Category: The Conversation – Global Perspectives

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Angélica Durán-Martínez, Associate Professor of Political Science, UMass Lowell

The death of a major cartel boss in Mexico has unleashed a violent backlash in which members of the criminal group have paralyzed some cities through blockades and attacks on property and security forces.

At least 73 people have died as a result of the operation to capture Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, or “El Mencho.” The head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel was seriously wounded during a firefight with authorities on Feb. 22, 2026. He later died in custody.

As an expert in criminal groups and drug trafficking in Latin America who has been studying Mexico’s cartels for two decades, I see the violent aftermath of the operation as part of a pattern in which Mexican governments have opted for high-profile hits that often lead only to more violence without addressing the broader security problems that plague huge swaths of the country.

Who was ‘El Mencho’?

Like many other figures involved in Mexico’s drug trafficking, Oseguera Cervantes started at the bottom and made his way up the ranks. He spent some time in prison in the U.S., where he may have forged alliances with criminal gangs before being deported back to Mexico in 1997. There, he connected with the Milenio Cartel, an organization that first allied, and then fought with, the powerful Sinaloa Cartel.

Most of the information available points to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel forming under El Mencho around 2010, following the killing of Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel Villarreal, a Sinaloa Cartel leader and main link with the Milenio Cartel.

Since 2015, Jalisco New Generation Cartel has been known for its blatant attacks against security forces in Mexico – such as gunning down a helicopter in that year. And it has expanded its presence both across Mexico and internationally.

In Mexico, it is said to have a presence in all states. In some, the cartel has a direct presence and very strong local networks. In others, it has cultivated alliances with other trafficking organizations.

Besides drug trafficking, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel is also engaged in oil theft, people smuggling and extortion. As a result, it has become one of the most powerful cartels in Mexico.

What impact will his death have on the cartel?

There are a few potential scenarios, and a lot will depend on what succession plans Jalisco New Generation had in the event of Oseguera Cervantes’ capture or killing.

In general, these types of operations – in which security forces take out a cartel leader – lead to more violence, for a variety of reasons.

Mexicans have already experienced the immediate aftermath of Oseguera Cervantes’ death: retaliation attacks, blockades and official attempts to prevent civilians from going out. This is similar to what occurred after the capture of drug lord Ovidio Guzmán López in Sinaloa in 2019 and his second capture in 2023.

Violence flares in two ways following such high-profile captures and killings of cartel leaders.

In the short term, there is retaliation. At the moment, members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel are seeking revenge against Mexico’s security forces and are also trying to assert their regional authority despite El Mencho’s death.

These retaliatory campaigns tend to be violent and flashy. They include blockades as well as attacks against security forces and civilians.

Then there is the longer-term violence associated with any succession. This can take the form of those who are below Oseguera Cervantes in rank fighting for control. But it can also result from rival groups trying to take advantage of any leadership vacuum.

The level and duration of violence depend on a few factors, such as whether there was a succession plan and what kind of alliances are in place with other cartels. But generally, operations in which a cartel boss is removed lead to more violence and fragmentation of criminal groups.

Of course, people like Oseguera Cervantes who have violated laws and engaged in violence need to be captured. But in the long run, that doesn’t do anything to dismantle networks of criminality or reduce the size of their operations.

What is the current state of security in Mexico?

The upsurge in violence after Oseguera Cervantes’ killing occurs as some indicators in Mexico’s security situation seemed to be improving.

For example, homicide rates declined in 2025 – which is an important indicator of security.

But other measures are appalling. Disappearances are still unsettlingly high. The reality that many Mexicans experience on the ground is one where criminal organizations remain powerful and embedded in the local ecosystems that connect state agents, politicians and criminals in complex networks.

Criminal organizations are engaged in what we academics call “criminal governance.” They engage in a wide range of activities and regulate life in communities – sometimes coercively, but sometimes also with some degree of legitimacy from the population.

In some states like Sinaloa, despite the operations to take out cartel’s leaders, the illicit economies are still extensive and profitable. But what’s more important is that levels of violence remain high and the population is still suffering deeply.

The day-to-day reality for people in some of these regions is still one of fear.

And in the greater scheme of things, criminal networks are still very powerful – they are embedded in the country’s economy and politics, and connect to communities in complex ways.

How does the El Mencho operation fit Mexico’s strategy on cartels?

The past two governments vowed to reduce the militarization of security forces. But the power of the military in Mexico has actually expanded.

The government of President Claudia Sheinbaum wanted a big, visible hit at a time when the U.S. is pushing for more militarized policies to counter Mexico’s trafficking organizations.

But this dynamic is not new. Most U.S. and Mexican policy regarding drug trafficking organizations has historically emphasized these high-profile captures – even if it is just for short-term gains.

It’s easier to say “we captured a drug lord” than address broader issues of corruption or impunity. Most of the time when these cartel leaders are captured or killed, there is generally no broader justice. It isn’t accompanied with authorities investigating disappearances, murders, corruption or even necessarily halting the flow of drugs.

Captures and killings of cartel leaders serve a strategic purpose of showing that something is being done, but the effectiveness of such policies in the long run is very limited.

Of course, taking out a drug lord is not a bad thing. But if it does not come with a broader dismantling of criminal networks and an accompanying focus on justice, then the main crimes that these groups commit – homicides, disappearances and extortion – will continue to affect the daily life of people. And the effect on illicit flows is, at best, meager.

Angélica Durán-Martínez has received funding from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Social Science Research Funding and the United States Institute of Peace.

– ref. Violent aftermath of Mexico’s ‘El Mencho’ killing follows pattern of other high-profile cartel hits – https://theconversation.com/violent-aftermath-of-mexicos-el-mencho-killing-follows-pattern-of-other-high-profile-cartel-hits-276728

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Sara Webb, Lecturer, Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology

One of the largest known stars in the universe underwent a dramatic transformation in 2014, new research shows, and may be preparing to explode.

A study led by Gonzalo Muñoz-Sanchez at the National Observatory of Athens, published in Nature Astronomy today, argues that the enormous star WOH G64 has transitioned from a red supergiant to a rare yellow hypergiant – in what may be evidence of impending supernova.

The evidence suggests we may be witnessing, in real time, a massive star shedding its outer layers, shrinking as it heats up, and moving closer to the end of its short life.

A very special star

WOH G64 was first discovered in the 1970s as as star of interest in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky Way.

It turned out the star was not only extremely luminous, but also one of the biggest ever discovered: more than 1,500 times the radius of the Sun.

In 2024, WOH G64 was the first star beyond our galaxy ever photographed in detail, thanks to the Very Large Telescope Interferometer. The image showed a clear dusty cocoon around the central giant star, which confirmed it was losing mass as it aged.

