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Citrus trees showing natural tolerance to citrus greening disease host bacteria that produce novel antimicrobials that can be used to fight off the disease, our recent study shows. We found the trees at an organic farm in Clermont, Florida.

Citrus greening disease – known more formally as Huanglongbing, or HLB, is caused by the bacterium Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus. It is spread by an insect called the Asian citrus psyllid. There is no known cure for the disease.

We are Florida-based researchers who study sustainable farming practices, a discipline also known as agroecology. Our team has isolated these antimicrobial compounds in the lab and is now working to test them with the goal of producing an effective treatment for HLB.

Why it matters

HLB has dealt a massive blow to Florida’s iconic citrus industry.

Since citrus greening disease was first detected in the state in 2005, Florida citrus production is down by more than 92%. The disease is just one factor. Others include hurricanes and freezes.

Infected trees produce fewer fruit. The fruit that does grow is partially green, smaller, shaped irregularly and bitter tasting. It may drop from the trees before ripening. Leaves may show blotchy mottling.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the 2022-2023 growing season was the least productive since 1936. Smaller crops lead to higher prices on oranges, tangerines, grapefruits, lemons and limes.

Pomelo tree leaves with symptoms of citrus greening.
Conor Wolfe, CC BY-ND

Management of HLB is daunting. Growers currently rely on pesticides to control the psyllid and antibiotics like oxytetracycline in an attempt to control HLB. These treatments are expensive and may pose health and environmental risks. The need for development of effective treatments to control HLB is evident.

How we did our work

Like humans, plants host diverse communities of microorganisms both inside and outside, representing the plant microbiome.

Endophytes – beneficial microorganisms living inside plants – play an important role in nutrient intake, disease and pest resistance, and adaptation to environmental stress.

In a search for treatments against HLB, we looked to endophytes of survivor citrus trees – in other words, trees that are HLB positive but showed only mild symptoms and continue to bear fruit. By studying 342 endophytes of survivor trees, we discovered five bacterial endophytes capable of producing novel antimicrobials.

The HLB bacteria cannot be grown on laboratory culture media like agar or broth. So, we used live bacterial cells present in the ground tissue samples of infected psyllids to test the antimicrobial compounds in the lab. These studies revealed that the antimicrobial compounds were highly effective at killing the live cells of citrus greening pathogen in this controlled environment. The antimicrobials can be mixed with water and were found to be effective at low concentrations.

What’s still not known

Preliminary results from our ongoing work indicate that multiple antimicrobial compounds are present in the bacterial culture extract. This is a positive sign because the antimicrobial compounds may be found to attack pathogenic bacteria in several different ways. If that’s the case, it will help minimize the development of resistance in the same way a variety of antibiotics are useful to human doctors.

One of our next steps will be to evaluate selected compounds against HLB, using infected citrus roots under laboratory conditions and infected citrus plants under greenhouse conditions, to test whether the plants will absorb these antimicrobial compounds through their leaves or roots. This work will be conducted in collaboration with scientists from Texas A&M University and the University of Florida.

What’s next

Further research will focus on methods to increase the production of purified antimicrobial compound in order for it to be evaluated in the field. To help get the technology to growers faster, we may look for partnerships with interested commercial biopesticide companies to help with product development.

Our work has taken on new urgency due to emerging psyllid-transmitted diseases that infect potato, tomato and carrot crops in the U.S. that are caused by closely related bacterial pathogens.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work. Läs mer…

People sometimes feel pressured to choose one identity over another. Kamala Harris, who is multiracial – her mother is from India and her father is a Black immigrant from Jamaica – illustrates the complexity of defining identity.

Harris is often asked questions about her Black identity. She has responded by saying how it relates to her sense of self. “I’m really clear about who I am, and if anybody else is not, they need to go through their own therapy.”

At the National Association of Black Journalists conference, in July 2024, former president and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump questioned her Black identity by saying, “Is she Indian or is she Black?”

The question reflected a narrow, either/or approach. As a scholar who draws from the ideas of Black thinkers to explore how society works, I know that identity is not the result of a single decision, but rather the confluence of several factors, such as someone’s environment and socialization.

‘The Truths We Hold’

Harris’ parents, Donald Harris and Shyamala Gopalan, met at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1960s. They connected through the radical politics of the Black intellectual tradition, finding both community and shared values. As part of a study group and, later, the Afro-American Association, they developed a language to confront civil rights struggles and systemic oppression.

Harris often refers to herself as both African American and Asian American. During the Democratic National Convention, she paid tribute to her multiracial background and upbringing.

But in her autobiography, “The Truths We Hold,” Harris explains how her mother was cognizant that some people would see her and her younger sister, Maya, as Black, and was “determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud Black women.”

Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 22, 2024, in Chicago.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Harris chose to attend Howard University, a historically Black University, and joined a Black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. In her autobiography, she highlighted how the values of hard work and social justice were instilled in her by her parents.

Identities are fluid and expanding

Individuals can hold multiple dimensions of identity based on their race, sexual orientation, culture and social class, among others. It is impossible to separate one from another. For example, someone can be Black, a lesbian and a woman at the same time.

Instead, identities inform one another; no one is simply Black, or a woman, or a lesbian, but these social identities compound, forming a unique experience. Furthermore, identity is fluid, and expanding. Your beliefs and values can shift, and so too can the ways in which people define themselves.

In these ways, identity is the work of context and choice. Defining your identity is about deciding not just who you want to be but how you choose to live and show up in the world. It is a complex process of making choices and navigating challenges along the way. For example, somebody navigating the intersection of race and gender might choose to embrace both identities fully, despite external pressures to conform to societal expectations.

