Category: The Conversation – Global Perspectives

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Drew Terasaki Hart, Ecologist, CSIRO

The annual clock of the seasons – winter, spring, summer, autumn – is often taken as a given. But our new study in Nature, using a new approach for observing seasonal growth cycles from satellites, shows that this notion is far too simple.

We present an unprecedented and intimate portrait of the seasonal cycles of Earth’s land-based ecosystems. This reveals “hotspots” of seasonal asynchrony around the world – regions where the timing of seasonal cycles can be out of sync between nearby locations.

We then show these differences in timing can have surprising ecological, evolutionary, and even economic consequences.

Watching the seasons from space

The seasons set the rhythm of life. Living things, including humans, adjust the timing of their annual activities to exploit resources and conditions that fluctuate through the year.

The study of this timing, known as “phenology”, is an age-old form of human observation of nature. But today, we can also watch phenology from space.

With decades-long archives of satellite imagery, we can use computing to better understand seasonal cycles of plant growth. However, methods for doing this are often based on the assumption of simple seasonal cycles and distinct growing seasons.

This works well in much of Europe, North America and other high-latitude places with strong winters. However, this method can struggle in the tropics and in arid regions. Here, satellite-based estimates of plant growth can vary subtly throughout the year, without clear-cut growing seasons.

Surprising patterns

By applying a new analysis to 20 years of satellite imagery, we made a better map of the timing of plant growth cycles around the globe. Alongside expected patterns, such as delayed spring at higher latitudes and altitudes, we saw more surprising ones too.

One surprising pattern happens across Earth’s five Mediterranean climate regions, where winters are mild and wet and summers are hot and dry. These include California, Chile, South Africa, southern Australia, and the Mediterranean itself.

These regions all share a “double peak” seasonal pattern, previously documented in California, because forest growth cycles tend to peak roughly two months later than other ecosystems. They also show stark differences in the timing of plant growth from their neighbouring drylands, where summer precipitation is more common.

Spotting hotspots

This complex mix of seasonal activity patterns explains one major finding of our work: the Mediterranean climates and their neighbouring drylands are hotspots of out-of-sync seasonal activity. In other words, they are regions where the seasonal cycles of nearby places can have dramatically different timing.

Consider, for example, the marked difference between Phoenix, Arizona (which has similar amounts of winter and summer rainfall) and Tucson only 160 km away (where most rainfall comes from the summer monsoon).

Other global hotspots occur mostly in tropical mountains. The intricate patterns of out-of-sync seasons we observe there may relate to the complex ways in which mountains can influence airflow, dictating local patterns of seasonal rainfall and cloud. These phenomena are still poorly understood, but may be fundamental to the distribution of species in these regions of exceptional biodiversity.

Seasonality and biodiversity

Identifying global regions where seasonal patterns are out of sync was the original motivation for our work. And our finding that they overlap with many of Earth’s biodiversity hotspots – places with large numbers of plant and animal species – may not be a coincidence.

In these regions, because seasonal cycles of plant growth can be out of sync between nearby places, the seasonal availability of resources may be out of sync, too. This would affect the seasonal reproductive cycles of many species, and the ecological and evolutionary consequences could be profound.

One such consequence is that populations with out-of-sync reproductive cycles would be less likely to interbreed. As a result, these populations would be expected to diverge genetically, and perhaps eventually even split into different species.

If this happened to even a small percentage of species at any given time, then over the long haul these regions would produce large amounts of biodiversity.

Back down to Earth

We don’t yet know whether this has really been happening. But our work takes the first steps towards finding out.

We show that, for a wide range of plant and animal species, our satellite-based map predicts stark on-ground differences in the timing of plant flowering and in genetic relatedness between nearby populations.

Our map even predicts the complex geography of coffee harvests in Colombia. Here, coffee farms separated by a day’s drive over the mountains can have reproductive cycles as out of sync as if they were a hemisphere apart.

Understanding seasonal patterns in space and time isn’t just important for evolutionary biology. It is also fundamental to understanding the ecology of animal movement, the consequences of climate change for species and ecosystems, and even the geography of agriculture and other forms of human activity.

Want to know more? You can explore our results in more detail with this interactive online map, which we also include below.

This work was completed under affiliations with the University of California (UC), Berkeley, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). Drew Terasaki Hart received funding for this work from UC Berkeley, the UC Berkeley Center for Latin American Studies, the Organization for Tropical Studies, IdeaWild, and the Bezos Earth Fund (via The Nature Conservancy).

– ref. See Earth’s seasons in all their complexity in a new animated map – https://theconversation.com/see-earths-seasons-in-all-their-complexity-in-a-new-animated-map-262935

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Giselle Bastin, Associate Professor of English, Flinders University

“I’ve had Japanese people crying when I tell them I’m not Diana,” British woman Christina Hance, who sometimes earned thousands of pounds a day as a Diana impersonator, told the BBC in 1996. A few months later, she announced she was stepping back from her duties as a Diana lookalike, saying the job had sent her mad and made her ill.

“I ended up a zombie just like her […] the strain of public life has been too much for both of us,” she said. Probably the best known of countless professional Diana impersonators, she “didn’t really look very much like Diana at all”, according to Edward White, whose new book Dianaworld: An Obsession is at least as much about “the princess’s people” as the “People’s Princess”.

In other words, it’s about “the sprawling, ever-evolving precinct of her various lives – public and private, real and imagined” – while mapping how Diana-the-icon has been created by her various “publics”.

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Review: Dianaworld: An Obssession – Edward White (Allen Lane)

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These “publics” sprang from diverse communities: from couturiers to courtiers, hairdressers to politicians, royal servants to sex workers, astrologers to gays, newspapermen to fickle paternal advisors – and soothsayers, superfans and satirists. And, of course, lookalikes.

Dianaworld describes a Diana who was many things to many people. “Dig deep enough”, White suggests, and you’ll find a part of Diana that was Jewish, or American, or a republican – or anything else that she wasn’t but you are.“

First and foremost, though, she was the “pale English rose celebrated for strengthening the Windsor monarchy with the DNA of her indigenous British ancestors”. She was “unencumbered by class identity, snobbery, or elitism of any kind precisely because she was so thoroughly, truly, aristocratic”.

Tony Blair once told an interviewer Diana invented a “new way to be British”. White proposes: “It might be more accurate to say that through Diana, the British invented a new way of fantasizing about themselves.” And:

Never was the domestic adulation of Diana so complete as when she was on the other side of the world. Organs of the British media documented her popularity abroad with an embarrassing neediness.

White charts how the cult of Diana assumed global proportions.

The United States liked to claim Diana as “an American princess” – for “only in America did Diana fully become Diana”, writes White. He argues she personified “the American Dream”, springing as she did from the life of a relative mortal (if one whose “family had been a mighty social presence for half a millennium”) to the superstardom of global celebrity.

