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Ukraine’s farms once fed billions but now its soil is starving

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mark Sutton, Honorary Professor in the School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh

Research suggests soil in Ukraine is degrading, affecting food production. Oleksandr Filatov/Shutterstock

For decades, Ukraine was known as the breadbasket of the world. Before the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, it ranked among the top global producers and exporters of sunflower oil, maize and wheat. These helped feed more than 400 million people worldwide.

But beyond the news about grain blockades lies a deeper, slower-moving crisis: the depletion of the very nutrients that make Ukraine’s fertile black soil so productive.

While the ongoing war has focused global attention on Ukraine’s food supply chains, far less is known about the sustainability of the agricultural systems that underpin them.

Ukraine’s soil may no longer be able to sustain the country’s role as one of the major food producers without urgent action. And this could have consequences that stretch far beyond its borders.

In our research, we have examined nutrient management in Ukrainian agriculture over the past 40 years and found a dramatic reversal of nutrient levels.

During the Soviet era, Ukraine’s farmland was excessively fertilised. Nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium were applied at levels far beyond what crops could absorb. This led to pollution of the air and water.

But since independence in 1991, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. Fertiliser use, especially phosphorus and potassium, plummeted as imports fell, livestock numbers declined (reducing manure availability) and supply chains collapsed.

By 2021, just before the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian soil was already showing signs of strain. Farmers were adding much less phosphorus and potassium than the crops were taking up, around 40–50% less phosphorus and 25% less potassium, and the soil’s organic matter had dropped by almost 9% since independence.

In many regions, farmers applied too much nitrogen, but often too little phosphorus and potassium to maintain long-term fertility. Moreover, although livestock numbers have declined significantly over the past decades, our analysis shows that about 90% of the manure still produced is wasted. This is equivalent to roughly US$2.2 billion (£1.6 billion) in fertiliser value each year.

These nutrient imbalances are not just a national issue. They threaten Ukraine’s long-term agricultural productivity and, by extension, the global food supply that depends on it.

Ukraine’s farmers face multiple challenges.

The war has sharply intensified the problem. Russia’s invasion has disrupted fertiliser supply chains and damaged storage facilities. Fertiliser prices have soared. Many farmers deliberately applied less fertiliser in 2022-2023 to reduce financial risks, knowing that their harvests could be destroyed, stolen or left unsold due to blocked export routes.

Our new research shows alarming trends across the country. In 2023, harvested crops took up to 30% more nitrogen, 80% more phosphorus and 70% more potassium from the soil than they received through fertilisation, soil microbes and from the air (including what comes down in rain and what settles onto the ground from the air).

If these trends continue, Ukraine’s famously fertile soil could face lasting degradation, threatening the country’s capacity to recover and supply global food markets once peace returns.

Rebuilding soil fertility

Some solutions exist and many are feasible even during wartime. Our research team has developed a plan for Ukrainian farmers that could quickly make a difference. These measures could substantially improve nutrient use efficiency and reduce wasted nutrients, keeping farms productive and profitable, while reducing soil degradation and environmental pollution.

These proposed solutions include:

  1. Precision fertilisation – applying fertilisers at the right time, place and amount to match crop needs efficiently

  2. Enhanced manure use – setting up local systems to collect surplus manure and redistribute it to other farms, reducing dependence on (imported) synthetic fertilisers

  3. Improved fertiliser use – applying enhanced-efficiency fertilisers that release nutrients slowly, reducing losses to air and water

  4. Planting legumes (such as peas or soybeans) – including these in crop rotations, improves soil health while adding nitrogen naturally

Some of these actions require investment, such as better facilities for storage, treatment and better application of manure to fields, but many can be rolled out, at least partially, without too much extra funding.

Ukraine’s recovery fund, backed by the World Bank to help Ukraine after the war ends, includes support for agriculture, and this could play a key role here.

Why it matters beyond Ukraine

Ukraine’s nutrient crisis is a warning for the world. Intensive, unbalanced farming, whether through overuse, under use or misuse of fertilisers, is unsustainable. Nutrient mismanagement contributes to both food insecurity and environmental pollution.

Our research is part of the forthcoming International Nitrogen Assessment, which highlights the need for effective global nitrogen management and showcases practical options to maximise the multiple benefits of better nitrogen use – improved food security, climate resilience, and water and air quality.

In the rush to ensure cheap food and stable exports, we must not overlook the foundations of long-term agricultural productivity: healthy, fertile soils.

Supporting Ukraine’s farmers offers a chance not only to rebuild a nation but also to change global agriculture to help create a more resilient, sustainable future.

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Prof. Mark Sutton works for the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, based at its Edinburgh Research Station. He is an honorary professor at the University of Edinburgh, School of Geosciences. He receives funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) through its Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), the UK Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF). He is Director of the International Nitrogen Management System (INMS) funded by GEF/UNEP, and of the GCRF South Asian Nitrogen Hub. He is co-chair of the UNECE Task Force on Reactive Nitrogen (TFRN) and of the Global Partnership on Nutrient Management (GPNM) which is convened by UNEP.

Sergiy Medinets receives funding from UKRI, Defra, DAERA, British Academy, UNEP, GEF, UNDP and EU

– ref. Ukraine’s farms once fed billions but now its soil is starving – https://theconversation.com/ukraines-farms-once-fed-billions-but-now-its-soil-is-starving-269147

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Ukraine: battered by bombing and scarred by corruption

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor, The Conversation

This newsletter was first published in The Conversation UK’s World Affairs Briefing email. Sign up to receive weekly analysis of the latest developments in international relations, direct to your inbox.

Nightly, for months now, Ukraine’s cities have been pounded by relentless aerial attacks. In addition to its grinding and attritional ground offensives in the east and south of the country, since early summer, the Russian military has greatly expanded its air offensive against centres of population, looking to collapse morale and undermine the Ukrainian people’s will to fight on.

And as winter approaches, so those aerial bombardments have targeted Ukraine’s power infrastructure.

Repeatedly in recent weeks, whole cities have been plunged into cold darkness as power plants, transmission lines and regional and local substations are damaged or destroyed. Rolling power outages are now common, reportedly lasting up to 14 hours in some cases.

