Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Chee Meng Tan, Assistant Professor of Business Economics, University of Nottingham

China’s president, Xi Jinping, has met with his American counterpart, Donald Trump, for their first face-to-face talks in six years. Trump emerged from the meeting in South Korea in a buoyant mood, describing it as a 12 on a scale of one to ten. He is now saying the US will lower tariffs on Chinese imports, with Beijing giving the US better access to rare earths in return.

The Chinese government’s response was, in comparison, relatively muted. In a statement, the foreign ministry declared that both sides had exchanged views on “important economic and trade issues” and said Xi was “ready to continue working” with Trump “to build a solid foundation for China and the US”.

Despite the optimism on show in South Korea, there is still much to be done before a trade deal between the two countries is signed. At the same time, Chinese officials appear to remain cautious of the Trump administration’s unpredictability and its damaging potential for their country’s economy.

Trump and Xi’s meeting came one week after China’s top leadership laid out their development priorities for the next five years, after four days of discussion in Beijing. Their message is clear: China needs to boost its self-reliance.

China has been reeling from an economic slowdown in recent years. A property market crash in 2021, which saw several major developers default on their debts, caused millions of Chinese people to lose wealth. This has dampened consumer spending and has reduced confidence in the economy.

Since China began shifting from central planning to a more market-oriented economy in 1978, it has enjoyed great success by relying on two mechanisms to stimulate growth. The first is attracting investment in the infrastructure and real estate sectors. The second, which is largely considered the primary driver of China’s extraordinary growth, is the export of manufactured goods.

However, investment in China’s infrastructure and property sectors has been lacklustre at best in recent years. At the same time, China has been embroiled in a trade war with the US – the largest importer of Chinese goods – since 2018. This period has been marked by cycles of escalating tariffs and retaliatory measures.

The external environment has become increasingly uncertain following Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025. Trump took Washington’s confrontation with Beijing to greater heights, imposing tariffs of 145% on most Chinese goods. Although many of these measures were later eased, the volatility of the two countries’ trade relationship was further evidenced when Trump threatened to reinstate 100% tariffs on Chinese exports just weeks before the Seoul meeting.

So, rather than relying heavily on exports, Chinese officials have announced that they intend to stimulate growth by boosting domestic consumption. Their plan is to create more job opportunities and improve healthcare and social benefits to help raise living standards. This should allow Chinese consumers to buy more goods and services.

However, improving domestic consumption will be no easy feat. China has weak social security nets, which encourage consumers to save more for uncertain times. Local governments in China, which provide public services, have also incurred huge amounts of debt in the past from excessive borrowing to fund projects. How China intends to improve living standards amid such debt is not certain.

Another key part of China’s economic plans is to become the world’s leader in AI and tech by 2035. This, like the government’s plans to boost economic growth, will also require self-reliance. The US has imposed sweeping tech restrictions in recent years to prevent advanced semiconductors and AI chips made by US firms from entering China.

These restrictions have intensified since the start of Trump’s second term. In May 2025, for example, the Trump administration ordered US chip design software makers to halt all sales to China. And even after Trump’s recent meeting with Xi, exports of advanced US technology to China still look like they will be largely restricted.

Trump said the two leaders discussed China purchasing some chips from US firms. But he clarified that the deal would not include Blackwell, Nvidia’s most advanced semiconductor, which US lawmakers have warned against allowing China to obtain. The Chinese government has not mentioned any agreement with the US regarding semiconductors.

As it stands, the US seems to be bent on ensuring that China is unable to access the tech that could aid Beijing in developing its computing and military prowess. So, to achieve tech superiority, China’s leaders have pledged more investment in education and talent. They have also promised measures to safeguard intellectual property.

Political survival

For years, China’s ruling communist party has relied on economic prosperity and nationalism to legitimise its rule. But Xi’s ability to retain control is likely to be undermined by China’s economic slowdown.

China needs a break from its external troubles, which have been induced by the US trade war and tech restrictions. And by dominating the production of rare earths, a group of metals crucial for high-tech manufacturing, China has a powerful trump card.

In early October, Beijing placed restrictions on the export of rare earths in a move that now appears to have been a calculated effort to strengthen China’s negotiating position with Washington. The strategy looks to have paid off, leading to a reduction of US tariffs on Chinese goods.

Ultimately, Xi needs victories of this sort to remain at the top of Chinese politics. If economic troubles worsen and growth continues to falter, even a leader as powerful as Xi may discover that loyalty sustained by rhetoric cannot be sustained.

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

– ref. Trump-Xi talks will not have changed the priorities of the Chinese government – https://theconversation.com/trump-xi-talks-will-not-have-changed-the-priorities-of-the-chinese-government-267785

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alex Dittrich, Senior Lecturer in Zoology, Nottingham Trent University

If you’re scared of spiders, Halloween certainly doesn’t help. People decorate their homes with monstrous-looking fake cobwebs and horror movies depict giant spiders hunting humans or creeping around spooky abandoned houses. Spiders’ long association with witches can also make their presence seem a little ominous.

In reality though, spiders are much more likely to be minding their own business than trying to pester humans.

The UK is home to more than 600 species of spider, with only a few of these common indoors. You might not notice them much through the year, but come autumn, more seem to start appearing in our homes.

This time of year we are focused on getting warm, sheltering from the weather outside. We may think that those animals we associate with our garden have similar ideas, and want to move in and share our cosy accommodation. However, the odds are they haven’t come in from the outside. The spiders you’re noticing have in fact probably always been there.

It’s just they are more active. Male spiders of many species are trying to find mates at this time of year. They cease to build webs and become roving individuals that are more easily spotted.

