Category: The Conversation – Global Perspectives

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Anthony Clarke, Research Associate, School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University

Ask people how Stonehenge was built and you’ll hear stories of sledges, ropes, boats and sheer human determination to haul stones from across Britain to Salisbury Plain, in south-west England. Others might mention giants, wizards, or alien assistance to explain the transport of Stonehenge’s stones, which come from as far as Wales and Scotland.

But what if nature itself did the heavy lifting in transporting Stonehenge’s megaliths? In this scenario, vast glaciers that once covered Britain carried the bluestones and the Altar Stone to southern England as “glacial erratics”, or rocks moved by ice, leaving them conveniently behind on Salisbury Plain for the builders of Stonehenge.

This idea, known as the glacial transport theory, often appears in documentaries and online discussions. But it has never been tested with modern geological techniques.

Our new study, published today in Communications Earth and Environment, provides the first clear evidence glacial material never reached the area. This demonstrates the stones did not arrive through natural ice movement.

While previous research had cast doubt on the glacial transport theory, our study goes further and applies cutting-edge mineral fingerprinting to trace the stones’ true origins.

A clear mineral fingerprint

Giant ice sheets are messy, leaving behind piles of rock, scratched bedrock and carved landforms.

However, near Stonehenge, these tell-tale clues are either missing or ambiguous. And because the southern reach of ice sheets remains unclear, the glacial transport idea is open to debate.

So, if no big and obvious clues are present, could we look for tiny ones instead?

If glaciers had carried the stones all the way from Wales or Scotland, they would also have left behind millions of microscopic mineral grains, such as zircon and apatite, from those regions.

When both minerals form, they trap small amounts of radioactive uranium – which, at a known rate, will decay into lead. By measuring the ratios of both elements using a technique called U–Pb dating, we can measure the age of each zircon and apatite grain.

Because Britain’s rocks have very different ages from place to place, a mineral’s age can indicate its source. This means that if glaciers had carried stones to Stonehenge, the rivers of Salisbury Plain, which gather zircon and apatite from across a wide area, should still contain a clear mineral fingerprint of that journey.

Searching for tiny clues

To find out, we got our feet wet and collected sand from the rivers surrounding Stonehenge. What we discovered was striking.

Despite analysing more than seven hundred zircon and apatite grains, we found virtually no mineral ages that matched the bluestone sources in Wales or the Altar Stone’s Scottish source.

Zircon is exceptionally tough: grains can survive being weathered, washed into a river, buried in rocks, and recycled again millions of years later. As such, zircon crystals from Salisbury Plain rivers span an enormous stretch of geological time, covering half the age of the Earth, from around 2.8 billion years ago to 300 million years ago.

However, the vast majority fell within a tight band, spanning between 1.7 and 1.1 billion years old. Intriguingly, Salisbury River zircon ages match those from the Thanet Formation, a blanket of loosely compacted sand that covered much of southern England millions of years ago before being eroded.

This means zircon in river sand today is the leftovers from ancient blankets of sedimentary rocks, not freshly delivered sand from glaciers during the last Ice Age 26,000 to 20,000 years ago.

Apatite tells a different story. All grains are about 60 million years old, at a time when southern England was a shallow, subtropical sea. This age doesn’t match any potential source rocks in Britain.

Instead, apatite ages reflect the squeezing and uplifting caused by distant mountain-building in the European Alps, causing fluids to move through the chalk and “reset” apatite’s uranium-lead clock. In other words, the heating and chemical changes erased the mineral’s previous radioactive signature and started the clock ticking again.

Much like zircon, apatite isn’t a visitor brought in by glaciers but is local and has been sitting on Salisbury Plain for tens of millions of years.

A new piece of the Stonehenge story

Stonehenge sits at the crossroads of myth, ancient engineering and deep-time geology.

The ages of microscopic grains in river sand have now added a new piece to its story. This gives us further evidence the monument’s most exotic stones did not arrive by chance but were instead deliberately selected and transported.

Anthony Clarke receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Chris Kirkland 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. Grains of sand prove people – not glaciers – transported Stonehenge rocks – https://theconversation.com/grains-of-sand-prove-people-not-glaciers-transported-stonehenge-rocks-271310

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Eric Lob, Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations, Florida International University

During the protests that ripped through Iran in January, one person who gained attention was Reza Pahlavi. Pahlavi, who lives in Los Angeles, is the son of the late shah of Iran, who ruthlessly ruled the country before being deposed during the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

Pahlavi emerged during the recent upheaval as a prominent political dissident in exile who encouraged and inspired Iranians to demonstrate. It remained unclear, however, what level of popular support he commanded inside Iran, not to mention whether he was, in fact, dedicated to democracy as the descendant of a monarch.

While some Iranians perceived Pahlavi as an opposition leader, others considered him an opportunistic figure with monarchical designs and a mixed track record.

Crown prince to political dissident

Born in Tehran in 1960, Reza Pahlavi was the eldest son of the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and his wife, Queen Farah Diba, making him the crown prince.

From 1941 to 1979, the shah ruled Iran with an iron fist. With funding and training from France, the United States and Israel, he established and deployed a secret police force, the SAVAK, that subjected political opponents to surveillance, imprisonment, torture and execution.

As popular discontent against the shah grew in 1974-75, Amnesty International estimated there were between 25,000 and 100,000 political prisoners in Iran.

Although the shah stated during the 1979 revolution that he would rather flee the country than fire on protesters, his security forces killed approximately 500 to 3,000 Iranians – though those figures are lower than those killed in the latest Iran protests.

In 1980, the shah admitted to mistakes, including acknowledging that his regime had tortured Iranians.

The shah and his family fled Iran in 1979, and the Islamic Republic subsequently was established. After the shah died in 1980, Reza Pahlavi declared himself the next shah and started his political activism against the Islamic Republic from abroad.

More recently, he attempted to organize and unify a divided opposition composed of ethnic and religious groups, leftists, rightists, centrists, republicans and, of course, monarchists. In the process, Pahlavi also aspired to raise his public profile.

From 2013 to 2017, he served as co-founder and spokesperson of the Iran National Council, an umbrella organization of opposition groups, headquartered in Paris. It reportedly suffered defections from some groups, which stifled its ability to accomplish much. In February 2019, Pahlavi helped establish the Phoenix Project of Iran, a think tank in Washington, D.C., dedicated to regime change and a transition plan in Iran.

During the 2022-23 Woman, Life, Freedom protests, sparked by the death of the young Iranian woman Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the morality police, Pahlavi called for rallies against the Iranian government in the United States, Canada and other countries. Leading opposition figures spoke at these rallies, and thousands of people participated.

That same year, some high-profile activists and celebrities, including some his father had imprisoned, endorsed Pahlavi as a leader or figure who could unite the opposition.

Presence and politics

In April 2023, Pahlavi made his first official visit to Israel, where he was hosted by Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The visit was condemned by Iranians, from regime supporters to anti-government activists, who were opposed to monarchy and unsympathetic to Israel.

After Pahlavi’s participation in the February 2025 Munich security conference was nixed, he and his supporters gathered in the city that month and in the summer to unify the political opposition and plan a post-regime transition. For Pahlavi, the meetings may have been simply a face-saving measure after the security conference snub.

