Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Catherine Meads, Professor of Health, Anglia Ruskin University

New data has revealed something the UK has never seen before: clear evidence that sexual minority people die earlier, and at higher rates, than their straight or heterosexual peers.

For the first time, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has published overall mortality rates by sexual orientation in England and Wales. The findings come from a new bulletin that links voluntary sexual orientation data collected in the 2021 census with death registrations between March 2021 and November 2024. The linkage was possible for people with valid NHS identification numbers, allowing researchers to examine patterns of death across a population of nearly 29 million adults.

Evidence on whether sexual minority people experience higher overall mortality has been mixed, with many previous studies limited by small sample sizes, indirect measures of sexual orientation or a focus on specific causes of death rather than all-cause mortality. The new ONS analysis is the first UK study to link self-reported sexual orientation from the census with national death registrations, allowing population-level mortality rates to be examined across millions of people.

The headline result is difficult to ignore. People identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or another minority sexual orientation were 30% more likely to die from any cause during the study period than those identifying as straight or heterosexual. In age-standardised terms, this equates to 982.8 deaths per 100,000 people in the LGB+ group, compared with 752.6 per 100,000 among straight or heterosexual people.

Sexual orientation was included in the census for the first time in 2021. Around 92.5% of people aged 16 and over answered the question, representing roughly 44.9 million people.

Most respondents (89.4%) identified as straight or heterosexual, while 3.2% identified with an LGB+ orientation. A further 7.5% chose not to answer. After linking census responses to death records, the final ONS analysis covered just under 28.7 million people.

While this is the first UK release to examine all-cause mortality by sexual orientation, it builds on earlier ONS findings. In April 2025, the agency reported that people identifying as LGB+ had more than double the risk of suicide and two-and-a-half times the risk of intentional self-harm compared with straight or heterosexual people.

What the new data shows is that higher mortality among sexual minority people extends well beyond mental health.

Heart disease, for example, was the leading cause of death in both groups together and specifically in men (the leading cause of death in LGB+ women was intentional self-harm, and heart disease was the second leading cause). It accounted for 11.9% of deaths among LGB+ people and 10.7% among straight or heterosexual people.

This might not sound surprising until age is taken into account. On average, people in the LGB+ group were much younger, with a mean age of 35.6 years, compared with 48.6 years in the straight or heterosexual group.

Because the risk of ischaemic heart disease rises steeply with age, a higher share of deaths from this cause in a younger population is particularly troubling.

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Read more:
Sexual minority women face barriers to health care

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The ONS does not attempt to explain why these differences exist, and the data alone cannot establish cause. But the broader evidence base offers important clues. Smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, obesity and physical inactivity are all well-established risk factors for cardiovascular disease, and some are known to be more common among sexual minority populations.

Earlier ONS analysis has shown that lesbian, gay and bisexual people are more likely to smoke than heterosexual people, especially women, even after accounting for factors such as age, ethnicity and socioeconomic status.

Other research suggests higher rates of obesity among sexual minority women, though not consistently among men. Evidence for differences in conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes is more mixed.

Beyond individual behaviour, decades of research point to the health effects of minority stress on heart disease. Exposure to discrimination, stigma and violence is associated with higher levels of smoking and alcohol use, disrupted sleep, obesity and hypertension, all of which accumulate over time to increase the risk of serious illness and early death.

The most distressing findings in the new ONS release concern young people. Among those aged 16 to 24 who identified as LGB+, suicide accounted for 45.3% of all deaths. Among straight or heterosexual people of the same age, the figure was 26.6%.

Suicide is preventable, but it rarely has a single cause. What these findings make clear is that living in today’s society still places a heavier burden on sexual minority people, particularly the young. That burden shows up not only in mental health statistics, but in patterns of physical illness and early death.

If sexual minority young people were able to grow up in safer, more inclusive environments, these stark inequalities might not exist. The emerging evidence suggests they are not inevitable. They are shaped by social conditions and, at least in part, they can be changed.

Catherine Meads volunteers occasionally for the Liberal Democrat political party in the UK but is not a member.

