Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Kim Gurney, Senior Researcher, Centre for Humanities Research — Platform: SA-UK Bilateral Digital Humanities Chair in Culture & Technics, University of the Western Cape
Independent art spaces are collectives of artists (and others) who club together to set up a communal space – often in former industrial sites and more affordable parts of the city – to further their practice. These spaces are DIY art institutions, if you like, that operate largely under the radar. In art world lingo, “offspaces”.
Designed for purpose over profit, they encourage experimental work and creative risk-taking. They also favour art in public space, which provides an intriguing lens on the city.
My Africa-wideresearch took me to five such spaces, each at least 10 years old, so that I could learn their secret sauce of sustainability. I found it’s largely about shapeshifting, a capacity for constant reinvention. The key ingredient is artistic thinking, made up of five key principles highlighted in the examples below.
Offspaces are found everywhere but have notably grown across Africa over the past couple of decades, along with fast-changing cities and a resurgent art scene. One big picture point is crucial, and that’s about urbanisation. Globally, more and more people are moving to cities and most of them are young – by 2050, one in three young people in the world will be of African origin and the continent will be largely urban.
There can be a lack of imagination about what all this means and that’s where artists come in. They offer new ideas to help build the world we want to live in, rather than reinforce the one we already have.
Offspaces in Africa have to navigate prevailing uncertainty, which is a daily reality for most people living in cities. In response, artists band together to build their own pseudo institutions, bit by bit. These self-made pathways offer useful navigational tactics for others – or “panya routes”, as Kenyans call the trails that motorbike taxis invent.
The spaces I visited were all moving away from reliance on foreign donor funding (given little or no state support) towards a hybrid model that blends with local philanthropy, collaborative economies and self-generated income schemes. They also want to own their own land and hold assets so that they can think about the future.
1. The GoDown Arts Centre – Nairobi, Kenya
Murals at the former GoDown (2010), currently being rebuilt. Katy Fentress/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA
The GoDown Arts Centre was established in 2003. Previously a large compound of repurposed warehouses (“godowns”) in Nairobi’s industrial area, right now it’s a construction site as it morphs into an iconic cultural hub. GoDown 2.0 is a multipurpose vision that works at different scales, like a fractal. There will be a large, welcoming facade leading into a semi-public section for music and dance, with artist studios at the heart. Plus galleries, library, museum, auditorium, offices, hotel, a restaurant, conference facilities and parking.
Its rebuild is a great example of how artists create public space: in phases. It follows a radical “design-with-people” approach, starting with years of input from all directions to reconsider the building and its relationship to the city.
This ground-up ethos of horizontality, the first key principle, also shapes its signature event, an annual public arts festival called Nai Ni Who? (Who is Nairobi?). Local residents are the curators, and the everyday city is the artwork. Participants are taken around neighbourhoods on foot to experience the good, the bad, and the possibilities. These grounded insights also inform ongoing engagements GoDown has with policymakers about the shape of a future Nairobi.
2. ANO Institute – Accra, Ghana
ANO, established in 2002, repurposed a former workshop for car repairs into a gallery, after starting life in a public park. On the other side of the road, opposite the gallery, stood its office, residency space and growing library.
Most intriguingly, a striking rectilinear structure was positioned alongside. This Mobile Museum mimics the trading kiosks that line every street. Many are also shapeshifters: kindergarten by day, church by night, for example.
ANO’s empty museum, collapsible and see-through, went on a countrywide adventure in 2018 and 2019, asking people to imagine its contents, and later revisited with the results. It signalled a larger and ongoing effort, Future Museum, to find a more relevant exhibition form that’s alive to the fluid way culture is threaded here into everyday life.
ANO demonstrates the second principle of performativity – that is, not only saying things with art but doing things too. More recently, it rebuilt on a new site in central Accra, designed by 87-year-old Ophelia Akiwumi, entirely from raffia palm in a focus on indigenous knowledge systems.
3. Townhouse Gallery – Cairo, Egypt
I visited Townhouse just after it reclaimed its inner-city premises following a partial physical collapse. But this turned out to be a false restart. It closed for good not long after, citing a complex brew of factors that ended 21 years of various battles and resurrections. That it survived so long – from 1998 until 2019 – is remarkable for an offspace.
Part of the reason was its solidarity networks, including with neighbourhood communities – mostly mechanic shops and other artisanal trades who even helped Townhouse rebuild. In its heyday, Townhouse comprised an art gallery, library, theatre and performance venue, and notably hatched other spaces.
The latest rose like a phoenix from its ashes – Access Art Space, which reanimates the same physical space with visual art exhibitions. The legacy of Townhouse is the third principle of elasticity – responding nimbly to constant flux but also being able to refuse impossible conditions with “the right no” (a necessary response in certain situations).
4. ZOMA Museum – Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
ZOMA Museum has also lived many lives. Starting small, its roots were in a three-day public arts festival called Giziawi #1 (Temporary). It comprised performances and exhibitions across the city but focused on Meskel Square, a key public space.
Zoma Contemporary Art Centre grew out of that in 2002, followed in 2019 by Zoma Museum when its co-founders bought a plot of polluted land. Its rehabilitation into an ecological haven has become a case study in sustainable architecture.
Zoma is built by local artisans from mud and straw using indigenous technologies going back centuries. Yet its elegant buildings look futuristic. Zoma is all about the fourth principle of convergence – the past, present and future all happening at once. It’s also about doing multiple things, like running Zoma School, an inherited kindergarten. The land is part of the curriculum.
Just a year after it opened, Zoma spawned yet another life, an offshoot in a newly opened park blending nature with culture and recreation.
5. Nafasi Art Space – Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Nafasi is Swahili for opportunity or chance, which fittingly describes the workings of Nafasi Art Space, established in 2008 – that is, second chance. This fifth and final principle of artistic thinking means giving materials, people and situations another go.
A good example of this is Nafasi’s new art school, built using repurposed shipping containers, like the rest of its premises – artist studios, a spacious gallery and performance arena. In the 2022 academy cohort, a general practice lawyer and an accountant were learning alongside artists, with a biologist at the helm.
Nafasi Art Academy cites the city’s biggest local market, Kariakoo, as design reference, particularly its distinctive elevated canopy and swirling stairwell. The curriculum also takes local context as a starting point, structured in themes to answer community-led questions. Its key function, like all the other offspaces, is storytelling. And the story it tells best is about institution-building as art.
The research behind this article was supported by the South African Research Chair in Urban Policy at UCT’s African Centre for Cities, where the author was previously affiliated.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Kim Gurney, Senior Researcher, Centre for Humanities Research — Platform: SA-UK Bilateral Digital Humanities Chair in Culture & Technics, University of the Western Cape
Independent art spaces are collectives of artists (and others) who club together to set up a communal space – often in former industrial sites and more affordable parts of the city – to further their practice. These spaces are DIY art institutions, if you like, that operate largely under the radar. In art world lingo, “offspaces”.
Designed for purpose over profit, they encourage experimental work and creative risk-taking. They also favour art in public space, which provides an intriguing lens on the city.
My Africa-wideresearch took me to five such spaces, each at least 10 years old, so that I could learn their secret sauce of sustainability. I found it’s largely about shapeshifting, a capacity for constant reinvention. The key ingredient is artistic thinking, made up of five key principles highlighted in the examples below.
Offspaces are found everywhere but have notably grown across Africa over the past couple of decades, along with fast-changing cities and a resurgent art scene. One big picture point is crucial, and that’s about urbanisation. Globally, more and more people are moving to cities and most of them are young – by 2050, one in three young people in the world will be of African origin and the continent will be largely urban.
There can be a lack of imagination about what all this means and that’s where artists come in. They offer new ideas to help build the world we want to live in, rather than reinforce the one we already have.
Offspaces in Africa have to navigate prevailing uncertainty, which is a daily reality for most people living in cities. In response, artists band together to build their own pseudo institutions, bit by bit. These self-made pathways offer useful navigational tactics for others – or “panya routes”, as Kenyans call the trails that motorbike taxis invent.
The spaces I visited were all moving away from reliance on foreign donor funding (given little or no state support) towards a hybrid model that blends with local philanthropy, collaborative economies and self-generated income schemes. They also want to own their own land and hold assets so that they can think about the future.
1. The GoDown Arts Centre – Nairobi, Kenya
Murals at the former GoDown (2010), currently being rebuilt. Katy Fentress/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA
The GoDown Arts Centre was established in 2003. Previously a large compound of repurposed warehouses (“godowns”) in Nairobi’s industrial area, right now it’s a construction site as it morphs into an iconic cultural hub. GoDown 2.0 is a multipurpose vision that works at different scales, like a fractal. There will be a large, welcoming facade leading into a semi-public section for music and dance, with artist studios at the heart. Plus galleries, library, museum, auditorium, offices, hotel, a restaurant, conference facilities and parking.
Its rebuild is a great example of how artists create public space: in phases. It follows a radical “design-with-people” approach, starting with years of input from all directions to reconsider the building and its relationship to the city.
This ground-up ethos of horizontality, the first key principle, also shapes its signature event, an annual public arts festival called Nai Ni Who? (Who is Nairobi?). Local residents are the curators, and the everyday city is the artwork. Participants are taken around neighbourhoods on foot to experience the good, the bad, and the possibilities. These grounded insights also inform ongoing engagements GoDown has with policymakers about the shape of a future Nairobi.
2. ANO Institute – Accra, Ghana
ANO, established in 2002, repurposed a former workshop for car repairs into a gallery, after starting life in a public park. On the other side of the road, opposite the gallery, stood its office, residency space and growing library.
Most intriguingly, a striking rectilinear structure was positioned alongside. This Mobile Museum mimics the trading kiosks that line every street. Many are also shapeshifters: kindergarten by day, church by night, for example.
ANO’s empty museum, collapsible and see-through, went on a countrywide adventure in 2018 and 2019, asking people to imagine its contents, and later revisited with the results. It signalled a larger and ongoing effort, Future Museum, to find a more relevant exhibition form that’s alive to the fluid way culture is threaded here into everyday life.
ANO demonstrates the second principle of performativity – that is, not only saying things with art but doing things too. More recently, it rebuilt on a new site in central Accra, designed by 87-year-old Ophelia Akiwumi, entirely from raffia palm in a focus on indigenous knowledge systems.
3. Townhouse Gallery – Cairo, Egypt
I visited Townhouse just after it reclaimed its inner-city premises following a partial physical collapse. But this turned out to be a false restart. It closed for good not long after, citing a complex brew of factors that ended 21 years of various battles and resurrections. That it survived so long – from 1998 until 2019 – is remarkable for an offspace.
Part of the reason was its solidarity networks, including with neighbourhood communities – mostly mechanic shops and other artisanal trades who even helped Townhouse rebuild. In its heyday, Townhouse comprised an art gallery, library, theatre and performance venue, and notably hatched other spaces.
The latest rose like a phoenix from its ashes – Access Art Space, which reanimates the same physical space with visual art exhibitions. The legacy of Townhouse is the third principle of elasticity – responding nimbly to constant flux but also being able to refuse impossible conditions with “the right no” (a necessary response in certain situations).
4. ZOMA Museum – Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
ZOMA Museum has also lived many lives. Starting small, its roots were in a three-day public arts festival called Giziawi #1 (Temporary). It comprised performances and exhibitions across the city but focused on Meskel Square, a key public space.
Zoma Contemporary Art Centre grew out of that in 2002, followed in 2019 by Zoma Museum when its co-founders bought a plot of polluted land. Its rehabilitation into an ecological haven has become a case study in sustainable architecture.
Zoma is built by local artisans from mud and straw using indigenous technologies going back centuries. Yet its elegant buildings look futuristic. Zoma is all about the fourth principle of convergence – the past, present and future all happening at once. It’s also about doing multiple things, like running Zoma School, an inherited kindergarten. The land is part of the curriculum.
Just a year after it opened, Zoma spawned yet another life, an offshoot in a newly opened park blending nature with culture and recreation.
5. Nafasi Art Space – Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Nafasi is Swahili for opportunity or chance, which fittingly describes the workings of Nafasi Art Space, established in 2008 – that is, second chance. This fifth and final principle of artistic thinking means giving materials, people and situations another go.
A good example of this is Nafasi’s new art school, built using repurposed shipping containers, like the rest of its premises – artist studios, a spacious gallery and performance arena. In the 2022 academy cohort, a general practice lawyer and an accountant were learning alongside artists, with a biologist at the helm.
Nafasi Art Academy cites the city’s biggest local market, Kariakoo, as design reference, particularly its distinctive elevated canopy and swirling stairwell. The curriculum also takes local context as a starting point, structured in themes to answer community-led questions. Its key function, like all the other offspaces, is storytelling. And the story it tells best is about institution-building as art.
The research behind this article was supported by the South African Research Chair in Urban Policy at UCT’s African Centre for Cities, where the author was previously affiliated.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Seth Asare Okyere, Visiting lecturer, University of Pittsburg and Adjunct Associate Professor, Osaka University, University of Pittsburgh
Africa’s urban future will be shaped not only by large cities and capitals but also by its many small and medium-sized towns.
Large capital cities are no longer the hotspots of rapid urban growth. According to the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN Habitat), small and medium-sized towns are growing faster than large cities. These smaller towns often start as rural settlements.
Despite their rapid growth, many small towns lack infrastructure and planning capacity, leaving them vulnerable to environmental risks.
Ghana offers a telling example. While the spotlight is often on the rapid growth of the two major cities, Accra or Kumasi, dozens of smaller towns across the country are booming. At the same time, they are struggling with environmental problems such as decline in green spaces, flooding and pollution, usually associated with much larger cities.
Our research examined this issue, arguing that overlooking small towns has put them on an unsustainable path. In Ghana, small towns often “rest in the shadows” of bigger cities when it comes to resource distribution and development priorities. They receive less funding, fewer services, and scant regulatory oversight compared to major urban centres.
We conducted research in Somanya, Ghana. It lies in the eastern region, about 70km from Accra, the national capital. Our aim was to establish whether emerging sites of urbanisation like Somanya were developing in ways that made them sustainable, or replicating environmental problems seen in large cities.
To identify the drivers of environmental risks in the town, we used geographic information data and interviewed residents, institutional representatives and local assembly members.
We found that the urban growth of Somanya was linked with a decline in vegetation cover and loss of biodiversity. The main factors at play were: pollution from mining, political neglect, and lack of infrastructure facilities and services.
We concluded that current realities pointed towards unsustainable futures where environmental problems will become pronounced and the impacts on everyday life will be destructive. Based on our findings we recommend that Ghana’s national urban sustainable development policies and international development programmes must not fixate solely on big cities. Small towns require attention and investment commensurate with their growth.
Environmental risks in a rapidly growing small town
Somanya’s population grew from 88,000 people in 2010 to over 122,000 by 2021. The proportion of the municipality’s population living in urban areas jumped from 31% to 47% in that period.
Local leaders and officials we interviewed painted a worrying picture of a town rapidly growing without proactive environmental planning, grappling with multiple hazards at once.
Declining ecological resources: Rapid expansion has led to the loss of green spaces and forests around Somanya. Hillsides that used to be covered with vegetation have been cleared for large mango plantations or speculative estate development. This situation has made the area more prone to erosion and flash floods. One community elder observed:
The trees on the hills are almost all gone now. Without those natural buffers, flooding has become more frequent and severe, threatening homes built in low-lying areas.
Pollution and toxicity from industry: Somanya’s growth has attracted extractive industries, notably stone quarries and small-scale mining. These bring jobs, but also environmental hazards. Residents described clouds of dust hanging over communities near a quarry. There are also reports of chemical runoff polluting local streams and soil. Heavy dust and particulate pollution have become part of daily life, and people worry about the health effects. One resident said:
The dusty conditions are not only an infrastructure problem, but also an environmental risk for us, especially if you have underlying health conditions.
Strained and inadequate infrastructure: Basic environmental infrastructure in Somanya has not kept pace with its growth. The town’s drains and gutters are few and often clogged, so even moderate rainstorms result in street flooding. Proper sewage and waste treatment facilities are non-existent. Piles of uncollected refuse are commonly seen, sometimes burnt in the open, posing health risks. One community leader remarked that:
It is only when there’s a major flood or disaster outbreak that they pay us attention.
These infrastructure deficits mean that as the town grows, so do the environmental health risks – from water-borne diseases to flooding and pollution.
Governance lapses and political indifference: Underlying many of these problems is a sense of neglect and weak institutional capacity. Local authorities in Somanya operate with limited funding and fragmented responsibilities, and higher-level support from the central government is minimal. As an Assembly member put it:
We live in a constant state of perpetual waiting for the crumbs after big cities have taken their lion’s share of available funding. If you are not connected to the ruling party, it’s hard to get the support you need.
All these factors put small towns on a path to unsustainable futures.
Steering towards sustainable urban futures
Our research highlights the need to adopt a cross-sector, integrated approach to environmental planning at the local level. In practice, that means urban planners, environmental agencies, and community leaders all working together on development plans. For example, in Koa Hill settlement, Solomon Islands, a community-led development team with support from local groups and university experts led to the successful pilot of nature-inspired disaster risk reduction programmes.
Therefore, communities should be involved in co-designing solutions, from problem identification to experimenting strategies and evaluating outcomes. After all, residents know the local risks and resources best.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Iran’s immediate response – the firing of about 100 drones into Israel, many of which were shot down – appears an opening gambit; meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country’s airstrikes would continue “for as many days as it takes.”
The Conversation turned to Javed Ali, an expert on Middle East affairs at the University of Michigan and a former senior official at the National Security Council during the first Trump administration, to talk through why Israel chose now to strike and what the implications are for U.S. policy on Iran.
Why did Israel strike now?
There was a combination of factors that led up to this moment.
One of the more immediate reasons was that an International Atomic Energy Agency report found that Iran was making progress toward enriching uranium to a degree that, in theory at least, would allow Tehran to very quickly upgrade to a weapons-grade level. That is the thrust of what Netanyahu has said by way of reason for the attack now – that intelligence shows that Iran was getting closer to a possible breakout status for a nuclear weapon.
But there is a confluence of other factors that have built up over the last year and a half, ever since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas in Israel.
Iran’s proxy Axis of Resistance – that is, regional groups aligned with Iran and supported militarily by Tehran, including Hamas and Hezbollah – doesn’t present the same level of threat to Israel as it did in the pre-Oct. 7 landscape.
In the past, an Israeli attack of the sort we are seeing now would have invited a multidirectional response from all corners of the resistance – and we saw this in the early days after the Oct. 7 attack.