As a political dissident, Pahlavi continually called for a popular uprising, regime change and a secular and democratic state. At the same time, he did not rule out the return of the monarchy, albeit a constitutional one, based on a national referendum and constituent assembly.

In an attempt to appease other opposition groups and some anti-monarchy Iranian citizens, Pahlavi occasionally insisted he was “not a political leader” and was “not personally seeking political office” in Iran if the regime fell.

On the foreign policy front – and following in his father’s footsteps – Pahlavi has advocated for Iran to align itself with the United States and Israel.

Unclear support, mixed record

As Pahlavi became more politically active abroad, questions surfaced about his viability as an opposition leader in Iran.

Discounting a 2023 poll conducted by a pro-Pahlavi institute indicating he was widely popular in Iran, it remained difficult to determine his support in Iranian society.

In a 2022 poll conducted by an independent, nonprofit research foundation with 158,000 respondents in Iran, Pahlavi received the highest percentage – 32.8% – among 34 candidates listed to serve on a transitional solidarity council, should the regime collapse.

At the same time, Pahlavi apparently lacked a serious monarchist movement and a strong connection with local opposition leaders and activists in Iran. He purportedly had little, if any, support among reformist or liberal groups in the country.

The lack of clarity concerning support for Pahlavi in Iran explained the hesitation of U.S. officials, including President Donald Trump, to engage with him. That did not deter Pahlavi from attempting to persuade them to abandon diplomatic talks and negotiations with the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program.

Despite the debates outside Iran about Pahlavi’s support within the country, pro-monarchy slogans increasingly appeared in Iranian social media postings and anti-government protests, including those in 2017-18, 2019-20, and 2022-23.

During the 2019-20 protests, the security forces arrested members of monarchist groups around the country and acknowledged their rising popularity and ability to infiltrate the government. Some reformist intellectuals suggested that monarchist slogans were merely a means for Iranian youth and other citizens to channel their anger and frustration at the authorities rather than expressions of true support for Pahlavi.

The slogans also reinforced the regime’s efforts to delegitimize the protests by portraying them as a plot by external and internal enemies, including the monarchists, to destabilize the country.

Throughout the 12-day war in June 2025 between Iran and Israel, which claimed the lives of 1,190 Iranian civilians and injured and displaced thousands more, Pahlavi publicly lamented the destruction of Iran’s military infrastructure that his father had initially built and the price its people paid for a war he blamed on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the regime.

At the same time, he was criticized by prominent political prisoners and other Iranian activists and citizens for betraying his country by supporting the Israeli strikes and failing to condemn them.

After the war, Israeli investigative journalists uncovered an influence operation conducted and funded by Israeli public and private entities to promote – among Persian-speaking audiences on social media – Pahlavi as a potential leader in a post-Islamic Republic Iran. The disinformation campaign created cynicism and controversy concerning Pahlavi’s true popularity inside the country and his tacit connection with Israel before and during the war.

Latest protests and future prospects

During the most recent protests, Pahlavi expressed support for protesters and encouraged them to demonstrate at certain times in the evening. The timing of the protests and demonstrations was intended to increase turnout by accommodating people’s work schedules and to maximize media coverage by aligning with news cycles.

Thousands of protesters turned out in the streets at those times, with some chanting anti-government slogans and others pro-monarchy ones.

His role in the protests was reduced after the regime cut off the internet and telecommunications between the people of Iran and the outside world, as well as among activists inside the country.

While some people praised Pahlavi for inspiring protesters, others asked whether he was responsible for sending them to detention and possible death, as some believed Trump was for similarly encouraging the protesters.

For the last 15 years, Pahlavi has intensified his efforts to unify the political opposition and gain greater exposure, culminating in him emerging as a central figure in the latest protests.

Yet there remain questions about whether he is viable as an opposition leader or is simply an opportunist.

His message about a democratic future for Iran has been largely consistent. However, his father’s repressive and imperial legacy, combined with his own royal pedigree and American and Israeli proximity, prevent him from finding favor with Iranians who oppose monarchy and prioritize sovereignty.

Now, the prospect of Iranians across the country rallying around Pahlavi remains as much of an open question as whether they will succeed in creating the conditions for his return by toppling the regime.

Eric Lob is affiliated with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

– ref. The rise of Reza Pahlavi: Iranian opposition leader or opportunist? – https://theconversation.com/the-rise-of-reza-pahlavi-iranian-opposition-leader-or-opportunist-273423

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Mireille Rebeiz, Chair of Middle East Studies, Dickinson College

More than a year after a ceasefire nominally ended active fighting, much of southern Lebanon bears the ecological scars of war. Avocado orchards are gone and beehives destroyed. So, too, are the livelihoods they supported. Meanwhile, fields and forests have disappeared under the intense fire caused by white phosphorus shelling. Shrapnel and unexploded bombs, however, remain.

Such grim realities are a window into the massive ecological destruction brought to Lebanon as a result of the 2024 war between Hezbollah and Israel. The number of Israeli airstrikes from October to November of that year ranked among the highest globally in the 21st century.

The conflict proved disastrous for human life, with more than 4,000 people killed, more than 17,000 injured, and 1.2 million civilians displaced internally. But a relatively uncovered aspect of the destruction was the significant effects to the environment.

Farmlands, olive groves, and pine forests were extensively burned by Israel’s airstrikes. Water resources were polluted. Pipelines and waste management were partially or completely destroyed. And the extensive dropping of ordnance and debris left a widespread trail of toxic dust and hazardous chemicals.

The damage to the Lebanon’s environment will have long-term consequences for the country’s agriculture and economy, and on its people’s mobility.
Repairing the damage would involve a multi-year reconstruction project costing an estimated US$11 to $14 billion, according to one World Bank assessment.

As experts in Middle East studies and environmental law, we believe that this destruction also indicates a grave breach of international environmental law and raises the question of whether Israel committed war crimes in Lebanon by deliberately targeting natural resources and engaging in environmental warfare.

Environmental destruction in Lebanon

During the latest war — the sixth such Israeli invasion of Lebanon since 1978 — Lebanon lost around 1,910 hectares of prime farmland, 47,000 olive trees and around 1,200 hectares of oak forests, according to Lebanese state figures.

According to Amnesty International, Israel used white phosphorus, a highly reactive chemical that burns at extremely high temperatures when exposed to air. While international humanitarian law does not necessarily ban its use for military necessity, it clearly dictates that white phosphorus must never be used against civilians.

Data collected by Amnesty International’s Citizen Evidence Lab suggests that Israel deliberately used this incendiary substance in densely populated villages in southern Lebanon to push the civilians out and make their lands unusable. Many civilians were killed, and several had long-term injuries, such as respiratory damages and severe burns.

As to the environment, white phosphorus destroyed fruit, vegetable and olive harvests, burned agricultural lands and left them polluted. White phosphorus also ignited large-scale fires that ravaged oak and pine forests and devastated wildlife. Natural habitats were destroyed, pushing animals whose species are already under stress, such as striped hyenas, golden jackals, and Egyptian mongoose, into residential areas, putting them at risk of being killed.

