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What if you could listen to music or a podcast without headphones or earbuds and without disturbing anyone around you? Or have a private conversation in public without other people hearing you?

Our newly published research introduces a way to create audible enclaves – localized pockets of sound that are isolated from their surroundings. In other words, we’ve developed a technology that could create sound exactly where it needs to be.

The ability to send sound that becomes audible only at a specific location could transform entertainment, communication and spatial audio experiences.

What is sound?

Sound is a vibration that travels through air as a wave. These waves are created when an object moves back and forth, compressing and decompressing air molecules.

The frequency of these vibrations is what determines pitch. Low frequencies correspond to deep sounds, like a bass drum; high frequencies correspond to sharp sounds, like a whistle.

Sound is composed of particles moving in a continuous wave.
Daniel A. Russell, CC BY-NC-ND

Controlling where sound goes is difficult because of a phenomenon called diffraction – the tendency of sound waves to spread out as they travel. This effect is particularly strong for low-frequency sounds because of their longer wavelengths, making it nearly impossible to keep sound confined to a specific area.

Certain audio technologies, such as parametric array loudspeakers, can create focused sound beams aimed in a specific direction. However, these technologies will still emit sound that is audible along its entire path as it travels through space.

The science of audible enclaves

We found a new way to send sound to one specific listener: through self-bending ultrasound beams and a concept called nonlinear acoustics.

Ultrasound refers to sound waves with frequencies above the human hearing range, or above 20 kHz. These waves travel through the air like normal sound waves but are inaudible to people. Because ultrasound can penetrate through many materials and interact with objects in unique ways, it’s widely used for medical imaging and many industrial applications.

In our work, we used ultrasound as a carrier for audible sound. It can transport sound through space silently – becoming audible only when desired. How did we do this?

Normally, sound waves combine linearly, meaning they just proportionally add up into a bigger wave. However, when sound waves are intense enough, they can interact nonlinearly, generating new frequencies that were not present before.

This is the key to our technique: We use two ultrasound beams at different frequencies that are completely silent on their own. But when they intersect in space, nonlinear effects cause them to generate a new sound wave at an audible frequency that would be heard only in that specific region.

Audible enclaves are created at the intersection of two ultrasound beams.
Jiaxin Zhong et al./PNAS, CC BY-NC-ND

Crucially, we designed ultrasonic beams that can bend on their own. Normally, sound waves travel in straight lines unless something blocks or reflects them. However, by using acoustic metasurfaces – specialized materials that manipulate sound waves – we can shape ultrasound beams to bend as they travel. Similar to how an optical lens bends light, acoustic metasurfaces change the shape of the path of sound waves. By precisely controlling the phase of the ultrasound waves, we create curved sound paths that can navigate around obstacles and meet at a specific target location.

The key phenomenon at play is what’s called difference frequency generation. When two ultrasonic beams of slightly different frequencies, such as 40 kHz and 39.5 kHz, overlap, they create a new sound wave at the difference between their frequencies – in this case 0.5 kHz, or 500 Hz, which is well within the human hearing range. Sound can be heard only where the beams cross. Outside of that intersection, the ultrasound waves remain silent.

This means you can deliver audio to a specific location or person without disturbing other people as the sound travels.

Advancing sound control

The ability to create audio enclaves has many potential applications.

Audio enclaves could enable personalized audio in public spaces. For example, museums could provide different audio guides to visitors without headphones, and libraries could allow students to study with audio lessons without disturbing others.

In a car, passengers could listen to music without distracting the driver from hearing navigation instructions. Offices and military settings could also benefit from localized speech zones for confidential conversations. Audio enclaves could also be adapted to cancel out noise in designated areas, creating quiet zones to improve focus in workplaces or reduce noise pollution in cities.

A sound only you can hear.
Daly and Newton/The Image Bank via Getty Images

This isn’t something that’s going to be on the shelf in the immediate future. For instance, challenges remain for our technology. Nonlinear distortion can affect sound quality. And power efficiency is another issue – converting ultrasound to audible sound requires high-intensity fields that can be energy intensive to generate.

Despite these hurdles, audio enclaves present a fundamental shift in sound control. By redefining how sound interacts with space, we open up new possibilities for immersive, efficient and personalized audio experiences. Läs mer…

There are many home-grown problems on Earth, but there’s still time to worry about bad things arriving from above. The most recent is the asteroid 2024 YR4, which could be a “city killer” if it hits a heavily populated area of our planet in the early years of the next decade.

The chances of that happening are now estimated to be around 0.001%. But there was a brief moment after the asteroid’s discovery last year when the estimated danger of a direct hit crossed the 1% threshold of comfortable risk.

There’s a need to worry about planetary defence if we are to avoid going the way of the dinosaurs. But there are many other things that could kill us, including climate change and wars. So what is it about space that grabs our attention? And how do these fears affect us – individually and as a society?

In the long run, something big will hit us, unless we can redirect it. The responsibility for preparation begins with us.

Yet preparation also carries risks. Daniel Deudney, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University in the US, has warned that the technologies used for planetary defence can not only guide asteroids away from Earth – they can also guide them towards it as a tool in a military conflict.

As explained in his book Dark Skies, Deudney’s solution is to reverse, regulate and relinquish most of our human activities in space for several centuries to come. The more we do in space, he believes, the greater the likelihood that states will end up in catastrophic conflict. “The avoidance of civilisation’s disaster and species extinction now depends on discerning what not to do, and then making sure it is not done,” he writes.

He ultimately argues space expansion has come too soon, and we must reverse the process until we are ready. That said, he thinks we may still need some form of planetary defence, but that it can be limited.