From supergiant to hypergiant, big is big

WOH G64 is a young star in the grand scheme of the cosmos, with an estimated age of less than 5 million years old. Unlike our Sun (currently about 4.6 billion years old), WOH G64 is destined to live fast and die young.

WOH G64 was born big, forming from a huge cloud of gas and dust collapsing until the pressure made it ignite. Like our Sun, it would have burned hydrogen in its core by nuclear fusion.

Later it would have expanded and burned helium, becoming what is called a red supergiant.

Not all supergiants become hypergiants. It’s been theorised that hypergiants form when very large stars quickly burn and evolve from burning hydrogen to burning helium.

During this transition, these stars start to shed their outer layers, while their cores begin to shrink inwards. Once a star becomes a hypergiant, it is destined for a quick death in the fiery explosion of a supernova.

What has caused this change seen in WOH G64?

So what happened to WOH G64 in 2014? The new study proposes that a large part of the original supergiant’s surface was ejected away from the star.

This may have been due to interactions with a companion star, which the authors have confirmed exists by looking at the spectrum of light from WOH G64.

Another theory: the star is getting ready to explode. We know stars this big will inevitably go kaboom, but exactly when it will happen can be hard to determine in advance.

One possible scenario is that the transition we’re seeing is due to a pre-supernova “superwind” phase. This is theorised to occur due to strong internal pulsations as the fuel in the core is spent quickly.

Only time will tell

Most stars live for tens of millions or even tens of billions of years. It was never a given we would witness and be able to document so much transformation in a star, let alone one outside our galaxy.

If we are lucky, we will see the death of WOH G64 in our lifetimes – not only providing an incredible intergalactic spectacle but also helping scientists complete the puzzle of this fascinating star.

Sara Webb 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. One of the biggest stars in the universe might be getting ready to explode – https://theconversation.com/one-of-the-biggest-stars-in-the-universe-might-be-getting-ready-to-explode-276519

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By John (Eddie) La Marca, Senior Research Officer, Blood Cells and Blood Cancer, WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research)

If you’re feeling worn out or have suddenly lost some weight, your doctor might send you for a blood test.

Blood tests are a common way health-care professionals detect, diagnose, and monitor a range of medical conditions.

But can they help us detect more serious conditions such as cancer? Let’s dive into the research.

How do blood tests work?

Blood tests are a technique used in the field of pathology, which is the study of the nature and causes of disease.

Blood tests assess what cells, proteins, and molecules are present in the blood. Health-care professionals use them to monitor things like organ health, nutrition levels, immune system function, and the presence of some infections.

To test for anaemia, for example, you would take a blood test and count the number of red blood cells in that blood sample. Another example is blood sugar testing, which is used to measure the glucose levels of a patient with diabetes.

What can blood tests tell us about cancer?

Currently, we can’t reliably diagnose most cancers using a blood test. One major reason is it’s often difficult to distinguish between cancer cells and normal, healthy cells. This is especially true when it comes to early-stage tumours.

But blood test results can give us clues about whether certain cancers are present in the body. So how do they do this?

1. By revealing abnormalities in your blood

Blood cancers will often cause clear changes in the number and types of cells in the bloodstream. We can measure these changes using a complete blood count, also known as a “full blood examination”.

This type of blood test counts all the different types of cells present in the blood: red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and more. Blood cancers arise when your body produces an abnormal amount of any type of blood cell. White blood cells, which fight infection, are the most common example. So a high number of one or more of these cell types may suggest the presence of a blood cancer.

But complete blood counts aren’t enough to make a conclusive diagnosis of blood cancer. We need to perform other tests to confirm whether the problem is a cancer or a different disease. These tests may include a biopsy or imaging techniques such as an MRI, CT scan, or X-ray.

2. By identifying “tumour markers”

We can also use blood tests to detect specific proteins which cancer cells often produce in greater numbers. These proteins are known as “tumour markers”.

One example of a tumour marker is prostate-specific antigen. This antigen is a protein made exclusively by the prostate gland. A healthy male will have only a small amount of prostate-specific antigen in his blood. In contrast, a male with prostate cancer will often produce abnormally high levels of this antigen. In this way, the prostate-specific antigen can serve as a “marker” of prostate cancer.

There are many different tumour markers used to identify different cancers. However, measuring tumour markers is not a foolproof solution. This is because they can be influenced by other factors. For example, an injury to or inflammation of the prostate gland could cause prostate-specific antigen levels to increase. So your doctor may perform additional tests to confirm if a person has cancer.

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Read more:
Do I have prostate cancer? Why a simple PSA blood test alone won’t give you the answer

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3. By locating rogue cells

For other types of cancer, blood tests can look for circulating tumour cells. Circulating tumour cells are produced when cancer cells break off from the original tumour and then enter the bloodstream. This usually only happens when a cancer reaches a more advanced stage and is metastatic, meaning it has spread to other parts of the body.

But this type of test is usually prognostic, rather than diagnostic. This means we can only use it to monitor the progression of a cancer which has already been diagnosed. So if a blood test does identify circulating tumour cells, it is best to conduct additional tests before proceeding with treatment.

So, are we close to creating a cancer-detecting blood test?

Unfortunately, we are yet to find a way to detect cancer with a single blood test. It’s a very difficult task, but researchers are making progress.

Circulating tumour DNA is a current topic of interest. These DNA molecules have mutations which distinguish them from healthy cells and can give information about the cancer they came from.

In one 2025 trial, Australian researchers measured the amount of circulating tumour DNA in 441 people with colon cancer to determine which patients would respond to chemotherapy. Another study from 2025 used circulating tumour DNA to monitor how 940 patients with lung cancer responded to different treatments.

One test did claim to successfully use circulating tumour DNA to detect more than 50 types of early-stage cancer. It’s known as the “Galleri test” and was first trialled in the UK in 2021. However, some experts have since raised concerns about the test’s effectiveness.

Researchers are also exploring other ways of using blood tests. In one 2025 study, Australian researchers adapted an existing test to use blood instead of tissue samples to identify known markers of ovarian cancer.

Another Australian study from 2025 investigated whether molecules other than proteins could serve as cancer markers. It found certain fats in blood can indicate if a patient with advanced prostate cancer will respond to treatment.

So, it looks like we’re still a while away from creating a cancer-detecting blood test. But with some time, effort, and robust research, it could be a possibility.

John (Eddie) La Marca receives funding from Cancer Council Victoria. He is affiliated with the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.

Cameron Lewis receives funding from the University of Melbourne as part of a PhD scholarship. He is employed by Austin Health as a clinical haematologist.

Sarah Diepstraten receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Cure Cancer Australia and My Room Children’s Cancer Charity.