In the course of the conflict Israel also used cluster munitions, which are widely banned by international law. A cluster bomb consists of several smaller bombs that explode at different times to cover wider areas. But some of these cluster munitions do not explode on impact, thus threatening civilians’ lives and targeting civilians indiscriminately.

Due to these various chemicals and munitions, Lebanon’s soil and water have been contaminated with heavy metals, military scrap, and unexploded bombs.

To be sure, underlying conditions that preceded Israel’s bombing campaign likely worsened the extent of the resulting environmental damage. For example, there are no clear domestic laws in Lebanon banning asbestos, and data indicates the country continued importing the toxic substance well into the early 2000s, well after it had been banned in most other countries.

Several urban and industrial sites were heavily bombed during the 2024 war, especially in south Beirut and Tyre, a major city in southern Lebanon. There is little doubt that the resulting debris contains high levels of asbestos and other toxic substances, which were released with the destruction of buildings, pipelines, paints, roofs, tiles and other old structures.

Environmental protection in armed conflict

Current international humanitarian law provides limited environmental protection during armed conflict. Article 8(2)(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute qualifies a war crime as any attack launched “in the knowledge that such attack will cause widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated.” The cumulative nature of these criteria — being widespread, long term and severe — establishes a high bar for proving a war crime of this nature.

Additional legal frameworks include the 1976 ENMOD Convention prohibiting environmental modification techniques for military purposes and Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions that prohibits methods of warfare intended or expected to cause widespread, long-term and severe environmental damage.

In Feb. 2024, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan announced a policy initiative prioritizing environmental crimes within the existing Rome Statute framework.

Further, a growing international movement is pushing to recognize “ecocide,” defined as the mass destruction of ecosystems, as a fifth international crime alongside genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. If adopted, this legal framework would significantly lower the threshold for prosecuting environmental destruction during armed conflict.

Even so, the documented environmental impacts in Lebanon already raise substantive questions regarding the application of international humanitarian law and the legal requirement that military commanders weigh anticipated civilian and environmental harm against expected military gains before launching an attack.

The actions of Israel and other countries in recent years, however, have more broadly raised questions over the viability of international law and institutions’ ability to hold those accused to account.

Moving forward

Although Israel and Lebanon agreed to an internationally supervised ceasefire in Nov. 2024, it has largely been a truce in name only, with continued Israeli strikes targeting southern Lebanon and Beirut since then. Meanwhile, though Lebanon remains committed to the terms of the ceasefire, including the disarmament of Hezbollah, the armed Shiite movement has refused to entirely give up its arms.

Under U.S patronage, negotiations between Lebanon and Israel continue today, with discussions of a land border agreement and the return of Lebanese hostages. But, the negotiations so far have stuck largely to political issues with no mention of environmental damages.

In fact, the question of environmental reparations is not without precedent. Since 2006, the United Nations General Assembly has adopted 19 consecutive resolutions on the Jiyeh oil spill, caused by the Israeli bombing of fuel storage tanks during the July 2006 war. The destruction released up to 30,000 tons of oil into the Mediterranean, contaminating 170 kilometers of Lebanese coastline. The U.N. secretary-general assessed damages at US$856.4 million, and the assembly has repeatedly called upon Israel to assume responsibility for prompt and adequate compensation — calls that have gone unanswered for nearly two decades.

For the Lebanese people, particularly those who experienced firsthand environmental destruction, the question of Israel’s alleged environmental crimes is not merely an intellectual exercise. Rather, many environmental groups inside and outside Lebanon argue that addressing such issues is necessary to ensure the promotion of human rights in the region and equitable access to unpolluted farmland, water and forests.

Mireille Rebeiz is affiliated with the American Red Cross.

Josiane Yazbeck is affiliated with TERRE Liban and With the International Center for Comparative Environmental Law (CIDCE).

– ref. Lebanon’s orchards have been burnt, wildlife habitat destroyed by Israeli strikes – raising troubling international law questions – https://theconversation.com/lebanons-orchards-have-been-burnt-wildlife-habitat-destroyed-by-israeli-strikes-raising-troubling-international-law-questions-271577

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Eric Van Rythoven, Instructor in Political Science, Carleton University

Looking at headlines around the world, it seemed like United States President Donald Trump’s annexation of Greenland was imminent. Buoyed by the success of his military operation to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump has ratcheted up his rhetoric and is now threatening tariffs on any nation that opposes him.

Adding insult to injury, he’s openly mocked European leaders by posting their private messages and sharing an AI-generated image of himself raising the American flag over Greenland.

But behind these headlines a different story is emerging.

Trump’s military threats have toxic polling numbers with the American public. His Republican allies have openly threatened to revolt. European countries are rapidly sending reinforcements, raising the costs of any invasion. And Europeans are starting to think about what economic retaliation might look like.

Far from being inevitable, Trump’s Greenland gambit appears to be on increasingly shaky ground.

No good options

Trump has three options to take control of Greenland: diplomacy, money and military force. The latest diplomatic talks collapsed as Greenland and Denmark’s foreign ministers left the White House in “fundamental disagreement” over the future of the territory.

Simply buying the territory is a non-starter. Greenlanders have already said the territory is not for sale, and U.S. Congress is unwilling to foot the bill. That’s left military force, the worst possible option.

It’s difficult to convey in words just how stunningly unpopular this option is with Americans. A recent Ipsos poll found that just four per cent of Americans believe using military force to take Greenland is a good idea.

To put that in perspective, here are some policies that are more popular:

• Billionaires should pay less tax (five per cent)

• Pardoning convicted drug trafficker and Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez (13 per cent)

• Government book bans (14 per cent)

• Stopping the release of all the Jeffrey Epstein files (seven per cent).

If your official foreign policy is less popular than pardoning drug traffickers, then your foreign policy might be in trouble.

Sensing this unpopularity, Trump has already begun to walk back his military threats. Using his platform at Davos, he claimed “I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.”

It is too early to tell whether Trump’s claims are sincere. Not long after claiming to be the “president of peace,” he was invading Venezuela and bombing Iran.

The broader point is that if diplomacy has failed, money is a non-starter, and now military action is ostensibly being taken off the table, then Trump has no good options.

The danger of defections

Trump’s political coalition, in fact, is increasingly fragile and in danger of defections. The Republican House majority has shrunk to a razor-thin margin, and Republicans are already signalling a loud break with Trump over Greenland.

Nebraska congressman Don Bacon recently told USA Today: “There’s so many Republicans mad about this … If he went through with the threats, I think it would be the end of his presidency.”

The situation in the Senate looks even worse. Multiple Republican senators have pledged to oppose any annexation, with Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski visiting Copenhagen to reassure the Danish government. With enough defections, Congress could sharply curtail Trump’s plans and force a humiliating climb-down.

There’s yet another danger of defection. Senior military officers can resign, retire or object to the legality of orders to attack America’s NATO allies. Just last year, Adm. Alvin Holsey, the leader of U.S. Southern Command, abruptly retired less than year into what is typically a multi-year posting.

