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Kamala Harris appears to have drastically changed her media strategy for the final few weeks of the US election race. From largely avoiding media interviews, she has begun embracing them.

The Democratic presidential candidate demonstrated she was a serious and consensus-building leader on 60 Minutes with Bill Whitaker. She told amusing anecdotes and drank a beer on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert; gave fast, snappy returns on The Howard Stern Show; and for 40 minutes talked women’s rights, domestic violence and reproductive health on the high-profile Call Her Daddy podcast.

With less than a month to go until the presidential election, Harris is trying to hit all demographics with her media message campaign. She appeared to be most at home, or “real”, on Call her Daddy with Alex Cooper, where she talked about the lessons she’d learned from her mother, and how an abused school friend helped ignite her desire to fight for justice for the vulnerable.

The podcast, which focuses on women’s issues, has 5 million listeners. Harris already leads the voting among women by a majority of 55% to former president Donald Trump’s 43%, according to a MaristPoll conducted last month in swing state Pennsylvania.

More significant was the CBS 60 Minutes interview. This show, which averages 8.4 million viewers, has been a must for presidential candidates to appear on for the last half century.

The first controversy came a week before the broadcast when Trump pulled out, with his team allegedly complaining the programme would fact-check the interview. Trump also claimed he needed an apology from CBS over disputed facts related to his 2020 interview, specifically about Hunter Biden’s laptop. No apology was forthcoming.

The former president’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, alleged Trump had never actually confirmed the interview, calling it “fake news”. CBS reporter Scott Pelley, who was due to do the Trump interview, was scathing about the “shifting explanations” that had been given for his no-show.

In advance of Harris’s 60 Minutes interview, I asked Nick Bryant, author of The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself, why he thought Trump had pulled out. “Scott Pelley is a seasoned pro,” Bryant replied. “On abortion, on January 6th, on accepting the 2020 result, he could skewer Trump. In a cost-benefit analysis, Trump has more to lose from a 60 Minutes interview than gain.”

Harris, on the other hand, had all to gain because, despite a clear win in the debate against Trump, she has stayed at relatively low visibility. During what was a fairly tough interview, she was quizzed on America’s inability to rein in Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, how she would fund her economic policies, how her administration would handle Ukraine, and whether or not she had flip-flopped on policies about fracking, immigration and Medicare.

iliya Mitskovets / Alamy

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Her answer regarding changing policies was not to deny this, as she had previously, but to say that over the past four years of being vice-president, she had travelled the country “listening to folks and seeking what is possible in terms of common ground. I believe in building consensus.” This strong answer managed to differentiate her starkly from her opponent’s more divisive approach.

Bryant believed that Harris’s lack of interviews before this latest round was worrying, because “she is not match fit” and her previous answers regarding the economy had been “tossed-salad like” and “strangely inarticulate”.

This time around, it wasn’t the economy that tripped Harris up, but answers about Israel and Netanyahu. After the interview, Fox News and the Trump campaign were quick to allege that an answer on Israel broadcast in the 60 Minutes trailer was different to the answer broadcast during the programme.

They argued that, once again, Harris had given a chaotic response in the trailer, while the answer in the programme was much more considered and neatly delivered. Trump’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, asked: “Why did 60 Minutes choose not to air Kamala’s full word salad, and what else did they choose not to air?” So far, there has been no comment from 60 Minutes.

Last-ditch swerves

The other factor that has dogged the Harris-Walz ticket is the claim that Governor Tim Walz had inserted himself, Walter Mitty-like, into being in Beijing at the time of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989.

He was first asked about this during the vice-presidential debate, where he answered that he was a “knucklehead” at times who had misspoken. Pressed on this in his part of Monday’s 60 Minutes interview, Walz said that people would understand the difference between him, who “got the date wrong”, and “a pathological liar like Donald Trump”.

Harris on 60 Minutes.

After Trump’s disastrous performance in the September debate with Harris, he refused a second one. This can be attributed to his answers resulting in countless memes of him declaring erroneously that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s cats and dogs. Social media subsequently exploded in a similar way to Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s earlier claims that the country was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies”.

And then Melania Trump threw a curve ball into the mix. Her autobiography, published this week, sets out her position on abortion, which conflicts with that of evangelic Republicans – a big Trump support base. “Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body,” she writes. “I have carried this belief with me my entire adult life”.

In these final weeks of campaigning, with the two sides so close in the polls, the gloves seem to have come off and we can expect further spats in the media. Once again, the power of misinformation and disinformation to sow conflict will continue to unfold on social media – especially now that X’s owner Elon Musk is openly campaigning, and jumping, in support of a Trump win. Läs mer…

The school that topped the Times newspaper’s A-Level rankings in 2024 only permits students to sit A-levels in three subjects: maths, further maths and physics. At King’s College London Mathematics School, 76.2% of students got an A* – and 99.5% of students achieved between A*-B.

King’s Maths School is a specialist mathematics school: a type of free school established in partnership with a leading university for students aged between 16-19. They offer a narrow range of predominately Stem subjects – science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

In addition to A-levels, the schools specialise in providing university level content and teaching to bridge the gap between secondary school and higher education. Students complete research projects in STEM fields, produce academic reports and are offered science modules delivered in university-style lectures.

There are currently eight maths schools in England, with another two schools to open in 2025 and a further school in 2026.

But very little research – only one study – has been carried out on how they operate, what they teach and their students’ experiences. My ongoing PhD research focuses on identifying the similarities and differences between the schools, as well as recording the experiences of students as they progress from school to university.

Russian inspiration

The creation of specialist maths schools was announced under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government in 2011. The policy was devised by Dominic Cummings, the then special advisor to the education secretary at the time Michael Gove. It was inspired by dedicated maths schools in Russia.