As of now, none of Iran’s resistance partners have done anything in response to the latest strike – and that is, in large part, due to the fact that Israel has successfully degraded these group’s capabilities through a series of campaigns and operations. The United States has also contributed to this effort to a degree with sustained operations against the Houthis in Yemen from March to May this year, including hundreds of airstrikes.
Further, Israel’s previous attacks on Iran in April and October 2024 managed to degrade Iran’s ballistic and surface-to-air missiles and air defense radar systems. This likely played into Israel’s calculations, too.
Lastly, Israel knows that it has a strong supporter in the White House with President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress. Washington may not be 100% aligned with Tel Aviv on every issue, but at the moment there is no criticism from the the White House or Republican members of Congress on Israel’s attacks.
There may have been some dialogue between Netanyahu and the Trump administration over the timing of the Israeli strike preceding yesterday’s attacks, during which Israel would have made the case that the time is right now to launch a very different type of campaign to really set back Iran’s nuclear program. In recorded remarks about Israel’s operations, Netanyahu stated he directed his national security team to begin planning for a large-scale campaign against Iran’s nuclear program last November.
Perhaps the White House did push back, saying that it wanted to see if any progress could be made in the talks. Certainly, it has been reported that Trump told Netanyahu in a phone call on June 10 that he believed a deal with Tehran could be negotiated.
Regardless, Netanyahu still went ahead with the strike.
Indeed some observers have posited that collapsing the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran may have been one of the intentions of Netanyahu, who has long opposed any deal with Tehran and has reportedly been irked by Trump’s reversal on the issue. During his first administration, Trump unilaterally pulled the U.S. out of a previous nuclear deal.
A newspaper shows the portraits of Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and White House special envoy Steve Witkoff, who were due to meet in Oman. Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images
What should we make of the US response to the strike?
The White House hasn’t criticized Israel in its response to the strike, merely stating that it wasn’t involved.
In my assessment, the White House appears to be sincere in the substance of what it is saying: that there was no overt and direct U.S. involvement with Israel during the actual strike. As for U.S. involvement in any planning or intelligence sharing ahead of the strike, we may never know.
But this is largely messaging for Iran: “We didn’t attack you. Israel attacked you.”
The U.S. is clearly worried that any response in Tehran may involve U.S. assets in the region. In the past, parts of Iran’s proxy network have hit American bases in Jordan and Iraq. Backing up this being a real concern in Washington is the fact that in advance of Israel’s strike, it already made moves to protect some of its assets in the region and remove personnel.
Has Iran said whether US targets will be included in its response?
On June 11, Iranian Defense Minister Aziz Nasrizadeh warned that if Israel were to attack, Tehran would respond against U.S. personnel and bases in the region – but that hasn’t happened yet.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and military officials must know that attacking U.S. targets would be very risky and would lead to a significant response that would likely be even more damaging than Israel’s latest attacks – including putting a potential deal over its nuclear program at risk. And the U.S. has the capability to hit Iran even harder than Israel, both militarily and through the extension of sanctions that have already been very punishing to the Iranian economy.
Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, points to a red line he drew on a graphic of a bomb while addressing the United Nations on Sept. 27, 2012. Mario Tama/Getty Images
Ultimately, it will be Khamenei who decides Iran’s response – and he remains firmly in control of Iran’s national security apparatus despite his advanced age. He knows he will have to walk a fine line to avoid drawing the U.S. into a military campaign.
So how might Iran respond in coming weeks?
Despite the challenges facing Iran at the moment, Iran will, I believe, have to respond in a way that goes beyond its previous attacks on Israel.
Reports of drone attacks against Israel on June 13 fit within the framework of the attack Iran launched against Israel in April 2024 that included a combined salvo of almost 300 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones over several hours. Despite the damage Israel has inflicted against Iran through its series of operations, Iran probably still possesses thousands or tens of thousands of these types of weapons that it can use against various targets in the region.
Iran could look at targets outside Israel, without necessarily hitting the U.S. directly – for example, by attacking maritime targets in the Persian Gulf and in effect closing the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. military planners have long been concerned about Iranian naval attacks using small boats for ramming or small arms attacks against shipping in the Persian Gulf.
Another option would be for Iran to increase its involvement in terrorism activities in the region. Tehran’s proxy groups may be diminished, but Iran still has its Quds Force, through which the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps conducts nonstate and unconventional warfare. Will the Quds Force look toward targeted assassinations, bombings, or kidnappings as part of Iran’s retaliatory options? It has employed such tactics in the past.
And beyond conventional weapons, Iran also has pretty significant cyber capabilities that it has used against Israel, the United States and Saudi Arabia, among others.
Where does this leave US-Iran talks?
It would appear Trump is still holding open the possibility of some kind of deal with Iran. In his statement following the Israel attack, he warned Tehran that if it didn’t come back to the table and cut a deal, the next Israeli attack would be “even more brutal.”
The attack could push Iran into reengaging in talks that were seemingly stalling in recent weeks. Certainly that seems to be the thrust of Trump’s messaging.
But the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists in the attack, and the apparent wounding of one of the negotiators, may convince Tehran to double down on a path toward a nuclear weapon as the only means of a deterrence against Israel, especially if it suspects U.S. involvement.
Javed Ali does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Democratic leaders and a lone Republican senator, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, quickly decried the treatment of U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla of California and called for an investigation after he was removed from a press conference with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on June 12, 2025, in Los Angeles, handcuffed and forced to the ground.
“Sir! Sir! Hands off!” Padilla, 52, shouted as several federal agents surrounded and moved him out of the room where Noem was speaking about the Los Angeles protests against immigration enforcement. “I am Senator Alex Padilla. I have a question for the secretary.”
Padilla, who unexpectedly appeared at the press conference and interrupted Noem as she was speaking during her prepared remarks, was released soon after and met with Noem. Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, shared a video of the incident with Padilla on X, and wrote, “Incredibly aggressive behavior from a sitting US Senator. No one knew who he was.”
Amy Lieberman, a politics and society editor at The Conversation, spoke with Boise State University political scientist Charlie Hunt, an expert on Congress, to understand how political polarization and a shift in American political decorum may have contributed to the shocking moment of an American senator being forcibly removed from a press conference.
What is striking to you about what happened to Sen. Padilla?
What stood out to me was the aggressiveness with which Noem’s security officers detained Sen. Padilla and took him out of the room. We do not ever see something like this happen to members of Congress and particularly members of the Senate. Sen. Padilla represents 39 million people – he is not some back-bencher member of the House of Representatives. I think it’s safe to say that no other modern presidential administration has come close to treating an individual member of Congress in this way.
This is also a real turn in terms of the completely autocratic way in which Department of Homeland Security staff responded to the incident. They claimed in a social media post that Padilla didn’t identify himself at the briefing, even though, “I’m Senator Alex Padilla” were the first words out of his mouth in the video that they themselves shared.
What safeguards, if any, do members of Congress have that might protect their ability to speak freely, and publicly oppose the executive branch?
Members of Congress enjoy the same basic free speech rights that all Americans do, but they do also have an additional set of protections that are relevant to this incident.
Members of Congress have significant oversight power, which involves doing due diligence on what actions the executive branch is taking and making sure they’re complying with laws that Congress has passed.
As a Senate member from California, it’s perfectly legitimate for Padilla to want clarity on immigration enforcement actions that are taking place in Los Angeles. Padilla even clarified after the incident that he was at the press conference to get answers from the Department of Homeland Security that he and other Senate members have been seeking for weeks about deportations.
This is completely in line with Congress’ oversight power. Senators often question officials in committee hearings like we typically see, but they also conduct fact-finding missions to learn how executive actions are affecting their constituents.
Congress members also have protections stemming from the Constitution’s speech and debate clause. Essentially, they cannot be arrested or indicted for things they say in their official capacity, which – because of Congress’ oversight responsibility – Padilla was clearly within the bounds of here.
Yes, of course, Padilla was also trying to draw attention to himself and the issues he’s focused on. But it’s not against the law to be a little bit disruptive or to engage in political theater, especially thanks to these additional protections members of Congress typically enjoy.
What other factors led to this moment?
Something I’ve written about previously is a phenomenon called negative partisanship. This means that voters and Congress members alike are driven not so much by loyalty to their own party but instead a sort of seething hatred for the other political party. What gets the most clicks and views, and what drives voters more and more, is the idea that “we don’t just want to see voting along the party line – we want to see our team beating the other side into submission.” This incident with Sen. Padilla was a very literal embodiment of this principle.
We have seen violence during Trump’s campaigns, where hecklers would be roughed up by participants at rallies, at Trump’s encouragement. Certainly, we saw it at the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, and Trump’s subsequent pardons of those rioters.
Does Padilla’s removal have anything to do with Donald Trump specifically?
We can’t ignore the singular role Trump has played here. This is a uniquely authoritarian presidency, even much more so than the first Trump administration. By authoritarian, I mean a leader who tries to rule on his own and suppress all dissent. Trump didn’t create partisanship, political violence or negative partisanship. But there’s no getting around the fact that his past behavior and openness to violence have lowered the bar for decorum in American politics.
For example, if you have convinced your supporters that the people on the other side of the political aisle are “sick” or “nasty,” that they are going to ruin the country, then those supporters will become more willing to accept some of the actions Trump has taken, such as calling in the Marines on protesters in Los Angeles, or pardoning the Capitol attackers – even if they wouldn’t have been willing to accept that kind of response 20 years ago.
All of these things combined – negative partisanship, plus having a leader on one side that is willing to lower the decorum bar beyond where we thought was possible – is a recipe for things unfolding like we saw with Padilla.
U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat from California, speaks to news reporters outside the Wilshire Federal Building after he was forcibly removed from a press conference on June 12, 2025. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images
What will you be watching for as this situation plays out?
My concern is the balance of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government. We expect competition between the branches, for “ambition to counteract ambition,” as James Madison put it, to ensure one branch doesn’t get too powerful. This incident was a huge step in the wrong direction.
As a result, authoritarian presidents and administrations see an opening to treat them this way without consequences. What Congress does in the next several days about this episode will speak volumes – or not – about whether it intends to ever reassert itself as an equal branch of government.
Democrats held the floor in the Senate all afternoon to demand answers about Padilla’s treatment. It will be revealing how Senate Majority Leader John Thune and others respond. Lisa Murkowski has said she’s pretty appalled by what happened. Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham seemed to imply that Padilla deserved what he got. Which route will Republicans, who control Congress, take?
Charlie Hunt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
What’s seven times nine? Quick, you’ve got six seconds to answer.
This June, over 600,000 children in England in year four, aged eight and nine, will be expected to answer questions like this. They will be sitting the multiplication tables check (MTC), a statutory assessment of their multiplication fact recall.
The MTC was introduced in 2022 with the aim of driving up standards in mathematics. It’s an online test that children take on a tablet or computer, made up of 25 questions with six seconds per question.
Being able to quickly recall multiplication facts is valuable. Not having to think about seven times nine, just knowing that it’s 63, frees up a child’s mental thinking space. This means they can focus on different aspects of the mathematics they are doing, such as completing multi-step problems or using reasoning to solve context-based problems.
Being able to quickly recall multiplication facts is also the foundation for more advanced mathematics topics that children will encounter at secondary school.
Our research shows that the MTC is an accurate reflection of children’s multiplication fact recall. But the learning they do for this test doesn’t necessarily help them apply this knowledge in other areas of mathematics. What’s more, focus on the MTC may be diverting teaching time away from other maths knowledge.
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Since the multiplication tables check was introduced in 2022, the average score in the test has increased year-on-year from 19.8 in 2022 to 20.6 in 2024. This suggests that schools are placing more emphasis on children’s multiplication fact recall – and on preparing them for this test.
Teaching union the NAHT (National Association of Head Teachers) has suggested that the test is unnecessary, and that it places too much emphasis on fact recall at a cost to other areas of mathematics. The union has also expressed concerns that it disadvantages some children for reasons such as digital accessibility.
Our research has investigated whether the MTC is a good way of testing children’s recall of multiplication facts. We have found that children perform just as well on a more traditional paper-and-pencil timed fact test as on a computer test equivalent to the MTC. However, having a time limit per question – which is only possible with a computerised test – is essential to assess recall, rather than fast calculation.
There was no evidence that any children were particularly disadvantaged by the computerised test. However, we did find that children’s attention skills and how quickly they could enter numbers into the tablet they were using did influence their scores.
This suggests that, for it to be a fair test, it is important that children are familiar with the technology they are using to complete the test. Given that there are stark differences in access to technology in schools, this may pose an issue for some children.
The purpose of introducing the MTC was to improve children’s broader mathematics attainment by improving their multiplication fact recall. But performance in the year six Sats tests, which assess a range of mathematical skills, shows little change.
Crucially, improving children’s multiplication fact recall through retrieval practice doesn’t equate to improving their ability to use the multiplication facts they know. If posed a question such as “Tara has seven books. Ravi has four times as many. How many books do they have altogether?” Children who can recall that 5 x 7 = 35 may still not be able to solve the problem.
Time pressure
What’s more, because the MTC is a timed test, teachers and parents may use similar time-pressured approaches to prepare children and help them improve their multiplication fact recall. But our research showed that while practice with a computerised game can support children’s fact recall, the benefits to learning are the same whether or not children are encouraged to answer as quickly as possible.
In research not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal, we found that children who were anxious about mathematics learnt less when practising with time pressure compared to children without mathematics anxiety. Without time pressure, anxiety levels were not related to the amount of learning. Doing some regular multiplication fact retrieval practice is more important than the type of practice, for all learners.
Even though the MTC is a timed assessment, it doesn’t mean that children only need to do timed practice to prepare for this. Some children may benefit more from less time pressure when practising.
Multiplication fact recall is just one element of mathematics and so having a good balance is important. Fact recall and testing should go hand in hand with other areas of mathematics learning such as understanding concepts, choosing strategies and solving applied problems.
Recalling multiplication facts doesn’t automatically help children to apply their knowledge. So, although working towards the multiplication tables check can support fact recall, children will need extra support in knowing how to use and apply these facts.
Camilla Gilmore receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.
Lucy Cragg receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.
Natasha Guy 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.
Thousands of British nationals are charged with drug smuggling abroad every year. The UK charity Prisoners Abroad reports a rise in the number of British people imprisoned abroad for drug offences in 2024-25, compared to the previous year, especially women under 34.
Two recent examples making headlines are Bella May Culley, an 18-year-old woman from County Durham, and Charlotte May Lee, a 21-year-old from south London. Culley was arrested in Georgia with 14 kilos of cannabis. Lee was arrested in Sri Lanka, with 46 kilos of synthetic cannabis (she has denied knowing it was in her bag and has yet to be charged).
If they are convicted, Culley and May face very long sentences. Reports suggest that Culley could receive up to 20 years or life imprisonment in Georgia. In Sri Lanka, May faces a sentence of up to 25 years.
And another three young Britons face the death penalty after being charged with smuggling nearly a kilo of cocaine into Indonesia. All of these cases are ongoing and the suspects have not been found guilty of any crime.
Why would people take the risk of such harsh punishments?
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For my book Drug Mules: Women in the International Cocaine Trade, I spent over a year visiting prisons in Ecuador to speak to people convicted of drug trafficking. I spoke to drug mules as well as people who recruited and managed them to understand how the business works. I spoke to people from the UK, Europe, the US, southeast Asia and Africa.
My research sheds light on how drug mules end up carrying such massive quantities, and why harsh punishments are an ineffective deterrent.
Who becomes a drug mule?
The abiding stereotype of the drug mule is someone who is motivated by poverty, often a woman from a drug-producing country. In fact, like most areas of crime, the majority of people arrested for smuggling drugs worldwide are men.
People’s motivations for trafficking drugs are extremely varied. In my research, I came across people motivated by grinding poverty, debts or a chance to make a change in their lives. The sums they were promised ranged from £5,000 to £10,000.
Some people didn’t expect to get paid at all, however. They became involved through debt (theirs or a family member’s), and carrying drugs was offered as a way to repay the debt. In rare cases, people became involved through threats and coercion.
There are, broadly, two kinds of people arrested at international borders with drugs. The first is carrying drugs that they have bought (and packed) themselves, and probably only a small quantity which they might use or sell for a modest profit. They probably also bought their own tickets to travel.
One trafficker I interviewed recalled that he carried only a few hundred grams of cocaine in a talc bottle. If caught, they can face custody, depending on the type and amount of drugs.
The second kind is carrying drugs that someone else has paid for – they are drug mules. The person paying for the drugs (we could call them the investor) decides what is smuggled, where to and how it will be concealed – not the mule.
Investors are, of course, motivated by profit: five kilos will be more profitable than just the one. And so, mules tend to carry much larger amounts than those carrying their own drugs.
Drug mules typically do not know what they are carrying, or how much. When people working as drug mules receive the drugs, they arrive ready to evade customs. In some cases, more professional groups might pay a specialist to conceal the drugs more effectively.
Traffickers have been known to evade detection by concealing cocaine in clear plastic products.
Understanding more about the role of drug mules sheds light on the harsh sentences that people accused of drug importation – like Culley and May – are facing. Possible sentences are very long, not only because Sri Lanka and Georgia have extremely tough drug laws, but also because of the large quantities of drugs involved.
When it comes to sentencing people for drug offences, the quantity of the drug (or, in some countries the monetary value) has long been taken as a proxy for harm. As I have argued in my research, this is a disproportionate and unfair punishment.
The key UN treaty on narcotic drugs requires countries to criminalise and punish activities relating to illegal drugs. The convention labels drug addiction as “evil”, paving the way for very harsh punishments for those who sell or transport drugs.
Drug trafficking can even be punished by death in some countries – over 600 people were executed globally in 2024. In many cases, people were executed even though they were in possession of relatively small quantities of an illegal drug – often less than 100g.
Each nation makes its own laws, but broadly speaking, more drugs means more punishment. This seems logical and proportionate, unless the person being charged with drug trafficking hasn’t made those decisions. And, as my research found, drug mules tend to be carrying larger quantities, paid for by investors or even groups of investors.
The job of the drug mule is characterised by exploitation rather than choice. If they don’t choose where they travel to, or what they are carrying, then deterrent sentences will simply fail to deter. They only serve to punish those who are most powerless and most exploited in the international drug trade.
Jennifer Fleetwood has previously receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.
