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Plans for the UK and other European countries to send troops to Ukraine are in their very early stages. But the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, will already be thinking about how such a move could play out at home. Sending UK troops abroad, even on a “peacekeeping” mission, always has the potential to spark huge public debate.

This is the first time the government has considered deploying military forces in 11 years, when the Cameron government debated intervening in Syria alongside the US Obama administration in 2014. Since then, the UK has not seriously considered deploying troops overseas.

In the intervening years, the Chilcot inquiry found that the UK’s decision to join the invasion of Iraq was made prematurely, before all peaceful options were exhausted.

This, along with the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, may well have decreased UK public support for military interventions.

When polled in 2021, the British public were unconvinced about involvement in Afghanistan, with 53% thinking that two decades of war in Afghanistan didn’t achieve anything. Worse, 62% think that the conflict either didn’t improve the lives of ordinary Afghans, or made their lives worse.

The picture, for now, is a bit different on deploying troops to Ukraine as peacekeepers. Of those polled in mid-January, 58% either strongly or somewhat support deploying UK troops as peacekeepers. Among Labour voters, support is higher at 66%, with Tory voters (67%) and Lib Dem voters (70%) showing similar levels of support.

Reform voters show far less support (44%), potentially building more of a split between Reform and the other mainstream parties. This division may increase polarisation, and could make it even harder for Starmer to slow the rise of Reform’s challenge to Labour’s voter base.

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Starmer will draw comfort from the limited opposition to deploying peacekeepers. Only 15% of Labour voters somewhat or strongly oppose deploying UK troops as peacekeepers, below the national average of 21%.

But looking at history, we can see how changeable public support can be when it comes to war. In 2003, 54% of those polled supported the US and UK invasion of Iraq.

Despite this, there were voluble public protests against the invasion. In February 2003, an estimated 1 million people marched through London.

The 12-week initial campaign went well, so this continued level of support is not surprising. However, when people looked back at the war in 2015, only 37% thought it had been a good idea.

Only eight years later, in 2023, this had fallen further to 23%. Meanwhile one in five thought Tony Blair should be tried as a war criminal for his decision.

Starmer will need to ensure that the public understand what his government sees as the need for UK troops to serve as peacekeepers in Ukraine – and he will need to do so honestly. Much of the criticism Blair received over Iraq stemmed from accusations he wasn’t “straight” and that he “overstated” the case for UK involvement in Iraq.

Read more:
Iraq war 20 years on: the British government has never fully learned from Tony Blair’s mistakes

The Iraq inquiry report also found the military was ill-equipped at the time of the invasion. There are similar concerns now about the readiness of the British army.

Party politics and spending

Starmer will be aware of the importance of parliamentary support for military action. When Cameron sought support for military intervention in Syria, Ed Miliband as leader of the Labour Party was crucial in the vote against this deployment.

In contrast, when Blair won parliamentary support for invading Iraq, opposition from within the Labour party was so strong that Blair only won because of support from Tory MPs. Starmer will watch the responses in parliament from Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, the Lib Dems and SNP.

At the time of writing, Badenoch hasn’t commented on the idea of sending troops to Ukraine. She has, however, rejected Donald Trump’s attacks that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is a dictator.

Comments from former prime minister Boris Johnson that Trump accusing Ukraine of starting the war was the same as claiming that “America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor” may help build cross-party support.

The most important challenge to Starmer’s plans could come from the Treasury rather than the Tories. Proposals reportedly involve 30,000 British and European troops.

The number of troops that the UK would contribute to this joint force is unclear. However, the cost will be the prime focus for the chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves.

Reeves has committed to increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP (up from 2.3%), but the timeline for this has not been set out. Starmer is under pressure to increase it even further, but any increase will be financially difficult given the state of Britain’s finances.

The UK saw significant protests against the war in Iraq in 2003.
Janine Wiedel/Shutterstock

This might help Starmer on his trip to Washington next week. Trump will be less likely to criticise Starmer if the PM can show that he is listening to Trump’s demands for Nato countries to increase their military spending.

But crucially, while increased spending to enable this deployment may improve UK-US relations, it could also make things difficult with voters, who could have to endure tax rises or further cuts to public spending.

Badenoch has said that failing to increase defence spending “is not peacemaking, it is weakness”. This suggests that the cost of intervention will be a key point of contention for the Tory leader.

Deploying UK troops to Ukraine may be a defining part of Starmer’s foreign policy. Increasing military spending and showing that the UK will help bear the cost of peacekeeping in Ukraine may also help set the tone of Starmer’s relationship with Trump.

However, politically, the consequences of deploying UK troops to Ukraine could spark numerous domestic challenges. While Labour voters appear to support the proposal now, there is likely to be opposition from at least some Reform voters – something Starmer doesn’t need more of right now. The financial costs will also put even more pressure on Labour’s spending plans, and could build division between PM and chancellor. Läs mer…

The start of 2025 has been good for China and its reputation as a high-tech innovator. The unveiling of the Chinese-made artificial intelligence (AI) tool, DeepSeek, caused consternation on the US stock exchange and from potential competitors in Silicon Valley.

Chinese firms are increasingly at the forefront of key high-level technologies such as electric vehicles (EVs) and AI, as reflected by the success of China’s electric vehicles, BYD, and now DeepSeek.

These moves have made the Chinese economy more self sufficient than it was during Trump’s first term, and has made Beijing more confident about pushing back politically against Trump.

This is all underlined by a high-level meeting hosted by President Xi Jinping at China’s Great Hall of the People this week. He told the heads of China’s leading tech firms it was time for them “to give full play to their capabilities” and spoke of it as a patriotic duty, according to official accounts.

This comes as China starts being hit by US tariffs of an additional 10% on its goods, as well as a slew of anti-China rhetoric from the Trump government.

But China’s high tech industries are on the up, and this is a significant boost for Xi. For instance, in January this year, sales of the Chinese EVs exceeded those of Tesla in the UK for the first time.

Part of the Chinese EV’s success could be attributed to a backlash against Tesla’s co-founder Elon Musk, after he started backing far-right parties around the world.

Another factor that Chinese high-tech goods have in their favour are lower prices. Prices for Chinese EVs start at £7,697 in the UK, for example – much lower than Tesla’s Model 3 at £25,490.

This price difference will be significant in the latest phase of the Sino-US trade war, particularly in countries struggling with a cost-of-living crisis. China is also hoping its cheap prices and tech innovations will help it find new trading allies to counteract Washington’s proposed tariffs.

What China has to offer

China is a fast-growing economic and political power and is expected to account for nearly a quarter of the global economy by 2030.