Maths schools must be sponsored by a local university. The Conservative government’s policy was that the university should be a “highly selective university”, where entry requirements for a full time maths degree are roughly equivalent to AAB at A-Level.

The universities, as well as sponsoring the schools, advise on the research projects, extra-currciular modules and provide resources to the schools. King’s College London and the University of Exeter opened maths schools in 2014, with others following.

Going to maths school

Maths schools are state funded and selective. Most maths schools require a minimum of grade 8 (formally grade A) in GCSE maths and a grade 8 in the subjects they want to study at A-Level, plus a minimum of grade 5 in English and any other subjects they studied at GCSE. This may be in addition to references from the school, an entry exam and an interview.

The schools’ admissions policies give preference to students from disadvantaged backgrounds. At King’s Maths School, 11% of pupils are eligible for free school meals – well below the national average of over 20%. The school does point out, though, that nationally only 3.3% of pupils eligible for free school meals study further maths. According to 2022-23 data, King’s Maths School and Exeter University Mathematics School admit more pupils who receive support for special educational needs than the national average.

Maths schools may also be part of a Multiple Academy Trust or affiliated with a local college. This can allow students to study a wider range of subjects by taking courses at the college.

Classroom sizes are small compared to state school classes. With approximately 16 pupils per class, some schools can have a student to staff ratio of 6:1. According to the only paper published on students’ experiences of a maths school, focused on Kings College maths school, students found teachers to be very knowledgeable and more positive compared to their GCSE years.

However, some students said that it was hit and miss based on the teacher they received. Teachers are given significant autonomy to deliver the curriculum in the way they see best. This means that different classes will be subjected to different teaching styles and therefore, according to some students, there is an element of luck.

Maths schools are a growing group of schools that appear to be having a positive effect on students. As free schools, they choose the curriculum they teach to their pupils – a liberty that may be under threat if Labour moves forward with plans to require all state schools to teach the national curriculum. Läs mer…

The UK has agreed to transfer sovereignty of the largely uninhabited Chagos archipelago to Mauritius. The islands have been known as the British Indian Ocean Territory since being administratively detached in 1965 from what was then the colony of Mauritius. Except for the US military base on Diego Garcia at the southern tip of the archipelago, the islands have been uninhabited since 1973.

As Mauritius takes back control, there are big environmental implications.

These 247,000 square miles (640,000km²) of remote seas include among the most pristine tropical coral reef ecosystems on our planet. Chagos is nearly three times the area of the British Isles. In 2010, it became the world’s largest marine protected area that bans any form of fishing.

The shallow water coral reefs account for 1.5% of the global total. Like coral reefs elsewhere around the planet, the marine ecosystems of Chagos are threatened by climate change with rising sea levels and warming waters. Unlike most places, however, these reefs don’t currently face the extra stresses such as pollution and physical damage that come with the presence of people.

Whether the islands remain uninhabited is a major factor in the potential environmental repercussions of Mauritian sovereignty. Future scenarios are highly dependent on how the UK and Mauritius engage with the displaced Chagossian community.

Chagossians have long campaigned for a right to return to the islands and need to be part of future plans. This would require establishment of infrastructure and livelihoods. The UK government has previously explored resettlement options with detailed feasibility studies. Addressing possible resettlement will form an important part of how Mauritius takes forward management of the environment in Chagos.

Protection of pristine coral reefs in the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean could be set to change – pictured here from Diego Garcia, the largest and only inhabited island.
John Parker/ Sylvia Cordaiy Photo Library Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

The environmental consequences of a change in management and human activity could be good or bad. Any environmental benefits or damage will depend very much on what, if any, development takes place and how it is managed. The presence of people could cause damage, but it doesn’t need to.

Economic activity and infrastructure can support the capacity to do research and to take action to help habitats adapt to climate change. This could include, for example, transplanting strains of coral with better resistance to marine heatwaves.

Island restoration efforts that began when Chagos was a British territory could become much easier if facilitated from local settlements rather than relying on long-distance expeditions. This includes the removal of rats from certain islands to help ground-nesting birds. Rat eradication also helps the health of surrounding coral reefs. The presence of people as observers could help deter unregulated fishing from vessels sailing into these quiet waters.

There is substantial scientific research by people from around the globe, including from the Zoological Society of London, already taking place on the ecosystems of Chagos. This supports informed ecological management under the current administration.

The government of Mauritius needs to continue supporting this, including plans for a Mauritian marine protected area in Chagos. Limited settlement and different zones allowing some uses including fishing are proposed. Funding and support for Mauritius to grow its ability to manage these islands is promised in the sovereignty transfer announcement. This is vital for a future Mauritian administration to be able to take forward environmental action.

Mauritius should embrace cooperation with the UK and other regional partners. The neighbouring Republic of Seychelles, for example, has extensive experience with the management of its own lightly inhabited outer islands, similar to those of the Chagos. Mauritius already cooperates with Seychelles in the world’s first joint management area of underwater extended continental shelf, the Mascarene plateau that covers approximately 150,000 square miles.

Read more:
Freedom for Chagos Islands: UK’s deal with Mauritius will be a win for all

Ensuring an environmentally sound future

The announcement of an agreement to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos archipelago might end years of dispute between the UK and Mauritius governments over jurisdiction. But it marks the humble beginnings of what will be complex, difficult and important work. There will inevitably be disputes between the two countries and other people involved, not least Chagossian citizens, in how these globally important ecosystems are managed.

It is vital for the environment of Chagos that there is an effective handover. Approaching sovereignty transfer, Mauritius needs to continue the current level of environmental engagement. There may later be reintroduction of economic activities, such as limited commercial fisheries or the resettlement of people with potential tourism development.