Mating for male spiders is a risky process as females often respond aggressively to male advances. So male spiders invest a lot of time and energy into finding the right mate. When spiders mate they fill specialised organs in front of their mouths, called palps, with sperm, that they then deposit into the sexual organ (epigynum) of the female.

Prior to this the male will go through a literal song and dance to make sure that the female is receptive and won’t eat him. This often involves a lot of leg tapping and sending vibratory signals sent down the female’s web. Only when she accepts these signals from the male will she mate with him.

Slowing down

Indoor female spiders are less active this time of year, often waiting in their homes, feeding and readying themselves for the mating season.

In early autumn indoor spiders are mostly nocturnal, with both males and females becoming more active at night when they are safer from potential predators, and maybe us humans.

While they rest during the day, some spider species even show signs of dreaming. A 2022 US paper found jumping spiders show bouts of eye movement and limb twitching that suggest phases of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. REM sleep is associated with vivid dreaming.

Getting the munchies

The males may slow down the web-building but the females don’t. Spiders don’t just build webs randomly. They spend time finding the right spot based on the availability of prey as well as safety and structure.

One common species you may encounter, particularly in the UK, is the common house spider Tegenaria domestica one of Britain’s bigger spiders. It is well known for its funnel like webs which differ from classic cobwebs in the corners of rooms. These webs provide a secure home for the web dweller and surface for dispatching any potential prey that may fall on it.

Depending on the species, different webs evolved for catching different types of prey, or to provide a suitable home for the spider. There are some weird examples, such as Hyptiotes paradoxus which builds a triangular web – shaped much like a pizza slice. You are less likely to see this species in the home but you may find them on a graveyard yew tree.

Although not all species of spiders make complex webs, all spiders make silk that can be used for storing prey, or safety lines. For those that do make webs, depending on the species, this can take a few minutes, hours or days. It is of course a big investment taking a lot of energy to build a web. Some spiders ingest broken webs, to recycle the lost energy.

The tangled webs we find in our houses are often produced by what we refer to as synanthropic species, meaning that they have adapted well to a human-centred existence. Or rather many of them find our homes a nice facsimile to the habitat that they evolved within. Their natural habitats are similar to our homes in that they have stable temperature and humidity, with warm and dry corners and crevices.

Some synanthropic species such as the cellar spider Pholcus phalangioides are common inside. They are often seen hanging upside down waiting for their prey to fall victim to their delicate webs, in the corners of rooms, where they do a good job of eating other spiders that may enter your house. This species, however, is not native and was introduced to the UK and US from Asia in the 1800s.

Although we share our homes with many species of spider, they don’t eat crumbs or human food. But those crumbs can attract insects, which in turn attract spiders.

What can we do for spiders in the house?

There are movies on the tele at the moment that have done a good job of reinforcing people’s arachnophobia. But spiders aren’t out to get you. They just want to raise a family.

So my appeal to you is, maybe leave some of those cobwebs up (it’s great decoration for Halloween), drape a towel over the side of your bath so spiders can escape. And if you do need to remove a spider from your house, do it carefully and remember it is bad luck to kill a spider. To recite an old folk saying,“if you wish to live and thrive, let a spider run alive”.

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

– ref. What do spiders really get up to on Halloween? – https://theconversation.com/what-do-spiders-really-get-up-to-on-halloween-265520

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Catherine Bannister, Visiting Researcher at The University of Sheffield, Social research of children’s play and cultural worlds / archives of cultural tradition and childhood, University of Sheffield

All About Ghosts by Christopher Maynard is a non-fiction book for children curious about spectral beings. First published in 1977, this book grabbed many children with the vice-like grip of a reanimated hand from a mouldering grave.

The book is one of several 1970s spooky releases that left many British children of the time with an abiding curiosity about all things unnerving. They are known as the “haunted generation”, a name coined by writer and broadcaster Bob Fischer.

One member of this haunted generation who went on to craft their own creepy contributions is actor and writer Reece Shearsmith, famous for The League of Gentlemen and Inside No.9, who introduces the 2019 edition of All About Ghosts. I too am a member, with an attraction to the mysterious that I can chart back to the original book – and which led me to become a folklorist.

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Read more:
Scary stories for kids: these tales of terror made me a hit at sleepovers as a pre-teen

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Despite the supernatural being an unusual topic for a factual book from an educational publisher such as Usborne, the writing addresses its younger readers with a straight face and without condescension. It presents its stories of eerie encounters succinctly and informatively, while indulging in just enough gruesome detail to have you sleeping with the light on.

The book’s whistlestop tour of the dark side opens by asking: “What is a ghost?” It provides definitions across the spectral spectrum before introducing the earliest recorded ghost sightings, beginning with the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, dating from 2000BC.

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This article is part of a series of expert recommendations of spooky stories – on screen and in print – for brave young souls. From the surprisingly dark depths of Watership Down to Tim Burton’s delightfully eerie kid-friendly films, there’s a whole haunted world out there just waiting for kids to explore. Dare to dive in here.

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All About Ghosts leads its young readers through a landscape of graveyards and battlefields. It takes them out to a sea of doomed vessels and pirate wraiths. It wends its way through a haunted house with a bricked-up skeleton, and to the English village of Pluckley, which counts 12 ghosts among its population.

While its engaging style and clear prose indicate a younger readership, the information in the book’s brief, spooky vignettes owes a lot to research. In writing this guide to ghosts, Maynard consulted the folklorist Eric Maple, as well as organisations and archives including the Harry Price Library of Magical Literature and the Society for Psychical Research.

What resonates most are the evocative illustrations accompanying these yarns. The one-eyed phantom dog Black Shuck dripping drool is terrifying. The spectral submarine officer warning living comrades of incipient danger conveys a weird melancholy.