– ref. Can blood tests really detect cancer? – https://theconversation.com/can-blood-tests-really-detect-cancer-269906

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Felicity Goodyear-Smith, Professor of General Practice and Primary Health Care, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

Primary care – the kind delivered by general practice (GP) clinics – is the backbone of every health system. When it works, we barely notice it.

It keeps people healthy, detects problems early, coordinates care and keeps people out of hospital.

But across many high-income countries, despite very different health systems, primary care is under unprecedented strain.

Our recently published paper presents case studies from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

All show governments are leaning on primary care to solve increasingly complex health needs. At the same time, bureaucracies are demanding more documentation, compliance, performance metrics and administrative work.

However, very little new investment is going into the four parts of primary care that matter most:

• continuity: seeing the same health provider over time, rather than pinballing from one specialist to another

• comprehensiveness: getting the whole family’s physical, mental and social health care from one place

• coordination: ensuring all the different people and services involved in a patient’s care work together smoothly, information is shared and roles are clear, so patients don’t fall through the cracks

• first-contact care: being able to get an appointment with a doctor or nurse you know, when you need it.

Ballooning administrative burdens

These are the core functions of effective primary care, and they are what reduce hospital visits. But across many countries, the GP workforce is shrinking or stagnating just as populations are ageing and multi-morbidity is increasing.

Medical graduates are turning away from general practice, citing high workloads, lower pay relative to other specialities, and the emotional weight of increasingly complex care.

Many GPs who stay in practice are reducing their hours, not because they lack commitment, but because the amount of unpaid work required outside of the consulting room makes full-time practice untenable.

Administrative burdens have ballooned. Electronic health-record systems generate endless inbox tasks. As hospitals push chronic care back into the community, GPs absorb more responsibility without receiving the resources to match.

The result is predictable: practices stop enrolling new patients, waiting times blow out, and people who cannot get timely care turn instead to emergency departments.

These alternatives are often far more expensive, lack continuity, and do not offer the long-term relationships that help detect disease early and manage chronic conditions effectively.

Quick wins, long-term losses

Many of the countries facing these problems spend less than 6% of their total health budget on primary care. For example, the US spends 4%, New Zealand 5.4% and Australia 6%. But how the money is allocated is as important as the amount itself.

Funding models in many countries fail to support team-based care – a collaborative, coordinated model of healthcare delivery in which multiple health professionals work together with patients and their families.

Governments often finance new roles – for example, physician assistants – in isolation, without ensuring practices have the infrastructure to integrate them safely and effectively. This creates inefficiencies and fragmentation.

Poorly designed “pay-for-performance” measures can make things worse. So, when funding is linked to disease-specific indicators rather than the core functions of high-quality primary care, clinicians end up spending more time on documentation and less on patients.

Continuity and comprehensiveness, the strongest predictors of better health outcomes, remain largely unmeasured and unrewarded.

The benefits of primary care investment accumulate slowly – fewer hospital admissions, better management of chronic disease, reduced premature mortality. But political cycles reward quick wins. Governments are tempted to fund initiatives that reduce waiting lists in months, not strengthen foundations for decades.

The result is a proliferation of short-term “solutions” that crowd out the long-term reforms primary care actually needs. The system that prevents downstream costs is neglected because its benefits are not immediately visible.

Toward a sustainable health system

Primary care is relationship-based. That continuity – knowing patients, their histories, their families and the context of their lives – is what allows efficient decision-making and prevents unnecessary interventions.

When investment flows into standalone or narrow services instead of strengthening general practice, care becomes episodic. This can result in poor followup and patients bouncing between providers who are working without shared information.

This fragmentation increases costs while reducing quality, even though each individual initiative may look beneficial in isolation. Once the foundation cracks, the entire system becomes more expensive to maintain but less effective.

The solutions are clear, and are strikingly consistent across countries. A whole-of-system approach is needed to:

• set explicit investment targets for primary care

• align funding, workforce planning and service delivery

• invest in true multidisciplinary teams, not piecemeal roles

• prioritise continuity, comprehensiveness, and first-contact access in funding models

• and create long-term accountability structures that survive election cycles.

Countries that have strong primary care systems will spend less overall on health, have better population health outcomes, and enjoy greater equity. Those that neglect primary care pay for it many times over in hospital pressures, workforce burnout and widening inequities.

Strengthening primary care is not just another reform. It is the only path to a sustainable health system. Countries that fail to recognise this are already seeing the consequences.

Felicity Goodyear-Smith has received funding from the NZ Health Research Council, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment, and other NZ research funding bodies.

– ref. We studied primary care in 6 rich countries – it’s under unprecedented strain everywhere – https://theconversation.com/we-studied-primary-care-in-6-rich-countries-its-under-unprecedented-strain-everywhere-276617

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Mark Nielsen, Associate Professor, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland

A baby macaque monkey named Punch has gone viral for his heart-wrenching pursuit of companionship.

After being abandoned by his mother and rejected by the rest of his troop, his zookeepers at Ichikawa City Zoo in Japan provided Punch with an orangutan plushie as a stand-in mother. Videos of the monkey clinging to the toy have gone viral worldwide.

But Punch’s attachment to his inanimate companion is not just the subject of a heartbreaking video. It also harks back to the story of a famous set of psychology experiments conducted in the 1950s by US researcher Harry Harlow.

The findings from his experiments underpin many of the central tenets of attachment theory, which positions the bond between parent and child as crucial in child development.

What were Harlow’s experiments?

Harlow took rhesus monkeys from birth, and removed them from their mothers. These monkeys were raised in an enclosure in which they had access to two surrogate “mothers”.

One was a wire cage shaped into the form of a “mother” monkey, which could provide food and drink via a small feeder.

The other was a monkey-shaped doll wrapped in terry towelling. This doll was soft and comfortable, but it didn’t provide food or drink; it was little more than a furry figure the baby monkey could cling to.

So, we have one option that provides comfort, but no food or drink, and one that’s cold, hard and wiry but which provides dietary sustenance.

These experiments were a response to behaviourism, which was the prevailing theoretical view at the time.

Behaviourists suggested babies form attachments to those who provide them with their biological needs, such as food and shelter.

Harlow challenged this theory by suggesting babies need care, love and kindness to form attachments, rather than just physical nourishment.

A behaviourist would have expected the infant monkeys to spend all their time with the wire “mother” that fed them.

In fact, that’s not what happened. The monkeys spent significantly more time each day clinging to the terry towelling “mother”.

Harlow’s 1950s experiments established the importance of softness, care and kindness as the basis for attachment. Given the opportunity, Harlow showed, babies prefer emotional nourishment over physical nourishment.

How did this influence modern attachment theory?

