Kategori: News in English

Rohingya activists, advocates and health organisations in Australia have been frustrated by the lack of support provided to displaced Rohingya people.

This ethnic minority group called Myanmar home for centuries before being made stateless by the government in 1982, persecuted due to both their race and majority Muslim religion.

While a few hundred Rohinhya refugees have resettled in Australia since 2008, at least a million continue to live in desperate circumstances in the world’s largest refugee camp: Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. There are many horrifying stories of displaced Rohingya facing physical and sexual violence and dire health conditions.

In August, the Refugee Council of Australia council called on the government to remain steadfast on its 2023 pledge to increase resettlement places and provide aid to those still living in camps, but we’ve yet to see substantive action.

As such, local advocates are turning to more creative ways to raise awareness, such as hosting events focused on Rohingya art, culture and resistance. These projects help strengthen local Rohingya communities, while educating the public.

Read more:
7 years after genocide, plight of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh is exacerbated by camp violence

For my research, I’ve investigated how activist groups use creativity and pleasure to encourage broader participation in their efforts.

This work led me to local Rohingya community members and their allies at the Creative Advocacy Partnership, (cofounded by four Australians with Rohingya community leaders). They told me traditional advocacy could increase feelings of oppression and “othering”.

Through interviews with them, I found creative advocacy projects can serve several empowering purposes, including preserving culture (and elevating culture over suffering), honouring ancestors and balancing power dynamics between aid workers and displaced people.

Building bridges to Cox’s Bazar

Last year, Creative Advocacy Partnership cofounders Tasman Munro and Arunn Jegan (who is also a Médecins Sans Frontières emergency coordinator) travelled to Cox’s Bazar to create artworks in collaboration with Rohingya artists, children and storytellers. One outcome was a sculpted bamboo story panel based on a Rohingya folktale.

The bamboo story panel, created in the Kutapalong refugee camp, features the banyan tree, representing the Rohingya people’s longing to connect to their motherland.
Victor Caringal for MSF

Munro described the experience to me:

we sat with [Rohingya creators] Nuru Salam and Nurus Safar, in the front room of their shelter and talked about the project. We saw each other’s work, discussed the tools we needed, the time we had and how flexible the bamboo was […] already, there was a common language and understanding. Over two weeks we had the chance to make together, to learn the artful process of stripping bamboo, figuring out the cane-glass technique, listening to Rohingya folktales and collaborating with talented kids to design and make the story panel.

In 2023, Tasman Munro worked alongside Rohingya artist to create the ‘Two Crows’ bamboo mural in Kutapalong, Cox’s Bazar.
Victor Caringal for MSF

This project was shared back on Gadigal land in an exhibition curated by the Creative Advocacy Partnership, Médecins Sans Frontières and Rohingya youth leader Asma Nayim Ullah. It provided ways to engage with both the refugee crisis and Rohingya culture through a photo exhibition, film screening, and live video call set up with Jegan, who was still stationed in Cox’s Bazar, and a Rohingya storyteller named Rezwan.

A delicious meal was cooked by the Australian Rohingya Women’s Development Organisation. The deep connection between both places was palpable.

A live video link was established between Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh and Join The Dots in Marrickville as part of the ‘Two Crows’ exhibition.
Victor Caringal for MSF

Jegan has lived the difference between traditional advocacy methods (such as focus groups or clinical rounds in refugee camps) and arts-focused projects. He is passionate about shifting the power dynamics of aid so that local voices are heard and disadvantage isn’t perpetuated.

He said that, outside of these creative approaches, he’d noticed dynamics that held aid workers in higher regard than the disenfranchised communities they served:

The arts has been ‘the great leveller’ for me. It places the community as experts, where their skills and crafts are centred, and their stories, plight, and are story-told through them, rather than through simply their misery, disease, or their service user-ship (usage). I’ve found that by using arts, I’ve created a stronger, more equal relationship.

Creative advocacy can change discourse

Here on Gadigal land, prominent Rohingya activist and cofounder/director of the Rohingya Maìyafuìnor Collaborative Network, Noor Azizah, told me millions of Rohingya continue to face extreme hardship:

With 2.8 million Rohingya worldwide, only 1% live in freedom while 99% remain in refugee camps, in hiding, in exile, or trapped in Arakan, Burma. Cox’s Bazar alone hosts nearly one million Rohingya refugees and the situation there remains dire. We need to ensure their voices are heard as this protracted crisis prevents Rohingya from thriving.

In August, to mark the seventh anniversary of the Rohingyas’ 2017 mass displacement from Myanmar, Azizah co-hosted an event called the Rohingya Social. She described it as an

opportunity to amplify voices and remind everyone that the fight for dignity, rights, and justice continues for those who remain displaced.

The public were invited to share in celebrating Rohingya cuisine, culture and survival over an authentic three-course meal. The event featured stories from survivors and Médecins Sans Frontières workers, poetry by a local Year 11 student and colourful paper decorations created by displaced Rohingya children in Malaysia.

Rohingya Social, held on Gadigal land in August 2024, was co-presented by the Creative Advocacy Partnership, Médecins Sans Frontières and the Rohingya community.
Victor Caringal for MSF

The night was full of generosity of spirit. As Azizah wrote on her social media:

Cooking Rohingya food for family and friends is more than just preparing a meal. It’s about honouring our ancestors who passed down these recipes, supporting our people currently facing struggles, and preserving our culture despite the challenges we face. Läs mer…

Black holes don’t have many identifying features. They come in one colour (black) and one shape (spherical).

The main difference between black holes is mass: some weigh about as much as a star like our Sun, while others weigh around a million times more. Stellar-mass black holes can be found anywhere in a galaxy, but the really big ones (known as supermassive black holes) are found in the cores of galaxies.

These supermassive behemoths are still quite tiny when seen in cosmic perspective, typically containing only around 1% of their host galaxy’s mass and extending only to a millionth of its width.