But the one I find most scary is Tom Colley’s ghost glowing by a gibbet – a cage in which the rotting remains of criminals were put on public display to warn against such crimes. Seeing this picture takes me back to being a child, sprawled on my bedroom carpet to read, pleasantly terrified and almost too nervous to turn the next page.

The book also invites its readers to participate in the hunt, sharing details of the equipment needed to track down apparitions and catch out frauds: “A thin layer of flour or powder … will show up any footprints or fingerprints made by fake ‘ghosts’.”

My younger self certainly took some of this advice on board. Even if I didn’t actively hunt ghosts, this book taught me to look out for the tell-tale signs of their presence: a sudden drop in temperature, strange draughts, objects moved by unseen hands. I would know a ghost was about.

These tips for ghost hunting in the style of other practical guides has the potential to encourage children to see themselves as daring researchers. And if the kit is a little outdated, today’s ghost hunters can always switch up a notepad and graph paper for digital tools.

The book’s examples of clever fakes and its ambiguous language – “ghosts are supposed to haunt the scene of death” – enable it to walk the line between belief and scepticism.

Children can sometimes be perceived by adults as being too ready to believe, growing into rationality later. However, folklorists of childhood Iona and Peter Opie – who have surveyed schoolchildren around the country from the mid-20th century onward on their play and games, language, beliefs and customs – describe the more nuanced phenomenon of “half belief”.

While children are drawn to the unexplained, their responses to tales of ghosts and summoning rituals, to good and bad luck, and to charms and omens, indicate they could also be taking part out of playful fun and exploration, curiosity and friendship. In subtly approaching its readers as critical thinkers as much as thrill-seekers, this book confirms its classic status for the spooky season and beyond.

All About Ghosts is suitable for children aged 10+.

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.

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

– ref. Scary stories for kids: All About Ghosts is a non-fiction book that gave me all the knowledge to spot spectres – https://theconversation.com/scary-stories-for-kids-all-about-ghosts-is-a-non-fiction-book-that-gave-me-all-the-knowledge-to-spot-spectres-268244

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jamie Woodward, Professor of Physical Geography, University of Manchester

One hundred years ago, a catastrophic flood carrying enormous boulders swept through part of Dolgarrog village, north Wales, destroying several homes, a bridge and the local chapel. Ten adults and six children lost their lives. The tragedy was widely reported and King George V sent a message of condolence.

This was not a natural flood. It was caused by the failure of two dams impounding the Eigiau and Coedty reservoirs on the Carneddau plateau, high above Dolgarrog, following a wet October. Overtopped by inflow from the Eigiau breach, the Coedty dam failed catastrophically, unleashing a flood of some 1.7 million cubic metres. There was no time to warn the village.

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Read more:
When the dam broke: the 1925 disaster that reshaped a Welsh community and a country’s safety laws

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The Dolgarrog disaster followed a reservoir failure at Skelmorlie, Scotland, in April 1925. Both brought attention to poor dam construction and inadequate maintenance practices, and led directly to the Reservoirs (Safety Provisions) Act of 1930.

The act sought to ensure the structural safety of large reservoirs by introducing legal requirements for regular inspection and certification by qualified engineers. It was the first attempt in the UK to regulate the design, construction, and maintenance of reservoirs through statutory safety measures.

Since Dolgarrog, the UK has had an excellent reservoir safety record. But in late July 2019, the evacuation of more than 1,500 residents from Whaley Bridge downstream of Toddbrook reservoir in Derbyshire, England, was ordered. Toddbrook had received a month’s rain in just two days.

Swollen inflows overtopped the dam’s emergency spillway, undermining its concrete slabs. A large cavity appeared on the spillway, exposing the dam’s core, raising fears of a breach.

A Chinook helicopter dropped 400 tonnes of aggregate on the Toddbrook spillway to reinforce the damaged section, while fire services used high-capacity pumps to lower the water level and reduce pressure on the dam. After several days, engineers declared the Toddbrook dam stable enough to lift the evacuation order.

The Toddbrook incident was one of the most serious near failures of a dam in recent UK history. It showed how extreme rainfall events can threaten dam safety and communities living downstream. Gavin Tomlinson, the fire incident commander, said: “We were in a situation where we had five times as much water going in than we could take out. We absolutely thought it could fail. It was a very, very tense night.”

Following this scare, in April 2021, the UK government commissioned an independent review into reservoir safety. A ministerial direction was issued to owners of all large, raised reservoirs, making the formulation of emergency flood plans a legal requirement to ensure that they are prepared for an eventuality that could result in an uncontrolled release of water.

The threat from climate change

As geomorphologists who work on river processes and landforms, we are researching the landscape-changing effects of such dam breach floods, but also how topography can amplify the hazard to communities.

As the Dolgarrog disaster showed so graphically, reservoirs that drain into steep and narrow upland valleys present a particular hazard, especially where flows increase in speed and pick up destructive boulders. All aspects of the landscape setting should be part of flood emergency planning.

While the Toddbrook reservoir was compliant with existing legislation and had been recently inspected, it suffered “unforeseen and potentially critical damage that could have led to a catastrophe.” Questions were raised by local residents about how well it had been maintained. Repairs were nearing completion in late 2025.

Most reservoirs in upland Britain were constructed in the 19th century under hydrological conditions that no longer hold. Embankment dams and older masonry dams can be especially vulnerable to erosion, seepage, slope instability or overtopping.

The most common cause of dam failures is overtopping where the spillway cannot cope with floodwaters. Reservoir safety may also be challenged by rapid or sustained water level lowering during droughts. As pore pressures change, and soils dry out and crack, embankment stability can be compromised.