Diana often expressed a desire to relocate to the US, thousands of miles away from the strictures of the House of Windsor and arc-lamp intensity of the British tabloid press.

Sound familiar? It seems Prince Harry’s destiny was written for him by his mother.

When visiting Pakistan, India and various African and Middle Eastern countries, Diana was seen as a “post-imperial princess whose image transcended all kinds of social barriers, real and imagined”.

White documents a group of Pakistani women who thrilled to the idea of Diana’s potential marriage to British-Pakistani cardiac surgeon Hasnat Khan, because it showed Diana “was doing what every Asian daughter was meant to do: marrying an Asian doctor”.

Ahead of the Charles and Diana 1986 tour of Japan, thousands of Japanese schoolchildren were gifted Diana robot dolls. Numerous Diana lookalikes and impersonators donned Diana wigs and made appearances at supermarkets.

Across several chapters, White returns to the idea of Diana’s “relationship with Britishness, especially the English component of that identity”. Back in Britain, Diana enjoyed a large following among the nation’s ethnic minority, as well as with the gay community. Her association with the latter was forged by her early embrace of the cause of HIV/AIDS. White writes: “the memory of her has become entwined with a particular idea of gay experience, in which defiance and radical honesty are king and queen.

Acknowledging how Diana was “a woman of mythological complexity and far-reaching significance”, White dissects how so much of the mythologising tends to heap “cliché and trope upon her mythological pyre”.

As the “fairytale princess at the centre of an archetypal romantic fantasy”, Diana was “loaded with other people’s ideas about love for close to half a century”. Dianaworld charts how this “love” spilled over to obsession, in alarming ways.

Sexual obsession

Dianaworld touches on the public’s sexual obsession with the princess, filtered through the male gaze of the media and the royal establishment.

One of the most interesting groups of Diana supporters White identifies are the older, well-connected paternalistic admirers who assumed the mantle of “fatherly advisor”. The likes of Clive James, film producer David Puttnam, and actor and director Richard Attenborough offered her advice on how to perform her royal role and navigate her life post-separation.

One, former British MP Woodrow Wyatt, wrote approvingly in his diary of Diana’s innocent feminine allure, but changed his view after revelations of her extra marital affairs were made in Andrew Morton’s Diana: Her True Story, casting her in a madonna-whore paradigm.

No longer required to revere Diana as the English rose, Wyatt – and many others like him – was now free to despise her and desire her, the nasty twin impulses that had always hovered in the backdrop of the soft-focus princess worship of earlier, more innocent, less honest times.

Lavish and inconstant, tyrannical and needy

Dianaland charts how the cult of “Diana love/obsession” had its parallel in the way Diana conducted her own private relationships.

It seems that she loved others in private in the way that her public loved her – lavishly and inconstantly, stiflingly and adoringly, tyrannically and needily, all or nothing.

With Prince Charles, she passed as an outdoors-loving fan of stalking deer, shooting grouse, fly-fishing and long country hikes. With James Hewitt, she took up riding lessons and clothed her young sons in junior-sized military uniforms. With rugby union player Will Carling, she became a football fan (Carling has denied they had an affair). And with cardiac surgeon Hasnat Kahn, she donned a surgical robe and mask and was filmed watching him perform heart surgery.

When the police interviewed Diana after hundreds of silent phone calls made to art dealer Oliver Hoare’s home were traced to Kensington Palace, another image of Diana emerged: both stalked and stalker.

Influences

Dianaworld is a compendium of existing scholarship about the princess, taking its lead from Michael Billig’s groundbreaking sociological study from the early 1980s, Talking of the Royal Family, and Jude Davies’ 2001 Diana, A Cultural History: Gender, Race, Nation and the People’s Princess

It draws heavily, too, on the biographies of Diana by Sally Bedell Smith (1999), Sarah Bradford (2006) and Tina Brown (2007).

Nonetheless, it distinguishes itself by choosing to take an often amusing, lighthearted approach, more in line with Diana Simmonds’ Squidgie Dearest (1995) and Craig Brown’s Princess Margaret biography, Ma’am Darling (2017).

In this way, it recognises how the worlds of the princess’ people are often absurd and nonsensical, fantastical and comical.

So many Dianas

White describes, for example, one British cinema preview audience’s laughter at the inadvertently hilarious dialogue of one of the early Diana and Charles biopics.

Diana: “I just need you to hold me and touch me”; Charles: “Yes, but you’re always being sick.”

He employs some wry wit to recount how Diana was given an award for Humanitarian of the Year “at a glitzy ceremony in New York at the end of 1995, among a who’s who of selfless lovers of humanity, including Henry Kissinger and Donald Trump”.

One chapter, Dianarama, about the memorialisation of Diana in public art, tells the story of the sculptor John Houlston who, at the end of 1997, had begun a “nine-foot, two-ton work of metal and resin” of Diana, to be placed outside the London headquarters of the National AIDS Trust.

Houlston said that he had been trying to “imbue his rendering of Diana with some of the qualities of Leonardo’s Virgin Mary”, but “the fly in the ointment was that a family of thrushes had taken up residency in Diana’s left ear”.

Houlston had to temporarily abandon the project. The sculpture was never completed.

White weaves some interesting threads between stories of the ways Diana’s various “publics” expressed their devotion to the princess. She gave them, he writes, “an avatar through whom to lead a second life, one that was otherworldly, yet contained something of themselves within it”.

With considerable perspicacity, White concludes,

With her clones and impersonators crowding the streets from Kensington to Kyoto, at times over the last half century it has been difficult to tell where Diana stops and the rest of us begin.

So many Dianas – and Dianaland will by no means be the last on the subject.

Giselle Bastin 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. Clones and superfans: 28 years on, our feelings about Diana reflect who we are – https://theconversation.com/clones-and-superfans-28-years-on-our-feelings-about-diana-reflect-who-we-are-262445

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By William Gourlay, Teaching Associate in Politics & International Relations at the School of Social Sciences, Monash University

A Turkish proverb – düştüğün yerden kalk – counsels that one should arise from where one has fallen.

Ekrem İmamoğlu, the jailed mayor of Istanbul and main rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey’s 2028 election, has taken this advice to heart.

Imprisoned in March on charges widely viewed to be concocted, İmamoğlu refuses to be silenced. Earlier this month, he published a by-invitation essay in The Economist setting out his vision for Turkey as an open democracy that plays a constructive role on the global stage.

İmamoğlu’s proverbial fall was not mere clumsiness. Members of his opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) called his arrest a “civilian coup”, pointing the finger at the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Erdoğan.

İmamoğlu was also charged with corruption and terror links just days before he was set to be anointed the CHP’s candidate for the 2028 presidential election.

