladfa was the first step of a broader Argentine project that actively sought to dispossess indigenous peoples and assert state sovereignty over Patagonia.

“The official history of Chubut silences the stories of the Mapuche and allows words like ‘progress’ and ‘Welsh settlers’ to resonate,” contributor Agustín Pichiñan explains.

“With the support of the State, fences were extended all over our territory bringing us subjugation, harassment and discrimination. Yet, we keep on resisting and fighting to recover our history, using the knowledge of our ancestors and the memories of our lof (community).”

Sustaining a simplified historical narrative and ignoring indigenous perspectives allows convenient stories which simply celebrate Y Wladfa. It prevents us from sitting with uncomfortable truths and learning.

Chief among these truths is that as a colonised people themselves the Welsh were agents of colonialism elsewhere. This is part of the wider history of Patagonian settlement and is key to striving for a better present and future for all involved.

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Geraldine Lublin has received funding for the “Problematising History: Indigenous perspectives on Welsh settlement in Patagonia”.project from the Arts & Humanities Research Council Impact Acceleration Account at Swansea University.

– ref. After 160 years of Welsh settlement in Patagonia, Indigenous voices are finally being heard – https://theconversation.com/after-160-years-of-welsh-settlement-in-patagonia-indigenous-voices-are-finally-being-heard-261700

Source: ForeignAffairs4

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Indranil Banik, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Astrophysics, University of Portsmouth

Looking up at the night sky, it may seem our cosmic neighbourhood is packed full of planets, stars and galaxies. But scientists have long suggested there may be far fewer galaxies in our cosmic surroundings than expected.

In fact, it appears we live in a giant cosmic void with roughly 20% lower than the average density of matter.

Not every physicist is convinced that this is the case. But our recent paper analysing distorted sounds from the early universe, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, strongly backs up the idea.

Cosmology is currently in a crisis known as the Hubble tension: the local universe appears to be expanding about 10% faster than expected. The predicted rate comes from extrapolating observations of the infant universe forward to the present day using the standard model of cosmology, known as Lambda-Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM).

We can observe the early universe in great detail through the cosmic microwave background (CMB), relic radiation from the early universe, when it was 1,100 times smaller than it is today. Sound waves in the early universe ultimately created areas of low and high densities, or temperatures.

By studying CMB temperature fluctuations on different scales, we can essentially “listen” to the sound of the early universe, which is especially “noisy” at particular scales.

These fluctuations are now imprinted in the CMB, and dubbed “baryon acoustic oscillations” (BAOs). Since these became the seeds for galaxies and other structures, the patterns are also visible in the distribution of galaxies.

By measuring these patterns, we can learn how galaxies are clustered at different redshifts (distances). A particularly striking pattern, with lots of clustering, occurs at an angle called the “angular BAO scale”.

This measurement ultimately helps astronomers and cosmologists learn about the universe’s expansion history by providing something physicists call a “standard ruler”. This is essentially an astronomical object or a feature on the sky with a well-known size.

By measuring its angular size on the sky, cosmologists can therefore calculate its distance from Earth using trigonometry. One can also use the redshift to determine how fast the cosmos is expanding. The larger it appears on the sky at a certain redshift, the faster the universe is expanding.

My colleagues and I previously argued that the Hubble tension might be due to our location within a large void. That’s because the sparse amount of matter in the void would be gravitationally attracted to the more dense matter outside it, continuously flowing out of the void.

In previous research, we showed that this flow would make it look like the local universe is expanding about 10% faster than expected. That would solve the Hubble tension.

But we wanted more evidence. And we know a local void would slightly distort the relation between the BAO angular scale and the redshift due to the faster moving matter in the void and its gravitational effect on light from outside.

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Read more:
Do we live in a giant void? It could solve the puzzle of the universe’s expansion

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So in our new paper, Vasileios Kalaitzidis and I set out to test the predictions of the void model using BAO measurements collected over the last 20 years. We compared our results to models without a void under the same background expansion history.

In the void model, the BAO ruler should look larger on the sky at any given redshift. And this excess should become even larger at low redshift (close distance), in line with the Hubble tension.

The observations confirm this prediction. Our results suggest that a universe with a local void is about one hundred million times more likely than a cosmos without one, when using BAO measurements and assuming the universe expanded according to the standard model of cosmology informed by the CMB.

Our research shows that the ΛCDM model without any local void is in “3.8 sigma tension” with the BAO observations. This means the likelihood of a universe without a void fitting these data is equivalent to a fair coin landing heads 13 times in a row. By contrast, the chance of the BAO data looking the way they do in void models is equivalent to a fair coin landing heads just twice in a row. In short, these models fit the data quite well.

In the future, it will be crucial to obtain more accurate BAO measurements at low redshift, where the BAO standard ruler looks larger on the sky – even more so if we are in a void.

The average expansion rate so far follows directly from the age of the universe, which we can estimate from the ages of old stars in the Milky Way. A local void would not affect the age of the universe, but some proposals do affect it. These and other probes will shed more light on the Hubble crisis in cosmology.

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Indranil Banik receives funding from the Royal Society as part of a University Research Fellowship managed by his boss Harry Desmond. The second author on the paper was Vasileios Kalaitzidis, who received an undergraduate summer project grant from the Royal Astronomical Society to undertake the analysis described here.

– ref. Distorted sound of the early universe suggests we are living in a giant void – https://theconversation.com/distorted-sound-of-the-early-universe-suggests-we-are-living-in-a-giant-void-259284