When Hannah Gheller had her baby 14 weeks ago, she did not expect social media to become such a “minefield”.
The first-time mum from Melbourne/Naarm says she felt it was a “shame-inducing tool” when she was struggling to breastfeed and her son wasn’t gaining weight.
“I would Google tips for improving [milk] supply and expressing, only for my Instagram to effectively be filled with tradwives who were showing off their chest freezers full of expressed milk. Or how formula is not natural and therefore shouldn’t be fed to babies.”
Experts say there are ways mothers can better protect themselves online during the vulnerable postpartum period.
Unsplash
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
The five brain phases were split into: childhood brain, adolescent brain, adult brain, early ageing brain and late ageing brain.Photo: 123rf
Scientists have discovered the human brain goes through five different phases of life, with key turning points at four different ages.
These “major turning points” occur around the ages of 9, 32, 66 and 83, a media release from the University of Cambridge said.
The neuroscientists from Cambridge University found the brain structure changes over the course of a human life, as the brain rewires to “support different ways of thinking while we grow, mature, and ultimately decline”.
The study that was led by the university’s MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit compared brains of more than 3800 people aged between 0 and 90.
According to scientist and research lead Dr Alexa Mousley, it is the first study to “identify major phases of brain wiring across a human lifespan”.
It found the brain does not shift into “adult mode”, on average, until the age of 32.
The five brain phases were split into: childhood brain, adolescent brain, adult brain, early ageing brain and late ageing brain.
“These eras provide important context for what our brains might be best at, or more vulnerable to, at different stages of our lives,” Mousley said.
“It could help us understand why some brains develop differently at key points in life, whether it be learning difficulties in childhood, or dementia in our later years.”
Childhood brain
According to the media release, brains are defined by “network consolidation” from infancy through to childhood. Connectors in the brain rewire across the whole brain in the same pattern until roughly 9 years old.
At this point, the first turning point, the brain experiences a “step-change” in cognitive capacity – and an increase in risk of mental health disorders.
Adolescent brain
The second turning point sees the brain’s communications networks increasingly refine, the media release said.
This continues until a person is in their 30s, when it peaks.
This is the “strongest topological turning point of the entire life span”.
Mousley said: “Around the age of 32, we see the most directional changes in wiring and the largest overall shift in trajectory, compared to all the other turning points.
“While puberty offers a clear start, the end of adolescence is much harder to pin down scientifically. Based purely on neural architecture, we found that adolescent-like changes in brain structure end around the early 30s.”
Adult brain
According to this study, adulthood begins at 32, until around the age of 66.
Researchers say it is at this time that the brain’s architecture stabilises.
Early ageing brain
Mousley said data used for the study suggested a “gradual reorganisation” of the brain’s networks occurs in the mid-60s.
“This is probably related to ageing, with further reduced connectivity as white matter starts to degenerate.
“This is an age when people face increased risk for a variety of health conditions that can affect the brain, such as hypertension.”
Late ageing brain
The final turning point for the brain occurs around the age of 83, the media release said.
Data for this stage was limited but showed the whole brain’s connectivity declined further.
Scientist Professor Duncan Astle said: “Many neurodevelopmental, mental health and neurological conditions are linked to the way the brain is wired. Indeed, differences in brain wiring predict difficulties with attention, language, memory, and a whole host of different behaviours.
“Understanding that the brain’s structural journey is not a question of steady progression, but rather one of a few major turning points, will help us identify when and how its wiring is vulnerable to disruption.”
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Food assistance does more good when it doesn’t make people feel bad for needing help.SolStock/E+ via Getty Images
The 2025 government shutdown drew widespread attention to how many Americans struggle to get enough food. For 43 days, the more than 42 million Americans who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits had to find other ways to stock their cupboards.
When asked how she felt about her benefits being suspended, one woman in West Virginia told a New York Times reporter, “We’re angry. Because we do count!”
Her sentiment reflects an often underappreciated fact about food. Food is not just a matter of survival. What and how you eat is also a symbol of your social status. Being unable to reliably feed your family healthy and nutritious foods in a way that aligns with your values can feel undignified. It can make people feel unseen and less important than others.
As researchers who study food inequality, nutrition and food justice, we have spent decades surveying and interviewing Americans about how they eat. We have witnessed firsthand how food assistance does help people meet their basic needs, but how it can also be stigmatizing and diminish their sense of dignity.
We have also studied alternatives to typical charitable food programs that, despite good intentions, tend to induce shame. We have learned that it is possible to help people put food on the table while preserving their dignity.
Dignity and food assistance
Addressing the root causes of food insecurity – what happens when people lack steady access to the food they need for a nutritious diet that’s in keeping with their preferences – is a persistent problem in the United States.