Holding off for centuries is an unlikely option though. The chances of an asteroid strike may well be too high. And the political interest in space expansion is, at this point, irreversible.

Fear of space has grown alongside space programs. Worries about asteroid strikes and over-militarisation lean into deeper fears about space as the unknown. Yet they also lean into worries about the self-destructive side of humanity.

Both fears are very old. One of our earliest traceable human tales, the story of the Cosmic Hunt dating back at least 15,000 years, combines the two.

An indigenous Sami version, surviving in Scandinavia, describes how a great hunt in the skies would go wrong if the hunter is impatient and fires an arrow which misses its target and accidentally strikes the pole star. This would bring the canopy of the night sky crashing down to Earth. Again, fears about misguided human actions and the threat from above fuse.

We can see this in modern technologically driven fears such as UFOlogy. Some hard-core believers in UFOs are not only concerned about hostile visitors, but about secret collaborations among scientists on Earth, or, an entire conspiracy to keep the truth from the public.

Without belief in a conspiracy to suppress the evidence, the whole idea falls apart. But without belief that there is actually something to fear from space, there is nothing for the conspiracy to be about. Fear of space is a necessary part of this picture.

This is an idea neatly captured in recent times by the Chinese science fiction author Cixin Liu, who compares space to a “dark forest” in which alien civilisations are trying to hide from each other.

All of this presupposes something of a bunker mentality, an over-separation of Earth and space, or sky and ground. This is something I have referred to as ground bias. The bias allows space to appear as a threatening outside, rather than something that we, too, are part of.

Alien viruses

The rationalisation for such fear shifts about and is not restricted to asteroids, aliens, meteors and runaway military conflict. There is even a theory that viruses come from space.

When COVID sceptics went looking for an idea to explain why mask wearing was pointless, what many of them struck upon was an obscure theory put together by the astrophysicists Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramsinghe in 1979.

Some believe Covid came from space.
Viacheslav Lopatin

The duo ultimately had a good idea which they followed up with a bad idea. The good idea was that the components for the emergence of life may have come from space. The bad idea was that they came ready formed, as viruses and bacteria, and that they are still coming.

According this theory, well known pandemics of the past (such as the lethal 1918 flu pandemic and even epidemics in antiquity) were apparently the result of viruses from space and could not be the result of person-to-person transmission – least of all from asymptomatic carriers.

The COVID version involved a meteor exploding over China. In an interview, Wickramsinghe claimed “a piece of this bolide containing trillions of the COVID-19 virus broke off from the bolide as it was entering the stratosphere” releasing viral particles which were then carried by prevailing winds.

The idea illustrates the way in which fears about space are used to drive anxiety about human failings or wrongdoing. COVID scepticism has since gone all the way into the White House.

But fears about space can also be used to critique those in power. In our own times, they are used to fuel narratives about billionaires with private space agendas and presidential access, wealthy space tourists and even wealthier prospective colonisers of Mars and beyond. It is a tempting narrative, but one that sees Earth as closed system, which should not be opened to the outside.

We may, at some level, be afraid of space itself. We certainly have an exaggerated sense our our Earthly separateness from it. And there are some particular things that we do have cause to worry about. But there is also the risk that a fear of space can combine with suspicions about governments, leading us to embrace conspiracy theories as a way to consolidate different kinds of worries into a single, manageable, set of beliefs. Läs mer…

The war in Gaza has been a notoriously controversial and difficult story to cover as a journalist. The Israeli government banned international journalists from the territory. At least 171 journalists and media workers in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank have been killed since the war began.

The BBC has faced relentless accusations of bias from all sides. You would think, then, that when it commissioned the film Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, billed as a “vivid and unflinching view of life” in Gaza seen through the eyes of children, it would have been meticulous in its commissioning and oversight.

Yet almost as soon as the programme was broadcast on February 17, a journalist outside the BBC revealed that one of the children featured in the film, 13-year-old Abdullah, who also acted as its narrator, was the son of a Hamas official. His father, Ayman Al-Yazouri, is a deputy minister of agriculture and therefore, as Hamas runs the government of Gaza, a Hamas official.

No major investigation was required to find out who this man was – an expert on wastewater treatment, in particular on the removal of heavy metals from industrial wastewater, who received degrees from UK universities. No evidence has emerged that he is linked to Hamas’s militant operations. But getting someone with any link to what is classified as a terrorist organisation by western governments to narrate the film was inevitably going to be criticised – especially because the link wasn’t explained to viewers.

The BBC pulled the film four days after its premiere and said it would investigate the matter. Where it really went wrong was that, for 12 days, the BBC tried to pin the blame elsewhere. It dumped on the production company, Hoyo Films, stating: “The production team had full editorial control of filming with Abdullah.” T

I argue this is a weak defence. A broadcaster can’t blame someone else when a mistake appears in a film.

Under Ofcom regulations, the broadcaster has full editorial responsibility, regardless of whether a freelance or independent crew carried out filming. Any mistake is the BBC’s mistake.

I was head of news and current affairs at Channel 4 for 17 years. We sometimes made mistakes. It happens. But the key is not to make things worse by trying to wriggle out of blame.

As it happens, Channel 4 also featured this child in some of its news coverage without initially disclosing his father’s role. “As international media access is restricted, Abdullah was sourced through an established journalist who has also worked for other major global media outlets,” Channel 4 News said in a statement.

Ofcom regulations

The BBC’s second excuse was even weaker. It said that filmmakers were asked in writing a number of times whether this child had any connection with Hamas.