The success of BYD and DeepSeek comes at a time where Beijing feels more prepared for Trump’s tough tariffs and tension with Washington, than it did in his previous term. China has responded to Trump’s threats with reciprocal tariffs on US coal and liquefied gas, as well as a ban on the export of critical minerals. These are a key component for many US military technologies varying from communications equipment to missiles.

China accounts for 72% of all rare earth imports for the US. Such measures contrast with the cautious approach taken by Beijing in 2017, when US tariffs during Trump’s first term met little retaliation from Beijing.

The changes in China’s tactics can partly be attributed to what Beijing learned from the previous trade war. In 2017 there were weaknesses in the supply chains of many Chinese firms, most notably ZTE and Huawei.

They struggled when Washington pressurised its own chipmakers and those of allied states, such as Britain’s Arm, to stop sales of semiconductor technology to China. As a result, finding long-term alternatives to US technology in the supply chain has become a key priority for Beijing.

What is Deep Seek?

Xi has recognised the value of firms such as Huawei and BYD in aiding China’s wider technological (and geopolitical) ambitions, most notably as part of the Made in China 2025 strategy, a national strategy to make China a leader in high-tech technology.

Read more:
DeepSeek: how China’s embrace of open-source AI caused a geopolitical earthquake

Traditionally, China was seen as the home of cheap, low-quality goods, which had been central to its development in the 1980s and 1990s. But many of companies producing these products are increasingly moving to south-east Asia to take advantage of lower labour costs.

However, Chinese industries are now gaining ground in fields that have traditionally been the preserve of developed nations. For instance, Huawei has developed a spin off, Honor, which has gone from producing cheap, simple smartphones and into AI technology.

Meanwhile, the success of BYD and DeepSeek have demonstrated that China is, in some ways at least, far better placed for a prolonged trade war. Beijing is feeling more confident, which explains its willingness to push back against Washington this time.

So the White House will have to deal with higher prices for US goods going into China, as well as additional trade spats with the EU, Canada and the UK. It might be a bumpy ride for US consumers.

How Beijing responds and its new-found clout may determine the course of this new trade war, and potentially add to its long-term standing in the world. Läs mer…

Anyone familiar with Scotland will know the weather is at best mercurial, and at worst wet, grey and what we call “dreich” – a good Scottish word meaning drab. For an artist in the early 20th century suffering not just miserable weather but a cultural landscape of joyless, soul-sucking Presbyterianism, escaping to the sunlit uplands of the Parisian avant garde, where artists were experimenting wildly with new ideas and techniques, would have been deeply attractive.

Into this vivid world of colour and possibility stepped four Scottish artists who embraced everything this exciting new art scene had to offer, and in doing so, changed Scotland’s art forever. Inspired by the post-impressionist works of Van Gogh, Matisse, Cezanne and Derain, they often painted outdoors, revelling in nature, creating exceptional artworks that explored light, shape and colour.

Green Sea Iona by SJ Peploe (1925), oil on canvas.
The Fleming Collection., Author provided (no reuse)

Samuel John Peploe experimented with Cezanne-like geometric forms, while John Duncan Fergusson took on fauvist influences. George Leslie Hunter focused on blocks of colour, and Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell explored bold shapes and impressionistic compositions.

Together they became known as the “Scottish colourists”, and their work is being celebrated at a new exhibition at the Dovecot in Edinburgh. As our reviewer Blane Savage points out, each brought back to Scotland new approaches to art that were reflected in their subsequent work. Take Peploe’s Green Sea, Iona from 1925, which perfectly captures the mesmerising colours of a Hebridean shoreline. Radiant and vibrant, here was art to lift even the dreichest Presbyterian Scot’s heart.

The Scottish Colourists: Radical Perspectives is on at the Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh until June 28.

Read more:
Scottish colourists exhibition: the painters who stood shoulder to shoulder with Matisse and Cezanne

Flowers, grief and reconciliation

Just as the Scottish colourists loved a nice vase of voluptuous blooms, the new Saatchi Gallery exhibition on the subject, named simply Flowers, explores the place of flora in contemporary art, as well as its wider cultural influence.

Reviewer Judith Brocklehurst describes the show as resembling a “supersized florist”, filled with bunches of blooms and hanging arrangements of dried flowers. The exhibition offers a wide perspective: from sculpture finding inspiration in Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, to William Morris’s much-loved floral designs, to the digital recreation of 17th-century Dutch paintings, and contemporary photography and video installations too.

Passing Through by Orlanda Broom.
Courtesy the artist

This richly imaginative and engaging exhibition celebrating the importance of flora in our lives is well worth an hour of your time if you’re in London.

Flowers – Flora in Contemporary Art and Culture is on display at London’s Saatchi Gallery until May 5 2025.

Read more:
Flowers at London’s Saatchi Gallery: this exploration of flora in history and contemporary culture smells as good as it looks

Highly recommended cinema this week is the Japanese film Cottontail, a gentle and touching story about a middle-aged man grieving the loss of his wife after a long illness. Honouring her dying wish, he takes her ashes to be scattered in the Lake District in the north of England – a place that had special significance for her.

Woven through the tale is the man’s complicated relationship with his son, whom he has neglected for his career. Struggling to connect, they embark on the journey together, each dealing with their own grief and sense of loss. Chao Fang, an expert in ageing, death and dying, found this delicate film’s portrayal of grief realistic and relatable, and the journey to find peace by reconciling the past and present both absorbing and affecting.

Cottontail is in select cinemas now.

Read more:
Cottontail review: how a man’s journey through grief mirrors our search for peace – by an expert in death and grieving

Fernanda Torres is outstanding as the wife and mother Eurnice in I’m Still Here.
BFA / Alamy

The Oscar-nominated I’m Still Here, released today, sees director Walter Salles adapt Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s autobiographical novel of the same name. The film follows the grief of a family whose husband and father is disappeared by the regime of Brazilian dictator Emílio Garrastazu Médici in the early 1970s. The film is carried by a memorable performance from actress Fernanda Torres who plays Eunice, the wife of missing left-wing politician Rubens.

Relating the story from Eunice’s perspective as she desperately searches for her husband, the film details the breakdown of her relationship with her eldest daughters as they all seek to deal with their devastating loss and uncertain future. Professor of film Belén Vidal describes the film as a “clear-cut tribute to the ‘feminine’ politics of resistance”. Sad, moving and bittersweet in its conclusion, I’m Still Here, appropriately, lingers long after the credits have rolled.

I’m Still Here is in cinemas now.