Harlow’s discovery was significant because it completely reoriented the dominant behaviourist view of the time. This dominant view suggested primates, including humans, function in reward and punishment cycles, and form attachments to whoever fulfils physical needs such as hunger and thirst.

Emotional nourishment was not a part of the behaviourist paradigm. So when Harlow did his experiments, he flipped the prevailing theory on its head.

The monkeys’ preference towards emotional nourishment, in the form of cuddling the furry terry towel-covered surrogate “mother”, formed the foundation for the development of attachment theory.

Attachment theory posits that healthy child development occurs when a child is “securely attached” to its caregiver. This is achieved by the parent or caregiver providing emotional nourishment, care, kindness and attentiveness to the child. Insecure attachment occurs when the parent or caregiver is cold, distant, abusive or neglectful.

Much like the rhesus monkeys, you can feed a human baby all they need, give them all the dietary nourishment they require, but if you don’t provide them with warmth and love, they’re not going to form an attachment to you.

What can we learn from Punch?

The zoo was not conducting an experiment, but Punch’s situation inadvertently reflects the controlled experiment Harlow did. So, the experimental setup was mimicked in a more natural setting, but the outcomes look very similar.

Just as Harlow’s monkeys favoured their terry towelling mother, Punch has formed an attachment to his IKEA plushie companion.

Now, what we don’t have with the zoo situation is the comparison to a harsh, physically nourishing option provided.

But clearly, that’s not what the monkey was looking for. He wanted a comforting and soft safe place, and that’s what the doll provided.

Were Harlow’s experiments ethical?

Most of the world now recognises primates as having rights that are, in some cases, equivalent to human rights.

Today, we would see Harlow’s experiments as a cruel and unkind thing to do. You wouldn’t take a human baby away from its mother and do this experiment, so we shouldn’t do this to primates.

It’s interesting to see people so fascinated by this parallel to an experiment conducted more than 70 years ago.

Punch the monkey is not just the internet’s latest animal celebrity – he’s a reminder of the importance of emotional nourishment.

We all need soft spaces. We all need safe spaces. Love and warmth are far more important for our wellbeing and functioning than physical nourishment alone.

Mark Nielsen receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. A viral monkey, his plushie, and a 70-year-old experiment: what Punch tells us about attachment theory – https://theconversation.com/a-viral-monkey-his-plushie-and-a-70-year-old-experiment-what-punch-tells-us-about-attachment-theory-276625

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Anne Twomey, Professor Emerita in Constitutional Law, University of Sydney

The place of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, former prince and brother of the king, in the line of succession to the British throne appears to be under threat in the United Kingdom.

Currently, Mountbatten-Windsor is eighth in line (after the families of princes William and Harry) to the Crowns of the United Kingdom and Australia. This makes it extremely unlikely he would ever become monarch, but his removal is more a symbolic act of repudiation.

Is it possible to remove him? The short answer is yes – but it would most likely be a time-consuming process involving many parliaments passing legislation.

Does the same line of succession apply to the British and Australian Crowns?

At the time of Australia’s federation in 1901, the British Crown was described as “one and indivisible”. Queen Victoria exercised constitutional powers over all her colonies, acting on the advice of British ministers.

That changed after the first world war, due to a series of Imperial Conferences, with the self-governing “dominions” (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland) having separate Crowns by 1930. This meant the Australian prime minister could advise the monarch about the appointment of the governor-general of Australia and other federal (but not state) Australian matters.

However, the rules of succession to these separate Crowns remained the same. They are a hotch-potch of English laws, including common law rules of inheritance and statutes, such as the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement 1701.

These laws became part of Australian law in the 18th century, but for a long time Australian parliaments had no power to alter them. This changed in 1931 with the enactment of the Statute of Westminster. It gave the dominions power to repeal or alter British laws that applied in their country.

However, recognising this could cause havoc in relation to succession to the Crown, a clause was included in the preamble to the statute, making it a convention that “any alteration in the law touching the Succession to the Throne” shall require the assent of the parliaments of all of the dominions and the United Kingdom. Section 4 of the statute continued the power of the UK parliament to legislate for a dominion, but only if it gave its request and consent.

In 1936, when King Edward VIII abdicated, the UK parliament enacted a statute to alter the rules of succession to the throne, to exclude any children he might have. Australia assented to the British parliament extending its law so it applied to Australia too.

That option is no longer available since the enactment of section 1 of the Australia Act 1986. It says that no act of the UK parliament shall extend as part of the law of the Commonwealth, or a state or territory. Any changes made to the operation of the laws of succession to the Crown of Australia must be made in Australia.

How could Australia change the law of succession?

When the Commonwealth Constitution was enacted, the Crown was still “one and indivisible”. This meant no one inserted a section giving the Commonwealth parliament power to make laws about succession to the Crown. However, the framers of the Constitution were clever enough to insert a mechanism to deal with such unanticipated developments.

Section 51(xxxviii) of the Constitution says the Commonwealth parliament may exercise a power, at the request or with the concurrence of all the states directly concerned, which only the UK parliament could have exercised at the time of federation. This means the Commonwealth and state parliaments can cooperate to change the rules of succession to the Crown of Australia.

This issue arose in 2011, when the various realms (being countries that retained Queen Elizabeth II as head of state) agreed to change the rules of succession so that males would no longer be given preference over females, and heirs would no longer be disqualified for marrying a Catholic.

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Read more:
Power to the princesses: Australia wraps up succession law changes

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The UK parliament enacted the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 to give legal effect to this change. However, it delayed commencing the act until other realms had enacted their changes too. The British act only made the change with respect to the Crown of the United Kingdom.

Some realms accepted they needed to change the law in relation to their own Crown. Others concluded they didn’t need to act, because their Constitution makes their sovereign the same person who is king or queen of the United Kingdom. Legislation was ultimately enacted in Australia, Barbados, Canada, New Zealand, St Kitts and Nevis, and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

In Australia, each state enacted the Succession to the Crown Act 2015. The Australian process took a long time, due to different legislative priorities and sitting periods, and the intervention of state election periods.

Australia was the last to enact its law, after which the alteration in succession was brought into effect simultaneously across all the realms.

How would the process operate today?

If it were proposed to remove Mountbatten-Windsor from the line of succession today, the UK government would probably first seek the agreement of all the realms. While not legally necessary, it is important if a shared monarch is to be retained for all realms to be consulted.

The UK parliament would then prepare its own bill, providing a template for other jurisdictions. This means the changes are uniform across the realms. The bill would probably also specify whether Mountbatten-Windsor’s exclusion affects his heirs, princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, and their children. Under the old law, a person who married a Catholic was treated as “dead” for the purposes of succession, so that their exclusion from the succession did not affect the hereditary position of their heirs. The same approach might be taken in relation to the exclusion of Mountbatten-Windsor.