Importantly, environmental outcomes can be successfully addressed whether people return or not. But this needs careful evidence-informed planning and robust management. And Mauritius needs to build effective working partnerships with the UK, Chagossians, scientists and the wider global community to deliver a sustainable future for the Chagos archipelago.

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The 2024 Nobel prize in chemistry has been awarded to three scientists for their work on describing and predicting proteins with the help of computers. One half of the prize goes to David Baker from the University of Washington in the US “for computational protein design”, with the other half jointly awarded to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper, both from Google Deepmind, UK, “for protein structure prediction”.

Using computers to carry out protein design and for predicting protein structures are two sides of the same coin. They are separately very powerful – and combined, even more so.

Proteins are the building blocks of life, building and powering our muscles and organs. Proteins are molecular machines: they read and copy our DNA to make new cells, and pump ions (electrically charged atoms or groups of atoms) into and out of our cells, so these always have what they need to work properly. Proteins act as sensors, detecting what’s in their environment. They also activate our immune systems.

The molecular building blocks of proteins are amino acids. These connect, one end to another, like letters joining to form a word. Exactly like a word, scientists give a letter to each amino acid, and these can spell out any given protein.

Just having that protein sequence – the “word” – isn’t enough, though. It’s the three-dimensional shape of the protein that determines how it works. So, if we want to make a protein for some purpose, we need a way to determine what its three-dimensional shape will be from the amino acid sequence alone. This is protein structure prediction.

Some proteins can be prepared in such a way that their structure can be determined by X-ray, but most cannot. This is why computational structure prediction is vitally important.

It is still an extraordinarily difficult problem. Even a small protein, of around 100 “letters” or amino acids, has an impossibly high number of possible ways it can be arranged in three dimensions. To visualise this, imagine arranging strands of cooked spaghetti in a bowl.

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Nobel Prize in physics spotlights key breakthroughs in AI revolution − making machines that learn

For this reason, until the last decade, computational structure prediction had very low accuracy – less than 50%, in fact. Then, in 2020, Hassabis and Jumper developed an AI tool called AlphaFold2. This can predict the three-dimensional structure of a protein, using only the sequence of letters, with over 90% accuracy.

Nobelprize.org, CC BY-SA

To make such a leap in accuracy, AlphaFold2 uses deep learning and neural networks. Deep learning is a computer-based approach that simulates the way the human brain makes decisions. Neural networks mimic the human brain’s structure and function to process data.

AlphaFold2 also makes use of massive databases of known protein structures and sequences. The neural network correlates the known three-dimensional shapes with the amino acid sequence. It can then derive rules for what shape a given sequence – the “letters” – will adopt.

The opposite problem, computational protein design, can be summed up by the following question: “I want a protein with this three-dimensional shape; what is the sequence that gives me that shape?”

This challenge was actually solved first. In 2003, Baker wrote a computer program called Rosetta that begins with the desired three-dimensional structure, and produces the amino acid sequence that will give that structure. It uses the idea that the three-dimensional structure of the entire protein can be built from the structures of small fragments.

Read more:
AI system can predict the structures of life’s molecules with stunning accuracy – helping to solve one of biology’s biggest problems

Applying the science

Computational protein design has many applications. Proteins have been designed to bind and inactivate viruses, to detect drugs like fentanyl, and even to degrade plastic in the environment.

So, why has this prize been awarded for these advances now? Protein design and prediction are both inherently complex problems. There is no way to shortcut the large number of possible structures. But the rapid rise in the capabilities and use of artificial intelligence methods has given us a way to address this complexity. AI can efficiently derive correlations from millions of protein structures.

The pace of development in AI approaches is highlighted by this year’s Nobel prize in physics, which was awarded for the development of neural networks.

The twin methods of computational protein design and computational protein structure prediction are now real tools, used by millions of scientists worldwide. Proteins to counter pandemic viruses can now be designed in a matter of weeks.

It therefore wouldn’t be surprising if we see many other Nobels in future being awarded for breakthroughs that use the power of artificial intelligence. Läs mer…

Mexico’s first female president, leftwing academic and climate scientist Claudia Sheinbaum, has set out her agenda. She pledged to maintain the social policies of her mentor and predecessor, the widely popular former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (commonly known by his initials, AMLO).

She promised a transition to green energy, and set out the need for new infrastructure in railways, ports and airports. Sheinbaum inherits a US$1.79 trillion (£1.4 trillion) economy closely integrated to that of the US – in fact, Mexico has the second-largest economy in Latin America. It is also the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world with 128 million people.

But Sheinbaum also inherits Mexico’s largest budget deficit since the 1980s.

Despite social policies that have seen 9.5 million Mexicans lifted from poverty during AMLO’s six-year term, 36% of Mexicans are still poor and 7% live in extreme poverty. Access to health services remains problematic, and has worsened for those living in deprivation.

Gross domestic product per capita, a measure of wealth, actually fell during the previous administration, which means the “average” Mexican is worse off now than at the start of AMLO’s presidency. And next year, the central bank estimates GDP will grow by only 1.2%, which will inevitably constrain Sheinbaum in her early years in office.

While campaigning, she promised to continue the social and political policies of her predecessor. Now in office, she will not only grapple with the country’s security situation but also navigate serious economic and fiscal challenges.

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In 2018, AMLO took office in a relatively stable fiscal environment. His predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto, had implemented significant reforms early in his term aimed at reducing reliance on oil revenues and energy subsidies.

Nieto also sought to strengthen the country’s two stabilisation funds. The Oil Revenue Stabilisation Fund is aimed at protecting Mexico’s budget from fluctuations in oil revenues. Meanwhile, the Budget Income Stabilisation Fund seeks to stabilise budget revenues from non-oil sources, such as taxes.

