Category: Analysis

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Max Western, Associate Professor of Behavioural Science, Co-Director, Centre for Motivation and Behaviour Change, University of Bath

To many people, crossing a road at a traffic light is a mundane task requiring little thought or effort. But for the growing population of senior citizens with limitations to their mobility, strength or balance, crossing the road can be a stressful and sometimes life-threatening experience.

The reason? Cities simply aren’t designed for older people and others with restricted mobility – as our latest research demonstrates. We found that only 1.5% of the older people with reduced mobility in our study – just 17 out of 1,110 participants who had an average age of 77 – could cross the road faster than the 1.2 metres per second walking speed that is programmed into many UK pedestrian crossings.

They told us how “hurried”, “rushed” and “unsafe” they felt being out and about in a city. All lived independently across seven English cities: Bristol, Bath, Birmingham, Cardiff, Exeter, Manchester and Stoke.

Our latest study is part of our community-led active ageing programmes, designed to help adults over 65 with reduced mobility to improve their physical function. From the outset, we were struck by just how slowly many of the people we met walked. The task of trying to time them move four metres from a standing start with a stopwatch could be rather uncomfortable, such was the struggle of walking for some.

To test what this meant when they were faced with crossing the road at a pedestrian crossing, we made a simple comparison between the speed (1.2m/s) programmed into “standard” UK pedestrian crossings and the participants’ normal walking speed. While their average speed was significantly slower at 0.77m/s, many of our participants with reduced mobility were much slower than that – meaning they had no chance of crossing the road safely within the time allowed.

In fact, the majority would have needed to walk nearly twice as fast as their comfortable walking speed to cross a road without significant risk.

Distribution of walking speeds of older adults with limited mobility:

As many of our participants told us, this mismatch between urban design and the capabilities of the growing ageing population can have catastrophic consequences.

First, there is a risk that a failure to take account of inadequate mobility in street features such as pedestrian crossings lowers confidence in older people for staying active and walking outdoors. This often leads to further reductions in physical function and greater social isolation.

Second, those who do keep walking around their local town or city can feel rushed. This places them at risk of a fall when they cross roads quicker than feels comfortable – made worse by wet or windy conditions.

A fall in older adults increases the likelihood of disability and the need for hospital care. It can have a significant impact on life expectancy.

How to make cities truly age-friendly

Pedestrian crossings are one of many features of towns and cities that can affect the physical activity of a mobility-limited older population. In reviewing determinants of physical activity in older adults, we found that the aesthetic quality of the environment, a reduction in noise and air pollution, and the availability of places to rest were all aspects that can lead to greater walkability.

The Centre for Urban Wellbeing has partnered with older adults and local communities and companies to explore how Birmingham, the UK’s second-largest city, can better support its ageing population and move closer to becoming truly age-friendly.

Our research has highlighted the critical role of accessible infrastructure – well-maintained pavements, ramps, benches and public toilets make a big difference. Just as important are safe, welcoming spaces such as parks, gardens, and community hubs that encourage social connection and active living.

Much of our effort to improve quality of life in later years has centred on improving, or at least slowing the decline in, physical function and mobility. The benefits go beyond personal wellbeing: they translate into significant savings for the NHS and social care, largely through reduced hospital admissions.

But for these gains to last, older people need more than exercise programmes. They need safe, inviting communities that motivate them to get out and about. Walking to local destinations is one of the simplest ways to boost daily activity – yet it depends on environments that feel secure and accessible.

To be fair, there is some variability in the way pedestrian crossings work. Some wealthier districts have crossings with sensors that will hold traffic before a road is cleared of walkers.

Other use countdown timers to give some indication of how long a pedestrian has to cross, aiding a judgement on when to start their crossing of a road. But one thing that seems to be consistent is that green signals are programmed based on an assumed walking speed of 1.2 metres per second, which is clearly inappropriate for many people.

The onus should not rest on individuals with reduced mobility to keep pace in a fast-moving world. Rather, we urge cities to prioritise urban design that puts pedestrians first – creating environments that enable physical activity, especially among vulnerable groups.

When it comes to road crossings, simple measures such as extending green signal times at locations frequently used by older adults could make a big difference.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Cities aren’t built for older people – our study shows many can’t walk fast enough to beat a pedestrian crossing – https://theconversation.com/cities-arent-built-for-older-people-our-study-shows-many-cant-walk-fast-enough-to-beat-a-pedestrian-crossing-271874

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Samantha Newbery, Reader in International Security, University of Salford

Of the countless people who provided intelligence to help the British state fight terrorism during the Troubles in Northern Ireland (1968-98), Agent Stakeknife was the best known. He had a reputation for having been involved in the most violent offences as a member of the IRA while simultaneously providing the British Army with intelligence.