However, as we have just discovered, there is a surprising link between what goes on near the black hole and the shape of the entire galaxy that surrounds it. Our results are published in Nature Astronomy.

When black holes light up

Supermassive black holes are fairly rare. Our Milky Way galaxy has one at its centre (named Sagittarius A*), and many other galaxies also seem to host a single supermassive black hole at their core.

Under the right circumstances, dust and gas falling into these galactic cores can form a disk of hot material around the black hole. This “accretion disk” in turn generates a super-heated jet of charged particles that are ejected from the black hole at mind-boggling velocities, close to the speed of light.

When a supermassive black hole lights up like this, we call it a quasar.

How to watch a quasar

To get a good look at quasar jets, astronomers often use radio telescopes. In fact, we sometimes combine observations from multiple radio telescopes located in different parts of the world.

Using a technique called very long baseline interferometry, we can in effect make a single telescope the size of the entire Earth. This massive eye is much better at resolving fine detail than any individual telescope.

As a result, we can not only see objects and structures much smaller than we can with the naked eye, we can do better than the James Webb Space Telescope.

Black holes are millions of times smaller than galaxies, yet make jets that are pointed in the same direction as the entire galaxy. Optical image: NASA, ESA, R.M. Crockett (University of Oxford, U.K.), S. Kaviraj (Imperial College London and University of Oxford, U.K.), J. Silk (University of Oxford), M. Mutchler (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA), R. O’Connell (University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA), and the WFC3 Scientific Oversight Committee. Top right: MOJAVE Collaboration, NRAO/NSF. Bottom right: Event Horizon Telescope / ESO (same as before)
CC BY-SA

This is the technique that was used to make the first “black hole image” in 2019, showing the halo of light generated around the supermassive black hole hosted by the galaxy M87.

Quasar jets that can be detected using very long baseline interferometry can be millions of light years long and are almost always found in elliptical galaxies. Using very long baseline interferometry, we can observe them all the way down to a few light years or so from their black hole of origin.

The direction of the jet near its source tells us about the orientation of the accretion disk, and so potentially the properties of the black hole itself.

Connection to the host galaxy

What about the host galaxies? A galaxy is a three-dimensional object, formed of hundreds of billions of stars.

But it appears to us (observed in optical or infrared) in projection, either as an ellipse or a spiral. We can measure the shape of these galaxies, tracing the profile of starlight, and measure the long axis and short axis of the two-dimensional shape.

In our paper, we compared the direction of quasar jets with the direction of this shorter axis of the galaxy ellipse, and found that they tend to be pointing in the same direction. This alignment is more statistically significant than you would expect if they were both randomly oriented.

This is surprising, as the black hole is so small (the jets we measure are only a few light years in length) compared to the host galaxy (which can be hundreds of thousands or even millions of light years across).

It is surprising that such a relatively small object can affect, or be affected by, the environment on such large scales. We might expect to see a correlation between the jet and the local environment, but not with the whole galaxy.

How galaxies form

Does this have something to say about the way galaxies form?

Spiral galaxies are perhaps the most famous kind of galaxy, but sometimes they collide with other spirals and form elliptical galaxies. We see these three-dimensional egg-shaped blobs as two-dimensional ellipses on the sky.

The merger process triggers quasar activity in ways we don’t fully understand. As a result, almost all quasar jets that can be detected using very long baseline interferometry are hosted in elliptical galaxies.

The exact interpretation of our results remains mysterious, but is important in the context of the recent James Webb Space Telescope discovery of highly massive quasars (with massive black holes), which have formed much earlier in the universe than expected. Clearly, our understanding of how galaxies form and how black holes influence that needs to be updated. Läs mer…

The housing crisis is pushing more and more people onto the streets. More than one in 10 Canadians report experiencing some form of homelessness in their lifetime.

Forced to camp out, homeless people are increasingly victims of the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) phenomenon. Governments are dismantling encampments — and some are willing to use the notwithstanding clause to circumvent court rulings on their actions — as well as banning supervised drug consumption sites near day-care centres and schools.

Now involuntary treatment is seemingly on their radar.

The rise in involuntary treatments

It is currently possible to forcibly treat someone anywhere in Canada. Provincial mental health legislation allows involuntary admission and involuntary treatment.

Criteria vary from danger to a lack of capacity for consent and the need for treatment. But involuntary admission and treatment should only be used as a last resort.

The rights of citizens to decide what happens to them is fundamental. According to the Supreme Court of Canada, the right to self-determination outweighs other interests, “including what physicians may think is in the patient’s best interests.” Psychiatric diagnoses or substance addictions have no legal impact on the right to consent to care.

No data is systematically collected in Canada on the use of involuntary admission and treatment. Available studies suggest there’s been a steady increase for more than a decade in the use of mental health legislation being used to detain people in Québec, Ontario and British Columbia.

This increase is similar to the situation in other western countries, suggesting that coercion is now an integral part of mental health treatment. Racialized and Indigenous people and people living in precarious conditions are over-represented among those forced into treatment.

The mother of a man who died due to an overdose from toxic unregulated drugs beats a drum as she and other members of Moms Stop the Harm walk among photographs of overdose victims on International Overdose Awareness Day in Vancouver in August 2023.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Research shows structural violations of the rights of people who are involuntarily admitted or treated. Class-action lawsuits have been won or are underway in several Canadian provinces for abuse of rights in psychiatric wards.

Québec will have to compensate people detained illegally.

The New Brunswick ombudsperson concluded that patients at Restigouche Hospital Centre in Campbellton were “victims of negligence, abuse and unacceptable treatment.”

British Columbia had to set up a service of rights advisers following the alarming findings of its ombudsperson in 2019. He reported a systematic failure by healthcare institutions to comply with the procedural safeguards required by the Mental Health Act, including consent to treatment, and by the Ministry of Health to adequately monitor institutions’ compliance with the procedures.