These funds have been crucial for maintaining economic stability given the volatility of commodity prices, especially since oil has historically been a key contributor to Mexico’s public finances. However, under AMLO’s administration, both funds were used to plug gaps, leaving them depleted and raising concerns about the country’s ability to weather economic downturns. The country has not balanced its books since 2007.

High energy subsidies introduced in 2019 are putting a strain on public finances. Driven by a commitment by AMLO to shield consumers from rising international oil prices, subsidies increased as a result of the COVID pandemic in 2020, and again in 2022 amid the war in Ukraine.

The recent rise in social spending to fund universal state pensions, social programmes and debt servicing has created considerable strain, pushing the deficit close to 6% of GDP. Mexico’s debt-to-GDP ratio is 50% this year, up from its 2018 level.

The tax issue

In most countries, tax revenues are used to fund social investment. But Mexico’s ability to raise taxes has been extremely limited – tax revenues amount to just 17% of the country’s GDP, below the Latin American average of 22%, and well below that of countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) at 34%.

Mexico has a large informal economy, with many workers and businesses not registered with tax authorities. Corruption, inefficiencies in tax administration and lack of trust in government institutions have led to low tax compliance, while efforts to increase taxes on the wealthy have met political resistance.

Mexico has high levels of income inequality, and the wealthiest segments of society contribute relatively little to the overall tax revenue. Instead, the country had historically relied on oil revenues – which have declined – to fund public services and investment.

AMLO had launched popular social programmes aimed at reducing poverty and inequalities. Now Sheinbaum has promised increased social spending while maintaining “fiscal responsibility” and not reforming tax (at least in her early presidency). That promise seems unrealistic. Without a change of approach, a fiscal crisis looms.

However, she is expected to be a more pragmatic president than her predecessor. In part because she is less ideology-driven, but also because she won’t have a choice. If she wants to boost the economy and keep reducing poverty, she will need to attract foreign investment and encourage the private sector to play a much bigger role.

Infrastructure will be a key focus, not least to ensure Mexico can benefit from the process of “near-shoring” – the relocation by multinationals of key processes away from Asia closer to the US market in order to minimise supply chain disruptions.

Mexico stands to gain from the current desire by many companies to operate closer to the USA. As a result of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), and its predecessor Nafta (North American Free Trade Agreement), Mexico enjoys tariff-free trade with its northern neighbours.

But the country has not fully benefited from those opportunities. It lacks a consolidated investment promotion strategy and needs to produce more energy, ensuring it is from cleaner sources.

It’s expected that Sheinbaum will continue government efforts to lift disadvantaged Mexicans out of poverty.

Companies keen to invest in Mexico need access to low-emission hydrocarbons, as well as renewable energy. But AMLO viewed oil as a key part of Mexico’s sovereignty, eradicating previous reforms that had opened up the energy sector to private companies and preventing private investment in renewable energy. Instead, public finances were used to prop up ailing state-owned oil monopoly Pemex and national electricity company CFE.

Given the fiscal challenges Sheinbaum inherits, Mexicans can expect the private sector to play a much greater role in infrastructure investment and in making the green energy transition a reality.

As mayor of Mexico City, she championed public-private partnerships (PPP) while promoting solar energy. But to entice factories from Asia, she will also have to weaken the grip of the criminal organisations which are believed to control as much as a third of Mexico.

During her tenure as mayor she halved the number of murders in the capital. But attempting to replicate this success throughout the country will be no small undertaking. Läs mer…

When the Paris agreement on climate change was gavelled into being in December 2015, it briefly looked like that rarest of things: a political victory for climate activists and delegates from the poorest regions of the world that, due to colonisation by today’s wealthy nations, have contributed little to the climate crisis – but stand to suffer its worst ravages.

The world had finally agreed an upper limit for global warming. And in a move that stunned most experts, it had embraced the stretch target of 1.5°C, the boundary that small island states, acutely threatened by sea-level rise, had tirelessly pushed for years.

Or so, at least, it seemed. For soon, the ambitious Paris agreement limit turned out to be not much of a limit at all. When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC, the world’s foremost body of climate experts) lent its authority to the 1.5°C temperature target with its 2018 special report, something odd transpired.

Nearly all modelled pathways for limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels involved temporarily transgressing this target. Each still arrived back at 1.5°C eventually (the deadline being the random end point of 2100), but not before first shooting past it.

Scientists responsible for modelling the response of Earth’s climate to greenhouse gas emissions – primarily caused by burning fossil fuels – called these “overshoot” scenarios. They became the dominant path along which mitigating climate change was imagined to proceed, almost as soon as talk of temperature limits emerged.

De facto, what they said was this: staying below a temperature limit is the same as first crossing it and then, a few decades hence, using methods of removing carbon from the atmosphere to dial temperatures back down again.

From some corners of the scientific literature came the assertion that this was nothing more than fantasy. A new study published in Nature has now confirmed this critique. It found that humanity’s ability to restore Earth’s temperature below 1.5°C of warming, after overshooting it, cannot be guaranteed. Many impacts of climate change are essentially irreversible. Those that are might take decades to undo, well beyond the relevant horizon for climate politics. For policy makers of the future, it matters little that temperatures might eventually fall back again; the impacts they will need to plan for are those of the overshoot period itself.

Not coming back: tropical coral reefs face permanent destruction.
Sabangvideo/Shutterstock

The rise of overshoot ideology

Even if global average surface temperatures are ultimately reversed, climate conditions at regional levels might not necessarily follow the global trend and might end up different from before. Delayed changes in ocean currents, for instance, could mean that the North Atlantic or Southern Ocean continue warming while the rest of the planet does not.