– ref. People from sexual minorities really do die younger, new data suggests – https://theconversation.com/people-from-sexual-minorities-really-do-die-younger-new-data-suggests-273415

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Thomas Lockwood, PhD Researcher in Politics, York St John University

Suella Braverman’s decision to defect to Reform UK is not just another blow to Kemi Badenoch’s attempt to stabilise the Conservatives after their 2024 defeat. It also changes what Reform is being judged on.

Earlier this month, Badenoch sacked Robert Jenrick from the shadow cabinet for plotting to defect to Reform. Hours later, he did just that. Braverman’s move takes Reform’s number of MPs to eight. Party leader Nigel Farage has said Reform had been in talks with her for a year.

At this point, though, Reform is at risk of absorbing so many former Tories that it starts to look like the establishment it denounces. This recruitment spree rewrites the insurgent brand.

Reform’s leadership will understandably celebrate Braverman’s arrival as a serious coup. She is a former home secretary and a national media figure. Her departure is an unmistakable signal that the Conservative right is fragmenting. The Times reports she told supporters it felt like she had “come home”, but there is a basic strategic tension here. Reform has thrived by arguing that British politics is run by a closed circle of insiders who fail repeatedly and then reshuffle into new jobs. A rapid intake of ex-ministers risks making Reform look less like a clean break and more like a migration route for political careers.

That attack line is already being deployed. After former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi’s switch earlier this month, the Liberal Democrats described Reform as “a retirement home for disgraced former Conservative ministers”. The same basic charge has followed Braverman’s move: critics argue that people who helped shape the recent Conservative record are now trying to rebrand themselves inside Reform rather than account for that record.

For Reform, then, the immediate gain in publicity comes with a reputational cost: the party becomes easier to frame as a collection of defectors rather than a coherent alternative.

The May deadline: Reform knows the danger

If Reform were confident that any defection is good news, it would have no need for a cut-off date. But Farage has set the local elections date of May 7 as the latest date he will take Conservative switchers. After that, he believes his party would start to look like “a rescue charity for every panicky Tory MP”.

That is revealing. It implies Reform is trying to capture the benefits of defections (experience, profile, the aura of inevitability) while limiting the downside (brand dilution, factional chaos, accusations of being “Tories in new colours”). A deadline is, in effect, an admission that there is such a thing as too many ex-Tories… or at least too many arriving too quickly.

The deeper issue is organisational. Recruiting MPs is not the same as building a party machine. Defectors bring personal followings, constituency operations, donor networks and ideological baggage. They can add reach but they can also add volatility, especially if Reform’s appeal relies on projecting discipline and clarity.

And internal tensions are not theoretical. Braverman and Jenrick are not merely Conservatives who happen to have drifted rightwards. They were also senior figures in a government that Reform has attacked as incompetent and deceitful.

That is why a July 2025 post on X by Zia Yusuf (widely circulated as Braverman joined) lands so sharply. In the post, the head of policy at Reform UK referred to the Conservative government’s handling of an Afghan data leak and secret resettlement, asking “who was in government?”, and then named Braverman as home secretary and Jenrick as immigration minister.

The point isn’t whether Yusuf’s earlier argument was fair or unfair. It’s that it feeds an “own goal” narrative. Reform’s senior figures have recently depicted these people as emblematic of the failures of the Conservative state, and now the party is inviting them into the tent.

That forces Reform into a delicate position. If it embraces defectors uncritically, it weakens its anti-establishment brand. If it keeps attacking them, it destabilises its own recruitment strategy.

Braverman’s seat: opportunity and risk

Braverman’s own constituency, Fareham and Waterlooville, illustrates why Reform wants converts of her stature and why the strategy can backfire.

On official local results for the 2024 general election, Braverman won with 35% of the vote; Reform placed fourth on 18%, behind Labour (23%) and the Liberal Democrats (19%).

That is the kind of compressed result Reform dreams about: a sizeable right-populist base already present, plus a Conservative vote that if transferred could turn a marginal into a secure Reform seat. From this perspective, defections are not just PR. They are an attempt to solve Reform’s hardest electoral problem: converting diffuse national support into winnable constituency coalitions.