Read more:
I’m Still Here: a vibrant testament to female resilience that mourns Brazil’s dark past

Downfall of an Instagram darling

Often real life is stranger than anything created for our screens. Based on the true story of Australian wellness influencer Belle Gibson, Apple Cider Vinegar follows the story of a social media darling documenting her “journey” as she rejects conventional medicine for alternative therapies to treat a rare form of brain cancer. But in 2015, Gibson was exposed as a financial fraud – and worse, was revealed as never having had cancer. The internet, understandably, went wild. But how was she able to perpetrate such an audacious and complex deception?

Katilyn Dever as Belle Gibson in the Netlix series Apple Cider Vinegar.
FlixPix / Alamy Stock Photo

Apple Cider Vinegar dramatises Gibson’s story, documenting her meteoric rise to fame and her dramatic downfall, detailing some of the psychological issues that influenced her deceit. But, as sociology professor Stephanie Baker indicates, this shocking story also illustrates a wider point about the conditions that enable frauds like Gibson to gain credibility and influence online. Truly fascinating stuff, it once again reveals how the virtual nature of the internet deludes people when it comes to online behaviour, accountability and getting away with it.

Apple Cider Vinegar is now streaming on Netflix.

Read more:
Apple Cider Vinegar: how social media gave rise to fraudulent wellness influencers like Belle Gibson Läs mer…

Amid rising tensions around the world, the UK government faces pressure to increase defence spending. External threats and uncertainty over the nature of peace talks with Russia over Ukraine have been in the spotlight. But there are also broader political and economic interests shaping these decisions.

The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, must navigate commitments to Nato, expectations from allies and the influence of the defence industry. All the while, the squeeze on domestic spending and public scepticism loom large.

The UK’s total military spending for 2024-2025 is expected to be £64.4 billion, with a rise to £67.7 billion in 2025-26. This is equal to 2.3% of the entire UK economy (GDP). It would continue the trend of making the UK one of the highest military spenders in Europe. But it’s still not enough as far as the US president, Donald Trump, is concerned.

In 2023-2024, the UK’s Ministry of Defence spent its budget across several key areas. Around one-third went towards investment in things such as equipment, infrastructure and technology. Another big area of spending was personnel costs, accounting for around one-fifth of the spend.

In recent years, UK military spending has fluctuated, reflecting a balance between modernisation, deterrence and operational readiness. One of the most significant areas of investment has been in the UK’s nuclear deterrent (Trident).

At the same time, cyber defence has become a growing focus, with £1.9 billion allocated to counter threats such as increased cyber attacks and misinformation campaigns from foreign governments and political extremists. The UK has also committed to expanding its next-generation air capabilities.

Britain’s recent escalation in defence investment mirrors a global surge in military spending. In 2024, worldwide defence expenditures reached an unprecedented US$2.46 trillion (£1.95 trillion), marking a 7.4% real-term increase from the previous year.

This trend is particularly pronounced in Europe, where nations are bolstering their military capabilities in response to geopolitical tensions such as the war in Ukraine. Germany’s defence budget experienced a significant 23.2% real-term growth, making the country the world’s fourth-largest defence spender.

In the UK, Labour has pledged to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, aligning with Nato expectations. It also serves as a response to concerns about the country’s military readiness. This could require several billion pounds more annually, raising questions about how this would be funded.

Publicly, the party presents this commitment as a necessary investment in the UK’s global standing and ability to deter aggression. However, you can argue that there is more at play.

Political and economic pressures

Starmer’s government inherited a complex set of geopolitical challenges, from European security concerns to the UK’s international relationships post-Brexit. Nato commitments remain a significant driver of defence spending, particularly as European allies anticipate shifts in US foreign policy under the second Trump presidency.

The UK must also respond to regional tensions beyond Europe, due to its military alliances in the Indo-Pacific and its arms trade relationships with Middle Eastern states.

Domestically, Labour’s commitment to raising defence spending is not just about security – it is also a political calculation. Starmer wants to dispel any perceptions that Labour is weak on defence.

However, it comes at a time of fiscal constraint. Any new defence commitments must compete with demands for public investment in healthcare, education and infrastructure. Without additional taxation or significant budget cuts, Labour may struggle to meet its defence spending targets without compromising other commitments.

Beyond geopolitical necessity, increased military spending benefits the UK’s powerful military-industrial complex (the relationship between the country’s military and its defence industry). Major defence contractors such as BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce and Lockheed Martin UK secure billions in government contracts.

The so-called “revolving door” between government and defence firms frequently sees former military officials and politicians taking on lucrative roles in private-sector defence companies.

But the cross-party consensus on expanding Britain’s defence industry, now embraced by trade unions and political commentators, reflects a narrow vision of economic security that overlooks more sustainable alternatives.

The sector’s 200,000 jobs are frequently claimed to justify increased military spending. But investment in renewable energy infrastructure and domestic energy production could both boost employment and address fundamental security challenges exposed by the Ukraine crisis.

The reliance on foreign energy sources can be weaponised by adversarial states, as reflected in the continued reliance of EU countries on Russia for their energy needs. By investing in domestic renewable energy infrastructure, the UK can insulate itself from geopolitical energy threats. Stable energy supplies can underpin both economic resilience and military readiness.

But there is a disconnect between strong government protection for arms manufacturers and relatively limited support for green technology development. This, even as climate change poses an escalating threat to national stability.

Labour faces a difficult balancing act. Increasing defence spending helps solidify the party’s credibility on national security. But domestically, it risks alienating voters who favour investment in social welfare over military expansion.

Additionally, higher military expenditure could make tax hikes or borrowing necessary. Both pose political hazards. And there is a real risk that increased spending will disproportionately benefit corporate defence giants rather than the public.

Starmer hopes increased defence spending will show that he is serious about European security.
Fred Duval/Shutterstock

Internationally, Starmer aims to signal Britain’s continued reliability as a Nato ally amid uncertainties about the US commitment to European security. This positioning becomes especially significant given the UK’s post-Brexit need to demonstrate its global relevance and military capability.

Labour’s drive to increase defence spending is also shaped by economic imperatives that extend beyond immediate security needs. The party faces pressure to expand a major sector of British manufacturing. At stake are not just defence capabilities but jobs, regional development and industrial strategy.

The government now finds itself caught between competing pressures. The commitment to military expansion reflects not just geopolitical imperatives but also domestic political calculations and economic concerns, which appear to be equally influential. And it raises fundamental questions about how national security priorities are truly determined in an era of multiple challenges. Läs mer…

For many low-budget, independent films, an Oscar nomination is a golden ticket.

The publicity can translate into theatrical releases or rereleases, along with more on-demand rentals and sales.