Climate change is increasing both storm and drought intensity in many parts of the UK posing a threat to reservoir safety. Climate models tell us that intense rainstorms that cause flash flooding will be five times more likely by 2080. Steep upland catchments in hard impermeable rocks are especially vulnerable to flash flooding, and this is where much of the UK’s water storage infrastructure is located.

The Dolgarrog disaster was the last time anyone was killed in the UK by a dam failure. But if intense storms and prolonged droughts are the new normal for our climate, the risk to ageing upland water storage infrastructure will likely increase.

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Jamie Woodward has received funding from research councils in the UK and Australia.

Jeff Warburton has received funding from UK research councils.

Stephen Tooth has received research funding from various sources, including charitable and non-charitable sources in the UK, Australia, South Africa, and USA.

– ref. Dam disasters of the 1920s made reservoirs safer – now the climate crisis is increasing risk again – https://theconversation.com/dam-disasters-of-the-1920s-made-reservoirs-safer-now-the-climate-crisis-is-increasing-risk-again-267449

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jan Machielsen, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History, History, Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff University

Across Europe, campaigns for national witch memorials are gathering pace. In the Netherlands, a charity recently announced it had selected the design for a monument in Roermond, the site of the country’s worst witch-hunt.

In Scotland, campaigners Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi published a manifesto, How To Kill A Witch, to continue pressure on the Scottish government for a state-funded monument. Their Witches of Scotland campaign had won an early victory in 2022 when first minister Nicola Sturgeon issued an official apology.

Across early modern Europe (1450-1750), between 40,000 and 50,000 people were executed as witches. Though the age and gender of the accused varied from place to place, roughly 75% to 80% of all victims were women.

Within Britain and Ireland, Scotland saw some of the fiercest witch-hunting. Historians have identified more than 3,800 accusations (84% women), leading to perhaps as many as 2,500 executions.

Despite these stark figures, there are still no official national witch memorials anywhere in Europe, although the Steilneset memorial in northern Norway, created in 2011, comes close.

The lack of such national memorials does not mean the witch hunt has been forgotten. Its memory has long offered moral lessons for the present.

On the other side of the Atlantic, descendants of those caught up in the infamous 1692 Salem witch trials were among the earliest to commemorate the victims. A cenotaph erected in 1885 by descendants of Rebecca Nurse, one of the Salem accused, may well have been the first.

In Europe, there are similar local memorials. A witches’ well installed outside Edinburgh Castle in 1894 was probably the earliest such memorial in Europe, but most local attempts at memorialisation have been much more recent.

Our project – supported by Cardiff University’s On Campus student internship scheme – mapped memorials around the world and created an inventory of 134 plaques, memorials, sites and museums, which skews heavily towards the 21st century. Of the sites that can be securely dated, nearly half were unveiled during the past decade.

#MeToo, politics and wartime bears

This growth in grassroots interest has several origins. It partly stems from renewed concern at present-day violence, both against women in general but also against suspected witches in the global south. Our research threw up one memorial in the Indian state of Odisha to deter modern vigilantism.

It also coincides with the popularisation of witch-hunting as a political metaphor and the #MeToo movement. The latter not only encouraged women to call out misogyny, in the process it also highlighted how few statues of non-royal women exist.

It was the sight of a statue of Wojtek, a Polish bear and second world war mascot in Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens, that inspired one of the Witches of Scotland campaigners. If a bear could be commemorated, why not any of the thousands of women executed as witches?

Overlaying witch memorials with the geography of the early modern witch-hunt reveals further striking patterns. With 29 local memorials, Scotland accounts for the largest share, followed by Germany with 24 – both epicentres of the early modern witch-hunt.

By contrast, France is virtually absent from our data. There is no memorial in the former Duchy of Lorraine, another notable witch-hunting hotspot, nor any marker in Paris of the sensational and infamous “affair of the poisons” that shook Louis XIV’s court.

Whether to remember is also a political choice. Memorials in the Basque country present witch-hunting as foreign (French and Spanish) impositions, while glossing over the role played by local officials and folkloric beliefs.

Catalonia saw relatively few trials but its nationalist politicians have spearheaded motions labelling the witch-hunt “institutionalised femicide”. In this way, calls for a memorial have become something of a vehicle for progressive nationalism.

How to remember can be fraught. Accusations of kitsch, commercialism and profit haunt museums in particular. Salem’s Witch Museum was once named the world’s second biggest tourist trap.

Perhaps for this reason, many communities have settled for straightforward plaques listing those executed for alleged witchcraft. In a similar spirit, streets in Catalonia and Scotland have been renamed in their memory as well.

Going further raises thorny questions of artistic licence and historical representation. Visual depictions risk perpetuating stereotypes about warts, noses and pointy hats.

On the other hand, portraying witches as alluring ignores a substantial body of research linking witchcraft fears to young mothers’ anxieties about the postmenopausal body. For those reasons, a monument on a Belgian roundabout of a naked witch “flying to freedom” on her broomstick surrounded by traffic sparked much debate among our project team.

Acts of remembering inevitably entail acts of forgetting, and there are pitfalls here to be avoided. Stronger, more centralised states saw less witch-hunting, not more. State and church-issued pardons and apologies may thus downplay the role that communities played in witch persecutions, including other women.

Remembering is never simple. Yet, as one of history’s most infamous forms of demonisation, the early modern witch-hunt will always teach us how easy it is to blame, and how difficult it is to understand.

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This project was supported by Cardiff University’s On Campus internship scheme. The authors would like to thank student interns Abigail Heneghan and Gabriel Hyde for creating the memorial database and for their thoughtful comments on this article.