As interviewers and clinicians, we have heard mothers describe the shame they feel when SNAP benefits do not cover the entire grocery bill. We have witnessed the frustration that comes with walking down a food pantry aisle lined with signs instructing hungry people to “take only 1 item!”
“The stuff looks like almost trash, but they give it to you,” one woman we interviewed said of her experience with food pantries and the like.
These kinds of stories are not uncommon. Charitable food programs receive leftover items from grocery stores, donations from community food drives and local businesses, and sometimes surplus from local farms. Food is often damaged in transport or from being handled too many times. A review of the research found that many people who use food pantries described the food as unhealthy, moldy or inedible. Being given unhealthy and unappealing food in a time of need is a double burden.
While free food may fill the stomach, it does not satisfy the desire to feel fully human and worthy of nourishment.
Several studies have shown that food programs do not need to sacrifice dignity to offer help. Programs that offer opportunities for people with lower incomes to receive and give back are important.
In Canada, bulk-buying food cooperatives did just that. Food assistance programs confer dignity when they make people feel good. People seeking help feel more satisfied after visiting food pantries that keep convenient hours or offer fresh produce.
SNAP has also tried to promote client dignity by ensuring that benefits are accepted in major grocery stores and distributing the funds to debit cards, allowing people to look and feel like everyday shoppers.
Because SNAP benefits can be used to buy food at stores, the program generally allows for broad choices. Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Cultivating dignity in food assistance
Minimizing stigma improves food assistance. Intentionally cultivating food dignity may be the next step.
Our assessment of a nationwide meal kit program demonstrated how dignity can be cultivated when food assistance programs consider the nutritional, emotional, aesthetic and cultural dimensions of food and eating.
In 2021, we conducted 116 interviews with participants of a meal kit program called Pass the Love. The program was free and anyone could enroll, no questions asked. The meal kits contained the necessary food and recipes to make three vegetarian meals a week, such as sesame coconut noodle salad or carrot coconut dal with rice. The program ran for four consecutive weeks.
When we interviewed participants about their experiences during and after the program, we learned that while they were thankful for the free food, what mattered more was the high quality, how it was packaged and how it conveyed care and respect.
Most participants had incomes at or well below the poverty line. They described what we came to call a “high dignity food experience,” meaning that it generated positive feelings and a sense of worth.
Opening the nicely packaged meal kit boxes each week felt like “Christmas,” to some people and a “gift” to others. Many found the “thought and care” that went into the program remarkable. Offering high-quality food to make nutritious, complete meals symbolized that low-income or food-insecure people deserve to eat well and feel good.
Our research, like similar studies that others have conducted, shows that treating food as a basic human right requires more than just giving people something to eat. It means ensuring unconditional access to the culturally appropriate fresh and nutritious food people need to thrive not just physically, but psychologically and socially.
Joslyn Brenton received funding from Partnership for a Healthier America as an external research expert.
Dr. Virudachalam received funding from the Edna G. Kynett Memorial Foundation, Rite Aid Foundation, and Partnership for a Healthier America in the last 36 months. She is a member of The Food Trust Board of Directors, the National Produce Prescription Collaborative Steering Committee, and Philadelphia City Council’s Food and Nutrition Security Task Force.
Alyssa Tindall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Christina Hymer, Assistant Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship, University of Tennessee
Members of the Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas meet at Pink’s restaurant at Knott’s Berry Farm before the holiday rush in 2009.Business Wire via AP
When you picture Santa Claus, a white, bearded, overweight and jolly man who dashes around delivering gifts to children during the Christmas season probably comes to mind. Yet, not everyone who dons the red suit fits this stereotype.
That’s what Bethany Cockburn, Borbala Csillag and I learned when we teamed up to study professional Santas. For our study, we looked into how these professional Santas were able to “be” Santa, even if they didn’t fully fit the image.
As we explained in a forthcoming article in the Academy of Management Journal, many who do this work don’t see it as just a job – it’s a calling. For some professional Santas, it’s especially important that they look and feel like Santa to experience that sense of purpose in their work.
We surveyed 849 professional Santas who live across the U.S. and interviewed 53 of them, collecting data between 2018 and 2021. We identified three types of professional Santas: prototypical (64%), semi-prototypical (23%) and nonprototypical (13%).
Prototypical Santas look the part. They are white and overweight, have real beards and express confidence that they are the right fit.
Semi-prototypical Santas looked the part, too, but felt like they weren’t quite suitable for a range of reasons. They might be introverted or use a fake beard.
Nonprototypical Santas had characteristics at odds with the stereotype. They might be nonwhite, female or gay, or have a physical disability.