Holsey’s departure came amid reports that he was questioning the legality of U.S. boat strikes in the Caribbean. Americans still have a high level of confidence in the military, so when senior officers suddenly leave, it can set off alarm bells.

Creating a tripwire

In recent days, Denmark and its European allies have rushed to send military reinforcements to Greenland. These forces, however, have no hope of defeating a committed American invasion. So why are they there?

In strategic studies, we call this a “tripwire force.” The reasoning is that any attack on this force will create strong pressures at home for governments to respond. Once Danes and Swedes — and other Europeans for that matter — see their soldiers being captured or killed, this will force their governments to escalate the conflict and retaliate against the United States.

The Trump administration would like to seize Greenland, face no European forces and suffer no consequences. But the entire point of a tripwire force is to deny easy wins and to signal that any attack would be met with costly escalation. It creates a price to invading Greenland for an administration that rarely wants to pay for anything.

The B-word

Amid the Trump administration’s threats, people are forced to grapple with what comes next. European governments are already quietly debating retaliation, including diplomatic, military and economic responses.

Chief among these is the European Union’s Anti-Coercion Instrument, colloquially known as the “trade bazooka,” that could significantly curb America’s access to the EU market.

But for ordinary Europeans a different B-word will come to mind: boycott.

Some Europeans began boycotting U.S. goods last year amid Trump’s trade threats — but never to the same level as Canadians. That could quickly change if the U.S. engages in a stunning betrayal of its European allies. Fresh anger and outrage could see Europeans follow Canada’s lead.

Trump repeatedly threatened Canada with annexation, and it triggered a transformation of Canadian consumer habits. Canadians travel to the U.S. less, buy less American food and alcohol and look for more home-grown alternatives. Despite Canada’s small population, these boycotts have caused pain for U.S. industries.

Now imagine a similar scenario with the EU. In 2024, the U.S. exported almost US$665 billion in goods and services to the EU. It’s one of the largest export markets for the U.S., fuelling thousands of jobs and businesses.

The real danger for American companies, however, is when consumer pressure moves upwards to governments and corporations. European governments and corporations who buy from American giants like Microsoft, Google and Boeing will start to see public pressure to buy European — or at least not American. America’s most valuable corporate brands risk being contaminated by the stigma of the U.S. government.

Will he, won’t he?

None of this will stop the Trump administration from trying. Trump’s own words — that there is “no going back” on his plans for Greenland — ensure he’s backed himself into corner.

The more likely scenario seems to be starting to play out — Trump will try and then fail. His threats to annex Greenland will likely be remembered next to “90 trade deals in 90 days” and “repeal and place” in the pantheon of failed Trump policies.

The tragedy here is not simply a Trump administration with desires that consistently exceeds its grasp. It’s that the stain of betraying America’s closest allies will linger long after this administration is gone.

Eric Van Rythoven 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’s annexation of Greenland seemed imminent. Now it’s on much shakier ground. – https://theconversation.com/trumps-annexation-of-greenland-seemed-imminent-now-its-on-much-shakier-ground-273787

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Maxime Aubert, Professor of Archaeological Science, Griffith University

When we think of the world’s oldest art, Europe usually comes to mind, with famous cave paintings in France and Spain often seen as evidence this was the birthplace of symbolic human culture. But new evidence from Indonesia dramatically reshapes this picture.

Our research, published today in the journal Nature, reveals people living in what is now eastern Indonesia were producing rock art significantly earlier than previously demonstrated.

These artists were not only among the world’s first image-makers, they were also likely part of the population that would eventually give rise to the ancestors of Indigenous Australians and Papuans.

A hand stencil from deep time

The discovery comes from limestone caves on the island of Sulawesi. Here, faint red hand stencils, created by blowing pigment over a hand pressed against the rock, are visible on cave walls beneath layers of mineral deposits.

By analysing very small amounts of uranium in the mineral layers, we could work out when those layers formed. Because the minerals formed on top of the paintings, they tell us the youngest possible age of the art underneath.

In some cases, when paintings were made on top of mineral layers, these can also show the oldest possible age of the images.

One hand stencil was dated to at least 67,800 years ago, making it the oldest securely dated cave art ever found anywhere in the world.

This is at least 15,000 years older than the rock art we had previously dated in this region, and more than 30,000 years older than the oldest cave art found in France. It shows humans were making cave art images much earlier than we once believed.

This hand stencil is also special because it belongs to a style only found in Sulawesi. The tips of the fingers were carefully reshaped to make them look pointed, as though they were animal claws.

Altering images of human hands in this manner may have had a symbolic meaning, possibly connected to this ancient society’s understanding of human-animal relations.

In earlier research in Sulawesi, we found images of human figures with bird heads and other animal features, dated to at least 48,000 years ago. Together, these discoveries suggest that early peoples in this region had complex ideas about humans, animals and identity far back in time.

Not a one-off moment of creativity

The dating shows these caves were used for painting over an extraordinarily long period. Paintings were produced repeatedly, continuing until around the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago – the peak of the most recent ice age.

After a long gap, the caves were painted again by Indonesia’s first farmers, the Austronesian-speaking peoples, who arrived in the region about 4,000 years ago and added new imagery over the much older ice age paintings.

This long sequence shows that symbolic expression was not a brief or isolated innovation. Instead, it was a durable cultural tradition maintained by generations of people living in Wallacea, the island zone separating mainland Asia from Australia and New Guinea.

What this tells us about the first Australians

The implications go well beyond art history.

Archaeological and genetic evidence suggests modern humans reached the ancient continent of Sahul, the combined landmass of Australia and New Guinea, by around 65,000 to 60,000 years ago.

Getting there required deliberate ocean crossings, representing the earliest known long-distance sea voyages undertaken by our species.

Researchers have proposed two main migration routes into Sahul. A northern route would have taken people from mainland Southeast Asia through Borneo and Sulawesi, before crossing onward to Papua and Australia. A southern route would have passed through Sumatra and Java, then across the Lesser Sunda Islands, including Timor, before reaching north-western Australia.

Until now, there has been a major gap in archaeological evidence along these pathways. The newly dated rock art from Sulawesi lies directly along the northern route, providing the oldest direct evidence of modern humans in this key migration corridor into Sahul.

In other words, the people who made these hand stencils in the caves of Sulawesi were very likely part of the population that would later cross the sea and become the ancestors of Indigenous Australians.

Rethinking where culture began

The findings add to a growing body of evidence showing that early human creativity did not emerge in a single place, nor was it confined to ice age Europe.

Instead, symbolic behaviour, including art, storytelling, and the marking of place and identity, was already well established in Southeast Asia as humans spread across the world.

This suggests that the first populations to reach Australia carried with them long-standing cultural traditions, including sophisticated forms of symbolic expression whose deeper roots most probably lie in Africa.

The discovery raises an obvious question. If such ancient art exists in Sulawesi, how much more remains to be found?

Large parts of Indonesia and neighbouring islands remain archaeologically unexplored. If our results are any guide, evidence for equally ancient, or even older, cultural traditions may still be waiting on cave walls across the region.

As we continue to search, one thing is already clear. The story of human creativity is far older, richer and more geographically diverse than we once imagined.