But the same numbers show the danger. If Braverman fails to bring a large share of Conservative voters with her, the most likely short-term effect is to make the seat more competitive for her opponents through vote fragmentation and tactical voting. Defections can therefore produce a paradox: they make Reform look bigger nationally while making individual contests messier locally.

And at the national level, the risk is huge. Reform’s central claim – that it is the “alternative” to a failed political class – is now colliding with the reality of who it is recruiting from that class.

If Reform wants to remain a pure insurgency, it must keep its distance from establishment figures and prioritise new candidates. If it wants to look like a credible government-in-waiting, it will keep collecting experienced politicians, but it must then accept the costs – intensified scrutiny, more ammunition for opponents, and the constant suspicion that it is simply rebranding Conservatism rather than replacing it.

Thomas Lockwood 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. Suella Braverman defects: is Reform becoming a magnet for Tory baggage? – https://theconversation.com/suella-braverman-defects-is-reform-becoming-a-magnet-for-tory-baggage-274344

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Thom Wilcockson, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Loughborough University

The earliest signs of dementia are rarely dramatic. They do not arrive as forgotten names or misplaced keys, but as changes so subtle they are almost impossible to notice: a slightly narrower vocabulary, less variation in description, a gentle flattening of language.

New research my colleagues and I conducted suggests that these changes may be detectable years before a formal diagnosis — and one of the clearest examples may lie hidden in the novels of Sir Terry Pratchett.

Pratchett is remembered as one of Britain’s most imaginative writers, the creator of the Discworld series and a master of satire whose work combined humour with sharp moral insight. Following his diagnosis of posterior cortical atrophy, a rare form of Alzheimer’s disease, he became a powerful advocate for dementia research and awareness. Less well known is that the early effects of the disease may already have been present in his writing long before he knew he was ill.

Dementia is often described as a condition of memory loss, but this is only part of the story. In its earliest stages, dementia can affect attention, perception and language before memory problems become obvious. These early changes are difficult to detect because they are gradual and easily mistaken for stress, ageing or normal variation in behaviour.

Language, however, offers a unique window into cognitive change. The words we choose, the variety of our vocabulary and the way we structure description are tightly linked to brain function. Even small shifts in language use may reflect underlying neurological change.

In our recent study, we analysed the language used across Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, examining how his writing evolved over time. We focused on “lexical diversity” — a measure of how varied an author’s word choices are — and paid particular attention to adjectives, the descriptive words that give prose its texture, colour and emotional depth.

Across Pratchett’s later novels, there was a clear and statistically significant decline in the diversity of adjectives he used. The richness of descriptive language gradually narrowed. This was not something a reader would necessarily notice, nor did it reflect a sudden deterioration in quality. Instead, it was a subtle, progressive change detectable only through detailed linguistic analysis.

Crucially, the first significant drop appeared in The Last Continent, published almost ten years before Pratchett received his formal diagnosis. This suggests that the “preclinical phase” of dementia — the period during which disease-related changes are already occurring in the brain — may have begun many years earlier, without obvious outward symptoms.

This finding has implications that extend far beyond literary analysis. Dementia is known to have a long preclinical phase, during which opportunities for early intervention are greatest. Yet identifying people during this window remains one of the biggest challenges in dementia care.

Linguistic analysis is not a diagnostic tool in itself, and it would not work equally well for everyone. Factors such as education, profession, writing habits and linguistic background all influence how people use language. But as part of a broader approach — alongside cognitive tests, brain imaging and biological markers — language analysis could help detect early risk in a non-invasive and cost-effective way.

Importantly, language data already exists. People generate vast amounts of written material through emails, reports, messages and online communication. With appropriate safeguards for privacy and consent, subtle changes in writing style could one day help flag early cognitive decline long before daily functioning is affected.

Why early detection matters

Early detection matters more than ever. In recent years, new drugs for Alzheimer’s disease have emerged that aim to slow disease progression rather than simply manage symptoms. Drugs such as lecanemab and donanemab target amyloid proteins that accumulate in the brain and are thought to play an important role in the disease. Clinical trials suggest these treatments would be most effective when given early, before significant neuronal damage has occurred.