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

– ref. Witch memorials are quietly spreading across Europe – https://theconversation.com/witch-memorials-are-quietly-spreading-across-europe-265506

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tom Harper, Lecturer in International Relations, University of East London

It was 12 out of ten, said US president Donald Trump when reporting back on his meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. The two men met in the South Korean city of Busan on October 30, the first time they have come together face to face since 2019.

That, in itself, must be seen as progress after months of rising tensions. Since Trump returned to the White House in January, the world’s two biggest powers have squared off in what has threatened to become an increasingly damaging trade war.

Their meeting by no means resulted in a trade deal – that will need to be agreed in coming months, if at all. But there is definitely a sense that a truce has been agreed by Xi and Trump, which will lower the temperature considerably and bring a sense of calm to relations between the two countries.

We asked Tom Harper, an expert in Chinese foreign policy at the University of East London, for his initial reaction to the messages emerging from the talks.

Who comes away from the meeting happier – Xi or Trump?

Both leaders will be happy at the outcomes from this meeting. Donald Trump is famously transactional in his approach to foreign policy, and he comes away from the meeting able to trumpet a “win” for the US.

China will be buying American soybeans, Xi has promised to help deal with the fentanyl issue and his threat to restrict China’s exports of the all-important rare earth minerals will not come into force. For 12 months, at least.

However, it’s important to note that there was no agreement from China to relax restrictions it imposed in April on exports of some critical minerals. Xi will want to prevent the US from building stockpiles of some key rare earth elements.

Restoring some trade between the two countries will also help ease the strain on US consumers. They are currently having to shoulder higher prices for everyday items, caused by the tariffs. Given Trump pledged to bring down prices in his presidential campaign, he may be able to frame this as a political victory with American voters.

China will benefit from lower US tariffs on many of its exports and Trump will suspend plans to expand trade restrictions to companies on what is known as the “entity list”. This is something China has been pushing for as it affects many of its companies. But of course, as we know, all of this could easily change.

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Read more:
Chinese controls on rare earths could create challenges for the west’s plans for green tech

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What does this meeting tell us about the two countries’ priorities?

What’s very evident from the language used by the Chinese foreign ministry’s report of the meeting when compared to the US president’s comments on social media and elsewhere is the different sense of timing between the two cultures.

China’s analysis stressed that this was all at one with the country’s long-term strategy, developed “from generation to generation”. It spoke in terms of a broad sweep of development: “Our focus has always been on managing China’s own affairs well, improving ourselves, and sharing development opportunities with all countries across the world.”

Trump’s post on Truth Social focused squarely on the deals done: the soybeans, rare earths and cooperation over fentanyl. He’s clearly looking ahead to the midterm elections, which take place next November. This electoral test of what Americans think of the first 18 months of Trump’s second term is looming ever larger.

On the one hand, his administration is trying to enhance its prospects by tinkering with the voting system in the US. On the other hand, the US president clearly sees foreign policy “wins” as being important when it comes to improving his approval rating with the US public.

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Read more:
Trump-Xi talks will not have changed the priorities of the Chinese government

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What are the main areas of tension between the two countries now?

Tech issues will undoubtedly continue to cause tensions between Beijing and Washington. The US currently blocks Chinese access to much of the advanced tech that Beijing needs to fulfil its desire to become the world’s leader in AI.

And, despite Trump’s suggestion that he and Xi discussed China purchasing some chips from US firms, Chinese access to such advanced tech looks like it will remain heavily restricted.

Trump has said that any trade deal with China will not involve the export of Blackwell, the most advanced AI chip produced by US firm Nvidia. US lawmakers have previously raised concerns about allowing China to obtain the chip, suggesting it could bolster China’s AI industry and weaken the US’s tech edge.

Where was the regular US lecture on human rights? And was Taiwan discussed at all?

Taiwan doesn’t appear to have been on the agenda, from what both sides have said. Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, took the opportunity of hosting delegates from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobby group this week.

He talked about nurturing “closer Taiwan-US-Israel cooperation on security, trade and beyond, promoting peace across the Taiwan Strait”. But it’s far from clear that this is at the front of Trump’s mind.

Before the trip, it was reported that Trump’s advisers had been concerned that the US president might come away from the meeting with Xi having in some way changed the language over China’s relationship with Taiwan.

There has also been talk in recent months that the US position might shift from “not supporting” Taiwanese independence to “opposing it”. However, when he was asked about this after his meeting with Xi, the US president said they hadn’t discussed it.

Human rights, on the agenda at just about every meeting between a US president and a Chinese leader for as long as anyone can remember, appears not to have featured in the two men’s discussion either.

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

– ref. What will Trump’s deal with Xi mean for the US economy and relations with China? Expert Q&A – https://theconversation.com/what-will-trumps-deal-with-xi-mean-for-the-us-economy-and-relations-with-china-expert-qanda-268688

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lynda Yorke, Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) in Critical Physical Geography, Bangor University

Nestled between the Caerneddau mountains and the Afon (River) Conwy, the small village of Dolgarrog in north Wales looks peaceful. But the huge hydro-electric pipes that run down the hillside are a constant reminder of the village’s history, and of how the same source of power that once brought prosperity also unleashed disaster.

On November 2 1925, the dam at Llyn Eigiau burst. A torrent of water and boulders thundered down the valley, sweeping through the northern part of Dolgarrog and destroying the small settlement of Porth Llŵyd. Sixteen people were killed.

One hundred years later, Dolgarrog’s story is not just one of tragedy. The village has become what its residents call a living memorial. It’s a place where disaster is not only remembered, but woven into the landscape, the law and the community’s sense of itself.

At 8pm on that night, the inhabitants of Dolgarrog felt the force of a catastrophic sequential engineering failure in the mountains above.