Harris’ embrace of her multiracial identity, thus, is the result of things she learned from her parents and the various contexts and communities she inhabited.

Claims to an identity

Historically, there has been a disregard for complex identities that don’t fit into clear categories, driven by fears about preserving white racial purity and protecting associated privileges. So, when Trump questioned Kamala Harris’ racial identity, it was a reminder of the long-standing notion of pressuring someone to choose one identity over another.

An example of this is the “one-drop rule” in the United States, where even a small amount of nonwhite ancestry classified a person as nonwhite, reinforcing strict racial boundaries. Dating back to a 1662 Virginia law, the one-drop rule ensured that a single drop of Black blood assigned minority status to mixed-race individuals.

The idea that identity can be simplified to just one thing, such as race, is based on the wrong assumption that these identities never change. It’s worth repeating that Harris is of South Asian and Black descent, and it is her choice to define her racial identity. I believe that any effort to question her on the topic is disingenuous and not grounded in a willingness to engage with the complexity of her identity or anyone else’s either. Läs mer…

Discovering extraterrestrial life would be one of the most profound scientific and philosophical revelations that our species has ever made. But such a big discovery won’t come easy. Our starting point is to first search other worlds for signs of habitability, that is, the potential for life to exist.

Nasa is doing just that: launching a spacecraft on October 10 to Europa, a moon of Jupiter holding twice the water of all Earth’s oceans combined. Europa’s ocean is between 60 and 150 kilometres deep and is hidden beneath an outer shell of ice that’s 15 to 25 kilometres thick. The evidence for an ocean began to mount from the late 1990s onwards.

The Europa Clipper mission will carry nine instruments designed to assess whether this ocean world is habitable. A place may be habitable for life as we know it if three ingredients are available: liquid water, energy and carbon-containing compounds called organics.

Earth has been teeming with life for almost four billion years, in spite of no less than five large mass extinction events. Water and organics are abundant on our planet, while sunlight powers photosynthesis in plants, allowing them to produce sugars that pass into the animal kingdom through plant-eating species.

However, Europa’s salty ocean is pitch black below a depth of several hundred metres, meaning photosynthesis has no chance there. This is why in 1977, when scientists explored even deeper, at close to 2,500 metres in a volcanic hotspot on the Pacific ocean’s seafloor, they were amazed to find life thriving around hydrothermal vents.

Artistic concept showing processes thought to be taking place on Europa.
TM Becker et al., CC BY

Life at that depth is fuelled not by photosynthesis, but by chemosynthesis, a way for organisms to get energy from chemical reactions. Sunlight was no longer a prerequisite for habitability.

The water in Europa’s ocean is kept liquid due to frictional heating. This heating occurs because Europa becomes stretched and then relaxed as it interacts with Jupiter’s gravity on its orbital path around the giant planet. For Europa’s ocean to be habitable, a steady supply of ingredients is needed to allow some form of chemosynthesis to take place.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

If these ingredients exist, they could come from hydrothermal vents on Europa’s rocky seafloor, like those on Earth, or from material seeping down through the icy crust, the “sea ceiling” if you like. We do not yet know if these mechanisms are plausible, so we need more data from many different angles.

There is growing evidence that plumes of material are escaping from Europa’s surface into space. If this material is from the ocean, measuring its composition would give us insights into the habitability of that ocean.

The long road to Europa

Scientists have advocated for a mission to Europa since at least the 1990s. Nasa’s Europa Orbiter was cancelled in 2002, followed by the ambitious Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (Jimo) in 2005, which was to orbit moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

In 2008, Nasa and the European Space Agency (Esa) proposed the Europa Jupiter System Mission – Laplace (EJSM-Laplace), which aimed to send orbiters to Europa and Ganymede.

The transition between two different types of terrain on Europa.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute

Both were cancelled in 2011, but out of the ashes came Esa’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) and Nasa’s Europa Clipper. Juice launched in April 2023 and will arrive in July 2031, while Europa Clipper will launch on October 10 and arrive in April 2030 –- sooner than Juice because it will launch on a more powerful rocket. Both spacecraft will be in the Jupiter system simultaneously for three years, which in the end is not far off the plan for EJSM-Laplace.

Europa Clipper won’t orbit Europa, instead it will cleverly orbit Jupiter in such a way that it passes over Europa 44 times, eventually building up a full global scan of the moon. The probe carries nine science instruments ready to give us a comprehensive understanding of Europa’s ocean, its geology and current state of activity.

Nasa’s main mission statement is: “Europa Clipper’s main science goal is to determine whether there are places below the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, that could support life.”

Europa Clipper has the largest solar arrays ever made for a Nasa planetary mission.
NASA/Kim Shiflett

During the flybys, magnetic field instruments will help determine the ocean’s depth and saltiness, mass spectrometry can “taste” the plumes to see their composition, ground-penetrating radar can see if water is inside the crust, helping us to understand if materials are exchanged from the ocean to the surface. Infrared instruments will scan the surface to look for signatures of organic materials which could be seeping out, as well as perform thermal imaging.

For decades, planetary scientists have pointed to ocean worlds like Europa as potential habitats for life. Europa Clipper cannot detect life directly, but it marks humanity’s first dedicated mission to study an ocean world and search for signs of habitability.

If there is even a hint that the stuff of life exists there, a surface lander could follow to probe deeper, and the surface observations gathered by Clipper will be essential for the planning of that mission. And as ever, this only pertains to life as we know it. Läs mer…

The transition to a greener society will involve huge investments in wind farms, electric cars and trains, new ways to heat homes, and much more. Yet the UK government is sending mixed messages over whether it intends to finance such projects at anything like the rate required.