Identifying people during the preclinical phase would allow people and their families more time to plan, access support and consider interventions that may help slow progression. These may include lifestyle changes, cognitive stimulation and, increasingly, new drugs to slow the disease progression.

More than a decade after his death, Terry Pratchett continues to contribute to our understanding of dementia. His novels remain deeply loved, but hidden within them is another legacy: evidence that dementia may leave its mark long before it announces itself. Paying closer attention to language — even language we think we know well — could help transform how we detect, understand and ultimately treat this devastating condition.

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. Terry Pratchett’s novels may have held clues to his dementia a decade before diagnosis, our new study suggests – https://theconversation.com/terry-pratchetts-novels-may-have-held-clues-to-his-dementia-a-decade-before-diagnosis-our-new-study-suggests-273777

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Timothy Hearn, Lecturer, University of Cambridge; Anglia Ruskin University

An upside-down jellyfish drifts in a shallow lagoon, rhythmically contracting its
translucent bell. By night that beat drops from roughly 36 pulses a minute to nearer 30, and the animal slips into a state that, despite its lack of a brain, resembles sleep.

Field cameras show it even takes a brief siesta around noon, to “catch up” after a disturbed night.

A new Nature Communications study has tracked these lulls in cassiopea jellyfish, which belong to a 500 million year-old lineage, as well as in the starlet sea anemone nematostella. The study findings may help settle a long-running debate among biologists about what sleep is for.

Does sleep conserve energy, consolidate memories – or do something more biologically fundamental? Until recently, most evidence for a “house-keeping” role for sleep came only from vertebrates.

When mice sleep, brain and spinal cord fluid surges through the brain and washes away metabolic waste. And a 2016 mouse study found that some types of DNA breaks are mended more quickly during sleep. Time-lapse imaging in a 2019 study of zebrafish showed that sleep lets neurons (nerve cells) repair DNA breaks that build up during waking hours.

The new study showed for the first time that the same process occurs in some invertebrates. That while the jellyfish and sea anemone are awake, DNA damage accumulates in their nerve cells and when they doze, that damage is repaired.

The work pushes the origins of sleep back more than 600 million years, to before the cnidarian branch (jellyfish, anemones, corals) split from the line that led to worms, insects and vertebrates roughly 600–700 million years ago. It also gives weight to the idea that sleep began as a form of self-defence for cells.

The new work moves the discussion to creatures whose nervous systems are much simpler than ours and are little more than thin nets. If sleep repairs their neurons too, that function is probably fundamental because simpler nervous systems evolved first.

The researchers first had to figure out when a jellyfish or anemone is asleep. This is surprisingly tricky: even when they rest, bell muscles keep twitching or the polyp drifts in slow motion. To do this they filmed the animals under infrared light and flashed white light at them or a pulse of food (a tiny squirt of liquid brine-shrimp extract).

Jellyfish that had been pulsing below 37 beats per minute for at least three minutes, and anemones that had stayed still for eight minutes, reacted more slowly. This meets the “reduced responsiveness” criterion for sleep, which is the same across the animal kingdom.

Next, the scientists stained nerve cells in tissue taken from jellyfish in a lab tank to mark where DNA breakages happened. The number of breakages peaked at the end of each species’ active spell (mid-morning for the jellyfish and late afternoon for the anemone) and dropped after a long rest.

When the scientists kept the animals awake by changing the tank’s water currents, both the DNA breaks and the next day’s sleeping time increased, similar to classic “sleep rebound” in humans where your body catches up on sleep.

To test cause and effect, the team shone ultraviolet-B light, which damages DNA, on the animals. This treatment doubled the number of DNA breaks within an hour and prompted extra sleep later the same day. When the animals had dozed, the breaks reduced back toward baseline and the jellyfish resumed their usual daytime rhythm.

Melatonin, the overnight hormone familiar to jet-lag sufferers, was added to the tank water and caused both species to doze during what should have been their busiest stretch (daytime for the jellyfish, night-time for the anemone), leaving their usual rest period unchanged.

The new finding is surprising because melatonin’s soporific role was thought to have evolved alongside vertebrates with centralised brains and circadian rhythms that respond to light cues. Seeing it work in a brainless animal suggests that this evolution took place much longer ago.