Turks from Istanbul to Anatolia immediately rose up to vent their fury. Protests continued for weeks despite bans on public gatherings. The government has since widened its net to arrest dozens of other opposition figures.

Erdoğan duly accused the opposition of fomenting unrest. But much like uprisings in 2013 that started over a government plan to redevelop an Istanbul park and metastasised into a wider protest movement, these rallies were a spontaneous reaction to Erdoğan’s own policies.

Turkey’s creeping authoritarianism under Erdoğan

Erdoğan was once hailed a reformer who might provide a governance model marrying Islamic observance and democracy that could be replicated throughout the Muslim world.

But after ruling for two decades, first as prime minister and then president, he has centralised power and bent state institutions to his will.

So enmeshed is he in conceptions of the Turkish state and its political and economic architecture, it has spawned new terminology: “Erdoğanism”. Neighbouring states witnessing similar concentrations of power are said to be undergoing “Erdoğanisation”.

Turkey under Erdoğan provides a potent example of “new authoritarianism”, a political model where the leader or ruling party maintains a veneer of democracy while skewing the system to their own advantage. “New authoritarians”, such as Vladimir Putin in Russia and Viktor Orban in Hungary, allow regular elections and grant some space to opposition parties. However, they have also constricted institutions and processes, hobbled the judiciary, the media and civil society, and rendered themselves unassailable.

Documenting the deterioration under Erdoğan, Freedom House rates Turkey’s political freedom at 33 out of 100, ranking it between Pakistan and Jordan. It notes shortcomings in electoral processes, political participation, the functioning of government, freedom of expression and rule of law.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International points to:

• government interference in judicial processes
• unjustified prosecutions and convictions of human rights defenders, journalists and opposition politicians
• restrictions on freedom of assembly
• violence against women.

Despite this, international leaders seem reluctant to admonish Erdoğan for democratic backsliding under his watch. Other than some tepid statements from the European Union, İmamoğlu’s arrest attracted little criticism.

In recent months, US President Donald Trump has described Turkey as a “good place” and praised Erdoğan’s qualities as a leader. The EU has also resumed discussions with Ankara on security issues.

This reflects the increasingly important role Turkey plays on the international stage. It has harboured millions of Syrian refugees and has mediated between Ukraine and Russia to try to end the war there.

As such, Western leaders are reluctant to get Erdoğan offside by raising Turkey’s internal politics.

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Read more:
Inaction from Brussels over the arrest of an opposition leader in Turkey may be a strategic mistake

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Youth movement pushing for change

Yet, like all authoritarians, Erdoğan is most wary of the electorate.

He has long defined his leadership as the personification of milli irade – the “national will”. However, after years of economic downturns and shrinking personal freedoms, fewer Turkish voters are buying it.

Several polls have İmamoğlu well placed to win the next presidential election in 2028, even though his university degree has been revoked (in dubious circumstances), which makes him ineligible to run. Indeed, İmamoğlu has grown even more popular since his arrest.

Such was Erdoğan’s concern that he banned images of Imamoğu, only to see his wife, Dilek, raise her voice to become an opposition figurehead.

In particular, a younger generation of voters, having known nothing but Erdoğan’s rule, is looking for an alternative and turning towards İmamoğlu.

The Turkish journalist and political commentator Ece Temelkuran suggests the energy and new ideas of politically disenfranchised youth are capable of overturning old-school authoritarianism.

Indeed, demonstrations since İmamoğlu’s arrest have seen high turnouts of Gen Z protesters. Even Pikachu made an appearance – a protester dressed in a costume of the video game character fleeing the police in Antalya. And a youth delegate recently raised the issue of İmamoğlu’s imprisonment at the Council of Europe, only to be arrested on returning to Ankara.

And even as Erdoğan has restricted the political playing field in Turkey, İmamoğlu has proven to be a canny and agile operator.

He presents as affable and engaging, both domestically and internationally, in contrast with Erdoğan’s often belligerent posture. He won the Istanbul mayoral race in 2019 on a platform of “radical love”. The approach won hearts and minds in an electorate long defined by polarisation and nationalist rhetoric.

When he was detained in March, İmamoğlu reportedly even quipped to police officers that their work conditions were so poor, they should come and work in his municipality.

Despite Erdoğan’s consolidation of power, democracy may yet have legs in Turkey. Even with İmamoğlu in prison, an energised opposition and younger generation hankering for greater freedoms seem fully intent on arising from where they fall.

William Gourlay is affiliated with the Brotherhood of St Laurence and the Australian International Development Network.

– ref. Polls suggest this man could become Turkey’s next president. Erdoğan is doing everything to stop him – https://theconversation.com/polls-suggest-this-man-could-become-turkeys-next-president-erdogan-is-doing-everything-to-stop-him-263034

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Marta Khomyn, Lecturer, Finance and Data Analytics, University of Adelaide

We may already live in the post-truth world, but are we about to enter the era of post-truth statistics?

Each month, the US employment report is one of the most closely watched releases on the health of the world’s largest economy. Financial markets can move sharply depending on the strength of the numbers.

This month, the jobs report was weak. Hours later, US President Donald Trump called the numbers “phony” and fired the head of the agency, Erika McEntarfer.

It was an unprecedented attack on the government’s impartial statistics body, the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is the agency responsible for tracking jobs, wages and inflation – key numbers that tell us how the economy is really doing.

Trump followed that up this week with a further attack on the nation’s economic institutions. He claimed in a social post he had fired one of the governors of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve. The governor, Lisa Cook, said he had no authority to do so.

With Donald Trump’s war on numbers and long-standing institutions, can we even trust US economic data anymore?

Some players in financial markets are already looking at alternative sources of data to get a real-time read on the health of the economy – such as satellite images of the shadows cast by oil tankers.

Chipping away at independence

On the surface, replacing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) with a Trump loyalist might not sound like a big deal. But a BLS commissioner cannot single-handedly falsify the data. The agency is large, full of professional staff, and its data is processed through established systems and checks.

However, the issue goes far beyond firing one official. The Trump administration has taken a series of steps that chip away at the quality and independence of America’s economic data.

After firing McEntarfer, Trump then appointed a loyalist who floated the idea of not releasing the jobs data at all.

The employment report is one of the most closely watched indicators of the US economy, showing how many jobs are being created or lost each month. Without it, millions of Americans would lose a vital tool for understanding whether the economy is growing, slowing, or heading into trouble.

Data is disappearing – literally

Hundreds of US datasets and more than 8,000 government webpages have vanished because the staff maintaining them were fired. These datasets, which taxpayers funded and researchers rely on, are now endangered. In fact, academics have launched the Data Rescue Project to preserve and share this data publicly when the government stops doing so.

Critical economic statistics agencies — the Bureau of Labor Statistics is just one of several — have cut staff. This shrinkage makes their data less precise, because fewer staff means fewer surveys, slower updates, and more reliance on estimates.