Any losses and damages that accumulate during the overshoot period itself would of course be permanent. For a farmer in Sudan whose livestock perishes in a heatwave that would have been avoided at 1.5°C, it will be scant consolation to know that temperatures are scheduled to return to that level when her children have grown up.

Then there is the dubious feasibility of planetary-scale carbon removal. Planting enough trees or energy crops to make a dent in global temperatures would require whole continents of land. Direct air capture of gigatonnes of carbon would consume prodigious amounts of renewable energy and so compete with decarbonisation. Whose land are we going to use for this? Who will shoulder the burdens for all this excess energy use?

If reversal cannot be guaranteed, then clearly it is irresponsible to sanction a supposedly temporary overshoot of the Paris targets. And yet this is exactly what scientists have done. What compelled them to go down this dangerous route?

Our own book on this topic (Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown, published last week by Verso) offers a history and critique of the idea.

When overshoot scenarios were summoned into being in the early 2000s, the single most important reason was economics. Rapid, near-term emissions cuts were deemed prohibitively costly and so unpalatable. Cost optimisation mandated that they be pushed into the future to the extent possible.

The models for projecting possible mitigation trajectories had these principles written into their code and so for the most part could not compute “low” temperature targets like 1.5 or 2°C. And because modellers could not imagine transgressing the deeply conservative constraints that they worked within, something else had to be transgressed.

One team stumbled upon the idea that large-scale removal of carbon might be possible in the future, and so help reverse climate change. The EU and then the IPCC picked up on it, and before long, overshoot scenarios had colonised the expert literature. Deference to mainstream economics yielded a defence of the political status quo. This in turn translated into reckless experimentation with the climate system. Conservatism or fatalism about society’s capacity for change flipped into extreme adventurism about nature.

Time to bury the time machine

Just as the climate movement scored an important political victory, compelling the world to rally behind an ambitious temperature limit, an influential group of scientists, amplified by the world’s most authoritative scientific body on the subject, effectively helped water it down. When all is said and written about the post-Paris era, this surely should stand as one of its greatest tragedies.

By conjuring up the fantasy of overshoot-and-return, scientists invented a mechanism for delaying climate action and unwittingly lent credibility to those (and they are many) who have no real interest in reigning in emissions here and now; who will seize on any excuse to keep the oil and gas and coal flowing just a little longer.

A stable climate is not compatible with rising oil profits.
Igor Hotinsky/Shutterstock

The findings of this new paper make it perfectly clear: There is no time machine waiting in the wings. Once 1.5°C lies behind us, we must consider that threshold permanently broken.

There then remains only one road to ambitious mitigation of climate change, and no amount of carbon dioxide removal can absolve us of its inconvenient political implications.

Avoiding climate breakdown demands that we bury the fantasy of overshoot-and-return and with it another illusion as well: that the Paris targets can be met without uprooting the status-quo. One limit after the other will be broken unless we manage to strand fossil fuel assets and curtail opportunities for continuing to profit from oil and gas and coal.

We will not mitigate climate change without confronting and defeating fossil fuel interests. We should expect climate scientists to be candid about this.

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The 125th anniversary of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 is marked on 11 October 2024. Also known as the South African War or the Second Boer War, the brutal conflict between the colonising forces of the British and the Boers (originally Dutch settlers, today known as Afrikaners) affected all cultural groups in the war zone. The war had profound consequences for the way that South Africa developed in the course of the 1900s and beyond. André Wessels has researched the war and its aftermath for nearly five decades, and has published several books and academic papers on it. We asked him how – and even if – the war should be commemorated.

What led to the Anglo-Boer War?

The first Europeans to settle in what is today South Africa were the Dutch in 1652. In 1795 and again in 1806, the British took over control of the Cape Colony. The Dutch, who sought to be free from British rule, then trekked northwards and established Boer republics. But Britain did its best to regain control over these areas.

The Anglo-Boer War was a classic David-Goliath struggle, pitting two small Boer republics against the British Empire. These were the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (the Transvaal, today Gauteng province) and the Orange Free State (now the Free State province). The war broke out on 11 October 1899, after the British government rejected a Boer ultimatum that all British soldiers be withdrawn from the Transvaal’s borders.

It was the culmination of a decades-long struggle between Afrikaner nationalism (and the ideal to be free and independent) and British imperialism. This was further fuelled by the discovery of rich goldfields in the Transvaal, and by the (in)famous empire-builder Cecil John Rhodes’s ideal of a British-controlled Africa from the Cape to Cairo.

About 450,000 white British soldiers (including volunteers from the colonies), and as many as 140,000 black and brown South African men on the side of the British, served in the war. They were pitted against not more than 79,000 Boers. This Boer force included about 2,500 foreign volunteers and several thousand white rebels from the Cape as well as a few hundred from the British colony of Natal (today KwaZulu-Natal province).

How did the war shape South Africa?

The war was supposed to be a white man’s war and a “gentleman’s war”, but from the start involved all race groups of the region. It degenerated into a total war and a precursor of many of the conflicts of the 1900s and beyond, such as the wars of liberation in the region. In some instances, it also showed characteristics of a civil war, especially in the Cape Colony, where some white colonials fought against white Cape rebels.

The war cast a shadow over South Africa and all its people. It is impossible to understand the history of the country without knowledge and insight of this far-reaching conflict.

After the Boers accepted the British terms of surrender on 31 May 1902, many Afrikaners strove to ensure that Afrikaner identity would not be jeopardised under British rule. The establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910 brought the Boer and British colonies together under British authority. But it did not satisfy the expectations of Afrikaner nationalists. In 1914 Afrikaners founded the National Party.