Here is a journalistic tip for the BBC’s news bosses: if you ask someone a question and they don’t answer, you don’t just keep asking. You demand answers or you go and get the answer yourself. As a former news boss myself, I would have demanded to see the boy’s entire family tree.

Finally, after 12 days, the BBC took responsibility and issued an apology.
BBC chair Samir Shah told MPs that people “weren’t doing their job” when it came to oversight of the production. Shah described it as “a dagger to the heart of the BBC claim to be impartial and to be trustworthy”.

A child of 13 should arguably not have narrated the film at all. He was not narrating his own words but a script written by the programme makers, which included facts about the history and geopolitics of Gaza. I would point the BBC to Ofcom guidance that children under 16 should not be asked for views on matters likely to be beyond their capacity to answer properly without the consent of a responsible adult.

On a subject like this, I would not have had a child narrate a film – especially not when one of the responsible adults in his life was a Hamas official.

This was a powerful and beautifully shot film. It’s hard to see how any of its content could be described as pro-Hamas propaganda. The strongest moment was when a child said he hated Hamas because they had caused the war and all the misery being suffered now. But it’s almost certainly politically impossible for an amended version of the documentary to now be shown, which is a great loss.

This debacle even resulted in a bizarre decision by the Royal Television Society to drop an award recognising the brave and brilliant work of journalists in Gaza (it has since reversed this after backlash from journalists). We have relied on journalists in Gaza to show us what is happening.

They have continued filming when their own families have been killed. Their reports have been powerful and moving and true. Why should they be punished for a BBC cock-up?

Falling trust

I have never worked for the BBC, but I have always admired it for two things. First, for the brilliance of its journalists. Second, for its ability to turn a mistake into a PR catastrophe.

The film contained editorial errors, but in my view the outrage built over days, resulting in calls not just for a public inquiry, but even a police inquiry, because the BBC wouldn’t take the rap. My journalistic heart went out to the great people who work at the BBC.

This ghastly incident sits alongside other (quite different) recent scandals about the BBC: the bad behaviour (whether alleged or proven) of powerful presenters and figures Huw Edwards, Russell Brand, Tim Westwood and Gregg Wallace. In each case, it turned out that BBC bigwigs had received complaints over long periods of time before the stories went public.

For many reasons beyond the BBC’s control, trust in the broadcaster is falling. It is constantly being attacked by the right-wing press, and undermined by conspiracy theorists who say you can’t trust the so-called mainstream media and that there is no such thing as truth.

In a 2023 YouGov survey on trust in media, only 44% of Britons said they trust BBC journalists to tell the truth. That was nearly half the level of trust in the BBC 20 years earlier, yet it still made the BBC the most trusted media outlet in the UK. Other surveys by Ofcom of people who actually watch TV news put trust in its accuracy much higher – something like 70%.

There is a general fall in trust in all institutions in the UK. The politicians and tabloids who attack the BBC are trusted far less than BBC journalists. But their unfair assaults make it all the more essential that the BBC avoids errors like this, and is transparent when those errors are revealed. Läs mer…

A proposed reform to the way electricity is priced in Britain could see households pay a different bill based on their postcode.

Presently, Britain’s electricity system operates as a single market across England, Wales and Scotland. Around 30% of electricity is traded through half-hourly auctions, known as the spot market, while the remaining 70% is traded in forward markets via contracts covering weeks, months, or even years of demand in advance.

The price of electricity is, broadly speaking, determined by the spot market, as forward market contracts are hedged on the basis of current and expected future spot market prices.

“Zonal pricing” would divide the British market into multiple separate zones instead, each with its own spot and forward markets to serve demand within it. In effect, zonal pricing would split one large market into a series of smaller, interconnected markets.

Whether it is the right approach depends on what you expect it to achieve, and where your interests lie. The UK’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, tasked with the decision, has three main objectives: decarbonising the country’s power sector, securing the supply of power and lowering the prices consumers pay.

I’m an academic investigating the factors that influence the UK’s ability to decarbonise the housing sector, in particular, the way people heat their homes. I’m most concerned with the affordability of electricity, since I take the view that the lower the price of electricity, the easier our journey to net zero emissions will be – and vice versa.

A lower electricity price would make clean heating systems (such as heat pumps, which run on electricity) more attractive to consumers and reduce the scale of insulation and draughtproofing required to make the running cost of these systems competitive with gas boilers. My research suggests that the UK’s high electricity price is behind the country’s comparably low rate of heat pump adoption.

Zonal pricing, as an electricity market reform, seems unlikely to lower electricity prices and drive decarbonisation on its own. Closer scrutiny of the electricity system and its mechanisms suggests it may only make things more complicated.

The root cause of high bills

At €0.321 (£0.27) per kilowatt-hour (kWh), the UK has the second-highest electricity price when compared to European Union countries. The EU average is €0.218 per kWh, meaning UK electricity costs around 47% more than it does for most of our EU neighbours.

Despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (which triggered a spike in energy prices) starting more than three years ago now, electricity prices across the UK remain about 53% higher than pre-crisis levels. If the UK is generating more electricity from renewables each year — and renewable electricity is the cheapest on the market — why do prices keep rising instead of falling, as one might expect?

The UK’s high electricity prices are the result of system marginal pricing, which lies at the heart of the spot market. At the end of each half-hourly auction, all electricity that is bid into the market is purchased at the price of the last unit required to meet demand.

Since total demand is rarely met by renewables, the much more expensive gas generators typically set the price. It’s like going to a fruit market to buy ten apples, finding the first nine for £1 each, the last one for £3, and then having to pay £30 for the lot, rather than the expected £13.