But here’s the irony: now the administration is attacking and even firing officials on the grounds that the data is unreliable, when that unreliability is the direct result of their own budget cuts. It’s a political catch-22: gut the agency, then blame it for the very decline in quality that underfunding caused.

The Fed relies on this report to set interest rates

Data is a public good, which means many benefit from it, yet data users are often unable or unwilling to pay for it. This is why data on labour market, inflation or economic growth (gross domestic product) is collected and published by the government, and paid for with taxpayers’ money.

Good quality data enables good policy decisions. For example, the BLS jobs report and inflation numbers are studied carefully by the Federal Reserve to set US interest rates.

The consumer price index (CPI) – a widely watched inflation index – is a benchmark for the US central bank’s mandate to keep inflation at its 2% target. So the quality of the CPI sets the floor for the quality of interest rate decisions.

Financial markets, too, watch government data closely. Both US stock and bond markets, worth trillions of dollars, move sharply on jobs and inflation releases.

Some traders are sourcing their own data

Sophisticated institutional traders such as hedge funds have long profited from having access to higher-quality data.

For example, some hedge funds use satellite images of Walmart parking lots to count the number of cars, which helps predict quarterly sales. This allows them to make money from the insights before Walmart’s sales data becomes public.

Can these alternative data sources also help assess the strength of parts of the economy? A recent academic paper investigates whether private satellite data can be a substitute for official data.

Focusing on two specific measures – US crude oil price, and Chinese manufacturing – the paper finds satellite data is so commonly used by traders that markets no longer react to government data releases, such as weekly surveys of crude oil inventories.

However, there are two caveats. First, not every type of macroeconomic data underpins trillion dollar markets like crude oil, making it profitable for traders to analyse the geometry of shadows cast by floating roofs of oil tankers, estimating quantities of oil stored in these tanks.

Second, this data is only available to a few deep-pocketed investors prepared to pay for it. For most market participants, purchasing satellite-imagery data from companies like Privateer or RS Metrics is prohibitively expensive. This creates inequities in data access and undermines market fairness.

The technological advancements in AI and commercialisation of space make satellite data ubiquitous. But this data is still years away from replacing hand-collected inflation numbers or labour market surveys, which generate public statistics for everyone, not just for those who are prepared to pay.

Marta Khomyn 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 a post-truth world, what happens if we can’t trust US economic data any more? – https://theconversation.com/in-a-post-truth-world-what-happens-if-we-cant-trust-us-economic-data-any-more-263338

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Troy Miller, Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space, The University of Western Australia

Sometime in the 2040s, humans may well reach a new frontier – Mars. To get there, we’ll need sustainable sources of food, medicines and materials.

As researchers who work on engineering plants to produce such resources in space, we sometimes get asked: “why?”. With issues such as climate change, inequality, global pandemics and environmental degradation, shouldn’t we be focused on Earth, not Mars?

But science can do both. And space research has a long history of not only satisfying the human instinct of exploration, but delivering transformational new inventions as we make discoveries along the way.

Plants not just for space

When the results of scientific research flow into the real world in practical ways, this is known as “research translation”.

These translations are often unexpected and unpredictable. For example, NASA’s need for compact, lightweight imaging technology in space led to the invention of the compact camera sensors we now have in smartphones, webcams, medical devices and more.

That shiny, reflective material used to deflect heat from buildings, appliances or even your car windshield? It’s an insulation technology perfected by NASA to protect spacecraft and astronauts from temperature fluctuations in space.

Within the next decade, we could see “space plants” directly and indirectly improving life on Earth. So what might space-ready plants look like and how could they benefit those of us who never leave Earth?

Flavour and nutrition

Plants nourish us and support our mental wellbeing, but this alone won’t sustain long-term space travel.

The modern space food menu largely consists of processed, long-life foods shipped along for the ride or delivered as cargo to the International Space Station. Anything fresh needs to be produced on the spot and farming animals isn’t an option.

To create a balanced space diet without the need to take dietary supplements, researchers have been developing nutritionally complete plant-based foods that have large quantities of high-quality protein. These will be pick-and-eat plants that can be grown and processed in space, and will provide an optimal balance of essential amino acids. They also include non-essential amino acids normally found in animals, such as taurine and creatine.

Improving plants in this way could help reshape agriculture on Earth, as plant-based diets are more sustainable for a planet facing a climate crisis and reduce global nutrient inequity.

Scientists are also researching plant-based food flavours and textures to address the common complaint from astronauts about “menu fatigue”. For decades, astronauts have reported their sense of taste is dulled in space, making spicy foods a station favourite.

Environmental resistance

Space plants must also thrive in an unfamiliar environment. On Earth, plants rely on gravity to know which way to grow their roots and which way to grow their shoots. This is a process called gravitropism.

In space, gravitropism is confused, causing roots to grow in random directions because of the effects of microgravity on hormone signalling. Research efforts are ongoing to determine the effects of microgravity on plant growth.

For example, water is “sticky” – it clumps together because molecules in water are attracted to each other, rather than pulled downwards into a puddle. In the absence of gravity, this results in sticky blobs of water that cling to surfaces such as plant roots and don’t flow anywhere because they’re held together by surface tension.

Furthermore, a lack of gravity also disrupts convection – it prevents gases from naturally mixing in water. This would limit oxygen availability to the roots of plants and result in low oxygen, also known as hypoxia stress.

Plant hypoxia also happens due to flooding during high rainfall and soil waterlogging. Engineering plants to tolerate microgravity-induced hypoxia will generate data for improving flood resistance in crops on Earth, reducing agricultural losses.

More than food

On a Moon or Mars base, colonists wouldn’t be able to wait for months or years to resupply essential resources such as medicines or construction materials. So, space plants are being designed to provide more than just food.

Plants have been engineered to produce proteins that elicit immune responses and act as edible vaccines.

On Earth, many pharmaceuticals are produced and extracted from microbes. Plants can be engineered to produce medicinal compounds or building material precursors in similar ways, but these compounds are likely to negatively impact plant growth.

The ability to engineer plants to produce different chemicals in response to environmental cues would allow astronauts to switch plants from making food to making medicine – perhaps with the literal flick of a switch.

Genetic “circuits” responding to light and chemical signals are being developed, too. These have the potential to make crops more readily able to adapt to the stresses of a changing climate.

When innovations need to overcome extreme limitations – such as the environment of space – they can speed up and lead to solutions we wouldn’t otherwise come up with.

The race to land on the Moon led to the development of many everyday items. Now, we’re on the verge of a new biotechnological revolution, getting ready to boldly grow where no plant has grown before.