The same parliaments that enacted laws in relation to the last change of succession (apart from Barbados, which is now a republic), would also need to enact an equivalent law, if they wish to maintain symmetry in such rules across the realms. Putting such a bill before a parliament runs the risk that other issues will be raised, opening broader questions concerning the role of the monarchy in different realms.

Could Australia make such a change on its own?

While Australia could unilaterally enact a law to exclude Mountbatten–Windsor from succession to the Crown of Australia, it is unlikely it would do so. There are two reasons for this.

First, it involves a lot of legislative hassle, getting seven parliaments to enact a law that will probably have no substantive effect, given how far Mountbatten-Windsor is down the line of succession.

Second, covering clause 2 of the Commonwealth Constitution says that references to “the Queen” in the Constitution shall “extend to Her Majesty’s heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom”.

There is considerable disagreement about whether this is just an interpretative provision about updating references, or whether it has a substantive effect.

Keeping Australia’s rules of succession in sync with those of the United Kingdom avoids opening that potential Pandora’s box.

Anne Twomey has received funding from the Australian Research Council and sometimes does consultancy work for governments and inter-governmental bodies. She also has a YouTube channel – The Constitutional Clarion.

– ref. How could Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor be removed from the line of succession to the throne? – https://theconversation.com/how-could-andrew-mountbatten-windsor-be-removed-from-the-line-of-succession-to-the-throne-276604

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Benjamin Isakhan, Professor of International Politics, Deakin University

Since October 2023, Israel’s war in Gaza has caused mass human suffering. But it has also brought devastation to the cultural heritage of the Palestinian people.

In our recent article in the International Journal of Heritage Studies, we documented the extent of heritage destruction in Gaza and analysed the strikingly limited response by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

We argue that UNESCO’s failures have consequences beyond Gaza, as they weaken deterrence of attacks on heritage sites globally and risk normalising impunity for these types of crimes in conflict.

Heritage destruction in Gaza

Gaza has a rich and layered heritage, with archaeological traces dating to at least 1300 BCE. It has long sat at the crossroads of many cultures, and has been controlled by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans.

Gaza is also home to historical sites important to the three main faiths of the region – Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Much of this cultural heritage now lies in ruin. UNESCO’s Gaza damage assessment list includes 150 sites that have been damaged or destroyed since the war began.

Some of these are globally significant sites. Two are on UNESCO’s World Heritage Tentative List:

• the Wadi Gaza Coastal Wetlands, considered a reserve of outstanding biodiversity

• the Anthedon Harbor, Gaza’s oldest known seaport, inhabited between 800 BCE and 1100 CE.

Other damaged or destroyed sites include:

• the Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrios Church, which dates to 425 CE and is sometimes referred to as the third-oldest church in the world

• the seventh-century Great Omari Mosque, thought to be the first mosque in Gaza, along with its 13th-century library containing rare Islamic manuscripts

• the Qasr al-Basha, a fortress also known as Pasha Palace, which was built in the mid-13th century by the Mamluk sultanate and had been turned into an archaeological museum

• a Roman cemetery (Ard-al-Moharbeen), thought to have at least 134 tombs dating back to 200 BCE.

UNESCO’s failures

Apart from creating this list, UNESCO has been relatively muted in its response, compared with the role the agency has played in other conflicts.

This doesn’t mean it’s been completely silent. It has issued several statements condemning the destruction in Gaza and calling on “all involved parties to strictly adhere to international law”.

It has also elevated one heritage site to its List of World Heritage in Danger – the Saint Hilarion Monastery. Taking this step strengthens the protections around the site, with potential penalties for intentional damage.

Yet, despite these efforts, we question whether UNESCO has truly met the moment. Our analysis identifies a pattern of omission and understatement that is difficult to reconcile with UNESCO’s own mandate and the legal architecture that exists to protect cultural property in armed conflict.

For example, UNESCO has failed to publicly invoke the 1954 Hague Convention in relation to Gaza, which aims to protect cultural sites during conflict. The agency has cited it in virtually every major conflict since its ratification.

It also didn’t seek urgent action from the UN Security Council or the UN General Assembly to protect cultural sites. The agency did this in response to the Islamic State’s acts in Syria and Iraq (including the desecration of the World Heritage site of Palmyra). In 2017, for instance, the security council passed a resolution backed by UNESCO that laid out a number of steps to help protect cultural heritage in conflict.

Similarly, UNESCO has not worked with the International Criminal Court or the International Court of Justice to initiate proceedings against Israel or Israeli officials for the destruction of heritage in Gaza. The agency did this after conflicts in the Balkans and Mali. These trials established the intentional destruction of cultural property during conflict as a war crime.

Finally, UNESCO has not taken its usual approach of explicitly naming Israel as the perpetrator of cultural destruction in Gaza. It has taken this step in many recent conflicts. This includes Ukraine, where is has frequently named and condemned Russia as the perpetrator.

Why has UNESCO been so cautious?

One explanation offered by critics is geopolitical constraint. UNESCO has increasingly been criticised for an overdependence on voluntary state contributions. This can make the agency reluctant to confront powerful countries for fear of alienating supporters.

This dynamic is certainly evident in UNESCO’s long and strained relationship with Israel and the US. Both formally withdrew from UNESCO in 2019 because the agency had described Israel as an occupying power in Gaza and the West Bank, and condemned its destruction of Palestinian heritage.

But we argue there’s something more troubling occurring – the erosion of UNESCO’s willingness and capacity to activate the legal and normative tools it helped build.

Once a mighty advocate for the protection of culture worldwide, UNESCO has slowly withered into a largely ineffective and technocratic agency that sidesteps complex issues and is hamstrung by internal division.

UNESCO’s response

In response to the arguments raised here, UNESCO sent a detailed email explaining its actions on heritage protection in Gaza. These are some of the points raised by a UNESCO spokesperson:

On citing the 1954 Hague Convention:

Across different conflicts, UNESCO sometimes explicitly cites the 1954 Hague Convention […] and in other instances use the broader formulation “international law”.

UNESCO also communicates with the concerned Member States bilaterally […] This has been done on several occasions through correspondence addressed to the authorities of Israel, for example to remind Israel of its obligations under the 1954 Hague Convention.

On explicitly naming Israel as a perpetrator:

UNESCO is not a judiciary body, therefore its role is not to assign responsibility. In specific case of Ukraine, there are several Security Council and/or UNESCO governing bodies decisions that may explain specific statements.

On the lack of willpower to use its tools and resources on Gaza:

UNESCO activates its legal, normative and programmatic tools within the remits of its mandate and available funds. The needs are enormous, and we take this opportunity to renew UNESCO’s call in support of the people of Gaza.