Because forward markets follow the spot market, and the spot market operates under system marginal pricing, UK consumers end up paying gas-generated electricity prices 98% of the time.

Read more:
How gas keeps the UK’s electricity bills so high – despite lots of cheap wind power

Will zonal pricing lower these prices? On its own, no. This is because all zones under the scheme will still have spot markets operating under the marginal pricing model. Zonal pricing doesn’t address the fundamental problem that’s keeping electricity prices in Britain so high.

Advocates of zonal pricing argue that it will encourage investment in the infrastructure required to lower electricity prices – namely, storage and transmission.

Grid-scale and home batteries, pumped hydro and thermal energy storage help reduce final electricity prices by storing excess renewable energy for use when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining, so grid operators don’t have to rely on expensive gas-generated electricity to fill supply gaps. Meanwhile, transmission lines and cables ensure that renewable electricity is delivered where it is needed.

By creating price differences between zones, so the argument goes, the market receives clear signals about where such investments would be most profitable.

Would zonal pricing help build more of these?
EOSMan/Shutterstock

This argument, however, assumes that electricity prices will fall in some zones, and that the market has a strong incentive to invest in high-price areas.

I’m compelled to ask two questions. What prevents zones that generate a lot of renewable electricity from selling their supply at higher prices in other zones, which could prevent renewables from meeting total demand and lead to the same price distortions currently seen due to marginal pricing?

And if investments in storage and transmission are underwhelming when electricity prices are high everywhere, why would they suddenly become more likely when prices are only high in specific areas?

Overall, I think the argument in favour of zonal pricing is unconvincing as it doesn’t address the structural issue underlying the UK’s high electricity prices: spot markets that operate according to system marginal pricing.

If zonal pricing neither lowers consumer electricity prices nor significantly stimulates investment in storage and transmission on its own — and does not alter the geographic and planning factors that determine wind and solar farm locations — then it is unclear what it would achieve beyond adding complexity to an already complex electricity system.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far. Läs mer…

The price of eggs has risen dramatically in recent years across the US. A dozen eggs cost US$1.20 (92p) in June 2019, but the price is now around US$4.90 (with a peak of US$8.17 in early March).

Some restaurants have imposed surcharges on egg-based dishes, bringing even more attention to escalating costs. And there are also shortages on supermarket shelves.

In the coming months, the US plans to import up to 100 million of this consumer staple. Government officials are approaching countries from Turkey to Brazil with enquiries about eggs for export.

Agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins, who previously said that one option to the crisis was for people to get a chicken for their backyard, suggested in the Wall Street Journal that prices are unlikely to stabilise for some months. And Donald Trump recently shared an article on Truth Social calling on the public to “shut up about egg prices”.

The main cause of the problem is an outbreak of avian flu that has resulted in over 166 million birds in the US being slaughtered. Around 98% of the nation’s chickens are produced on factory farms, which are ripe for contagion.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the flu has already spread to several hundred dairy cattle and to one human. The USDA recently announced a US$1 billion plan to counter the problem, with funding for improved bio-security, vaccine research and compensation to farmers.

In January 2025, Donald Trump’s White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, blamed the previous administration for high egg prices. It is true that birds were slaughtered on President Joe Biden’s watch, but this was and remains standard practice at times of bird flu outbreaks and had also been the case during the Obama and first Trump administrations.

However, this points to the way the rising price of eggs has become a political touchstone. It was referred to regularly in campaign speeches and press briefings as a sign of things going wrong and a symbol of the US economy faced. Donald Trump promised to fix the price of eggs swiftly if elected, but so far the issue shows no sign of going away.

Prices are still trending up. Even when prices suddenly drop, as they have this week, the public know how much cheaper they used to be until recently, and do not tend to feel better.

There are a number of reasons why egg prices have become an important to US politicians. First, almost everyone buys eggs. So the shortage and subsequent price rise is newsworthy and affects consumers in all income brackets.

Secondly, they are a measure of broader economic vulnerabilities, so egg-related problems tend to be part of a larger story about how weak the economy is. And thirdly, egg prices are political because of Trump’s promise to bring them down.

Read more:
US inflation has increased since Trump took office – why prices are unlikely to come down soon

Polls showed that the economy and inflation were key factors in voter choice on election day 2024. In February 2025, Donald Trump did an interview with NBC News in which he said he won the election on the border and groceries.

On immigration, voters often base their opinions on what they perceive to be true. For example, tough rhetoric on building a wall may equate with a sense of feeling that the president is taking strong action, whether anything tangible actually materialises or not.

With groceries, reality trumps perception. The price of eggs is printed on the box and the cost is paid directly by voters.

Donald Trump on what he’s doing on egg prices and the economy.

Then there are the egg producers. US farmers tended to overwhelmingly support Trump on election day, so it is prudent for him to feel their pain, or at least appear to. Farming areas voted for him increasingly in his three election efforts, even increasing their support for him in 2020 after trade wars and price increases which would have negatively impacted them.

Another factor that may push up egg prices is that an estimated 70% of the factory farm workforce is immigrant labour, and as many as 40% are undocumented. Should the administration’s plans for high tariffs and mass deportations come to fruition, the industry would struggle to function.

Further food price increases will be inevitable, with potential exacerbation via the funding freezes for some USDA programmes that Trump has enacted. As of March 2025, US$1 billion in cuts has been announced, the consequences of which are already being felt by farmers. The “pain now for gain later” message is a tricky political sell.