Troy Miller receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Farley Kwok van der Giezen receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Ryan Coates receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Why grow plants in space? They can improve how we produce food and medicine on Earth – https://theconversation.com/why-grow-plants-in-space-they-can-improve-how-we-produce-food-and-medicine-on-earth-263539

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Sarah Scales, PhD Candidate, School of Social Sciences, Media, Film and Education, Swinburne University of Technology

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have announced their engagement, posting on Instagram images of the proposal with the caption “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married”.

“America’s sweethearts”, the pair have been dating for two years. Now fans are saying this will be America’s version of the royal wedding.

Swift and Kelce’s post has already received over 24 million likes from the pair’s fans.

Swift’s love life has long been in the spotlight – both in her songs and in the news. So fans were perfectly primed for their outpouring of support and love.

But what is it about Swift – and her fans – that encourages such emotional reactions?

Understanding parasocial relationships

To understand the deep affection Swift’s fans have for her, it’s important to understand parasocial relationships.

A parasocial relationship is a one-sided relationship we develop with someone, typically a media figure, where there is no reciprocity. Through the media and artistic output, we develop knowledge and feelings, and begin to encounter the relationship the same way as we would a “real world” or interpersonal relationship – but there is no mutual development.

Every time we see them in the news or on social media, or listen to their songs, that’s a parasocial interaction we have with them. Then those interactions build until we feel as though we know them like a friend, or perhaps they fill a role as a mentor, or a crush.

Parasocial relationships mimic our real world relationships.

Swift’s fans are very passionate and she expertly harnesses this fanbase.

Swift builds on these relationships

Swift’s first album was released in 2006, and over the ensuing 20 years, she has had many iterations, or eras. This has given fans many entry points into her life, and the opportunity to grow up with her and experience their different life stages with her and her music.

Many other musicians may have long periods of stepping away from the spotlight between albums, so their fans aren’t receiving necessary parasocial interactions to maintain their relationship and closeness.

But Swift has released 11 studio albums and four re-rerecorded albums since 2006, with her 12th to be released this October. She is also a common figure in the news because of her high-status relationships and friendships. This has allowed fans to constantly build and flourish their relationship and closeness with her.

Her marketing savvy, the easter eggs she drops leaving fans always speculating, and the interest and buzz she generates, creates a sense of community and belonging among fans which is global, universal and easily accessible online.

She has a strong perceived authenticity, where fans feel as though they truly know her, and they feel as though she cares about them individually. For non-fans, this may not make sense: she is an untouchable billionaire who has broken records for her crowd sizes. But this is one of the ways parasociality works: you feel as though the celebrity is your close friend and that they care for you.

Swift generates and feeds into these emotions. In hosting listening parties at her house or picking fans from the crowd to join her onstage, she creates the sense she is a genuine person – and keeps the illusion that, maybe one day, that could be you.

Crafting the celebrity image

Swift’s romantic relationships and close personal friendships are a key part of her celebrity image. Throughout her whole career these relationships have been reported on, drawing attention and interest.

Her fans see her relationships playing out in the news through various paparazzi images and articles. Then they hear about these relationships in her songs, as a major theme of her music is love and heartbreak. Because her music is so centred around love and heartbreak, it makes sense love has become a core part of her celebrity image.

Her relationship with Kelce is probably one of the most reported-on relationships she has had. She was with the actor Joe Alwyn for six years, but that was a much more private relationship.

For the past two years, Swift and Kelce have been in the limelight, and fans have felt a joy in seeing her in this relationship and getting to witness it.

Your English teacher is getting married

Swift clearly has an understanding of her fans and their parasocial relationships with her.

Fans have long called Swift their “English teacher” because her songwriting is so revered. Her fans see a lot of poetry in her music, and feel they have learnt a lot through this poetry.

In calling themselves “your English teacher and your gym teacher”, Swift and Kelce are placing themselves in the roles their fans have cast them as.

The pair know their fans have a closeness with the couple – and even though that isn’t reciprocated by Swift and Kelce, the pair are placing themselves in the position of role models.

Language like this closes the gap between celebrities and ordinary people. If you imagine your teachers getting married – someone you saw every day and you personally knew – that would be exciting. To word it in that way brings them down to a more personable level, drawing them, once again, closer to their fans.

Sarah Scales 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. Taylor Swift is engaged. She’s been getting her fans ready for this moment for 20 years – https://theconversation.com/taylor-swift-is-engaged-shes-been-getting-her-fans-ready-for-this-moment-for-20-years-264027

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Susan Davis, Chair of Women’s Health, Monash University

If you’re a woman approaching middle age and you’re on social media, you might have been urged to get your hormones checked.

These posts often highlight troubling symptoms of perimenopause. Then they flag blood tests as a way to help you understand what’s going on and to guide treatment.

Some women are now turning to wellness providers and online services seeking these types of tests, often at substantial expense.

But these tests don’t provide any benefits. An editorial in the British medical journal BMJ has raised an alert about these tests. The authors conclude they’re unnecessary and shouldn’t guide treatment decisions.

So what hormonal changes occur in the transition to menopause? And why is hormonal testing mostly unhelpful?

What do hormones do during menstrual cycles?

The key hormones the ovaries produce before menopause are oestrogens (mostly as oestradiol, but also as oestrone) together with progesterone and testosterone.

The amount of each hormone produced changes during the menstrual cycle.

Blood oestradiol levels double around the time of ovulation. This is followed by an increase in progesterone.

Testosterone blood levels also increase around ovulation, but the increase is less than about 10%.

What’s the difference between menopause and perimenopause?

Menopause happens when the ovaries have lost the capacity to produce an egg.
After menopause, oestrogen and progesterone blood levels are dramatically lower than before menopause.

Perimenopause is the time between being pre-menopausal, through to the first 12 months after having the last menstrual bleed. But the end of perimenopause is difficult to determine if you don’t menstruate, for example after a hysterectomy or when you have a hormonal intra-uterine device (IUD).

Testosterone blood levels don’t meaningfully change at natural menopause; they slowly decline with age.

What are the symptoms of perimenopause?

During the transition to menopause, the ovaries function haphazardly. So oestrogen and progesterone blood levels can be unpredictably very high or very low.

Hot flushes and night sweats, also known as vasomotor symptoms, commonly start in early perimenopause and may persist for many years. Vasomotor symptoms occur intermittently during perimenopause and persist after menopause.

Perimenopause is identified by irregular periods (cycles closer together or further apart) or changed bleeding patterns (bleeding becoming scant or heavy), together with the onset of vasomotor and other symptoms such as:

• increased abdominal fat
• low mood
• vaginal irritation and dryness
• urinary symptoms, such as bladder irritability
• memory difficulties, or “brain fog”. This seems to relate to the fluctuations in oestrogen levels and mostly resolves in the early postmenopausal years.

Our recent study shows the onset of vasomotor symptoms is the hallmark of perimenopause, and should also be used to diagnose perimenopause in women not menstruating (after hysterectomy or for other reasons).