Many Santas see their work, whether paid or volunteer, as a calling. Photo by Gwyn Sussman
Whereas prototypical Santas could easily slide into the Santa role, the process was more complex for the others.
Semi-prototypical Santas did things like come up with stories they’d tell themselves or share with children to explain away their fake beards. Nonprototypical Santas had values aligned with the Santa image, such as being peaceful, loving and kind. But they still made a big effort to look like what people expect when they visit a Santa.
“Should it be a difference if you’re a Jewish Santa Claus or a Catholic Santa Claus?” asked an atheist professional Santa we called “Santa Aquila.” “No. You’re Santa Claus. What do you do? You’re not even supposed to preach anything.”
Another Santa whom we called “Santa Lynx” hid that she was female in part by flattening her chest.
Why it matters
While anyone can take a turn being their neighborhood potluck’s Santa, the one you meet at the mall probably attended some combination of Santa schools, webinars and training.
Actor B.J. Averell, dressed as Santa Claus, attends a toy drive for struggling Bay Area families in Burlingame, Calif., in December 2024. Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images
There are also local organizations, such as the Lone Star Santas network in Texas.
Although most professional Santas are paid for their work, many do this voluntarily.
But that doesn’t mean that women can’t be pilots, men can’t be teachers or that introverts can’t work in sales.
What’s next
I’m now looking at how broader institutional environments, current events and social movements can shape how people experience their callings and find meaning at work.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
Christina Hymer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The roar of an African lion is one of the most iconic sounds of the animal kingdom. However, my new research suggests it should actually be separated into two distinct vocalisations: the full-throated roar, and an “intermediary roar” with a flatter, less varied sound. Making this distinction could have important implications for lions’ conservation.
The total population of wild lions in Africa is estimated to be between 22,000 and 25,000, but this number is half what it was 25 years ago. The main drivers of this decline are habitat loss and fragmentation, reduction in prey, and conflict with local people. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list, lions are now vulnerable to extinction.
My colleagues and I investigated roaring in lions to get better at distinguishing between their different vocalisations. But our findings may make it easier to monitor lions’ numbers, which in turn would make it easier to protect them.
You might think you know a lion’s roar from the clip used by MGM at the start of all its films – but that isn’t quite right. It’s actually a tiger’s roar dubbed on top of this famous piece of cinema. Compared with a lion, a tiger’s roar is often raspier and higher-pitched.
In fact, male and female lions produce what scientists call a “roaring bout”. Each begins with a series of soft moans, followed by a subsection of intermediary and full-throated roars, which finally subside into a repetition of grunts.
There is no set length of time a roaring bout will last (though most are between 30 and 45 seconds), and the number of vocalisations within each subsection does not keep to a strict formula.
The roaring bout is important behaviour. Not only does it signal to other lions in their pride where they are, but to unfriendly lions, bouts can be used to advertise territorial boundaries.
The loudest, most complex component of a lion’s roaring bout is the full-throated roar, which is an individually identifiable sound. Each lion’s full-throated roar is as specific to the individual as the pattern of spots are to a leopard (and as my 2024 paper found, their roar too).
Population density estimates are a key metric for identifying priority areas for conservation. If individual lions can be identified by their full-throated roars, then researchers could use this to count them.
However, picking out the full-throated roars from other vocalisations within a roaring bout is tricky. Even for those with expert ears, it is a subjective process which is prone to human bias.
The reason becomes clearer when you look at a spectrogram of a lion’s roaring bout – a visual representation of its sounds using an x-axis of time (seconds) and y-axis of frequency (hertz). The full-throated roar at the start of the mid-section of the bout rarely looks or sounds the same as the roar that occurs right before the grunts kick in. Which made me wonder: should these different roars be classified the same?
My colleagues and I leaned on AI to help us analyse our roar recordings. Perhaps this could help solve the issue of subjectivity, we thought, and classify lion vocalisations automatically, creating a tool so that other researchers always know which roar is right for counting lions.
We used supervised machine learning to classify the vocalisations which occur in a lion’s roaring bout into three call types: full-throated roars, grunts, and our newly identified intermediary roar.
From the spectrogram, we could see that the full-throated roar is loud, complex and arcs in pitch. The intermediary roar was a flatter sound with less variation – and it always followed the full-throated roars. Grunts were shorter and even more compact.
Using simple acoustic parameters – the duration of each vocalisation and its maximum frequency – we could then identify each call type with an accuracy of 95.4%. As the full-throated roars are unique to each individual lion, we wanted to test whether our AI analysis of full-throated roars was better at distinguishing between different lions than human hearing.