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The research on early rock art in Sulawesi has been featured in a documentary film, Sulawesi l’île des premières images produced by ARTE and released in Europe today.

Maxime Aubert receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Google Arts & Culture and The National Geographic Society.

Adam Brumm receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Adhi Oktaviana receives funding from The National Geographic Society.

Renaud Joannes-Boyau receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Humanity’s oldest known cave art has been discovered in Sulawesi – https://theconversation.com/humanitys-oldest-known-cave-art-has-been-discovered-in-sulawesi-273364

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Adrian Barnett, Senior Lecturer in Behavioural Ecology, University of Greenwich

Look down at the rainforest floor. Rotting flowers shift under the assault of tiny petal-eating beetles. Vividly coloured fungi pop up everywhere like the strange sculptures of a madly productive ceramicist.

Look in front of you and heliconias and calatheas, tropical plants familiar from garden centres and greenhouses, vie for the attention of hummingbirds with scarlet and orange flowers.

Look up and the distant canopy offers a full spectrum of shades of green, along with clusters of flowers and fruits in a bewildering range of shades, shapes and sizes.

You’d be excused from thinking that life in a tropical forest is easy. A lazy arm movement being all that’s needed to secure the next mouthful of food. But it’s not like that at all.

Life in the rainforest demands extraordinary adaptations.

Which is why I found myself stepping out of a small canoe on the Tapajós
River in Brazil’s central Amazon to collect the remnants of the most recent meal of the endangered red-nosed cuxiu monkey (Chiropotes albinasus) for my recent study.

They are like no other monkey on Earth. Many species have ecological parallels on other continents, often with very similar physical and behavioural adaptations. For example, spider monkeys and gibbons, chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys. But cuxius, and their close relatives the uacaris and sakis, are a uniquely South American phenomenon.

Cuxius are cat-sized animals, with canines bigger than human teeth, even though their skull is the size of an orange. Although other primates have massive canines too (think baboons, mandrills or chimps) these are for display. Those of the cuxiu are the real deal; designed for cracking open hard, unripe fruits to get at the equally unripe and hard seeds. They eat a range of fruits that include relatives of the Brazil nut, acacia tree and oleander.

Humans would need a hammer to crack open this kind of fruit. But cuxius and their near relations bite them open. Powered by massive muscles, the jaws can deliver a bite which, if scaled for size, is equal to that of a jaguar. They eat hundreds of rock-hard fruits a week, tens of thousands over their ten-year life span.

So, I wanted to know: how do they avoid cracking their teeth along with the nuts? We know their skulls are evolved to disperse the shock of a bite. But scientists have long been mystified by how the cuxiu avoids breaking its teeth through the sheer repetitive strain.

My findings revealed that cuxius are a lot smarter and more subtle than anyone thought.

Pick up a walnut and you’ll notice a thin line running around the hard shell. This is the suture, and it’s where the shell would naturally break open to free the seed when it ripens. It’s also a lot less resistant to puncture than the rest of the fruit. Fruits with sutures dominate the diet of the red-nosed cuxiu, so I wondered if this could be the key to the cuxiu’s success.

Measurements of the force needed for a copy of a cuxiu canine to penetrate fruit outer husks showed this was the case. It took up to 70% less force to go in at the suture than elsewhere on the fruits the cuxiu ate.

My examination of skulls held in London’s Natural History Museum showed canine breakages were no more common in cuxius than in capuchins (which use either their molars or stone tools to break hard fruits) or ateline monkeys (which eat either soft pulpy fruits or leaves). Avoiding dental damage is smart – with no dentists in the forest a split tooth is a quick path to a slow death by starvation. And it allows the cuxius and their relatives to access unripe seeds, a food source few other animals can exploit.

This mirrors tactics used by carnivores like big cats, who bite prey at vulnerable spots to avoid breaking their teeth.

Then there’s the fact that every animal in the rainforest needs to be its own doctor, physiotherapist and fitness coach. With no first aid stations for bitten, twisted or shocked bodies, it’s best to avoid things going wrong in the first place. This is also true for actions that, through sheer repetition, could cause breakage through stress.

Survival in the rainforest depends on vigilance, cunning survival strategies and Olympian levels of fitness. An animal’s survival depends not only on knowing what to eat but how to eat it. Seconds count when a bite too many can mean missing the one key glance skywards that stops you becoming someone else’s breakfast.

Living in the top of the canopy of either rainforest or flooded forest, moving huge distances and doing so very fast, makes cuxius a challenge to observe. I first became interested in cuxius and uacaris because they are hard to study and, as a result, were so little known. But, soon after I started working with them, I realised cuxius and uacaris are like extreme sports athletes, pushing the boundary of what is possible in a monkey.

And they aren’t the only ones.

Swinging and hanging between the trees, the life of a spider monkey is like a perpetual parallel bar performance, not for a few brief minutes, after months of rigourous training as in humans, but all day, every day. No gold medal and long retirement, just surviving till dusk and starting again at dawn.

Additionally, while not exactly Olympian, the energy howler monkeys use during their daily calling bouts is similar to that of a mid-aria opera singer. Except that the monkeys must perform twice a day for a lifetime.

Sadly, animals’ Olympian abilities are no match for humans, whose use of tools is the equivalent of competitors using steroids or robotic enhancements. And, since it is clear that humans are not as smart as we are skilled, rainforest loss continues at a pace that even evolution – formerly the world’s best trainer – cannot have prepared them for.

Adrian Barnett 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. Deep in the Amazon, I discovered this monkey’s ingenious survival tactic – https://theconversation.com/deep-in-the-amazon-i-discovered-this-monkeys-ingenious-survival-tactic-271995

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Paul Webster Hare, Master Lecturer and Interim Director of Latin American Studies, Boston University

When the Trump administration sent in a team of U.S. special forces on Jan. 3, 2026, to extract Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, the operation fell short of full-scale regime change.

Despite years of U.S. antagonism toward Venezuela’s government, the broader political coalition that Maduro led was allowed to remain intact under the guidance of longtime Maduro ally Delcy Rodríguez. And it now seemingly has the tacit support of President Donald Trump – who has supported a transition to Maduro’s deputy over the option of pushing for opposition leader María Corina Machado to assume control.

As such, it marks a new phase, rather than an end, to the left-wing political ideology of Chavismo.

An ever-evolving Bolivarian revolution?

Now under its third stewardship in Rodríguez, Chavismo has already undergone change since being rolled out in Venezuela by Hugo Chávez.

Chávez himself drew heavily on Fidel Castro’s Cuba in fomenting the ideology, which has ruled over Venezuela since Chávez came to power in a 1998 presidential election.

In particular, he borrowed from Cuba’s model of state controls and a blend of socialism, with a brand of Latin American nationalism and strident anti-imperialism. That included a wide-ranging platform of social welfare and programs to distribute land and money to the poor – financed by Venezuela’s vast oil reserves while the price of crude was high.

All of that is anathema to much of the political beliefs of the U.S Republican Party, particularly in Florida, and rubs up against both the MAGA wing and the coterie of anti-leftist foreign policy hawks that surround the president.