Can a blood test tell you’re perimenopausal?

Blood oestradiol and progesterone levels are continually fluctuating during perimenopause. A blood test cannot be “timed” to any specific part of the cycle, as cycles vary in length and frequency.

So the results can’t generally be interpreted and are therefore not helpful.

However, it’s sensible to have blood tests to check for common causes of fatigue (under-active thyroid or iron deficiency) and palpitations and overheating (over-active thyroid).

How is perimenopause managed?

Treating perimenopause is not the same as treatment after menopause. Perimenopause is a time of hormonal chaos, rather than deficiency. So standard menopause hormone therapy (also called MHT) can make things worse.

Adding in an extra layer of hormones with the MHT that’s used after menopause will ease symptoms during the hormone lows, but often worsens symptoms during hormone highs (heavy bleeding, breast tenderness, fluid retention).

Instead, getting on top of perimenopause requires managing heavy and unscheduled bleeding, symptom relief, and, where needed, contraception, as the ovaries are still randomly producing eggs.

Can blood tests individualise hormone therapy?

No. Blood hormone tests can’t determine whether you might benefit from menopause hormone therapy or what dose you might need.

People’s oestrogen receptors have different levels of sensitivity and are turned up and down by other proteins and hormones in the cells. So even achieving the same blood oestradiol level with oestrogen therapy can have completely different effects in different people.

Individuals also respond differently to prescribed oestrogen, whether it’s tablet or through the skin. For transdermal patches or gels, the temperature of the skin, exercise, skin hydration and site of application affect absorption.

After absorption, oestradiol is metabolised rapidly to other oestrogens which are not measured in a standard blood test. So the total amount of oestrogen circulating is not determined by simply measuring blood oestradiol.

Do you need a blood test to check your dose?

No. There is no target blood oestradiol level that is right for everyone, and no established blood level that will prevent bone loss, heart disease or dementia.

Nor is there a perfect time of day to measure oestradiol, as the pattern of absorption of oestrogen over 24 hours varies, especially with transdermal oestradiol.

Plus, different commercial laboratories use different measurement systems so you cannot always directly compare test results between laboratories.

What about progestogen and testosterone?

Progestogens, including progesterone, are required to protect against thickening of the uterine lining by oestrogen.

The type and dose of progestogen needed can vary substantially and this cannot be predicted, or fine tuned, by a blood test.

For testosterone, there is no cut-off below which a woman can be diagnosed as having “insufficient testosterone”.

Whether hormone therapy involves oestrogen, progesterone or testosterone, for women who experience natural menopause after the age of 45, diagnosis and treatment is determined on symptoms, not blood hormone levels.

Susan Davis has served on Advisory Boards for Theramex, Astellas, Abbott Laboratories, and Besins Healthcare, and as a consultant to Besins Healthcare. She receives funding from the NHMRC, Medical research Future Fund, MS Australia and the Heart Foundation and has received research support from Lawley pharmaceuticals paid to Monash University. She is affiliated with the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

– ref. I’m a woman approaching middle age, do I need to get my hormones checked? – https://theconversation.com/im-a-woman-approaching-middle-age-do-i-need-to-get-my-hormones-checked-263541

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Shannon Bosch, Associate Professor (Law), Edith Cowan University

Senior Israeli Defence Force (IDF) officials have announced that around 130,000 reservists will take part in Israel’s planned military operation to take over Gaza City. Fighting is expected to continue well into 2026.

The first set of 40,000–50,000 reservists are due to show up for duty on September 2.

Our research, to be published in a forthcoming book, shows the call-up plans raise significant legal issues for countries that permit their dual-Israeli nationals to serve in the IDF — whether through voluntary enlistment programs such as Mahal and Garin Tzabar, or compulsory reserve duty.

Compulsory service and dual citizenship

Under Israeli law, every citizen or permanent resident must serve in the IDF for between 18 to 36 months (based on their age, marital status and gender), followed by ten years of reserve duty.

Dual citizens living abroad are not exempt and are expected to settle their conscription status through Israeli consulates and embassies.

Following the October 7 2023 Hamas attacks, Israel expanded compulsory service to three years, boosting the IDF to 169,500 active troops and 465,000 reservists.

While many reservists are currently residents in Israel, significant numbers also live overseas.

What the ICJ and UN experts have said

In July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) handed down an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. The court advised that all UN member states are obligated to refrain from providing assistance to Israel in maintaining the occupation.

This came after the ICJ had already issued a preliminary ruling saying Palestinians in Gaza had a plausible right to protection from genocide in Gaza.

In response to the ICJ’s July 2024 opinion, 40 independent UN experts advised that states should be taking steps to prevent their dual Israeli citizenship from serving in the IDF to avoid being potentially complicit in war crimes or crimes against humanity.

And earlier this year, an independent international commission established by the UN Human Rights Council urged UN member states to investigate and prosecute those accused of committing crimes in Gaza, either under their own domestic laws or using universal jurisdiction.

These opinions and reports have intensified the debate over the legal obligations of states that allow their dual Israeli nationals to enlist in the IDF.

How other countries view serving in foreign armies

The countries with the largest Jewish populations have done little to restrict IDF recruitment.

The United States, France, Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom all have laws against foreign enlistment. However, they allow IDF recruitment through exemptions, treaties or permissive interpretations of the laws.

Australian law prohibits citizens from engaging in foreign conflicts as mercenaries, but permits enlistment in foreign armies. Recruiting Australians to join a foreign military, that aligns with Australia’s defence or international interests may be permitted by the Attorney General, but the Criminal Code Act of 1995 does however prohibit Australian nationals entering foreign military zones where a designated terrorist organisation is engaged.

South Africa has a law against its citizens fighting in foreign wars without permission. It has also explicitly threatened to prosecute those who join the IDF. Yet, enforcement has been rare and selective. .

Civil society mobilisation

In Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police confirmed in June it was investigating possible war crimes in Gaza. Many believed this was targeted at dual national IDF reservists.

In May 2024, the Hind Rajab Foundation, a Palestinian advocacy group based in Belgium, submitted a dossier of evidence to the International Criminal Court alleging war crimes committed by some
1,000 IDF soldiers, including a number of dual citizens.

A related group also filed a complaint with the ICC about dual Dutch-Israeli soldiers allegedly committing war crimes in Gaza.

And in April 2025, UK advocacy groups submitted a dossier to the Metropolitan Police war crimes team targeting ten British nationals for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the war.

Meanwhile, in Australia, a legal group called the Australian Centre for International Justice has been monitoring about 20 dual nationals who have served in the IDF.

In response to the group, the government urged Australians seeking to serve in foreign armies to “carefully consider their legal obligations and ensure their conduct does not constitute a criminal offence”.

Obligations of countries

All ten countries we surveyed — the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Russia and South Africa — are parties to the Geneva Conventions, the Convention against Torture, and the Genocide Convention. These treaties impose obligations on members to not only punish violations, but prevent them.