The UK’s medicine regulator has issued a warning to those taking oral contraceptives.MillaF/ Shutterstock
Weight loss drugs, including Wegovy (semaglutide) and Mounjaro (tirzepatide), are becoming increasingly popular among those trying to lose weight. But a rise in so-called “Ozempic babies” has led the UK’s medicines regulator to issue guidance on their use by women of reproductive age.
Weight loss jabs (including both semaglutide and tirzepatide) act by mimicking the naturally occurring hormone GLP-1, which is released from the gut after we eat. One of the things this hormone helps to do is suppress appetite. Tirzepatide also acts on another naturally occurring hormone system called GIP, also known to suppress appetite.
The mechanism through which these drugs impact appetite is multifaceted. First, they inhibit regions of the brain associated with hunger. This suppresses the increase in appetite that occurs when people lose weight. GLP-1 drugs also slow how quickly food leaves the stomach.
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There’s currently very little published literature which has investigated the interactions between GLP-1 drugs and oral contraceptives. However, the effect these drugs have on stomach emptying appears to at least partly explain why the oral contraceptive pill may not work as well as expected.
One 2024 study demonstrated that tirzepatide reduced the amount of ethinylestradiol (a synthetic form of oestrogen, which is a component of the combined oral contraceptive pill) in the bloodstream by 20%. It also increased the amount of time it took the ethinylestradiol to be fully absorbed into the bloodstream by two to four hours.
This reduced absorbency hampers the drug’s ability to suppress the action of the reproductive system in women. This will affect its contraceptive effects. Notably, the effects of semaglutide on ethinylestradiol absorption were less pronounced.
The increased length of time it took the contraceptive to be fully absorbed is probably a consequence of reduced gastric emptying since ethinylestradiol is primarily absorbed in the small intestine. The reasons why these effects were more pronounced in tirzepatide compared with semaglutide remain unclear. However, one study showed that while both of these drugs affect gastric emptying to a similar degree, these effects are much longer lasting with tirzepatide.
Other possible factors
Two commonly observed side-effects of GLP-1 drugs include vomiting and diarrhoea – affecting 12% and 23% of patients taking tirzepatide respectively. Vomiting and diarrhoea have the potential to interfere with the absorption of all types of oral medications – including contraceptives.
This is because the drugs may be expelled from the body before they have an opportunity to be absorbed into the blood stream. People taking the contraceptive pill are advised to use a back-up contraceptive for this reason if they vomit or have diarrhoea to avoid unintended pregnancy.
Another factor that could explain the link between GLP-1 drug use and unintended pregnancy could be the effect that weight loss in general has on fertility.
Obesity has long been associated with reduced fertility. Obesity can also exacerbate other conditions which affect fertility – such as polycystic ovary syndrome, a hormonal disorder that affects how the ovaries work.
It is likely weight loss associated with taking GLP-1 drugs leads to an increase in fertility. This in turn could make women more likely to become pregnant – independent of whether they’re using oral contraceptives or not.
So far, it doesn’t appear that other forms of contraceptives are affected by GLP-1 weight loss drugs. Non-oral contraceptives, such as intrauterine devices (IUDs), transdermal patches and implants, are unlikely to be affected as their active ingredients are absorbed into the blood stream independently of the gastrointestinal tract. Likewise, physical barriers such as condoms and copper IUDs are also unaffected.
But women who use an oral contraceptive are advised to use an additional, non-oral form of contraception (such as condoms) for four weeks after starting semaglutide or tirzepatide. This is when side-effects are typically at their highest.
Because of a lack of evidence around the safety of these medications during pregnancy, women who do become pregnant while using a weight loss drug are advised to speak to their doctor to find alternative medications.
Simon Cork does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
I have been researching the possibility of living on Mars for several years. But it took an invitation to give a talk about space at HMP Erlestoke in England – a category C men’s prison – to make me realise that there are a surprising number of similarities between the challenges that would be faced by would-be Martians and daily life in jail.
The talk was part of a literary festival called “Penned Up”. As I discussed the parallels between Mars and prison with those incarcerated at HMP Erlestoke, the men agreed with me that, despite seeming so different, they both would share long-term isolation, confinement and psychological challenges (not to mention bad food).
So, as plans for exploration of Mars advance and we consider how to survive on this distant and hostile world, could there be important lessons from an environment closer to home – the modern prison? Understanding this overlap could be critical for ensuring the wellbeing of those we send to Mars. We know the terrible conditions of prisons can have a severe impact on people, and perhaps we can learn from that to help keep others safe and well.
It’s important to recognise the fundamental distinction between prisons and space exploration. Prisons are a punitive measure, depriving individuals of their freedom, while space exploration is a highly selective, paid endeavour undertaken by choice. As I saw, living in prison is a profoundly challenging environment. Despite legal minimum standards, overcrowding and shortages mean many prisons fail to uphold them.
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The profoundly negative impact of poor prison conditions highlights the urgent need for effective solutions. But the knowledge gained from this could also then help support people in other challenging and remote environments, such as space exploration.
We have many years’ experience of studying psychological and team challenges from isolated, confined and extreme environments such as submarines, polar research stations, space simulators on Earth and space stations. But few people have looked to the public prisons on our doorstep for what we can learn.
Extreme routine
Daily life in both a prison and in space is governed by structured routines. In prisons, days are often planned down to the minute, dictating everything from waking to sleeping. This rigid scheduling is mirrored by mission-controlled timetables for astronauts.
Mandatory work is another common thread. Prison routines often include assigned tasks, such as kitchen or laundry duty, which serve the needs of the facility. Similarly, Martian astronauts would need to perform scientific experiments, equipment maintenance and resource production duties. Mandatory work can sometimes lead to resentment if there’s little autonomy.
Basic food and limited sleep is another common factor. When I asked the inmates what the food was like, they laughed. A staff member explained that the budget is £3.08 per person (the government benchmark figure is even less at £2.70 per person per day). Prison food can be of low nutritional value and meal times are fixed, impacting both health and morale.
The author, Lucy Berthoud, giving a talk at HMP Erlestoke. Photo by Andy Aitchison., CC BY-SA
On Mars, astronauts would consume carefully planned dehydrated meals, which would no doubt have a higher budget and be nutritionally richer, but it is not as good as freshly cooked food back on Earth.
Sleep, a fundamental need, can also be elusive in both environments. In prisons, it can be disrupted by noise and poor conditions. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station are continuously exposed to an average noise level of 72 decibels, which is equivalent to the sound of motorway traffic from a distance of 15 metres.
Limited space
Prison cells are famously small, often measuring little more than a few square metres, and frequently housing several people. They offer minimal personal space and little privacy. The European standard – if it’s upheld – is a minimum of four square metres per person in a single cell.
Similarly, Martian habitats, designed to function with the minimum resources and with a focus on life support, will also be challenging space-wise.
For example, the Apollo Command and Service module which went to lunar orbit had a volume of just 6.2 cubic metres for three astronauts. This lack of personal space and privacy in both settings can lead to heightened stress levels and challenges to emotion regulation.
Both places also provide a potentially high-risk environment. The threats may be different – often interpersonal in prisons – from violence, sexual assault, and extortion to potential staff abuse-, mainly environmental – radiation, cold and lack of air on Mars. But they can lead to a persistent state of vigilance which can significantly impact mental well-being in both cases.
Dealing with isolation
Perhaps the biggest parallels lie in the psychological challenges arising from prolonged isolation. Imprisonment involves a significant separation from family, friends, and the outside world, leading to feelings of isolation and loneliness.
While astronauts on a mission to Mars are highly trained professionals and have chosen to go, they too will operate under a significant degree of control. With a likely round trip time of two years, astronauts embarking on a mission to Mars may also experience isolation. This could lead to feelings of disconnection and homesickness, as has been studied in volunteers on Earth.
Prisoners experience a near-complete lack of control over even the most basic aspects of their daily existence. You can see the importance of feelings of control in the fact that even astronauts and cosmonauts sometimes rail against or even disobey mission control’s strict guidelines, as the Nasa astronaut Clayton Anderson has written about in his candid book The Ordinary Spaceman.
Social dynamics
Both groups require living in close quarters with a limited, unchanging set of companions. In prison, people are confined to a relatively small social environment, which can lead to complex subcultures and the potential for interpersonal conflict and violence, though supportive relationships can also be a crucial resource.
Equally, for Martian crews, strong group cohesion and mutual support will be absolutely essential. However, the inherent stress of the mission, confined living conditions and significant communication delays with Earth could still lead to tensions.
So we see that lessons learned from studying the experiences of people in jails can provide valuable insights for mitigating the negative impacts of life on Mars.
Strategies such as designing habitats to maximise personal space and privacy, improving food and maximising autonomy will be needed for Martian travel. It will be important to provide access to meaningful activities to combat monotony, ensuring access to comprehensive mental health support and fostering strong social connections and support networks. These have all been studied in prisons.
By trying to improve prison conditions and continuing to learn from prisons, we can better prepare our pioneers for the unprecedented challenges of making a home on Mars, improving their chances of survival and their ability to thrive.
Lucy Berthoud receives funding from UK Space Agency and UKRI.
Chinese tourists at Everest’s northern base camp, Rongbuk in Tibet, photograph the world’s highest mountain.Carl Cater, CC BY-NC-ND
To the discerning eye, other mountains are visible – giants between 23,000 and 26,000 feet high. Not one of their slenderer heads even reaches their chief’s shoulder. Beside Everest they escape notice, such is the pre-eminence of the greatest. (George Mallory, 1922)
The climbing season on Mount Everest peaks in late May and early June every year. Extreme weather patterns at this location and altitude mean the main climbing season is remarkably short, perhaps only a few weeks between the winter freeze and monsoon storms.
Even within that time, the precise location of the jetstream that accelerates wind speeds at the summit creates pinchpoints of ideal climbing conditions, leading to images of long queues of mountaineers at particularly challenging points such as the Hillary Step – named after one of the two men who first climbed Everest on May 29 1953.
In the 30 years after Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay first stood at the summit, only 150 men and women matched their feat. But since then, the number of climbers has sky-rocketed. In 2019, a record 877 people summited the mountain, and in 2024 ascents were only just shy of this.
Rebecca Stephens, the first British woman to climb Everest in 1993, has described how the “global obsession with the world’s highest mountain is shaping its future and the future of the people who work on it”.
Stephens said her ascent in 1993, when there was only one commercial expedition on the mountain, felt like a watershed moment. Since then, commercial expeditions have mushroomed on Everest’s southern base camp on the Khumbu glacier (altitude: 5,364 metres), which now boasts a wide range of facilities including coffee shops and party tents.
The explosion of interest in climbing Everest has been aided by the fact that, despite its altitude and dangers, it is far from the most difficult high-altitude mountain. A member of the Tibet Mountaineering Association who had summited five times told me, on a good day, Everest was “very straightforward” – and that climbing Denali in Alaska (North America’s tallest peak) had been much more difficult.
By the end of 2024, there had been 12,884 ascents and 335 deaths on Everest, a survival rate of 97.4%. But the so-called “death zone” above 8,000 metres, combined with avalanches, extreme weather and frostbite, will always present significant hazards to the people who visit these slopes.
This climbing season, a Scottish former marine described quitting his attempt 800 metres below the summit after encountering two dead climbers. Meanwhile, four other ex-British special forces soldiers including UK government minister Alastair Carns used xenon gas and hypoxia training to travel to Everest and summit in under a week – leading to concerns that this could further increase the number of people attempting to scale the increasingly crowded mountain.
But while images of high-altitude queues and stories of occasional fatalities hog the headlines, most visitors to Everest do not attempt to climb it. And by far the majority of these tourists are on the “other side of Everest”, in China-administered Tibet.
Unlike a century ago, Everest is now easily accessed by tarmacked roads. (To compare the images, move the white bar right and left.) Sandy Irvine/Royal Geographical Society (1924)/Carl Cater (2024)
China’s “economic miracle”, combined with its desire to develop peripheral regions, has meant that Qomolangma (the Tibetan name for Everest) is now easily accessible, with tarmacked roads all the way to the northern base camp at Rongbuk (altitude: 5,150 metres).
From having lower numbers of visitors than the Nepalese side 20 years ago, the Tibetan side of Everest now welcomes more than half a million tourists a year – the vast majority from mainland China. Short Chinese holidays mean most of these visits are whistlestop trips that also take in the nearby high-altitude cities of Lhasa and Shigatse. Because of the lack of altitude acclimatisation time, many tourists carry oxygen bottles or wear oxygen backpacks during their visits.
The date of our visit was significant, being a century since the disappearance of early Everest adventurers George Mallory and Sandy Irvine on June 8 1924. We set out to examine both the human and environmental changes that have occurred over the intervening hundred years – using century-old journals and photographs as a baseline.
As geographers rather than high-altitude mountaineers, our aim was to retrace some of the reconnaissance routes used by the British in the 1920s – a time when Nepal was closed to foreign visitors. Between 1921 and 1924, three expeditions organised by the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club visited Tibet with the aim of being the first recorded people to climb Mount Everest. None, as far as we know, reached the top – and the remains of the two leaders of the final expedition, Mallory and Irvine, were only discovered on Everest many years later.
While the vistas are equally spectacular today, climate change has had a significant impact on glaciers throughout the region. Recent scientific estimates suggest that there has been between a 26% and 28% reduction in the glaciers surrounding Everest between the 1970s and 2010.
In 1921, the leader of the first expedition, Charles Howard-Bury, camped just below the Langma pass – the highest but most direct easterly route to Everest – and photographed “a peak of black rock with a glacier just below it”. It is apparent from this “slider” comparison, using a photograph I took from the same spot, how much this hanging glacier has retreated over the past century.
This glacier to the south of the Langma pass has retreated significantly. Charles Howard-Bury/Royal Geographical Society (1921)/Carl Cater (2024)
The human impact on Everest
Everest’s permanent northern base camp at Rongbuk in Tibet now welcomes up to 3,000 visitors a day in high season. Tourists are initially disgorged into a regimented tented village – modern versions of Tibetan yak herder accommodation.
Some of these jet-black tents, made from thick yak hair which breathes when dry and is waterproof when wet, provide simple (but heated and oxygenated) accommodation for the hardier tourists who want to be at the mountain early for the best photo opportunities.
Wandering up the astroturf lining the central boulevard, we meet a range of souvenir sellers before reaching the “world’s highest post office” and a circular plaza commemorating the various scientific and political achievements of the region. The near-landscape is largely brown: when he was here, Mallory described the contrast between the rain-shadowed “monotonously dreary, stony wastes” of Rongbuk with the beauty of the snowy mountains looming above.
Today, a boardwalk takes tourists marginally further to Rongbuk monastery – founded in 1902 and rebuilt after being damaged during the Chinese Cultural Revolution – and a final viewpoint of the north face of Everest. A yellow sandstone band is clearly visible just below the summit – evidence that this mighty mountain was once at the bottom of the ocean.
An astroturf walkway in the tourist village at Everest’s northern base camp, Rongbuk in Tibet. Carl Cater, CC BY-NC-ND
The mood on our trip was a sharp contrast to my visit in November 2007, when our Tibetan guide had been keen to evade any security checkpoints (albeit to maximise his personal profit, rather than any ethical standpoint). With only a few thousand annual, mostly international, visitors, the facilities back then were very limited, beyond a warning to tourists to proceed no further or face significant fines – and a shiny new sign proclaiming mobile phone coverage.
However, we were able to walk to the snout of the Rongbuk glacier, a jumble of shattered sandstone rocks at the terminal moraine. Today, tourists cannot go far beyond the monastery and are corralled on new boardwalks.
Tourism has brought rapid economic change to this region of the Tibetan plateau – including diversifying from traditional livelihoods. Central government efforts to reduce overgrazing in the fragile ecosystem have led to a system of payments to traditional herders – and a drop in livestock numbers from a peak of nearly 1 million in 2008 to below 700,000 today.
In contrast, the permanent human population of the Qomolangma National Nature Preserve (the protected area that includes the Tibetan side of Everest) has more than doubled since the 1950s to more than 120,000 people, with especially accelerated growth over the last decade coinciding with the rise in tourism. The Pang La pass which crosses into the Rongbuk valley, described as “desolate” by English mountaineer Alan Hinkes in the 1980s, is now festooned with souvenir shops and mobile coffee baristas.
Concern about the environmental impacts of these tourists led to the introduction of a fleet of electric buses in 2019, with visitors instructed to park their vehicles in the small town of Tashi Dzom before taking a 30-minute electric bus ride to the northern Everest base camp.
Tourists are brought up the mountain to Rongbuk in electric buses. Carl Cater, CC BY-NC-ND
Now there are plans to move the bus transfer station to a gleaming new park centre closer to the main highway, to save tourists having to drive the numerous switchbacks over the Pang La pass to Tashi Dzom, then negotiate traffic jams and parking challenges nearer the peak.
This is partly to cope with another western import to China: the concept of the “road trip”. For Chinese car enthusiasts, the 5,000-kilometre Route 318 from Shanghai to the foot of Everest is now one of their most popular long-distance drives.
‘The most beautiful valley in the world’
We visited the east and north faces of Everest in Tibet armed with photographs and accounts from those three early British expeditions more than a century ago – the first recorded attempts to climb the world’s highest mountain.
The first (1921) expedition led by Howard-Bury, an army lieutenant-colonel, botanist and future Conservative MP, was a detailed scientific and topographical survey of the area. In their attempts to find a route to the summit, approaches via the northern (Rongbuk) and eastern (Kama) valleys were reconnoitred.
Views of Kharta, location of the 1921 expedition’s second base camp. Charles Howard-Bury/Royal Geographical Society (1921)/Carl Cater (2024)
Although less visited than the Khumbu base camp in Nepal or the Rongbuk base camp in Tibet, the eastern approach to Everest via the Kama valley is a wonderful trek with unobstructed views of the immense eastern face of Everest. Howard-Bury described the allure of the valley which remains today:
We had not been able to gather much information locally about Mount Everest. A few of the shepherds said that they had heard that there was a great mountain in the next valley to the south … They called this the Kama valley, and little did we realise at the time that in it, we were going to find one of the most beautiful valleys in the world.
The valley is accessed from the settlement of Kharta, a small-but-booming town on the banks of the Bong Chu-Arun river. Just below Kharta, the river enters a steep gorge, dropping from nearly 4,000m to 2,000m as it enters Nepal. Today, the Kama valley route is becoming popular with Chinese trekkers, although there are very limited facilities to deal with their impact on the area – notably, the human and plastic waste.