Why Gaza matters

UNESCO’s limited response to the destruction in Gaza matters. Heritage protection is not only about salvaging damaged sites and trying to rebuild them. It’s also vital for defining unacceptable conduct and deterring future violations.

When the world’s foremost body on the protection of cultural heritage limits itself to cautious generalities, it fosters a permissive environment. It allows this destruction to be treated as regrettable collateral damage of war, rather than an actionable crime. This undermines UNESCO’s credibility.

It can also set a dangerous precedent. If the large-scale destruction of heritage occurs in full view of the world, with no repercussions, future belligerents may believe the costs of heritage crimes will be tolerated.

Benjamin Isakhan has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the United Kingdom Research and Innovation fund, and the Australian Department of Defence.

Eleanor Childs 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. Gaza’s cultural sites have been decimated. UNESCO’s muted response sets a dangerous precedent – https://theconversation.com/gazas-cultural-sites-have-been-decimated-unescos-muted-response-sets-a-dangerous-precedent-275091

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Jane Goodall, Emeritus Professor, Writing and Society Research Centre, Western Sydney University

Anyone who engages in serious dialogue with a Large Language Model (LLM) may get the impression they are interacting with an intelligence. But many experts in the field argue the impression is just that. In philosopher Daniel Dennett’s words, such systems display “competence without comprehension”.

The hype about Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) from big corporations and their celebrity spokespersons has prompted a backlash, in which scepticism turns to cynicism, often tinged with paranoia about how “stochastic parrots” may start to control our lives.

“Intelligence” itself has become an overheated topic, one that calls for less assertiveness, more cool thinking, and refreshed attempts at a starting point.

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Review: What is Intelligence: Lessons from AI about Evolution, Computing, and Minds – Blaise Agüera y Arcus (MIT Press)

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What Is Intelligence? by Google luminary Blaise Agüera y Arcus is the first book in a new series from MIT in collaboration with Antikythera, a think tank focused on “planetary-scale computation as a philosophical, technological, and geopolitical force”. A foreword from series editor Benjamin Bratton makes the bold claim that “computation is a technology to think with” and that the building blocks of our reality are themselves computational.

Research on intelligence has a chequered history, tainted by eugenics, statistical manipulation and a banal obsession with metrics. Agüera y Arcas counters this by opening up the topic as wide as it can go. A physics graduate with a background in computational neuroscience, he is something of a polymath. He draws explanatory frameworks from microbiology, philosophy, linguistics, cybernetics, neuroscience and industrial history.

His book presents almost as a sequence of foundation lectures in these areas. Its release has been accompanied by dozens of online talks and interviews, in which Agüera y Arcas presents the case that we are up for a seismic shift in how we think about intelligence – biological and artificial.

“Few mainstream authors claim that AI is ‘real’ intelligence,” he writes. “I do.”

Could the nerds be right?

The fundamental case against the “I” in AI is that intelligence is organic, derived from sensory interaction with a physical environment. Agüera y Arcas turns the tables with the premise that computation is the substrate for intelligence in all life forms.

The claim builds on an apparently crude proposition: prediction is the fundamental principle behind intelligence and “may be the whole story”.

What he means by prediction here is something much more radical than what we see with autocorrect. He explains it in biological terms as a process of pattern development. Single cells like bacteria predict sequences of events that may influence their capacity for survival. The synaptic learning rules in single neurons give rise to local sequence prediction.

Agüera y Arcas recounts how his journey into the enigmatic terrain of AI reached a turning point with his counterintuitive recognition that “the nerds were right”: in computation, bigger really was better and might actually be the key to moving from Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) – the kind that can play chess – to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which can participate in a philosophical discussion.

Setting aside his contempt for the apparently simplistic dedication to scaling up, Agüera y Arcas returned to the biology lab for a reassessment of what was observable in living systems. If every form of life is an aggregation of cooperative parts, he reasoned, the evolution of cells into organs and organisms may be a matter of predictive modelling.

A central tenet of What is Intelligence? is that every form of life is an aggregation of cooperative parts. Links proliferate through patterns that enable increasingly complex functions. When Agüera y Arcas says the brain is computational, it’s not a metaphor: it is not that brains are like computers, they are computers.

Correlations between biological and mechanical forms of intelligence are his deep and abiding interest. What is Intelligence? follows What is Life?, a shorter book in which Agüera y Arcas lays the groundwork for this larger, more ambitious publication.

The two questions remain interwoven, if not fused, in his analysis, which draws on the foundational work of physicist Ewin Schrödinger, mathematicians Alan Turing, John von Neumann and Norbert Weiner, and microbiologist Lynn Margulis.

These are the originators of modern thinking about artificial intelligence, and the quest for origins runs through all Agüera y Arcas’ lines of enquiry.

It is worth noting that Antikythera, the publishing series launched with this book, is named after an ancient device found in a shipwreck off the coast of Greece, which has been called the original analog computer.

Computation was discovered as much as it was invented, Bratton says in his foreword. This might apply to the Antikythera. If it is indeed the first computer, it was literally discovered at the bottom of an ocean.

But it corroborates Bratton’s statement in another sense. As a device for tracking astronomical phenomena, the Antikythera testifies to computation as an aspect of how the universe works.

Getting specific about origins

Agüera y Arcas wants to get more specific about origins. How does pattern emerge from randomness? How does code emerge from an unorganised soup of molecules?

In approaching these questions, he takes his cue from Turing and von Neumann, whose experiments anticipated the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA in 1953. The 1936 Turing machine established a minimalist prototype for computational function with the simple components of a coded tape and a read/write head. Von Neumann brought in a focus on embodied computation, where the components of the machine or body are part of what is written.

This is where Agüera y Arcas situates his work. His breakthrough came from adopting a programming language, devised in 1993, called “Brainfuck”. With just eight command symbols, Brainfuck set the parameters for a controlled experiment, in which Agüera y Arcas and his team used 64 byte tapes coded with “junk” drawn from a soup of code and data.

In the experiment, two tapes are selected at random, joined end to end, and run to test for interaction patterns. Then it’s rinse and repeat. The tapes are returned to the soup, and two more are run.

At first, nothing much shows up amidst the randomness. But after a million or so repeats (not massive in computing terms) the magic starts to happen. Loops appear. Patterns emerge. At around the five million mark, the non-functional code or “Turing gas” transforms itself into a “computorium” of replicating code.

In lectures, Agüera y Arcas shows a screenshot of this on his laptop: a vertical line down the centre of the field of data marks the “phase transition”. The image is reproduced on the cover of his book, as an emblem of the paradigm shift he is tracking.

If the transition to replicating code is indeed an expression of what is happening in the development of life forms, the theory of natural selection may lose its claim to primacy as the explanatory model for evolution. Richard Dawkins enthusiasts, hang on to your hats.