Two reservoirs, Llyn Eigiau and lower Coedty, supplied electricity to the local aluminium works, an industry that sustained the village. But the upper dam at Eigiau had been built on a foundation of glacial clay and boulders. After a dry summer, the clay had cracked. When autumn rains came, water seeped through. The dam wall gave way, unleashing a surge down the afon Porth Llŵyd.

This flood rapidly reached the lower Coedty dam, overwhelming its embankment. As the second dam failed, the water rushed like a massive tsunami wave down the steep gorge of afon Porth Llŵyd. Ripping out the hydro-electric pipeline, it created a deadly flow of water, debris and boulders that destroyed homes, and swept villagers into the afon Conwy.

From local tragedy to national protection

The Dolgarrog disaster was not the first dam failure in the UK, but it was the one that forced government action. Public outrage over the deaths of 16 villagers led directly to the Reservoirs (Safety Provisions) Act 1930, the first law in the UK to regulate dam safety.

For the first time, large reservoirs had to be inspected and supervised by qualified, independent engineers. This ended the era when private companies could self-regulate. It marked a major shift in how the UK governed risk and infrastructure.

The event was codified into national law and updated in 1975. It created an invisible, yet mandatory, safety structure that continues to protect people today.

If the law is an unseen memorial, the land around Dolgarrog is a visible one. The remnants of the Llyn Eigiau dam wall still stand, a stark reminder of the engineering flaws that caused the disaster.

Downstream toward the Coedty dam, the torn-up peat moorland is barely visible. But the afon Porth Llŵyd gorge still shows the impact of the powerful flood, constrained by its bedrock walls. As the flood waters thundered down the gorge, they shattered, split and tore at the bedrock walls, ripping huge boulders from their rest.

The boulders dumped at the gorge’s outlet, formed a huge fan of rock debris still visible at the roadside – a chilling, preserved record of the suffering.

That landscape tells a story, not just of destruction but of recovery. The village’s memorial walk, created in 2004 around the boulder field, traces the path of the flood and symbolises the community’s ability to reclaim the space. It is both a site of reflection and an everyday walking route. This is cultural resilience and proof that remembrance and daily life coexist.

Disasters are not just events of the past: shape how we individually and collectively experience places, politics and society. Dolgarrog’s residents are marking the centenary with a programme of events under the banner “Dolgarrog Past, Present and Future”. These include commissioned art, musical performances, history projects and a lantern parade – acts of remembrance that also look forward.

Lessons for today

The lessons of Dolgarrog are as urgent now as they were a century ago. In an age of climate change, when extreme rainfall and flood risks are rising, the need for strong safety standards and accountable infrastructure has never been greater.

The 1925 disaster shows why state oversight of private infrastructure is vital when public lives depend on it. It also offers a model of resilience, one that is legislative as well as communal.

A hundred years on, the memory of the 16 villagers who died is not only preserved in stone and ceremony, but in the law itself, and in the ongoing safety of every major reservoir across the UK. Dolgarrog remains a living memorial to both the dangers of neglect and the power of collective renewal.

Lynda Yorke receives funding from NERC, British Council and Learned Society of Wales.

Giuseppe Forino has received funding from NERC, British Council and Learned Society of Wales.

– ref. When the dam broke: the 1925 disaster that reshaped a Welsh community and a country’s safety laws – https://theconversation.com/when-the-dam-broke-the-1925-disaster-that-reshaped-a-welsh-community-and-a-countrys-safety-laws-267701

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Femi Owolade, Research Associate, Sheffield Hallam University

Every few years, a familiar anxiety resurfaces in British public discourse: that sharia law is establishing a parallel legal system and threatening the sovereignty of English law. Those fears were reignited following Donald Trump’s recent speech to the UN, where he claimed that London wants “to go to sharia law”.

Such claims ignore two realities. First, that the English legal system is adaptive and capable of accommodating diversity. And second, that having multiple legal systems is – far from undermining British law – an inevitable legacy of Britain’s colonial history. Looking to that history, it should be no surprise that it is a feature of modern, multicultural Britain.

My research shows how British colonial administrators deliberately designed plural legal systems to sustain imperial rule. The colonial state recognised that it could not rule diverse populations by imposing English law on multicultural societies.

In northern Nigeria, this approach became a defining feature of colonial governance. English law operated alongside Islamic courts, which handled family disputes and aspects of land tenure. Allowing limited autonomy for Africans under sharia was both a pragmatic and political strategy. It maintained local legitimacy while ensuring that English law remained supreme in cases of conflict.

A similar arrangement existed in British India. This legacy continues to shape how law functions in postcolonial, multicultural Britain today.

How sharia operates in Britain today

There is no separate sharia legal system in the UK. What exist are sharia councils and the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal. The sharia councils have no statutory authority under English law. They may be used to resolve personal disputes such as marriage, divorce and inheritance.

The Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, in existence since the early 2000s, operates under the Arbitration Act 1996. This law allows private arbitration between consenting adults in civil disputes. But such tribunals must operate within the boundaries of English law.

Sharia councils have a slightly longer history, dating back to the 1980s. Their number and activities are difficult to track: in 2009, rightwing thinktank Civitas approximated at least 85, while a 2012 study by a researcher at the University of Reading identified 30.

No comprehensive survey has been conducted since, leaving the exact number uncertain. This lack of official oversight fuels the perception that the councils pose a challenge to Britain’s legal sovereignty.

But, as a 2018 Home Office review confirmed, sharia councils hold no legal jurisdiction in England and Wales.

The review did acknowledge concerns raised by women’s rights groups about gender inequality and lack of representation of women in some councils. It concluded that these issues called for better regulation and oversight, and that the “state would be justified in intervening” in bad practices by sharia councils that disadvantage women.