The 1921 expedition selected Kharta as the location of its second base camp after several months of exploration at Rongbuk. All were relieved to find such an amenable climate and greenery after the dry and cold of the Tibetan plateau. With the help of the dzongpen (village head) and a local fixer, they rented a farmhouse where many of the photos from the expedition were later developed. Located in a grove of poplar and willow with small streams trickling along its boundary, we also visited this farmhouse – now owned by a Tibetan farmer who cheerily showed us around and introduced the three generations of his family.
Three generations of the Tibetan family who now own the farm used by the 1921 British expedition. Carl Cater, CC BY-NC-ND
The British expeditions’ investigations of the Kama valley are of particular interest as this valley sits on the climatic boundary between drier and wetter areas to the north and south of the Himalayan range. Howard-Bury described thick mists coming up the Kama valley each evening, providing significant moisture to the region:
As usual, in the evening, the clouds came up and enveloped us in a thick mist … When we started the following morning, there was still a thick Scotch mist which made the vegetation very wet … On the opposite side of the valley were immense black cliffs descending sheer for many thousand feet.
Still evident today, this precipitation, combined with great variations in altitude and temperature, supports a profusion of plants – as well as animal life that our predecessors described as “extraordinarily tame”. Now as then, in summer, the hillsides are covered with the yellow, white and pink flowers of rhododendrons and azealas, and huge juniper trees grow in the lower valley. Howard-Bury described spending “the whole afternoon lying among the rhododendrons at 15,000 feet – admiring the beautiful glimpses of these mighty peaks revealed by occasional breaks among the fleecy clouds”.
Adorned with prayer flags, the high passes are still used by local people as portals to the sacred Kama valley. In 1921, when he crossed the Langma pass to enter this “sanctuary”, Mallory wrote that the grumblings of his previously stubborn porters had suddenly transformed into “great friendliness” and “splendid marching” – such that they were “undepressed with the gloomy circumstance of again encamping in the rain”. Descending into the Kama valley, Howard-Bury effused:
To the west, our gaze encountered a most wonderful amphitheatre of peaks and glaciers. Three great glaciers almost met in the deep green valley that lay at our feet. One of these glaciers evidently came down from Mount Everest.
While the topography here remains largely unchanged, the very significant reduction in the volume of the central glacier is evident in these comparison images:
The spectacular Kama valley photographed from below the Langma pass. Mount Everest is the distant right peak. Charles Howard-Bury/Royal Geographical Society (1921)/Carl Cater (2024)
In 1921, the expedition wrote that the outflow from the Kangshung glacier (which descends from Everest) had to “hurl itself into a great ice cavern” in order to flow under the Kandoshang glacier (from Makalu, the world’s fifth-highest peak) and become the Kama river. Today, as a result of glacial retreat, that ice cavern is no longer present and the main stream from the Kangshung glacier flows unimpeded along the snout of the Kangdoshang glacier.
Further up the valley, the 1921 expedition established another base camp in the high meadows towards the head of the valley at Pethang Ringmo, which, as well as a final camp stop for trekking groups today, remains an important grazing area for migratory yak herders. These herders were important sources of information for the early explorers, but today there is some evidence of overgrazing. Howard-Bury commented:
We found ourselves among pleasant grassy meadows – it was a most delightfully sunny spot at 16,400 feet, right under the gigantic and marvellously beautiful cliffs of Chomolönzo – now all powdered over with the fresh snow of the night before and only separated from us by the Kangshung glacier, here about a mile wide. Great avalanches thunder down its sides all day long with a terrifying sound.
A century later, avalanches continue to show us this is a dynamic landscape in a state of constant flux. Often, we would glimpse the rapid tumbling of ice and snow in a long white cloud, rushing down the steep couloirs seconds before the terrifying sound reaches you – reminding us of one of the major threats to climbers.
The ‘gigantic’ cliffs of Mount Chomolönzo viewed from Pethang Ringmo. Charles Howard-Bury/Royal Geographical Society (1921)/Carl Cater (2024)
At the head of the Kama valley, the Kangshung face of Everest is perhaps the most impressive of all the sides of the mountain, towering some two miles above the glacier below. Both the north-east (Tibetan) and south-east (Nepalese) ridges – the most popular routes to the summit – are clearly visible from here. The Kangshung face itself was not climbed successfully until an assault by an American team in 1983, and the first British ascent of Everest without oxygen by Stephen Venables in 1988.
While initially, the mountains and peaks look remarkably similar to the 1920s, the drop in the level of the glacier quickly becomes apparent. The ordered glacial flow has been replaced by rocky detritus and numerous perched lakes, leaving a lunar-like landscape.
During his first visit, and despite having spent much of his life in the mountains of Europe, Mallory wrote that he was in awe of the vista here:
Perhaps the astonishing charm and beauty here lie in the complications half-hidden behind a mask of apparent simplicity, so that one’s eye never tires of following up the lines of the great arêtes, of following down the arms pushed out from their great shoulders, and of following along the broken edge of the hanging glacier covering the upper half of this eastern face of Everest.
This view of the south-east ridge of Mount Everest shows the retreating Kangshung glacier. George Mallory/Royal Geographical Society (1921)/Carl Cater (2024)
While Everest was the prize sought by all the expeditions, the sight of the Makalu massif, dominating the Kama valley to the south, appears to have had a greater impact on both the climbers. Howard-Bury claimed it was by “far the more beautiful mountain of the two”, while Mallory “saw a scene of magnificence and splendour even more remarkable than the facts suggest”. He wrote:
Among all the mountains I have seen, and, if we may judge by photographs, all that ever have been seen, Makalu is incomparable for its spectacular and rugged grandeur. It was significant to us that the astonishing precipices rising above us on the far side of the glacier as we looked across from our camp – a terrific awe-inspiring sweep of snow-bound rocks – were the sides not so much of an individual mountain, but rather of a gigantic bastion or outwork defending Makalu.
In fact, according to Howard-Bury, “the shepherds would insist that Makalu was the higher of the two mountains, and would not believe us when we said that Mount Everest was the higher”.
The future of the Everest region
This historical comparison of hundred-year-old images and quotes represents both the enduring mountains but also the rapid changes that the Himalayas now face. Forces of tourism on one hand and climate change on the other are posing huge challenges for these marginal environments.
Our research shows that tourist and climbing activity is having significant impacts on the region. The causes are both directly at the mountain but also at home, particularly in the damage that all of our consumptive lifestyles are having on Himalayan glaciers.
Of course, these activities have also brought much-needed development opportunities to local populations, and the residents of both the Nepalese and Tibetan sides are generally much better off than populations in less-visited areas of their respective countries.
The expected redesignation of the Qomolangma National Nature Preserve as a national park in the current Chinese central government plan may bring opportunities for further management locally as the crowds continue to grow. However, we also identified a shortfall in protecting the significant cultural heritage and longstanding spiritual relationship to the mountain, which is often eclipsed by its physical size.
Perhaps a more balanced relationship to the mountain and its people is required, one that reevaluates our rather unhealthy obsession with just one peak. Reading the accounts from the 1920s, one is aware that there was a deep reverence for the region – not only from local people but also from its British visitors.
Journeys through Tibet’s Kama valley to Mount Everest more than a century apart. Video: Carl Cater and Linsheng Zhong.
In the intervening years, summit bids on the Tibetan side have historically been much lower than in Nepal. Closed to outsiders for much of the latter half of the last century, Tibetan ascents briefly became more popular in the 1990s and 2000s, with a few well-organised commercial operators. But closures in 2008 during Olympic preparations, and again during the COVID pandemic from 2020 to 2023, once again meant a much-reduced number of attempts.
Combined with less reliance on foreign exchange, China has been able to exert much more control on the climbing industry, and in 2024 did not charge a permit fee at all, preferring to ensure climbers were appropriately experienced. There may be merit in this approach, as no one was killed on the Tibetan side in 2024, as opposed to the eight climbers who perished on the southern side.
But on both sides of the mountain, it is highly unlikely that our global obsession with Everest will wane. As longtime chronicler Alan Arnette notes, the mountain has an “immutable attraction that is oddly perverse”. So, it is important we continue to monitor the changes in this dynamic landscape wrought by both its visitors and climate change.
To counter the rising commercialisation of both mountaineering and mountain tourism requires, above all, greater respect for our mountains and the people who reside on them. According to Lakhpa Puti Sherpa, president of the Nepal Mountain Academy, notes:
The Himalayan mountains are holy spots – and we, the Sherpas, worship them. Before climbing any mountain we worship it, begging apologies on having to step on it on the top, and asking to absolve the sin we are going to incur from this particular violence.
Watch more image comparisons of the Everest expeditions here. All historical photographs are published courtesy of the Royal Geographical Society. Slider comparisons built using Juxtapose.
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Carl Cater received funding from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ President’s International Fellowship Initiative. With thanks to Linsheng Zhong, Professor of Human and Tourism Geography at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Yuxiang Lin, Doctoral Researcher, Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies, University of Birmingham
The EU has given the green light for Bulgaria to join the euro from January 1 2026. This huge step towards European integration comes just six months after Bulgaria became a full member of Schengen area, within which people can move freely across borders.
However, while rapprochement moves apace at the top level, euroscepticism shows little sign of abating at the grassroots level in Bulgaria, or in national party politics.
Protests calling for Bulgaria to stick with its national currency have sprung up in both capital city Sofia and in several towns around the country. A May poll showed that 38% of Bulgarians were against the euro and only 21% agreed that the switch should go ahead in January.
Others wanted to wait a few years. In a similar poll in January, 40% of respondents said they never wanted Bulgaria to join the euro.
Anti-euro protests tend to be associated with the Bulgarian nationalist political parties. The most influential of these, Vazrazhdane, has become increasingly popular and won 13.63% in the most recent parliamentary elections in October 2024. It had won just 2.45% in elections held in April 2021.
Bulgaria joined the European Union in 2007. When, in December 2021, I interviewed a former spokesman for the political party NDSV (National Movement Simeon II), which was in government from 2001 to 2009, they said Bulgarians had very high expectations ahead of becoming part of the bloc.
They had thought it would take just a few years for Bulgaria to be as economically developed as Switzerland, and that their standard of life would soar. The dream was that Bulgaria to become the so-called “Switzerland of the Balkans”, as both countries have similar population size and a similar touristic appeal.
The EU has channelled €16.3 billion into Bulgaria since the country joined EU, particularly for infrastructure development. However, a year of fieldwork has shown me that Sofia has been the main benefactor of this investment.
Small municipalities and rural communities have not felt the benefit as clearly. Among the €16.3 billion, Sofia received €3.1 billion and Plovdiv received €0.8 billion.
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Whereas Sofia gets new metro lines during recent years, citizens in some municipalities still struggle with basic public services for survival. Nearly 15% of the country’s population struggles with regular quality water supply.
The imagined “European” standard of life has not yet reached small municipalities and rural areas. Europe still feels far away.
Becoming part of the EU has given opportunities to Bulgarian citizens to work and live abroad in European countries. Official figures show 861,054 Bulgarian citizens lived in other EU countries in 2022. Recently a total of 74% of young people in Bulgaria are considering more or less seriously the idea of emigrating abroad.
However, the trend of young people working abroad in Europe has caused brain drain and has partially contributed to the decreasing population of Bulgaria, which fell from 7.68 million before it joined the EU in 2006 to 6.44 million in 2024.
According to a research analyst at a Sofia-based non-governmental organisation who I interviewed recently, many Bulgarian parents hope that their children working abroad in Europe will return to work in Bulgaria, because jobs for migrants abroad tend not be for high-skilled workers.
Accession to the eurozone is more likely to benefit Sofia-based people who do business abroad rather than older people living local lives in small municipalities or rural areas. Younger and working people have already been shown to be the ones who benefited most from European integration in Bulgaria and Romania in the first place.
That said, support for EU membership has been rising recently.
Holding a coalition together
Despite euroscepticism, European integration is one of the few issues that unites Bulgaria’s fragile coalition government – although not all political parties agree with joining the eurozone.
Bulgaria held seven parliamentary elections between April 2021 and October 2024. It therefore has been a surprise that amid the political turmoil, the coalition government that was formed in October 2024 has survived. A very important motivational source here is unity on the question of Europe.
But with mixed results so far and with meaningful levels of opposition the joining the euro, Bulgaria’s government will have to be careful about the potential for eurosceptic movements to grow as they have in several other EU nations.
Yuxiang Lin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By John Kiely, Department of Physical Education & Sport Sciences, University of Limerick
If you’ve sustained an injury while exercising, giving up alcohol while you recover could be key.Andrey_Popov/ Shutterstock
Rest, rehab and patience are cornerstones of injury recovery. But should quitting alcohol be a part of any recovery plan? This is what England cricket captain Ben Stokes has done – saying he’s given up alcohol in a bid to quickly recover from a serious hamstring injury.
While this may seem extreme, emerging research shows that even small amounts of alcohol can interrupt recovery and delay healing in five key ways:
1. Disrupting immune function
Alcohol disrupts immune cells’ ability to reach and repair injured tissues – slowing the regeneration of healthy muscle, tendons and ligaments. This delays the clean-up of damaged cells and also prolongs swelling and sensitivity, which further delays the process of repair.
The effect of heavy drinking (more than four or five drinks at one time) on the immune system can leave your body vulnerable to infection and delay repair for between three to five days afterwards. Even moderate drinking (one to three drinks at one time) stalls tissue regeneration and prolongs swelling and tenderness in the injured area.
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2. Interfering with muscle rebuilding
Muscle protein synthesis – the process of repairing and rebuilding muscle – is reduced for 24 to 48 hours after even moderate alcohol consumption. In one study, muscle protein synthesis was shown to be reduced by 24-37% after drinking.
When this process is impaired, muscle regeneration slows. This results in persisting weakness, soreness and greater susceptibility to re-injury.
3. Delaying bone and tissue healing
When bones, ligaments, tendons and muscles are damaged, signals from these injured tissues trigger natural repair processes. But alcohol disrupts these signalling pathways and interferes with the body’s natural repair mechanisms, delaying healing and increasing swelling and scarring of the injured tissues.
Heavy drinking can prolong healing from a bone fracture by one to two weeks, and extend recovery from sprains and strains by two to three weeks.
4. Disrupting hormonal balance
Hormones are chemical messengers that coordinate many of the body’s recovery processes – including tissue repair, inflammation and muscle growth. Two especially helpful healing hormones are testosterone and growth hormone. Both help rebuild muscle and other connective tissues after injury.
Alcohol lowers circulating levels of these hormones and blunts the body’s ability to regenerate damaged tissues.
At the same time, alcohol raises cortisol levels. Cortisol is the body’s primary stress hormone. Elevated cortisol levels convince the brain that there’s an immediate threat. The brain subsequently seeks to mobilise available energy in preparation for a “fight” or “flight” response.
Clear communication between the brain and body is essential for smooth, precise and coordinated movement. But alcohol interferes with this communication.
As a result, coordination, balance and reaction times all plummet. The subtle movement impairments caused by even moderate drinking can linger for a couple of days afterwards. These increase the risk of movement errors and re-injury to the already vulnerable tissues.
Alcohol and injury recovery
Current research illustrates that there’s no safe threshold of alcohol consumption during rehabilitation. Even low-to-moderate drinking impairs athletic performance and injury recovery for a couple of days, depending on the dose, the person and the aspect of recovery being measured.
Binge drinking (periods of abstinence followed by consuming four or five drinks in one session) causes substantial short-term damage. Low-to-moderate drinking causes subtler disruptions, but these disruptions typically happen more frequently.
Stokes’ decision to abstain from alcohol is not an overreaction – it’s a clear-headed, evidence-led commitment to optimal recovery. As new evidence reshapes our understanding of alcohol’s multiple impacts, the message is simple: rehabilitation doesn’t happen in the pub. Whether you’re a professional athlete, a recreational runner or an enthusiastic “weekend warrior”, every drink counts.
When returning from an injury, the less you drink, the better your chances of a complete recovery. If a rapid and complete recovery is your goal, then less is better, and none is best.
Deciding to drink alcohol during rehabilitation is a personal choice. But if healing is the priority, one of the simplest, most controllable ways to skew the odds in your favour is to follow Stokes’ lead and skip that drink.
John Kiely 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.
Pterosaurs were an amazing group of flying reptiles that occupied the skies around the same time that dinosaurs roamed on land. Appearing in the fossil record around 230 million years ago, pterosaurs survived until 66 million years ago, when an asteroid impact helped wipe them, and many other life forms, out.
The pterosaurs are often the animals in the background, while the dinosaurs occupy the foreground. However, they are worthy of much more recognition than they are commonly given, not just as interesting ancient animals, but because they could also inspire aircraft designs.
Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to evolve powered flight. They were in the air 80 million years before birds and around 180 million years before bats. However, their flight apparatus was rather different to either. The wings of bats are supported by multiple digits (like our fingers). Birds use feathers as structural units in the wings.
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But pterosaurs primarily had one finger to support their wings. Their main wing was composed of a single giant “spar” – a structural unit – made of up of the bones of the arm and the greatly elongated fourth finger, with a membrane that stretched from the tip of the finger down to the ankle. This membrane acted as a flight surface.
As a group, pterosaurs were diverse – some were specialist fishers, filter feeders, terrestrial predators, insect hunters, seed crackers, and more. Some could climb well and many species were highly mobile on the ground.
They also got very large. The biggest pterosaurs had wingspans of over 10m and could weigh over 250kg. Even the smallest pterosaurs could fly: juveniles with 10cm wingspans were probably capable of flight within days or even hours of hatching.
The bones of pterosaurs, like those of birds and many dinosaurs, were filled by extensions of the lungs called air-sacs, and they were extremely thin walled. This made the skeletons of the animals very stiff for their weight (rather important when flying). It also made their skeletons very fragile after death, and so pterosaur fossils are rare.
However, in a handful of sites around the world – most notably in Germany, Brazil and China – where the preservation of fossils is exceptionally good, we have huge numbers of pterosaur fossils with both complete skeletons and a lot of soft tissue. This gives us an incredible insight into the shape and structure of their wings and how they flew.
In addition to the main wing surface, pterosaurs had two other smaller subsidiary surfaces that would have given them extra control. At the front of the main wing sitting in the crux of the elbow was a small membrane between the wrist and the base of the neck, supported by a unique long wrist bone called the pteroid.
At the back of the body, earlier pterosaurs had a single large sheet of membrane between the legs, supported in the middle by a long tail and on each side by long fifth toes on the feet. Later pterosaurs split this rear membrane and had only a small piece of membrane running from the ankle on each leg to the base of a short tail.