Even in the current era of international turbulence, elections are largely won on more pedestrian matters. Specifically, “kitchen-table” economics is relatable to every voter, regardless of how grand, or not, their table is.

Americans will be aware that in neighbouring Canada, egg prices have not risen dramatically and there have not been shortages. But prices in Canada have been traditionally higher than the US, this is in part at least because farming standards differ.

The US does not have high welfare standards for agricultural workers or animals, and this shortcoming needs to be addressed in order to help reduce future risk of flu, but this is likely to also raise prices.

Blaming the previous incumbent is not a durable stance for Donald Trump. As former president Harry Truman might remind him: “The buck stops here.” Right at his desk. Läs mer…

The price of eggs has risen dramatically in recent years across the US. A dozen eggs cost US$1.20 (92p) in June 2019, but the price is now around US$4.90 (with a peak of US$8.17 in early March).

Some restaurants have imposed surcharges on egg-based dishes, bringing even more attention to escalating costs. And there are also shortages on supermarket shelves.

In the coming months, the US plans to import up to 100 million of this consumer staple. Government officials are approaching countries from Turkey to Brazil with enquiries about eggs for export.

Agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins, who previously said that one option to the crisis was for people to get a chicken for their backyard, suggested in the Wall Street Journal that prices are unlikely to stabilise for some months. And Donald Trump recently shared an article on Truth Social calling on the public to “shut up about egg prices”.

The main cause of the problem is an outbreak of avian flu that has resulted in over 166 million birds in the US being slaughtered. Around 98% of the nation’s chickens are produced on factory farms, which are ripe for contagion.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the flu has already spread to several hundred dairy cattle and to one human. The USDA recently announced a US$1 billion plan to counter the problem, with funding for improved bio-security, vaccine research and compensation to farmers.

In January 2025, Donald Trump’s White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, blamed the previous administration for high egg prices. It is true that birds were slaughtered on President Joe Biden’s watch, but this was and remains standard practice at times of bird flu outbreaks and had also been the case during the Obama and first Trump administrations.

However, this points to the way the rising price of eggs has become a political touchstone. It was referred to regularly in campaign speeches and press briefings as a sign of things going wrong and a symbol of the US economy faced. Donald Trump promised to fix the price of eggs swiftly if elected, but so far the issue shows no sign of going away.

Prices are still trending up. Even when prices suddenly drop, as they have this week, the public know how much cheaper they used to be until recently, and do not tend to feel better.

There are a number of reasons why egg prices have become an important to US politicians. First, almost everyone buys eggs. So the shortage and subsequent price rise is newsworthy and affects consumers in all income brackets.

Secondly, they are a measure of broader economic vulnerabilities, so egg-related problems tend to be part of a larger story about how weak the economy is. And thirdly, egg prices are political because of Trump’s promise to bring them down.

Read more:
US inflation has increased since Trump took office – why prices are unlikely to come down soon

Polls showed that the economy and inflation were key factors in voter choice on election day 2024. In February 2025, Donald Trump did an interview with NBC News in which he said he won the election on the border and groceries.

On immigration, voters often base their opinions on what they perceive to be true. For example, tough rhetoric on building a wall may equate with a sense of feeling that the president is taking strong action, whether anything tangible actually materialises or not.

With groceries, reality trumps perception. The price of eggs is printed on the box and the cost is paid directly by voters.

Donald Trump on what he’s doing on egg prices and the economy.

Then there are the egg producers. US farmers tended to overwhelmingly support Trump on election day, so it is prudent for him to feel their pain, or at least appear to. Farming areas voted for him increasingly in his three election efforts, even increasing their support for him in 2020 after trade wars and price increases which would have negatively impacted them.

Another factor that may push up egg prices is that an estimated 70% of the factory farm workforce is immigrant labour, and as many as 40% are undocumented. Should the administration’s plans for high tariffs and mass deportations come to fruition, the industry would struggle to function.

Further food price increases will be inevitable, with potential exacerbation via the funding freezes for some USDA programmes that Trump has enacted. As of March 2025, US$1 billion in cuts has been announced, the consequences of which are already being felt by farmers. The “pain now for gain later” message is a tricky political sell.

Even in the current era of international turbulence, elections are largely won on more pedestrian matters. Specifically, “kitchen-table” economics is relatable to every voter, regardless of how grand, or not, their table is.

Americans will be aware that in neighbouring Canada, egg prices have not risen dramatically and there have not been shortages. But prices in Canada have been traditionally higher than the US, this is in part at least because farming standards differ.

The US does not have high welfare standards for agricultural workers or animals, and this shortcoming needs to be addressed in order to help reduce future risk of flu, but this is likely to also raise prices.

Blaming the previous incumbent is not a durable stance for Donald Trump. As former president Harry Truman might remind him: “The buck stops here.” Right at his desk. Läs mer…

If spy films have taught us anything, it’s that the people chosen for a career in espionage are special. They are the cream of the crop selected because they exhibit unique skills: high levels of intelligence and certain emotional traits that made them perfect for spying.

During the second world war, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a British agency tasked with training spies to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in German-occupied Europe and in east Asia. Active from 1940 to 1946, SOE was a pioneering British secret service. This is because it employed civilians, from all backgrounds, including women, which was unusual at a time where most spies were recruited from the army.

The women hired by the agency were the only ones allowed to take on a combatant role by the British Army during the second world war. However, many have been unjustly forgotten.

These women were active throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, but most women worked in France. They were not French, but French speakers who tried to pass for local. On paper, this might seem impossible, since being fluent in a language does not make you a spy.