As such, the Trump administration’s willingness to give Chavismo a chance under Rodríguez is a startling difference from Dec. 19, 2025, when Sec. of State Marco Rubio gave a long explanation of why he thought Venezuela was “an illegitimate regime that openly cooperates with terrorist elements.”

Not just Maduro himself, note, but the “regime” itself.

As a former deputy head of the U.K. mission to Venezuela, I discussed politics with Chávez himself back in 1995. I had served in Portugal and the example of a left-wing Portuguese military ousting a right-wing dictator to promote a return to democracy was something that appealed to Chávez.

In opting to allow the Chavista former deputy to Maduro, Rodríguez, to take over the country rather than push for the immediate installation of María Corina Machado – whose proxy won the last Venezuelan election in 2024, according to international verification – Trump is betting that that a reformed Chavismo can uniquely provide the stability that is required to rebuild the Venezuelan oil industry. And that appears to be his immediate priority.

Rodríguez has succeeded, according to reports, in convincing Trump that immediate elections are not a priority, meaning that the Venezuelan people must wait further for their choices to made.

But Chavismo has gone through various iterations since the 1990s, and it might well do so now.

Chavismo’s evolution

At one point, Chavismo had been a more democratic venture. Chávez was elected in 1998 fairly, having been pardoned in 1994 for an earlier and unsuccessful illegal power grab. And at first Chávez seems committed to the idea of a democratic process. Moreover, like in Cuba after the revolution, he prioritized developing socialist programs in areas like health care and housing.

But how Chávez viewed the sustainability of his government changed markedly in 2002. That’s when the U.S. supported a coup attempt that challenged Chavez’s authority.

In surviving that coup attempt, he gained credibility with Cuba’s Fidel Castro who had at first doubted Chavez’ abilities.

Castro became his mentor in all policy decisions, particularly in helping craft his international profile.

At the time, Cuba was facing a more hawkish U.S. president on Latin American leftism in George W. Bush. So Chávez decided that Chavismo needed to become more anti-American, and the high price of oil enabled him to fund domestic and international largesse.

‘Competitive authoritarianism’

The system that the new Chávez presided over evolved gradually, and under Castro tutelage it became increasingly undemocratic.

Chávez was advised by the Cuban government on how to develop what critics have termed a system of “competitive authoritarianism.” This involved extending presidential terms, attacking the media and tweaking the constitution to further centralize power.

In a tried-and-tested authoritarian measure, Chávez packed the judiciary with loyalists, and turned the electoral commission into a rubber stamp for the incumbent government.

These measures proved the lynchpin of Maduro’s election fraud of 2024, when the courts refused to verify the QR codes of receipts produced by the opposition showing that they, not Maduro, had won.

Under Maduro, Chavismo only got more repressive and authoritarian. Lacking the charisma of Chavez – who died in 2013 – and facing dwindling oil revenue with which to fund social and welfare programs, Maduro turned to the suppression of human and voting rights to maintain power as the country spiraled into the economic crisis and gang violence.

And to compensate for reduced oil revenues, Maduro turned to funding from drug and human trafficking, gold smuggling and, perhaps above all recently, crypto-trading.

A post-Trump makeover?

Rodríguez is no break from this Chavismo past, having served under both Chávez and Maduro.

Yet, she is apparently willing to work in cooperation with Washington. And the Trump administration has seemingly given her its blessing for now, evidenced most recently by a high-profile Jan. 15 visit to Caracas by the head of the CIA.

The basis of this apparent bargain is oil. Rodríguez has long experience of dealing with international oil companies – and her handling of oil production is reportedly a factor in her having been accepted by the U.S. administration.

The Chávez and Maduro governments advanced the state’s control of oil and other sectors, such as goldmining in Venezuela.

Under Rodriguez, it is likely to be reversed to appease Washington – opening up again to foreign companies and especially U.S. investment. Such a move would inevitably prove a wedge between Venezuela and Cuba.

Under Chávez and Maduro, Venezuela gave oil at heavily discounted prices to Cuba. In return, Cuban sent its doctors, advisers and security personnel.

This arrangement will likely be terminated under a new arrangement between Caracas and Washington. Its cessation would force Cuba to look for alternative oil supplies – probably from Mexico, Brazil and Colombia.

Yet Chavistas will likely be advising Cuba to do a similar deal with Trump. Cuba does not have oil, but it does have big nickel deposits and massive upside potential for U.S businesses in tourism. Cuba has only one 18-hole golf course, and years ago Trump, as a real estate developer, commissioned a study on building golf resorts on the island. Such deals might also save “Fidelismo.”

But where else might Chavismo go now? Will Rodríguez reverse the trend toward autocracy, and commit to future elections within a defined time period?

Will she also commit to dismantle “colectivos,” the militias of Chavismo that for years have suppressed opposition? And will she commit to returning the military to a national body, rather than the protector of one political movement?

Looking ahead, Trump’s prolonging of Chavismo is a political gamble in Florida – a state where many Latin Republican voters despise the system and any dealing with socialist governments. Trump ran in 2016 partly on a platform of opposing Obama’s deal with Cuba of 2014, claiming he would never deal with “socialist dictators.”

Can Chavismo survive?

The leaders of Chavismo have long been pragmatic negotiators, with a reputation among critics for breaking promises. In October 2023, for example, the Biden administration helped iron out the Barbados Agreement with Maduro and Venezuelan opposition groups, providing for free and fair elections in return for sanctions relief.

Yet the U.S. soon after accused Maduro of reneging on the deal by disqualifying the chosen opposition candidate, María Corina Machado. Now-acting President Rodríguez is still surrounded by all the stakeholders in Chavismo who concocted the scheme to deny the opposition’s victory – save, of course, Maduro himself.

Nonetheless, Chavismo had shown a strong instinct for survival. And Delcy Rodríguez has learned what many others leaders have: Chavismo can succeed in flattering, or at least appeasing, Trump. She has also learned that Trump appears more interested in oil than in restoring democracy.

Paul Webster Hare 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. Chavismo has adapted before – but can Venezuela’s leftist ideology become US friendly and survive? – https://theconversation.com/chavismo-has-adapted-before-but-can-venezuelas-leftist-ideology-become-us-friendly-and-survive-273390

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Jye Marshall, Lecturer, Fashion Design, School of Design and Architecture, Swinburne University of Technology

Valentino, who died on Monday at 93, leaves a lasting legacy full of celebrities, glamour and, in his words, knowing what women want: “to be beautiful”.

The Italian fashion powerhouse has secured his dream of making a lasting impact, outliving Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent.

Valentino was known for his unique blend between the bold and colourful Italian fashion and the elegant French haute couture – the highest level of craftsmanship in fashion, with exceptional detail and strict professional dressmaking standards.

The blending of these styles to create the signature Valentino silhouette made his style distinctive. Valentino’s style was reserved, and over his career he built upon the haute couture skills he had developed, maintaining his signature style while he led his fashion house for five decades.

But he was certainly not without his own controversial views on beauty for women.

Becoming the designer

Born in Voghera, Italy, in 1932, Valentino Clemente Ludovico began his career early, knowing from a young age he would pursue fashion.