Israel’s mobilisation of 130,000 reservists dramatically increases the potential that more dual nationals will be drawn into operations that have been condemned by the UN and ICJ as unlawful.

For dual citizens, the risks are profound. Not only can they be involved in a protracted conflict, but they can also be potentially exposed to future prosecution for grave crimes.

For states, the stakes are just as high – silence and inaction may amount to complicity in genocide. The question now is whether governments will uphold their obligations and effectively warn their citizens about fighting in Gaza, and investigate and prosecute them, where necessary.

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. Israel’s call-up of 130,000 reservists raises legal risks for dual citizens and their home countries – https://theconversation.com/israels-call-up-of-130-000-reservists-raises-legal-risks-for-dual-citizens-and-their-home-countries-263783

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Suzanne Nielsen, Professor and Deputy Director, Monash Addiction Research Centre, Monash University

Medicinal cannabis use has increased rapidly in recent years in Australia. Since access pathways were expanded in 2016, more than 700,000 prescription approvals have been issued.

The vast majority of medicinal cannabis products on the market have not been registered on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods. But medical practitioners can apply to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) for approval to prescribe them to patients.

Data shows the three most common conditions for which scripts are approved are chronic pain, anxiety and sleep disorders.

Although many patients report benefits, professional bodies and regulators have raised concerns about whether prescribing is outpacing the evidence.

So what does the evidence actually say? Does medicinal cannabis work for the conditions for which it’s most commonly prescribed?

Medicinal cannabis for pain

Medicinal cannabis refers to cannabis products that are legally prescribed to treat a medical condition. This can be the plant itself, or natural compounds extracted from the plant. Some compounds similar to or the same as those found in cannabis (for example, dronabinol and nabilone) are made in a lab.

Two of the most common compounds in the plant are THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) and CBD (cannabidiol), known as cannabinoids.

These are commonly found at various concentrations in medicinal cannabis products which come in forms including oils, capsules, dried flower (used in a vaporiser), sprays and gummies.

Chronic pain is the most common reason for medicinal cannabis use. But as we’ve written in a previous article, research shows only modest benefits, with limited improvements in pain and physical functioning.

The TGA says there’s limited evidence medicinal cannabis provides clinically significant pain relief for many conditions, and should only be tried if other standard therapies haven’t helped.

Does medicinal cannabis work for anxiety?

Beside chronic pain, a growing number of people are now turning to medicinal cannabis for anxiety.

Multiple reviews have examined whether it works for this purpose and have come to similar conclusions. For THC-based products the evidence is mixed, with some patients finding relief, while others report their symptoms are worse.

There is emerging evidence for CBD, however it’s too soon to recommend medical cannabis as a first-line treatment for anxiety. So far, studies of CBD in anxiety have been small, only measured effects under experimental conditions designed to induce stress, had no comparison group, or only tested a one-off dose. Because of these limitations, the studies can’t tell us if CBD is effective for ongoing anxiety management.

A recent review found CBD had positive effects on anxiety, but these effects were seen in studies deemed to have problems with their methods, and not in studies that were more rigorously designed and conducted.

Similarly, a small Australian study (with no control group) demonstrated positive effects of CBD in young people with anxiety who had already tried other treatments. However, the authors stated more rigorous trials were still needed.

What’s more, there are recent case reports of acute psychosis arising from medicinal cannabis use. Taken together with the ambiguous evidence, the role for cannabinoids for anxiety remains far from clear.

How about sleep disorders?

The evidence for cannabis in the treatment of sleep disorders and insomnia is perhaps even more limited, with neither CBD or THC having shown clear benefits reducing the number of awakenings or time spent awake during the night, or improved sleep quality. That said, some people do report they have fewer symptoms of insomnia when using medicinal cannabis.

Similar to anxiety, many of the studies have major weaknesses in their study design which make it difficult to draw strong conclusions. There are also few studies that compare medicinal cannabis to proven treatments for sleep disorders and insomnia. This makes it hard to make recommendations for treatment based on the current research evidence.

THC can make you drowsy, and in the short term, may help people fall asleep, or feel like they’re getting more sleep. But there are some important downsides to consider, too.

For example, if you take medicinal cannabis regularly to fall asleep your body can get used to it, making it harder to fall asleep without it. In the long term, medicinal cannabis can also affect the amounts of light and deep sleep a person will have, which can result in poorer sleep quality.

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Read more:
Cannabinoid products may reduce total sleep time in adults with insomnia: new study

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There is good evidence for some conditions

Some of the strongest evidence for medicinal cannabis products are for rare forms of epilepsy that don’t respond to existing treatments, and for treating symptoms associated with multiple sclerosis.

The only TGA-approved medicinal cannabis products are for these conditions.

There’s also evidence medicinal cannabis can help with chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. Though as newer medications with fewer side effects are now available, medicinal cannabis products are not considered first-line treatments.

Risks and side effects

Common side effects with THC in the short term include drowsiness, anxiety, dry mouth, nausea, vomiting and appetite changes. For some people, these effects reduce over time.

Some people with preexisting health conditions such as schizophrenia, psychosis or heart conditions may be more prone to experiencing side effects.

An estimated one in four people using medical cannabis meet the criteria for dependence (known as cannabis use disorder). In the longer term, dependence appears more common with medical use, particularly when combined with non-medical use.

If you are suffering with anxiety, sleep problems or chronic pain, and are wondering what treatments might be most effective for you, speak to your regular GP.

Suzanne Nielsen receives funding from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, and has previously received funding from Worksafe and the Therapeutic Goods Administration to provide independent evidence reviews on medical cannabis. She is the president-elect of the Australasian Society for Professionals on Alcohol and other Drugs.

Myfanwy Graham receives funding from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, alongside government and university institutes. Myfanwy has served as a consultant for the UNODC, WHO and NASEM. She is an appointed member of the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s Medicinal Cannabis Expert Working Group. This article does not represent the views of the TGA or the Expert Working Group.

– ref. Medicinal cannabis is most often prescribed for pain, anxiety and sleep. Here’s what the evidence says – https://theconversation.com/medicinal-cannabis-is-most-often-prescribed-for-pain-anxiety-and-sleep-heres-what-the-evidence-says-262429

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Maha Nassar, Associate Professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, University of Arizona

Five journalists were among the 22 people killed on Aug. 25, 2025, in Israeli strikes on the Nasser Hospital in the Gaza Strip. Following global condemnation, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement saying Israel “values the work of journalists.” But the numbers tell a different story.

Those deaths bring the total number of journalists killed in Gaza in almost two years of war to 192. The Committee to Protect Journalists, which collates that data, accuses Israel of “engaging in the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists” that the U.S.-based nonprofit has ever seen. “Palestinian journalists are being threatened, directly targeted and murdered by Israeli forces, and are arbitrarily detained and tortured in retaliation for their work,” the committee added.