SOE recruited prospective agents on the basis of their language skills, and trained most of them in England before sending them into the field. Despite their lack of experience, many SOE women successfully duped German soldiers. Here are some of the simple but effective ways they managed such deception.

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Emotional control

First, women spies sometimes fooled people simply by appearing calm. Irish agent Maureen Patricia “Paddy” O’Sullivan had grown-up in Belgium and was renowned for her daring personality. In a post-war interview, she described how she avoided a thorough search while carrying compromising documents. O’Sullivan acted confident and friendly to divert the soldier’s attention from her bag:

As she laughed and joked with the German, he was distracted from making a closer examination.

The spies’ cool was frequently praised in post-war commendations. Remaining calm was no mean feat, especially since most SOE recruits had never worked undercover. In France, they could be questioned by Nazis at any time and nervousness made them look suspicious.

Agent Yvonne Cormeau joined SOE after losing her husband during a bombing at the beginning of the war. In a 1989 interview, she summarised the situation perfectly: “We learned to live with fear.”

Physical appearance

SOE spies did alter their appearance in order not to be recognised, but for most, this merely involved picking clothes which matched their cover. Yvonne Cormeau was sent to a farm in southern France, where the pro-Allied owners gave her new clothes and an apron. She was supposed to pass as their assistant and needed to look like one.

A few agents went a step further and dyed their hair. This was the case of Noor Inayat Khan (code name Madeleine), a Sufi Muslim of royal lineage born to Indian and American parents. Betrayed to the Germans, she was executed at Dachau concentration camp in 1944.

Noor Inayat Khan.
Imperial War Museums/Wikimedia, CC BY

Inayat Khan’s contribution to SOE proved invaluable. For several months in 1943, she was the sole radio operator still active in Paris amid the growing Gestapo presence.

However, her constant hair dyeing was less effective. To try and escape the notice of the Gestapo, she regularly bleached her hair blonde, but this actually brought her to the attention of the Germans.

They questioned Alfred and Emilie Balachowsky, her contacts who lived near Paris and led a local resistance network, about the presence of a woman “sometimes blonde and sometimes brunette”. The agent was not arrested on that occasion, but her efforts had backfired.

Everyday habits

Locals like the Balachowskys provided crucial support for SOE women, who could be given away by any small gesture. Despite having grown up near Paris, Inayat Khan threatened her cover just by pouring tea.

Shortly after her arrival, Mrs Balachowsky invited neighbours to a tea party, during which the SOE agent poured the milk first into her cup, leading a neighbour to comment that she behaved like a Brit. Emilie Balachowsky quickly corrected Inayat Khan, who was not the only spy to make errors based on cultural differences.

Yvonne Cormeau.
Imperial War Museums/Wikimedia, CC BY

While at the farm, Yvonne Cormeau was asked to watch the owner’s cows. She was about to bring her knitting kit, until her contact explained that this would give her away: “I was forbidden from knitting, as we Englishwomen knit differently.”

These anecdotes are a testament to the importance of everyday habits and of the agents’ local contacts. For SOE women, espionage in France was very much about teamwork.

While Inayat Khan was compromised and executed, for the most part the SOE’s civilian programme for women was a success. The SOE paved the way for other agencies which gradually started to recruit civilians of all genders after the second world war.

Some of its methods are also used by modern secret services, such as the illegals programme, a Russian initiative which involves sending Russian operatives fluent in English undercover in the US.

Despite this success, the contribution of women like Patricia O’Sullivan, Yvonne Cormeau and Noor Inayat Khan has remained widely overlooked. They deserve to be remembered along with the period’s male spies. Läs mer…

During Donald Trump’s first term as US president, he regularly referred to rising stock markets as evidence of the success of his economic policies. “Highest Stock Market EVER”, Trump wrote on social media in 2017 after record gains. “That doesn’t just happen!”

And after securing a second term in November 2024, some of Trump’s close advisers told the New York Times that the president “sees the market as a barometer of his success and abhors the idea that his actions might drive down stock prices”.

This, in addition to a broader economic policy agenda committed to lower regulation and significant tax cuts, had Wall Street investors bullish about their prospects under the new Trump administration.

But fears of an escalating trade war have seen the S&P 500, an index of the leading 500 publicly traded companies in the US, drop more than 10% from its February 2025 high. A decline of this magnitude in a major index is what professional traders refer to as a “correction”. In less than a month, roughly US$5 trillion (£3.9 trillion) has been wiped off the value of US stocks.

So, what exactly is driving down stock prices? Economists cite the president’s brinkmanship, as well as his start-stop approach to tariffs with Canada and Mexico, as having rattled global investors. Some commentators believe this “chaotic” trade agenda has created huge uncertainty for consumers, investors and businesses.

In view of such policies, a recent JP Morgan report said that US economic policy was “tilting away from growth”, and put the chances of a US recession at 40%, up from 30% at the start of the year. Moody’s Analytics has upped the odds of a US recession from 15% to 35%, citing tariffs as a key factor driving the downturn in its outlook.

Any economic downturn would have an adverse impact on the profitability of US corporations, and the declining share prices reflect the negative outlook from investors.

A screen shows the Dow Jones stock market index on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on March 11.
Justin Lane / EPA

So far, the Trump administration appears unfazed by the US stock market decline. In an address to Congress on March 4, Trump declared his use of tariffs was all about making America rich again. “There will be a little disturbance, but we’re okay with that,” he said.

The White House has, since then, announced that some short-term pain may be necessary for Trump to implement his trade agenda successfully, which is designed to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US.