Agüera y Arcas does not engage in a polemical critique of Dawkins, but his book brings Margulis, an early adversary of Dawkins, into the centre of the arena. The pair faced off in a public debate in Oxford in 2009, where Dawkins’ popularised concept of the “selfish gene” came under pressure from Margulis’ theory of symbiogenesis, literally genesis through combination or fusion.

The Dawkins account is based on a Darwinian view of natural selection through competitive advantage; Margulis was drawing on research into the formation of microorganisms through combinations of mitochondria and chloroplasts, once independent life forms.

It was survival of the fittest versus a vision of biological complexity generated through endosymbiosis, a relationship in which one organism lives inside another, potentially resulting in a new life form – or, as Agüera y Arcas sees it, an impetus towards “fit” understood as pattern completion, rather than “fitness” understood as advantage.

Prediction and function

Agüera y Arcas’ central concepts are prediction and function, which work together to explain intelligence as the development of functional complexity through predictive pattern completion.

He is erasing a familiar conceptual boundary here: intelligence does not prompt function, it is function.

Intelligence, he argues, is a property of systems rather than beings, and function is its primary indicator. A rock does not function, but a kidney does. This is demonstrated simply by cutting them in half. The rock becomes two rocks, but the kidney is no longer a kidney.

So does a kidney have intelligence? Or an amoeba? Or a leaf? These questions are opened up, along with the question of whether Large Language Models have intelligence, which may a better way to frame it than asking whether they are intelligent.

Agüera y Arcas is not alone in taking an affirmative position. Influential biologist Michael Levin runs a research laboratory at Tufts University, where he and his team study the functional correlations between natural organisms and synthetic or chimeric life forms in search of “intelligence behaviour in unfamiliar guises”.

Their declared goal is to develop modes of communication with truly diverse intelligences, including cells, tissues, organs, synthetic living constructs, robots and software-based AIs.

Such an approach steers a course between the stochastic parrots view and biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of “morphic resonance,” which proposes that organic form is a manifestation of memory, resonating through generations as genetic heritage. Agüera y Arcas avoids both Sheldrake’s intuitive and telepathic orientations, and the hard-headed constraints of mechanistic determinism.

The thesis presented in What is Intelligence? is unfamiliar rather than intrinsically difficult. Much of the explanation is easy enough for the general reader to follow, though Agüera y Arcas has a tendency to veer into more the technical and abstract terrain of programming, as if addressing an insider audience. The extensive glossary does not include standard programming terms, such as logic gates, gradients, weights and backpropagation.

At over 600 pages, What is Intelligence? is a marathon read and it is encumbered by tangential excursions. I’m not sure why Agüera y Arcas needs to go into the history of industrialisation, or anthropological studies of the Pirahā people of the Amazon. This is a book for dipping into rather than swallowing whole.

But its ideas are important. They may well be part of a major transformation in our thinking about where human intelligence sits in the rapidly evolving environment of AI.

Jane Goodall 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. Is AI really ‘intelligent’? This philosopher says yes – https://theconversation.com/is-ai-really-intelligent-this-philosopher-says-yes-271721

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Benjamin D. Muir, Casual Academic, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University

Emily Brontë died of tuberculosis 177 years ago, yet this adaptation is still the worst thing that has ever happened to her.

This is how one Letterbox’d user described writer-director Emerald Fennell’s film adaptation of Brontë’s classic tale.

Reviews for the film are mixed at best. While some critics have praised the visuals, detractors return to the same argument: it is not a good adaptation.

Good adaptations take advantage of the affordances the cinematic medium provides, so some changes are permissible. Fennell goes well beyond this, altering essential characters, relationships and themes to the point that the film feels like erotic fan-fiction with a Hollywood budget.

To synopsise, Brontë’s story is a tragedy of intergenerational trauma. It follows Heathcliff, an abused serial abuser, and Catherine, an intergenerational manipulator. The pair’s toxic relationship – and mutual revenge on everyone they knew (beyond the grave in Catherine’s case) – wreaks havoc.

Visually loud, emotionally mute

Given its tagline “the greatest love story ever told”, Fennell’s film was destined to make some changes.

The frame narrative of the novel is missing. The novel is told through housekeeper Nelly Dean, who is recounting it to Heathcliff’s tenant, Lockwood. The film, meanwhile, starts in Catherine’s childhood and ends at her death.

This also means Fennell stops short of the final act of the novel. In doing so, she omits an entire generation of important characters on whom the original Catherine and Heathcliff – two traumatised, irredeemable wrecking balls – foist their damage.

The interpersonal dynamics that underpin Brontë’s story are warped into a vacuous caricature, missing the point with virtuosic flair. And make no mistake: there is flair. The visual design is bombastic, pointedly anachronistic, and utterly at odds with the novel’s gloomy Gothic countenance.

Brontë’s perpetually grey and haunted moors are swapped for technicolour highlights, elaborate outfits and, at times, saturated tangerine sunsets. It watches like Sofia Coppola attempting Edgar Allan Poe – or a Charli XCX clip (guess who wrote the original soundtrack). This is an odd liberty for a film named after the story’s original setting – the stormy Wuthering Heights estate.

As pioneering Gothic theorists Sanda Gilbert and Susan Gubar write, the Heights in the novel are blanketed by “a general air of sour hatred” that manifests as “continual, aimless violence”.

In the Gothic, setting functions as a haunted presence that reflects the characters’ aberrant psychological states. The past haunts, even when there are no ghosts.

Fennell’s version retains the melodrama, but not the foreboding, hate and malice. And despite the explicit sexuality (none of which appears in the novel beyond euphemism), her take on the story feels oddly toothless. Neutered, even. It trades Gothic for vaudeville.

The erasure of Hindley and Heathcliff

To say the film lacks the novel’s social commentary is an understatement.

From the opening scene, the changes to the source material are clear. We see a young Catherine witnessing a hanged man with an erection – and this tone remains for the entire runtime.

Hindley – Catherine’s brother who forces Heathcliff into servitude, and is arguably the lynchpin of Heathcliff’s revenge – is also entirely absent from the film.

Literary critic Terry Eagleton notes how it is Hindley’s inherited status that enables his abuse of Heathcliff. It is Heathcliff’s lack of wealth, status and property that sees Catherine wed the wealthy Edgar Linton; and, as theorist Arnold Kettle argues, it is Heathcliff’s weaponisation of wealth and inheritance that finally serves as his vehicle for revenge.

To remove these factors is to remove the novel’s entire moral framework.

In the film, Heathcliff’s grievances shrink to Catherine choosing to marry Edgar Linton. This is as close as the film comes to the novel’s treatment of classism, racism and intergenerational trauma.