He drew from a young age and studied fashion drawing at Santa Marta Institute of Fashion Drawing in Milan before honing his technical design skills at École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, the fashion trade association, in Paris.

He started his fashion career at two prominent Parisian haute couture houses, first at Jean Dessès before moving to Guy Laroche.

He opened his own fashion house in Italy in 1959.

His early work had a heavy French influence with simple, clean designs and complex silhouettes and construction. His early work had blocked colour and more of a minimalist approach, before his Italian culture really came through later in his collections.

He achieved early success through his connections to the Italian film industry, including dressing Elizabeth Taylor fresh off her appearance in Cleopatra (1963).

Valentino joined the world stage on his first showing at the Pritti Palace in Florence in 1962.

His most notable collection during that era was in 1968 with The White Collection, a series of A-line dresses and classic suit jackets. The collection was striking: all in white, while Italy was all about colour.

He quickly grew in international popularity. He was beloved by European celebrities, and an elite group of women who were willing to spend the money – the dresses ran into the thousands of dollars.

In 1963, he travelled to the United States to attract Hollywood stars.

The Valentino woman

Valentino’s wish was to make women beautiful. He certainly attracted the A-list celebrities to do so. The Valentino woman was one who would hold themselves with confidence and a lady-like elegance.

Valentino wanted to see women attract attention with his classic silhouettes and balanced proportions. Valentino dressed women such as Jackie Kennedy, Audrey Hepburn, Julia Roberts, Gwyneth Paltrow and Anne Hathaway.

His aristocratic taste inherited ideas of beauty and old European style, rather than innovating with new trends. His signature style was formal designs that had the ability to quietly intimidate – including the insatiable Valentino red.

Red was a signature colour of his collections. The colour provided confidence and romance, while not distracting away from the beauty of the woman.

French influence

Being French-trained, Valentino was well acquainted with the rules of couture.

With this expertise, he was one of the first Italian designers to be successful in France as an outsider with the launch of his first Paris collection in 1975. This Paris collection showcased more relaxed silhouettes with many layers, playing towards the casual nature of fashion.

While his design base was in Rome, many of his collections were shown in Paris over the next four decades. His Italian culture mixed with the technicality of Parisian haute couture made Valentino the designer he was.

Throughout his career, his designs often maintained a classic silhouette bust, matched with a bold Italian colour or texture.

Unlike some designers today, Valentino’s collections didn’t change too dramatically each season. Instead, they continued to maintain the craftsmanship and high couture standards.

“Quintessentially beautiful” is often the description of Valentino’s work – however this devotion to high beauty standards has seen criticism of the industry. In 2007, Valentino defended the trend of very skinny women on runways, saying when “girls are skinny, the dresses are more attractive”.

Critics said his designs reinforce exclusion, gatekeeping fashion from those who don’t conform to traditional beauty standards.

The Valentino runways only recently have started to feature more average sized bodies and expand their definition of beauty.

The $300 million sale of Valentino

The Valentino fashion brand sold for US$300 million in 1998 to Holding di Partecipazioni Industriali, with Valentino still designing until his retirement in 2007.

Valentino sold to increase the size of his brand: he knew without the support of a larger corporation surviving alone would be impossible. Since Valentino’s retirement, the fashion house has continued under other creative directors.

Valentino will leave a lasting legacy as the Italian designer who managed to break through the noise of the French haute couture elite and make a name for himself.

The iconic Valentino red will forever be remembered for its glamour, and will live on with his legacy. A true Roman visionary with unmatched craftsmanship.

Jye Marshall 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. Valentino shaped the runway – and the red carpet – for 60 years – https://theconversation.com/valentino-shaped-the-runway-and-the-red-carpet-for-60-years-273891

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Geoff Childs, Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis

Dorje Dundul recently had his foot gnawed by a brown bear – a member of the species Ursus thibetanus, to be precise.

It wasn’t his first such encounter. Recounting the first of three such violent experiences over the past five years, Dorje told our research team: “My wife came home one evening and reported that a bear had eaten a lot of corn from the maize field behind our house. So, we decided to shoo it away. While my wife was setting up camp, I went to see how much the bear had eaten. The bear was just sitting there; it attacked me.”

Dorje dropped to the ground, but the bear ripped open his shirt and tore at his shoulder. “I started shouting and the bear ran away. My wife came, thinking I was messing with her, but when she saw the wounds, she knew what had happened.”

Researchers Dolma Choekyi Lama, Tsering Tinley and I spoke with Dorje – a 71-year-old resident of Nubri, a Buddhist enclave in the Nepalese highlands – as part of a three-year study of aging and migration.

Now, you may be forgiven for asking what a bear attack on a septuagenarian has to do with demographic change in Nepal. The answer, however, is everything.

In recent years, people across Nepal have witnessed an increase in bear attacks, a phenomenon recorded in news reports and academic studies.

Inhabitants of Nubri are at the forefront of this trend – and one of the main reasons is outmigration. People, especially young people, are leaving for education and employment opportunities elsewhere. It is depleting household labor forces, so much so that over 75% of those who were born in the valley and are now ages 5 to 19 have left and now live outside of Nubri.

It means that many older people, like Dorje and his wife, Tsewang, are left alone in their homes. Two of their daughters live abroad and one is in the capital, Kathmandu. Their only son runs a trekking lodge in another village.

Scarcity of ‘scarebears’

Until recently, when the corn was ripening, parents dispatched young people to the fields to light bonfires and bang pots all night to ward off bears. The lack of young people acting as deterrents, alongside the abandonment of outlying fields, is tempting bears to forage closer to human residences.

Outmigration in Nubri and similar villages is due in large part to a lack of educational and employment opportunities. The problems caused by the removal of younger people have been exacerbated by two other factors driving a rapidly aging population: People are living longer due to improvements in health care and sanitation; and fertility has declined since the early 2000s, from more than six to less than three births per woman.

These demographic forces have been accelerating population aging for some time, as illustrated by the population pyramid constructed from our 2012 household surveys in Nubri and neighboring Tsum.

A not-so-big surprise, anymore

Nepal is not alone in this phenomenon; similar dynamics are at play elsewhere in Asia. The New York Times reported in November 2025 that bear attacks are on the rise in Japan, too, partly driven by demographic trends. Farms there used to serve as a buffer zone, shielding urban residents from ursine intruders. However, rural depopulation is allowing bears to encroach on more densely populated areas, bringing safety concerns in conflict with conservation efforts.

Dorje can attest to those concerns. When we met him in 2023 he showed us deep claw marks running down his shoulder and arm, and he vowed to refrain from chasing away bears at night.

So in October 2025, Dorje and Tsewang harvested a field before marauding bears could get to it and hauled the corn to their courtyard for safekeeping. The courtyard is surrounded by stone walls piled high with firewood – not a fail-safe barrier but at least a deterrent. They covered the corn with a plastic tarp, and for extra measure Dorje decided to sleep on the veranda.

He described what happened next:

“I woke to a noise that sounded like ‘sharak, sharak.’ I thought it must be a bear rummaging under the plastic. Before I could do anything, the bear came up the stairs. When I shouted, it got frightened, roared and yanked at my mattress. Suddenly my foot was being pulled and I felt pain.”