With her speech at the recent Labour Party conference, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, sparked rumours she would change her approach to fiscal policy to enable more public spending. This came after months of the new UK government blaming a hole in the public finances for the need to make difficult decisions and spending cuts, so a shift in the opposite direction would be surprising.

Perhaps less surprisingly, the Guardian has since reported that ministers are being asked to draw up “billions of pounds in cuts to infrastructure projects” over the next 18 months. We will have to wait until the new budget is announced at the end of October to know which vision wins out.

Investment was at the heart of Reeves’ conference speech, and was cited as the solution to create economic growth. But we need to understand what type of investment is necessary and who is expected to invest.

In the private sector (businesses), “capital investment” generally means acquiring land, factories, machinery, or equipment that will be used to produce goods and services for a relatively long time. (Businesses also need to pay for their shorter term operating costs, such as staff salaries, raw materials or electricity bills, but these are non-capital or “working capital” expenditures and are typically not considered strictly an investment).

In the public sector, capital investment or expenditure, refers to the financing of big infrastructure projects such as roads or railways, or the building of facilities for public services such as schools and hospitals. The chancellor’s speech mentioned all these elements (schools, roads, hospitals). But while any changes to her fiscal rules will be aimed at increasing public investment, a big part of the discourse revolves around unlocking investment by business.

Overwhelming underinvestment

Investment hugely affects the plans for net zero and the green transition. The government’s official independent advisory body, the Climate Change Committee, has confirmed the UK is not on track to achieve its targets. Its latest report outlines a need to triple the annual installation of offshore wind, to double onshore wind installations, and to increase solar installations by five times. Other priority actions include installing heat pumps in 10% of UK homes, and a significant increase in the uptake of electric cars.

More needed.
Jevanto Productions / shutterstock

But one of the barriers to achieving these goals is the overwhelming underinvestment in the UK’s energy infrastructure. For instance, around £54 billion will be required for the national grid alone, in order to improve connectivity and adapt it to the intermittent generation of renewable electricity. (The grid was designed to support the continuous flow of fossil fuel or nuclear energy, but you cannot control when the sun will shine or wind will blow.)

The grid is only one of the many areas where investment is falling short. So even if the rejig of fiscal rules does actually happen and produces a projected £50 billion windfall, that would still be nowhere near the amounts that the green transition demands.

In fact, recent academic research suggests that £50 billion in green investments will be needed every year by 2030. That figure will be even more difficult to reach if we add the fact the UK’s Green Investment Bank was privatised and no longer operates in the country, and that since Brexit there is no longer access to European Investment Bank funding, which was key to finance climate-related projects.

Investment in education

The green transition will also require huge investment in education. The UK faces a considerable shortage in the skills needed by new green sectors – heat pump installation, forestry, electric car maintenance, and so on. Closing this gap will require investment not just in schools but in adult training, through apprenticeships, life-long learning or university.

Importantly, green skills training can contribute to softening the loss of jobs in the so-called “brown” sectors of the economy like the oil and gas industry. But once again, and as tends to happen with public goods, the private sector is lagging behind in the necessary investments to train and reskill its workforce, and government intervention becomes complicated as different places and sectors have differing needs.

It is also difficult to estimate the funding required to close the green skills gap, with some figures suggesting an additional £13 billion per year by 2030, just in reskilling.

Bearing all that in mind, it is unlikely that any creative interpretation of the definition of a balanced budget at the end of October will produce a significant change. It won’t be enough to address the shortage in public financial resources to reach the investment needs of the green transition.

This makes it even more important to count on the private sector, which should be an active participant in large infrastructure projects and long-term investments. The need of private business investment has become a common institutional message internationally, but it increases the uncertainty of investment materialising and hence whether we can achieve our green transition goals. Läs mer…

After decades of development, Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed film Megalopolis was finally released in cinemas on September 27. It cost the director US$120 million (£91.5 million) and has received overwhelmingly negative reviews, with a global box-office taking of just US$4 million during its opening weekend. This has prompted reports that the film is crumbling, sputtering and a “financial disaster”.

Megalopolis frames the US as the new Roman Empire. On the surface, the film is about what happens when an empire’s decline has reached rock bottom and there is no sense of what comes next – except for a radical, utopian experiment by a young but troubled architect and scientist (Adam Driver), whom the people in power dislike.

But on a deeper level, and for those familiar with Coppola’s 60-year career, the young, troubled visionary played by Driver looks a lot like the director himself, who over the course of his career has had epic battles with the studios and the conglomerates that have controlled cinema since the 1960s.

Intent on materialising his vision, which was often tied to advancements and experiments in technology that the financiers of his films were not comfortable with, Coppola frequently fought tooth and nail with the establishment.

The end of an empire

The multiple Oscar-winning director has experienced many triumphs (The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now) but also crushing failures (One from the Heart, Tucker: A Man and His Dream). His last major film release was The Rainmaker in 1997, while for the past 27 years he has only managed three small films that barely registered (Youth without Youth, Tetro and Twixt).

In this context, Megalopolis is also an allegory for the Coppola family – another empire that seems to be reaching an end. Coppola, the patriarch, is in now in his mid-80s. Even though his children, Sofia and Roman, and nephews, Nicolas Cage and Jason Schwartzman, are all very much established artists in the film industry, they tend to be associated with indie film and genre movies. They have little to do with the grandiose cinematic experiments of the family’s patriarch.