While the identities of many of the informers who provided intelligence of this kind remain unknown, agent Stakeknife’s alleged identity as a man called Freddie Scappaticci was first made public in 2003.

The final report of a lengthy independent investigation into this case is now calling for the UK government to confirm Stakeknife’s identity. Operation Kenova, set up by the Police Service of Northern Ireland, found that Stakeknife was named as a suspect in dozens of crimes, including murders.

Although he denied it up until his death in 2023, Scappaticci is widely believed to have provided intelligence to the British Army from the late 1970s into the 1990s. Throughout this time he was also an active member of the IRA, something his handlers in the British Army – the people he reported to – were well aware of.

Agent Stakeknife was able to provide intelligence on the IRA’s members and activities across Northern Ireland. He was privy to a huge amount of sensitive information because he was part of – and may even have led – the IRA’s “nutting squad”. This unit’s aim was to find suspected informers within the IRA and punish or even kill them. Yet he himself was an informer.

The nutting squad has been described as being “like an electrical junction box through which every wire must flow”. It gave Stakeknife access to people and information across the IRA, making him particularly useful to the British Army.

But in this role, he was suspected of being involved in multiple counts of conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to unlawfully imprison and other potential charges in connection with the abduction, interrogation, torture and murder of people suspected, wrongly or rightly, of being informants.

Arguments for and against naming informers

Without the final piece of information on Stakeknife’s identity, the families of those who died feel they are not getting the whole truth.

Since Scappaticci’s death, there has been no attempt to refute claims he was Agent Stakeknife. While alive, a peer named him in the House of Lords as Stakeknife – a claim that was quickly retracted.

Scappaticci was never charged or convicted with any Troubles-related offences and now never will. Civil action is likely to continue, however. The High Court’s highly unusual ruling that Scappaticci’s will should be sealed rather than made public is likely to be challenged.

The Kenova investigators argued strongly that agent Stakeknife’s identity should be revealed. While they don’t confirm their belief that Stakeknife is Scappaticci, they do list the extensive list of reasons that have left many others thinking he was. Naming Stakeknife, they argue, is essential for victims and families, public discussion and debate, media freedom, open justice and public confidence in state authorities and the criminal justice system.

The British government has long maintained a policy regarding informers known as “neither confirm nor deny”. This protects informers’ lives as well as ensuring the government can continue to access intelligence that could save other lives.

Confirming that a particular individual is, or has been, an informer puts that person at risk of being killed by their associates to deter potential future informers and as a punishment. While Scappaticci is dead, others are still alive.

Naming informers also demonstrates to anyone considering becoming an informer that they may not be protected by whichever state organisation they come to work for, whether that be the police, the army or intelligence agencies such as MI5. This therefore reduces their chances of coming forward to provide intelligence.

On the other hand, to deny that Scappaticci or anyone else was an informer would create a situation where if someone else was later alleged to be an informer, if the government did not issue a denial for them, they would be assumed to be an informer. So while there is no harm to Scappaticci in either scenario, others could be put at risk.

Although this nine-year investigation has delivered some new nuggets of information about Agent Stakeknife, it is no surprise that there is disappointment from some quarters that the government still refuses to name Agent Stakeknife. This situation demonstrates the sometimes competing needs of truth, justice, accountability and intelligence work.

Samantha Newbery does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Stakeknife: should the British government reveal the real name of its top IRA informer? – https://theconversation.com/stakeknife-should-the-british-government-reveal-the-real-name-of-its-top-ira-informer-271699

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andreas Krieg, Associate Professor, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London

Fighters aligned with the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a separatist group in southern Yemen, raised their flags in the provinces of Hadramout and Marah in early December. The seizures mean the STC now controls all eight of the provinces that make up the south of the country.

The new status quo looks like a fait accompli for the creation of a separate southern state. It has left Yemen’s internationally recognised government, the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), squeezed between a pole in the south and a state run by the Iran-backed Houthi militia in the north.

The STC taps into memories of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen which, until 1990, gave southerners their own state. Yemen’s 1990 unification produced one flag, but many people in the south never felt they joined a shared political project.