As well as the outer skin-like layers, the wings had at least three major layers, comprising blood vessels, a layer of muscles, and a layer of stiffening fibres. Some might well have had extensions of the airsacs in the main wing membranes too, which could presumably be inflated and deflated to a degree. The wing as a whole was therefore extremely elastic and flexible.
Artist’s impression of pterosaurs in flight. Natalie Jagielska
This would have given pterosaurs extraordinary control over their wings. All of this makes them an intriguing model for future aircraft design.
Flight challenge
Aircraft wings are not (and cannot) be perfectly stiff. Adding flexibility, or better still, actual shape changing potential, could give them substantial performance benefits. But stiffness and flexibility need to be balanced. Problems with aeroelasticity – the tendency of a soft wing to vibrate in ways that greatly reduce performance (or even cause flight to fail outright) – limit how pliable the wings can be.
Pterosaurs had multiple mechanisms to address this challenge, from passive mechanisms, such as fibres within the wing, to active mechanisms, such as the muscles that ran throughout the wing and could tighten on demand. This wing tensioning anatomy is*is?* among the most sophisticated aeroelastic control systems known to science.
The key to applying our knowledge of pterosaurs to future aircraft design comes not in closely mimicking the exact shape and form of pterosaurs, but instead, in understanding and extracting core principles from their anatomy.
The membranous wings of pterosaurs were great at changing shape. The leading
edge could lie flat or depress to a sharp angle, thanks to the small anterior membrane. The main wing surface could change its curvature, or camber. There is even evidence that the wing could manage what is called reflex camber – a shape in which the trailing edge of the wing curves upwards.
Even the stiff portion of the wing (the spar) made of bone and surrounding muscles, was mobile – through motions of the shoulder, elbow, and wrist and flexibility within the bone itself near the wingtip. This soft, shape changing structure gave pterosaurs exceptional control over their moment-to-moment wing performance, optimising for lower speed or higher speed within fractions of a wingbeat. This would have made them particularly adept at slow speed flight – good for tight turns and precise, soft landings.
Greater manoeuvrability and pinpoint landings are a premium for autonomous vehicles working in busy environments – such as cities or natural disaster zones full of debris. So future survey and rescue drones could take lessons from pterosaur wing control systems.
The jointed, flexible wing anatomy of pterosaurs also meant that the wings could fold tightly, and unlike the wings of birds, the folded wings of pterosaurs doubled as powerful walking limbs. Because the hands contacted the ground while walking, the forelimbs were available to help push the animals into the air during take-off leaps. Mathematical models predict half-second launch times, from a standing start, in even the largest pterosaurs.
The exceptional mechanical loads associated with these launches were handled
by one of the highest stiffness-to-weight skeletons to ever evolve. This folded-wing, rapid-launch system has great potential for applications to future technologies.
So much so, in fact, that a prototype folding wing system modelled on pterosaurs has already undergone some testing (through a Nasa-funded university project on which one of the authors, Michael Habib, consulted). A folding, flapping wing that doubles as a launch system could allow future drones to take off with limited space – perhaps while on ships at sea. It could also be used to allow small flying drones to land and launch again out of craters on Mars.
The red planet has just enough atmosphere to make flapping wing and rotor wing systems work. But it’s energetically costly and hovering is tough – better to land, measure and launch again. Similarly, rapid take offs from uneven terrain, precise landings, tight turns, and on demand tweaks to improve performance are all features that could be applied to the drones of the future, in wingsuits, and more.
As the control systems for drones become increasingly driven by intelligent software, we will need a new generation of hardware to match. Pterosaurs may hold the keys to unlocking a future of highly manoeuvrable autonomous aerial vehicles that are competent in harsh conditions and urban environments. These would be ideal for search and rescue or surveys in locations that are too dangerous for humans.
So despite having been extinct for 66 million years, the pterosaurs have huge potential as the inspiration for aircraft design. Sometimes looking back can be the best way to look forward.
Michael Habib has worked on a prototype folding wing system based on pterosaur flight through a Nasa-funded university project.
David Hone and Liz Martin do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
But aside from these issues the tournament, which features 32 clubs from around the world, provides fresh evidence of a new model emerging in global sport.
This event, which is being staged in 12 different cities across the US, is the latest experiment in “polycentric” hosting, where multiple locations collaborate as destinations for international sporting events.
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The next men’s Fifa World Cup in 2026 will take place across the US, Canada and Mexico. Four years later, the event will be spread across different continents, starting in South America, before moving to Europe and Africa. In between, the men’s Euros of 2028 will be co-hosted by the UK and Ireland.
The trend is not limited to football. The 2026 Winter Olympics is being shared in Italy between Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo. The Commonwealth Games are also moving towards a more pragmatic model of hosting.
Our research, which focused on the men’s Euro 2020 tournament (delayed by COVID and held in 2021), suggests that polycentric hosting has many advantages.
Spanning 11 European countries, Euro 2020 was conceived as a celebration of the tournament’s 60th anniversary.
From a branding perspective, this posed significant challenges. Each city had its own visual identity, with localised fan engagement strategies.
Without a singular geographic or cultural anchor, Uefa, the governing body of European football, had to balance the benefits of celebrating local diversity with the need for a coherent overarching narrative.
Instead of one city or nation shouldering the financial and logistical burden of building infrastructure, accommodating visitors, and managing security and transport, responsibilities were shared.
A team effort
This can significantly reduce the risk of the problem of “white elephants” where expensive stadiums or facilities fall into disuse after an event has finished.
By using infrastructure and venues which already exist, the environmental and economic costs of hosting are minimised. It also makes hosting more feasible for countries that might not have the capacity to do it alone.
At the same time, many of the perceived benefits of staging sports events – such as economic boosts to local economies, increases in tourism, improved transport links, and civic pride – can be shared more widely. Rather than one host reaping all the rewards, several places can potentially benefit, engaging local communities and stimulating regional development.
Collaborative multi-host formats also allow for widespread sharing of knowledge and opportunities for innovation. When cities and organising committees work together, they can bring diverse perspectives, cultural insights, operational practices, and even healthy competition to the table.
We found that the development of friendly rivalries between Euro 2020 hosts actually encouraged a competitive mindset that motivated organising committee staff to attempt to outperform counterpart cities.
Meanwhile Uefa enabled those different cities to develop branding strategies which reflected local character while contributing to a broader European narrative of unity through sport. One example was each city selecting a landmark bridge to tie in with the tournament’s overarching “bridging Europe” theme.
This collaborative way of thinking also led to creative and inclusive ideas. Glasgow, for example, integrated a cultural festival into its role as a host city, featuring local artists and musicians.
Polycentric tournaments aren’t without challenges of course. There is a risk of fragmentation, where the tournament feels like a series of disconnected mini-events rather than something cohesive.
But overall, the environmental, economic and cultural benefits can be substantial. And what began as a celebratory one-off with Euro 2020 is fast becoming the design for future major sport events.
By sharing the spotlight, cities and countries also share the strain and the opportunity. The age of the single host nation isn’t over, and the looming Saudi Arabia 2034 World Cup is a stark reminder that above all, money still talks. But the era of shared hosting is clearly here, and might just be what global sport and its fans need.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The Middle East is undergoing a realignment of power. With Israel’s attack on Iranian nuclear sites and the assassination of at least two of Iran’s senior security officials, Benjamin Netanyahu is showing his willingness to go it alone and ignore pressure from the Trump administration.
Though Donald Trump sought diplomatic solutions to the growing tensions between Israel and Iran, it appears that the US president, despite his previously strong relationship with the Israeli leader, was unable to restrain Netanyahu.
The timing of the strikes is important. The Trump administration probably knew that they could not prevent Israel from striking Iran, but they did think they could pressure Israel to hold off launching an attack until after the US had solidified a new nuclear deal with Iran, talks for which were scheduled for June 15.
Just hours before the air strikes, Trump said: “As long as I think there will be an agreement [with Iran], I don’t want them going in.”
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Trump, following months of groundwork laid by the Joe Biden administration, managed to secure a ceasefire deal with Israel in January. But as part of the negotiation, Netanyahu succeeded in reversing sanctions on settlers in the West Bank, giving him free rein to act there. Additionally, the US also lifted its freeze on the transfer of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, another concession that benefited Israel.
The US also proved unwilling or incapable of stopping the humanitarian crisis that has unfolded in Gaza. Washington also appeared powerless to stop Israel’s pounding of Lebanon and its efforts to eradicate the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah.
The US has become more of a spectator than a powerful regional actor. And sources suggest that Washington was not informed in advance of Israel’s airstrike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in October 2024, a sign of Israel’s growing willingness to act without US approval.
Indeed, the expansion of the war in Gaza to Lebanon was a pivotal moment in the region. With significant Israeli public support to stop Hezbollah (which had been launching rockets towards northern Israel), Israel pounded southern Beirut with airstrikes, killing several high-ranking Hezbollah officials.
In the aftermath, Hezbollah was unable to replenish itself with younger recruits (it had relied on its charismatic leadership to recruit in the past), and the losses caused Hezbollah’s organisation to implode. By November 2024, Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire brokered by the US.
Israel announces strikes on Iran.
Iran’s weaker role
Hezbollah’s near military and organisational collapse has been a big blow for Iran’s regional power. Hezbollah was at one point the most heavily armed violent non-state actor in the world. It had an army of around 50,000 men and experts speculated that it had as many as 200,000 rockets and missiles of various ranges in its arsenal.
With the assassination of so many high-level officials in Hezbollah and Hamas, both of which Iran has bankrolled and used in its proxy conflicts with Israel, Iran has been severely weakened. As Iran is in the middle of an economic crisis, it no longer has the financial means to revive these traditional allies.
For decades Iran had tried to gain strategic depth in the Middle East, with the US estimating that Iran spent more than US$16 billion to prop up Bashar al-Assad in Syria from 2012 to 2020. Additionally, with the fall of Assad, Syria can no longer serve as a transit corridor or logistical hub for shipments of arms from Iran to Hezbollah.
With Turkey’s support for the various armed militias that ousted the Assad regime, it is Ankara, and not Tehran, that sees itself as the big winner in the aftermath of the Syrian civil war.
US plans for Middle East threatened
The US, meanwhile, is seeing its influence in the Middle East waning. And Trump’s plan for extending trade in the region, particularly in the Gulf, may also be undermined by the rising regional tension.
The US had been due to send Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to this weekend’s talks in Oman, with the aim of getting Tehran to agree to stop enriching uranium (which is crucial for creating nuclear weapons) in exchange for lifting economic sanctions. Trump had said that he did not want Israel to go ahead with its attack on Iran, and yet these calls went unheeded.
Some US officials were optimistic that the escalating tensions taking place between Iran and Israel were mere tactics of negotiation amid the important nuclear talks. But, though the US was clearly warned about the attack, Washington was not able to deter Israel.
Though the US still supplies Israel with US$3.8 billion (£2.8 billion) worth of arms per year, it has had little success in exercising much leverage recently. It remains to be seen if domestic political pressure could halt this US funding.
International relations experts should not be surprised that Israel went on the offensive in Iran. Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah in 2024 were just a precursor to the bigger prize of bringing Iran to its knees.
For Netanyahu, this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape the Middle East and shift the regional power dynamics, and he appears to care little about what the US, or the rest of the world, thinks of how he does it.
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.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Douglas Lucas Kivoi, Principal Policy Analyst, Governance Department, The Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA)
The recent killing in Kenya of a young man in police detention highlights a string of systemic failures to hold the country’s security officers accountable for their actions. Despite public outrage and protests, Kenyan police officers continue to use inhumane, brutal and sometimes fatal methods with little consequence. Douglas Lucas Kivoi, who has studied policing and police reform in Kenya, unpacks the situation.
Why is the Kenyan police service given to brutality?
First, Kenya’s police institution was established as a colonial instrument of oppression. Police reforms since independence in 1963 have had little impact in changing this. Instead, successive governments have used the police to suppress dissent. This has cemented a culture of violence and police impunity. This was seen during former president Daniel arap Moi’s repressive regime, the post-2007 election violence and recent crackdowns on public protests protected under the constitution.
Second, police brutality thrives in environments where wrongdoing goes unpunished. Kenya’s police force lacks good internal control mechanisms. A culture of silence and solidarity – the “blue code” – deters whistleblowing. Advancements and rewards are sometimes determined by political allegiances rather than professionalism.
Third, many police officers work in toxic conditions marked by poor pay, limited resources and long shifts. These contribute to feelings of frustration and aggression. The situation is worsened by institutionalised corruption where police officers extort money from citizens and demand bribes. This has contributed to diminished ethical standards.
What’s in place to punish police excesses?
Kenya has several formal avenues for holding police accountable. But all are deeply flawed.
Independent Policing Oversight Authority: This was established in 2011 in light of the post-election violence of 2007-08. Its job was to independently investigate police misconduct. However, underfunding and understaffing has led to delayed investigations.
There has also been a lack of cooperation from the police. They often fail to provide evidence or deliberately provide misleading information to impede investigations.
Internal Affairs Unit: This is a critical oversight body. It’s mandated to provide accountability and professional discipline within the police service. It’s tasked with investigating public complaints and complaints from within the police service against police officers.
The unit can recommend to the National Police Service Commission disciplinary action – such as prosecution or dismissal – against officers it finds guilty. It also monitors police officers to ensure that ethical conduct and professional standards are maintained.
Judiciary and Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions: Cases take years to move through the judicial system. Convictions are rare. The public prosecutions office has faced accusations of bias, which it exhibits through its reluctance to prosecute high-profile police killings.
The time it takes to conclude police misconduct cases allows impunity to thrive. Deliberately poor investigations carried out by the police (who are also suspects) have led to collapsed cases.
National Police Service Commission: This was established by the 2010 Kenyan constitution. The commission recruits and appoints police officers (except the inspector-general of police, who is appointed by the president with parliamentary approval). It also promotes, transfers and disciplines police officers.
However, the commission has faced claims of being unduly influenced by the inspector-general’s office in recruitment and promotions. This undermines its independence.
Civil society and the media: Organisations like Amnesty International Kenya and the Kenya Human Rights Commission document police abuses. But their reports rarely, if ever, lead to any real action being taken. The media’s attention and reporting of cases may exert temporary pressure but this doesn’t seem to have any long-term impact.
Why haven’t these mechanisms worked?
Firstly, there’s an institutional resistance to reform. Powerful factions in the police and government benefit from the current system. Whenever there is an attempt at enforcing accountability, these senior officials take advantage of bureaucratic delays, and harass investigators and whistleblowers.
In extreme cases, they enforce the disappearance of witnesses.
Secondly, a lack of political will creates a favourable environment to circumvent constitutional frameworks. This ultimately weakens any chances of accountability. At best, police in Kenya are used to defend political interests and suppress dissent.
This emboldens powerful political players who want the police to be controllable. This dissuades them from instituting actual reforms and establishing a humane policing service.
What will change things?
Until those in leadership positions genuinely prioritise independent institutions and justice over transient political gains, significant police reform is unlikely to be realised.
Elements of such reform would include steps to:
Strengthen police oversight and guarantee independence
The Independent Policing Oversight Authority Act needs to be amended to enhance autonomy. The current system is easy for the president to manipulate because he gets to appoint the authority’s commissioners.
There’s also a need to provide the authority with equipment. This includes ballistics analysis, digital forensics and crime scene reconstruction capabilities to combat police cover-ups.
The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions must also be required to respond to the authority’s recommendations within 30 days. Currently, cases can take years to complete. There have been instances when rogue police have used this window to eliminate witnesses or tamper with evidence.
Overhaul police training and culture
There must be a move away from paramilitary-style drills and procedures in training. Instead, officers need to practise de-escalation, communication and problem-solving tactics with the public. What exists within Kenya now is a paramilitary service not a police service.
Additionally, the police service commission needs to reward professionalism and not cronyism.
Judicial and prosecutorial reforms
Ending police impunity in Kenya requires a multi-pronged approach. This involves judicial independence, vigorous prosecution, meaningful oversight, legislative changes and public engagement.
Continued police impunity has eroded public confidence in Kenya’s policing and justice systems. The policing oversight authority needs sufficient funding – free of political interference – to investigate and prosecute police misconduct. Senior officers should be held accountable for not disciplining rogue officers under their charge. The presidency and interior ministry must have a zero-tolerance policy toward police brutality.
If Kenya doesn’t grapple with police impunity, then the anniversary of the June 2024 protests will be just another date in history when the state brutally attacked, maimed and killed its own citizenry. And still managed to silence them.
Douglas Lucas Kivoi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nick Robinson, Associate Professor in Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds
By the end of June 2025, Sam Fender will have played four stadium shows to nearly 250,000 people across the UK, with three of those in his native north east. With three albums and over 2 billion streams, his music has earned widespread acclaim. Yet, Fender is no ordinary rock star.
His songs provide a powerful connection to place and a lens through which to reflect on social, cultural and political dynamics. Deeply rooted in north-east England, Fender’s lyrics reference his hometown of North Shields and use local vernacular.
As a researcher of the links between popular culture and politics who lives less than a mile from his hometown, I find his work particularly powerful in the way it mobilises emotive issues at scale. Fender explores themes such as masculinity, poverty and everyday struggle, forging a direct emotional connection with his audience.
To my mind, this work is not performative celebratory activism, but is grounded in his own community and personal experiences. This combination of commercial success rooted in honesty, vulnerability and community action led to him being named “freeman of North Tyneside” in May 2025.
Boys and girls are together facing an uncertain world. But research shows they are diverging when it comes to attitudes about masculinity, feminism and gender equality.
Social media, politics, and identity all play a role. But what’s really going on with boys and girls? Join The Conversation UK and Cumberland Lodge’s Youth and Democracy project at Newcastle University for a discussion of these issues with young people and academic experts. Tickets available here.
Fender’s teenage years were marked by personal challenges, including his parents’ separation and his mother’s fibromyalgia. These experiences, and the state’s failure to support those in need, are captured in his song Seventeen Going Under (2021): “I came home and you were on the floor / Floored by the letters and the council rigmarole.”
His latest album, People Watching (2025), continues this critique. The title track, inspired by the death of a close friend in a care home, laments:
The place was fallin’ to bits
Understaffed and overruled by callous hands
The poor nurse was around the clock
And the beauty of youth had left my breaking heart.
The music video for People Watching.