However, for “No Other Land,” a Palestinian film nominated for best documentary at the 2025 Academy Awards, this exposure is unlikely to translate into commercial success in the U.S. That’s because the film has been unable to find a company to distribute it in America.

“No Other Land” chronicles the efforts of Palestinian townspeople to combat an Israeli plan to demolish their villages in the West Bank and use the area as a military training ground. It was directed by four Palestinian and Israeli activists and journalists: Basel Adra, who is a resident of the area facing demolition, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor. While the filmmakers have organized screenings in a number of U.S. cities, the lack of a national distributor makes a broader release unlikely.

Film distributors are a crucial but often unseen link in the chain that allows a film to reach cinemas and people’s living rooms. In recent years it has become more common for controversial award-winning films to run into issues finding a distributor. Palestinian films have encountered additional barriers.

As a scholar of Arabic who has written about Palestinian cinema, I’m disheartened by the difficulties “No Other Land” has faced. But I’m not surprised.

The role of film distributors

Distributors are often invisible to moviegoers. But without one, it can be difficult for a film to find an audience.

Distributors typically acquire rights to a film for a specific country or set of countries. They then market films to movie theaters, cinema chains and streaming platforms. As compensation, distributors receive a percentage of the revenue generated by theatrical and home releases.

The film “Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat,” another finalist for best documentary, shows how this process typically works. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2024 and was acquired for distribution just a few months later by Kino Lorber, a major U.S.-based distributor of independent films.

The inability to find a distributor is not itself noteworthy. No film is entitled to distribution, and most films by newer or unknown directors face long odds.

However, it is unusual for a film like “No Other Land,” which has garnered critical acclaim and has been recognized at various film festivals and award shows. Some have pegged it as a favorite to win best documentary at the Academy Awards. And “No Other Land” has been able to find distributors in Europe, where it’s easily accessible on multiple streaming platforms.

So why can’t “No Other Land” find a distributor in the U.S.?

There are a couple of factors at play.

Shying away from controversy

In recent years, film critics have noticed a trend: Documentaries on controversial topics have faced distribution difficulties. These include a film about a campaign by Amazon workers to unionize and a documentary about Adam Kinzinger, one of the few Republican congresspeople to vote to impeach Donald Trump in 2021.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of course, has long stirred controversy. But the release of “No Other Land” comes at a time when the issue is particularly salient. The Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing Israeli bombardment and invasion of the Gaza Strip have become a polarizing issue in U.S. domestic politics, reflected in the campus protests and crackdowns in 2024. The filmmakers’ critical comments about the Israeli occupation of Palestine have also garnered backlash in Germany.

Locals attend a screening of ‘No Other Land’ in the village of A-Tuwani in the West Bank on March 14, 2024.
Yahel Gazit/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

Yet the fact that this conflict has been in the news since October 2023 should also heighten audience interest in a film such as “No Other Land” – and, therefore, lead to increased sales, the metric that distributors care about the most.

Indeed, an earlier film that also documents Palestinian protests against Israeli land expropriation, “5 Broken Cameras,” was a finalist for best documentary at the 2013 Academy Awards. It was able to find a U.S. distributor. However, it had the support of a major European Union documentary development program called Greenhouse. The support of an organization like Greenhouse, which had ties to numerous production and distribution companies in Europe and the U.S., can facilitate the process of finding a distributor.

By contrast, “No Other Land,” although it has a Norwegian co-producer and received some funding from organizations in Europe and the U.S., was made primarily by a grassroots filmmaking collective.

Stages for protest

While distribution challenges may be recent, controversies surrounding Palestinian films are nothing new.

Many of them stem from the fact that the system of film festivals, awards and distribution is primarily based on a movie’s nation of origin. Since there is no sovereign Palestinian state – and many countries and organizations have not recognized the state of Palestine – the question of how to categorize Palestinian films has been hard to resolve.

In 2002, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rejected the first ever Palestinian film submitted to the best foreign language film category – Elia Suleiman’s “Divine Intervention” – because Palestine was not recognized as a country by the United Nations. The rules were changed for the following year’s awards ceremony.

In 2021, the cast of the film “Let It Be Morning,” which had an Israeli director but primarily Palestinian actors, boycotted the Cannes Film Festival in protest of the film’s categorization as an Israeli film rather than a Palestinian one.

Film festivals and other cultural venues have also become places to make statements about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and engage in protest. For example, at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017, the right-wing Israeli culture minister wore a controversial – and meme-worthy – dress that featured the Jerusalem skyline in support of Israeli claims of sovereignty over the holy city, despite the unresolved status of Jerusalem under international law.

Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev wears a dress featuring the old city of Jerusalem during the Cannes Film Festival in 2017.
Antonin Thuillier/AFP via Getty Images

At the 2024 Academy Awards, a number of attendees, including Billie Eilish, Mark Ruffalo and Mahershala Ali, wore red pins in support of a ceasefire in Gaza, and pro-Palestine protesters delayed the start of the ceremonies.

So even though a film like “No Other Land” addresses a topic of clear interest to many people in the U.S., it faces an uphill battle to finding a distributor.

I wonder whether a win at the Oscars would even be enough. Läs mer…

Brazilian politics are getting more dramatic again.

The South American country’s attorney general filed five criminal charges against former President Jair Bolsonaro and 33 others in its Supreme Court on Feb. 18, 2025, detonating political shock waves. The charges include plotting a coup d’état to prevent Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva’s presidency. The other defendants include several former prominent officials, including a former spy chief, defense minister, national security adviser and Bolsonaro’s running mate.

Lula took office in Brazil for a third time in January 2023, after he defeated Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential election. Bolsonaro, a right-wing politician allied with U.S. President Donald Trump, had served the previous four-year term. Bolsonaro and his codefendants are also charged with trying to poison Lula and assassinate his vice presidential running mate, Geraldo Alckmin, and Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes; participating in an armed criminal organization; and seeking to violently overthrow the democratic rule of law. He denies doing anything wrong.

As a professor of Brazilian politics, I believe that Bolsonaro’s legal troubles threaten to definitively end his political career. There’s also a possibility that the 69-year-old former president will be sentenced to prison. But, at the same time, the charges could also galvanize Bolsonaro’s base – playing into a narrative that sees the right-wing leader as stymied, unfairly, by the government he used to run.

No sash passed

Bolsonaro’s behavior before, during and after his second presidential campaign was unusual for any president seeking another term. He claimed, when he was still in office, that Brazil’s electronic voting system was not secure and predicted that fraud might crop up in the 2022 elections.

Although he never produced any evidence to support this claim, he promoted it on social media, fostering skepticism about the election among some voters.