Yet the B.C. government has announced that it will expand involuntary care to keep people and communities “safe.”

Read more:
B.C.’s plan for involuntary addiction treatment is a step back in our response to the overdose crisis

Baseless arguments

The arguments made by advocates for involuntary treatments aren’t supported by science.

First, they often suggest homelessness is due to mental health issues or addiction, while research shows that financial difficulties are the primary cause of homelessness. Rising housing and living costs and low incomes are behind the unprecedented rise in homelessness.

The situation was predictable.

Economic inequality has been on the rise since the 1980s. Housing affordability has been declining over the same period. Homelessness is a structural problem, not an individual one.

Demonstrators hold a sign at the homeless encampment in front of Halifax City Hall in February 2024 after being told they’d have to vacate the site.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese

Second, involuntary treatment proponents make an association between mental health/addiction and public safety, suggesting that people with mental health problems or drug users are violent.

Research has long since disproved this association in terms of mental health and the situation is nuanced for addiction. Nonetheless, involuntary treatment advocates argue that treating people against their will is necessary because they are unable to make decisions for themselves. This assumption is also disproven by research, which reveals a much more complex reality.

In addition, risk assessment and incapacity evaluation tools are controversial and primarily target marginalized and racialized people.

The focus on public safety also perpetuates prejudices and fear, which increases popular support for coercive measures like involuntary treatment. Nearly 70 per cent of Ontario residents, for example, support legislative changes to facilitate forced treatment.

Third, some politicians argue that involuntary treatment works. Current data do not support a strong causal link between involuntary treatment and treatment adherence, relapse prevention or social functioning. On the contrary, they show adverse effects associated with coercion.

Expanded access to community-based services, the use of experiential knowledge from the people concerned and a trauma-informed approach seem promising and more respectful of human rights.

Changing the language

Proponents of involuntary treatments, like Patrick Brown, the mayor of Brampton, Ont., claim “the old approach isn’t working.”

Because the term “involuntary treatment” has a negative connotation, they talk now of “compassionate care.”

This change in terminology aligns with the CARE program implemented in California in 2022. Homeless people with certain psychiatric diagnoses can be subjected to involuntary treatment through “a compassionate civil court process.” CARE’s compassionate approach is presented as a paradigm shift.

Read more:
The ethical dilemmas behind plans for involuntary treatment to target homelessness, mental illness and addiction

But is it?

Making it easier to confine homeless and marginalized people is, to say the least, not a new or original idea. Rather, it’s a very old approach dating back to the Middle Ages.

Involuntary treatment is claimed to be necessary because people would not enter therapy voluntarily. Yet mental health and addiction services are difficult to access across Canada thanks to decades of under-funding. It’s tough to justify violating people’s rights to engage them in involuntary treatments when voluntary treatments are inaccessible.

Compassionate care, in fact, is nothing more than a smoke screen intended to hide coercion, structural inequalities and governments’ lack of social responsibility. Läs mer…

Headlines following Donald Trump’s election victory focused largely on the influence of personalities, such as Elon Musk or Robert Kennedy junior, and single issues, such as how US tariff hikes would affect New Zealand’s exports.

But this oversimplifies and diverts attention from the more systemic challenges a second Trump presidency will pose for Aotearoa New Zealand’s economy.

Yes, Trump is an unpredictable authoritarian and an economic disruptor. But his policies are not novel and need to be understood in a broader context.

Many of Trump’s trade policies are an extension of recent US-centric strategies to dismantle the global free trade model. Ironically, the US largely created this model, but it no longer serves US objectives.

The international trade regime, and the neoliberal model of free trade in general, now face an existential crisis that New Zealand cannot ignore.

Free trade backlash

Trump’s tool of choice for trade policy is high tariffs or border taxes, which make imports more expensive. His agenda is driven by two factors:

increasing production and jobs in the US domestic economy and incentivising foreign firms to invest within the US border to avoid tariffs
geopolitically, using super-tariffs to undercut China’s rise as a competing power.

Neither objective is new. The tariffs Trump imposed in his previous term, especially on China, were largely continued under Joe Biden. They were part of a broader backlash against free trade agreements in the US.

Trump withdrew the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA). The Biden administration did not rejoin and eschewed the Democrats’ traditional approach to free trade.

Biden’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) promoted non-tariff strategies designed to boost US industrial, investment and security interests in Asia. Its “friend-shoring” approach aimed to strengthen economic and foreign policy alliances, including with New Zealand, while eroding China’s influence, especially over critical supply chains in the region.

Interestingly, Trump condemned the IPEF (incorrectly) as a reincarnation of the TPPA, so its fate remains uncertain.

WTO in crisis

There has been a similar cross-party convergence on US challenges to the “rules-based” international trade regime. Both Democrat and Republican administrations have systematically undermined the World Trade Organization (WTO), claiming it no longer serves US interests.

Successive US administrations, starting with Barack Obama’s, have paralysed the WTO’s two-tier dispute system by refusing to appoint new Appellate Body members. This means they can break the WTO rules with impunity – including by imposing unilateral tariff sanctions.

At this year’s WTO Public Forum in September, people were openly discussing the existential crisis in the organisation and possible responses if the US disengages completely.

Bipartisan agreement: Joe Biden continued trade policies enacted during the first Trump presidency.
Getty Images

Breakdown of rules

This is just one part of the WTO’s institutional disintegration. The Doha Development Round, launched in 2001, had effectively collapsed by 2008.

In large part, this was over the Agreement on Agriculture. Its foundations were laid in 1993 by the so-called Blair House Accord, which ensured the US and European Union did not have to reduce (and could continue to increase) subsidies for their farmers. They insisted that continue.

Meanwhile, the US and EU stymied demands from developing countries for alternative “safeguard” and “public stockholding” arrangements to support their farmers and ensure food security.