We found we could identify individual lions at an accuracy of 94.3% – an improvement of 2.2% over when human-selected full-throated roars were used. Using this technique for identifying full-throated roars could hopefully lead to more accurate population density estimates of lions.
It is exciting to discover the language of lions is more complex than previously thought. However, it is unclear what the communicative differences of the two roar types may be.
Scientists have long believed that lion roars may convey information relating to pride size, age and identity – but without Dr Doolittle to translate the meaning of moans, grunts and roars, this is still guesswork.
Therefore, it may take some time before “lion” appears as an option on Duolingo. For now, we should just celebrate the fact that AI can help us to discover more about wild phenomena as iconic as a lion’s roar.
Jonathan Growcott was funded via a doctoral training grant awarded as part of the UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in Environmental Intelligence (UKRI grant number EP/S022074/1).
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Susan Ann Samuel, PhD Candidate, School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds
At the UN climate conference Cop30 in Belém, Brazil, I asked some young climate activists and negotiators about their hopes, expectations and demands. Despite their positivity and the push for action from climate movements, Indigenous people and civil society, a lack of consensus on key issues was palpable.
Following overnight negotiations on November 21-22, the Brazilian presidency unveiled an outcome decision referred to as the “global mutirão” (collective efforts). But experts agree that the outlined climate action is insufficient.
I attended this years’ Cop as an advisor to the international Youth Negotiators Academy — a programme offering training to negotiators under the age of 35. My experience at Belém informs my PhD research into how social movements are influencing climate conferences. Here are some of the expectations of the young people I met at Cop30.
Brazilian student Ana Bertazzo Lemos, 23, attended Cop30 calling for obligations to cut fossil fuel emissions and the integration of ecological action into everyday life. But the final Cop30 text had no mention of fossil fuels.
Matthaeus Menezes Assef, 29, from Guarujá, Brazil, is the student representative of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) taskforce at the University of Leeds. I talked to Menezes and Guarany Osório, a Brazilian professor of sustainability, about their common goals.
Menezes is concerned for Brazil’s domestic political vision. He says Brazil needs to deal with deforestation and oil extraction in the Amazon, while evolving as a climate leader. He was happy that Cop30 brought 3,000 Indigenous people to Belém, with many receiving blue badges for direct access to negotiations. However, a roadmap to deforestation did not materialise at Cop30.
Protection for Amazonia
Jhulielson Conceição, 22, and Nathália Vasques, 24, were volunteers at Cop30, providing essential information and guidance to delegates. “Without us they’ll be lost,” Vasques told me. She sees Cop30’s location as crucial because Belém is on the frontline of climate change.
Vasques hoped that first-hand experience for delegates would translate into stronger commitments and greater protection for Amazonia, but this hasn’t happened yet. Both Conceição and Vasques wanted to see more recognition for youth voices at future Cops — but this shouldn’t just be tokenistic. Young people require decision-making power.
Stronger climate law
Emily Zinkula, 25, a law student from Stanford University, focused on whether legal mechanisms can create accountability for climate action. She tracks whether negotiations incorporate the recent advisory opinions on climate obligations, particularly by the International Court of Justice. An advisory opinion is a legal interpretation that’s not legally binding, provided by a high-level court or tribunal in response to a specific question of law.
Zinkula spoke at a side event alongside Jojo Mehta, co-founder of the campaign organisation Stop Ecocide International. Zinkula argued that the advisory opinion can help civil societies gain momentum around recognising ecocide (large-scale destruction of nature by human actions) as an international crime.
Having researched climate laws, I share her vision for accountability and justice – but the negotiations don’t yet reflect that.
Tebbe demanded adaptation finance from developed to developing countries as per the Paris climate agreement. She emphasised that human health should be central to climate negotiations, and hoped for a just transition mechanism that moves from policy to implementation.
Tebbe also wanted the second global stocktake (a five-yearly assessment of the world’s progress toward the goals of the Paris agreement, due in 2028) to be more inclusive, with civil society input. She told me how the Belém conference’s positive atmosphere and push for quick decisions seemed unusual compared with other climate summits she had attended.
This mechanism is a strategy to guarantee that the global shift towards a green economy is equitable and safeguards the rights of all people. There were discussions about doubling adaptation finance by 2025 and tripling it by 2035 – but whether the adaptation indicators include priorities for health is yet to be seen.