Bolsonaro never formally conceded his narrow electoral defeat to Lula in October 2022, insinuating that instead the election had been stolen. In 2023, Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Court ruled that he had abused his power and banned him from running for political office again for the next eight years.

Instead of attending Lula’s inauguration on Jan. 1, 2023, where he would have been expected to participate in the traditional passing of the sash from the incumbent to the incoming president, Bolsonaro flew to Orlando, Florida, on Dec. 30, 2022. He stayed in Kissimmee, Florida, for the next three months.

That meant Bolsonaro was not in Brazil when thousands of his supporters rampaged through and vandalized three government buildings in Brasília on Jan. 8, 2023. The incident was strikingly similar to Trump supporters’ assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The new charges accuse Bolsonaro of taking part in a conspiracy to delegitimize the elections. The indictment also alleges that after the results were announced, Bolsonaro and the other defendants encouraged protests and urged the armed forces to intervene, declare a state of siege and prevent the peaceful transition of power from Bolsonaro to Lula.

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro can still draw crowds of supporters, as happened on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro on April 21, 2024.
Buda Mendes/Getty Images

Possibility of prison

The evidence in this indictment is based, in part, on plea-bargained testimony by one of the alleged conspirators, the former presidential adviser and army Lt. Col. Mauro Cid.

The attorney general has also accused Bolsonaro and his associates of being linked to businessmen who paid for buses to take Bolsonaro supporters to Brasília so they could participate in the Jan. 8 attacks, which caused damage estimated at 20 million Brazilian reais (US$3.5 million). And the indictment alleges that the coup plot failed because the commanders of Brazil’s army and air force refused to support the conspiracy, although the commander of the navy did, which explains why he was named as a defendant.

If Brazil’s Supreme Court accepts the charges, which seems likely, the legal battle will begin. If Bolsonaro is convicted, he could go to prison.

Bolsonaro’s defense team, for its part, says that the charges are “inept” and unconvincing. His lawyers expressed confidence that they could win the case.

President Lula, wearing a hat, walks alongside Brazil’s first lady, Rosangela Janja da Silva, in a pink suit, during a rally in Brasilia on Jan. 8, 2025 – two years after supporters of his predecessor staged a failed coup attempt.
Claudio Reis/Getty Images

Narrow path

Bolsonaro and his supporters have long criticized Brazil’s Supreme Court, arguing that it has exceeded its constitutional powers and become a judicial “dictatorship.” They have also pushed for Congress to grant amnesty to everyone who took part in or helped carry out the Jan. 8 attacks, including Bolsonaro.

To date, Brazil’s Supreme Court has convicted 371 people for participating in the attacks. Those convicted have received prison sentences of between three and 17 years.

Unlike in the United States, however, there has been a broad consensus in Brazil that the attacks were illegitimate and unacceptable. This consensus includes many lawmakers on the right and center-right in Brazil’s Congress, as well as in state and local governments.

So, although the example of Donald Trump returning to the presidency and pardoning the participants in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol inspires Bolsonaro’s supporters, his path to achieving a similar result is narrower than was Trump’s.

Meanwhile, Trump’s media company, which owns Truth Social and Rumble, sued Moraes, the judge Bolsonaro is accused of plotting to kill, for ordering the suspension of social media accounts and thereby undermining the First Amendment rights of U.S. citizens. The case was filed in federal court in Tampa, Florida, on Feb. 19.

Any trial of Bolsonaro and the other alleged coup plotters could spark a political struggle.

Brazil’s right wing is currently divided between advocates of hard-line Bolsonarismo – a disruptive ideology that advocates social conservatism, a lightly regulated economy, militarism and a strong executive branch – and a more pragmatic conservatism that works within the conventional rules of politics and is mainly focused on patronage and the management of the spoils of office.

Should Bolsonaro and his fellow defendants be tried in the Supreme Court, those hard-liners could be mobilized and energized.

They would see the trial as the political establishment’s persecution of their political hero. And a struggle to find Bolsanaro’s successor, most likely between his son Eduardo and the former president’s wife, Michelle, would ensue.

The successor would claim the mantle of opposition to Lula, who is eligible to seek a fourth presidential term and claims to want to run for reelection in 2026 – when he would be about to celebrate his 81st birthday.

High stakes

There are, to be sure, some Brazilian politicians who are more moderate than Bolsonaro and would also like to run against Lula next time. They would bring much less baggage to that presidential race.

Their candidacies might offer a possible return to the relative political stability Brazil had experienced for almost two decades before 2013, when the main dividing line in Brazilian politics was between coalitions led by the center-right Social Democratic Party and the center-left Workers’ Party.

To be clear, it’s hard to overstate the potential consequences of the Supreme Court’s deliberation and judgment in this case.

The trial, should it occur, would be televised and also have a geopolitical dimension, because it would be closely watched by advocates of hard-right populism in other countries across the Americas and beyond. The stakes are high.

In the meantime, I have no doubt that Bolsonaro’s supporters will try to use his legal woes to rally his political movement. The judgment of Brazil’s Supreme Court, should it decide to hear this case, could therefore end Bolsonaro’s political career. However, no matter what happens, I believe that Bolsonarismo would still be alive and well as a political force in Brazil and a factor in the 2026 elections. Läs mer…

On top of efforts to fire potentially tens of thousands of federal workers, an early executive order from President Donald Trump’s second term seeks to reclassify the employment status of as many as 50,000 other federal workers – out of more than 2 million total – to make them easier for the president to fire as well.

The order has already been challenged in court by two federal workers’ unions and other interest groups, though no judge has yet issued any orders. The Trump administration is drafting rules to put the order into effect.

The Conversation U.S. politics editor Jeff Inglis spoke to James Perry, a scholar of public affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington, to understand what the order is trying to achieve and how it would affect federal workers, the government and the American public. What follows is an edited transcript of the discussion.

Andrew Jackson, depicted here giving a speech, believed the president should be in control of most federal workers.
PHOTOS.com / Getty Images Plus

What is the standard situation for government employees?

In the 1820s and 1830s, President Andrew Jackson popularized the idea that the president could, and should, hire supporters into government jobs. But by the early 1880s, there was concern on the parts of both Democrats and Republicans that the victor would control a lot of workers who would serve the president, not the American people whose tax dollars paid their salaries.

So the parties came together in 1883 to pass the Pendleton Act stipulating that government workers are hired based on their skills and abilities, not their political views. That law was updated in 1978 with the Civil Service Reform Act, which added more protections for workers against being fired for political reasons.