The trailer for Megalopolis.

Looking at the film in this way, it can be seen as a messy representation of a family that has been in the limelight for decades, with their triumphs, failures, family tragedies and bankruptcies scrutinised.

Furthermore, a cultural idea of Coppola as a megalomaniac filmmaker whose post-1980 films never lived up to the expectations his 1970s films established has continued to persist. This is despite the fact that Coppola has continually tried to push the envelope in terms of what can be done with cinema, and even what counts as cinema.

Uncompromising vision

Because he decided to self-finance Megalopolis, this time Coppola was completely unrestrained in materialising his vision. Cue a torrent of visuals in support of a story that often does not make sense, as it also doubles up as a re-imagining of his biography.

Add to that a cornucopia of themes, ranging from the state of American politics and how entertainment corrupts it, to efforts to save the empire and “make America great again” – and more than a nod to the rise of fascism. It is not surprising that the film is pulled in so many different directions, turning it into a “hot mess”, as an early review put it.

Coppola in 1973.
Library of Congress

Reviews from Megalopolis’s opening weekend stuck with this script, using words and phrases such as “epic fail”, “plainly nuts”, “confusing” and “bloated”.

But should a film that does not make money at the box office still be considered a financial disaster, when it was not made under a production model that is based on a corporate entity making a return on its investment? I would argue that a director spending their own money to do what they want – in this case, create a very expensive artwork – seemingly without caring about getting it back, isn’t really a disaster.

Coppola has managed something extraordinary. He made his passion project by any means necessary, and he did it without compromising his vision. He had the film released theatrically on the global market, and had all major news outlets and critics engage with it.

I believe that while the market may have rejected Megalopolis in its theatrical release, it will eventually accept it. The film will find its way to the Blu-ray and streaming markets. It will then be part of retrospectives honouring Coppola. And years down the line, it will be “rediscovered”, with future critics arguing how audiences and the critical establishment in the 2020s were not ready for the film’s visionary take on that era’s culture.

There is no precedent for what Coppola has done, on the scale that he has done it. Discussions of Megalopolis’s “failure” are grounded in conventional film production and circulation. But there is little (if anything) that is conventional about the film and its making.

Perhaps such conventional, market-driven evaluation criteria are not appropriate for a film such as Megalopolis, which, decades down the line, will not be “dead on arrival”, as some reviews put it, but alive and kicking. An example of visionary filmmaking that was misunderstood upon its initial release.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here. Läs mer…

The Labour MP Torsten Bell is widely considered to be a rising star of the party. His recent book, Great Britain? How We Get Our Future Back, provides a detailed description of what he sees as the key economic challenges facing the UK today and proposes a series of policy ideas to return the country to economic and social prosperity.

Bell has a background in economic policymaking and research. After working as a Treasury civil servant through the 2007-2008 financial crisis, he served as chief executive at the independent economic thinktank the Resolution Foundation.

Now he’s the Labour MP for Swansea West after being elected in July 2024. But with its first budget around the corner, will his party adopt the policy approaches he so strongly advocates?

In his book, Bell describes a Britain facing major economic challenges. British households were poorer at the end of the 2019-24 Conservative government than they were at the start. This, he says, is the only time on record when that has happened between general elections.

Bell argues that more than 15 years of economic stagnation have not only held back living standards, but crucially, have undermined any hope that the future will be better. He writes of a risk that stagnation will become entrenched.

He says the austerity that followed the 2008 financial crisis was not only economically damaging, but also socially disastrous. And he argues that a “toxic combination” of high inequality and low growth left the UK more exposed to what followed – Brexit, a global pandemic and the biggest inflation shock for a generation. In particular, this negatively impacted both poorer and middle-class Britain.

Bell believes Britain, long a high-inequality country, has now also become a low-growth one. He points to the 1980s as the decade in which a gulf opened between the incomes (and wealth) of rich and poor. The number of children growing up in relative poverty more than doubled to 30% in the 1980s.

Economic growth is also a major concern for Bell. In the four decades before the 2008 financial crisis, GDP grew at a consistent 26% per decade, but this fell to just 6% in the 2010s.

Additionally, since 2010, the productivity gap in the UK has doubled compared to those of France and Germany. British workers produce in five days what their competitors produce in four. This has contributed to stagnant real average wages in the UK from 2008 to 2023. To view this in context, since the second world war, real wages have grown on average 50% every 15 years.

Rising property prices and rents are another issue. In 1980, the average family spent 9% of their income on housing costs. By the early 2020s that had doubled. The cost of housing in the UK is the second highest out of 38 OECD countries.

So, what can be done to address these issues? To begin with, Bell identifies good work and affordable housing as the two most important pillars of any shared society.

Investment spending – the only show in town

He sees ending Britain’s stagnation as an investment project. For decades, Britain has had some of the lowest investment spending of countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This has resulted in substandard water systems, transport and road infrastructure.

Bell calls for Britain to become a normal investor with a “golden rule” level of investment of 2.5%-3% of GDP every year and argues that the decarbonisation of the economy required in response to the climate crisis offers significant opportunities.

But reports have suggested that chancellor Rachel Reeves is demanding cuts to infrastructure of around 10% across a range of departments over the next 18 months. This is required to fill the £22 billion “black hole” in public finances that the Labour government inherited.

While this policy may please the Treasury bean counters in the short term, it is completely at odds with what Bell says is required to escape economic stagnation.

These short-term cuts, if they go ahead, could do Labour significant damage electorally. Britain is in a hole economically with creaking infrastructure. As Bell argues, a major investment programme is required now.