Young climate activists can’t deny that climate negotiations are complex, driven by political agendas and national interests. But my time in Belém has reinforced something essential: young people can play an instrumental role in and around the negotiations. Unfortunately, those demands don’t always translate into actual outcomes.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Susan Ann Samuel is a PhD candidate at the University of Leeds – School of Politics and International Studies (awaiting defence). She collaborates with the Youth Negotiators Academy and her presence at the UNFCCC COP30 in Belém, Brazil was as an advisor to YNA. Her PhD is funded by Prof. Viktoria Spaiser’s UKRI FLF Grant MR/V021141/1. She currently works as the Research Assistant to Dr. Shashi Tharoor – Member of Parliament, Thiruvananthapuram and Chairman of Committee of External Affairs, India.
Arthur Conan Doyle was not just one of the world’s best crime fiction writers. He was a progressive wordsmith who brought light to controversial and taboo subjects. One of those taboo subjects was male vulnerability and mental health problems – a topic of personal significance to the author.
Doyle was a vulnerable child. His father, Charles, was an alcoholic, which led to financial troubles in the family. Charles was admitted to an asylum in 1881 and spent the next 12 years in various mental care establishments. So began Doyle’s interest in male vulnerability and mental health.
The character of Sherlock Holmes is a true expression of male vulnerability that does not equate it with weakness. Doyle does not represent Holmes as infallible, but as a man others can relate to – he battles with drug addiction, loneliness and depression. His genius thrives in part because of these vulnerabilities, not despite them.
Many of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories examine male characters facing emotional catastrophe, betrayal or moral dilemmas. In works such as The Man with the Twisted Lip (1891), The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb (1892) and The Stockbroker’s Clerk (1894), Holmes’s male clients approach him with problems layered with emotional turmoil, fear and failure.
In The Man with the Twisted Lip, for example, a man named Neville St Clair hides his double life. He tells his family that he is a respectable entrepreneur going to London on business. In reality he is begging on the city streets. He lives this double life due to fear and shame over the inability to pay off his debts. “It was a long fight between my pride and the money,” he explains, “but the dollars won at last.”
An illustration from The Stockbroker’s Clerk, by Sidney Paget (1893). Strand Magazine
“I would have endured imprisonment, ay, even execution, rather than have left my miserable secret as a family blot to my children,” St Clair says. In having his character consider execution to protect his and his family’s reputation, Doyle explored the societal expectations of Victorian masculinity and how men struggled with such pressures.
The Stockbroker’s Clerk also examines male suicide, as well as economic and professional anxieties. When Holmes reveals the crimes of Harry Pinner, the man attempts suicide rather than face prison.
In The Engineer’s Thumb, hydraulic engineer Victor is treated physically by Watson and mentally by Holmes. As Doyle writes: “Round one of his hands he had a handkerchief wrapped, which was mottled all over with bloodstains. He was young, not more than five-and-twenty, I should say, with a strong masculine face; but he was exceedingly pale and gave me the impression of a man who was suffering from some strong agitation, which it took all his strength of mind to control.”
The physical injury marks Victor as a victim of physical violence. Watson suggests that Victor is using all his mental capabilities to keep calm about his severe pain. Holmes treats Victor’s mind as he listens to his story: “Pray lie down there and make yourself absolutely at home. Tell us what you can, but stop when you are tired, and keep up your strength with a little stimulant.”
Holmes is a protector, a confidante and a comforter in this scene. He provides Victor with breakfast, induces him to lie down and offers him a stimulant (more than likely brandy).
The extremity of violence that Victor has endured has escalated to mental trauma. In having Holmes treat Victor’s mental trauma while Watson treats his physical pain, Doyle showed the importance psychological support for men of the age.
Holmes was a highly popular character. To contemporary readers, his drug use and dysfunctional clients were seen as markers of his genius rather than a reflection of the significant social issues that men faced during this period. But today, they offer a window into the mental struggles of Victorian men, and a point of connection between readers of the past and present.
Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.
This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.
Emma Linford 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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Francesca Lessa, Associate Professor in International Relations of the Americas, UCL
Fifty years ago on November 25 1975, military intelligence officers from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay gathered in the Chilean capital of Santiago to set up what they called the “Condor System”.
Better known as Operation Condor, this was a secret transnational terror network that allowed repressive regimes in these countries to persecute opponents living in exile. It left behind a legacy of torture, as well as hundreds of kidnappings, disappearances and murders.
Condor was built on three main operational pillars. First, all intelligence information about perceived subversive activities across the region was centralised in a database in Santiago. Second, an encrypted communications channel let state agents communicate secretly and efficiently. And third, the so-called office for coordination and advanced command oversaw joint operational activities.
Argentina, Chile and Uruguay also set up the Teseo unit to target exiles from those three countries who were living in Europe. And while Operation Condor ended in late 1978, bilateral operations which mainly saw Argentina collaborate with Brazil, Paraguay and Chile continued until early 1981.