It also found that public fears are fuelled by misleading terms, used in both the media and sometimes by councils themselves. For example, referring to the councils as “courts” and their members as “judges” reinforces misconceptions about the existence of a parallel legal system.

Multifaith Britain and the law

English law is capable of accommodating and regulating diverse legal practices without losing its sovereignty. Besides sharia councils, other faith-based arbitration bodies exist in Britain.

The Beth Din courts, for example, serve the Jewish community, offering guidance on issues of marriage and divorce. While they cannot compel a divorce, they can encourage or persuade a husband to grant a religious divorce certificate.

The Roman Catholic Church, which complies with the Marriage Act 1949, operates its own tribunals to consider annulments under canon law. None of these institutions undermine the authority of English courts.

The same applies to sharia councils. Participation is voluntary: individuals choose to use these forums, often to resolve family or inheritance matters in line with their faith. English civil courts remain fully available to them.

Following concerns about the protection of women’s rights in the councils, the 2018 Home Office review recommended stronger safeguards. These include requiring civil registration of marriages, greater transparency in decision-making, and education about legal rights.

The review found that nearly all users of the sharia councils were women, with over 90% seeking an Islamic divorce. Many were unable to obtain a civil divorce because their marriages had never been registered under English law, leaving them without legal recourse in the civil legal system.

The review stressed that its proposed safeguards were designed to protect vulnerable women, rather than suppress or prohibit sharia councils from operating. This recognises that the demand for religious divorce will continue regardless of sharia prohibition.

The UK government accepted the review’s findings but has not established a regulatory body. This suggests that most safeguards are currently dependent on voluntary good practice within the councils.

Postcolonial legal pluralism

In a postcolonial, multifaith society like Britain, legal pluralism is not a sign of a fragmented legal sovereignty – it’s an acknowledgement of social reality. The persistence of sharia in modern Britain reflects a society still negotiating how to govern cultural and religious difference through law, as the empire once did.

Other postcolonial societies have accepted this. In India, different personal law systems for Hindus, Muslims and Christians coexist under one constitution. There is an ongoing debate in the country about how to balance faith-based identity with the rights guaranteed by the secular state.

The same question now faces Britain. The challenge is not whether to recognise the arbitrating powers of sharia councils, but how to regulate them fairly – ensuring that every citizen, regardless of faith, can exercise their rights within the boundaries of English law.

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

– ref. Sharia law isn’t taking over Britain – it’s an inevitable legacy of its colonial legal history – https://theconversation.com/sharia-law-isnt-taking-over-britain-its-an-inevitable-legacy-of-its-colonial-legal-history-267262

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Abi Crane, Postgraduate Researcher in Palaeontology, University of Southampton

A new specimen of one of the most controversial species of dinosaur has the
potential to overturn decades of research on the T rex.

Nanotyrannus, the “miniature T rex”, has been the centre of one of the fiercest debates in palaeontology. Scientists have long argued over whether the Nanotyrannus is a separate species or just a young T rex.

The controversy was ignited in 1999 when the only known fossil of a Nanotyrannus was found to belong to a juvenile. More complete fossils have since failed to produce any conclusive answers because they were all also found to be juvenile.

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Read more:
Five things you probably have wrong about the T rex

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But the debate surrounding the identity of Nanotyrannus may finally be settled. A new fossil specimen, described in the journal Nature, is the smoking gun researchers have been looking for: an adult Nanotyrannus.

Known as the duelling dinosaurs, this fossil preserves an almost-complete
Nanotyrannus and Triceratops entombed together. They seem frozen in combat (whether they were actually fighting when they became buried in the Earth’s sediment remains to be tested). Although the fossil was discovered in Montana, US back in 2006, it was under private ownership until the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences purchased it in 2020. Now accessible to scientists, the true nature of this remarkable fossil can be revealed for the first time.

The researchers have confirmed that Nanotyrannus is a separate miniature type of tyrannosaur by demonstrating this specimen belonged to a near fully-grown adult. The age and maturity of dinosaurs can be assessed by looking at the inside of their bones. Dinosaurs grew in cycles of faster and slower growth which produced distinct layers of bone. When cut open and examined under a microscope, these marks can be counted like rings in a tree.

Using this method, the researchers could determine that the Nanotyrannus in the duelling dinosaurs was at least 14 years old when it died. The researchers also found its rate of growth had slowed significantly in its final years, indicating that this individual was nearly at full body size.

So just how small was this miniature T rex? Nanotyrannus is only around one tenth of the size of a fully grown T rex. Being one of the largest predators to ever walk the Earth, however, T rex would make most animals look small. The duelling dinosaurs Nanotyrannus is over four metres long and estimated to have weighed over 700kg – that’s as heavy as some of the very largest polar bears.

Other specimens of Nanotyrannus are even bigger. The almost complete skeleton known as Jane, discovered in 2001 also in Montana, is estimated at over a ton, larger than any land predator alive today.

The researchers have found enough differences in the shape of bones in the skulls of the duelling dinosaurs fossil and the larger Jane to separate them into two different species; Nanotyrannus lancensis and the newly-named Nanotyrannus lethaeus.

Other than small size, another feature that the researchers have used to distinguish Nanotyrannus from T rex is the number of teeth. Despite its much smaller mouth, Nanotyrannus could no doubt pack a powerful bite with its over 60 teeth. T rex had 40-50 teeth in its jaws.

The teeth themselves are also different. Nicknamed “lethal bananas”, the teeth of T rex are curved and serrated like steak knives. These unique teeth are perfect for slicing into flesh and could crush bone. By contrast, some of the teeth of Nanotyrannus are straight, chisel-like and without serrations, more closely resembling those of other types of carnivorous dinosaur.