Putting these pieces together, it seems wakefulness gradually stresses the DNA in nerve cells. Sleep offers a period of sensory deprivation during which repair enzymes that stitch or swap the components of DNA can work unimpeded.

This logic fits with experiments in fruit-flies and mice which have linked chronic sleeplessness to neurodegeneration. Insomnia has also been linked to build-ups of reactive oxygen molecules (highly reactive by-products of normal metabolism that can punch holes in DNA, proteins and cell membranes).

If jellyfish need sleep to keep their nerve nets intact, the need to sleep probably predates the evolution of brains, eyes and even bodies that are the same on both left and right sides. In evolutionary terms, a nightly repair window could have been vital. Ancient organisms that skipped it may have accumulated mutations in irreplaceable neurons and slowly lost control of movement, feeding and reproduction.

The new study tracked two species in the lab and one in a Florida lagoon, but cnidarians live in many different light levels and temperatures. To be able to generalise this finding, future work will need to confirm that DNA-repair during sleep happens in similar animals that live in different conditions such as cold, deep or turbid waters.

Does this study settle the debate? Not entirely. Sleep almost certainly carries more than one benefit. Tasks such as memory consolidation could have been layered onto an ancient physiological maintenance programme as nervous systems grew more complex.

Yet the new findings strengthen the view that guarding DNA is a core purpose of sleep.

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

– ref. What an ancient jellyfish can teach us about the evoution of sleep – https://theconversation.com/what-an-ancient-jellyfish-can-teach-us-about-the-evoution-of-sleep-273307

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Steven David Pickering, Honorary Professor, International Relations, Brunel University of London

Academic freedom is often described as a cornerstone of democratic society. Politicians regularly claim to defend it, universities invoke it in mission statements and most members of the public say they support it in principle.

So why does it provoke such intense disagreement once it becomes concrete? At first glance, these disputes look like arguments about universities. But our research suggests something else is going on. Public disagreements over academic freedom are not simply about campus policy. They reflect deeper divides over political ideology and trust in expertise.

Debates about academic freedom have become increasingly prominent in the UK. New free speech legislation to protect academic freedom in universities was introduced in 2025. Disputes over offensive research, controversial speakers or international partnerships routinely make headlines.

Similar tensions exist elsewhere, even if they are less visible. In Japan, for example, academic freedom is formally protected in article 23 of the constitution, but scholars often report subtle pressures to avoid politically sensitive topics.

In a new study, we surveyed over 3,300 people in the UK and Japan to examine how citizens understand academic freedom when it is presented in concrete terms rather than abstract slogans.

Instead of asking whether people support “academic freedom” in general, we asked how much they agreed or disagreed with specific scenarios. These included whether universities should protect research that causes offence, and whether academics should be free to publish controversial findings. We also asked whether universities should collaborate with multinational corporations or political regimes accused of human rights abuses.

This approach matters. In surveys, people often express strong support for free inquiry in the abstract. But once academic freedom is tied to real-world trade-offs, such as offence, harm, reputation or political controversy, agreement tends to fracture.

Across both countries, political ideology emerged as one of the strongest predictors of attitudes toward academic freedom.

Right-leaning respondents were consistently more supportive of academic freedom. They were more likely to oppose restrictions on offensive research and more likely to agree that academics should be protected even when their work provokes controversy. This pattern appeared not only in the UK, where universities are deeply entangled in culture-war debates, but also in Japan, where such disputes are less visible in public life.

Left-leaning respondents, by contrast, were more likely to emphasise accountability. They tended to support limits on research perceived as offensive or harmful, reflecting greater concern for social sensitivity and the potential impact of academic work on marginalised groups.

These differences suggest that academic freedom is not a single, universally understood value. Instead, people interpret it through broader political worldviews. For some, it primarily means freedom from interference. For others, it is inseparable from social responsibility.

Trust in scientists matters

Trust also plays a crucial role. In both countries, people who trusted scientists more strongly were more likely to support academic freedom, particularly when asked whether researchers should be protected regardless of whether their findings cause offence.