The US, EU and others blocked a waiver of intellectual property rights that would have ensured affordable access to vaccines, diagnostics and supplies during the COVID-19 (and future) pandemics.

Subsets of members, including New Zealand, have ignored the WTO’s own rules to negotiate plurilateral agreements without a mandate, and seek to dilute the “consensus” rule to have them adopted. Ironically, the main opponents, India and South Africa, are labelled the “blockers” for standing up for the WTO rules.

New Zealand’s challenge

So, the crises in the international trade regime (and the neoliberal model of free trade) predate Trump’s first term.

But successive New Zealand governments have put all their eggs in the “free trade” basket of the WTO and regional and bilateral trade agreements.

Current Trade Minister Todd McClay seems determined to secure new agreements as rapidly as possible, illustrated by the 100-day negotiation of a recent deal with the United Arab Emirates under strict secrecy and with minimal scrutiny.

The previous Labour government pragmatically engaged in the IPEF more as a geopolitical alliance with the US than as a trade forum, despite New Zealand’s export dependency on China and the lack of any clear economic benefits.

So far, the reaction to Trump’s re-election from government ministers, business, farmers and news media has given an impression of business as usual, albeit with the threat of unhelpful US tariffs. But what is really needed is a far-reaching debate about the risks of a failing international trade system.

New Zealand’s export share of GDP has not changed meaningfully over the past few decades, despite more than two-thirds of New Zealand’s exports being covered by free trade agreements. The primary problem is not a lack of markets, but rather firms’ export capability, weak innovation, and an over-reliance on low-value-added commodities.

The now-disbanded Productivity Commission’s work on improving economic resilience urged New Zealand to tackle head-on the challenges of an increasingly uncertain and volatile economic and geopolitical world.

That apparently fell on deaf ears. But Trump’s re-election is an opportunity to open that debate and confront those challenges. Läs mer…

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a global gendered epidemic that inordinately impacts females. Worldwide, 25-50 per cent of women report abuse in a personal relationship and two out of three victims of IPV are female.

Although both women and men experience abuse at the hands of their partners, women disproportionately experience more severe abuse and women and girls are more likely to be killed by an intimate partner than any other member of society.

The many faces of IPV

There are multiple forms of IPV, including sexual, psychological, financial and physical abuse. Injuries associated with physical violence and the mental health consequences of abuse are generally known. Women commonly report physical symptoms including chronic pain, sleep disorders and gastrointestinal issues. These health consequences linger after abuse has ended, and may not become apparent until years later.

Among the common but lesser-known consequences of IPV is a heightened risk for cardiovascular disease.

Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death for males and females. Abuse survivors of both sexes have increased rates of cardiovascular disease, but the increase is higher in women.

Despite the connection between IPV and cardiovascular disease in women, this link is not well known, even among health-care professionals.

Factors driving heart risks in IPV survivors

Emerging data suggests the biological response to mental health stressors may be more pronounced in women, a possible explanation for gender disparities in cardiovascular disease following abuse.
(Shutterstock)

Common mental health issues in survivors of abuse — including depression, anxiety and PTSD — are known risk factors for cardiovascular disease. However, these conditions are linked to cardiovascular disease in women and men, whereas many of the cardiovascular consequences of IPV are specifically linked to women. Emerging data suggests the biological response to mental health stressors may be more pronounced in women, a possible explanation for gender disparities in cardiovascular disease following abuse.

Pain is also a stimulus for cardiovascular disease: individuals with chronic pain have rates of cardiovascular disease nearly double the average. IPV is a leading cause of physical injury for women and women who experience violence have twice the risk of chronic pain than those who do not.

Physical injuries associated with violence occur in both sexes, but studies generally find that female victims of abuse are more likely than males to sustain physical injuries and that these injuries are more severe in female victims.

Women at risk

While any of these consequences of IPV could explain an increase in cardiovascular disease rates and mortality, they need not work in isolation. Mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression and PTSD, increase pain sensitivity, which could exacerbate heightened sensitivity to pain in women.

Inequities in medical treatment may also contribute to the higher rates of cardiovascular disease mortality in women who experience abuse. Sign and symptoms of cardiovascular disease may be dismissed or wrongly attributed by both patients and physicians. More than half of women are unaware of their risk for cardiovascular disease, which may result in them dismissing symptoms or attributing symptoms to non-cardiovascular issues.

Read more:
Dying to be seen: Why women’s risk for heart disease and stroke is still higher than men’s in Canada

Importantly, health-care providers may also overlook broader contextual factors surrounding women’s heart health. Sex and gender-based bias in the assessment and treatment of cardiovascular disease also leads to women not being treated in accordance with guidelines, including delayed and less intensive treatments.

Identifying cardiovascular risks faced by victims of abuse is an important step in solving this emerging crisis. Partnerships between social scientists and health-care professionals are critical to creating a team that identifies women at risk; develops strategies to educate victims and practitioners on risks; and implements treatments and interventions to reduce the adverse health consequences of IPV, while considering the victim’s life circumstances.

A key obstacle for these plans is the lack of information about what biological changes drive cardiovascular disease risk associated with IPV. While the associations between pain and mental health with cardiovascular health are established, shockingly little is known about the changes within the heart that make it more susceptible to disease.

A call to action

Despite the link between IPV and cardiovascular disease in women, this connection is not well known, even among health-care professionals.
(Shutterstock)

The lack of information on the link between cardiovascular health and IPV is reflective of the overall knowledge gap in women’s health.

Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death for men and women, and yet most research continues to focus on male laboratory animals and patients. The focus of research on males is concerning because cardiovascular disease is profoundly different between females and males. Investments in women’s health research like the National Women’s Health Research Initiative in Canada are critical to support basic science research needed to understand the mechanisms of risk and the unique pathology in women.