Those rules cover about 99% of staff in the federal civil service. Currently, there are just about 4,000 political appointees. I’ve seen various estimates that this new executive order would shift at least 50,000 positions from career positions to the political-appointments list.

Some states, such as Mississippi, Texas, Georgia and Florida, have moved to strip employment protections from state government employees, turning protected employees into at-will workers, who can be fired at any time for any reason. These are largely red states, with strong control by Republican governors. Supporters of this move at the federal level argue that at-will employment can work in federal civil service.

This argument is not backed by strong evidence. The evidence supporters offer is that human resources directors, who are often appointees of the governor who changed the statute, claim no one has complained about the change in policy. But that doesn’t include people who are likely to have a different perspective.

It could be that nobody is talking about people being fired for political reasons in these states because they are afraid of getting fired themselves.

What does this executive order change, and why?

The rationale for the new policy is that the administration wants to get rid of federal workers whom leaders perceive as either intransigent or insubordinate – or who they fear might oppose Trump’s policy initiatives. This sets up a conflict between how government workers see their duties and how Trump appears to view them.

Federal employees interviewed by sociologist Jamie Kucinskas during Trump’s first term say they are obligated to look beyond the president’s bidding: They took an oath to the Constitution when they started their jobs, and their salaries and benefits are paid for with taxpayer dollars.

Trump, by contrast, says workers in the executive branch must answer to him and follow his orders.

Trump and others have tried to cloak this effort in language about removing workers who perform poorly at their jobs. That concern is legitimate. The Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, which surveys hundreds of thousands of federal workers every year about various aspects of their work and working conditions, indicates that in 2024, 40% of those surveyed said people who perform poorly are not fired and do not improve.

But taking action against only 50,000 of the 2 million-plus federal employees isn’t going to address such a wide problem.

There’s a stereotype that in government it can be hard to discipline or fire workers who are not competent at their jobs. The flip side of that stereotype is, however, false: Private businesses are not better at holding poor performers accountable. Survey evidence shows the private sector has just as much difficulty as the government with getting workers to perform effectively.

There’s room for legitimate disagreement about how far federal employees have to go to comply with presidential directives. The people who think loyalty is the key to merit still might not agree on whether that loyalty is owed to the person sitting in the Oval Office or to the Constitution.

Protests against the Trump administration have been widespread, including against its policies aimed at federal workers.
AP Photo/Sejal Govindarao

How does this affect government workers?

It’s not clear which positions might be targeted. The order calls them “policy influencing positions,” but drawing the line between policy and administration isn’t always easy.

It’s also not clear whether the change will stick. When the George W. Bush administration reduced job protections for Department of Homeland Security employees in 2005, a major federal workers’ union sued the administration and won.

In the first round of this effort under the first Trump administration, it seemed that most of the people affected would be at the top of the federal hierarchy, probably mostly based in Washington, D.C.

Most of the workers in the federal civil service, though, are not there. They work for the Social Security Administration, giving out checks in Bloomington, Indiana, or other departments and offices around the country. It would be very difficult to classify them as influencing political policy or advocating for policies.

But there are people who are not Senate-confirmed who do have an influence on policy. For instance, at the Department of Justice, assistant and deputy assistant secretaries have influence on civil rights policy or other policies that affect the president’s ability to pursue his agenda. The February 2025 resignation of Danielle Sassoon from her role as U.S. attorney in New York is an example of legitimate divergence between an appointee and the president’s policy direction.

Any workers who lost their protections would likely feel threatened with losing their job and their livelihood. They might, out of fear, be more responsive to the dictates of their superiors.

That might sound good – that if you do what your boss says, you’re doing a good job. But it’s different if your obligations are to the public interest and the Constitution.

At the start of their terms, members of Congress take the same oath to the Constitution as federal workers do when they begin work for the government.
Win McNamee/Getty Images

How does this affect everyday Americans?

Large majorities of Americans believe government workers are serving the public over themselves. And as many as 87% of Americans say they want a merit-based, politically neutral civil service.

The U.S. has attracted to government service workers who are good at their jobs and able to remain politically neutral at work. Saying that’s no longer important would change the relationship between government workers and their jobs. And it would hurt the nation as a whole if government cannot attract the best and the brightest, or if it sends the best and the brightest packing because they are not comfortable with their work situation, or if they stay but their performance declines. Läs mer…

Since arriving in the United States four years ago, Alex has worked at a primary care office. He has witnessed firsthand how difficult it was for immigrants to access preventive care.

When he heard of the implementation of Florida’s Senate Bill 1718, Alex feared it would have dire consequences for the patients he served.

Alex is a pseudonym for one of our research subjects.

SB 1718, signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis in May 2023, imposed sweeping restrictions aimed at discouraging unauthorized immigration. Among its provisions, it requires hospitals that accept Medicaid funds to question patients about their immigration status and share data about how many immigrants they are serving within the state.

The law had several more provisions. It mandated E-Verify, a system to check employment eligibility, be used for new hires in businesses employing more than 25 employees. It also criminalized driving into Florida with an unauthorized immigrant, and restricted community organizations from issuing IDs.

After the law passed, Alex told his patients that they could refuse to divulge their legal status when asked on hospital forms. But he says his reassurances didn’t work. He watched as many immigrant patients hesitated to access necessary medical care for themselves and their children – or even left the state.

Alex had legal documentation to be in the country, but as his immigrant community shrank, he wondered if he, too, should leave Florida.

We are a group of social science professors and graduate students studying immigrant communities in Florida. We believe SB 1718 has important implications for immigrants, for Floridians and all Americans – particularly as the country faces surges in outbreaks of communicable diseases like measles and the flu.

An environment of fear

These concerns are based on our survey of 466 immigrants to Florida and adult U.S.-born children of immigrants between May and July of 2024.

Nearly two-thirds of non-U.S. citizens and one-third of U.S. citizens who responded to our survey said they hesitated to seek medical care in the year after SB 1718 passed.

“I was very sick recently and needed medical care, but I was scared,” one survey participant told us.

While hospitals cannot deny care based on a patient’s immigration status, our data shows that anticipating they would be asked deterred not only immigrants lacking permanent legal status but also those with legal status, including U.S. citizens, from seeking care.

We believe U.S. citizens are affected by spillover effects because they are members of mixed-status families.

Our survey took place during the intense 2024 presidential election season when anti-immigrant rhetoric was prevalent. The immigrants we surveyed also reported experiencing discrimination in their everyday lives, and these experiences were also associated with a reluctance to access health care.

Laws like SB 1718 amplify preexisting racial and structural inequities. Structural inequities are systemic barriers within institutions — such as health care and employment — that restrict access to essential resources based on one’s race, legal or economic status.