T rex had famously tiny arms, the source of many jokes and dinosaur impressions. Nanotyrannus does not

– ref. New ‘miniature T rex’ rewrites the history of the world’s largest predator – https://theconversation.com/new-miniature-t-rex-rewrites-the-history-of-the-worlds-largest-predator-268678

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adriana Marin, Lecturer in International Relations, Coventry University

A massive anti-drug raid in Rio de Janeiro left 132 people dead in the early hours of October 28 as Brazil’s security forces confronted one of the country’s biggest crime gangs. It was one of the deadliest security operations in modern Brazilian history.

Around 2,500 officers descended on the favelas of Complexo do Alemão and Complexo da Penha, strongholds of Brazil’s oldest criminal group, Comando Vermelho. There were more than 80 arrests.

Authorities described the operation as the country’s “biggest gang raid in history”. Human Rights Watch in Brazil called the episode “a huge tragedy”.

Beyond the immediate shock, the operation raises deeper questions about the resurgence of militarised policing models across Latin America. These are often labelled under the banner of mano dura – the “iron-fist” approach.

Mano dura policies prioritise forceful state intervention, military-style policing and mass incarceration as mechanisms to reassert territorial control and deter organised crime. These strategies have a long history in Latin America, particularly in central America during the early 2000s, when governments in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala adopted militarised responses in the face of rising gang violence.

What distinguishes the current wave is its intensity and the geopolitical narratives that accompany it. Rather than being seen as exceptional, mano dura is increasingly treated as a legitimate and even necessary model of governance in the face of criminal insurgency and institutional fragility.

The Rio raid appears to be part of this broader shift. Brazil has long grappled with powerful criminal factions. The gangs control territory, levy taxes and provide informal governance in the favelas and prison systems of Rio.

As fears of gang power have risen, so has support for militarised intervention. Many see a hardline approach as the only viable means of restoring order. The electoral success of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018, built on promises of aggressive policing and the expansion of military influence in civilian affairs, reflected this sentiment.

The current president, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, has positioned himself as a moderate alternative. But this week’s raid suggests that the structural pressures driving mano dura politics persist across administrations, regardless of their ideology.

International political dynamics have played a significant role in the resurgence of militarised security strategies. The rhetoric of “law and order” popularised globally by figures such as Donald Trump has reframed domestic security – not as a social or economic challenge, but as a war requiring overwhelming force.

Trump’s statements praising extrajudicial killings of drug traffickers and his advocacy for deploying the military to “take back” American cities have resonated beyond the US.

It would be inaccurate to claim that US politics directly cause security crackdowns in Latin America. But it contributes to a widely accepted narrative which frames displays of state violence as decisive leadership rather than as democratic backsliding.

Militarised policing

This phenomenon aligns with a broader global trend in which states use militarised policing as a tool of political legitimacy. In Latin America, leaders across the political spectrum have capitalised on public fear of crime to justify extraordinary security measures.

Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s strongman leader, has achieved record approval ratings after implementing mass detentions and militarised crackdowns on gangs. In Brazil, the Rio raid may be interpreted in this light. It was a demonstration of state authority designed to reassure voters that the government is willing to use force to restore order.

But there are significant risks to this approach. Historical evidence from Latin America indicates that mano dura policies often deliver only temporary reductions in violence. Meanwhile they tend to undermine institutional legitimacy in the long term.

Mass raids and lethal confrontations can fragment criminal organisations, leading to splinter groups that generate further instability. Militarised policing can deepen mistrust between communities and the state.

This is particularly the case in marginalised areas where residents already feel excluded from formal institutions. Excessive use of force without due process risks normalising extrajudicial killings and diminishing accountability, eroding democratic norms.

The Rio raid also reflects a changing power dynamic in the region. Criminal organisations such as Comando Vermelho have evolved beyond their drug-trafficking origins. They now operate as parallel governance systems.

They control territory and the provision of welfare. Many of these gangs wield considerable political influence.

In this context, mano dura is not only a security policy. It’s become more of a response to perceived challenges to the state’s power.

The use of large-scale force can be understood as a performative attempt to reassert territorial dominance. This aligns with what some scholars describe as the “punitive turn” in Latin America. Countries like Brazil increasingly use coercive power to demonstrate authority rather than to resolve underlying drivers of violence.

Cycles of violence

There is a broader question. Will this approach achieve lasting security or will it merely reproduce cycles of violence? In countries where judicial systems are weak and prisons are overcrowded, militarised operations often funnel recruits into criminal networks rather than dismantling them. Brazil’s own experience illustrates this.

Many of the country’s most powerful criminal factions, including Comando Vermelho itself, originated within the prison system during periods of mass incarceration.

It is also important to recognise that mano dura policies are often implemented in the absence of viable alternatives. Policymakers face immense pressure from citizens to deal with this security crisis. In some cases, communities themselves may call for military intervention, viewing it as the only way to dislodge criminal control.

This creates a security paradox. While forceful interventions may be politically popular, they can inadvertently reinforce the very conditions that allow criminal organisations to thrive.

The Rio raid therefore presents a critical moment for reassessing security governance in Latin America. It highlights the challenges governments face in balancing public demands for safety with the need to preserve democratic institutions and human rights. It also raises questions about the role of international influence in shaping security policy.

The global resurgence of punitive approaches, legitimised by leaders like Trump, has helped reshape the boundaries of what is considered acceptable in state responses to crime. As governments face growing security challenges, the appeal of mano dura will continue to grow.

Yet the question remains whether these tactics represent a solution to violence or a symptom of deeper institutional crisis.

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

– ref. Latin America is reviving the ‘iron fist’ approach to law enforcement – https://theconversation.com/latin-america-is-reviving-the-iron-fist-approach-to-law-enforcement-268596