We could feel a lot better quite quickly – just stop messing it up.

This makes public and private infrastructure spending the most interesting area to watch. Returns from higher investment in the form of increased productivity and growing real wages will take decades to realise.

Will the government commit to the golden rule target that Bell calls for? Higher investment levels as a percentage of GDP will help address the productivity gap relative to competitors. That means Britain can grow faster, certainly in the short term, so this argument may be used to “pay” for any such commitments.

Living with crumbling public services has further undermined public trust in the state’s capability to deliver on just about anything. Bell highlights potholes as one example of the failure of government to achieve the very basics.

But Labour’s economic policies need to succeed to ward off the threat from the far right. Fixing Britain’s potholes may go some way to restoring public faith in government, and perhaps even (in Bell’s words) to make Britain normal again. Läs mer…

The past year of conflict in Gaza has been covered in the media with extraordinary bravery, mostly by local journalists. Israeli authorities have not allowed the foreign press inside the occupied territory, apart from via short media trips embedded with the military.

According to Reporters without Borders (RSF) more than 130 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli forces. The RSF also asserts that 32 of them were targeted and it has filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court for war crimes.

Israel has used its powers to shackle what it sees as dissent by shutting down Al Jazeera’s offices in Ramallah, Nazareth and East Jerusalem. In April the channel was taken off air inside Israel.

British media companies and correspondents have been vocal in calling for access to Gaza, but to no avail. In July the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) initiated a letter signed by 70 media companies and NGOs urging Israel to give journalists “independent access to Gaza”.

Despite these challenges, the BBC, ITN, Channel 4 and Sky, among others, have still managed to keep the story in front of UK viewers’ eyes by reporting from inside Israel, the occupied territories and Egypt. As the conflict expands into Lebanon, the BBC has moved more of its Middle East reporters to cover the conflict live from Lebanon and northern Israel.

The reporting team has included Syrian Middle East correspondent, Lina Sinjab, and BBC bilingual correspondent, Sally Nabil, alongside the likes of senior international correspondent, Orla Guerin, and international editor, Jeremy Bowen.

In recent years, BBC viewers have become familiar with such scenes of large teams presenting live from war zones. Lyse Doucet and Clive Myrie presented live for an extended period from a Kyiv hotel rooftop following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It is effective, but costly and often dangerous.

Eventually the Kyiv reporting team was scaled down, leaving behind just a couple of reporters in Ukraine or nearby, bringing in more when events called for it. This will may well prove to be the case in Beirut in a few weeks’ time.

Accusations of bias

Despite its impressive efforts to cover the current Middle East conflict as closely as possible, the BBC has been subjected to accusations of bias from all sides. Its correspondents’ words and interviewing techniques have come under heavy scrutiny.

Just one week after the Hamas attack in October 2023, the BBC had already received 1,500 complaints about its coverage. This was reportedly “split almost evenly between those claiming its reporting has been biased against Israel and those saying it was biased against Palestinians”.

In March, BBC director general, Tim Davie, and the director of editorial policy, David Jordan, faced questioning before a House of Commons select committee about its coverage. By this date, Jordan said the number of complaints about coverage had grown to 8,000, and again were 50-50 in terms of bias for or against Israel.

The BBC has enlisted journalists on the ground in Gaza as well as their international correspondents to cover the war.

During the hearing Davie addressed a question about BBC Arabic staff retweeting remarks seen as “essentially pro-Hamas”, according to Conservative MP Damian Green. Davie explained that: “Some of those tweets that we’ve seen are unacceptable and we have taken action and we’ll continue to take action.”

There have also been regular complaints about the BBC’s refusal to label perpetrators of violence as “terrorists” unless it is a quote from a source. The BBC has repeatedly explained its reasoning, which dates back to its founding principles, on not airing loaded language.

In perhaps the most absurd of the complaints, Olympics presenter Hazel Irvine was accused of a lack of impartiality and pro-Palestinian bias for mentioning the “dark shadow of conflict in Gaza” as the Palestinian team sailed down the Seine during the opening ceremony.

The BBC’s complaints unit dismissed the complaint, stating that “it was not a requirement of impartiality that the commentator’s remarks about the various teams should be precisely equivalent”.

In the same week the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Community Security Trust accused the BBC in a report of being “institutionally hostile to Israel”.

While the BBC promised to examine the report, a BBC spokeswoman said: “The Israel-Gaza conflict is a polarising and difficult story to cover and we understand there are a range of views. The BBC has focused on reporting the conflict impartially, bringing audiences breaking news, insight and analysis, and reflecting all perspectives.”

Journalists report near the Israel-Gaza border. Israel continues to restrict international journalists access to Gaza.
Eddie Gerald / Alamy Stock Photo

As I have written before, the logistics of covering the front line of a conflict (in addition to the particular access challenges in Gaza), make it impossible for the BBC to win this war of words.

At times like this it tends to fall back on neutral language, fact-checking and reporting carefully both sides of the divide. Under its current BBC News CEO, Deborah Turness, it is attempting to be more transparent with audiences about its own coverage.

This week Turness accused critics of being stuck in echo chambers on social media. “BBC News does not and cannot reflect any single world view”, she said, adding: “In this war, we cannot be a place where any side feels that their perspective prevails.”

An expanding conflict

Smaller media companies and newspapers have also covered the conflict creditably despite the constrained circumstances. There has also been a heavy reliance on the global news agencies – Reuters, AP and AFP – who have continued to employ local journalists inside Gaza as reporters and photographers.