So the latest political scandal to hit the government of Volodymyr Zelensky could hardly have come at a worse time for his country. And to make matters worse, it revolves around Ukraine’s energy industry.

Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies this week released the findings of Operation Midas, an 18-month probe into Energoatom, the state-owned operator of all of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, investigating allegations of bribes and kickbacks said to amount to US$100 million (£76 million). Raids were carried out around the country and seven people have been arrested.

What makes this so dangerous for Zelensky is that one of the people named in the probe is a former business partner of his. Businessman Timur Mindich was the co-owner, with Zelensky, of Kvartal 95 Studio – the platform on which the Ukrainian president made his name as a comedian before he entered politics (ironically, under the circumstances, as an anti-corruption candidate).

Mindich is reported to have left the country, but he is said to have connections to several senior government ministers. The scandal risks tainting the already embattled Zelensky government by association.

What’s worse, as Stefan Wolff and Tetyana Malyarenko explain, is that only a few months before this scandal exploded, Zelensky tried to bring Ukraine’s independent anti-corruption agencies under the direct control of his government. He backed down in the face of huge demonstrations, but this latest corruption scandal is likely to weaken him further.

He has already lost his justice minister, German Galushchenko, and energy minister, Svitlana Hrynchuk. And, as Wolff and Malyarenko point out, the last thing Zelensky needs while his European allies debate how to raise desperately needed funds to keep fighting is a whiff of corruption surrounding his administration.



Read more:
Ukraine: energy corruption scandal threatens to derail Zelensky’s government and undermine its war effort

Having spent the day debating how to raise the huge amounts of money Ukraine will need in 2026, it appears that the EU is closing in on a preferred option. The European Commission considered two main options. One plan is for either the EU to borrow €140 billion (£124 billion) using its long-term budget as collateral. Another is to use the frozen Russian assets as collateral for a loan to Ukraine, to be repaid after the war if Russia pays reparations to Kyiv.

An idea floated by Norwegian economists to use Norway’s €1.8 trillion sovereign wealth fund to guarantee the loan was quickly scotched by the country’s finance minister, former Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, who said that while Norway was happy to contribute, it could not be responsible for the entire amount.

The next move will be to assuage the fears of Belgium, which is where the assets are held by securities depository Euroclear, that a successful legal challenge by Russia could leave it liable for repayment. The Kremlin has already made noises to this effect.

Veronika Hinman, the deputy director of the University of Portsmouth’s military education team, believes that while the massive injection of funds will certainly enable Ukraine to continue to fight, it’s unlikely to be decisive. “It cannot deliver the manpower, weapons or morale,” she writes.

Hinman describes the fairly dire situation on the battlefield, where Russia is slowly but surely beating back the defenders outside key cities such as Pokrovsk and Huliaipole. The invaders continue to press for a breakthrough in these strategically important towns, which would allow them to make a push into central Ukraine.

ISW map showing the state of the conflict in Ukraine, November 11 2025.
The state of the conflict in Ukraine, November 11 2025.
Institute for the Study of War

Russia has been unsuccessfully trying to capture both Pokrovsk and Huliaipole for many months (its troops briefly entered Huliaipole on March 5 2022, only a couple of weeks after the invasion started, and were pushed back). But the fight appears to be increasingly lopsided, writes Hinman. Russia may have lost more than a million troops – killed or injured – but it has huge reserves and its retooled war economy appears to be bearing up reasonably well, despite US sanctions.

So the need for more money from the EU grows ever more critical, Hinman writes. But she worries that “in the end, this latest wave of aid may buy Ukraine time – but it’s unlikely to deliver victory”.



Read more:
Kyiv’s European allies debate ways of keeping the cash flowing to Ukraine but the picture on the battlefield is grim

Trump: lawfare and diplomacy

In the US, meanwhile, blows were struck in a different kind of war as a Florida prosecutor issued subpoenas to a range of officials that the US president believes are part of the “deep-state” opposition to his presidency.

When you look at the targets of these subpoenas, which include former CIA director John Brennan, former FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok, former FBI attorney Lisa Page and former director of national intelligence James Clapper, the thinking becomes clear. All of them were involved in the federal investigation into alleged links between Russian intelligence and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

As we know, under instruction from Trump, the Justice Department has already gone after several of the president’s enemies, including former FBI director James Comey, former national security adviser John Bolton and New York attorney general Letitia James.

It’s all part of what has become known as the “grand conspiracy”, writes Robert Dover, an expert in intelligence from the University of Hull. And it appears as if the Trump administration is gearing up for some serious lawfare.

As Dover observes, whether or not these investigations actually end up with anyone facing court is, while not immaterial, not the whole point of the exercise. In the US, these investigations can take a huge toll on their targets: emotionally, financially and health-wise.

Dover points to a new unit in the Department of Justice, the “weaponization working group”, whose director, Ed Martin, said his job was to expose and discredit people he believes to working against the president: “If they can be charged, we’ll charge them. But if they can’t be charged, we will name them.” This, writes Dover, is a complete inversion of the traditional approach of: “charge crimes, not people”.

It feels like another step on the road to authoritarian government, he observes.



Read more:
First subpoenas issued as Donald Trump’s ‘grand conspiracy’ theory begins to take shape

The incumbent of the Oval Office, meanwhile, received the (relatively) new leader of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, this week. He’s the first Syrian leader ever to visit the White House and the visit represents a considerable rise to power and respectability for someone who, until a year ago, was leading an insurgent group against Syria’s Assad regime. His Hayat Tahrir al-Sham was, until July, proscribed by the US as a terrorist organisation.

But, as William Plowright, a Syria expert from Durham University, points out, as far back as 2015, former CIA director David Petraeus suggested that the US should consider working with the organisation which later became al-Sharaa’s group, Jabhat al-Nusra, against Islamic State.

As Plowright observes, there are upsides for both Trump and al-Sharaa in striking up a working relationship, not least of which is that it would deprive Iran of its closest ally in the region.