Likewise, ending on Catherine’s death erases the consequences of the deuteragonists’ manipulations – namely the suffering of their respective children and servants.

The casting of Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff has its own controversy. In the novel, Heathcliff’s ambiguous racial identity, within the context of Georgian England, shapes almost every interaction he has.

Even though it’s not clear what his racial identity is (some scholars point to hints that suggest he may have escaped from slavery), his character is defined by “othering”. This is something Elordi’s Heathcliff is at no risk of believably experiencing.

The film flattens the novel’s broader account of how trauma replicates across generations, and how systemic marginalisation can both attract and beget abuse.

On abuse – perhaps Fennell’s strangest departure from the source material is reframing Heathcliff’s treatment of Isabella (Edgar Linton’s sister and later Heathcliff’s wife) as a consensual BDSM dynamic.

Brontë’s Heathcliff terrorises Isabella physically and emotionally, and implicitly sexually, until she flees with their son.

The switch from repressed, complex desire in the novel to explicit sex scenes (absent from the book), and the rewriting of abuse as kink, seems to cater to audiences raised on post-50 Shades Of Grey erotica rather than Victorian Gothic.

Literary classics for a Tiktok generation

Like 2020’s colourful Austen adaptation, Emma (well received as a film, but criticised as an adaptation), Fennell’s Wuthering Heights signals a trend towards the “tiktokification” of literary adaptations.

Hollywood has long taken liberties with books, but this recent wave feels engineered for clips, reels and virality, rather than the necessary sacrifices of adaptation.

We know it’s possible to have adaptations with both flair and substance. Consider Baz Luhrmann. The Oscar-nominated Romeo + Juliet (1996) is just as visually bombastic, yet the extent of verbatim Shakespeare retains a dedication to the source that Fennell’s film lacks.

So what does it have to offer? Virality. Even this article contributes to the internet firestorm that will ensure Wuthering Heights’ commercial success. It will ragebait critics far longer than such a limp effort deserves – and we are all its victims.

Benjamin D. Muir 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. Wuthering Heights looks lush – but it’s a bad film and a worse adaptation – https://theconversation.com/wuthering-heights-looks-lush-but-its-a-bad-film-and-a-worse-adaptation-276179

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Felicity Deane, Professor of Trade Law and Taxation, Queensland University of Technology

US President Donald Trump has announced the United States will increase baseline tariffs on imports from all countries to 15%, as the fallout continues from a seismic Supreme Court ruling on Friday.

Trump had imposed sweeping “reciprocal tariffs” last year under an emergency powers act, but the court ruled this law did not authorise him to do so.

Speaking in the wake of the ruling on Friday, Trump admonished the justices of the Supreme Court. He called the Democratic justices who ruled against the tariffs a “disgrace to the nation”.

He also said he felt “ashamed” of members of the court he considered conservative who had voted against his use of emergency powers.

Trump’s statement was riddled with insults and inaccuracies. However, he admitted he had tried to “make things simple” by using the emergency powers act. He went on to say he does have other options, but those options would take more time. This was one part of his speech that was indeed accurate.

With the clock already ticking on his landmark trade agenda, and the multi-billion dollar question of refunds looming, what might Trump do next? Here’s what could now be in store for both Australia and the world.

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Read more:
Supreme Court rules against Trump’s emergency tariffs – but leaves key questions unanswered

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Scrambling for alternatives

The new 15% rate is an increase on the 10% global baseline tariff enacted shortly after the ruling using a different law, and will hit some Australian exports.

This part of the law has never been used. However, it appears to clearly allow the president to impose tariffs of up to 15%, and for a period of no more than 150 days.

But Trump said during this five-month period, his administration would investigate the use of yet another law, section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.

This section does allow the president to impose tariffs in response to foreign countries who violate US rights under international trade agreements, or that burden or restrict US commerce in “unjustifiable”, “unreasonable” or “discriminatory” ways. However, it requires some steps to be followed.

The process for using this law is detailed and cannot be subverted. It would likely take either years or vast amounts of resources to introduce tariffs that were anywhere near the “Liberation Day” tariffs.

If nothing else, it requires consultations with the countries upon whose goods those tariffs will be imposed.

Section 301 has previously been used to impose tariffs on China, following an investigation by the United States Trade Representative in 2018.

Another option

Another avenue for the president to bypass Congress is a specific section of a different law, Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, that applies to a particular sector of the economy.

This is the power used to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium in the first Trump administration in 2018.

However, it can’t be used to recreate sweeping tariffs on all foreign imports. This provision is generally product-specific and requires an investigation into the national security threat.

Its use to impose steel and aluminium tariffs has been challenged by multiple trading partners at the World Trade Organization. A panel of experts ruled the US had used a special national security exception erroneously.

However, despite this violation, Trump has suggested that he isn’t bound by international law.

The question of refunds

The Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday means all tariffs introduced under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) were unlawfully collected.

If all collected duties are refunded, it’s estimated the total repayment could reach approximately US$175 billion (A$247 billion).

Much to the president’s frustration, there was no clarity within the Supreme Court’s ruling on the process for refunds of illegally collected tariffs.

That silence, which prompted Trump to refer to the decision as “terrible” and “defective”, was likely because this would be handled by other courts.

Back in December, the US Court of International Trade stated it would have the authority to order reliquidation and refunds of the sweeping tariffs if the Supreme Court ultimately ruled them unlawful.

Many large companies had already anticipated this ruling, and acted to get on the front foot. For example, in late November, large retailer Costco sued the Trump administration to secure a full refund of tariffs in the event the Supreme Court deemed them unlawful.

In late December, faced with an avalanche of similar cases, the Court of International Trade temporarily halted all cases where companies were claiming relief from IEEPA tariffs ahead of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Refunds may not be straightforward

Some importers have argued that because the tariff payments were itemised, receiving refunds should not be messy.

But the process for refunds may not be as straightforward as it should be. Trump suggested they could be “in court for the next five years”.

What does this all mean for Australia?

Australia’s previous 10% rate was much lower than many other nations, but now at 15% the playing field has been levelled – at least for the next 150 days.

Australian exporters don’t pay these tariffs directly themselves, but may be pressured to absorb some of the cost, and it makes their imports less competitive in the US market.

However, not all Australian exporters are in the same position. The proclamation issued by the White House listed some exceptions, including beef, critical minerals, energy products and pharmaceuticals.

At Friday’s press conference, Trump said “great certainty” had been brought back to the United States and the world. In truth, the uncertainty is far from over.

Felicity Deane 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 hikes global tariffs to 15% as the fallout from Supreme Court loss continues – https://theconversation.com/trump-hikes-global-tariffs-to-15-as-the-fallout-from-supreme-court-loss-continues-273105