Trust appears to act as a kind of permission structure. When people believe scientists are acting in good faith, they are more willing to tolerate controversial outcomes.

This effect was especially pronounced in Japan. There, trust in scientists was one of the strongest predictors of support for academic freedom across multiple scenarios. This likely reflects Japan’s institutional culture. Deference to expertise remains relatively high and political conflict over universities is more muted than in the UK.

In Britain, by contrast, trust in scientists mattered most when academic freedom was framed as protection for individual researchers, but less so when questions involved partnerships with controversial regimes. In those cases, trust was more conditional. This suggests that even trusted experts are expected to exercise judgement about ethical boundaries.

Taken together, these findings point to a deeper pattern. Public attitudes toward academic freedom are structured by two competing logics.

One emphasises autonomy. This is the idea that scholars must be insulated from political and social pressure in order to pursue knowledge freely. The other emphasises accountability: the belief that universities, as publicly funded institutions, should be responsive to social norms and moral concerns.

Most people do not fully embrace one logic or the other. Instead, they shift between them depending on the issue at hand. Many support free research in principle but draw lines when offence, ethics or international politics enter the picture.

This helps explain why debates over academic freedom so often feel polarised and unresolved. They are not simply disputes about policy details. They are disagreements about which values should take priority when liberal principles collide.

These findings have important implications.

First, they suggest that appeals to “academic freedom” alone are unlikely to persuade sceptics. Because people understand the concept differently, arguments that assume a shared meaning often talk past their audience.

Second, they highlight the importance of trust. Where confidence in scientists and universities is high, support for academic autonomy is more resilient. Where trust erodes, demands for oversight and restriction grow stronger.

Finally, disputes over academic freedom reflect broader tensions within democratic societies between liberty and accountability. These tensions are not new, but they are becoming more visible as universities sit at the centre of political and cultural change.

Rather than asking whether academic freedom is under threat, a better question may be this: how can institutions sustain public trust while defending the autonomy that makes academic inquiry possible in the first place?

Steven David Pickering received funding from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS, grant reference JPJSJRP 20211704) and the UK Research and Innovation’s Economic and Social Research Council (UKRI-ESRC, grant reference ES/W011913/1).

Yosuke Sunahara receives funding from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (grant reference JPJSJRP 20211704.

Martin Ejnar Hansen 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. How political leanings affect views on academic freedom – new research – https://theconversation.com/how-political-leanings-affect-views-on-academic-freedom-new-research-273408

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andrew Gawthorpe, Lecturer in History and International Studies, Leiden University

Another US citizen has allegedly been killed by immigration agents in Minnesota, raising tensions between state and federal governments. The actions of the federal agencies involved has drawn fierce criticism not only from former Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, but also America’s powerful pro-gun lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA).

If you were to think it unusual that the people named in the previous sentence appear to be on the same side over this issue, you’d be right. But these aren’t usual times in America.

Video footage taken at the scene reportedly shows agents of the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) – working with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) in Minnesota to detain people they suspect of being illegal migrants – tackling 37-year-old nurse, Alex Pretti.

The footage reportedly shows they wrestled him to the ground, beat him and apparently removed a handgun from a holster he was wearing, before firing ten shots at him.

Since his killing a lot of attention has focused on his gun. Carrying a handgun, whether openly or holstered, is legal in Minnesota, and Pretti had a license for his gun. So he was perfectly within his rights to be carrying it. And there is nothing to suggest from the footage that he attempted to draw it or use it while being tackled by the ICE agents.

Of course, in the United States, the right to keep and bear arms – the second amendment – is a pretty big deal to a lot of people, especially conservatives. So when various figures in the Trump regime suggested that CBP agents had been justified in shooting Pretti because he was carrying a holstered weapon, they provoked outrage from gun rights activists. And, significantly, many of these people are usually on the same page as the White House about pretty much anything.

First there was FBI director Kash Patel, who told Fox News: “You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want.” Dead wrong, replied the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus and the group Gun Owners of America – you’re legally entitled to bring a gun to a protest.

Then a Trump-appointed district attorney waded in, arguing: “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.”