The siloed nature of research and even medical practice presents other challenges. The systemic effects of IPV — from physical pain to mental health — demands a co-ordinated health-care team that considers the complex interactions between the consequences of abuse. Moreover, IPV should be treated as a global public health crisis requiring expertise from social scientists to inform relevant and reliable health-care support for women.

Finally, the systemic issue of sexism in science and medicine requires addressing the ongoing gender bias in cardiology and cardiovascular research. This requires greater support for health-care professionals to better understand and advocate for female patients’ heart health.

Simultaneously, women must be empowered with the knowledge needed to make independent and informed health-care decisions, something that demands a significant investment in women’s health research — a bill that is long overdue. Läs mer…

Of 44 people who served in Donald Tump’s cabinet during his first administration, only four endorsed him for the presidency in 2024. As he told influential podcaster Joe Rogan days before the election, his biggest mistake was to appoint “disloyal people”.

The 47th president-elect clearly doesn’t intend to make the same mistake this time round, from what we know of the cabinet choices and other political appointments he has made so far.

Chief of staff: Susie Wiles

The first appointment to be announced by the Trump team was not a huge surprise. Trump said that Wiles had “just helped me achieve one of the greatest political victories in American history”, describing her as “tough, smart, innovative”, and “universally admired and respected”.

An experienced political operator who cut her political teeth working on Ronald Reagan’s campaign team in 1980, Wiles has decades of experience in Republican politics in Florida, where she masterminded Ron DeSantis’s successful campaign for governor.

Her relative lack of Washington experience has been spun as a virtue by people close to Trump who say she has no pre-existing loyalties or ties to Washington bureaucrats or insiders.

Secretary of state: Marco Rubio

Once a bitter rival whom Trump ridiculed as “little Marco” when he ran against him in the 2016 Republican primaries, Marco Rubio was elected to the US senate in 2010 with the support of Tea Party funding. Considered hawkish on foreign policy, Rubio’s confrontational stance against China will align him closely with the president-elect.

Rubio’s views on Nato in the past – he co-sponsored a bill which would prevent any US president from pulling out of Nato without congressional approval – would put him at odds with Trump. So would his hard line on Russia. But more recently he has endorsed Trump’s position on Ukraine, saying the war “needs to be brought to a conclusion”.

Rubio is a staunch supporter of Israel, who views Iran as a “terrorist regime”. He urged the Netanyahu government to respond with force to missile attacks launched in Israel by both Iran and its proxy Hezbollah.

Read more:
Marco Rubio: Trump’s foreign policy pick might be a hopeful sign for Nato

Attorney general: Matt Gaetz

In typical Trump fashion, his cabinet picks have combined controversy with surprise. But none more so than Matt Gaetz as attorney general. A long-time Maga stalwart, Gaetz has been a vocal supporter of Trump in Congress, opposing his impeachment on both occasions.

Surprise nomination for attnrney general: Matt Gaetz.
EPA-EFE/Erik S Lesser

In his 14-year career in state and federal politics, the 42-year-old lawyer from Hollywood in Florida, has attracted plenty of controversy – being investigated after allegations of sexual misconduct and misuse of campaign finance rules. Since being elected to Congress in 2016, Gaetz has come to represent the far-right Trump loyalist wing of the GOP.

Homeland security: Kristi Noem

The South Dakota governor was considered a strong contender for the vice-presidential nomination earlier this year until she revealed in a her memoir that she had killed an “untrainable” family dog. This admission quickly put paid to these ambitions.

But Noem was a very vocal supporter of Trump’s immigration policy throughout the campaign and is expected to take a hard line on this issue as secretary of homeland security. Her willingness to use terms like “invasion” to describe immigration demonstrates some of the tone we can expect to come from the Trump administration.

Border tsar: Tom Homan

Tom Homan is another returning cast member from the first Trump administration where he was acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). Now appoined as Trump’s “border tsar”, Homan is another immigration hardliner.

A recent TV interview, in which he made the Trump case for mass deportation and said the concern over splitting up families was easily solved (“families can be deported together”), gave a foretaste of immigration policy during the second Trump White House.

National security advisor: Mike Waltz

Former Green Beret veteran Mike Waltz has years of experience in defence and foreign policy. He is particularly known as a China hawk, having called the country an “existential threat” to the US in the 21st century, much like Russia had been in the 20th century.

He is a passionate supporter of Israel and told journalists earlier this year that he opposed a ceasefire and hostage deal because it would not end the conflict. He supports Trump’s stance on Nato and in 2023 co-sponsored legislation to authorise the use of military force against the cartels in Mexico.

Defence secretary: Pete Hegseth

A veteran of the US National Guard and Fox News, Pete Hegseth is another surprise appointment. In fact it was reported that his appointment as defence secretary took nobody by surprise more than the top brass at the Pentagon itself.

As a Fox News presenter, Hegseth called for several top generals to be fired, including the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, General C.Q. Brown, for what Hesgeth called their “woke” agenda which he said was undermining US military strength.

In a book published earlier this year, Hegseth wrote: “The next president of the United States needs to radically overhaul Pentagon senior leadership to make us ready to defend our nation and defeat our enemies. Lots of people need to be fired.”

Director of national intelligence: Tulsi Gabbard

Formerly a Democrat in the House of Representatives representing Hawaii, Gabbard is another surprise pick. She was was a lieutenant colonel in the National Guard, and after losing the 2020 Democratic nomination to Joe Biden, she left the party in October 2022 and endorsed Trump in August this year.

Director of national intelligence: former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.
EPA-EFE/Erik S Lesser

Gabbard is opposed to continued US support for Ukraine and has been criticised for her extreme views about Ukraine and Russia. She has no experience in intelligence having never worked in the sector, and has not served on any congressional intelligence committees.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy

Another appointment which must rank as suprising but not unexpected after the election campaign is that of Elon Musk. Trump has asked the world’s richest man to work alongside pharmaceuticals billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy at the helm of the department of government efficiency.