As the media’s focus switches from a long-distance view of Gaza to an expanding regional war involving Iran, coverage will be stretched thin. Even at the most peaceful of times there is highly limited access for journalists wishing to report from Tehran.

Iran ranks at number 176 out of 180 countries on the RSF Freedom Index. Its media is controlled by the government and there are many cases of dissenting journalists being jailed.

As Israel and Iran battle to control the narrative, the task of journalists to report accurately and fully will remain crucial – but it won’t get any easier. Läs mer…

Paris hosted 26 million international visitors in 2023. Brazil, meanwhile, has never reached the mark of seven million foreign tourists in a year.

The competition to attract international tourists is fierce. The idea that Brazil’s lush landscapes, vibrant culture, and friendly hospitality are enough to attract potential travelers is a fallacy.

The country currently attracts less than 0.5% of the world’s international trips, a stark contrast to Mexico (3.2%), Thailand (2.2%), and India (1.1%). Its smaller neighbour Argentina welcomes more international travelers than Brazil annually.

Arrivals at Rio de Janeiro International Airport: Brazil registers less than 0.5% of the world´s international trips.
AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo

How can this be? Although there are plenty of problems in Brazil, five reasons explain the country’s challenges in attracting tourists. They are:

1 – Distances and transportation

First, tourists find getting where they want to go in Brazil difficult. Its continental dimensions and global position make trips long, expensive, and complicated.

It is worth remembering that Europe, North America, and Asia are the leading international tourist markets. As a result, most overseas travellers have no option but to make a great effort to arrive in Brazil.

Although it has been expanding recently, and there is a growing effort to attract new air routes, there are few options for direct flights to Brazil´s north or northeast regions. Transport challenges occur despite the growing international appeal of the Amazon and beaches such as Fernando de Noronha, which are much closer to the European and North American markets.

Popular nature-based and cultural destinations depend on expensive domestic/regional aviation, usually with limited availability.

Additionally, ground transport suffers from the long distances involved and the precariousness of highways, including a lack of security and the scarcity of road and rail services suitable for foreign audiences.

2 – Feeling of insecurity and violence

The second factor is the feeling of insecurity. There are reasons for this: the homicide rate in the country is 20 per 100,000 inhabitants, placing Brazil as 16th in the most violent countries ranking. In the criminality and organized crime ranking, Brazil occupies the 22nd position.

Although violence is mainly concentrated in specific areas, it can be difficult for visitors to distinguish between safe and unsafe places.

An example is the “unsafety” classification that the U.S. Department of State gives U.S. citizens who wish to travel to Brazil. The British government warns about kidnappings, rapes, robberies, and scams in Brazil.

Another facet of the insecurity problem is “small” scams applied to tourists, such as improper price rises and service deliveries that differ from what was contracted. The so-called “Brazilian way of doing things”, a combination of informality with absent professionalism that promises easy solutions, contrasts with the difficulty that tourists find in defending themselves or appealing against these scams.

3 – Inadequate services

A third factor is that foreign tourists usually prefer services that suit their needs and preferences. Most Brazilian tourism service providers speak only Portuguese; recent surveys indicate that 1% of Brazilians are fluent in English.

Tourist services are generally aimed at the Brazilian domestic audience, with few options that cater to both Brazilian and foreign preferences. Information available online, tours, activities, meals, and additional services are rarely designed to address the needs or tastes of international tourists.

The greater attention given to local clients is natural since the number of domestic visitors far exceeds that of foreigners. This disproportionate ratio dilutes the presence of international tourists among the mass of Brazilian visitors, practically eliminating specialized services for them.

4 – Costs

Foreigners cannot make a quality trip to Brazil on a low budget. The country is not cheap for travelers.

This fact does not mean Brazil is an expensive destination, like Switzerland or Japan. Although Brazil is not among the most expensive countries to travel to, it is not one of the cheapest either. Brazil has a median cost of living.

Unlike really cheap countries, such as Indonesia, India, and Egypt, in Brazil, the average tourist cannot hire services at a competitive price that guarantees compatibility with experiences from the best locations.

For example, public urban transport is cheap but of poor quality, and specialized transport services for tourists are good but priced highly.

5 – Erratic promotion of the country

There has been a lack of continuity in the country’s international promotion. Building, maintaining, and constantly improving a tourist destination’s positive image is essential.

In addition to the rational decisions that impact the purchase of travel, emotional factors are increasingly present. For experienced travelers, visiting a country perceived as a friendly and creative place, vibrant in culture, and where you can rest in tranquility becomes increasingly essential. Buying a holiday is, after all, making a dream come true.

Holistic solution

Addressing isolated issues is not enough to attract more international travelers and generate prosperity in Brazil. A comprehensive approach is needed to create a high-quality tourist experience, which is challenging.

This challenge is particularly significant for destinations where local citizens struggle daily. Developed countries with high quality of life find it easier to develop and thrive in tourism. In contrast, developing or least developed countries often see tourism flourish in wealthy enclaves protected by security barriers, such as Cancun (Mexico), Bali (Indonesia), or the Maldives.

However, developing tourism in such enclaves is controversial and can lead to social and political conflicts. In Brazil, this model has become increasingly politically unfeasible and rejected by public opinion.

Discussions about Brazil’s stagnation in international tourism often focus on specific aspects like limited flight options, a lack of trained workers, and uneven marketing investments. While these points are important, addressing them in isolation without a holistic approach will continue to hinder Brazil’s potential as a major international tourism destination. Läs mer…

Should young people be paid less than their older counterparts, even if they’re working the same job? Whether you think it’s fair or not, it’s been standard practice in many industries for a long time.