For Fender, these stories reflect a Britain in decline. In Crumbling Empire, he sings: “Road like the surface of the moon / A Detroit neighbourhood left to ruin.” The song further critiques a society that fails to honour those who have given everything:
My mother delivered most the kids in this town
My step-dad drove in a tank for the crown
They left them homeless, down and out
In their crumbling empire.
His message is clear: hard work, even by midwives and war heroes, no longer guarantees dignity or reward.
Fender’s most poignant observations are rooted in his locality. In Nostalgia’s Lie, he sings: “These streets break my heart / There’s pain unfurling and desperate yearning / For all my friends who are gone.”
North Shields has some of the highest rates of child poverty in the UK. According to the North East Child Poverty Commission (March 2025), 31% of children in the region lived below the poverty line between 2021 and 2024.
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In this context, Fender places mental health – especially male mental health – at the core of his work, made even more powerful by his honesty about his own struggles.
Dead Boys reflects both personal loss and the epidemic of male suicide in North Tyneside: “We close our eyes, learn our pain / Nobody ever could explain / All the dead boys in our hometown.”
In Something Heavy, he adds: “My friends reached for the rope and tied / Oh, God, how can we keep missing signals?”
Fender performs Dead Boys in Manchester.
Fender’s engagement with mental health is deeply personal. He wrestles with confusion, despondency, and his own sense of self-esteem: “Though I am a soundboard to some / With myself I am not so forgiving” (Last to Make it Home), and “Sometimes I wanna die, sometimes” (Paradigms).
In Good Company, he confesses: “Sometimes I cry until there’s no sound,” and in Arm’s Length: “Do you have to know me, know me, inside out / I’m selfish, and I’m lonely.”
Yet, like many artists, Fender feels guilt that success has uprooted him. In Wild Long Lie, he reflects: “Oh, I’ve got so much pain here, yet so much love / But it’s drownin’ every inch of my soul.” He questions whether he can still authentically raise these issues now that fame has distanced him from his past. As he puts it in Crumbling Empire:
I’m not preaching, I’m just talking
I don’t wear the shoes I used to walk in
But I can’t help thinking where I’d be
In this crumbling empire.
Fender’s work helps us understand political and social phenomena by reflecting unfolding events. His songs can be seen as giving life and voice to what political theorist Michael Shapiro calls an “aesthetic subject”.
The characters in his songs, whether autobiographical or imagined, give voice to communities which are so often ignored. They allow exploration of the structures of power that deny working-class people opportunities, contributing to mental health crises, suicide and spiralling drug use within those communities.
Sam Fender talks about men’s mental health.
Even though Fender acknowledges he no longer walks in the same shoes, his songs still speak truth to power. They give voice to experiences that are often ignored and expose the increasing struggle of everyday life in the UK and beyond.
He also offers a nuanced reflection on masculinity. Fender challenges traditional ideals – rational, authoritative, emotionally restrained – while rejecting simplified portrayals of men as weak or unstable. His songs reveal a masculinity that is complex, conflicted and deeply human.
While Fender is not alone in using music for social commentary, what sets him apart is his ability to channel the spirit of his local community to explore universal themes. His work critiques the failures of contemporary capitalism to provide dignity, respect, and cohesion – issues that resonate deeply amid today’s cultural, political and economic challenges.
Nick Robinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michael Cunliffe, Professor of Marine Microbiology, School of Biological and Marine Sciences, University of Plymouth
Fungi are nature’s recyclers and chemists, turning waste into useful products and creating an array of enzymes and compounds. By harnessing this potential through fungal biotechnology (using fungi to develop products and technologies for various applications), we can create sustainable materials, food and processes that help solve global challenges like food shortages, pollution and climate change.
Fungal biotechnology supports a “circular economy”, where resources are reused instead of wasted. Fungi can help make our food supply more stable and eco-friendly, while cutting greenhouse gas emissions. But to fully unlock what is possible, we need to better understand different fungi and develop new tools to work with them to find solutions.
The marine environment is home to a rich diversity of fungi. However, marine fungi were once overlooked and not widely considered for their biotechnological potential.
Local science, global stories.
This article is part of a series, Secrets of the Sea, exploring how marine scientists are developing climate solutions.
In collaboration with the BBC, The Conversation’s senior environment editor, Anna Turns, travels around the West Country coastline to meet ocean experts making exciting discoveries beneath the waves.
Now, my team of scientists at the Marine Biological Association, a research institution based in Plymouth on the south-west coast of England, has changed that. By gathering over 500 fungal strains from seawater, sediments and seaweeds, we have created a comprehensive marine fungi culture collection.
These fungi are stored at -80°C and studied at temperatures similar to the local shoreline they are from. This unique collection is already helping us learn more about marine fungi, including how they grow and adapt to different environments.
My colleagues and I are now exploring how these marine fungi, especially those from seaweed, can be used in biotechnology to create more useful, sustainable products in the future.
The European seaweed industry is growing fast and could be worth up to €9.3 billion (£7.8 billion) by 2030. Seaweed farming doesn’t need land, fresh water or fertiliser, and it can support ocean health.
Marine fungi, especially those originally isolated from seaweed, could recycle seaweed into valuable products.
At the Marine Biological Association, we are testing many combinations of different seaweeds and fungi to discover new uses. This approach could help make the seaweed industry stronger, more efficient and better for the environment.
The future is fungal
Feeding the world’s growing population is a major challenge, especially with nearly a billion people unable to afford nutritious food and the environmental consequences of high meat consumption. One promising alternative protein source involves using seaweed and fermenting it with marine fungi to create a nutritious protein source called mycoprotein – similar to what’s found in some current commercial products.
Antimicrobial resistance – the development of superbugs that become resistant to antibiotics as a result of their overuse – is a global health threat. This makes it harder to treat infections. Fungi naturally produce chemicals to protect themselves from other microbes, and several antibiotics come from fungi, including penicillin. Marine fungi could be a valuable new source of antibiotics and drug treatments to fight resistant infections and protect public health.
Pests and the diseases they spread cause major crop losses worldwide, threatening food security. Traditional chemical pesticides are becoming less effective and can harm helpful species like pollinators, while also leading to pest resistance.
Scientists are now exploring ways to target pests by using microbes without damaging the environment. One promising but unexplored source is marine fungi. Marine fungi and the arsenal of chemical compounds they produce may hold the key to developing new, eco-friendly pest control methods that protect crops while supporting wildlife and sustainable farming practices.
Our marine fungi culture collection is helping unlock the potential for finding new solutions to many of the world’s biggest challenges.
Listen to episode four of Secrets of the Sea here on BBC Sounds, presented by Anna Turns for The Conversation.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Michael Cunliffe received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) for the project MYCO-CARB and currently receives funding from the UKRI Horizon Europe Guarantee scheme for the projects MARCO-BOLO and BIOcean5D. PhD students in the Cunliffe Group are supported by the UKRI BBSRC/NERC SWBio, ARIES and INSPIRE Doctoral Training Partnerships and the Marine Biological Association.
The Women’s prize was founded in 1991 in bold riposte to the year’s all-male Booker prize shortlist. It’s funny to think how male-dominated the industry once was when you look at it now. There has been a real renaissance in literary fiction by women since then. Take last year’s Booker prize shortlist where the only male writer nominated was Percival Everett for his brilliant book James.
That women dominate the literary landscape has not diminished the need for the Women’s prize, however. In fact, I would say it has grown in boldness and depth, now taking on non-fiction, a world still dominated by men. The prize has also launched their first outstanding contribution award, which this year was won by the inimitable Bernadine Evaristo.
This year’s shortlisted books are a testament to the depth and variety of fiction being written by women. From a multi-generational tale of one Iranaian family to a daring and laugh-out-loud comedy about the rehabilitation of Isis brides by a researcher who worked for the UN doing just that. It serves as a perfect summer reading list. I have read four of the books so far and have loved every single one for very different reasons.
This year’s winner, The Safekeep by Yael van der Woeden, is a queer romance exploring the lesser-documented consequences of the second world war in the 1980s Netherlands. It’s a book I have gifted several times already and might be my favourite book of 2024. I would also recommend reading last year’s winner, Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan, which has made its way slowly around The Conversation newsroom.
Set in Edinburgh, Netflix’s Dept. Q follows arrogant maverick detective Carl Mork (Matthew Goode) whose hubris got him shot through the neck, his partner paralysed and a rookie officer killed. Back at work after this horrifying ordeal, he’s wracked with survivor’s guilt and more than a touch of post traumatic stress disorder. He’s been banished to the basement to lead a new cold case unit.
Surprisingly, instead of being the fool’s errand his commander thinks Dept. Q will be, Mork and his rag tag team find themselves suited to this sort of work. Rather than throw him completely off his game, his new obsessive qualities and hyper-awareness of negative stimuli actually make him better at his job. Our reviewer, an expert in psychological vulnerabilities, analytical thinking patterns and cognitive processing styles, thoroughly enjoyed the show and found it really chimed with his research into how trauma can change the brain.
From a Scottish detective crime thriller series to a Scottish samurai-western film. Yes, you read that right. Tornado is a revenge tale about a young samurai performer on the run from a gang of bandits in 18th-century Scotland. It might seem like an odd splicing of genres, but in his review film studies scholar Jonathan Wroot argues that the two have a long-shared history. Both westerns and samurai films envision a world full of lone warriors, greedy gangs, wild landscapes, epic struggles and, of course, violence.
This year marks the 250th birthday of Jane Austen and JMW Turner. Though the pair never met, both were great documenters of Regency England. A new exhibition at Leeds’s Harewood House explores the common threads in their work in relation to the cultural and societal significance of British country houses and their landscapes.
At Austen and Turner: A Country House Encounter, visitors will be able to look upon rarely seen paintings and manuscripts, including the unfinished manuscript of Austen’s last work, Sanditon. Our reviewer, an expert in literature, found it wonderfully brought to life the reality of the landed aristocracy of the time. It’s sure to move anyone who has an interest in art and history.
Our final recommendation is our own podcast. This week a series of Conversation products were nominated at the Publisher podcast and newsletter awards, including Something Good. While we didn’t win, The Conversation did take home the big podcast prize, being named podcast publisher of the year.
The Conversation Weekly talks to academics about their discoveries and explores the big questions they are still trying to answer.
This week we take you to Indonesia where conservation scientist Hollie Booth trialled a programme paying fishermen to release any sharks and rays accidentally caught in their nets in the hope it would help to keep more alive. Listen to Booth and her colleague M. Said Ramdlan discuss the unintended consequences of the incentive programme.
We also can’t recommend the limited series podcast Scam Factories enough, which took home best investigative podcast. The three-part series takes you inside the world of scammers, many of whom are often victims too.
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It’s Donald Trump’s birthday this weekend, and he is planning a big bash to celebrate. There will be a full-colour parade in the nation’s capital. Expected to attend are a whole bunch of military vehicles, from a second world war bomber to M1 Abrams battle tanks to Paladin self-propelled howitzers.
The cavalcade will take a route through the grander streets of Washington DC making its way along Constitution Avenue all the way to the Lincoln memorial, with an expected 6,600 soldiers in attendance. The whole thing is estimated by the Associated Press to cost around US$45 million (£33 million).
This splashy show of Trump’s power and the US’s military strength could serve as a warning to anyone who was thinking of crossing the US right now. Trump is, of course, the commander-in-chief of the US forces. And he was using the full strength of his position, some argue going beyond it, when he sent the national guard and the marines – bypassing the state governor – to the streets of Los Angeles in the past few days.
There are now, according to ABC News, more US troops on the streets of LA than in Syria and Iraq. This was necessary, Trump claimed, to address protests over immigration raids that broke out around LA. Something that Sean Parnell, chief Pentagon spokesperson, said this week was “exactly what the American people voted for”.
While Trump is testing how far he can flex his political and military muscle at home, as the Open University’s Sinead McEneaney has detailed, he is also using what some historians have called unprecedented use of power, by sending in the marines to take action against Americans, while California governor Gavin Newsom said the troops were not wanted, or needed.
Newsom is pushing back hard, and publicly, against Trump. Something, that Natasha Lindstaedt at the University of Essex, believes could propel Newsom higher up the Democrat selection list for a presidential nomination.
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While signalling his military strength to those on the streets of California, Trump has also been sending a strong message to his erstwhile international allies that he might not be quite as willing to share his military hardware with them as they might have thought they had been promised. The US administration has opened a review of the Aukus (the Australia, UK and US defence pact) and in particular its nuclear submarine deal, to see whether it meets the “America first” criteria. This deal was due to help all three countries scale up their submarine capacity.
Australia already transferred US$500 million to the US this year, as part of a down payment on the deal, with the expectation of receiving used US submarines in the near future. Canberra and London have been speedily revising their reliance on Trump as a security partner in the past few months. This is yet another signal from Washington that they definitely should.
John Blaxland , a professor at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, argues that Trump is angling to renegotiate the Aukus deal but won’t scrap it.
“There are a few key reasons for this. We’re several years down the track already. We have more than 100 Australian sailors already operating in the US system. Industrially, we’re on the cusp of making a significant additional contribution to the US submarine production line. And finally, most people don’t fully appreciate that the submarine base just outside Perth is an incredibly consequential piece of real estate for US security calculations.”
Meanwhile, Mark Beeson, an adjunct professor at the University of Technology Sydney and Griffith University, believes that Australia is locked into the foreign and strategic policies of “an increasingly polarised, authoritarian and unpredictable regime” and should rethink its international relationships.
Beeson quotes an essay from another Australian academic, Hugh White, from Australian National University: “It is classic Trump to expect more and more from allies while he offers them less and less.”
In a military arena where most of the world would like Trump to apply a little more pressure, he continues to hold back and Vladimir Putin continues not to do a peace deal. Putin showed no sign of calling off his troops (or drones) from attacking Ukraine this week.
But as the onslaught continued Russia is expected to hit a horrific target this month, 1 million casualties in the war. Hundreds of thousands of Russians have died forcing Putin to get increasingly creative in coming up with ways to fill the gaps on the battlefields.
According to some reports he is sending the wounded back to fight before they are fully recovered, as well as offering large financial incentives to those who join up, and their families. The conflict continues and the death toll does, too. As Russian politics expert Jenny Mathers at the University of Aberystwyth points out, even before the war the country had a demographic crisis, and now that is even more extreme.
Russian women who want to earn the newly reinstated “Mother Heroine” award by bearing and raising ten or more children may struggle to find men to father them now, and after the war. Putin, like Trump, is fond of suggesting there is a glowing future for those who support him. The Russian leader has even created a Time of Heroes programme for war veterans who are promised a fast track into an elite career on their return from battle. Whether, of course, they do return when an estimated 53 casualties are being lost per square kilometre of land gained in eastern Ukraine is not a gamble many would like to take.
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The UK government’s investment of around £14 billion in a new nuclear power plant marks a big economic shift for the country’s approach to energy.
The Sizewell C plant in Suffolk will be the second of a new generation of reactors to be built in the country, after Hinkley Point C in Somerset, which is expected to open in 2031.
French energy firm EDF is building Hinkley and will probably end up building Sizewell too. But it seems that the British government is finally prepared to take on the considerable financial risk which these projects bring.
Previously it has preferred to look elsewhere. China, notably, has a longstanding appetite for investment in British infrastructure. (Although in 2022, the UK government bought back China’s stakes in Sizewell C amid geopolitical concerns.)
But the money has to come from somewhere. And after EDF announced it wanted to limit its participation in Sizewell C – and in particular, exposure to the risk of cost overruns – the UK government has stepped in.
EDF has has already lost a lot of money building Hinkley Point C. When construction began in 2017, costs were estimated at £18 billion.
At the time, the UK government agreed to pay a set rate for the electricity produced so the French company could recoup its cost and make a reasonable profit. That price was perceived by some as as extremely high and remains higher than current wholesale prices.
But as construction costs have more than doubled, the project has generated an estimated loss of around £13 billion for EDF. The company hopes to keep construction costs down this time, after similar costs overruns in projects it completed in France and in Finland.
But now Sizewell C will only progress because the British government has said it will take on almost all of the financial risk.
In doing so, the UK is not an outlier. In France, China and South Korea, nuclear power plants are built by state-owned companies. In the US, private companies are waiting for public funding to finance Donald Trump’s dream of a nuclear renaissance.
And perhaps it’s an expense the state should be willing to take on.
And if the long-term goal is to eliminate the need for fossil fuels, it means all electricity will need to come from a mixture of renewables, batteries and nuclear. Electricity could then become much cheaper than it is now.
But building the means of creating this power comes with varying degrees of risk.
Solar, for example, is not that risky. Panels are usually imported, there are no major safety concerns, and investors can roughly predict how much sun there will be in a typical year.
For nuclear energy, production is also predictable. But the time it will take to complete construction of a plant and the associated costs are not.
Part of this is down to choice. UK regulations around nuclear energy are complex and strict, and other countries build faster and cheaper. This may be why globally, solar power is attracting much more investment than other sources of energy.
Political energy
But this does not mean governments should ignore the nuclear option. One of the main reasons governments are useful to society is that they can afford to take risks that private investors cannot, and finance long term innovation.
This in turn can lead to much greater strategic and geopolitical autonomy. While solar panels and batteries are getting ever cheaper, the vast majority of production is in China.
Domestic production of nuclear allows for greater diversity in energy sourcing, and arguably from some more predictable partners. The key component, uranium, can be found in large quantities in places like Canada or Australia, or directly reused.
Research suggests that nuclear energy may be particularly suited to feed the needs of digital datacentres and artificial intelligence.
Meanwhile, the government also hopes to get small nuclear reactors from domestic producer Rolls Royce which could be built in factories at a much more predictable cost. Russia and China have each already built this kind of reactor.
No one knows if fusion will ever be possible. It is the kind of uncertain, incredibly expensive projects (with potentially massive returns) that pretty much no private investor would risk looking at.
But again, it is the kind of bet only governments can take. For nuclear power, for reasons of scale, risk and uncertainty, is mostly a government business – and ultimately a political choice.
It will take a long time to know if the decision to spend taxpayers’ money on Sizewell C was the right way to respond to the country’s energy needs. But ending reliance on private or foreign financing for nuclear projects could one day be seen as a positive reaction.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Renaud Foucart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
What may be one of the U.S. Supreme Court’s most important and far-reaching rulings in decades dropped in late May 2025 in an order that probably didn’t get a second – or even first – glance from most Americans.
But this not-quite-two-page ruling, as technical and procedural as they come, potentially rewrites a major principle of constitutional law and may restructure the operation of the federal government.