Read more:
New book on South Africa’s history puts black people at the centre, for a change

Soon after the first world war broke out in 1914, an Afrikaner rebellion broke out, but was soon quelled. Staunch Afrikaner nationalists’ first aim was to ensure the future dominance of the Afrikaner. Once that was achieved, the focus shifted to ensure that white people in general would remain in power.

Thus the scene was set for the creation of apartheid. With it came a decades-long struggle between Afrikaner nationalism and black nationalism. To a large extent black nationalism was led by the African National Congress, established in 1912 in the wake of the Anglo-Boer War. Among other things this was because of promises of political rights, should black people support the British, that were not kept.

How did the war lead to trans-generational trauma?

Over and above the military casualties – more than 22,000 dead on the British side and some 6,000 on the Boer side – the war had a devastating effect on civilians in the war zone. In a desperate attempt to corner and destroy mobile Boer commandos, the British resorted to an elaborate and drawn-out counter-guerrilla strategy. This included a scorched earth policy.

War concentration camp.
Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images

The result was a humanitarian disaster. More than 40 Boer towns and villages, and some 30,000 Boer farmhouses, were destroyed, together with more than 100,000 dwellings of black farm labourers. At least 145,000 white and 140,000 black civilians were incarcerated in internment camps. There, at least 28,000 white and 23,000 (but probably many more) black civilians died – mostly children aged 16 or younger.

I argue in my research that the Afrikaners who suffered in the internment camps stored those negative experiences in their memories. The trauma was internalised and for many years some Afrikaners harboured great resentment, bitterness, frustration and fear. Later – sometimes only many years later, even in a succeeding generation – these traumatic experiences once again gained prominence and sometimes manifested themselves in some or other political view.

By the 1940s, the so-called “black threat” had in large measure replaced the “British/imperial threat”. Afrikaners wanted to ensure that they would never again be oppressed or humiliated as they had been in the war. The excessive emphasis on the protection of one’s own interests meant that the logical next step – to prevent universal oppression and suffering – was never made.

The Afrikaners had not learnt from their history and they, who had been humiliated and oppressed earlier, became the new oppressors (of black and brown people) from 1948 onwards under the colours of apartheid (and with it white supremacy).

Read more:
A ’graffiti’ wall reveals women’s stories from the South African War

The traumatised from the era of the Anglo-Boer War (and their descendants) became the new traumatisers. They caused a new wave of collateral damage, to the detriment of mutual relationships in South Africa, to the disadvantage of the black inhabitants of the country, and eventually also to the detriment of the Afrikaner nation.

How should the war be commemorated – if at all?

It’s human nature to commemorate events. Everything taken into consideration, it is also proper to commemorate the outbreak of a bloody war, the events that took place in the course of the conflict, and also the conclusion of peace.

But it is, of course, important that commemorations should take place in the correct spirit. Not to refight the battles of the past, not to open up old wounds, not to ostracise or vilify “the enemy”, not to hero-worship; but rather to use the opportunity to reflect, and to take stock of a shared history and heritage. So commemorations must be inclusive.

The ideal is that the 125th anniversary will lead to greater insight into this bloody and traumatic conflict and the way it influenced developments in South Africa over the course of the 20th century. It could lead to the restoration (where necessary) of historical monuments, buildings and sites pertaining to this conflict. It could lead to people from all walks of life, and from all cultural groups, visiting museums and places of historical interest in South Africa, and in the process developing a better understanding of the country’s chequered and complicated history.

It must also be kept in mind that history enables one to forgive, without the need to forget. It is the ideal that it will be in this spirit that the 125th anniversary of the Anglo-Boer War will take place. After all, South Africa and its people are in need of healing from a brutal past. Läs mer…

In just a few years, brand-name injectable drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound have rocketed to fame as billion-dollar annual sellers for weight loss as well as to control blood sugar levels and reduce the risk of heart disease.

But the price of these injections is steep: They cost about US$800-$1,000 per month, and if used for weight loss alone, they are not covered by most insurance policies. Both drugs mimic the naturally occurring hormone GLP-1 to help regulate blood sugar and reduce cravings. They can be taken only with a prescription.

The Food and Drug Administration announced an official shortage of the active ingredients in these drugs in 2022, but on Oct. 2, 2024, the agency announced that the shortage has been resolved for the medicine tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Mounjaro and Zepbound.

Despite the soaring demand and limited supply of these drugs, there are no generic versions available. This is because the patents for semaglutide – the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, which is still in shortage – and tirzepatide don’t expire until 2033 and 2036, respectively.

As a result, nonbrand alternatives that can be purchased with or without a prescription are flooding the market. Yet these products come with real risks to consumers.

I am a pharmacist who studies weaknesses in federal oversight of prescription and over-the-counter drugs and dietary supplements in the U.S. My research group recently has investigated loopholes that are allowing alternative weight loss products to enter the market.

High demand is driving GLP-1 wannabes

The dietary supplement market has sought to cash in on the GLP-1 demand with pills, teas, extracts and all manner of other products that claim to produce similar effects as the brand names at a much lower price.

Products containing the herb berberine offer only a few pounds of weight loss, while many dietary supplement weight loss products contain stimulants such as sibutramine and laxatives such as phenolphthalein, which increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes and cancer.

Poison control centers have seen a steep rise in calls related to off-brand weight loss medications.

The role of compounding pharmacies

Unlike the dietary supplements that are masquerading as GLP-1 weight loss products, compounding pharmacies can create custom versions of products that contain the same active ingredients as the real thing for patients who cannot use either brand or generic products for some reason.

These pharmacies can also produce alternative versions of brand-name drugs when official drug shortages exist.

Since the demand for GLP-1 medications has far outpaced the supply, compounding pharmacies are legally producing a variety of different semaglutide and tirzepatide products.