Read more:
How former jihadist Ahmed al-Sharaa ended up being welcomed to the White House

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– ref. Ukraine: battered by bombing and scarred by corruption – https://theconversation.com/ukraine-battered-by-bombing-and-scarred-by-corruption-269755

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British pub quiz that spurred the ‘crime of the century’

Source: Radio New Zealand

A British pub in Greater Manchester has become the scene of what the landlord jokingly called “the crime of the century” — a whodunnit involving pints, songs, and a sneaky group.

The Barking Dog pub transforms into a trivia battleground every week, regularly drawing 70 to 80 people to claim the coveted prize — a £30 (NZ$70) bar tab.

Everything ran as usual until a new team showed up about a year and a half ago — a group of middle-aged women who seemed, at first, simply brilliant, says quiz master Bobby Bruen.

Five of the best classic Kiwi pubs

Food

They answered obscure questions, nailed every round, and became unbeatable to the point it drove others away, he says.

“We started getting a bit fishy because we had complaints about them cheating, but we never saw anything,” Bruen told RNZ’s Morning Report.

The doubts grew during the music round, where contestants have to identify 10 song titles and artists, based on the intros, and find the secret connection between them — maybe all songs that hit number two on the UK charts, or tracks that share a producer.

Bruen came up with a tactic to throw curveball questions that no one would get, “especially not a team like that”.

“From ’80s hip hop to ’50s rock to 2010s pop music, they’d get everything … even with the producer’s titles which aren’t even mentioned on Spotify – I didn’t have no clue of the connection – that’s when I thought ‘right, you really are cheating now’.”

To level the playing field, the pub banned phones about six weeks ago, which mellowed suspicions. Yet somehow, the same team kept winning. So the staff decided to investigate.

One staff member began peering over their shoulders, sure they were cheating, but couldn’t figure out how. Another slipped outside to spy through the window — and caught the team whispering into their smartwatches and using an app to guess the songs, he says.

“They just stayed silent, they didn’t even deny it. They just sat in silence and turned away.”

The team has been banned from the quiz but remain anonymous, “for our sake and their sake”, he says.

But news of the scandal spread fast after the pub’s landlord, Mark Rackham, shared the story on Facebook.

He told the BBC the anonymity sparked a “massive whodunnit”.

“Everyone’s desperate to know who’s done it. I was at a council meeting the next day and people were coming over and asking me about the quiz,” he said, labelling it as “the crime of the century”.

Despite the drama, Bruen says there’s no need to change the rules.

“Because of how much media frenzy that this story has got that no one would dare to cheat in this pub again, because you’ll end up in the news in New Zealand.”

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

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Die My Love: The film Jennifer Lawrence and Martin Scorsese had to get made

Source: Radio New Zealand

Some films seem to will themselves into existence.

After reading a translated copy of Argentinian author Ariana Harwicz’s novel Matate, Amor (Die My Love) for his book club, Martin Scorsese was flabbergasted by its forthright depiction of a strong-willed woman on the edge.

He passed Harwicz’s book to Jennifer Lawrence’s production company, Excellent Cadaver. Equally enthralled, Lawrence sent it to You Were Never Really Here filmmaker Lynne Ramsay, asking her to adapt it.

Video poster frame

This video is hosted on Youtube.

Ramsay wasn’t automatically convinced, she reveals, speaking hoarsely from the London Film Festival through a cold.

“I didn’t get back to Jennifer right away because I had to see how I could find my way into the book,” Ramsay says. “It’s quite a challenging piece.”

Ramsay relocated the action to a sweltering hot summer in the middle-of-nowhere Montana, with Harwicz’s blessing.

“I was really moved by meeting Ariana,” she says. “It’s a bit of a different animal, but the spirit of the book is still there, and she saw that.”

A young couple, with the woman holding a baby, sit on the front deck of a house.

Filmmaker Lynne Ramsay shows the shades of grey surrounding postpartum depression and the way couples navigate a new baby.

Supplied / Kimberley French

Lawrence plays Grace, an aspiring writer hoping to pen the next Great American Novel, convinced to move from New York City by her partner, Jackson (Robert Pattinson), who has inherited a rundown house from his uncle.

Careening around that crumbling edifice in the heated throes of passion, Grace falls pregnant. After the birth, Jackson is frequently absent.

Ramsay has felt frustrated by reductive reviews pinning her increasingly extreme behaviour purely on postpartum depression.

“I want people to go into this film with no expectations because it’s not black and white,” she says.

Shades of grey

There’s a sense that Grace always felt throttled by the world and its suffocating views on a woman’s place. Ramsay’s films Morvern Callar and We Need to Talk About Kevin both painted incredibly complex portraits of women in shades of grey.

“Kevin is worried about the relationship between the mother and child, whereas Die My Love is more about the relationship between Jackson and Grace,” Ramsay says.

Lynne Ramsay in a grey hat and with headphones around her neck holds a pen and looks downward.

Lynne Ramsay wanted to capture the broad spectrum of womanhood in Die My Love.

Supplied / Kimberley French

Lawrence was willing to go anywhere with Ramsay.

“It’s a love story with madness involved that’s also about someone being isolated and their marriage starting to disintegrate,” Ramsay says.

“But mainly it’s about this completely unapologetic character that felt quite bold, very feral, very animalistic.

“You love her or hate her, but you know she’s got some kind of honesty.”

Set fire to the rain

Lawrence’s performance is astonishingly raw.

“Jennifer trusted me a lot because we did some pretty wild stuff,” Ramsay says.

“She was pregnant while we were shooting it, which made it so much more powerful, and she embraced it in a way that could have been terrifying for some people.”

Jennifer Lawrence, wearing a white nightgown, dances with Nick Nolte in a shady forest.

Ramsay said Lawrence, pictured here with Nick Nolte, put a lot of trust in her to film while pregnant.

Supplied / Kimberley French

Lawrence also shares remarkable moments with Carrie star Sissy Spacek, as her stepmother, Pam, and tender ones with Nick Nolte as Jackson’s ailing dad, Harry.

Working with them was a dream come true for Ramsay.

“Sissy’s an idol of mine, one of cinema’s greats,” Ramsay says.

“So is Nick Nolte, who has one of those faces. [Cinematographer] Seamus McGarvey and I were like, ‘Oh my God, this guy is mesmeric.'”