Operation Condor allowed South American leaders to target people who had fled their home countries and continued to denounce the dictatorships from abroad. Plancondor.org
Because of Operation Condor’s top-secret nature, there are no official lists of victims. But my research has confirmed there were at least 805 victims between August 1969, when several South American regimes began collaborating in informal ways, and February 1981.
While victims came from a variety of backgrounds, they were mostly political and social activists plus members of revolutionary armed groups, primarily from Uruguay, Argentina and Chile.
Seeking justice
From 1976, when Condor’s repressive operations peaked, evidence was being compiled on the atrocities committed by member states. In 1977, for example, a Uruguayan journalist called Enrique Rodriguez Larreta gave evidence to Amnesty International in London about his abduction in Buenos Aires the previous year. He had travelled there to search for his missing son.
Rodriguez Larreta recounted how he was detained and tortured in three secret prisons across Argentina and Uruguay, before being released six months later. His testimony provided undeniable evidence of the clandestine coordination between South America’s military regimes.
Further proof of Operation Condor’s atrocities was provided in 1979, when American journalist Jack Anderson wrote an article in the Washington Post revealing Condor’s role in the assassination of Orlando Letelier in 1976. Letelier was a minister in the government of Chile’s socialist former president, Salvador Allende.
Wider progress towards justice was limited while South America’s dictatorships remained in power. But the collapse of several regimes across the region in the 1980s opened a window of opportunity.
This period saw some groundbreaking achievements including the Nunca Más (Never Again) report, published in 1984 by Argentina’s National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons. Beyond investigating the military dictatorship’s systematic practice of disappearing people, the commission was the first official state body to recognise Operation Condor’s transnational terror machinery.
However, the possibility of seeing perpetrators stand trial for their crimes was again delayed. So-called impunity laws were sanctioned by democratic governments in Argentina and Uruguay in 1986 and 1987, effectively preventing proceedings against people accused of committing crimes during the military dictatorships.
These laws were passed primarily to quell military dissent and prevent further uprisings after the return to democracy. The laws in Argentina and Uruguay accompanied existing amnesty laws in Brazil and Chile.
The tide of justice finally began to turn in 1998. That year, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was detained in London to face charges for human rights abuses, including Condor atrocities.
Pinochet was spared from trial on medical grounds. But there has been considerable progress since then in the investigation, prosecution and sentencing of state agents for the atrocities committed by Operation Condor.
Over 100 South American civilian and military officers have been sentenced to prison over crimes committed under Operation Condor. Francesca Lessa, CC BY-NC-ND
My research has mapped 50 criminal trials since 1976 that endeavoured to shed light on some of these atrocities. Convictions have been handed down in 40 of these trials so far, with over 100 people sentenced to prison.
These include high-profile figures like former dictators Reynaldo Bignone of Argentina and Juan María Bordaberry of Uruguay. Several high- and middle-ranking military officers, such as Chilean colonel Manuel Contreras, Argentine admiral Antonio Vañek and Uruguayan colonel José Nino Gavazzo, have also been jailed.
Most of these trials have taken place in South America, with 13 verdicts handed out in Argentina, 11 in Uruguay and seven in Chile. In September 2025, retired military intelligence officers Carlos Alberto Rossell and Glauco Yannone were sentenced in Uruguay to 12 years in prison. These men were found guilty of abducting and torturing political activists Universindo Rodríguez and Lilián Celiberti, as well as Celiberti’s two children, in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in 1978.
This sentence is significant, despite a four decade-long delay. In February 1984, Rodríguez and Celiberti were the first people to file a lawsuit in Uruguay for the crimes they had suffered at the hands of Operation Condor. At that time, Uruguay was still in the grips of its military dictatorship.
The daughter of Rafaela Filipazzi, who was killed by Jorge Troccoli in 1977. Janaina Cesar, CC BY-NC-ND
Five verdicts have also been delivered by Italian criminal tribunals. A Rome court sentenced Jorge Troccoli, a former officer in the Uruguayan navy, to life imprisonment in October. He was convicted for the murders of Italian Rafaela Filipazzi, Argentine José Agustín Potenza and Uruguayan Elena Quinteros between 1976 and 1977. Troccoli is a dual Uruguayan-Italian national and fled to Italy in 2007 to avoid prosecution in Uruguay.
According to Alessia Merluzzi, a lawyer I consulted prior to writing this article, this prosecution not only once again confirmed the existence of Operation Condor, it also “probed deeper into its violent and operative mechanisms and structures”. Merluzzi added: “It revealed the modus operandi of the repressive agents beyond borders – and the specific, planned and methodical organisation of the atrocities suffered by the three victims”.
While significant progress has been made towards achieving justice for victims of Operation Condor, many of its crimes remain shrouded in impunity and silence. As the Inter-American Court of Human Rights recommended in 2021, all former Condor member states should work together to uncover the extent of this transnational network’s crimes.
Francesca Lessa’s projects “Operation Condor” and “Plancondor.org” received funding from University College London, the University of Oxford John Fell Fund, The British Academy/Leverhulme Trust, the University of Oxford ESRC Impact Acceleration Account, the European Commission under Horizon 2020, and the Open Society Foundations. Lessa is also the Honorary President of the Observatorio Luz Ibarburu, a network of human rights NGOs in Uruguay, as well as the principal researcher and the coordinator of the Plancondor.org collaborative project.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Selbi Durdiyeva, Visiting Scholar, Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent University
Details of a new peace plan for Ukraine are emerging after officials from the US, Ukraine and its European allies met in Geneva on November 23. They discussed the 28-point plan presented by Russia and the US the previous week, which has been widely criticised as requiring concessions from Kyiv that critics said would be tantamount to surrender.
These two plans, which represent the contrasting positions approved by Ukraine and Russia, are now being discussed in Abu Dhabi by officials from the US, Russia and Ukraine.
The plan which emerged from Geneva is reportedly based on a European counter-proposal to the US-Russia plan that had been developed in Miami by US envoy Steve Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund.
Full details of the Geneva plan have yet to be published. But reports suggest that unlike the US-Russian plan, it leaves open the door to Nato membership, removes restrictions on the size of Ukraine’s post-war army, and removes a proposal for an amnesty for war crimes committed since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
The most contentious issues, including any territory to be ceded by Kyiv and Ukraine’s future Nato membership – something that Russia strongly opposes – will be decided by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and his US counterpart, Donald Trump. Ukraine is calling for a meeting between Trump and Zelensky within days to iron out the remaining issues.
It’s no surprise that neither Ukraine nor its allies in Europe were happy with the the US-Russia deal developed by Witkoff and Dmitriev. Apart from looking more like a plan for Kyiv’s capitulation than a credible pathway to peace, it presents some serious problems – both legal and moral.
Territorial concessions
The 28-point US-Russia proposal suggests Ukraine should concede parts of Ukraine’s internationally recognised territory including Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, which would then become internationally recognised as part of Russia. It also calls for the frontlines to be frozen in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, with “de facto recognition” along the current line of contact between the two armies.
The state of the conflict in Ukraine, November 24 2025. Institute for the Study of War
This would legitimise acquisition of territory by means of force and aggression, and hence would be in contravention of obligations under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits the “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”.
The illegality of Russia’s invasion in 2022 was underlined in June 2025 when the Council of Europe established a special tribunal to prosecute senior political and military leadership “for the crime of aggression against Ukraine”.
If the territorial concessions detailed in the US-Russia plan were to be adopted, they would hinder effective investigation and prosecution of any such crimes of aggression – and thus set a dangerous precedent for future conflicts.
Impunity and accountability
The US-Russia plan’s proposed blanket amnesty for war crimes also contradicts international law. The law governing conduct of hostilities – and public international law in general – imposes an obligation for states to investigate, prosecute and punish war crimes.
While international law does not outlaw amnesties in pursuit of reconciliation, for the establishment of truth or to prevent war recurring, these should not interfere with a state’s obligation to investigate and prosecute international crimes. So, blanket amnesties are incompatible with this requirement.
The scale of documented violations in Ukraine over nearly four years makes the idea of an amnesty especially troubling. The Ukrainian authorities, with support from civil society, have documented more than 183,000 alleged war crimes since 2022.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for senior Russian figures including Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. National prosecutors in Europe are pursuing cases under universal jurisdiction.
Granting amnesty would nullify these investigations. It would signal that even the gravest crimes can go unpunished as a result of political deal-making.
The principles of transitional justice place victims at the centre of any post-conflict processes. They are entitled, under international law, to truth, justice and reparations. But the US-Russia plan does not outline any role for victims. Instead, it effectively deprives them of their right to pursue justice.
Research suggests that peace agreements without mechanisms to ensure accountability all too often end up with further outbreaks of violence. The pursuit of justice, which can include – but should not be limited to – criminal prosecutions, can be slow, costly and imperfect. But it tends to strengthen the rule of law and provide some form of remedy to the victims.
The US-Russia plan’s clause limiting the size of Ukraine’s post-conflict armed forces to 600,000 personnel is also controversial.
It is common to see measures such as demobilisation and disarmament in non-international armed conflicts. This was part of the settlement in peace negotiation processes for Colombia’s lengthy civil war in 2016. But applying them to a state which is the victim of aggression in an international armed conflict reverses the logic of accountability.
Ukraine is the state under attack. Limiting its defence capability while the aggressor retains its forces undermines both security and justice.
A fragile ‘peace’
Critics have described the US-Russia plan as “a gift to Putin”, as it aligns with the Kremlin’s longstanding demands while disregarding Ukraine’s legal rights. It would transform the future of millions of Ukrainians into a bargaining chip for great-power politics.
However, it appears that Kyiv’s European allies recognise this danger. The negotiations now underway in Abu Dhabi will be vital – as will any meeting between Trump and Zelensky to agree the framework of a new deal which fairly represents Kyiv’s position.
A genuine and just peace agreement must reflect the system of international law which, for 80 years, has sought to prevent the sort of aggression that Russia has unleashed on Ukraine. The 28-point plan presented by the US and Russia clearly failed to meet that test.
It is now up to Ukraine and its allies to ensure that any plan which does go forward rests on justice, accountability and the rights of victims – not on concessions to an aggressor.
Selbi Durdiyeva 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.
Humans have probably shared their homes with dogs ever since they first settled. So it could be argued that there is no such thing as “human society” without including animals as part of it. Our long shared history with dogs has even be described as a form of co-evolution.
And a new study my colleagues at Cambridge and I published shows golden retrievers and humans seem to share a genetic basis for at least some behaviour.
Dogs show many adaptations that might help them live and co-operate with people. Ancient humans may even have been selected dogs’ ancestors for an ability to eat a more human diet than wolves. At a psychological level there are many adaptations that aid communication between the two species, like an ability to follow human gestures such as pointing, that exceeds that of our closest relatives, chimpanzees.
Nowadays, our relationship includes sharing the hustle and bustle that is so often a feature of modern living. So it is not surprising that there is an exceptionally high prevalence of stress-related problems arising in dogs, especially in countries like the US.
This has led researchers to question to what extent we might share mental health problems too. Recently there have been several claims about the potential for an autism-like syndrome in dogs. In March 2025, a similar genetic marker was identified for some of the social problems related to autism.
Our study has taken this genetic search to another level. My team and I analysed the genetic code and behaviour of 1,300 golden retrievers, looking for genes associated with their behavioural traits. “Equivalent” genes in humans, inherited from the same evolutionary ancestor, were then identified.
They also identified the genes’ associations with a range of human intelligence, mental health and emotional processes. I specialise in studying and managing companion animal emotions at the University of Lincoln, and so I worked with the team to explore the psychobiological basis to these traits.
We identified 12 genes where there seemed to be a connection between dogs and humans that related to similar psychological functioning. Some of these were closely aligned in terms of the emotional responses they produced, for example responses related to non-social anxiety. However, in other cases the link was perhaps less obvious.
But we formed hypotheses that may explain the association. When we did this, we found logical reasons to support the similarities we saw in the genetic associations in humans and golden retrievers.
For example, the canine gene ADD2 was associated with fear of strangers, but in humans was related to depression. A key characteristic of depression in people is social withdrawal, so we suspect there may be a common genetic link, which manifests in dogs (who are generally hypersocial) as stranger anxiety.
Other potential associations were with human conditions that involved complex cognitive processes, like self reflection, which are not thought to occur in dogs. However, as we looked more deeply into the range of human associations we could identify potential reasons for even some of these associations.
For example, trainability in dogs tended to be linked to genes in humans that are connected to not only intelligence but also sensitivity about being wrong. As far as we know, dogs cannot project themselves and their circumstances in the abstract ways people can, but they can certainly vary in their sensitivity to unpleasant experiences. so this might form the basis of the common genetic root between the two species.
The results provide a great basis for future studies in comparative and evolutionary psychiatry. As, Eleanor Raffan, a vet and assistant professor of physiology who led the Cambridge side of this research, said: “The findings are really striking – they provide strong evidence that humans and golden retrievers have shared genetic roots for their behaviour. The genes we identified frequently influence emotional states and behaviour in both species.”
There are, of course, differences in the ways that humans and dogs experience their
emotions. A lot of human emotion is tied up in complex thought processes. However, that does not undermine the importance of related conditions that might reflect mental health or suffering.
Enoch Alex, the first author of the report and a PhD candidate in the department of physiology, development, and neuroscience, summed this up: “These results show that genetics govern behaviour, making some dogs predisposed to finding the world stressful. If their life experiences compound this, they might act in ways we interpret as bad behaviour, when really they’re distressed”.
Although it might be tempting to sometimes dismiss academic work on dogs as somewhat frivolous, in this new work, there are hints at an important new role for dogs in our shared society: as natural models of mental health issues.
Daniel Mills 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.