Together they are tasked with making cuts estimated at more than US$2 trillion (£1.6 trillion), about one-third of the overall budget of the federal government. Trump has referred to this as his adminstration’s “Manhattan project”.

To achieve the cuts, Musk – whose Tesla is the only US car company not to employ unionised labour – will inevitably run up against the labour unions and the strong workplace protections which benefit federal government employees.

Controversially, this appointment will give Musk power over the very departments that regulate his companies – and which have launched a raft of investigations over issues such as the safety of his Tesla cars and environmental damage allegedly caused by his SpaceX projects in recent years.

These are not cabinet roles. But there is intense speculation that Musk in particular, whom Trump praised in his victory speech as a “super genius”, will play a central role in the president’s inner circle. But, in echoes of the often chaotic hiring and firing that characterised Trump’s first term, there are also reports that Musk’s extremely high media profile may already be grating on the president-elect. Läs mer…

In early October, The Swan auction house in Tetsworth, Oxfordshire, listed several lots of human remains for sale, including skulls from west Africa and shrunken heads from South America.

They were withdrawn within a couple of days after objections were raised by representatives of the Pitt Rivers museum in Oxford and indigenous activists.

The Pitt Rivers Museum specialises in archaeology and anthropology and has been returning similar items from its own collection as part of a wider decolonisation process.

The remains withdrawn from the Swan auction – mostly decorated and adorned skulls – appeared to be from colonial-era collections, with estimated prices ranging from £2,000 to £25,000. They had previously been owned by collectors including the late Playboy owner Hugh Hefner, and Billy Jamieson, a notorious Canadian antique dealer and self-styled “headhunter”.

The remains included examples from the Naga people of India, the Ekoi people of present-day Nigeria and Cameroon, and other groups in the Solomon Islands, Benin, Congo, Nigeria, Amazonia and Papua New Guinea.

While the UK’s museums and education institutions increasingly have professional guidelines about the respectful treatment of human remains, those in private collections do not have any protection. Although it is difficult to legislate how people care for private collections, this case raises the question of whether human remains should still be allowed to be bought and sold at all.

Human remains have long held a fascination for the living. Their collection, display and use has a long, and often dark, history. The Victorians had a penchant for mummies, grinding them up to create new paint colours, tonics for various ailments and more.

There are stories from as late as 1967 of American soldiers removing ears and fingers of those killed during the war in Vietnam as trophies. During and after the Cambodian genocide in the 1970s, some people used the remains of the dead as amulets to ward off dangerous enemies, and as medicines for various illnesses among other things.

The recent auction, however, shows that colonial practices of collecting, owning and displaying the remains of the dead is very much alive in Britain today.

Collecting the dead

Very few countries fully restrict the sale of human remains, and most legislation remains patchy between jurisdictions. There is also often a a lack of clarity over whether rules about such items would fall under laws concerned with the treatment of bodies or those that protect heritage.

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the Human Tissues Act protects human remains. Emerging as a response to the Alder Hey organ scandal and other similar cases, the act aims to “ensure human tissue is used safely and ethically, with proper consent”.

Its remit, however, is limited to remains that are less than 100 years old. It also only covers disposal, storage and public display. The sale of human tissue is only prohibited if it is for the purposes of medical transplantation.

The majority of remains already in private collections, which were largely accumulated during the colonial period, are therefore not covered. There are also significant issues with enforcement of ethical standards. A study in 2022 showed that the unregulated trade in human remains is thriving on UK social media.

Such a trade suggests the bodies of some human beings are seen as artefacts or artworks. They are treated like objects and not people – added to collections of “curiosities” as though they were any other item in the collection.

This is not a problem of the past or one just relevant to private collections. Such attitudes – that others are worthy of less respect and care than others – underpins much racism, imperialism and xenophobia today. Such views are linked to ideas of the superiority of one group of people to another. The sale of the dead illuminates this in vivid form.

The Swan auction house listed its lots as part of what it called “The Curious Collector Sale” and advertised these remains alongside lots containing movie props, ethnic art and artefacts, collections of taxidermy and fossils, and paintings and posters. Although some were identified as the ancestors of the relevant ethnic group, there was nothing to distinguish them from the other curios and collectibles of the sale.

Neiphiu Rio, the chief minister of Nagaland in India, some of whose ancestral remains were among those being listed, is reported as writing to India’s foreign minister:

You will agree that the human remains of any deceased person belongs to those people and their land. Moreover, the auctioning of human remains deeply hurts the sentiments of the people, is an act of dehumanisation and is considered as continued colonial violence upon our people.

Neiphiu Rio has called the mistreatment of remains colonial violence.
Alamy

Selling colonial collections, and especially human remains, perpetuates the ideas that were integral to British imperialism – that other people can be things to be owned and traded. We’d be horrified if the remains of our own ancestors or of people from our own society were treated in this way. To start dealing with the underlying issues related to this, such sales need to stop.

We approached the Swan auction house for comment on this story but they did not reply. Läs mer…

The creative industries are of vital importance to the UK economy, accounting for £115.9 billion in 2019. It’s estimated that film and high-end television production alone – one of the UK’s fastest growing industries – will require between 15,130 and 20,770 additional full-time equivalent employees by 2025.

But there are major issues which need to be addressed if the screen industries are to continue to prosper. These include not only the loss of skills as older workers, women and carers leave the sector, but the over-abundance of screen sector workers from upper-middle class backgrounds.

A new report from charity the Sutton Trust has found that young people aged 35 and under in the creative industries are around four times less likely to be from a working class than a middle-class background.

This is an issue we also encountered in our research on training for the UK film and TV industries. There is a key lack in the “soft” skills required for career success in these industries, such as communication, team working and time management. And these skills are often far more difficult to build for those from poorer or more marginalised backgrounds.