For Ramsay, Pam is the glue that holds the film together.

“Pam sees Grace a bit more clearly than everyone else,” Ramsay notes. “Grace is a punk rocker. She’s setting the world on fire.”

Knives Out star LaKeith Stanfield also plays a small but fascinating role as biker jacket-wearing Karl. Erotically charged sequences in which he circles Grace under an eerily blue moon feel dream-like.

“He’s part fantasy for her, even though he’s a real guy, and that was in the novel,” Ramsay says.

“She’s got these sexual desires that aren’t being fulfilled.”

No love lost

A discombobulating shift from reality to dreamscapes is also a feature of one of Ramsay’s favourite filmmakers, Ingmar Bergman.

“I’ve always been so fascinated by characters and getting into their psyche,” she says.

“Bergman is really close to his characters.”

Sissy Spacek, wearing a yellow shirt, looks across the room with concern.

Lynne Ramsay says Sissy Spacek, who also starred in the 1970s horror film Carrie, is an idol of hers.

Supplied / Kimberley French

Ramsay’s mum, who died recently, raised her on the likes of Mildred Pierce, Imitation of Life and All About Eve. The latter’s dark humour is present in Die My Love.

“Right from the beginning, through any discussions on the script [with co-writers Enda Walsh and Alice Birch], it had to have this absurdity,” Ramsay says.

“A kind of gallows humour that Glaswegians tend to have, and Jennifer Lawrence has great comic timing.”

From the screenplay, sound and cinematography to working with costume designer Catherine George and production designer Tim Grimes, Ramsay was across every inch.

“We were looking at colour palettes for different moods,” she says. “I picked out the powder-blue dress Grace wears to her wedding, with its slightly 50s feel. At the beginning, she’s bright and hopeful, then she starts dressing like everyone else.”

But you won’t forget her.

Die My Love‘s closing credits are accompanied by a Joy Division cover sung by Ramsay herself.

She also worked closely on the score composed by Raife Burchell and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds guitarist, George Vjestica.

“It summed up the movie, but it was never my intention that it was going to be in the film,” Ramsay reveals.

“It was just a temp track we did for Cannes because we didn’t have anything else. I love writing songs and jamming, but I don’t want to sing.”

International distributors insisted it stay in.

“I guess it works,” she says.

Die My Love hits New Zealand cinemas on 27 November.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

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NASA goes on an ESCAPADE – twin small, low-cost orbiters will examine Mars’ atmosphere

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Christopher Carr, Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

This close-up illustration shows what one of the twin ESCAPADE spacecraft will look like conducting its science operations. James Rattray/Rocket Lab USA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Envision a time when hundreds of spacecraft are exploring the solar system and beyond. That’s the future that NASA’s ESCAPADE, or Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, mission will help unleash: one where small, low-cost spacecraft enable researchers to learn rapidly, iterate, and advance technology and science.

The ESCAPADE mission launched on Nov. 13, 2025 on a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket, sending two small orbiters to Mars to study its atmosphere. As aerospace engineers, we’re excited about this mission because not only will it do great science while advancing the deep space capabilities of small spacecraft, but it also will travel to the red planet on an innovative new trajectory.

The ESCAPADE mission is actually two spacecraft instead of one. Two identical spacecraft will take simultaneous measurements, resulting in better science. These spacecraft are smaller than those used in the past, each about the size of a copy machine, partly enabled by an ongoing miniaturization trend in the space industry. Doing more with less is very important for space exploration, because it typically takes most of the mass of a spacecraft simply to transport it where you want it to go.

A patch with a drawing of two spacecraft, one behind the other, on a red background and the ESCAPADE mission title.
The ESCAPADE mission logo shows the twin orbiters.
TRAX International/Kristen Perrin

Having two spacecraft also acts as an insurance policy in case one of them doesn’t work as planned. Even if one completely fails, researchers can still do science with a single working spacecraft. This redundancy enables each spacecraft to be built more affordably than in the past, because the copies allow for more acceptance of risk.

Studying Mars’ history

Long before the ESCAPADE twin spacecraft Blue and Gold were ready to go to space – billions of years ago, to be more precise – Mars had a much thicker atmosphere than it does now. This atmosphere would have enabled liquids to flow on its surface, creating the channels and gullies that scientists can still observe today.

But where did the bulk of this atmosphere go? Its loss turned Mars into the cold and dry world it is today, with a surface air pressure less than 1% of Earth’s.

Mars also once had a magnetic field, like Earth’s, that helped to shield its atmosphere. That atmosphere and magnetic field would have been critical to any life that might have existed on early Mars.

A view of Mars' crater-flecked surface from above.
Today, Mars’ atmosphere is very thin. Billions of years ago, it was much thicker.
©UAESA/MBRSC/HopeMarsMission/EXI/AndreaLuck, CC BY-ND

ESCAPADE will measure remnants of this magnetic field that have been preserved by ancient rock and study the flow and energy of Mars’ atmosphere and how it interacts with the solar wind, the stream of particles that the sun emits along with light. These measurements will help to reveal where the atmosphere went and how quickly Mars is still losing it today.

Weathering space on a budget

Space is not a friendly place. Most of it is a vacuum – that is, mostly empty, without the gas molecules that create pressure and allow you to breathe or transfer heat. These molecules keep things from getting too hot or too cold. In space, with no pressure, a spacecraft can easily get too hot or too cold, depending on whether it is in sunlight or in shadow.

In addition, the Sun and other, farther astronomical objects emit radiation that living things do not experience on Earth. Earth’s magnetic field protects you from the worst of this radiation. So when humans or our robotic representatives leave the Earth, our spacecraft must survive in this extreme environment not present on Earth.

ESCAPADE will overcome these challenges with a shoestring budget totaling US$80 million. That is a lot of money, but for a mission to another planet it is inexpensive. It has kept costs low by leveraging commercial technologies for deep space exploration, which is now possible because of prior investments in fundamental research.

For example, the GRAIL mission, launched in 2011, previously used two spacecraft, Ebb and Flow, to map the Moon’s gravity fields. ESCAPADE takes this concept to another world, Mars, and costs a fraction as much as GRAIL.