So, should we read this economic turbulence as a temporary blip? Or is it symptomatic of a more fundamental shift in the US economy?

Change of strategy

Stephen Miran, who was recently confirmed as chairman of Trump’s council of economic advisers, wrote a paper in November 2024 titled: A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System. The paper gives us an insight into the Trump administration’s wider economic strategy.

It sets out Trump’s desire “to reform the global trading system and put American industry on fairer ground vis-a-vis the rest of the world”. Miran cites persistent US dollar overvaluation as the root cause of economic imbalances.

Miran does not believe that tariffs are inflationary, and argues that their use during Trump’s first presidential term had little discernible macroeconomic consequences. He does concede that tariffs may eventually lead to an appreciation – or further overvaluation – of the US dollar. However, Miran sees the extent of that appreciation as “debatable”.

He sees tariffs as a tool for leverage in trade negotiations. The administration could, for example, agree to a reduction in tariffs in exchange for significant investment is the US by key trading partners. China investing in car manufacturing in the US is specifically mentioned in his analysis.

Miran also states his belief that tariffs can be used to raise tax revenues from foreigners in order to retain low tax rates on American citizens.

Trump has said his tariff strategy is about ‘making America rich again and making America great again’.
Jim Lo Scalzo / Pool / EPA

Some economists agree that the US dollar is overvalued. A combination of its role as the world’s reserve currency, as well as the attractiveness of the US economy as an investment destination, fuels demand for the US dollar and makes it stronger.

A strong US dollar has made American manufacturing exports less competitive. This has cost American jobs. The “rust belt” states of the north-eastern and mid-western US have experienced a decline in manufacturing employment over the past 40 years, which is evidence of this.

However, it is worth noting that the many US manufacturers who import manufactured parts or components to make their products do benefit from a stronger dollar. This is because it makes the parts and materials they are importing cheaper. US mortgage holders and investors also benefit from a stronger dollar through lower interest rates on loans.

Steven Englander, the head of research and strategy at Standard Chartered bank, believes there are some contradictions in the Trump administration’s approach.

In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Englander said: “The problem for the new administration is that it simultaneously wants a weaker dollar, a reduced trade deficit, capital inflows, and the dollar to remain the key currency in international reserves and payments.”

Reduced trade deficits and capital inflows would typically strengthen the US dollar, as does its position as the world’s reserve currency.

As Miran says in his paper: “There is a path by which the Trump administration can reconfigure the global trading and financial systems to America’s benefit. But it is narrow, and will require careful planning, precise execution, and attention to steps to minimise adverse consequences.”

Only time will tell whether the Trump administration can successfully navigate this “narrow” path. In the meantime, the recent turbulence in US stock prices appears to be acceptable to the Trump administration in their pursuit of reforming the global financial system. Läs mer…

New Zealand’s concentrated supermarket sector is back in the spotlight after Finance Minister Nicola Willis said she was open to offering “VIP treatment” to a third international player willing to create competition.

However, New Zealanders hoping for a foreign hero to break up the current supermarket concentration will be waiting a long time.

It could take five years or more for an international brand such as Aldi to enter New Zealand and establish a nationwide chain. It is a risky bet. So far, no foreign operator has expressed interest publicly in setting up shop here on a national scale.

To create more competition in the supermarket sector, the New Zealand government needs go back to where the issues began: allowing multiple companies to merge until there were few alternatives for shoppers.

Breaking up two of the major entities in the sector would be a relatively quick way to reintroduce competition and improve affordability for everyone.

The rise in concentration

The current state of New Zealand’s supermarket sector – dominated by Woolworths (formerly Countdown), Foodstuffs North Island and Foodstuffs South Island – is a result of successive mergers and acquisitions along two tracks.

The first was Progressive Enterprises’ (owner of Foodtown, Countdown and Five Guys banners) purchase of Woolworths New Zealand (which also owned Big Fresh and Price Chopper) in 2001.

Progressive Enterprises was sold to Woolworths Australia, its’ current owner, in 2005. In less than 25 years, six brands owned by multiple companies were whittled down to a single brand, Woolworths.

The second was the concentration of the “Foodstuffs cooperatives” network. This network once included four regional cooperatives and multiple banners including Mark’n Pak and Cut Price, as well as New World, PAK’nSave and Four Square.

The decision of the four legally separate cooperatives to include “Foodstuffs” in their company name blurred the lines between them. The companies looked similar but remained legally separate.

As a result of mergers, these four separate companies have now become Foodstuffs North Island – franchise limited share company, operating according to “cooperative principlies” and Foodstuffs South Island, a legal cooperative.

In a recent failed application to merge into one company, Foodstuffs North Island and Foodstuffs South Island admitted to sharing information between the two legally separate companies. They are also not meaningfully competing with each other as they operate in regions which do not overlap.

Breaking up the current players to compete

While the Commerce Commission declined the clearance for Foodstuffs North Island Limited and Foodstuffs South Island to merge into one single national grocery entity, more can be done to drive competition in the supermarket sector.

The fastest option would be to break up the “Foodstuffs” companies into smaller entities, with the breakaway and re-branding of PAK’nSave across both islands.

But to do this the government would need to update legislation to allow parliament to force divestiture, consistent with the United Kingdom and the United States.

This would allow New Zealand to go from three supermarket companies to five or more in a short period of time.

Reducing the power dependency of suppliers and customers on the current companies would also reduce barriers to entry for overseas brands.