These products may come in versions that differ from the brand-name companies, such as vials of powder that must be dissolved in liquid, or as tablets or nasal sprays.

Just like the brand-name drugs, you must have a valid prescription to receive them. The prices range from $250-$400 a month – still a steep price for many consumers.

Compounding pharmacies must adhere to the FDA’s sterility and quality production methods, but these rules are not as rigorous for compounding pharmacies as those for commercial manufacturers of generic drugs.

In addition, the products compounding pharmacies create do not have to be tested in humans for safety or effectiveness like brand-name products do.

Proper dosing can also be challenging with compounded forms of the drugs.

Companies that work the system

For people who cannot afford a compounding pharmacy product, or cannot get a valid prescription for semaglutide or tirzepatide, opportunistic companies are stepping in to fill the void. These include “peptide companies,” manufacturers that create non-FDA approved knockoff versions of the drugs.

From November 2023 to March 2024, my team carried out a study to assess which of these peptide companies are selling semaglutide or tirzepatide products. We scoured the internet looking for these peptide companies and collected information about what they were selling and their sales practices.

We found that peptide sellers use a loophole to sell these drugs. On their websites, the companies state that their drugs are for “research purposes only” or “not for human consumption,” but they do nothing to verify that the buyers are researchers or that the product is going to a research facility.

By reading the comments sections of the company websites and the targeted ads on social media, it becomes clear that both buyers and sellers understand the charade. Unlike compounding pharmacies, these peptide sellers do not provide the supplies you need to dissolve and inject the drug, provide no instructions, and will usually not answer questions.

Peptide sellers, since they allegedly are not selling to consumers, do not require a valid prescription and will sell consumers whatever quantity of drug they wish to purchase. Even if a person has an eating disorder such as anorexia nervosa, the companies will happily sell them a semaglutide or tirzepatide product without a prescription. The average prices of these peptide products range from $181-$203 per month.

Skirting regulations

Peptide sellers do not have to adhere to the rules or regulations that drug manufacturers or compounding pharmacies do. Many companies state that their products are 99% pure, but an independent investigation of three companies’ products from August 2023 to March 2024 found that the purity of the products were far less than promised.

One product contained endotoxin – a toxic substance produced by bacteria – suggesting that it was contaminated with microbes. In addition, the products’ promised dosages were off by up 29% to 39%. Poor purity can cause patients to experience fever, chills, nausea, skin irritation, infections and low blood pressure.

In this study, some companies never even shipped the drug, telling the buyers they needed to pay an additional fee to have the product clear customs.

If a consumer is harmed by a poor-quality product, it would be difficult to sue the seller, since the products specifically say they are “not for human consumption.” Ultimately, consumers are being led to spend money on products that may never arrive, could cause an infection, might not have the correct dose, and contain no instructions on how to safely use or store the product.

Will prices for brand-name products come down?

To combat these alternative sellers, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly began offering an alternative version of its brand-name Zepbound product for weight loss in September 2024.

Instead of its traditional injection pen products that cost more than $1,000 for a month’s supply, this product comes in vials that patients draw up and inject themselves. For patients who take 5 milligrams of Zepbound each week, the vial products would cost them $549 a month if patients buy it through the company’s online pharmacy and can show that they do not have insurance coverage for the drug.

After a grilling on Capitol Hill in September 2024, pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk came under intense pressure to offer patients without prescription coverage a lower-priced product for its brand-name Wegovy as well.

In the next few years, additional brand-name GLP-1 agonist drugs will likely make it to market. As of October 2024, a handful of these products are in late-phase clinical trials, with active ingredients such as retatrutide, survodutide and ecnoglutide, and more than 18 other drug candidates are in earlier stages of development.

When new pharmaceutical companies enter this market, they will have to offer patients lower prices than Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk in order to gain market share. This is the most likely medium-term solution to drive down the costs of GLP-1 drugs and eliminate the drug shortages in the marketplace. Läs mer…

This is the season of patriotism in Latin America as many countries commemorate their independence from colonial powers. From July to September, public plazas in countries from Mexico to Honduras and Chile fill with crowds dressed and painted in national colors, parades feature participants costumed as independence heroes, fireworks fill the skies, and schoolchildren reenact historical battles.

Beneath these nationalist displays ripples an uneasy tide: the colonial legacies that still tie the Americas to their Iberian conquerors. And as the calendar turns to October, another holiday highlights similar tensions – Columbus Day.

Since 1937, the U.S. has observed the holiday on the second Monday of the month, commemorating the explorer’s 1492 arrival in the New World. It remains a federal holiday, even as many states and cities rename it “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” rejecting Christopher Columbus as a symbol of imperialism.

Indigenous groups protest in front of a statue of Christopher Columbus on Oct. 12, 1997, during marches in Mexico against ‘Dia de la Raza’ celebrations.
David Hernandez/AFP via Getty Images

Most Latin Americans, meanwhile, know Oct. 12 as “Día de la Raza,” or Day of the Race, which also celebrates Columbus’ arrival in the New World and the tide of Iberian conquistadors that followed. But commemorating the event is all the more charged in these countries, home to the Spanish Empire’s most lucrative territorial assets and sweeping spiritual conquests. Days before taking office in September 2024, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum reiterated her predecessor’s demand that the king of Spain apologize for the genocide and exploitation of the conquest 500 years ago.

As a historian of Latin America, I’ve paid attention to the ways calendars signal a nation’s “official” values and how countries wrestle with these holidays’ meanings.

Día de la Raza

The first encounter between Aztec emperor Montezuma and conquistador Hernando Cortés took place on Nov. 8, 1519 – the latter backed by an entourage of 300 Spaniards, thousands of Indigenous allies and slaves, and hundreds of Africans, free or otherwise.