Led by Rob Lillis of UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, this collaboration between spacecraft builders Rocket Lab, trajectory specialists Advanced Space LLC and launch provider Blue Origin – all commercial partners funded by NASA – aims to show that deep space exploration is now faster, more agile and more affordable than ever before.

NASA’s ESCAPADE represents a partnership between a university, commercial companies and the government.

How will ESCAPADE get to Mars?

ESCAPADE will also use a new trajectory to get to Mars. Imagine being an archer in the Olympics. To hit a bull’s-eye, you have to shoot an arrow through a 15-inch – 40-centimeter – circle from a distance of 300 feet, or 90 meters. Now imagine the bull’s-eye represents Mars. To hit it from Earth, you would have to shoot an arrow through the same 15-inch bull’s-eye at a distance of over 13 miles, or 22 kilometers. You would also have to shoot the arrow in a curved path so that it goes around the Sun.

Not only that, but Mars won’t be at the bull’s-eye at the time you shoot the arrow. You must shoot for the spot that Mars will be in 10 months from now. This is the problem that the ESCAPADE mission designers faced. What is amazing is that the physical laws and forces of nature are so predictable that this was not even the hardest problem to solve for the ESCAPADE mission.

It takes energy to get from one place to another. To go from Earth to Mars, a spacecraft has to carry the energy it needs, in the form of rocket fuel, much like gasoline in a car. As a result, a high percentage of the total launch mass has to be fuel for the trip.

When going to Mars orbit from Earth orbit, as much as 80% to 85% of the spacecraft mass has to be propellant, which means not much mass is dedicated to the part of the spacecraft that does all the experiments. This issue makes it important to pack as much capability into the rest of the spacecraft as possible. For ESCAPADE, the propellant is only about 65% of the spacecraft’s mass.

ESCAPADE’s route is particularly fuel-efficient. First, Blue and Gold will go to the L2 Lagrange point, one of five places where gravitational forces of the Sun and Earth cancel out. Then, after about a year, during which they will collect data monitoring the Sun, they will fly by the Earth, using its gravitational field to get a boost. This way, they will arrive at Mars in about 10 more months.

This new approach has another advantage beyond needing to carry less fuel: Trips from Earth to Mars are typically favorable to save fuel about every 26 months due to the two planets’ relative positions. However, this new trajectory makes the departure time more flexible. Future cargo and human missions could use a similar trajectory to have more frequent and less time-constrained trips to Mars.

ESCAPADE is a testament to a new era in spaceflight. For a new generation of scientists and engineers, ESCAPADE is not just a mission – it is a blueprint for a new collaborative era of exploration and discovery.

This article was updated on Nov. 13, 2025 to reflect the ESCAPADE launch’s date and success.

The Conversation

Christopher E. Carr is part of the science team for the Rocket Lab Mission to Venus (funding from Schmidt Sciences and NASA). More information is available at https://www.morningstarmissions.space/rocketlabmissiontovenus

Glenn Lightsey 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.

– ref. NASA goes on an ESCAPADE – twin small, low-cost orbiters will examine Mars’ atmosphere – https://theconversation.com/nasa-goes-on-an-escapade-twin-small-low-cost-orbiters-will-examine-mars-atmosphere-269321

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How the Plymouth Pilgrims took over Thanksgiving – and who history left behind

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Thomas Tweed, Professor Emeritus of American Studies and History, University of Notre Dame

‘The First Thanksgiving, 1621,’ by Jean L. G. Ferris. Library of Congress

Nine in 10 Americans gather around a table to share food on Thanksgiving. At this polarizing moment, anything that promises to bring Americans together warrants our attention.

But as a historian of religion, I feel obliged to recount how popular interpretations of Thanksgiving also have pulled us apart.

Communal rituals of giving thanks have a longer history in North America, and it was only around the turn of the 20th century that most people in the U.S. came to associate Thanksgiving with Plymouth “Pilgrims” and generic “Indians” sharing a historic meal.

The emphasis on the Pilgrims’ 1620 landing and 1621 feast erased a great deal of religious history and narrowed conceptions of who belongs in America – at times excluding groups such as Native Americans, Catholics and Jews.

Farming faiths and harvest festivals

The usual Thanksgiving depiction overlooks Indigenous rituals that give thanks, including harvest festivals.

The Wampanoag, who shared food with the Pilgrims in 1621, continue to celebrate the cranberry harvest, and similar feasts were held long before Columbus sailed and Pilgrims landed.

As I note in my 2025 book, “Religion in the Lands That Became America,” for instance, celebrants gathered for a communal feast in the late 11th century in the 50-acre plaza of Cahokia. That Native city, across the river from present-day St. Louis, was the largest population center north of Mexico before the American Revolution.

An overhead view of a grassy green area with several raised mounds.
The St. Louis, Mo., skyline is seen beyond Monks Mound at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Collinsville, Ill., on July 11, 2019.
Daniel Acker for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Cahokians and their neighbors came in late summer or early autumn to give deities thanks, smoke ritual tobacco and eat special food – not corn, their dietary staple, but symbolically significant animals such as white swans and white-tailed deer. So, those Cahokians attended a thanks-giving feast five centuries before the Pilgrims’ harvest-time meal.

‘Days of Thanksgiving’

The usual depiction also de-emphasizes the tradition of officials announcing special “Days of Thanksgiving,” a practice familiar to the Pilgrims and their descendants.

The Pilgrims, who settled in what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts, were separatist Puritans who had denounced the Catholic elements that remained in the Protestant Church of England. They first sought to form their own “purified” church and community in Holland. After about 12 years, many of them moved again, crossing the Atlantic in 1620. The Pilgrims’ colony southeast of Boston was gradually absorbed into Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded in 1630 by a larger group of Puritans who did not split from England’s official church.

As historians have noted, Puritan ministers in Massachusetts’ state-sanctioned Congregational Church didn’t just speak on Sundays. Now and then they also gave special thanksgiving sermons, which expressed gratitude for what the community considered divine interventions, from military victory to epidemic relief.