The argument is that young people are not fully “work-ready” and require more intensive employer support to develop the right skills for their job.

But change could be on the horizon. Major unions and some politicians are pushing for reform – arguing “youth wages” should be scrapped entirely for adults.

Why? They say the need to be fairly paid for equal work effort, as well as economic considerations such as the high cost of living and ongoing housing crisis, mean paying young adults less based on their age is out of step with modern Australia.

So is there a problem with our current system, and if so, how might we go about fixing it?

What are youth wages?

In Australia, a youth wage or junior pay rate is paid as an increasing percentage of an award’s corresponding full adult wage until an employee reaches the age of 21.

This isn’t the case in every industry – some awards require all adults to be paid the same minimum rates.

But for those not covered by a specific award, as well as those working in industries including those covered by the General Retail Industry Award, Fast Food Industry Award and Pharmacy Industry Award, employees younger than 21 are not paid the full rate.

Why pay less?

Conventionally, junior rates have been thought of as a “training wage”. Younger people are typically less experienced, so as they gain more skills on the job over time, they are paid a higher hourly rate.

But there are a few key problems with this approach, which may not be relevant given many employers’ expectations for their workers to start “job-ready” and a lack of consistency in the training they provide.

Training up and developing skills is an important part of building any career. But it isn’t always provided by their employers.

Many young adults undergo training prior to starting work and at their own expense.
Best smile studio/Shutterstock

Many young workers train themselves in job-related technical education and short courses, often at their own expense and prior to starting work.

Employers reap the benefit of this pre-employment training and so a “wage discount” for younger workers may be irrelevant in this instance.

None of this is to say employers aren’t offering something important when they take on young employees.

Younger workers coming into employment relatively early have access to more than just a paid job, but also become part of a team, with responsibilities and job requirements that support “bigger-picture” life skills.

Those who employ them may be contributing to their broader social and cultural engagement, something that could be considered part of a more inclusive training package. Whether that justifies a significant wage discount is less clear.

Read more:
Why real wages in Australia have fallen while they’ve risen in most other OECD countries

Calls for a rethink

There are growing calls for a rethink on the way we compensate young people for their efforts.

An application by the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association – the union for retail, fast food and warehousing workers – seeks to remove junior rates for adult employees on three key awards. This action will be heard by the Fair Work Commission next year.

Sally McManus, Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, said the peak union body will lobby the government to legislate such changes if this application fails. The Greens have added their support.

Australian Council of Trade Unions Secretary Sally McManus.
Lukas Coch/AAP

That doesn’t have to mean abolishing youth wages altogether. But 21 years of age is a high threshold, especially given we get the right to major adult responsibilities such as voting and driving by 18.

A transition strategy could consider gradually lowering this threshold, or increasing the wage percentages over time.

Lessons from New Zealand

We wouldn’t be the first to make such a bold change if we did.

Our geographically and culturally close neighbour, New Zealand, has already removed the “youth wage” – replacing it with a “first job” rate and a training wage set at 80% of the full award rate in 2008.

A common argument against abolishing youth wages – and increasing the minimum wage in general – is that it will stop businesses hiring young people and thus increase unemployment.

But a 2021 study that examined the effects of New Zealand’s experience with increasing minimum wages – including this change – found little discernible difference in employment outcomes for young workers.

The authors did note, however, that New Zealand’s economic downturn post-2008 had a marked effect on the employment of young workers more generally.

New Zealand has already taken major steps in reforming junior pay rates.
Stephan Roeger/Shutterstock

What’s fair?

It’s easy to see how we arrived at the case for paying younger adults less. But younger workers should not bear the burden of intergenerational inequity by “losing out” on wages in the early part of their working life.

The debate we see now echoes the discussions about equal pay for equal work value run in the 1960s and ‘70s in relation to women’s unequal pay.

We were warned that paying women the same as men would cause huge economic dislocation. Such a catastrophe simply did not come to pass. Läs mer…

Israel and Iran are at war. In truth, the two sides have been fighting for decades, but the conflict has played out largely under the cover of covert and clandestine operations.

The recent actions of both sides in this once “shadow war” have changed the nature of the conflict. It is not clear that de-escalation is on the horizon.

On Oct 1, 2024, Iran launched a massive, direct attack against Israel notionally in retribution for Israel’s dual assassinations of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah’s chief, Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah.

It was the second such barrage in six months.

By many accounts, the previous Iranian attack against Israel on April 13 – which consisted of over 300 ballistic and cruise missiles and attack drones – caused very little damage to Israel. Perhaps because of this, and likely in part due to U.S. encouragement of restraint, Israel’s immediate military response then – an airstrike against a single advanced Iranian air defense system in the Isfahan province – was somewhat measured.

Many onlookers saw the calibrated exchange in April as a possible indication that both sides would prefer to de-escalate rather than engage in ongoing open warfare.

But further Israeli military operations since then have prompted escalatory Iranian military responses, forcing the conflict back out of the shadows.

With Hamas’ capabilities and leadership degraded in the Gaza Strip, Israel’s military leaders announced in June that they were “ready to face” Hezbollah – the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group whose persistent rocket attacks against northern Israel have caused tens of thousands to evacuate the area.

Israel pivots north

Israel’s pivot from Gaza toward Lebanon coincided with the July 31, 2024, assassination of Hamas’ political bureau chairman, Haniyeh, during his stay in Tehran. The purported Israeli operation was seen as an affront to Iran’s sovereignty. It was also an embarrassment that highlighted the vulnerability and permeability of Iran’s internal security apparatus.