As a scholar of modern Palestinian history, I see the current killing of reporters, photographers and other media professionals in Gaza as part of a longer history of Israeli attempts to silence Palestinian journalists. This history stretches back to at least 1967, when Israel militarily occupied the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip following the Six-Day War.

Beyond the humanitarian toll, what makes matters even more drastic now is that, with Israeli restrictions on foreign media entering Gaza, local Palestinian journalists are the only people who can bear witness to the death and destruction taking place – and report it to a wider world. Indeed, nearly all of the nearly 200 journalists killed since Oct. 7, 2023, have been Palestinian.

A decades-long process in the making

From the first days of the occupation in 1967, Israel has tried to keep a tight grip on media reporting, building a legal and military architecture that aimed to control and censor Palestinian journalism.

In August 1967, the army issued Military Order 101, effectively criminalizing “political” assembly and “propagandistic” publications in the occupied territories.

Yet despite such restrictions, local journalism persisted and grew. By the early 1980s, Palestinians in the occupied territories were publishing three dailies, five weeklies and four magazines. The most popular publications circulated up to 15,000 copies.

But all Palestinian publications were subject to Israeli military censorship. Every night, editors were forced to submit two copies of everything they planned to print to Israeli censors. That included articles, photos, ads, weather reports and even crossword puzzles.

Anything the Israeli censor deemed to be “of political significance” had to be removed prior to publication. Editors who violated these terms, or who were accused of belonging to Palestinian political groups, could be detained or deported. These practices have echoes today with Israel often accusing the journalists it kills of being Hamas operatives.

Censorship regimes

Objecting to these and many other restrictions, Palestinians launched the first intifada, or uprising, against the Israeli occupation in December 1987. During the uprising’s first year, Israeli forces reportedly jailed 47 Palestinian reporters, temporarily banned eight local and regional newspapers, permanently revoked the licenses of two magazines and closed four press service offices.

While intended to be a show of force, most Palestinians saw the restrictions as evidence that Israel was afraid of Palestinians reporting on their own conditions.

Many people hoped that the Oslo Accords – a series of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization that formally launched in 1993 – would lead to greater press freedoms. But it was not to be the case.

Israeli authorities continued to enforce military censorship on what they deemed to be “security topics.” They also revoked the press cards of reporters who did not stay in line and assaulted and harassed journalists reporting from the ground.

Meanwhile, the newly established Palestinian Authority, set up as part of the Oslo process to partially govern Palestinian territories on what was meant to be a temporary basis, built a censorship regime of its own. It, too, arrested, suspended and closed news outlets it deemed too critical of its actions.

Shootings and impunity

By the 2000s, Israel’s attacks on journalists in the West Bank and Gaza Strip grew deadlier. Israeli forces fatally shot Palestinian photographer Imad Abu Zahra in Jenin in the West Bank in 2002, British filmmaker James Miller in Rafah in 2003 and Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana in Gaza in 2008.

Since 2008, as battles between Israeli forces and Palestinian militant groups have grown fiercer, journalists have worked under even deadlier conditions. Yet even during unarmed demonstrations, journalists have faced deadly Israeli force. In 2018, during the mass unarmed protests in Gaza known as the Great March of Return, Israeli forces shot and killed Palestinian journalists Yaser Murtaja and Ahmed Abu Hussein. Both were wearing “PRESS” vests when they were shot. In addition, at least 115 journalists were wounded while covering the protests, which lasted six months.

The deadly force has not been limited to Palestinians in Gaza. In May 2022, Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in the Jenin refugee camp. One of the most famous Palestinian reporters at the time, Abu Akleh’s death drew hundreds of thousands of mourners, while Israeli police beat pallbearers at her funeral service.

Legitimate military targets?

International humanitarian law makes clear that journalists are civilians and therefore cannot be targeted during combat. That includes war correspondents who are covering war while under the protection of an armed group.

For their part, Israeli officials argue that they do not target journalists. They say that their strikes are aimed at legitimate military objectives, often asserting that Hamas embeds itself in civilian buildings or that some of the journalists killed were militants.

But such allegations are often made without independently verifiable evidence. Israel alleged that Murtaja, the journalist killed in Gaza in 2018, was a militant, but provided no proof.

In the case of Abu Akleh, Israeli officials initially claimed that she may have been killed by Palestinian militants. They eventually admitted there was a “high possibility” that Israeli forces killed Abu Akleh, but claimed that the killing was accidental and therefore the government would not press charges. A recent documentary refutes that claim and identifies the Israeli soldier alleged to have killed Abu Akleh intentionally.

Culture of impunity

Even prior to the deadly Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the picture emerging was that of impunity for Israeli forces who killed journalists – by accident or by design. A May 2023 report from the Committee to Protect Journalists concluded that Israel engaged in a “deadly pattern” of lethal force against journalists and failed to hold perpetrators accountable.

Since October 2023, journalists in Gaza have faced even deadlier conditions. Israel continues to ban international news agencies from reporting inside the Gaza Strip. As a result, local Palestinian journalists are often the only ones on the ground.

Aside from the deadly conditions, they contend with Israeli smears against their work and threats against their families.

Palestinian journalists there often run toward bombardments when others run away. As a result, they are sometimes killed in “double-tap” strikes, where Israeli air and drone strikes return to an area that has just been struck, killing rescue workers and the journalists covering them.

All this has led to an unbearable personal toll for those continuing to report from within Gaza. On Oct. 25, 2023, Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael al-Dahdouh, was reporting live on air when he learned that an Israeli airstrike had killed his wife, two children and grandson. He returned on air the next day.

And the killing has not eased up. On Aug. 10, 2025, Israeli forces killed Anas al-Sharif in Gaza City, another prominent Al Jazeera correspondent who had stayed on the streets through months of bombardment. Five of his fellow journalists were also killed in the same airstrike.

The Aug. 25 strike on Nasser Hospital is just the latest in this deadly pattern.

Among the five journalists killed in that attack were freelancers working for Reuters and The Associated Press – two international media outlets frustrated by Israel’s refusal to allow its journalists into Gaza to document the war.

Despite the danger, global newsrooms have repeatedly urged Israel to open Gaza to independent media, and a coalition of 27 countries recently pressed for access in Gaza.

Israel continues to refuse these requests. As such, Palestinian journalists remain the primary witnesses of Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza. And they are increasingly killed as they do so. The question remains whether the international community will hold Israel to account.

Maha Nassar 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. Israel’s killing of journalists follows a pattern of silencing Palestinian media that stretches back to 1967 – https://theconversation.com/israels-killing-of-journalists-follows-a-pattern-of-silencing-palestinian-media-that-stretches-back-to-1967-263891