These grievances led to a brief civil war in 1994. This war ended with northern victory, purges of southern officers and civil servants, and what many in the south still describe as an occupation rather than integration.

By the mid-2000s, retired officers and dismissed civil servants in the south were marching for pensions and basic rights. Those protests turned into al-Hirak al-Janoubi, a loose southern movement running from reformists to hardline secessionists.

And when the 2015 Saudi-led intervention began against the Houthis, which had seized the Yemeni capital of Sana’a the previous year, southern fighters were folded into a campaign to restore a “national” government that had never addressed their grievances.

The STC was formed in 2017 to try and give this crowded field in the south a recognisable leadership. It has a formal president, Aidarus al-Zubaidi, and councils. But in practice it sits at the centre of a web of armed units, tribal groups and businessmen.

Through sustained financial and material backing for the southern armed groups, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) emerged as the midwife of the organisation’s creation. Against the backdrop of widespread failed governance in Yemen, the STC project seems to deliver relatively well on security and public services.

In April 2022, several years after the STC’s formation, the PLC was created to unite the forces fighting the Houthis. Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-based president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, resigned and handed his powers over to an eight-member body backed by Riyadh.

The PLC was designed to bridge the various tribal, ideological and political divides in the country. It also aimed to create a platform to coordinate governance and statecraft with a view to engaging the Houthis through diplomacy.

But as it mixes northern and southern leaders, including those from the STC, the PLC has never emerged as a viable hub to merge competing agendas. The inability of the PLC to deliver on its promise to consolidate governance across Yemen has incrementally eaten away at its legitimacy.

A Gulf proxy war

Yemen has turned into a quiet scorecard for two Gulf projects. Saudi Arabia intervened to defeat the Houthis, rescue a unified Yemeni state and secure its own borders. The UAE went in to secure reliable partners, access to ports and sea lanes and control of resources as part of its regional policy.

A glimpse at a map of Yemen today shows it is the UAE whose vision seems to have been realised. Through the STC and a web of allied units, the UAE has helped stitch together a power base that runs across nearly all of former South Yemen. STC-aligned forces hold the city of Aden, sit on much of Yemen’s limited oil production and control long stretches of the Arabian and Red Sea coasts.

Control of terrain in Yemen

Key national infrastructure in southern Yemen is now guarded by men whose salaries, media platforms and external ties flow through Abu Dhabi. In return, the UAE enjoys a loyal surrogate on the Gulf of Aden and the approaches to the Bab al-Mandab strait. Saudi Arabia, by contrast, has been left propping up a fragile PLC.

The Houthis remain the nominal enemy for everyone. But, in reality, UAE-aligned units have poured more bandwidth into sidelining Saudi-backed rivals in southern Yemen than engaging the insurgent-turned-state in the north. The UAE now holds leverage over Yemen’s crown jewels in the south, while Saudi Arabia shoulders the burden of the narrative of a “united Yemen” with few dependable allies inside the country.

Two-and-a-half Yemens

For decades, neighbours Saudi Arabia and Oman as well as most foreign capitals have sworn by a single Yemeni state. The UAE-backed STC project cuts directly across that line, with an entrenched southern order making a formal split far more likely.

If Yemen is carved in two, the Houthi structure in the north does not evaporate; it gains borders, time and eventually a stronger claim to recognition. That would cement a heavily armed ideological authority at the mouth of the Red Sea, tied to Tehran and Hezbollah and ruling over a population drained by war and economic collapse.

Yet, confronted with the multilayered network created by Iran and the UAE in Yemen, Saudi Arabia has few cards to play. It may eventually be forced to concede to a UAE-backed government-in-waiting in the south while the north settles into Houthi rule and territory held by the PLC gets increasingly squeezed.

Oman keeps arguing for a shared table that brings all parties – including the Houthis – into one system. But every new southern flag raised undercuts that goal. For outside powers, a southern client that keeps ports open and hunts Islamist militants is tempting.

The price is to freeze northern Yemen as a grey zone: heavily armed, ideologically rigid and wired into regional confrontation. That outcome cuts against the very unity project Saudi Arabia and Oman have endorsed for years. What is left today are two-and-a-half Yemens – with the half, territory administered by the PLC, looking the least sustainable moving forward.