This article is part of our State of the Arts series. These articles tackle the challenges of the arts and heritage industry – and celebrate the wins, too.

These are skills that are traditionally honed on the job – or through (unpaid) internships and work placements. But these are notoriously difficult to secure even for those registered on formal educational programmes. The reality is that access to these careers often comes down to personal connections and the kinds of skills that are fostered through private education and existing networks in the arts.

Learning professional skills

We carried out research funded by the Screen Industries Growth Network into skills gaps and training for the UK screen industry, interviewing screen industry professionals, training providers and university and college lecturers. Our research underscored how difficult it can be to teach professional skills in the classroom.

We worked with creative charity One to One Development Trust to develop an educational game that will help students develop the professional skills they need for working on a film or TV set.

This is an approach that has received support from the UK government. In 2023 the Department for Culture, Media and Sport launched the Video Games Research Framework to help develop and promote research on games and game-related technologies. A key priority focuses on the use of games to teach and develop skills to support the growth of the creative industries.

In the game we developed – Play Your Way Into Production – game players can choose to be a runner, a trainee sound assistant, or a trainee grip. These three entry-level roles give players the chance to experience different elements of working on a set, undertake a variety of tasks and interact with cast and crew.

Getting set-ready

Each of the tasks included in the game are based on real-life studio experiences and are designed to help players develop the skills highlighted in our skills gap report.

These include industry knowledge. There was a perception among training providers that graduates knew how to write, edit or operate a camera but didn’t understand the industry as a whole or how different roles worked together.

The game also works to build professional skills, also known as soft skills: being able to work in a team, communicate effectively or be assertive.

Image from the game Play Your Way Into Production.
One to One Development Trust, Author provided (no reuse)

Some interactions are dictated by the game script and can’t be altered by the player. Others depend on a task which comes with a range of responses which feed into the feedback players get at the end of the game. One example of this is when Hazar, the sound technician, overhears a sexist comment from Nick, the camera operator. Hazar can challenge Nick, laugh along, or not respond. What Nick does next depends on the choice the player makes.

The game also includes a virtual TV studio that can be explored in virtual reality. Players can explore different pieces of kit, read profiles of the cast and crew characters, and find out about different job roles.

While the game isn’t designed to replace work experience, our research has shown that students and industry professionals find it beneficial in helping develop the professional skills required on set. One lecturer commented on how playing the game would mean that the environment on set wouldn’t come as such a surprise:

Imagine if you’ve gone through your whole degree, and this is like your first working experience. And all of a sudden, like the ground would shift beneath you. It’s like, okay, so I know all this stuff about editing and camera, but I don’t understand the flow of working on a set. So yeah, I think, I think in that respect, that’s kind of the game’s USP for me in a way.

In an industry where it’s notoriously difficult to get a foot in the door, having a broader understanding of the culture and requirements of a film set can only be beneficial for young people who might lack the connections to get ahead. Läs mer…

Keir Starmer’s pledge to cut the UK’s emissions by 81% by 2035 is undoubtedly ambitious. However, his assertion at the Cop29 climate conference that it can be achieved without “telling people how to live their lives” is probably not true – at least, not according to what scientists who study this problem have found.

We are two such researchers. Our work concerns the lifestyle and behaviour changes needed to mitigate climate change and we argue that Starmer’s claim is not only unrealistic, it’s also potentially harmful to the prospects of effective climate action.

Many politicians, including Starmer, subscribe to the belief that technological advancements alone – more efficient wind turbines or electric vehicle batteries – will solve the climate crisis. This kind of “techno-optimism” is rife in government policy statements and strategies, but it is misplaced.

The latest scientific assessments, and our own research, show that systemic changes to society and the global economy are necessary to keep global warming at safe levels. While some progress has been made in shifting the supply of energy from fossil fuels to renewables (in the UK, renewables now account for 40% of electricity generation, though only 25% of total energy), far less attention has been paid to tackling demand – how we use energy and resources – which directly relates to people’s lifestyles and values.

Radically different lifestyles

Telling people “how to live their lives”, or more accurately, encouraging and enabling significant lifestyle changes, is essential for meeting climate targets. Most measures for reaching carbon targets in the UK will require changes to public behaviour. It’s the government’s job to make it easier, cheaper and advantageous for people to make those changes.

UK prime minister Keir Starmer addresses the UN climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.
EPA-EFE/Anatoly Maltsev

The necessary scale of this change is startling. To stay within the emissions budget consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, the average UK carbon footprint must shrink from the equivalent of 8.5 to 2.5 tonnes of CO₂ by 2030.

This cannot be achieved through incremental change. It requires radically different lifestyles which involve flying less, eating more plant-based foods, wasting less and replacing boilers and combustion engines with heat pumps and electric vehicles.

Not everyone needs to change their lifestyle to the same extent. Those with the largest carbon footprints – typically the wealthiest people – need to make the most significant changes. As well as having a moral responsibility to act, wealthy people also have a greater capability to change and have more potential to influence wider change as organisational leaders and investors.

Emissions inequality exists within and between countries.
International Energy Agency/Samuel Hampton

Change for the better

Not all climate action is sacrifice. Pro-environmental behaviour and lifestyle change can improve your wellbeing.

There is overwhelming evidence that climate action has health benefits, whether it is eating more plant-based food and less meat, or enjoying cleaner air as you walk or cycle instead of driving.

People with greener lifestyles also tend to be happier. Our international analysis found people who took more environmental action reported higher wellbeing. It can also help manage anxiety about the climate. In this sense going green is more likely to improve your quality of life rather than diminish it.

The manifold benefits of low-carbon lives are waiting to be realised.
EPA-EFE/Clemens Bilan

Importantly, research from numerous countries shows that there is public appetite for radical change. This includes not just a desire for governments and businesses to do more to address climate change, but also a willingness to make personal sacrifices. In a survey of 130,000 people randomly selected across across 125 countries, 69% said they would be willing to contribute 1% of their personal income to climate action.