The case is dry in a way only lawyers could love, but its implications are enormous.
The National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board, like the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Reserve, are among more than 50 independent agencies established by Congress to help the president carry out the law. Though technically located within the executive branch, independent agencies are designed to serve the public at large rather than the president.
The dispute began when President Donald Trump fired board members of two independent agencies. Win McNamee/Getty Images
Other executive branch agencies, such as the FBI, Food and Drug Administration and Department of Homeland Security are entirely under presidential command – if he wants their leaders out, out they go. But independent agencies, in existence since the late 19th century, are to carry out congressional policy free from the president’s purview and his political pressure.
Because independent agencies are creatures of Congress housed within the executive branch, there is long-standing disagreement among scholars about just how much power the president should have over them.
Limiting Congress, empowering the president
In the two firings, there was agreement that Trump had violated the relevant statute by firing Wilcox and Harris without “good cause.”
But the bigger issue was whether the law itself was constitutional: Could Congress limit why or how a president can remove employees of the executive branch?
The root of the problem lies within the Constitution. Although Article 2 specifically gives the president the power to “appoint” certain federal officials, it says nothing about the power to fire -– or “remove” – them.
Conservative legal scholars propose, under what’s called the “unitary executive theory,” that because the president “is” the executive branch, he has complete authority, including removal, over all who serve within it. Only with the unfettered ability to fire anyone who serves under him can the president fulfill his constitutionally mandated duty to ensure that “the Laws be faithfully executed.”
The Supreme Court first took up the issue in 1926 in Myers v. United States, when Chief Justice – and former president – William Howard Taft held that Congress could not limit the president’s ability to fire an Oregon postmaster, writing that “the power to remove inferior executive officers … is an incident of the power to appoint them.”
Less than a decade later, however, the court ruled in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States that the Constitution did not grant the president an “illimitable power of removal,” at least over certain types of officials. This included the head of the Federal Trade Commission, whose firing by President Franklin Roosevelt had sparked the case.
Humphrey’s Executor stood basically untouched for decades, until Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito – both of whom had previously served in the executive branch – were appointed.
With a now-solid conservative majority, the Supreme Court invalidated restrictions on the president’s ability to remove members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in 2009.
Rather than explicitly overrule Humphrey’s Executor, however, the justices declared that these agencies were factually distinct from the Federal Trade Commission – leaders of one were protected by a “two-layer” removal system and the other because it was run by a single individual, not a multimember board.
‘Massive change in the law’
Because Humphrey’s Executor was still good law, and the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board were structured like the Federal Trade Commission, district courts in 2025 initially held that the firings of Wilcoxand Harris were unlawful.
On April 9, 2025, Trump filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court, asking it to put the district court decisions on hold. On May 22, the Supreme Court granted that request, at least while the cases proceed through the lower courts.
The court did not decide on the constitutionality of the removal statute, but the ruling is nonetheless a major victory for Trump. He can now fire not only Wilcox and Harris but also potentially the heads of any independent agency. Low-level civil servants may also be at risk.
In the unsigned order, the high court echoed unitary executive theory, stating, “Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the Presidents … he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf, subject to narrow exceptions.” It simply ignored Humphrey’s Executor altogether, leaving its value as precedent unclear.
The Supreme Court also said that the holding did not apply to the Federal Reserve Board. That “uniquely structured, quasi-private entity” would remain free from executive control via removal.
Such an explicit carve-out in legal doctrine is striking but responds directly to claims made by litigants and political commentators of the dire economic consequences that could result were the president to have free rein over the Federal Reserve’s chairman.
In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan blasted the majority for allowing the president to overrule Humphrey’s Executor “by fiat,” a result made even worse because the court had done so via the so-called shadow docket, in the absence of full briefing or oral argument. Such “short-circuiting” of the “usual deliberative process” is, she wrote, a wholly inappropriate way to make a “massive change in the law.”
After the appointments of conservatives John Roberts, left, and Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court in 2009 invalidated restrictions on the president’s ability to remove members of an independent agency. Alex Wong/Getty Images
The shadow of Humphrey’s Executor
What happens now?
The National Labor Relations Board is paralyzed, and the Merit Systems Protection Board is somewhat hamstrung, with both lacking the quorum necessary to act. Cases about the firing of Harris, Wilcox and multiple other officials will bedevil lower courts as they try to figure out whether Humphrey’s Executor still stands, even as a shadow of its former self.
And, already asked again to make major legal change on its emergency docket, the Supreme Court will need to determine whether such change warrants more than the few paragraphs of explanation it gave in the ruling on the Wilcox and Harris firings.
If, as seems likely, the court ultimately overturns Humphrey’s Executor, Kagan’s dissent serves as a warning voiced by others as well: A decision that allows the president to have total control over the heads of more than 50 independent agencies – agencies that pursue the public interest in areas from financial regulation to the environment, to nuclear safety – could shift their focus from serving the public to pleasing the president, profoundly affecting the lives of many Americans.
In the fall of 1971, Sly and the Family Stone’s “There’s a Riot Goin’ On” landed like a quiet revolution. After two years of silence following the band’s mainstream success, fans expected more feel-good funk from the ensemble.
What they got instead was something murkier and more fractured, yet deeply intimate and experimental. This was not just an album; it was the sound of a restless mind rebuilding music from the inside out.
He was among the first major artists to fully embrace the recording environment as a space to compose rather than perform. Every reverb bounce, every drum machine tick, every overdubbed breath became part of the writing process.
From studio rat to bedroom producer
Sly and the Family Stone’s early albums – including “Dance to the Music” and “Stand!” – were recorded at top-tier facilities like CBS Studios in Los Angeles under the technical guidance of engineers such as Don Puluse and with oversight from producer David Rubinson.
These sessions yielded bright, radio-friendly tracks that emphasized tight horn sections, group vocals and a polished sound. Producers also prized the energy of live performance, so the full band would record together in real time.
But by the early 1970s, Stone was burnt out. The dual pressures of fame and industry demands were becoming too much. Struggling with cocaine and PCP addiction, he’d grown increasingly distrustful of bandmates, label executives and even his friends.
So he decided to retreat to his hillside mansion in Bel Air, California, transforming his home into a musical bunker. Inside, he could work on his own terms: isolated and erratic, but free.
Without a full band present, Stone became a one-man ensemble. He leaned heavily into overdubbing – recording one instrument at a time and building his songs from fragments. Using multiple tape machines, he’d layer each part onto previous takes.
The resulting album, “There’s a Riot Goin’ On,” was like nothing he’d previously recorded. It sounds murky, jagged and disjointed. But it’s also deeply intentional, as if every imperfection was part of the design.
In “The Poetics of Rock,” musicologist Albin Zak describes this “composerly” approach to production, where recording itself becomes a form of writing, not just documentation. Stone’s process for “There’s a Riot Goin’ On” reflects this mindset: Each overdub, rhythm loop and sonic imperfection functions more like a brushstroke than a performance.
Automating the groove
A key part of Stone’s tool kit was the Maestro Rhythm King, a preset drum machine he used extensively.
It wasn’t the first rhythm box on the market. But Stone’s use of it was arguably the first time such a machine shaped the entire aesthetic of a mainstream album. The drum parts on his track “Family Affair,” for example, don’t swing – they tick. What might have been viewed as soulless became its own kind of soul.
This early embrace of mechanical rhythm prefigured what would later become a foundation of hip-hop and electronic music. In his book “Dawn of the DAW,” music technology scholar Adam Patrick Bell calls this shift “a redefinition of groove,” noting how drum machines like the Rhythm King encouraged musicians to rethink their songwriting process, building tracks in shorter, repeatable sections while emphasizing steady, looped rhythms rather than free-flowing performances.
He recorded his own parts the way future DJs would splice records – isolated, reshuffled, rhythmically obsessed. His overdubbed bass lines, keyboard vamps and vocal murmurs often sounded like puzzle pieces from other songs.
Music scholar Will Fulton, in his study of Black studio innovation, notes how producers like Stone helped pioneer a fragment-based approach to music-making that would become central to hip-hop’s DNA. Stone’s process anticipated the mentality that a song isn’t necessarily something written top to bottom, but something assembled, brick by brick, from what’s available.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Stone’s tracks have been sampled relentlessly. In “Bring That Beat Back,” music critic Nate Patrin identifies Stone as one of the most sample-friendly artists of the 1970s – not because of his commercial hits, but because of how much sonic space he left in his tracks: the open-ended grooves, unusual textures and slippery emotional tone.
While Sly’s approach was groundbreaking, he wasn’t entirely alone. Around the same time, artists such as Brian Wilson and The Rolling Stones were experimenting with home and nontraditional recording environments – Wilson famously retreating to his home studio during “Pet Sounds,” and the Stones tracking “Exile on Main St.” in a French villa.
Yet in the world of Black music, production remained largely centralized in institutionally controlled studio systems such as Motown in Detroit and Stax in Memphis, where sound was tightly managed by in-house producers and engineers. In that context, Stone’s decision to isolate, self-produce and dismantle the standard workflow was more than a technical choice: It was a radical act of autonomy.
The rise of home recording didn’t just change who could make music. It changed what music felt like. It made music more internal, iterative and intimate.
Sly Stone helped invent that feeling.
It’s easy to hear “There’s a Riot Goin’ On” as murky or uneven. The mix is dense with tape hiss, drum machines drift in and out of sync, and vocals often feel buried or half-whispered.
But it’s also, in a way, prophetic.
It anticipated the aesthetics of bedroom pop, the cut-and-paste style of modern music software, the shuffle of playlists and the recycling of sounds that defines sample culture. It showed that a groove didn’t need to be spontaneous to be soulful, and that solitude could be a powerful creative tool, not a limitation.
Half a century ago, a funk pioneer led the way. I think it’s safe to say that Sly Stone quietly changed the process of making music forever – and in the funkiest way possible.
Jose Valentino Ruiz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
President Donald Trump has promised not to cut Medicaid many times over the past decade, including in the tax-and-spending legislative package he has made a top priority in his second administration.
But several provisions in the bill, which the House of Representatives passed in a largely party-line 215-214 vote in May 2025, could cause millions of Americans enrolled in Medicaid to lose their health insurance coverage, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Medicaid is funded jointly by the federal government and the states. The program provides nearly 80 million Americans, most of whom are low-income or have disabilities, with health insurance.
As a scholar who researches access to health care, I am concerned about the possibility that millions of people will lose their health insurance coverage should this bill become law. In many cases, that could occur due to new bureaucratic obstacles the bill would introduce.
The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan agency that provides evidence-supported information to Congress, estimates that 10.9 million Americans would lose their health insurance by 2034 if the House of Representatives’ version of that package were to become law.
Another 2.1 million people who the CBO estimates would end up uninsured are Americans who today have coverage they bought in the marketplaces that the Affordable Care Act created.
Other estimates suggest that the number of Americans losing their coverage could run even higher.
Obstructing Medicaid expansion
The House bill would reduce incentives the federal government provides states to expand their Medicaid programs as part of the ACA.
Eliminating these incentives would make it even less likely that Texas and the other nine states that still have not expanded Medicaid eligibility would do so in the future.
The bill would also make it harder for states to come up with their share of Medicaid funding by limiting “provider taxes.” These taxes are charged to hospitals, doctors and other medical providers. The revenue they raise help pay for the state’s share of Medicaid costs.
Losing Medicaid coverage may leave millions of low-income Americans without insurance coverage, with no affordable alternatives for health care.
A supporter of the Affordable Care Act stands in front of the Supreme Court building on Nov. 10, 2020. Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Making Medicaid enrollment more complicated
Other proposed changes in the House bill would indirectly cut Medicaid coverage by forcing people to deal with more red tape to get or keep it.
This would happen primarily through the introduction of “work requirements” for Medicaid coverage. When enrolled in the program, applicants who are between 19 and 64 years old would need to certify they are working at least 80 hours a month or spending that much time engaged in comparable activities, such as community service.
Work requirements specifically target people eligible for Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of the program. They tend to have slightly higher incomes than the other people eligible for this benefit.
Arkansas gave Medicaid work requirements a try during the first Trump administration. Researchers who studied what happened found that 1 in 4 of the Arkansans enrolled in Medicaid affected by the policy lost their health insurance coverage. They also found that in most cases, this occurred because of bureaucratic obstacles, and that the policy didn’t lead to more people getting jobs.
By some estimates, the work requirements provision alone would lead to close to 5 million people of the 7.8 million being denied Medicaid coverage.
Changes in the House version of the bill would make it harder to get this coverage. This includes reducing the time Americans have to enroll in plans and eliminating certain subsidies. It also makes the enrollment process more complicated.
Some states may also reduce eligibility for certain groups or cover fewer services, as states seek to reduce their Medicaid costs.
And some states, including Iowa and Utah, are already pursuing work requirements on their own whether or not they become mandatory across the nation.
If fewer Americans have health insurance due to changes the Trump administration is making and the policies embedded in the pending tax-and-spending legislative package, the health of millions of people could get worse due to forgone care. And at the same time, their medical debts could grow larger.
Dr. Simon F. Haeder has previously received funding from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Pennsylvania Insurance Department, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for unrelated projects.
Pangolins are scaly mammals found across Asia and Africa. They are considered the world’s most trafficked wild mammals and they are exploited in different ways on different continents.
In Asia, mainly China, their scales are used in large-scale therapeutic medicines, despite not having known medicinal properties. Their meat is consumed as a delicacy, so it’s expensive and highly sought after.
Due to the relatively recent rise in international demand, the drivers of African pangolin exploitation remain unclear. However, some conservationists and researchers propose that this exploitation is primarily driven by overseas demand for pangolin scales used in traditional medicine.
My new study challenges this view and suggests that African pangolin exploitation is motivated more by local demand for meat than international demand for scales.
Having grown up in Nigeria, I developed personal connections with many of the hunters and vendors and have spent the past five years building a trustworthy relationship with them in order to research pangolin trade from within the industry.
My colleagues and I sent an anonymous questionnaire to 590 hunters and 219 wild meat vendors in 33 locations in southeast Nigeria. We wanted to find out how many pangolins they caught annually and how they were captured. We also asked what their motivations for hunting were, how much they sold pangolin products for and the subsequent uses of meat and scales.
Given that pangolin meat is eaten as food, we asked another group of 570 hunters, vendors, and other household members to score the palatability (perceived sensory qualities of meat flavour and texture) of 96 meat and fish dishes consumed in Nigerian communities.
Of the approximately 21,000 white- and black-bellied pangolins, which we estimated were killed annually across the hunters in the landscape between 2020 and 2023, 97% were captured opportunistically (that is, while performing activities other than hunting) or during general hunting. Of those, were picked up by hand – these animals weigh just 2-3kg on average and are relatively slow-moving.
Surprisingly, 98% of captured pangolins were caught for their meat, with 71% eaten by the hunters and 27% sold locally. This high rate of personal consumption compared to local sales is likely driven by their exceptional taste. In southeast Nigeria, the three pangolin species eaten scored highest in palatability among 96 wild meats assessed, and were comparable only with the African brush-tailed porcupine.
By comparison, rural southeast Asian communities increasingly forego eating the pangolins themselves and instead sell them to urban centres because they get high prices for meat and scales.
Most of the pangolin scales (70%) were discarded. Less than 30% were traded illegally. We also found that, on a per-animal basis, pangolin scales have been three to four times lower than meat since 2010, when Nigeria’s first pangolin scale seizure was documented.
Beyond Nigeria
While our study focused on pangolin trade in southeast Nigeria, our findings likely apply to other African forest regions where pangolins make up a similar proportion of the hunters’ total catch and where the price of scales is comparable.
Our analysis only applies to white- and black-bellied pangolins; but this is still substantial as they make up approximately 98% of African pangolins trafficked internationally (based on seizure data) and 96% of pangolins caught by hunters across central and west Africa (based on hunter offtake data from six countries).
Securing the future of African pangolins demands a bold shift if they are primarily being hunted for meat rather than scales, as appears to be the case in southeast Nigeria. Anti-trafficking measures alone won’t protect pangolins if hunting for local consumption remains unchecked.
Promoting alternative protein sources or sustainable livelihoods for hunters could help reduce wild meat dependence. As current global trade bans don’t always reflect local hunting motivations, understanding why people hunt protected species and how they get traded both locally and globally will be crucial in developing conservation strategies that will tackle the root of the problem and encourage a transition to more sustainable practices.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Charles Emogor receives funding from the British High Commission in Nigeria, National Geographic Society, Wildlife Conservation Society, Wildlife Conservation Network, Rufford Foundation, Conservation Leadership Programme, and Save Pangolins. He is the founder of Pangolin Protection Network (aka Pangolino).
Carl Morck is psychologically damaged. He’s socially insufferable. And he’s a departmental embarrassment. Yet this broken man becomes an incredibly effective investigator. Welcome to the brilliant paradox of Netflix’s Dept. Q, where mental trauma doesn’t disable – it supercharges.
Detective Morck’s story begins with catastrophic failure. Ignoring protocol, he and his partner, James Hardy, rush headlong into what they think is a routine murder scene. It’s an ambush. Hardy ends up paralysed for life, a rookie officer dies and Morck survives with crushing survivor’s guilt and severe PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Most detectives would retire. Morck comes back more determined to get his man.
Months later, Morck returns to work. He obsessively replays the rookie’s body camera video hundreds of times as well as the ballistics reconstruction. His colleagues flee his toxic presence. His commander ships him off to the basement with a stack of cold cases, hoping he’ll disappear into bureaucratic obscurity.
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Instead, she accidentally creates the perfect storm.
Morck’s first basement case involves Merritt Lingard, a prosecutor who vanished from a ferry four years earlier. The official conclusion was she fell overboard and drowned. Case closed. But Morck can’t move on from anything anymore. His trauma-rewired brain won’t let him.
He watches the ferry security footage with the same obsessive intensity he brings to replaying his shooting. Frame by frame. Over and over. The same compulsive attention to detail that torments him with endless replays of his failure becomes his investigative superpower. Where normal detectives see a tragic accident, Morck’s damaged neural pathways spot the inconsistencies everyone else missed.
This isn’t nonsense, it’s neuroscience. Research shows that depression fundamentally rewires information processing, creating enhanced sensitivity to negative details and threats. What his therapist calls pathological rumination becomes detective gold.
The banished misfits
Morck is saddled with a team of misfits: Hardy (paralysed and bitter), Akram Salim (a Syrian refugee with mysterious combat skills), and Rose Dickson (battling her own demons). Together, they form a collection of damaged individuals that conventional policing would write off.