This drew a rebuke from the NRA, one of the most prolific and important right-wing groups in America and a big donor to Trump’s campaigns, which replied that: “This sentiment … is dangerous and wrong. Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens.”

The problem that the Trump regime has is that it appears from abundant video evidence that Pretti was not handling his gun irresponsibly. He wasn’t waving it around, he wasn’t threatening anyone, in fact he wasn’t even touching it. He didn’t approach the federal agents – they appeared to pile on him. And he was disarmed of his holstered weapon by one of them before he was killed.

Second amendment vs tyrannical government

The reason that this touches such a raw nerve, even with many people who usually support Trump’s agenda, is that this cuts to the core of what the second amendment is about. In the eyes of the right, the amendment’s whole legitimacy rests on the idea that it allows the populace to arm in order to protect itself against a tyrannical government.

This means that Pretti was doing exactly what second amendment advocates say they need guns for. And while some gun rights advocates may have been willing to keep quiet while federal agents were trampling on the rights of migrants and brown-skinned citizens, the murder of Pretti is a bridge too far.

That’s not to say that the gun lobby is turning on the Trump administration – at least, not yet. But it is notable that ICE’s outrages (and those of the related Customs and Border Protection Agency) are becoming so hard to ignore that they’re increasingly drawing opposition not just from the left but also from traditionally right-wing groups.

The NRA is not about to flip and start fundraising for the next Democratic party presidential candidate. But its willingness to call out the regime is unusual to say the least. And it increases pressure on Trump to change course and damages the credibility of key people in the regime among conservatives.

The whole sequence of events also reveals something more concerning – the fact that more and more people in America on both left and right are carrying weapons. The idea of arming for self-defense has been quietly gaining ground in left-wing circles for around a decade.

Gun clubs have sprung up to serve LGBTQ+ people, black people, white liberals – anyone who fears they might one day be a target of violence from the Trump-ified federal authorities or right-wing militia. Nearly one-third of self-identified liberals now live in a gun-owning household.

And while it’s hard to find fault with their fears, this is another reason why America’s knife-edge politics is so terrifying. What happens when things fall apart in a country in which hatred and fear have driven so many people to arm themselves?

Let’s hope that Alex Pretti’s death serves as a reminder of the importance of stepping back from the brink rather than pushing the country closer to it.

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A version of this article also appears on the author’s Substack series, America Explained.

Andrew Gawthorpe is affiliated with the Foreign Policy Centre, a London-based think tank.

– ref. Shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis has put America’s gun lobby at odds with the White House – https://theconversation.com/shooting-of-alex-pretti-in-minneapolis-has-put-americas-gun-lobby-at-odds-with-the-white-house-274343

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Seamus Higgins, Associate Professor Food Process Engineering, Chemical & Environmental Engineering, University of Nottingham

A few thousand years ago, sugar was unknown in the western world. Sugarcane, a tall grass first domesticated in New Guinea around 6000BC, was initially chewed for its sweet juice rather than crystallised. By around 500BC, methods to boil sugarcane juice into crystals was first developed in India.

One of the earliest references to sugar we have dates to 510BC, when Emperor Darius I of what was then Persia invaded India. There he found “the reed which gives honey without bees”.

Knowledge of sugar-making spread west to Persia, then across the Islamic world after the 7th century AD. Sugar reached medieval Europe only via trade routes. It was extremely expensive and used more like a spice. Indeed, in the 11th century Crusaders returning home talked of how pleasant this “new spice” was.

It was the supply potential of this “new spice” in the early 16th century that encouraged Portuguese entrepreneurs to export enslaved people to newly discovered Brazil. There, they rapidly started growing highly profitable sugar cane crops. By the 1680s, the Dutch, English and French all had their own sugar plantations with enslaved colonies in the Caribbean.

In the 18th century, the increasing popularity of tea and coffee led to the widespread adoption of sugar as a sweetener. In 1874, prime-minister William Gladstone abolished a 34% tax on sugar to ease the costs of basic food for workers. Cheap jam (one-third fruit pulp to two-thirds sugar) began to appear on the table of every working-class household. The growing demand for sugar in Britain and Europe encouraged further growth and profit, earning the name “white gold”.