These kinds of laws discourage immigrants from utilizing health resources. They foster an exclusionary policy environment that heightens fears of enforcement, restricts access to essential services and exacerbates economic and social vulnerabilities. Moreover, restrictive immigration policies exclude people from accessing services based on their race. Immigrants who have been discriminated against in everyday settings may internalize the expectation that seeking care will result in further hostility – or even danger.

Consequences for public health

U.S. history holds numerous examples of racial and ethnic barriers to health care. Examples include segregation-era hospitals turning away Black patients . It also involves systemic restrictions on health care access for non-English speakers, including inadequate language assistance services, reliance on untrained interpreters and lack of culturally competent care.

President Donald Trump’s new executive orders signed in January 2025 threaten to further ostracize certain communities. For example, the order terminating federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs dismantles efforts to address racial disparities in public institutions. New restrictions on federally funded research on race and equity could hinder efforts to study and address these disparities.

Civil rights advocates believe these measures represent a systemic rollback of rights and diversity practices that generations fought to secure and could accelerate a national shift toward exclusion based on race under the guise of immigration enforcement.

Supporters of immigrants’ rights protest against U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration policies on Feb. 7, 2025 in Homestead, Florida.
Joe Raedle via Getty Images

The results of our survey in Florida may be a warning sign for the rest of the country. Health care hesitancy like we documented could increase the likelihood of delayed treatment, undiagnosed conditions and worsening health disparities among entire communities.

These legal restrictions are likely to increase the spread of communicable diseases and strain health care systems, increasing costs and placing a greater burden on emergency services and public health infrastructure. Läs mer…

President Donald Trump has vowed to target his political enemies, and experts have warned that he could weaponize U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct mass surveillance on his targets.

Mass surveillance is the widespread monitoring of civilians. Governments typically target specific groups – such as religious minorities, certain races or ethnicities, or migrants – for surveillance and use the information gathered to “contain” these populations, for example by arresting and imprisoning people.

We are experts in social control, or how governments coerce compliance, and we specialize in surveillance. Based on our expertise and years of research, we expect Trump’s second White House term may usher in a wave of spying against people of color and immigrants.

A man apprehended in an immigration raid on Jan. 28, 2025, sits in a holding cell in New York City.
Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Spreading moral panic

Trump is already actively deploying a key tactic in expanding mass surveillance: causing moral panics. Moral panics are created when politicians exaggerate a public concern to manipulate real fears people may have.

Take Trump on crime, for example. Despite FBI data showing that crime has been dropping across the U.S. for decades, Trump has repeatedly claimed that “crime is out of control.” Stoking fear makes people more likely to back harsh measures purportedly targeting crime.

Trump has also worked to create a moral panic about immigration.

He has said, for example, that “illegal” migrants are taking American jobs. In truth, only 5% of the 30 million immigrants in the workforce as of 2022 were unauthorized to work. And in his Jan. 25, 2025, presidential proclamation on immigration, Trump likened immigration at the southern border to an “invasion,” evoking the language of war to describe a population that includes many asylum-seeking women and children.

The second step in causing moral panics is to label racial, ethnic and religious minorities as villains to justify expanding mass surveillance.

Building on his rhetoric about crime and immigration, Trump frequently connects the two issues. He has said that migrants murder because they have “bad genes,” echoing beliefs expressed by white supremacists. During the 2016 campaign, Trump’s coinage “bad hombre” invoked stereotypes of dangerous migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to steal jobs and sell drugs.

The president has similarly connected Black communities with crime. At an August 2024 rally in Atlanta, Georgia, Trump called the majority-Black city “a killing field.” The month prior, he said the same thing about Washington, D.C.

Primary targets

History shows that in the U.S. moral panics are most likely to target Latino, Indigenous and Black communities as a precursor to surveillance and subjugation.

In the 18th century, Colonial politicians passed legislation likening the Indigenous people of the American colonies to “savages” and passed laws identifying Indigenous tribes as political enemies to be assimilated. If “killing the Indian” out of people didn’t work, they were to be tracked down and removed from the population through imprisonment or death.

Another early form of moral panics escalating to spying and mass surveillance were southern slave patrols, which emerged in the early 1700s after pro-slavery politicians proclaimed that Black escapees would terrorize white communities. Slave patrols tracked down and captured not only Black escapees but also free Black people, whom they sold into bondage. They also imprisoned any person, enslaved or not, suspected of sheltering escapees.

Once a group of people becomes the subject of moral panics and targeted for government surveillance, our research shows, the effects are felt for generations.

Black and Indigenous communities are still arrested and incarcerated at disproportionately high rates compared with their percentage in the U.S. population. This even affects children, with Indigenous girls imprisoned at four times the rate of white girls, and Black girls at more than twice the rate of white girls.

Low-tech methods

These 21st-century numbers reflect decades of targeted surveillance.

In the 1950s, the FBI under Director J. Edgar Hoover created the counter-intelligence programs COINTELPRO, allegedly for investigating communists and radical political groups, and the Ghetto Informant Program. In practice, both programs broadly targeted people of color. From Martin Luther King Jr. to U.S. Rep. John Lewis, Black activists were identified as a threat, spied on, investigated and sometimes jailed.

A 1964 letter from J. Edgar Hoover expressing his dislike for Martin Luther King Jr.
Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images

President Lyndon Johnson’s “war on crime,” a sweeping set of federal changes that militarized local police in urban communities, continued this mass surveillance in the 1960s. Later came the “war on drugs,” which an aide to President Richard Nixon later said was designed explicitly to target Black people.

In subsequent decades, politicians would stir up new moral panics about Black communities – remember the “crack babies” who never really existed? – and use fear to justify police surveillance, arrests and mass incarceration.

These early examples of mass surveillance lacked the technology that enables spying today, such as CCTV and hacked laptop cameras. Nonetheless, past U.S. administrations have been remarkably effective at achieving social control by creating moral panics then deploying mass surveillance to contain the “threat.” They enlisted droves of police officers, recruited informants to infiltrate groups and locked people away.

These textbook surveillance methods are still routinely used now.

Police fusion centers

For many Americans, the term “mass surveillance” evokes the Department of Homeland Security, which was founded after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This national agency, which forms part of a federal intelligence apparatus of more than 20 agencies focused on surveillance, has played a key role in mass surveillance since 2001, especially of Muslim Americans.

But it has local help in the form of police units known as fusion centers. These units feed identification information and physical evidence such as video footage to federal agencies such as the FBI and CIA, according to a 2023 whistleblower report from Rutgers Law School.