The practice continued and spread. During the American Revolution, for instance, the Continental Congress declared a Day of Thanksgiving to commemorate the victory at Saratoga in 1777. President James Madison announced Days of Thanksgiving during the War of 1812. Leaders of the United States and the Confederate states did the same during the Civil War.

This tradition influenced Americans such as Sarah Hale, who called for a national Thanksgiving holiday. A magazine editor and poet best known for “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” she successfully pitched the idea to Abraham Lincoln in 1863.

Harvest feast of 1621

Many Americans’ view of “The First Thanksgiving” resembles the scene depicted in a Jean Ferris painting by that name. Finished around 1915, it is similar to another popular image painted around the same time, Jennie Augusta Brownscombe’s “The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth.”

A painting in muted colors of a small group of people in plain clothing seated around a table outside, with a log cabin in the background.
‘The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth’ by Jennie A. Brownscombe.
Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal/Wikimedia Commons

Both images distort the historical context and misrepresent Indigenous attendees from the nearby Wampanoag Confederacy. The Native leaders wear headdresses from Plains tribes, and there are too few Indigenous attendees.

Only one eyewitness account survives: a 1621 letter from the Pilgrim Edward Winslow. He reported that the Wampanoag’s leader, Massasoit, brought 90 men. That means, some historians suggest, the shared meal was as much a diplomatic event marking an alliance as an agricultural feast celebrating a harvest.

Ferris’ painting also implies that the English provided the food. Plymouth residents brought “fowl,” as Winslow recalled – probably wild turkey – but the Wampanoag added five killed deer. Even the harvest of “Indian corn” depended on Native aid. Tisquantum or Squanto, the lone survivor of the village that the Pilgrims called Plymouth, had offered lifesaving advice about planting as well as diplomacy.

The image’s cheerful scene also obscures how death had destabilized the area. The Pilgrims lost almost half their group to famine or exposure that first winter. After earlier European contact, however, even larger numbers of the Wampanoag had died in a regional epidemic that raged between 1616-1619. That’s why the Pilgrims found Squanto’s village abandoned, and why both communities were open to the alliance he brokered.

Pilgrims’ primacy

The Pilgrims were latecomers to the Thanksgiving table. Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation, published in Harper’s Monthly, mentioned “the blessing of fruitful fields,” but not the Pilgrims. Nor were Pilgrims depicted in the magazine’s illustrated follow-up. The page showed town and country, as well as emancipated slaves, celebrating the feast day by praying at “the Union altar.” For years before and after the proclamation, in fact, many Southerners resisted Thanksgiving, which they saw as a Northern, abolitionist holiday.

Several small black-and-white illustrations around a larger one of a woman with long hair and a star headdress kneeling in prayer.
This ‘Thanksgiving Day’ illustration, made by cartoonist Thomas Nast, commemorated its first celebration as a U.S. holiday.
Syracuse University Art Museum

The Pilgrims’ absence makes sense, since they were not the first Europeans to land on North America’s eastern coast – or to give thanks there. Spanish Catholics had founded St. Augustine in 1565. According to an eyewitness account, the Spanish leader asked a priest to celebrate Mass on Sept. 8, 1565, which Native Americans attended, and “ordered that the Indians be fed.”

Two decades later, an English group had tried and failed to establish a colony on Roanoke Island, North Carolina – including a Jewish engineer. The English had more success when they settled Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. A commander leading a new group to Virginia was instructed to mark “a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God” in 1619, two years before the Plymouth meal.

But over the years, Plymouth’s Pilgrims still moved slowly toward the center of the national holiday – and America’s founding narrative.

In 1769, Plymouth residents promoted their town by organizing a “Forefathers’ Day.” In 1820 the Protestant politician Daniel Webster gave a speech commemorating the bicentennial of the landing at Plymouth Rock and praising the Pilgrims’ arrival as “the first footsteps of civilized man” in the wilderness. Then in an 1841 volume, “Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers,” a Boston minister reprinted the 1621 eyewitness account and described the shared harvest meal as “the first Thanksgiving.”

Rising immigration

Between 1880 and 1920, the Pilgrims emerged as the central characters in national narratives about both Thanksgiving Day and America’s origin. It was no coincidence that these years were the peak of immigration to the U.S., and many Americans saw the new immigrants as inferior to those who had landed at Plymouth Rock.

An illustration in faded colors of a group of men and women standing, a bit disoriented, on a hill beside the ocean.
A late-1800s depiction of the Plymouth landing, published by the printmaking business Currier and Ives.
Mabel Brady Garvan Collection/Yale University Art Gallery

Irish Catholics already had a presence in Boston when the “Pilgrim Fathers” volume appeared in 1841, and more came after the Irish potato famine later that decade. Boston’s foreign-born population increased further as poverty and politics pushed Italian Catholics and Russian Jews to seek a better life in America.

The same was happening in many northern cities, and some Protestants were alarmed. In an 1885 bestseller called “Our Country,” a Congregational Church minister warned that “the glory is departing from many a New England village, because men, alien in blood, in religion, and in civilization, are taking possession of homes in which were once reared the descendants of the Pilgrims.”

During the 300th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ landing and harvest meal, celebrated in 1920 and 1921, the federal government issued commemorative stamps and coins. Officials staged pageants, and politicians gave speeches. About 30,000 people gathered in Plymouth, for instance, to hear President Warren Harding and Vice President Calvin Coolidge praise the “Pilgrim Spirit.”

Soon nativist worries about the newcomers, especially Catholics and Jews, led Coolidge to sign the Immigration Act of 1924, which would largely close America’s borders for four decades.

Americans kept telling the Pilgrim story after U.S. immigration policy became more welcoming in 1965, and many will tell it again next year as we celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary. Understood in its full context, it’s a story worth telling. But we might use caution since, as history reminds us, stories about the country’s spiritual past can either bring us together or pull us apart.

The Conversation

Thomas Tweed 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.

– ref. How the Plymouth Pilgrims took over Thanksgiving – and who history left behind – https://theconversation.com/how-the-plymouth-pilgrims-took-over-thanksgiving-and-who-history-left-behind-267944

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Renewable energy is reshaping the global economy – new report

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sam Fankhauser, Professor of Climate Economics and Policy, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford

Flash Vector/Shutterstock

World leaders gather for the UN climate summit (Cop30) in Belém, Brazil, amid concerns about the slow progress in cutting global carbon emissions. Ten years into the historic Paris climate agreement, we are off track to meet its core objective, to keep global warming well below 2°C, relative to pre-industrial levels.