Achieving the necessary changes to our lives and wider society will require more than public information campaigns (“telling people how to live their lives”, as Starmer calls it). These are what we call downstream approaches: they urge people to make different decisions but have been shown to have little effect in changing behaviour in the long term.

Instead, we need upstream approaches which change the array of options available to everyone. This could involve using regulations, taxes and subsidies to make low-carbon lifestyles easier, cheaper and more attractive to adopt. Most of these measures already enjoy public support.

While Starmer’s emissions target is commendable, his reluctance to discuss lifestyle changes is at odds with the scientific consensus. Tackling climate change effectively requires a shift to a more equal society, where happiness is prioritised over consumption. It necessitates radical behavioural changes, particularly from the wealthiest, and policies that enable these changes.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
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Many people when they “grow up” wonder when the penny will drop and they’ll finally feel like a fully fledged adult. There have been consistent studies and articles on this subject. In fact, one British study of 18 to 30 year olds this year found that attitudes to being an adult are shifting as traditional milestones become out of reach.

At 40, Eleanor Allard (aka Ellie) feels much the same and considers herself, to paraphrase the iconic words of Britney Spears, “not a girl, not yet a woman”. This is an enduring theme in the much-anticipated return of Jacqueline Wilson’s Girl’s in Love series.

Originally featuring four book, Girls in Love (1997), Girls under Pressure (1998), Girls out Late (1999) and Girls in Tears (2002), the series followed Ellie and her two best friends, Magda and Nadine, as they navigated their teens. These books were a hit with young girls and broached topics like boys, first sexual feelings and body images issues and changes.

So, when Wilson announced that, 22 years after the last books, she would be publishing a new one for the original fans of the series, British millennials rejoiced. Think Again is Wilson’s first book for an adult audience, but fans of the original series will be happy to see that a lot of what they loved remains. Think Again is a comforting and funny read about friendship, family and finding fulfilment as adults.

No one’s 20s and 30s look the same. You might be saving for a mortgage or just struggling to pay rent. You could be swiping dating apps, or trying to understand childcare. No matter your current challenges, our Quarter Life series has articles to share in the group chat, or just to remind you that you’re not alone.

Read more from Quarter Life:

Girls As Women

We are reintroduced to Ellie, about to celebrate her 40th birthday. She lives in a rented flat in London, has a daughter at university and is single. She has achieved her dreams of making a living from art, working as an art teacher and freelancing as an illustrator for The Guardian.

From the opening page, fans of Girls in Love will find that Ellie’s voice remains comfortingly consistent with the previous books – although with some (expected) added maturity.

Much like the original series, the narrative is told through Ellie’s compelling point of view. Wilson has done a good job of ageing her up, keeping threads from the originals and maintaining Ellie’s tone of voice, with an adult edge.

One example of this is through callbacks to the second book, Girls Under Pressure, which focused on mental health and body issues. In Think Again, these thoughts remain consistently present and primarily negative, as they were in the original. Yet, as an adult, she is able to put her perspective into a modern and grownup framework, helping the readers to do so too.

It’s refreshing to hear Ellie correcting herself and trying to focus on body positivity. Having insight into Ellie’s internal monologue while she tries to rewire her own thinking and challenge her biases is relatable for returning readers who grew up with the same, often fatphobic, messaging when they were younger. The books were published in a time when tiny body sizes were presented by the mainstream as the norm. These women, however, have come through this, emerging into a culture which is trying harder to represent and celebrate every body type.

Jacqueline Wilson surprises her grown up fans of Girls in Love with Think Again.

While she still grapples with some of the same issues, Ellie’s life has changed in many other ways, such as her success with her career. Readers will be satisfied and pleased for her, even if Ellie herself sometimes struggles to be. Many readers will relate to Ellie’s feelings of self-doubt; despite achieving a lot personally and professionally, she still worries about not having every part of their life in place. She symbolises the desire many Millennial women express to “have it all”. In Ellie’s case, this manifests through her anxiety at still being single at 40, but for readers, these feelings may be about other relationships, their careers or finances.

Although Ellie on her own remains compelling, the most dynamic scenes in the novel occur when she is reunited with best friends, Magda and Nadine. Again, Wilson has done a good job in depicting what these two would look like as adults, while maintaining much of what fans loved about their friendship, including the bickering.

Nadine is still the cool friend, working as a producer, has no plans or desire to be a mum, and is enjoying casual sex. Fans will be relieved that she hasn’t lost her gothic nature. On the surface, it is Magda who has evolved the most. Although she is twice-divorced and on the cusp of a third with her new partner, she is portrayed as softer while attempting to fulfill a stepmother role. Luckily, her friends are there to show her that motherhood doesn’t mean traditional; she can still parent while wearing her iconic red lipstick.

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The differences between the three women allow Wilson to cover a lot of different joys and pains that their demographic may face. Notably, they all represent differing women’s attitudes to motherhood, with Ellie becoming a young, single mum while studying at university; Nadine knowing that motherhood isn’t for her (especially refreshing and pertinent to current women’s rights issues); and Madga not becoming a mother of any kind until 40. Despite these differences, they are consistently seen supporting each other’s choices throughout the narrative, offering guidance rather than judgement.

Although readers may wish Nadine and Magda featured more, the fact that they’re not has more realism, including the, all too familiar, group chat. While the girls can’t talk all the time like they did at school, they remain close, their friendship largely mediated through texts and calls.

The books is full of lovely nods and anecdotes from the original series. It can, however, be read as a standalone by those who are new to the Girls series, as Wilson does provide consistent context. It’s a treat to get to spend time with these characters again after so long. The narrative wraps up nicely, leaving open possibilities for a sequel. Läs mer…