The New Jersey Regional Operations Intelligence Center, for example, is a police fusion center overseeing New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. It employs advanced military technology to gather massive amounts of personal data on people perceived as potential security threats. According to the Rutgers report, these “threats” are highly concentrated in Black, Latino and Arab communities, as well as areas with a high concentration of political organizing, such as Black Lives Matter groups and immigrant aid organizations.

The New Jersey police fusion approach leads to increased arrest rates, according to the report, but there’s no real evidence that it prevents crime or terrorism.

Guantanamo and black sites

Given Trump’s pledges to further militarize border enforcement and expand U.S. jails and prisons, we anticipate a rise in spending on fusion centers and other tools of mass surveillance under Trump. The moral panics he’s been stirring up since 2015 suggest that the targets of government surveillance will include immigrants and Black people.

Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event on April 2, 2024, in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Sometimes, victims of mass surveillance go missing.

The Guardian reported in 2015 that Chicago police had been temporarily “disappearing” people at local and federal police “black sites” since at least 2009. At these clandestine jails, under the guise of national security, officers questioned detainees without attorneys and held them for up to 24 hours without any outside contact. Many of the victims were Black.

Another infamous black site was housed at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba, where the CIA detained and secretly interrogated suspected terrorists following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Trump seems to be reviving the Guantanamo black site, flying about 150 Venezuelan migrants to the base since January 2025. It’s unclear whether the U.S. government can lawfully detain migrants there abroad, yet deportation flights continue.

The administration has not shared the identities of many of the people imprisoned there. Läs mer…

Insects do a lot more harm than ruining picnics. Some insects spread devastating diseases, while others cause staggering economic losses in agriculture. To control some of these pests, scientists are developing males that make sex a deadly event.

The stakes are high. Mosquitoes carry viruses such as dengue, West Nile and Zika, as well as parasites that cause malaria. Researchers estimate that mosquitoes have caused the deaths of 52 billion people overall – nearly half of all the humans that have ever lived.

Other insects cause major crop damage, jeopardizing the food supply and driving up prices. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 20% to 40% of global crop production is lost to pests annually at a cost of US$70 billion.

Pesticides have been the front-line defense against insects, but many bugs have evolved resistance to these chemicals. Some pesticides can indiscriminately kill beneficial insects, harm the environment and endanger human and animal health. Some researchers worry that certain pesticides can cause cancer or have damaging effects on human nervous and endocrine systems.

I’m a microbiology researcher studying infectious disease. New solutions that do not harm humans and the environment to control disease-carrying insects and agricultural pests could lead to fewer people contracting dangerous diseases. In the past few years, a variety of genetic engineering approaches have emerged as promising tactics to combat problematic insects.

Genetically modified insects

To avoid the problems associated with pesticides, scientists have devised new approaches that genetically alter the insects themselves in ways that cause their population to crash or render them incapable of transmitting disease – a strategy called genetic biocontrol.

Genetic biocontrol entails genetically modifying insects to curb their populations.

The idea to suppress an insect population by flooding it with sterile males has been around for decades. Since the 1950s, scientists have been using radiation to create infertile male mosquitoes. These sterile males mate with females but produce no offspring. Since females are engaged in a lot of unproductive mating, the overall population tends to decline.

In the past two decades, genetic engineering has been used to introduce dominant lethal genes into insect populations. In this approach, the offspring of genetically modified males inherit a gene that kills them before they reach reproductive age. A field trial in Brazil found that this strategy reduced the target mosquito population up to 95%. Another approach on the horizon involves releasing insects genetically modified to be poor carriers of pathogens that cause disease.

Despite these advances, a key shortcoming to current genetic biocontrol methods is that they take time. At least one generation needs to be born before the population suppression begins. This means the female insects continue to be a disease vector or agricultural pest until they die a natural death. An ideal technique would neutralize the females immediately, especially during outbreaks.

A faster approach

Biologists Samuel Beach and Maciej Maselko at Macquarie University in Australia sought to solve this dilemma by genetically engineering male insects to make poisonous semen. The poisonous semen would kill the female quickly, reducing the population faster than previous biocontrol methods.

To test this idea, the team used fruit flies called Drosophila melanogaster, which are easy to genetically modify and study in the lab.

The Brazilian wandering spider, Phoneutria nigriventer.
Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

The researchers transferred venom genes from the Brazilian wandering spider (Phoneutria nigriventer) and the Mediterranean snakelocks sea anemone (Anemonia sulcata) into the genomes of fruit flies.

The genetically modified fly produces and stores venom proteins in its male accessory gland – a fly’s prostate – along with other seminal fluid proteins. Upon mating, the fly deposits the venomous semen into the female’s reproductive tract. The researchers named this approach the toxic male technique.

The Mediterranean snakelocks anenome, Anemonia viridis.
Diego Delso

After mating, the seminal toxins seep into the female’s body and attack her central nervous system. The toxins bind to proteins called ion channels on cellular membranes, which nerve cells use to communicate with one another. This quickly leads to paralysis and respiratory arrest. You could say these genetically engineered Romeos literally take her breath away.

The lifespan of female flies that mated with toxic males decreased – up to 64%. A computer simulation of the toxic male technique for Aedes aegypti, a mosquito that transmits several viruses, predicted that this approach could work better than current methods.

Safety and effectiveness

While promising and innovative, there are some important challenges that researchers developing the toxic male technique will need to overcome. For example, the technique has been shown to work only in fruit flies. Whether it will work in mosquitoes or other insect pests remains an open question.

In addition, the technique reduced the female lifespan by only 37% to 64%. To improve the rate of killing, the researchers suggested that other venom formulations might work better. Researchers could try thousands of venom genes from spiders, snakes, scorpions and centipedes. Each new venom they try will require tests to ensure the modified males tolerate them – if they become weak, unmodified males may outcompete them for mating opportunities.

As with all genetic biocontrol methods, this technique may be too expensive to implement for low-income countries. Nations would need to finance the costs of breeding and deploying the mosquitoes safely.

Insects also pollinate plants and serve as food sources for other animals, such as bats. If these insects vanish, the ecosystem could face unforeseen adverse effects. Monitoring these potential effects on the environment will also be expensive.

Other researchers are experimenting with using venom toxins to control parasites that female insects spread through biting. Called paratransgenesis, this technique alters an insect’s gut bacteria to produce a toxin that kills the parasite, leaving the insect unharmed. Since the insect population remains unaltered, paratransgenesis may pose less risk to ecosystems.

Insects tend to adapt quickly to the methods humans use to control them, so it is advantageous to have multiple strategies at our disposal. The toxic male technique may one day become a valuable new weapon in the arsenal to combat insect pests. Läs mer…