Even though Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei vowed a “harsh response” against Israel, by September Iran had taken no action.

Tehran’s inaction caused many Middle East analysts to question if the Iranian response would ever materialize – and by extension, what that would mean for Khamenei’s commitment to his proxy forces.

If indeed Iran’s leadership opted for restraint following the assassination of Hamas’ top political leader, the same could not be said for its reaction to Israel’s multiphase operation against Hezbollah in mid-September.

Israel began with a clandestine operation to sow chaos and confusion in Hezbollah’s command and control through the means of sabotaged explosive communications devices. Israel then carried out airstrikes eliminating Hezbollah’s top leaders including Nasrallah. The Israeli military then launched what the country’s leaders describe as a “limited [ground] operation” into southern Lebanon to remove Hezbollah positions along the northern border.

Tehran’s Oct 1. attack in response against Israel was, according to many Middle East experts and indeed Iranian military leaders, primarily a retaliation for the two high-profile assassinations against Hamas and Hezbollah leaders.

These were certainly key factors. But as an expert on Iran’s defense strategy, I argue that Iran’s leaders also felt compelled to attack Israel for three equally, if not more important, reasons: to slow Israel’s advance in Lebanon, to save face, and to restore deterrence.

Challenging Israel’s advance

Iran hopes to slow and potentially reverse Israel’s successes against Hezbollah, especially as Israel embarks on ground operations into southern Lebanon. Of course, Israeli ground troops must now deal with what is perhaps the world’s most capable guerrilla fighting force – one that performed quite successfully during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

Nevertheless, Israel’s ability to achieve a tactical surprise and eliminate Hezbollah’s top leaders – even in the midst of an ongoing localized war, and even after Israel’s leaders announced their intention to engage Hezbollah – reveals a far superior Israeli strategy and operational planning and execution capability than that of Hezbollah.

And that presents a huge blow to what is seen in Iran as the Islamic Republic’s crown jewel within its “Axis of Resistance.”

In this respect, the Oct. 1 retaliatory strike by Iran can be seen as an attempt to afford Hezbollah time to appoint replacement leadership, regroup and organize against Israel’s ground invasion.

The brutal art of save face?

It also serves to help Iran save face, especially in how it’s seen by other parts of its external proxy network.

Orchestrated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, or IRGC – Tehran’s primary arm for coordinating external operations – Iranian money, training, guidance and ideological support enabled and encouraged the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack against Israel – even, as it has claimed, Iran had no prior warning of the assault.

Since then, Hamas fighters have received almost no real-time support from Tehran. This lack of support has no doubt contributed to Hamas being successfully degraded as a threat by Israel, with many of its members either dead or in hiding and unable to mount a coherent offensive campaign, leading Israel’s military leaders to claim the group has been effectively defeated.

Unsurprisingly, Iran is glad to enable Palestinians to fight Tehran’s enemies and absorb the human costs of war, because this arrangement primarily benefits the Islamic Republic.

Once the fighting in Gaza started, the IRGC was nowhere to be found.

Rockets fired from Iran are seen over Jerusalem on Oct. 1, 2024.
Wisam Hashlamoun/Anadolu via Getty Images

Now that Israel has shifted its attention to Lebanon and scored several initial tactical successes against Hezbollah, Iran cannot afford to stand back and watch for two main reasons. First, a year of fighting in Gaza has demonstrated that Israel is willing to do whatever it takes to eliminate threats along its borders – including a willingness to withstand international political pressure or operate within Iran’s borders.

And second, Iran’s proxy groups elsewhere are watching to see if Tehran will continue supporting them – or will abandon them, as it seemingly has done with Hamas.

Reclaiming deterrence

Perhaps above all, in Tehran’s calculus over how to respond is Iran’s need to restore a deterrence.

The two defining features of Iran’s interrelated external, or “forward defense,” and deterrence strategies is its regional network of militant proxies and its long-range weapons arsenal, which includes a large number of advanced ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and attack-capable drones.

These Iranian defense strategies seek to dissuade enemies from attacking Iran proper in two ways: first, by threatening Israel and other regional U.S. allies with punishment via proxy militia or long-range weapon attacks; and second, by offering scapegoat targets against which Iran’s enemies can express their rage. In effect, Iran’s proxy forces act as proxy targets that pay the costs for Iran’s hostile policies.

Israel’s degradation of Hamas and ongoing operations against Hezbollah threaten to undermine Iran’s ability to deter attacks against the homeland. For the Islamic Republic’s leaders, this is an unacceptable risk.

Who plays the next move?

These interweaving imperatives likely prompted Iran’s leaders to launch a second massive, direct missile attack on Oct. 1 against Israel. How effective the strike will be in achieving any of Tehran’s aims is unknown.

The Islamic Republic claimed that as many as 90% of the ballistic missiles reached their intended targets, while Israel and the United States characterize the attack as having been “defeated and ineffective,” despite unverified cellphone videos showing several ballistic missiles detonating after reaching land in Israel.

What is almost certain, however, is that this will not be the last move in the conflict. Israel is unlikely to halt its Lebanon operation until it achieves its border security objectives. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed retaliation against Iran for its latest retaliatory attack.

IRGC leaders met this warning with a counterthreat of their own that if Israel responds to the Oct. 1 attack militarily, Iran will again respond with unspecified “crushing and destructive attacks.”

Rhetorically, neither side is backing down; militarily this may be true, too. The nature and scope of Israel’s next move will dictate how the war with Iran develops – but make no mistake, it is a war. Läs mer…