Yet there are glimmers of hope, and none more important than the astounding progress on renewable energy. Renewables are now so cheap that the clean energy transition is no longer an economic burden, it is a momentous opportunity.

Climate change campaigners tend to see renewables as an environmental imperative, an effective way of cutting emissions. They are that, of course. But they are also a powerful engine of investment, jobs and growth. They are reshaping the global economy. In my team’s new report, we lay out the evidence.

The first economic dividend of renewables is inclusion. Access to affordable energy remains a critical sustainable development goal, which shapes everything from education to health to women’s empowerment. Distributed renewables – from solar home systems to mini-grids – are our best chance yet of bringing affordable energy to all.

Across Africa, Asia and Latin America, renewable energy entrepreneurs are doing what national grids have struggled to do: reaching remote villages and replacing polluting diesel generators with clean, reliable power.

Because of its modularity, renewable electricity can be built out fast, expanded flexibly and maintained locally. Renewable energy firms are combining these technical advantages with new business models that make renewables more accessible (for example, through pay-as-you-go models) and keep benefits in the local community (for example, by offering energy services like cold storage, phone charging and water pumping, as well as electricity).

Investment, jobs and growth

If inclusion is the first dividend, investment is the second. Every dollar invested in renewables delivers more economic bang than a dollar spent on fossil fuels. The International Monetary Fund estimates that clean energy investments generate about 1.5 times their cost in economic activity, while fossil fuels yield less than one-for-one. Renewables do not just pay back; they pay forward through spending on supply chains and local wages.

The numbers are staggering. Between 2017 and 2022, climate finance flows into the 100 largest developing countries (excluding China) boosted their GDP by a combined US$1.2 trillion (£0.9 trillion) – the equivalent of 2-5% of GDP for most nations. In Brazil, the host of Cop30, renewable investments raised GDP by US$128 billion over those six years, according to our report.

woman in hard hat with clip board standing near hydroelectric dam
A report found that, in South Africa, clean energy jobs pay 16% more on average than all other advertised roles.
bsd studio/Shutterstock

Climate finance flows are still insufficient. To increase them, we need more concessional funding, more risk guarantees and more partnerships between governments, investors and local communities.

In the Dominican Republic, a blend of policy reform, clear incentives and blended finance has helped the country mobilise over US$6.5 billion in clean energy investment and double its renewables capacity in just three years.



Read more:
Green jobs are booming, but too few employees have sustainability skills to fill them – here are 4 ways to close the gap

The energy transition is often painted as a jobs killer, but the evidence says otherwise. Intergovernmental organisations project that there will be 43 million clean energy jobs by 2050, far outstripping those lost in fossil fuels.

For our report, we took a closer look at the jobs market in South Africa. For 12 months we collected data from job adverts and found a striking fact: clean energy jobs pay 16% more on average than all other advertised roles. For the most part the higher wages reflect the fact that clean energy jobs are high-skilled jobs, which require experience, training and problem-solving skills.

The high skills requirements are a challenge as well as a boon. Taking full advantage of the clean jobs revolution will require proactive skills development, both in the classroom and on the job. But for the young labour forces of many developing countries, the message is clear: renewables are not just a climate strategy, they are a job opportunity.



Read more:
What are green jobs and how can I get one? 5 questions answered about clean energy careers

Perhaps the most underappreciated economic benefit of renewables concerns productivity. Cheap, efficient energy is the lifeblood of industrial growth. Renewable energy is now much cheaper than fossil fuels, particularly when factoring in what is lost when turning energy (say, car fuel) into usable services (propulsion).

We calculated that with a rapid conversion to renewables, energy-sector productivity could double by 2050, compared to both current levels and a fossil fuel future. Since energy is such a ubiquitous input to all other economic activities, this has significant economy-wide benefits. For some developing countries, the GDP boost could be as high as 9-12% – simply from having more efficient energy services.

These productivity gains are not evenly distributed. For once it could be developing countries that benefit most. Industrialised countries grew rich on the back of cheap and abundant energy. In a low-carbon economy, it will be sun-rich developing countries that have the cheapest, most abundant sources of energy. This critical shift in comparative advantage could finally help to narrow the global prosperity gap.

At Cop30, leaders are debating climate targets, finance mechanisms and transition timelines. But they should also recognise this deeper reality: renewables are not a drag on growth but its new engine. In a world anxious about growth and prosperity, the clean energy transition is an economic strategy as much as an environmental one.

The challenge, as our report reminds us, is to share these gains equitably. Without fair benefit-sharing the transition risks repeating the inequities of the fossil fuel era. But get it right, and renewables can power not just cleaner economies, but fairer ones.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

The Conversation

This work was supported by grants from SSE plc and the UK Foreign and Development Office under the Climate Compatible Growth programme. .

– ref. Renewable energy is reshaping the global economy – new report – https://theconversation.com/renewable-energy-is-reshaping-the-global-economy-new-report-268676

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Titanic passenger’s pocket watch expected to fetch $2.3m at auction

Source: Radio New Zealand

An "iconic" pocket watch recovered from the body of a first class passenger who died during the Titanic's sinking is estimated to grab up to $2.3 million at auction.

The pocket watch is estimated to sell for between £800,000 – £1 million (NZD$2.3m). Photo: Henry Aldridge & Son

An “iconic” pocket watch recovered from the body of a first class passenger who died during the Titanic’s sinking is estimated to grab up to $2.3 million at auction.

According to UK auction house Henry Aldridge & Son, the watch is “quite simply one of the most important and iconic Titanic items ever to be offered for sale”.

It is estimated to sell for between £800,000 – £1 million (NZD$2.3m).

The 18 carat Jules Jurgensen pocket watch belonged to Isidor Straus and is listed as part of his belongings in the official body recovery list.

According to Discover Titanic, Isidor and his wife Ida were one of few first class couples who died in the sinking.