Andreas Krieg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The UAE is leaving Saudi Arabia squeezed in Yemen – https://theconversation.com/the-uae-is-leaving-saudi-arabia-squeezed-in-yemen-271777

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nicky Hudson, Professor of Medical Sociology, De Montfort University

Around 200 children in several countries were conceived with sperm from a single donor who unknowingly carried a rare genetic mutation linked to early onset cancers, it has been revealed. The consequences have been devastating. Several children have already died and many families across Europe are now facing a risk they never expected.

The case has prompted urgent questions. How was one donor used so widely? Why did standard safeguards fail to identify a mutation that can have such severe consequences? And how did a system created to create families allow a tragedy of this scale?

When someone donates sperm or eggs they are screened for a set of common inherited conditions before being accepted by a clinic. The exact process varies by country and it has limitations. Screening depends heavily on accurate family history, yet many people have incomplete information about their relatives.

Some conditions emerge later in adulthood, which means a young donor may appear healthy. Clinics also focus primarily on established, higher frequency conditions rather than the vast number of rare variants that exist.

Ordinarily, donors complete a detailed questionnaire covering their medical background and their family’s health history. If the information suggests a possible inherited risk, the donor may be offered further testing or, more commonly, they may be declined.

More recently, clinics have begun to use expanded genetic screening. These tests can examine hundreds of genes linked to childhood or early adulthood conditions.

However, the technology is still developing and cannot detect every possible disease-causing variant. Many rare mutations are not part of routine panels, either because they have only recently been identified or because the evidence base is still small.

That context matters in this case. The donor had no family history of the condition and showed no symptoms. A person can carry a harmful mutation without being affected themselves, so nothing in his medical history raised concerns. The newer, broader screening was not used, but even if it had been, the variant is so rare that it may not have been included or detectable.

The donor provided sperm to the European Sperm Bank in Denmark for around 17 years. His donations were used to create roughly 200 children across multiple European countries, although experts say the true number could be higher.

This scale was possible because there is no international law limiting how widely donor sperm can be distributed. Many countries have rules on how many families can be created from a single donor.

The United Kingdom, for instance, permits no more than ten families. These limits, however, apply only within national borders. A donor can be used in several countries without any system to flag that the overall number has far exceeded what any one country would allow.

A recent unrelated case showed how extreme this can become. A different donor was found to have fathered around 1,000 children in several countries. There were no known health issues in that situation, but it revealed how donor use can expand rapidly without oversight.

The challenges in the current case are profound. Families are dealing with grief and uncertainty. Some have lost children. Others face a very high likelihood that their child will develop cancer before the age of 60, often in infancy or childhood.

There has been little public discussion about the sperm donor himself, although the emotional impact of learning these outcomes is likely to be significant.

Because the mutation was so rare, additional routine testing would probably not have prevented what happened. In truth, every person carries some genetic variants that remain undetected and harmless in everyday life.

There have been earlier examples of donors unknowingly passing on inherited conditions, such as cystic fibrosis or fragile X syndrome, but those cases typically involved far fewer families. What makes this case stand out is the sheer number of children affected.

For this reason, simply calling for more screening is unlikely to be the full answer. The more pressing issue is the lack of limits and monitoring on how many families can be created from one donor across borders.

In this case, families were created in several countries and in some places even the national limits were breached. Belgium, for example, permits only six families per donor, yet reports indicate that about 38 families were created.

What is needed is a robust system for tracking and tracing donor use both within and between countries. Without coordinated oversight, national limits are easily bypassed. Establishing international upper limits will be difficult and politically complex, but the conversation has to begin if further tragedies are to be prevented.

As more people use commercial DNA testing to find donor relatives, large networks of siblings connected across countries are becoming increasingly visible. The implications for those families are significant. A coordinated global approach is overdue and would help prevent another case like this one, where families are left facing consequences they could never have foreseen.

Nicky Hudson receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council on expanded carrier screening and gamete donation (reference: ES/W012456/1, ES/N010604/1, ES/V002430/1. She is a member of the NICE Guideline Committee on Fertility and a member of the British Fertility Society’s Law Policy and Ethics Special Interest Group.

– ref. One sperm donor fathered 200 children and passed on a deadly mutation – and it could easily happen again – https://theconversation.com/one-sperm-donor-fathered-200-children-and-passed-on-a-deadly-mutation-and-it-could-easily-happen-again-271856

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matt Jacobsen, Senior Lecturer in Film History in the School of Society and Environment, Queen Mary University of London

Despite a wonderful central performance from June Squibb, Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut is a sentimental, tonally uncertain drama about grief and holocaust survival

Eleanor Morgenstein, a 94-year-old Midwesterner living in Florida, moves to New York after the death of her close friend and roommate Bessie, a Holocaust survivor. She joins a Jewish seniors group and accidentally finds herself part of a meeting of Holocaust survivors.