This moment of contact began Mexico’s 500-year transformation into a “mestizo” nation: a hybrid identity with largely European and Indigenous roots. During the colonial period, racial differences were codified into law, and those with “pure” Spanish bloodlines enjoyed legal privileges over the racially mixed categories that fell below them. The 19th century ushered in independence from Spain and liberal ideas that promoted racial equality – in principle – but in reality, European influence prevailed.

It was Spain that first proposed the Día de la Raza, held on Oct. 12, 1892, to commemorate the 400-year anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the Americas – implying a celebration of Spain’s contributions to the mestizo racial mixture.

The celebration was part of a bid to fortify nationalism in Spain, as the waning colonial power continued its retreat from the hemisphere it controlled for the better part of four centuries. Spain also hoped to export the invented holiday to the Americas, strengthening trans-Atlantic cultural affinities tested by the United States’ growing sway. Across the Americas, Día de la Raza came to be synonymous with celebrating European influence.

Decorations for ‘Día de la Raza,’ in the Monserrat neighborhood of Buenos Aires in 1929.
Archivo General de la Nación/Wikimedia Commons

In Mexico, the 1892 commemoration empowered members of the political elite who promoted European investments and culture as the model for modernizing the country. They used the occasion to extol the civilizing influence of the “madre patria,” or motherland, justifying the conquest and colonialism as a period of benevolent rule.

Mestizo nationalism

Only a few years later, however, the U.S. victory in the Spanish-American War swept the last vestiges of Spanish empire from the hemisphere. Spain’s exit made way for dual – and dueling – phenomena: rising patriotic spirit in Latin American countries, even amid increasing economic pressure and cultural influence from the U.S.

The 1910 Mexican Revolution ignited mestizo nationalism, which soon extended to other countries. In 1930s Nicaragua, Augusto Sandino started a revolution to oust the occupying U.S. Marines while calling for the unification of the “Indo-Hispanic Race.” Meanwhile, Peruvian intellectual José Mariátegui envisioned a modern nation built upon the ideals of a collective, reciprocal society, modeled by the Incan ayllu system. And in Mexico, beauty pageants celebrating native features gained popularity among the social classes accustomed to perusing department stores for Parisian imports.

Yet a tendency to emphasize Spanish cultural ancestry rather than Indigenous ones persisted. In the late 1930s, for example, October issues of Mexican children’s magazine Palomilla celebrated Columbus’ arrival as a heroic entry that provided the region with a common language and religion.

Pan American Day

Meanwhile, the U.S viewed Pan-Hispanic sentiments as a threat: Spanish economic goals, cloaked in racial and cultural solidarity.

To help shore up hemispheric allegiances, Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed a new holiday on April 14, 1930: Pan American Day, or Día de las Américas. The holiday sought to offset the narratives of both Columbus Day and Día de la Raza and marked the U.S. administration’s Good Neighbor Policy pivot toward Latin America – a softer form of imperialism that promoted solidarity and brotherhood, at least on the surface.

The Pan American Union, an inter-American organization headquartered in Washington, saw the new date as an opportunity to forge common traditions across the hemisphere. It vigorously promoted Pan American Day celebrations, primarily among schoolchildren, exhorting teachers to implement games, puzzles, pageants and songs created in Pan American Union offices.

Students at Parkway Public School in New York present a pageant for Pan American Day in 1943.
Bettmann/CORBIS/Bettmann Archive via Getty Images

The holiday met enthusiastic reception in the United States. Midwesterners donned sombreros for parades, and Spanish language clubs in California hosted pageants celebrating the flags of American nations.

But Latin American commemoration was tepid at best. The Organization of American States, the successor to the Pan American Union, still recognizes Pan American Day. However, it never gained traction in Latin America and faded in the U.S. during World War II.

Recent shift

Latin America’s ambivalence toward holidays to commemorate the colonizers has taken a turn since 1992. The 500-year anniversary of Columbus’ arrival corresponded with yet another form of colonialism, in many Latin Americans’ eyes, as a new wave of multinational corporations colluded with heads of state to tap the continent’s oil, lithium, water and avocados.

Activists used the commemoration to call attention to lingering economic, social, racial and cultural inequities. In particular, the anniversary inspired Indigenous rights movements – some of which commemorated an “anti-quincentenary” to celebrate “500 years of resistance.”

The Día de la Raza has since been renamed to reflect anti-colonial sentiments, similar to Columbus Day in the United States. Ecuador calls Oct. 12 the Day of Interculturalism and Ethnic Identity; Argentina celebrates it as Day of Respect for Cultural Diversity; Nicaragua now refers to it as the Day of Indigenous, Black and Popular Resistance; in Colombia it is the Day of Ethnic and Cultural Diversity; and the Dominican Republic celebrates it as Intercultural Day.

A statue in honor of ‘women who fight’ has replaced an effigy of Christopher Columbus on Paseo de la Reforma Avenue in Mexico City.
Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images

In some places, renaming the holiday has drawn attention to Indigenous rights and culture. Bolivians, for example, draped a statue of a European monarch in a traditional “aguayo” garment, transforming her into an Indigenous woman. However, critics suggest that removing the holiday’s reference to the colonizers erases an important reminder of the conquest and its painful legacy.

As in the U.S., monuments to colonizers are coming down – including the monument to Columbus that occupied a conspicuous spot on La Reforma, one of Mexico City’s most-traversed thoroughfares.

In its place is a new installation: a purple silhouette of a girl with her fist raised, in honor of Latin America’s women activists. She heralds a new era of statues lining La Reforma, and heroes for the future – not mired in the colonial legacies of the past. Läs mer…