Isidor was offered a seat on a lifeboard due to his age but refused, saying he would not go before other men. Ida refused to leave her husband, saying “I will not be separated from my husband; as we have lived, so will we die together”.

An "iconic" pocket watch recovered from the body of a first class passenger who died during the Titanic's sinking is estimated to grab up to $2.3 million at auction.

The watch is engraved with the initials of IS and the date of 6 February 1888. Photo: Henry Aldridge & Son

Discover Titanic said the couple were last seen sitting on deck chairs next to each other before the ship went down.

According to the description of the watch on the auction house’s website, the watch is engraved with the initials of IS and the date of 6 February 1888.

“This date marked his 43rd birthday. 1888 was also an important year in his life as in 1888, he and his brother Nathan became full partners of the iconic Macy’s Department store in New York.”

The auction house said the watch “quite simply represents one of the finest and rarest objects from the Titanic story in existence”.

“A piece which was a treasured personal possession from one of the most respected and high profile men from the Titanic story.

“At the turn of the 20th century, a pocket watch was one of the closest things to the heart of a gentleman of the era, and this watch embodies this as a gift from one half of the most famous couple on the Titanic to the other.”

The auction takes place on 22 November.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Posted on

Actor’s skincare brand for kids labelled ‘dystopian’ and ‘tone deaf’

Source: Radio New Zealand

When Shay Mitchell’s daughter said she wanted to do “what mummy does”, it sparked the idea behind Rini — a Korean-inspired skincare line for young children.

Co-founded by Mitchell, a well-known Canadian actor, and fellow entrepreneur Esther Song, the brand was announced on Instagram last week to Mitchell’s 35 million followers.

“This has been three years in the making, inspired by my girls, their curiosity, and all the little moments that made me realise how early it starts,” Mitchell wrote.

Rini founders Esther Song and Shay Mitchell with their kids.

Rini founders Esther Song and Shay Mitchell with their kids.

Rini

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Posted on

Trump v BBC: Trust is the real casualty in the latest edit scandal

Source: Radio New Zealand

Members of the media work in the rain outside the entrance to the BBC in London on November 10, 2025. The outgoing CEO of BBC News said on November 10, 2025 that the broadcaster was "not institutionally biased", after she resigned over accusations that it had misleadingly edited a speech by Donald Trump. (Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP)

A leaked memo has led to resignations at the top levels of the BBC, and shaken confidence in media. Photo: Henry Nicholls/ AFP Photo: HENRY NICHOLLS

From editing error to boardroom exit, how the BBC’s reputation took a blow and what this means for global journalism

Since its inception, the BBC has stood as one of the world’s most trusted news institutions, standing for journalistic integrity, accuracy, and balance.

But this week, that trust has taken a severe blow after a damaging editing scandal, involving President Donald Trump, which has ignited a firestorm of outrage, accusations of political bias, and an existential crisis for the public broadcaster.

The BBC’s top leader and head of its news division have both now resigned, the BBC has issued a rare public apology, and Trump himself threatened a US$1 billion (NZ$1.7 billion) lawsuit, accusing the organisation of defamation.

The controversy centres on a Panorama documentary in which a crucial section of Trump’s speech was misleadingly edited, altering its tone and meaning.

“When media organisations breach the trust they have with their audience, they are in big trouble,” long-time journalism educator Jim Tully tells The Detail.

“It’s crucial our readers, listeners, viewers trust us, and anything we do to undermine that trust is potentially quite harmful to the reputation of the organisation.”

He says the BBC “sees itself as the bastion of impartial and accurate reporting, they have staked their reputation on that since the 1930s. Most people would see the BBC as a trustworthy media organisation”.

But he believes the editing scandal, which follows a string of other controversies, will make it hard for the broadcaster to rebuild and regain public trust.

“I think the resignations of people at that level should send a message to the public that they take matters seriously, and people have obviously fallen on the sword because of the significant damage that is emerging.

“[But] I think it will be much more of a challenge [to rebuild] this time. And it’s going to have a potentially significant effect on the extent to which people think ‘oh yeah, it’s from the BBC, therefore it’s correct and I can rely on it and I can believe in it’.

“Once that goes, it’s very difficult to reclaim.”

For many, the story cuts deeper than just one mistake. It feeds into a growing trust unease about whether any media organisation remains truly impartial in an age of polarisation, algorithms, and instant outrage.

“There are always surveys, annually coming out, in which we don’t figure much ahead of used car salesmen and the like,” Tully says. “It’s become fashionable to clobber the media.”

He says the ethical guidelines for journalists are “pretty clear and widely accepted”.

“You may edit in a way for clarity and conciseness because journalists are not required to report everything that somebody says, otherwise, we would be merely stenographers.

“So, we exercise judgement as to what is interesting and relevant, and that is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

“The issue arises, of course, when in making those edits, you create a situation where the intended message of the interviewee has been disrupted, and you have misrepresented through selected editing what they were saying.”

The BBC has promised a full internal review, tighter editorial checks, and renewed transparency.

Freelance UK correspondent Sean Hogan is in London and tells The Detail that since the scandal emerged, more than 500 complaints have been sent to the broadcaster about the programme.

“I think the general public sentiment is an increased level of scepticism,” he says.

“People are calling it a storm, a crisis, a disaster. It’s quite extraordinary…. some are saying it’s the biggest scandal the BBC has faced in decades.

“Public trust has been continuously eroded, and they’ve got to change the narrative somehow.”

He says the scandal is front page lead news and is showing no signs of going away.

“UK media love to hold a microscope very closely to the BBC. It’s never far from the headlines, so it wasn’t a surprise to see this story splashed all over our screens and front pages, since it broke, and it really hasn’t relented.

“I’ll give you a few of the headlines there’s ‘BBC meltdown’, ‘BBC humiliation’, and ‘The BBC in crisis’. And that’s just a few of them.

“Now, to be fair to the BBC, their own website and channel haven’t shied away from the story and have covered the story extensively.”

The scandal is becoming more than a BBC story.

Jim Tully says there are lessons the entire industry – that in an era where truth is fragile and trust is currency, even the most respected newsrooms are one mistake away from crisis.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand