English – Page 590 – MIL Submissions Engine

October 13, 2025

Diane Keaton pioneered new kinds of complex femininity on screen

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jen Harvie, Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance, Queen Mary University of London

American film actress Diane Keaton, who has died aged 79, was an icon of style but also character. She challenged the boundaries and range of what it was possible for women to play and be, especially in American cinema’s new wave of the 1970s and 80s.

Keaton was most famous for her performance as the title character in Woody Allen’s 1977 satirical romantic comedy-drama, Annie Hall. Her Annie could have been the love child of Katharine Hepburn and Charlie Chaplin.

She had Hepburn’s strength, intelligence, hair in a bun, and gender non-conforming trousers and tie; Chaplin’s comedy, goofiness and charm; and the idiosyncrasy of them both. Annie – like many more of Keaton’s characters – was kooky but smart, troubled and flawed, sweet but sensuous. And always endearing and complex.

Keaton won an Oscar for Annie. She physically overshadowed Allen despite being the same height (according to Allen), and her character’s awkward flirtatiousness, delight and curiosity balanced his character’s neurosis. Allen cast Keaton in eight of his movies and described her as, “with the exception of Judy Holliday”, “the finest screen comedienne we’ve ever seen”.

Keaton is better known as a comedian (or, as film critic Peter Bradshaw puts it, “a comic performer of ethereally self-aware genius”). But she had an impressive record in drama as well.

Keaton as Annie Hall.

Five years before Annie Hall, Keaton played the marrying-in outsider Kay to the mob family in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972). She appeared across the trilogy opposite Al Pacino.

Speaking to US broadcaster NPR in 2017, she explained that she drew on her experience as a young woman on The Godfather’s profoundly male-dominated set to understand Kay’s experience in the similarly male mob world.

The same year as Annie Hall, Keaton played Theresa Dunn in the much darker Looking for Mr Goodbar. Theresa leads a double life. By day she’s a Catholic teacher and by night, she cruises bars and discos for casual and sometimes rough sex.

Adapted from Judith Rossner’s 1975 novel, the film has been criticised for crude sensationalism, but Keaton’s portrayal of Theresa’s desire was broadly admired. Sight and Sound, for example, called her performance impressive “mainly because her strength and sensitivity as an actress seem to be operating apart from the underdeveloped character she is playing”.

Keaton also starred alongside Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson in Reds (1981), Beatty’s epic drama exploring political and personal commitment in the context of journalists’ engagement with the Russian revolution. Keaton played activist Louise Bryant, who leaves her family to join the political struggle and, let’s be honest, handsome journalist Jack Reed (Beatty).

New York Times journalist Alissa Wilkinson wrote of the performance: “We might not all be Reed, the charismatic idealist giving speeches, but we might be Bryant, just trying to catch hold as history barrels past and discovering who we are inside of it.

Keaton’s later career

It is an indictment of Hollywood that, as Keaton aged, her roles and films generally became more conventional and less challenging than some of her earlier work. That said, she admitted that her own confidence affected her career, mistakenly believing that “without a great man writing and directing for me” she was “mediocre”.

Despite this, she did find and create roles that continued to challenge expectations about how women can behave, and she made a series of successful collaborations with director Nancy Meyers.

The trailer for Something’s Gotta Give.

In 1987’s Baby Boom, co-written by Meyers, Keaton played a career-committed businesswoman who inherits a baby that disrupts her life. Not only does she gradually cope, she eventually pulls off the hat-trick of growing her career, keeping the baby and snatching heartthrob Sam Shepard.

Keaton also starred in another tale of mainstream feminism triumphant, Meyers’ romantic comedy-drama Something’s Gotta Give (2003). Turning the tables on sexist stereotypes, Keaton’s successful playwright character “tames” playboy Nicholson while also attracting the much younger Keanu Reeves.

There is a sense that Hollywood couldn’t imagine Keaton’s early frisson in the body of an ageing woman. But she carried on doing what she could from within these more tame and often liberal feminist comedy-dramas, which sought gender equality but never questioned structures that were fundamentally sexist.

Keaton’s legacy persists. Some of the most influential American women television and filmmakers of the 21st century have sought to take up the mantle of her complex characterisations of smart, awkward and unconventional femininity, including Lena Dunham and Greta Gerwig. And we will always have Diane Keaton’s back catalogue to remind us of Hepburn and Chaplin’s strange, poignant, funny love child.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

Jen Harvie 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. Diane Keaton pioneered new kinds of complex femininity on screen – https://theconversation.com/diane-keaton-pioneered-new-kinds-of-complex-femininity-on-screen-267348

October 13, 2025

The cooking pot that became a symbol of Sweden’s commitment to helping Palestine

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Maria Småberg, Senior Lecturer, Peace and Conflict Research, Department of HIstory, Lund University

In the hills of the southern West Bank, a Swedish cooking pot has become a symbol of trust, resilience and forgotten solidarity. Half a century after it was first distributed as emergency aid, the cooking pots still gleam in the kitchens of Beit Awwa – reminding villagers of a time when Sweden stood by them in the aftermath of war.

Today, that legacy stands in stark contrast to Sweden’s current policy: a sharp reduction in aid to Palestine which has been folded into a regional government strategy for all of the Middle East and north Africa region.

The origins of these pots – and the trust they symbolise – were uncovered through research into the history of Swedish civil society organisations in Palestine. In the aftermath of the six-day war in 1967, Beit Awwa was one of several villages destroyed by Israeli forces. Villagers lost their homes, belongings and livelihoods.

Beit Awwa was not alone. In the chaotic aftermath of the six-day war, entire Palestinian villages were razed. Few international observers were present to document what happened. Israeli authorities actively tried to prevent outside scrutiny.

One of the few who bore witness was Sister Marie-Thérèse, a French nun from the Companions of Jesus order, who later wrote about the devastation in her diary. Israeli journalist Amos Kenan also reported on the forced expulsions, describing elderly people and mothers with infants wandering with white flags.

By mid-July 1967, John Reddaway, Unrwa’s deputy commissioner-general, estimated that around 16,000 people had been made homeless by the destruction of villages in the West Bank. Altogether, between 200,000 and 250,000 people from the West Bank went into exile.

Just a week after the war ended, on June 10, representatives from the Swedish organisation Individuell Människohjälp (IM), including the then ambassador, Bo Siegbahn, and consul, Arnold Hjertström, visited the ruins of Beit Awwa and the neighbouring village of Beit Marsam. They witnessed the devastation and appealed for help.

Sweden’s foreign ministry did not respond. But IM acted. With funding from the Norwegian Refugee Council and donations from the Swedish public (raising more than kr544,000 (£343,000) in July alone), IM chartered two planes from Malmö.

They delivered blankets, clothing, 100 tons of wheat flour, powdered milk, food supplies, primus stoves, and kitchen utensils — including the now-legendary Skultuna pots, a brand dating back to 1607.

The village elder, or mukhtar, oversaw the distribution, ensuring that aid was shared fairly. One of the men who proudly showed the pots to a visiting development worker decades later turned out to be the mukhtar’s grandson. IM also set up two tent camps and later sent medical supplies, prosthetics, spectacles and wheelchairs.

Cleaning up

Many years after the humanitarian intervention in 1967, Sweden returned to the Beit Awwa area to help resolve a new and complex problem. Swedish representatives were met with goodwill by the villagers, apparently based on the role Sweden had played decades earlier, even though no one was old enough to have their own clear memories of what had taken place in 1967.

During the 2010s, the Swedish consulate-general in Jerusalem identified a growing environmental crisis in the occupied Palestinian territory. In the villages near Hebron, many families had turned to informal recycling of Israeli electronic waste, a hazardous livelihood born out of economic necessity and political exclusion.

After the second intifada, when Palestinian workers were largely barred from entering Israel, some turned to old contacts among Israeli junk dealers. They began importing discarded electronics, burning them to extract copper and other metals, and selling the materials back through informal networks.

The environmental cost was devastating. Thick black smoke from burning cables choked the air and toxic runoff seeped into the soil and groundwater. The intricacies of the dangerous trade were brought to light by a group of researcher led by Yaakov Garb at Ben-Gurion University. They were able to link the burn sites to rising rates of lymphoma and other illnesses among children in the area.

In response to the crisis, researchers and villagers, supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), developed a pilot project in 2015 to transform the informal recycling into a safer, small-scale industry.

The idea was to replace open-air burning with mechanical cable grinding, decontaminate the burn sites by removing toxic soil, and register the recycling operations as formal businesses with the Palestinian Authority. Local municipalities were also tasked with forming monitoring teams to prevent illegal burning.

The pilot project was a success. A significant area was cleaned, and a volunteer force of 60 people was quickly mobilised to enforce the new regulations. On both sides of the green line, the project earned praise – from Palestinian villagers, Israeli neighbours, and local authorities alike. In the villages, it became known as “the Swedish project”.

One cable-grinding machine remains in operation today – but like many well-intentioned initiatives in Palestine, the project eventually ran into political obstacles. Sustaining the success of the pilot project required a degree of formalised collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian authorities, but agreement on the details proved impossible and the structures of occupation left little room for long-term, trust-based governance.

Events since then, including the Israeli government’s declared intention to annex the West Bank and the trauma of October 7 2023 and its violent aftermath, have made any efforts at aid requiring collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian authorities virtually impossible.

Still, Sweden’s name continues to carry weight in Beit Awwa and beyond. The memory of those aluminium pots – still gleaming after half a century of use – speaks to a legacy of solidarity that transcends politics. As a historian and a development worker, we believe this legacy deserves to be remembered, and reconsidered, in light of today’s shifting aid policies.

Perhaps one day, that legacy will form the foundation for a renewed Swedish contribution to just peace and prosperity in the region.

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

– ref. The cooking pot that became a symbol of Sweden’s commitment to helping Palestine – https://theconversation.com/the-cooking-pot-that-became-a-symbol-of-swedens-commitment-to-helping-palestine-266488

October 13, 2025

Travel between African countries is still hard: fresh ideas to get movement flowing

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Alan Hirsch, Senior Research Fellow New South Institute, Emeritus Professor at The Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, University of Cape Town

It remains too difficult for Africans to travel between African countries. Africa-wide reforms have failed. The keynote continental agreement, the African Union’s Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, adopted in 2018, still has only four country ratifications from 55 members.

A new report of the African Union bemoans the low (though slightly improved) level of human integration in Africa. It describes the main challenges as legal fragmentation, weak institutional frameworks, security concerns, and limited mutual recognition of documents and qualifications.

Nevertheless, some consolation can be drawn from the fact that African migration governance systems have been moving in the right direction.

We are migration researchers and, as we show in our recent report, there has been some progress. This is evident in improving scores in the annual African Visa Openness Index, which is published by the African Development Bank.

The visa openness index shows that for 28% of country‑to-country travel scenarios within Africa, African citizens do not need a visa to cross the border. This is an improvement from 20% in 2016.

But the pace of change is slow. Given this, and the fact that progress has been driven at bilateral and regional levels, is there still a role for continental initiatives?

Based on our research over the last decade, we argue that incremental reforms at all levels – unilateral, bilateral, regional and continental – can combine to move Africa forward towards free regular movement.

We recognise that the implementation of the African Union Protocol on Free Movement of Persons is still some way off. But there are opportunities to support its aims and intentions through incremental initiatives and reforms. This could include pilot programmes run under the auspices of the African Union and regional bodies that provide for categories of people to travel freely. These categories could include, for example, traders at borders or those with professional skills.

What’s standing in the way

There are many reasons a continental process to reform and align migration governance shouldn’t work.

Firstly, the African Union has an extraordinary number of members (55). The European Union has 27. The large number of countries makes any wholesale continental institutional intervention difficult.

Secondly, there are huge levels of inequality both within and between African countries. The richest country in Africa has an income per person on average – taking costs into account – around 53 times higher than the poorest. Large income differences between countries, sometimes coinciding with better judicial systems and social services, make it likely that, whatever the reality, vulnerable residents in the richer country are likely to fear an uncontrolled influx.

Thirdly, the level of institutional development varies hugely between countries. Population registration is very weak in many African countries. Unicef estimated that in 2022, more than half of the unregistered children in the world were African. The Lancet medical journal estimated that in 2021 only one in three deaths in Africa were registered. Systems for issuing identification documents and passports are imperfect. Confidence in other countries keeping good records of citizens and monitoring criminal and terrorist activity are key ingredients of a good migration partnership.

But Africans cannot afford to allow these and other obstacles to diminish the effort towards a fully integrated continent.

In a world of large, competing power blocs, Africa’s fragmentation puts it at a huge disadvantage. In any case, compared with much of the rest of the world, at least Africa is moving in the right direction. It is mostly opening borders, rather than closing them.

The efforts so far

African initiatives to facilitate easier border crossings have a long history.

In 1991, the Abuja Treaty committed Organisation of African Union member states to

establish a common market and gradually remove obstacles to the free movement of persons, goods, services, and capital and the right of residence and establishment.

The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights guarantees the right to free movement of persons. The Migration Policy Framework for Africa and Plan of Action (2018–2030) is a detailed plan for implementing the Free Movement of Persons Protocol.

The 2018 protocol itself explained why freer movement would be beneficial for Africa’s social and economic development. It set up a programme of three phases, from visa-free visits to (eventually) rights to settle, work and start a business.

We noted some evidence that citizens of African countries are often more open to freer movement than their governments are.

Unlike the Free Movement of Persons Protocol, the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) has been widely ratified and is in the process of implementation. It provides for specific categories of travellers to be allowed free movement in the course of service delivery.

The free movement protocol is, in practice, driven by a few busy staffers in the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, with some kind external assistance. The AfCFTA is driven by a relatively large, dedicated secretariat with wide support within and beyond Africa.

A more practical way forward

One of the conclusions we have drawn from our research is that a varied approach might work better.

For example, migration expert Amanda Bisong has pointed out that the AfCFTA services protocol makes provision for the visa-free movement of certain categories of professional and business persons. If implemented, this would be a significant continental step towards broader reforms.

We noted previously that such “neo-liberal” or “elitist” reforms could pave the way to broader multilateral reforms, as was the case in South America. The term “neo-liberal migration reform” was coined in South America to refer to visa-free travel for elites, but not for lower-skilled people.

Secondly, informal cross-border traders could be included into the ambit of formality within a specific agreement. Or as an extension of the services protocol of the free trade agreement.

Thirdly, such initiatives could be initiated as pilot programmes under the auspices of the AU and some regional blocs. Their purpose would be to support the free trade agreement services protocol commitment and to formalise informal traders.

Such pilot programmes could include:

the implementation of regional agreements on mutual recognition of skills
special economic zones with freer movement provisions, or
harmonised visa policies for specific categories of persons.

If successful, these models could be scaled up to encourage broader adoption of the AU Free Movement of Persons Protocol.

Countries with weaker institutional capacities should not be left behind in integrating mobility into the implementation of the free trade agreement. Capacity-building programmes, including financial and technical assistance, should be provided to states that struggle with border management, migration governance or digital infrastructure.

We also noted that continental and regional forums to exchange views and experiences in migration policy and practice are important. We recommend more frequent and more focused forums to monitor the implementation of migration reform policies and discuss the systematic deepening of reforms.

Alan Hirsch is a Senior Research fellow at the New South Institute which funded the research on which this article is based.

Victor Amadi is an Affiliate Researcher at the New South Institute, which funded the research on which this article is based.

– ref. Travel between African countries is still hard: fresh ideas to get movement flowing – https://theconversation.com/travel-between-african-countries-is-still-hard-fresh-ideas-to-get-movement-flowing-266837

October 13, 2025

Why industry-standard labels for AI in music could change how we listen

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Gordon A. Gow, Director, Media & Technology Studies, University of Alberta

Earlier this year, a band called The Velvet Sundown racked up hundreds of thousands of streams on Spotify with retro-pop tracks, generating a million monthly listeners on Spotify.

But the band wasn’t real. Every song, image, and even its back story, had been generated by someone using generative AI.

For some, it was a clever experiment. For others, it revealed a troubling lack of transparency in music creation, even though the band’s Spotify descriptor was later updated to acknowledge it is composed with AI.

In September 2025, Spotify announced it is “helping develop and will support the new industry standard for AI disclosures in music credits developed through DDEX.” DDEX is a not-for-profit membership organization focused on the creation of digital music value chain standards.

The company also says it’s focusing work on improved enforcement of impersonation violations and a new spam-filtering system, and that updates are “the latest in a series of changes we’re making to support a more trustworthy music ecosystem for artists, for rights-holders and for listeners.”

As AI becomes more embedded in music creation, the challenge is balancing its legitimate creative use with the ethical and economic pressures it introduces. Disclosure is essential not just for accountability, but to give listeners transparent and user-friendly choices in the artists they support.

A patchwork of policies

The music industry’s response to AI has so far been a mix of ad hoc enforcement as platforms grapple with how to manage emerging uses and expectations of AI in music.

Apple Music took aim at impersonation when it pulled the viral track “Heart on My Sleeve” featuring AI-cloned vocals of Drake and The Weeknd. The removal was prompted by a copyright complaint reflecting concerns over misuse of artists’ likeness and voice.

CBC News covers AI-generated band The Velvet Sundown.

The indie-facing song promotion platform SubmitHub has introduced measures to combate AI-generated spam. Artists must declare if AI played “a major role” in a track. The platform also has an “AI Song Checker” so playlist curators can scan files to detect AI use.

Spotify’s announcement adds another dimension to these efforts. By focusing on disclosure, it recognizes that artists use AI in many different ways across music creation and production. Rather than banning these practices, it opens the door to an AI labelling system that makes them more transparent.

Labelling creative content

Content labelling has long been used to help audiences make informed choices about their media consumption. Movies, TV and music come with parental advisories, for example.

Digital music files also include embedded information tags called metadata, which include details like genre, tempo and contributing artists that platforms use to categorize songs, calculate royalty payments and to suggest new songs to listeners.

Canada has relied on labelling for decades to strengthen its domestic music industry. The MAPL system requires radio stations to play a minimum percentage of Canadian music, using a set of criteria to determine whether a song qualifies as Canadian content based on music, artist, production and lyrics.

As more algorithmically generated AI music appears on streaming platforms, an AI disclosure label would give listeners a way to discover music that matches their preferences, whether they’re curious about AI collaboration or drawn to more traditional human-crafted approaches.

What could AI music labels address?

A disclosure standard will make AI music labelling possible. The next step is cultural: deciding how much information should be shared with listeners, and in what form.

According to Spotify, artists and rights-holders will be asked to specify where and how AI contributed to a track. For example, whether it was used for vocals, instrumentation or post-production work such as mixing or mastering.

For artists, these details better reflect how AI tools fit into a long tradition of creative use of new technologies. After all, the synthesizer, drum machines and samplers — even the electric guitar — were all once controversial.

But AI disclosure shouldn’t give streaming platforms a free pass to flood catalogues with algorithmically generated content. The point should also be to provide information to listeners to help them make more informed choices about what kind of music they want to support.

Information about AI use should be easy to see and quickly find. But on Spotify’s Velvet Sundown profile, for example, this is dubious: listeners have to dig down to actually read the band’s descriptor.

AI and creative tensions in music

AI in music raises pressing issues, including around labour and compensation, industry power dynamics, as well as licensing and rights.

One study commissioned by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers has said that Gen AI outputs could put 24 per cent of music creators’ revenues at risk by 2028, at a time when many musician careers are already vulnerable to high costs of living and an unpredictable and unstable streaming music economy.

The most popular AI music platforms are controlled by major tech companies. Will AI further concentrate creative power, or are there tools that might cut production costs and become widely used by independent artists? Will artists be compensated if their labels are involved in deals for artists’ music to train AI platforms?

The cultural perception around musicians having their music train AI platforms or in using AI tools in music production is also a site of creative tension.

Enabling listener choice

Turning a disclosure standard into something visible — such as an intuitive label or icon that allows users to go deeper to show how AI was used — would let listeners see at a glance how human and algorithmic contributions combine in a track.

Embedded in the digital song file, it could also help fans and arts organizations discover and support music based on the kind of creativity behind it.

Ultimately, it’s about giving listeners a choice. A clear, well-designed labelling system could help audiences understand the many ways AI now shapes music, from subtle production tools to fully synthetic vocals.

Need for transparency

As influence of AI in music creation continues to expand, listeners deserve to know how the sounds they love are made — and artists deserve the chance to explain it.

Easy-to-understand AI music labels would turn disclosure into something beyond compliance: it might also invite listeners to think more deeply about the creative process behind the music they love.

Gordon A. Gow receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Brian Fauteux 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. Why industry-standard labels for AI in music could change how we listen – https://theconversation.com/why-industry-standard-labels-for-ai-in-music-could-change-how-we-listen-262840

October 13, 2025

In Guillermo Del Toro’s ‘Frankenstein,’ what makes us monstrous is refusing to care

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Billie Anderson, Lecturer, Disability Studies, King’s University College, Western University

In Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, the true horror lies in scientist Victor Frankenstein’s hubris and refusal to care for The Creature he creates.

Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein gave The Creature an eloquent voice — but cinema has often silenced him, rendering him mute, groaning and monstrous in both appearance and behaviour.

Del Toro’s Frankenstein, which arrives in select theatres and on Netflix this fall, presents a Creature who thinks, feels, suffers and demands recognition.

The film, which I saw recently at its Toronto International Film Festival screening, restores to The Creature not only speech, but also, as some reviewers have noted, subjectivity.

Del Toro’s Frankenstein offers audiences a chance to reconsider how we regard “the monster,” not just in horror cinema, but in stories that reflect attitudes about difference — especially difference in embodiment.

Depictions of bodily difference

The tendency for film to punish difference has long persisted. From the silent era onward, films have used bodily difference as shorthand for inner corruption: the scarred face, the twisted body, the corrupt mind.

Disability studies scholar Angela Smith argues that the horror genre’s visual and narrative conventions were shaped by eugenic beliefs about bodily wholeness.

Another disability studies scholar, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson has noted that disabled figures are often trapped as spectacles: seen but not heard, as well as pitied or feared.

By giving The Creature an interior life, del Toro insists on humanity where cinema once imposed monstrosity.

Shift is more than aesthetic

The shift matters for how popular culture links monstrosity and disability. For nearly a century, films like the 1931 Frankenstein, directed by James Whale, encoded the monster as “deformed,” “broken,” or pathologically violent.

A colour film poster says 'Frankenstein,' and 'the man who made a monster' and shows a creature with green skin, two men in discussion and a woman in a long white dress. — Poster for the 1931 ‘Frankenstein’ directed by James Whale.
(Universal Pictures/Wikipedia)

Whale’s Frankenstein is a landmark of horror cinema, but it also cemented some of the most troubling tropes about disability on screen.

The Creature (played by Boris Karloff) was made grotesque through design choices: a flat head, sunken eyes, heavy gait. These features mark him as visibly other, a body built for the audience to recoil from.

The film doubles down with plot devices: instead of receiving a “normal” brain, the monster is mistakenly given a “criminal brain.” Violence, the story suggests, is not the result of isolation or trauma but the natural consequence of defective biology. The message is clear: difference equals danger.

Difference as innate fault

From a disability studies perspective, this is called pathologization — the act of treating difference as if it were a medical defect that explains everything about a person. Whale’s Creature’s strangeness is presented as something built into his body. His scars, his staggered walk, his inability to communicate in words — all of these are framed as signs of an innate fault.

This is what theorists mean when they talk about “otherness.” Otherness refers to the way societies define who counts as normal, human or acceptable by pushing certain groups outside those boundaries. The Creature’s stitched, scarred body signals that he is not simply different but a threatening body to fear and control.

Over time, these representations cemented a cultural shorthand: to be visibly different, to bear scars, to move awkwardly or speak strangely, was to embody danger. The monster on screen taught viewers to associate disability with deviance and fear.

Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailer for the 1931 ‘Frankenstein.’

Looking ‘wrong’ and being ‘dangerous’

The story tells us if someone looks or moves “wrong,” then violence or danger must be lurking inside them.

That way of thinking didn’t come out of nowhere. It echoes early 20th-century ideas of eugenics, which tried to link disability and criminality. When you watch Whale’s Frankenstein through this lens, The Creature is a cautionary tale about why difference itself must be feared, controlled or even eliminated.

Mary Shelley’s original 1818 novel tells a much more complicated story. Her Creature is eloquent, self-aware and painfully conscious of how he is rejected by every human being he meets.

As noted by literary critic Harold Bloom, Shelley’s narrative insists humans “can live only through communion with others; solitude, for her, represents death.” Shelley shows us the social roots of monstrosity: rejection and isolation, not biological fate.

But the 1931 film stripped that complexity away. Over time, audiences learned to read disability-coded traits — a limp, a scarred face, halting speech — as cinematic signs of danger.

Trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Frankenstein.’

A Creature with soul

Del Toro’s narrative follows Shelley more closely than the 1931 film. The Creature learns to speak, contemplates justice and articulates the pain of being abandoned. His violence, when it occurs, is not framed as the inevitable product of a defective brain but as the consequence of rejection, loneliness and abuse.

Del Toro’s version feels like a correction. Rather than leaning into horror, the film prioritizes tenderness, existentialism, love and understanding.

The design of The Creature reflects a shift in perspective. While his stitched body is unmistakably scarred, the makeup emphasizes vulnerability as much as grotesquerie. The Creature is unsettling because he is both human and not — beautiful, wounded and deeply present. The stitching and scars become traces of experience, history and survival.

From monstrosity to humanity

Movingly, the question becomes not “what is wrong with him?” but “why does society fail him?” This reorientation:

Rejects the idea of defect as destiny. The Creature’s tragedy comes from rejection, not innate flaw.
Restores voice and agency. In del Toro’s hands, The Creature is eloquent, thoughtful and capable of moral reasoning. That matters for audiences used to seeing disability-coded figures as voiceless.
Shifts monstrosity onto society. The true horror is Victor Frankenstein’s hubris and refusal to care for what he made. The violence arises from abandonment, not deformity.

This is a disability-affirming move. Rather than imagining disability as pathology, or the monster as metaphor for disability, the film asks audiences to look at the structures of exclusion. Representations shape perception. If difference is always framed as frightening or tragic, those ideas seep into how we treat real people.

The Creature becomes legible as disabled because he shows us what it is like to live in a body that others cannot accept. His tragedy mirrors the lived reality of many disabled people: not inherent brokenness, but the pain of exclusion.

Monsters, disability and empathy

Frankenstein stories endure because they dramatize the question: What do we owe each other?

Whale’s 1931 version presented the monster as proof that boundaries must be enforced because the abnormal body is a threat.

Del Toro answers differently. His Creature reveals that what makes us monstrous is not our difference but our refusal to accept others as fully human. We are asked to fear the consequences of our own failure to care.

Billie Anderson 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. In Guillermo Del Toro’s ‘Frankenstein,’ what makes us monstrous is refusing to care – https://theconversation.com/in-guillermo-del-toros-frankenstein-what-makes-us-monstrous-is-refusing-to-care-265829

October 13, 2025

Why Russia’s provocations in Europe actually signal a weakened strategic position

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By James Horncastle, Assistant Professor and Edward and Emily McWhinney Professor in International Relations, Simon Fraser University

There’s recently been a significant uptick in Russian incursions into Europe. They started in mid-September with Russian drones violating Polish airspace, resulting in Poland being forced to deploy its air force to protect its sovereignty.

Subsequently, a Russian drone violated Romanian airspace. Perhaps most disconcerting, three Russian MiG-31s deliberately violated Estonian airspace in a clearly provocative act.

But these known Russian incursions are being overtaken by a troubling phenomenon. Airports in Europe, including but not limited to Copenhagen and Munich, have seen their operations disrupted by unknown drones.

Analysts increasingly believe these mysterious drones are operated by Russian agents to sow fear and tension in Europe. Whether that’s true remains to be seen.

Russian offensive weakening

While these incidents may appear designed to escalate the conflict by threatening to draw the European Union and NATO into the conflict, they instead reflect Russian strategic weakness as winter approaches.

Throughout 2025, Russia had several advantages over Ukraine. Russian superiority in arms production and mobilization, supplemented by direct and indirect aid from states like North Korea and China put it in a favourable strategic position compared to Ukraine.

Russia has hit Ukraine on multiple fronts.

While Russian frontline forces advance against Ukrainian positions, Russia increased the tempo and volume of its drone and missile strikes against Ukrainian cities. Nonetheless, even though Russian drones and missiles have inflicted considerable destruction and casualties on Ukraine in 2025, Ukrainians have yet to lose their will to resist.

Russian forces took advantage of this strategic imbalance against Ukraine to seize Ukrainian territory. Critically, however, while Russian forces have made gains, they have not achieved a decisive breakthrough against Ukraine. Russia’s minimal gains in September, furthermore, indicate that its offensive is stalling.

The fall weather and resulting cold and rain will further stall Russian offensive operations in Ukraine. The year 2025, initially looking like it would favour Russia, has resulted in Putin having little to show for it.

What’s more, Ukraine has not been passive during this period.

Exploiting Russian vulnerabilities

From a numbers and material standpoint, Ukraine is at a considerable disadvantage against Russia. But Putin’s government has two interrelated points that Ukraine seeks to undermine: domestic support for Putin and the Russian economy.

The extent of domestic support for Putin is a subject of debate among scholars and analysts. But Putin’s actions suggest he’s nervous enough about it that he’s seeking to insulate his support base against the effects of the war. To do so, he’s maintaining the illusion of a strong Russian economy.

But Elvira Nabiullina, Russia’s central bank governor, has warned the Russian economy is in trouble. Putin has ignored her warnings and has instead offered pithy retorts to criticisms of the Russian economy.

Despite Putin’s nonchalant reaction to the weakness of the Russian economy, Ukraine recognizes the fragility of his stance. In fact, Ukraine is now repeatedly striking the resource at the heart of Russia’s precarious prosperity: oil.

Oil and natural gas account for at least 30 per cent of the federal Russian budget. Ukrainian innovations in drone and missile technology has allowed Ukraine to repeatedly strike Russian oil and natural gas refining and logistical facilities.

This has resulted in Russia declaring a full moratorium on gasoline exports for the rest of the year. Furthermore, Russia was recently forced to partially extend an export ban to diesel as well.

Fuel shortages will only become more pronounced as energy demands increase over the cold Russian winter. Putin’s base, in short, could finally be forced to confront the consequences of his policies.

Escalate to de-escalate

Russian strategic failures in 2025, along with increased Ukrainian pressure, help explain Russia’s subversive efforts in Europe.

A misunderstood element of Russian strategic doctrine is the concept of escalating to de-escalate. Although this tactic is most commonly applied to nuclear strategy, it applies to all aspects of Russia’s strategic doctrine.

Russian politicians and generals are calculating that Europe is simultaneously unprepared and unwilling to wage war against Russia. Furthermore, Russian leaders are relying on the belief that European leaders, despite their rhetoric, will do whatever possible to eliminate the root cause of Russia’s recent incursions into European airspace: the Russia-Ukraine war.

Putin, after seemingly pushing Europeans to the brink of war, will likely pivot to a policy that encourages a diplomatic solution to Ukraine. Putin has followed a similar strategy of appearing to be more diplomatically inclined in the winters of 2024 and early 2025. World leaders, desperate for the war to end, have treated such proposals more seriously than warranted.

Russian drones and missiles may have proven devastating for Ukraine, but they haven’t altered the strategic balance.

Ukraine’s strikes, on the other hand, appear to be bearing strategic fruit at a critical moment of Russian vulnerability, forcing Putin to use unconventional means to try to secure victory against Ukraine.

James Horncastle 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. Why Russia’s provocations in Europe actually signal a weakened strategic position – https://theconversation.com/why-russias-provocations-in-europe-actually-signal-a-weakened-strategic-position-266883

October 13, 2025

The disasters we talk about shape our priorities and determine our preparedness

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Fatma Ozdogan, PhD Candidate & Researcher, Université de Montréal

In December 1989, the United Nations declared Oct. 13 International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction. At the time, the aim was to make disaster-risk reduction part of everyday thinking worldwide.

Today, this mission is more urgent than ever as disasters strike more often and with greater force.

And although substantial progress has been made, there is still much to achieve in reducing disaster risks and their impacts.

One of the main culprits for overlooking certain disasters is the way we talk about them. We tend to focus more on the narratives surrounding rapid-onset events — wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes — versus long-term crises like climate change.

Punishment from the gods

Historically, people saw disasters as unpredictable forces beyond human control.

Earthquakes, floods and famines were often explained as punishment from the gods. Communities believed these events reflected moral failings or divine judgment, rooted in cultural and religious traditions.

For instance, the Epic of Gilgamesh tells of a great flood sent to cleanse humanity of its sins. Early Islamic traditions interpreted disasters as tests of faith or signs of divine displeasure, with references in the Qur’an. Other major religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism have similar divine-based interpretations.

The Lisbon earthquake of 1755, however, marked a turning point, prompting a shift towards human-centred explanations of disasters.

Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, Rousseau and Kant challenged purely religious interpretations, advocating rational and scientific reasoning and a better understanding of nature, ushering in a new view of disasters as acts of nature.

Disasters as human-induced

This intellectual shift marked the beginning of a more secular and scientific understanding of disasters. It suggested that disasters could be studied, anticipated and potentially prevented through human action.

Building on this foundation, the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century introduced new risks associated directly with human activities, such as factory accidents and railway crashes. By statistically analyzing these incidents, experts identified predictable patterns, prompting the creation of specialized institutions to manage and mitigate these emerging hazards.

As the understanding of human influence on disasters evolved further in the early 20th century, scholars began exploring how social behaviours, industrial practices and preparedness levels shaped disaster outcomes.

This expanded perspective underscored the crucial role of societal structures and human decisions, demonstrating that disasters were not just natural events but deeply intertwined with human factors. Although religious interpretations still exist in some communities, the consensus has shifted toward viewing disasters as human-induced.

By the 1960s, research turned to the social, political and economic roots of disasters. Scholars showed that poverty, weak governance, poor infrastructure and inequality made communities far more vulnerable.

As a result, attention shifted from reacting after disasters to tackling their root causes in advance. This regarded disasters as acts of social systems and structures.

Politics and equity meet

More recently, vulnerability and resilience have become core concepts in disaster management practice and policy-making.

International frameworks such as the Hyogo Framework (2005–2015) and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–2030) reflect this shift. These frameworks define disasters as a global issue requiring international collaboration, systematic risk management and proactive strategies.

Today, scholars widely recognize disasters not as purely natural events but as results of human actions, including negligence, poor planning and inadequate governance.

Defining what exactly constitutes a disaster, however, remains contested: Who decides what qualifies as a disaster, and according to which criteria? Which ones are more important and deserve more attention?

This distinction is especially clear in media and political discussions, which tend to highlight rapid-onset events like earthquakes, floods or hurricanes. In contrast, slower, long-term crises related to climate change or environmental degradation often receive far less attention

What media coverage misses

Our understanding and management of disasters is biased.

A recent analysis of Canadian media highlights a significant imbalance in the attention given to sudden and slow-onset disasters.

Sudden disasters like wildfires consistently receive far greater media coverage in comparison to slower-developing events like droughts or environmental degradation.

For example, CBC devoted up to eight hours in a single day to covering the immediate aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. In contrast, the 2011 Horn of Africa drought typically received less than two minutes of daily coverage. Yet the cumulative impacts of these slow-onset crises are substantial, often surpassing the effects of rapid-onset disasters.

According to a report by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, although droughts accounted for only 15 per cent of natural hazard-induced disasters from 1970 to 2019, they exacted the highest human toll, causing approximately 650,000 deaths globally.

During this period, weather-, climate- and water-related hazards comprised half of all disasters and 45 per cent of disaster-related deaths, disproportionately affecting developing countries. Additionally, between 1998 and 2017 alone, droughts led to economic losses roughly US$124 billion.

The World Bank further underscores this critical issue, estimating that climate-related, slow-onset disasters could displace about 216 million people globally by 2050. Such displacement carries extensive humanitarian and geopolitical consequences.

Recent events highlight the serious consequences of slow-onset disasters. Global soil degradation, for example, currently affects nearly 3.2 billion people. Between 2015 and 2019, 100 million hectares of land were lost each year, cutting food production and worsening hunger.

Rising sea levels threaten nearly 900 million people globally in low-lying coastal areas. Flooding, saltwater intrusion and soil salinization are damaging homes, farmland and public health.

Building a better future

Addressing what we pay attention to requires a fundamental shift in approaches to disasters.

This involves critically recognizing human accountability in exacerbating hazards and scrutinizing structural vulnerabilities — poverty, inadequate infrastructure, ineffective governance — which increase disaster impacts.

As a society, we need to re-evaluate our priorities and adopt a holistic perspective that equally acknowledges all disaster forms.

With sustained investment in prevention, stronger infrastructure and greater social equity, communities in Canada and around the world can strengthen their capacity to face the future.

– ref. The disasters we talk about shape our priorities and determine our preparedness – https://theconversation.com/the-disasters-we-talk-about-shape-our-priorities-and-determine-our-preparedness-266200

October 13, 2025

Climate tipping points sound scary, especially for ice sheets and oceans – here’s why there’s still room for optimism

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Alexandra A Phillips, Assistant Teaching Professor in Environmental Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara

Meltwater runs across the Greenland ice sheet in rivers. The ice sheet is already losing mass and could soon reach a tipping point. Maria-José Viñas/NASA

As the planet warms, it risks crossing catastrophic tipping points: thresholds where Earth systems, such as ice sheets and rain forests, change irreversibly over human lifetimes.

Scientists have long warned that if global temperatures warmed more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) compared with before the Industrial Revolution, and stayed high, they would increase the risk of passing multiple tipping points. For each of these elements, like the Amazon rain forest or the Greenland ice sheet, hotter temperatures lead to melting ice or drier forests that leave the system more vulnerable to further changes.

Worse, these systems can interact. Freshwater melting from the Greenland ice sheet can weaken ocean currents in the North Atlantic, disrupting air and ocean temperature patterns and marine food chains.

World map showing locations for potential tipping points. — Pink circles show the systems closest to tipping points. Some would have regional effects, such as loss of coral reefs. Others are global, such as the beginning of the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet.
Global Tipping Points Report, CC BY-ND

With these warnings in mind, 194 countries a decade ago set 1.5 C as a goal they would try not to cross. Yet in 2024, the planet temporarily breached that threshold.

The term “tipping point” is often used to illustrate these problems, but apocalyptic messages can leave people feeling helpless, wondering if it’s pointless to slam the brakes. As a geoscientist who has studied the ocean and climate for over a decade and recently spent a year on Capitol Hill working on bipartisan climate policy, I still see room for optimism.

It helps to understand what a tipping point is – and what’s known about when each might be reached.

Tipping points are not precise

A tipping point is a metaphor for runaway change. Small changes can push a system out of balance. Once past a threshold, the changes reinforce themselves, amplifying until the system transforms into something new.

Almost as soon as “tipping points” entered the climate science lexicon — following Malcolm Gladwell’s 2000 book, “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” — scientists warned the public not to confuse global warming policy benchmarks with precise thresholds.

A tall glacier front seen from above shows huge chunks of ice calving off into Disko Bay. — The Greenland ice sheet, which is 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) thick at its thickest point, has been losing mass for several years as temperatures rise and more of its ice is lost to the ocean. A tipping point would mean runaway ice loss, with the potential to eventually raise sea level 24 feet (7.4 meters) and shut down a crucial ocean circulation.
Sean Gallup/Getty Images

The scientific reality of tipping points is more complicated than crossing a temperature line. Instead, different elements in the climate system have risks of tipping that increase with each fraction of a degree of warming.

For example, the beginning of a slow collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, which could raise global sea level by about 24 feet (7.4 meters), is one of the most likely tipping elements in a world more than 1.5 C warmer than preindustrial times. Some models place the critical threshold at 1.6 C (2.9 F). More recent simulations estimate runaway conditions at 2.7 C (4.9 F) of warming. Both simulations consider when summer melt will outpace winter snow, but predicting the future is not an exact science.

Bars with gradients show the rising risk as temperatures rise that key systems, including Greenland ice sheet and Amazon rain forest, will reach tipping points. — Gradients show science-based estimates from the Global Tipping Points Report of when key global or regional climate tipping points are increasingly likely to be reached. Every fraction of a degree increases the likeliness, reflected in the warming color.
Global Tipping Points Report 2025, CC BY-ND

Forecasts like these are generated using powerful climate models that simulate how air, oceans, land and ice interact. These virtual laboratories allow scientists to run experiments, increasing the temperature bit by bit to see when each element might tip.

Climate scientist Timothy Lenton first identified climate tipping points in 2008. In 2022, he and his team revisited temperature collapse ranges, integrating over a decade of additional data and more sophisticated computer models.

Their nine core tipping elements include large-scale components of Earth’s climate, such as ice sheets, rain forests and ocean currents. They also simulated thresholds for smaller tipping elements that pack a large punch, including die-offs of coral reefs and widespread thawing of permafrost.

A few fish swim among branches of a white coral skeleton during a bleaching event. — The world may have already passed one tipping point, according to the 2025 Global Tipping Points Report: Corals reefs are dying as marine temperatures rise. Healthy reefs are essential fish nurseries and habitat and also help protect coastlines from storm erosion. Once they die, their structures begin to disintegrate.
Vardhan Patankar/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Some tipping elements, such as the East Antarctic ice sheet, aren’t in immediate danger. The ice sheet’s stability is due to its massive size – nearly six times that of the Greenland ice sheet – making it much harder to push out of equilibrium. Model results vary, but they generally place its tipping threshold between 5 C (9 F) and 10 C (18 F) of warming.

Other elements, however, are closer to the edge.

Alarm bells sounding in forests and oceans

In the Amazon, self-perpetuating feedback loops threaten the stability of the Earth’s largest rain forest, an ecosystem that influences global climate. As temperatures rise, drought and wildfire activity increase, killing trees and releasing more carbon into the atmosphere, which in turn makes the forest hotter and drier still.

By 2050, scientists warn, nearly half of the Amazon rain forest could face multiple stressors. That pressure may trigger a tipping point with mass tree die-offs. The once-damp rainforest canopy could shift to a dry savanna for at least several centuries.

Rising temperatures also threaten biodiversity underwater.

The second Global Tipping Points Report, released Oct. 12, 2025, by a team of 160 scientists including Lenton, suggests tropical reefs may have passed a tipping point that will wipe out all but isolated patches.

Coral loss on the Great Barrier Reef. Australian Institute of Marine Science.

Corals rely on algae called zooxanthellae to thrive. Under heat stress, the algae leave their coral homes, draining reefs of nutrition and color. These mass bleaching events can kill corals, stripping the ecosystem of vital biodiversity that millions of people rely on for food and tourism.

Low-latitude reefs have the highest risk of tipping, with the upper threshold at just 1.5 C, the report found. Above this amount of warming, there is a 99% chance that these coral reefs tip past their breaking point.

Similar alarms are ringing for ocean currents, where freshwater ice melt is slowing down a major marine highway that circulates heat, known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC.

Two illustrations show how the AMOC looks today and its expected weaker state in the future — How the Atlantic Ocean circulation would change as it slows.
IPCC 6th Assessment Report

The AMOC carries warm water northward from the tropics. In the North Atlantic, as sea ice forms, the surface gets colder and saltier, and this dense water sinks. The sinking action drives the return flow of cold, salty water southward, completing the circulation’s loop. But melting land ice from Greenland threatens the density-driven motor of this ocean conveyor belt by dilution: Fresher water doesn’t sink as easily.

A weaker current could create a feedback loop, slowing the circulation further and leading to a shutdown within a century once it begins, according to one estimate. Like a domino, the climate changes that would accompany an AMOC collapse could worsen drought in the Amazon and accelerate ice loss in the Antarctic.

There is still room for hope

Not all scientists agree that an AMOC collapse is close. For the Amazon rain forest and the North Atlantic, some cite a lack of evidence to declare the forest is collapsing or currents are weakening.

In the Amazon, researchers have questioned whether modeled vegetation data that underpins tipping point concerns is accurate. In the North Atlantic, there are similar concerns about data showing a long-term trend.

A map of the Amazon shows large areas along its edges and rivers in particular losing tree cover — The Amazon forest has been losing tree cover to logging, farming, ranching, wildfires and a changing climate. Pink shows areas with greater than 75% tree canopy loss from 2001 to 2024. Blue is tree cover gain from 2000 to 2020.
Global Forest Watch, CC BY

Climate models that predict collapses are also less accurate when forecasting interactions between multiple tipping points. Some interactions can push systems out of balance, while others pull an ecosystem closer to equilibrium.

Other changes driven by rising global temperatures, like melting permafrost, likely don’t meet the criteria for tipping points because they aren’t self-sustaining. Permafrost could refreeze if temperatures drop again.

Risks are too high to ignore

Despite the uncertainty, tipping points are too risky to ignore. Rising temperatures put people and economies around the world at greater risk of dangerous conditions.

But there is still room for preventive actions – every fraction of a degree in warming that humans prevent reduces the risk of runaway climate conditions. For example, a full reversal of coral bleaching may no longer be possible, but reducing emissions and pollution can allow reefs that still support life to survive.

Tipping points highlight the stakes, but they also underscore the climate choices humanity can still make to stop the damage.

Alexandra A Phillips 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. Climate tipping points sound scary, especially for ice sheets and oceans – here’s why there’s still room for optimism – https://theconversation.com/climate-tipping-points-sound-scary-especially-for-ice-sheets-and-oceans-heres-why-theres-still-room-for-optimism-265183

October 13, 2025

Unusual red rocks in Australia are rewriting the rules on exceptional fossil sites

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Tara Djokic, Scientific Officer, Palaeontology, Australian Museum; UNSW Sydney

Fossilised fish from McGraths Flat. Salty Dingo

Hidden beneath farmland in the central tablelands of New South Wales lies one of Australia’s most extraordinary fossil sites – McGraths Flat. It dates back between 11 million and 16 million years into the Miocene epoch, a time when many of today’s familiar plants and animals evolved.

It is here that palaentologists and geologists from the Australian Museum Research Institute have made remarkable fossil discoveries. Where dust and drought now dominate, a lush rainforest once flourished. In stunning ecological detail, fossils at McGraths Flat reveal this ancient ecosystem.

Strikingly red in appearance, the sedimentary rocks here are composed entirely of goethite – a fine-grained mineral that contains iron. This iron has preserved a range of plants, insects, spiders, fish and feathers with exceptional detail.

Our new study, published in the journal Gondwana Research, shows there’s another reason these rocks are so intriguing. They fundamentally challenge ideas about where well-preserved fossil sites on Earth can be found, and why.

Large trapdoor spider fossil preserved on a red rock — A large trapdoor spider preserved in McGraths Flat.
Michael Frese

Beyond shale and sandstone

Traditionally, the most exceptionally well-preserved fossil sites are from rocks dominated by shale, sandstone, limestone, or volcanic ash.

Consider Germany’s Messel Pit or Canada’s Burgess Shale. At these sites, organisms were rapidly buried in fine-grained sediments, allowing the exceptional preservation of soft tissues, not just hard parts.

Messel Pit has preserved roughly 47 million-year-old fossils showing the outlines of feathers, fur and skin. Meanwhile, the Burgess Shale contains soft tissues from some of Earth’s earliest animal life, dating back about 500 million years.

By contrast, sedimentary rocks made entirely of iron are the last place you’d expect to find well-preserved remains of land-based (terrestrial) animal and plant life.

That’s because iron-rich sedimentary rocks are predominantly known from banded iron formations. These massive iron deposits largely formed around 2.5 billion years ago in Earth’s ancient oxygen-depleted oceans, long before complex animal and plant life evolved.

In more recent history, iron is considered a mere weathering product, forming rust on the continents when exposed to our oxygen-rich atmosphere. Just look at Australia’s iconic red-rocked outback landscape that preserves these million- to billion-year-old features.

Yet the discovery of McGraths Flat has defied these expectations.

Large rectangular block of red rock composed of goethite, an iron-rich mineral. — Strikingly red fossil-bearing rocks of McGraths Flat, composed of an iron-oxyhydroxide mineral called goethite.
Tara Djokic

Terrestrial life entombed in iron

McGraths Flat is made from a very fine-grained, iron-rich rock called ferricrete. It’s essentially a cement made from iron.

The ferricrete consists almost entirely of microscopic iron-oxyhydroxide mineral particles, each just 0.005 millimetres across. When an animal died and was buried in the sediment, this minute scale is what allowed the iron particles to fill every cell. The result? Extraordinarily well-preserved soft tissue fossils.

Compared with marine life, fossil sites preserving terrestrial life are notoriously rare. Terrestrial sites that preserve soft tissues? Even rarer. The exceptional detail captured in the McGraths Flat fossils reveals new snapshots of past life we don’t often get to find.

These fossils are so perfectly preserved that individual pigment cells in fish eyes, internal organs of insects and fish, and even delicate spider hairs and nerve cells can be seen.

This level of preservation rivals other well-preserved fossil sites, such as those consisting of shale or sandstone. Except here, they are entombed in iron.

Three people, two men standing on either side of one woman, in a rural field wearing outdoor gear with work boots and wide brimmed hats. — Australian Museum Research Institute researchers Matthew McCurry, Tara Djokic and Patrick Smith (left to right), three of 15 co-authors who collaborated on this study published in Gondwana Research.
Salty Dingo

How did McGraths Flat form?

Our new study sheds light on how this fossil site came to be – a crucial step for finding similar terrestrial fossil troves in iron.

McGraths Flat began forming during the Miocene when iron leached from weathering basalt under warm, wet rainforest conditions.

Acidic groundwater then carried the dissolved iron underground until it reached a river system with an oxbow lake – an abandoned river channel. There, the iron became ultra-fine iron-oxyhydroxide sediment.

It rapidly coated dead organisms on the lake floor and replicated their soft tissue structures down to the cellular level.

A new fossil roadmap

Understanding how McGraths Flat formed could provide a roadmap for finding similar iron-rich fossil sites worldwide.

Key features to look for include very fine-grained and finely layered ferricrete in areas where:

ancient river channels cut through older iron-rich landscapes, such as basaltic rocks from volcanoes
ancient warm, humid conditions once promoted intense weathering, and
the surrounding geology lacks significant limestone or sulphur-containing minerals (such as pyrite), because these could interfere with the formation of the iron-oxyhydroxide mineral sediments.

The red rocks of McGraths Flat open an entirely new chapter in our understanding of how exceptionally well-preserved fossil sites can form.

The next breakthrough in understanding ancient terrestrial life might not come from traditional shale or sandstone fossil beds, but from rusty-red rocks hidden beneath our feet.

Four people kneeling on the ground over red rocks, with hammer and chisels spitting the rocks apart to search for fossils. — Palaeontologists from the Australian Museum Research institute at the McGraths Flat field site, splitting the red rocks apart with a hammer and chisel to search for fossils.
Tara Djokic

The study’s authors acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land and waterways on which McGraths Flat is located, the Wiradjuri Nation people.

Tara Djokic and co-authors received funding for this research from the Etheridge family descendants; Australian Museum Research Institute, Australian Museum Trust; and Australian Research Council (ARC). We acknowledge the scientific and technical assistance of Microscopy Australia, especially from the Centre for Advanced Microscopy, ANU (jointly funded by the ANU and the Australian Federal Government).
Tara is affiliated with the not-for-profit organisation Women in Earth and Environmental Sciences Australasia (WOMEESA).

– ref. Unusual red rocks in Australia are rewriting the rules on exceptional fossil sites – https://theconversation.com/unusual-red-rocks-in-australia-are-rewriting-the-rules-on-exceptional-fossil-sites-266904

October 13, 2025

Will Trump’s ceasefire plan really lead to lasting peace in the Middle East? There’s still a long way to go

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Andrew Thomas, Lecturer in Middle East Studies, Deakin University

The first steps of the peace plan for Gaza are underway. Now both parties have agreed to terms, Hamas is obligated to release all hostages within 72 hours and the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) will withdraw to an agreed-upon line within the strip.

Hopes are high, particularly on the ground in Gaza and in Israel after two years of brutal conflict. Some argue the parties are now closer than ever to an end to hostilities, and US President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan may be an effective road-map.

But the truth is we have been here before. Hamas and Israel have now agreed to a road-map to peace in principle, but what is in place today is very similar to ceasefire deals in the past, and a ceasefire is not the same as a peace deal or an armistice.

The plan is also very light on specifics, and the devil is definitely in the detail. Will the IDF completely withdraw from Gaza and rule out annexation? Who will take on governance of the strip? Is Hamas going to be involved in this governance? There were signs of disagreement on these issues even before the fighting stopped.

So if the ceasefire steps hold in the short term – then what? What would it take for the peace plan to be successful?

First, the political pressures to refrain from resuming hostilities will need to hold. Once all the hostages are returned, which is expected to take place by Tuesday Australian time, Hamas effectively loses any remaining leverage for future negotiations if hostilities were to resume.

Once the hostage exchange is complete, it’s likely Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will see some pressure from his right to resume hostilities.

With Hamas relinquishing this leverage, it will be essential for the Israeli government to see these negotiations and the end of the war as fundamental to its long term interests and security for peace to hold. There must be a sincere desire to return to dialogue and compromise, not the pre-October 7 2023 complacency.

Second, Hamas will likely have to relinquish its arms and any political power in Gaza. Previously, Hamas has said it would only do this on the condition of recognition of a sovereign Palestinian state. As recently as October 10, factions in Gaza have said they would not accept foreign guardianship, a key part of the peace plan, with governance to be determined “by the national component of our people directly”.

Related to this, any interim governance or authority that takes shape in Gaza must reflect local needs. The proposed “body of peace” headed by Trump and former UK prime minister Tony Blair, could risk repeating previous mistakes of cutting Palestinians out of discussions over their own future.

Part of the peace deal is the resumption of humanitarian aid flows, but the fate of the Gaza blockade that has been effectively in place since 2007 is unclear. The land, sea and air blockade, which was imposed by Egypt and Israel following Hamas’ political takeover of Gaza, heavily restricts imports and the movement of Gazans.

Prior to October 2023, unemployment in the strip sat at 46%, and 62% of Gazans required food assistance as a result of the limits placed on imports, including basic food and agricultural items such as fertiliser.

Should the blockade continue, at best Israel will create the same humanitarian conditions in Gaza of food, medical and financial insecurity that existed prior to the October 7 attacks. While conditions and restrictions are orders of magnitude worse in Gaza today, NGOs called early incarnations of the blockade “collective punishment”. For peace to hold in the strip, security policy needs to be in line with global humanitarian principles and international law.

Most importantly, however, all parties involved must see peace in Gaza as fundamentally connected to broader peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Seeing the Gaza conflict as discrete and separate from the broader Palestinian-Israeli conflict would be a mistake. Discussions of Palestinian national self-determination in Gaza and the West Bank must be taken seriously and be a central part of the plan for peace to last.

While the 20-point plan mentions a “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”“, history tells us these pathways struggle to get past the rhetoric stage.

Many challenges stand in the way, including Israeli settlement and annexation, the status of Jerusalem and the question of demilitarisation.

A meaningful step would be for the US to refrain from using its veto power at the UN Security Council (UNSC) against votes supporting Palestinian statehood. While several states recognised a Palestinian state at the recent UN General Assembly, the US has blocked formal status at the UNSC every time.

Despite all these concerns, any pause in hostilities is undeniably a good thing. Deaths from October 7 2023 number nearly 70,000 in total, with 11% of Gaza’s population killed or injured and 465 Israeli soldiers killed. The resumption of aid delivery alone will go far in addressing the growing famine in the strip.

However, peace deals are incredibly difficult to negotiate at the best of times, requiring good faith, sustained commitment and trust. The roots of this conflict reach back decades, and mutual mistrust has been institutionalised and weaponised. Difficulties in negotiating the Oslo Accords in the 1990s showed just how deep the roots of the conflict are. The situation is now much worse.

It is not clear if any party involved in negotiation possesses the political will needed to reach an accord. However, an opportunity exists to reach one, and it should not be taken for granted.

Andrew Thomas 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. Will Trump’s ceasefire plan really lead to lasting peace in the Middle East? There’s still a long way to go – https://theconversation.com/will-trumps-ceasefire-plan-really-lead-to-lasting-peace-in-the-middle-east-theres-still-a-long-way-to-go-267112