Dorje suffered deep lacerations to his foot. Trained in traditional Tibetan medicine, he staunched the bleeding using, ironically, a tonic that contained bear liver.

Yet his life was still in danger due to the risk of infection. It took three days and an enormous expense by village standards – equivalent to roughly US$2,000 – before they could charter a helicopter to Kathmandu for further medical attention.

And Dorje is not the only victim. An elderly woman from another village bumped into a bear during a nocturnal excursion to her outhouse. It left her with a horrific slash from forehead to chin – and her son scrambling to find funds for her evacuation and treatment.

So how should Nepal’s highlanders respond to the increase in bear attacks?

Dorje explained that in the past they set lethal traps when bear encroachments became too dangerous. That option vanished with the creation of Manaslu Conservation Area Project, or MCAP, in the 1990s, a federal initiative to manage natural resources that strictly prohibits the killing of wild animals.

Learning to grin and bear it?

Dorje reasons that if MCAP temporarily relaxed the regulation, villagers could band together to cull the more hostile bears. He informed us that MCAP officials will hear nothing of that option, yet their solutions, such as solar-powered electric fencing, haven’t worked.

Dorje is reflective about the options he faces as young people leave the village, leaving older folk to battle the bears alone.

“At first, I felt that we should kill the bear. But the other side of my heart says, perhaps I did bad deeds in my past life, which is why the bear bit me. The bear came to eat corn, not to attack me. Killing it would just be another sinful act, creating a new cycle of cause and effect. So, why get angry about it?”

It remains to be seen how Nubri’s residents will respond to the mounting threats bears pose to their lives and livelihoods. But one thing is clear: For those who remain behind, the outmigration of younger residents is making the perils more imminent and the solutions more challenging.

Dolma Choekyi Lama and Tsering Tinley made significant contributions to this article. Both are research team members on the author’s project on population in an age of migration.

Geoff Childs receives funding from the National Science Foundation.

– ref. What a bear attack in a remote valley in Nepal tells us about the problem of aging rural communities – https://theconversation.com/what-a-bear-attack-in-a-remote-valley-in-nepal-tells-us-about-the-problem-of-aging-rural-communities-271377

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Jun Du, Professor of Economics, Centre Director of Centre for Business Prosperity (CBP), Aston University

European negotiators believed they had bought stability in July 2025 amid the global trade turmoil sparked by Donald Trump’s liberation day tariffs. The EU’s deal with the US involved eliminating tariffs on American goods, purchasing US energy and committing to American investment. But six months later, as the US president made his intentions regarding Greenland clear, it collapsed.

Trump has now threatened new tariffs on eight European countries, the UK among them. The tariffs punish countries that sent military personnel to Greenland in support of Danish sovereignty.

The president has said 10% tariffs will apply to all goods entering the US from the eight countries from February 1, rising to 25% on June 1 until he is able to buy territory.

This isn’t an aberration. The US offered to buy Greenland in 1946. And before that it purchased Alaska (in 1867, from Russia), Florida (in 1821, from Spain) and Louisiana (in 1803, from France). What’s different now is the coercion mechanism – tariffs rather than a negotiated price.

Greenland offers Arctic shipping routes, rare earth deposits and missile defence positioning. Trump’s “Golden Dome” defence system needs more than military bases – it requires sovereign control to deploy classified systems without Danish oversight.

This is the same logic that drove pressure on Panama to renegotiate US control of the canal. This showed how existing arrangements aren’t enough – Washington wants exclusive control.

The tariff threats serve multiple purposes: punishing countries that showed solidarity with Denmark, testing whether economic pressure can fracture Nato from within, and of course generating revenue.

US tariff income hit US$264 billion (£197 billion) in 2025, up US$185 billion from 2024 after new tariffs kicked in. This is a windfall that makes security dependent allies who cannot retaliate reliable payers.

The usual playbook won’t work

When China faced US tariffs in 2025, it retaliated hard. China targeted soybeans from swing states, restricted rare earths with new export licences and slowed regulatory approvals for US tech companies. Beijing could absorb pain and inflict it back. That was a trade war fought with trade weapons.

Europe’s position is different. Brussels is now discussing the anti-coercion instrument – the so-called “trade bazooka”.

This law gives the EU teeth to hit back against economic blackmail from a non-EU country and overrides existing trade deals. In practice, this could restrict US companies from public procurement and impose retaliatory tariffs on €93 billion (£81 billion) of American goods.

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Read more:
Tariffs may bring a US$50 billion monthly boost to the US government. But ordinary Americans won’t feel the benefit

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But the EU requires unanimity for serious trade retaliation, and member states differ vastly in their US market exposure and Nato security dependence. Any serious escalation risks the security guarantee, a constraint China never faced.

And these tariffs aren’t really about trade anyway. Fighting a territorial objective with trade weapons is bringing the wrong tools to the job.

If trade diplomacy cannot solve a territorial problem, what can? The conventional playbook offers escalating retaliation — measured responses or catastrophic threats meant to deter a rational actor. But that assumes your opponent isn’t playing a game where brinkmanship is the point. Given those constraints, we have identified five options. None of them is comfortable.

1. Accept the new reality

Treat US tariffs as a permanent feature of transatlantic trade rather than a disruption to negotiate away. Price them into business planning and stop expending political capital on deals that probably won’t hold.

2. Diversify faster

The EU-Mercosur agreement signed in the same week between Brussels and the South American trading bloc wasn’t a coincidence. It was agreed in the knowledge that higher US tariffs were a distinct possibility one day.

For the UK, diversifying means accelerating its own negotiations (the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership – CPTPP, the Gulf and India). Every percentage point shifted from the US reduces Washington’s leverage.

3. Address the security dependence

European defence spending has risen sharply since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine — from €251 billion in 2021 to €343 billion in 2024. But capability takes longer than building up budgets. The Greenland tariffs illustrate the cost of dependence. When your security guarantor becomes your economic coercer, your options narrow dramatically.

4. Reconsider the UK-EU relationship

The crisis creates opportunity for both sides. These options require coordination across member states with vastly different US exposure and Nato dependence. Bringing Britain closer strengthens Europe’s negotiating position while giving the UK strategic options beyond an increasingly transactional US relationship.

The slow reset has been constrained by reluctance to make Brexit look costless. But when both face a direct challenge to the post-war order from their principal security guarantor, the calculation changes. Closer alignment becomes mutual strategic necessity.

5. Hold the line together

The worst outcome would be European countries peeling away from Denmark to escape tariffs. That is precisely what the policy is designed to achieve. This is the logic of political deterrence, which would suggest that showing solidarity will prevent further demands. If this cracks, there is likely to be more of the same from the US.

Whether Trump will ultimately acquire Greenland remains uncertain. Conventional wisdom says he won’t, but conventional wisdom has been wrong before. What’s clear is that this isn’t a tariff dispute requiring trade concessions. It’s a structural shift in transatlantic relations, and European strategy needs to adjust accordingly.

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. Europe has five options for responding to Trump’s Greenland threats. None of them look good – https://theconversation.com/europe-has-five-options-for-responding-to-trumps-greenland-threats-none-of-them-look-good-273885