But here’s the magic: their shared outsider status creates collective investigative superpowers.
Take their interview with William Lingard, Merritt’s disabled brother. William draws pictures of “a man in a hat with a bird logo” — evidence that conventional investigators would probably set aside because it wouldn’t hold up in court. The series shows this attitude earlier when a young mother recants her witness statement. While other officers dismiss it as useless since it can’t help prosecute a case, Morck argues it’s still valuable investigative information.
This reflects a fundamental difference in approach: most police focus on building prosecutable cases, but Dept. Q’s outsider status frees them to pursue any lead that might reveal truth, regardless of its courtroom value. Taking William’s drawings seriously as investigative intelligence, rather than dismissing them as legally inadmissible, eventually leads them to identify the crucial cormorant logo connection.
Organisational psychology research shows that socially excluded groups are more willing to ask questions that insiders avoid due to workplace politics or social taboos. Operating from their basement exile, Department Q pursues theories that proper procedure would shut down. Their isolation becomes investigative freedom, unencumbered by institutional constraints.
Department Q isn’t just entertainment, it’s a master class in psychological diversity’s investigative value. Real police departments might benefit from understanding how different types of cognitive processing can reveal different types of evidence. The systematic pessimism of depression, the hypervigilance of PTSD, the pattern recognition of anxiety – these aren’t just symptoms to medicate away, they’re investigative tools waiting to be properly deployed.
The series suggests that our most psychologically damaged individuals might see truths that healthy minds systematically miss, which research backs up. It’s a provocative idea: maybe the people we consider “broken” are exactly who we need investigating the cases that have broken everyone else.
Department Q proves that in the right circumstances, psychological damage doesn’t create victims. It creates visionaries.
Edward White is affiliated with Kingston University.
In South Africa, most long-term care for older people happens at home through the efforts of family members, largely female kin, not through government services.
With South Africa’s population growing older, combined with reduced funding for community care, higher levels of disability in old age, and widespread poverty and unemployment, family care has become more important than ever and more challenging. But government and policy makers don’t know how it happens, and we can’t just assume it happens.
The Family Caregiving Programme is the first major programme dedicated to understanding family care of older persons in southern Africa. As part of the research team for this programme we are looking at how family care works and how it can be better supported. The five-year programme aims to improve our understanding of how family care is experienced in South Africa, Malawi, Namibia and Botswana.
For the latest research report, we worked with 103 caregivers and 96 older persons in 100 family units across seven locations in three South African provinces: the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal. We worked in two rural areas, one peri-urban area and four urban areas including two townships.
Three quarters of the sample of older persons required constant care or supervision.
We found that all the care needs were being met – but at a significant cost for caregivers, older persons and society.
Care needs go beyond physiological and cognitive issues and are shaped by the physical and social environment. The environment can make care more challenging and create more dependency. Lack of access to water, sanitation and electricity adds to care work.
For care needs to be met, older persons need supported caregivers, access to care services and basic services.
The gaps
South Africa’s long term care policy encourages “ageing in place”, meaning older people should live in their homes, supported by community-based services. But the reality is that support is limited.
Of the 5.5 million older people in South Africa, around 4 million receive the Older Person’s Grant, and at least 1.5 million need help with daily activities. Very few receive home-based care or subsidised meals. Even fewer receive assistive devices and materials such as wheelchairs or incontinence products.
It’s a common assumption that if an older person lives with family, they’re being cared for. But this isn’t always true. Sometimes the available family member isn’t able – physically, emotionally, or financially – to provide proper care. Mental health support is also largely missing. Many older people experience loneliness and depression, but help is hard to find. In our study, one in five older persons experienced feelings of loneliness, anxiety and despair.
Many older people don’t have running water, proper toilets, wheelchairs, or incontinence products. If basic services are missing, the older person needs more help. Older black people in rural areas and in under-resourced townships are most affected.
Older people also need help accessing healthcare. High levels of diabetes, hypertension and arthritis in many cases lead to disability in later life. But getting help to access care isn’t always available.
Mary Mwebu (we have used pseudonyms), who lives in the rural Eastern Cape and has TB of the spine and mobility challenges, has no running water in her home. She also has no accessible and affordable transport, so she hasn’t been to the clinic in 10 years and struggles to manage her pain.
Care needs of older persons include basic provision of food. Our findings show that older persons and their households spend way below what is needed for a healthy diet.
The older person’s grant, at R2,315 (US$130) a month in 2025 and similar to the cost of incontinence products for the month, is often the main income in the household and is used to cover the costs for everyone, especially in a context where 64% of people living with an older person are unemployed.
Food is the biggest cost, often up to two thirds of income. It is the first thing to cut when there’s not enough money.
Money is particularly tight in black low-income households. In many cases expenditure exceeds income, and older people are left vulnerable. If any unexpected costs like medical needs or hygiene products arise, the older person will often have to sacrifice food.
Others will obtain loans and so many fall into debt. Borrowing from loan sharks is a way to buy food but high interest rates put people in a worse position the following month.
Limiting spending, eating less, and limited help from family members are the only other ways to meet their needs.
Why care is depleting
The average older person household has five people in it. Large households have many care needs, not just elder care. We found that women – especially daughters and female relatives – are the main caregivers.
But the findings show that due to HIV/Aids and migration, older people can’t always rely on their children. In such instances care is also provided by nieces, neighbours, and adult granddaughters.
Looking after an older person often requires caregivers to relocate. Our findings showed that one in five caregivers had to move, often with young children or leaving spouses behind.
Sometimes older persons need to move to get care. This happened in one in 10 older persons in our sample. Many are reluctant to move from their homes and the process can take years.
The findings show that family caregiving is not an endless supply of “free” labour. It is physically, emotionally and financially costly, especially for black low-income women.
Some answers
The report proposes three key recommendations.
Firstly, family caregivers and careworkers should be adequately compensated for their work.
Secondly, we call for expanding home-based care services to ease the load and give caregivers breaks and mental health support.
And thirdly, care-related items, such as wheelchairs, incontinence products and healthy food, should be made more easily available.
Supporting family caregivers means supporting the wellbeing of millions of older South Africans. It’s time the country took elder and family care seriously and backed it with real investment and action.
Elena Moore receives funding from Wellcome Trust and IDRC-CRDI for the work on elder care in Southern Africa.
Vayda Megannon and Zeenat Samodien do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Viswashkumar Ramesh, a British citizen returning from a trip to India, has been confirmed as the only survivor of Thursday’s deadly Air India crash.
“I don’t know how I am alive,” Ramesh told family, according to his brother Nayan, in a video call moments after emerging from the wreckage. Another brother Ajay, seated elswhere on the plane, was killed.
The Boeing 787-7 Dreamliner crashed into a medical college less than a minute after taking off in the city of Ahmedabad, killing the other 229 passengers and 12 crew. At least five people were killed on the ground.
Surviving a mass disaster of this kind may be hailed as a kind of “miracle”. But what is it like to survive – especially as the only one?
Surviving a disaster
Past research has shown disaster survivors may experience an intense range of emotions, from grief and anxiety to feelings of loss and uncertainty.
Some people may develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and have difficulty adjusting to a new reality after bearing witness to immense loss. They may also be dealing with physical recovery from injuries sustained in the disaster.
Most people recover after disasters by drawing on their own strengths and the support of others. Recovery rates are high: generally less than one in ten of those affected by disasters develop chronic, long-term problems.
However, being a sole survivor of a mass casualty may have its own complex psychological challenges.
Survivor’s guilt
Survivors can experience guilt they lived when others died.
My friend, Gill Hicks, spoke to me for this article about the ongoing guilt she still feels, years after surviving the 2005 bombings of the London underground.
Lying trapped in a smoke-filled train carriage, she was the last living person to be rescued after the attack. Gill lost both her legs.
Yet she still wonders, “Why me? Why did I get to go home, when so many others didn’t?”
In the case of a sole survivor, this guilt may be particularly acute. However, research addressing the impact of sole survivorship is limited. Most research that looks at the psychological impact of disaster focuses on the impact of disasters more broadly.
Those interviewed for a 2013 documentary about surviving large plane crashes, Sole Survivor, express complex feelings – wanting to share their stories, but fearing being judged by others.
Being the lone survivor can be a heavy burden.
“I didn’t think I was worthy of the gift of being alive,” George Lamson Jr. told the documentary, after surviving a 1985 plane crash in Nevada that killed all others on board.
Looking for meaning
People who survive a disaster may also be under pressure to explain what happened and relive the trauma for the benefit of others.
Vishwashkumar Ramesh was filmed and interviewed by media in the minutes and hours following the Air India crash. But as he told his brother: “I have no idea how I exited the plane”.
It can be common for survivors themselves to be plagued by unanswerable questions. Did they live for a reason? Why did they live, when so many others died?
These kinds of unaswerable questions reflect our natural inclination to look for meaning in experiences, and to have our life stories make sense.
For some people, sharing a traumatic experience with others who’ve been through it or something similar can be a beneficial part of the recovery process, helping to process emotions and regain some agency and control.
However, this may not always be possible for sole survivors, potentially compounding feelings of guilt and isolation.
Studies indicate guilt is notably widespread among individuals who have experienced traumatic events, and it is associated with heightened psychopathological symptoms (such as severe anxiety, insomnia or flashbacks) and thoughts of suicide.
Taking time to process the traumatic event can help survivors cope, and seeking support from friends, family and community or faith leaders can help an individual work through difficult feelings.
My friend Gill says the anxiety rises as the anniversary of the disaster approaches each year. Trauma reminders such as anniversaries are different to unexpected trauma triggers, but can still cause distress.
Media attention around collectively experienced dates can also amplify trauma-related distress, contributing to a cycle of media consumption and increased worry about future events.
On the 7th of July each year, Gill holds a private remembrance ritual. This allows her to express her grief and sense of loss, and to honour those who did not survive. These types of rituals can be a valuable tool in processing feelings of grief and guilt, offering a sense of control and meaning and facilitating the expression and acceptance of loss.
But lingering guilt and anxiety – especially when it interferes with day-to-day life – should not be ignored. Ongoing survivor guilt is associated with significantly higher levels of post-traumatic symptoms.
Survivors may need support from psychologists or mental health professionals in the short and long term.
Erin Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
On Thursday afternoon local time, an Air India passenger plane bound for London crashed shortly after takeoff from the northwestern Indian city of Ahmedabad. There were reportedly 242 people onboard, including two pilots and ten cabin crew.
The most up-to-date reports indicate the death toll has surpassed 260, including people on the ground.
Thankfully, catastrophic plane crashes such as this are very rare. But seeing news of such a horrific event is traumatic, particularly for people who may have a fear of flying or are due to travel on a plane soon.
If you’re feeling anxious following this distressing news, it’s understandable. But here are some things worth considering when you’re thinking about the risk of plane travel.
Just how dangerous is flying?
One of the ways to make sense of risks, especially really small ones, is to put them into context.
Although there are various ways to do this, we can first look to figures that tell us the risk of dying in a plane crash per passenger who boards a plane. Arnold Barnett, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calculated that in 2018–22, this figure was one in 13.7 million. By any reckoning, this is an incredibly small risk.
And there’s a clear trend of air travel getting safer every decade. Barnett’s calculations suggest that between 2007 and 2017, the risk was one per 7.9 million.
We can also compare the risks of dying in a plane crash with those of dying in a car accident. Although estimates of motor vehicle fatalities vary depending on how you do the calculations and where you are in the world, flying has been estimated to be more than 100 times safer than driving.
Evolution has skewed our perception of risks
The risk of being involved in a plane crash is extremely small. But for a variety of reasons, we often perceive it to be greater than it is.
First, there are well-known limitations in how we intuitively estimate risk. Our responses to risk (and many other things) are often shaped far more by emotion and instinct than by logic.
As psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, much of our thinking about risk is driven by intuitive, automatic processes rather than careful reasoning.
Notably, our brains evolved to pay attention to threats that are striking or memorable. The risks we faced in primitive times were large, immediate and tangible threats to life. Conversely, the risks we face in the modern world are generally much smaller, less obvious, and play out over the longer term.
The brain that served us well in prehistoric times has essentially remained the same, but the world has completely changed. Therefore, our brains are susceptible to errors in thinking and mental shortcuts called cognitive biases that skew our perception of modern risks.
This can lead us to overestimate very small risks, such as plane crashes, while underestimating far more probable dangers, such as chronic diseases.
Why we overestimate the risks of flying
There are several drivers of our misperception of risks when it comes to flying specifically.
The fact events such as the Air India plane crash are so rare makes them all the more psychologically powerful when they do occur. And in today’s digital media landscape, the proliferation of dramatic footage of the crash itself, along with images of the aftermath, amplifies its emotional and visual impact.
The effect these vivid images have on our thinking around the risks of flying is called the availability heuristic. The more unusual and dramatic an event is, the more it stands out in our minds, and the more it skews our perception of its likelihood.
It’s natural to perceive the risk of flying as being greater than it truly is. OlegRi/Shutterstock
Another influence on the way we perceive risks relevant to flying is called dread risk, which is a psychological response we have to certain types of threats. We fear certain risks that feel more catastrophic or unfamiliar. It’s the same reason we may disproportionately fear terrorist attacks, when in reality they’re very uncommon.
Plane crashes usually involve a large number of deaths that occur at one time. And the thought of going down in a plane may feel more frightening than dying in other ways. All this taps into the emotions of fear, vulnerability and helplessness, and leads to an overweighting of the risks.
Another factor that contributes to our overestimation of flying risks is our lack of control when flying. When we’re passengers on a plane, we are in many ways completely dependent on others. Even though we know pilots are highly trained and commercial aviation is very safe, the lack of control we have as passengers triggers a deep sense of vulnerability.
This absence of control makes the situation feel riskier than it actually is, and often riskier than activities where the threat is far greater but there is an (often false) sense of control, such as driving a car.
In a nutshell
We have an evolutionary bias toward reacting more strongly to particular threats, especially when these events are dramatic, evoke dread and when we feel an absence of control.
Although events such as Air India crash affect us deeply, air travel is still arguably the safest method of transport. Understandably, this can get lost in the emotional aftermath of tragic plane crashes.
Hassan Vally does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus Professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University; and Vice Chancellor’s Strategic Fellow, Victoria University
Alarmed by an intelligence assessment that Iran will be able to produce nuclear weapons within months if not weeks, Israel has launched a massive air campaign aiming to destroy the country’s nuclear program.
Israel’s air strikes hit Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz, as well as its air defences and long-range missile facilities.
Among the dead are Hossein Salami, the chief of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards Corps; Mohammad Bagheri, the commander-in-chief of the military; and two prominent nuclear scientists.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has promised “severe punishment” in response. Iran could potentially target Israel’s own nuclear sites and US bases across the Persian Gulf. Israel claimed Iran launched 100 drones towards it just hours after the attack.
The Middle East is yet again on the precipice of a potentially devastating war with serious regional and global implications.
Stalled nuclear talks
The Israeli operations come against the backdrop of a series of inconclusive nuclear talks between the United States and Iran. These negotiations began in mid-April at President Donald Trump’s request and aimed to reach a deal within months.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposed the talks, pressing for military action instead as the best option to halt Iran’s nuclear program.
The diplomatic efforts had stalled in recent weeks over Trump’s demand that Iran agree to a zero-uranium enrichment posture and destroy its stockpile of some 400 kilograms of enriched uranium at a 60% purity level. This could be rapidly enriched further to weapons-grade level.
Tehran refused to oblige, calling it a “non-negotiable”.
Netanyahu has long pledged to eliminate what he has called the Iranian “octopus” – the regime’s vast network of regional affiliates, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the regime of former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, and the Houthi militants in Yemen.
Following Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7 2023, Israel’s military has considerably degraded these Iranian affiliates, one by one. Now, Netanyahu has now gone for beheading the octopus.
Trump keeping his distance
Netanyahu has in the past urged Washington to join him in a military operation against Iran. However, successive US leaders have not found it desirable to ignite or be involved in another Middle East war, especially after the debacle in Iraq and its failed Afghanistan intervention.
Despite his strong commitment to Israel’s security and regional supremacy, Trump has been keen to follow this US posture, for two important reasons.
He has not forgotten Netanyahu’s warm congratulations to Joe Biden when he defeated Trump in the 2020 US presidential election.
Nor has Trump been keen to be too closely aligned with Netanyahu at the expense of his lucrative relations with oil-rich Arab states. He recently visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates on a trip to the Middle East, while bypassing Israel.
Indeed, this week, Trump had warned Netanyahu not to do anything that could undermine the US nuclear talks with Iran. He has been keen to secure a deal to boost his self-declared reputation as a peace broker, despite not having done very well so far on this front.
But as the nuclear talks seemed to be reaching a dead end, Netanyahu decided now was the moment to act.
The Trump administration has distanced itself from the attack, saying it had no involvement. It remains to be seen whether the US will now get involved to defend Israel if and when Iran retaliates.
What a wider war could mean
Israel has shown it has the capacity to unleash overwhelming firepower, causing serious damage to Iran’s nuclear and military facilities and infrastructure. But the Iranian Islamic regime also has the capability to retaliate, with all the means at its disposal.
Despite the fact the Iranian leadership faces serious domestic issues on political, social and economic fronts, it still has the ability to target Israeli and US assets in the region with advanced missiles and drones.
It also has the capability to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20–25% of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments flow. Importantly, Iran has strategic partnerships with both Russia and China, as well.
Depending on the nature and scope of the Iranian response, the current conflict could easily develop into an uncontrollable regional war, with none of the parties emerging as victor. A major conflict could not only further destabilise what is already a volatile Middle East, but also upend the fragile global geopolitical and economic landscape.
The Middle East cannot afford another war. Trump had good reasons to restrain Netanyahu’s government while the nuclear negotiations were taking place to see if he could hammer out a deal.
Whether this deal can be salvaged amid the chaos is unclear. The next round of negotiations was due to be held on Sunday in Oman, but Iran said it would not attend and all talks were off until further notice.
Iran and the US, under Barack Obama, had agreed a nuclear deal before – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Although Netanyahu branded it “the worst deal of the century”, it appeared to be holding until Trump, urged by Netanyahu, unilaterally withdrew from it in 2018.
Now, Netanyahu has taken the military approach to thwart Iran’s nuclear program. And the region – and rest of the world – will have to wait and see if another war can be averted before it’s too late.
Amin Saikal 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.