Eleanor, at first buoyed by the prospect of new friends, fabricates past experiences based on the Bessie’s stories, claiming harrowing recollections as her own.

Nina (Erin Kellyman), a journalism student writing a piece on Holocaust survivors, attends the meetings and is moved by Eleanor’s stories. Having recently lost her mother she connects with Eleanor through shared grief.

Eleanor starts out with ambiguously good intentions of preserving the memory of a dear friend. However, she is soon out of her depth when Nina’s article is taken up by Nina’s news anchor father (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as a human interest story for his show.

Early in the film, a comic exchange in a supermarket aisle telegraphs the film’s central theme. An acquaintance in his 90s tells Eleanor crossly: “You were born in New York. You can’t feel bad about the Holocaust. You weren’t there.”

The film wants to probe the ways in which grief is processed individually and collectively, asking us to consider what drives Eleanor to appropriate her friend’s traumatic life history.

At the centre of the film is the wonderful performance by Squibb, then 94 but now 96, who had a sturdy but unspectacular stage and screen career for more than 60 years before her breakthrough performance in Alexander Payne’s superb Nebraska in 2013.

Eleanor the Great is not a film specifically concerned with ageing and we are not so conscious of the vivacious Squibb’s age until a care home subplot is shoehorned in.

Scarlett Johansson was motivated to direct this film after her own investigations into her family’s history of Holocaust survival. She may have the highest grossing body of work in Hollywood for action films like The Avengers series, but she has a considerable track record of excellent low key independent films – from her breakthrough in Ghost World to Noam Baumbach’s powerful Marriage Story. Eleanor the Great most clearly takes its inspiration from that kind of American character drama.

There is little technical flair or stylistic character to distinguish Johansson as a director in this first feature. The gently sentimental scenes of New York City, its diners, crosswalks and ranks of yellow taxis are clearly inspired by the work of Baumbach as well as Woody Allen, Johansson’s director in two films (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Match Point).

The film is at its strongest in the Allen-esque day-to-day moments in the city that let Squibb embody her character with gentle acidity and likeable crankiness. Johansson, like many actors-turned-directors, has a strength when it comes to allowing performers space to breathe and inhabit their characters. Scenes unfold quietly and unhurriedly.

The script, by Tory Kamen, could be wittier, sharper and more engaging, as there is a promise in character interactions that never quite take flight. When the film reaches what should be its narrative peak with the unravelling of Eleanor’s fabrications it is neither emotional nor funny.

Instead the climax’s tone is uncertain, sentimental and lands flat. What follows is a series of fraught conversations where the actors gamely try to mine emotional heft from a dreary screenplay.

The cultural memory of the Holocaust and the enormity of its legacy on Jewish descendants has been probed with considerably more success elsewhere. Jesse Eisenberg’s impressive, Bafta-winning and Oscar-nominated A Real Pain featured a pair of cousins on a tour of Jewish Poland, confronting its young characters with the memory of the Holocaust.

That film takes a well-executed midway tonal turn from broad character comedy to unexpected powerful poignancy. This happens in a scene where the usually motor-mouthed, bickering men are silenced in the face of a visit to the Majdanek concentration camp. Eleanor the Great doesn’t possess a moment like this that would drive its well-intentioned message home.

The film attempts to sidestep the callousness of Eleanor’s appropriation of Bessie’s stories by switching to flashbacks. In these memories we see Eleanor hear these stories for the first time in the middle of a sleepless night. These scenes, where the words come directly from Bessie, are well acted and moving, especially in a longer, emotional monologue towards the film’s climax.

When the film’s attention turns in the final third to the issue of whether Eleanor should be placed in a retirement home, the tone similarly skirts between humour and pathos – neither of which connect.

The film has admirable intentions but its script and plotting are not worthy of the excellent performance at the film’s heart. It also can’t quite bear the seriousness or the potential power of its central themes, leading to a disappointingly hollow experience.

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Matt Jacobsen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Eleanor the Great: a tonally uncertain Holocaust drama with a wonderful central performance – https://theconversation.com/eleanor-the-great-a-tonally-uncertain-holocaust-drama-with-a-wonderful-central-performance-271895