New Zealanders have long hoped for Aldi to set up shop in New Zealand. But doing so would take time and a significant investment.
Stepan Skorobogadko/Shutterstock

Global players will take too long

Breaking up the local dominant supermarket players is simply faster, and more straightforward, than waiting for a foreign company to enter New Zealand. It takes time and is expensive to build scale with stores. It can also be risky, as recent history in Australia shows.

Aldi Australia, a favourite of New Zealand consumers hoping for a global alternative, took 20 years to reach scale as a third major player in that country. Originally from Germany, Aldi entered Australia as a declining brand – Franklins – left the market.

In 2017, another German company, Kaufland, announced ambitious plans to enter the Australian market, starting with 20 stores. It purchased its first site in 2018 and hired 200 staff. However, the company abandoned launch plans in 2020 and divested completely from the market.

Additionally, it took US-based bulk retail store Costco three years – and NZ$100 million – to go from announcing its plans for one New Zealand store to open. The retailer has hinted at opening a second location but this has not yet happened.

In the end, the solution to New Zealand’s concentrated supermarket sector needs to come from within. Breaking up the power held by the dominant supermarket companies will allow prices to come down more quickly than waiting for a foreign supermarket to arrive.

The government allowed the market to become concentrated, so it can now fix it. An international brand is not the hero – local, New Zealand-owned competition is. Läs mer…

As Canada’s trade conflict with the United States escalates, governments are encouraging Canadians to buy local to support the country’s economic, social and environmental stability and independence.

But while enthusiasm in purchasing locally made food is growing, actually identifying Canadian products in grocery stores is often confusing. Decades of free trade have deeply integrated Canada’s food supply chains with the U.S., making it difficult to determine what is actually local.

Read more:
Trump tariffs have sparked a ’Buy Canadian’ surge, but keeping the trend alive faces hurdles

Even for Canadian-owned companies, most food products are enmeshed in global supply chains and often contain a mix of Canadian and foreign ingredients.

Canada’s beef industry is a striking example of this. Two multinational corporations — American-owned Cargill and Brazilian-owned JBS — process more than 95 per cent of beef produced in Canada. This means that even if some of the food consumers purchase is labelled as Canadian-owned, the economic benefit may be flowing outside the country

As food systems researchers and practitioners who have explored ways for Canadians to feed themselves in equitable and sustainable ways, it has become clear that local food systems lack the infrastructure and supply to meet increasing demand.

What’s holding local food systems back?

In collaboration with Sustain, an Ontario-wide network that promotes healthy, just and sustainable food and farming, we conducted a study to understand the policy priorities of organizations and businesses working to build local food economies in regions across the province.

Ontario already has a vibrant network of farmers, organizations and food entrepreneurs ready to meet local food demand. However, systemic challenges continue to hinder their ability to scale up production and distribution.

Farmland is seen outside of Ravenna, Ont., in October 2024.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

To better understand how to support Ontario’s food system, we surveyed over 90 organizations working in different food-related sectors.

Through this research, we developed a series of policy reports focused on supporting aspiring farmers, protecting land for food production and strengthening local food systems.

Our findings show that regulatory changes to support small- and medium-sized enterprises and key investments could remove barriers and allow local food economies to flourish.

Smaller farms struggling to survive

Our study identified several barriers holding back Ontario’s local food economy. The first set of barriers are on the supply side. A strong local food system depends on a strong network of farmers. However, many small- and medium-sized farms that supply local markets face disproportionate barriers that threaten their survival.

Many current government policies favour large-scale food production, making it difficult for smaller farmers to flourish.

Compounding the issue is Canada’s looming farm succession crisis. More than 40 per cent of farmers in Canada are expected to retire by 2033, yet many aspiring farmers cannot afford to purchase farms or access start-up capital. When farmers can’t afford land, it’s often sold for non-agriculture uses.

To tackle these barriers, our study calls for provincially supported low-interest loan programs to finance down-payments, construction and equipment. Strengthening policies to protect farmland from urban sprawl, among other strategies, is also essential, as is expanding access to public land for local, ecological food production.

Farmland for sale is advertised in Shelburne, Ont., in October 2024.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

Processing, distribution bottlenecks

The second set of barriers we identified affect the farm-to-plate process. Small- and medium- sized farmers need better access to retail opportunities to sell fresh produce, along with the infrastructure to process raw foods into products like flour, packaged meats, jams, sauces and pickles.

This is especially evident in Ontario’s meat-processing sector, where a shortage of local abattoirs has led to long wait times.

To address these issues, our study recommends increased investment in regional food hubs. Food hubs are shared-use facilities that manage the aggregation, processing and distribution of food products from local and regional producers, giving them better access to markets.

These hubs are essential to meeting the growing demand coming for sustainable, local food from businesses, public institutions and school food programs. But they are only part of the picture.

We also identified funding opportunities that could bolster local food economies. These include expanding Ontario’s Fair Finance Fund to provide more financing options for regional food enterprises and supporting new abattoirs through the expansion of the Meat Processors Capacity Improvement Initiative.

A co-ordinated strategy is needed

Ontario manufacturers, retailers and farmers have all shown a willingness to expand local food production, but they need better support from policymakers to make it viable. There must be policies in place to support local food production and processing, remove key barriers and prioritize much-needed investments.

Across Canada, other provinces and territories face similar challenges in building strong local food networks. Most of the recommendations we heard are similarly outlined across different regions.

With consumer interest in local food on the rise, this is a critical moment for governments at all levels to improve avenues for new farmers, invest in processing and storage facilities and build local distribution networks — all essential to building a robust local food system.

Moe Garahan, a board member of Sustain Ontario, co-authored this article. Läs mer…