Britain’s per capita sugar consumption skyrocketed from four pounds in 1704 to 90 pounds by 1901. While slavery was eventually abolished, the supply of cheap labour was sustained by new flows of indentured workers from India, Africa and China.

Britain’s naval blockade of Napoleonic France at the start of the 19th century prodded the French to seek an alternative to Caribbean sugar supplies. It gave birth to the European sugar beet industry.

Sugar beet is a biennial root crop grown for its high sucrose content, which is extracted to produce table sugar. The 20th century has seen this traditionally heavily subsidised and tariff-protected industry grow to produce approximately 50% of Europe’s sugar. This includes the UK’s consumption, which is now around 2 million tons of beet (60%) and cane sugar (40%) annually.

Delights and dangers

In 1886, Atlanta’s prohibition laws forced the businessman and chemist John Pemberton to reformulate his popular drink, Pemberton’s Tonic French Wine Coca. He replaced the alcohol with a 15% sugar syrup and added citric acid. His bookkeeper, Frank Robinson, chose a new name for the drink after its main ingredients – cocaine leaves and kola nuts – and created the Coca-Cola trademark in the flowing script we know today.

In 1879, Swiss chocolatier Daniel Peter invented the world’s first commercial milk chocolate using sweetened condensed milk developed by his neighbour, Henri Nestlé. Milk chocolate, which contains about 50-52 grams of sugar per 100 grams, has now become a global favourite for its sweet taste and creamy texture.

Chocolate and cola have since solidified their status as global staples in the realm of fizzy drinks and sweet treats and have become essential indulgences for people worldwide.

In 1961, an American epidemiologist Ancel Keys appeared on the cover of Time magazine for his “diet-heart hypothesis”. Through his “seven countries” study, he found an association between saturated fat intake, blood cholesterol and heart disease. Keys remarked: “People should know the facts. Then, if they want to eat themselves to death, let them.”

With competing scientific advice John Yudkin, founder of the nutrition department at Queen’s College, published an article in the Lancet. He argued that international comparisons do not support the claim that total or animal fat is the main cause of coronary thrombosis, highlighting that sugar intake has a stronger correlation with heart disease.

He published his book, Pure, White and Deadly, in 1972. It highlighted the evidence linking sugar consumption to increased coronary thrombosis and its involvement in dental caries, obesity, diabetes and liver disease. He ominously noted: “If only a small fraction of what is already known about the effects of sugar were to be revealed about any other material used as a food additive, that material would promptly be banned.”

The British Sugar Bureau dismissed Yudkin’s claims about sugar as “emotional assertions”, and the World Sugar Research Organisation called his book “science fiction”. In the 1960s and 1970s, the sugar industry promoted sugar as an appetite suppressant and funded research that downplayed the risks of sucrose, while emphasising dietary fat as the primary driver of coronary heart disease.

Scientific debate over the relative health effects of sugar and fat continued for decades. In the meantime, governments began publishing dietary guidelines advising people to eat less saturated fats and high-cholesterol foods. An unavoidable consequence of this was that people began eating more carbohydrates and sugar instead.

Official dietary guidelines did not begin to clearly acknowledge the health risks of excessive sugar consumption until much later, as evidence accumulated toward the end of the 20th century.

In my new book, Food and Us: the Incredible Story of How Food Shapes Humanity I explore the fact that sugar is a relatively new addition to our diet. In just a short period of 300 years, or 0.0001% of our food evolution, sugar has become ubiquitous in our food supply. It has even evolved its own terms of endearment and affection for people, such as sugar, honey and sweetheart.

However, the global addiction to sugar poses significant and interconnected challenges for public health, the economy, society and the environment. The pervasive nature of sugar in processed foods, combined with its effects on the brain’s reward system, creates a cycle of dependency that is driving a worldwide crisis of diet-related diseases and straining health systems.

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This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Seamus Higgins 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. A brief history of sugar – https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-sugar-266189

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nima Shokri, Professor, Applied Engineering, United Nations University

Iran’s current wave of protests is often interpreted as having been sparked by inflation, currency collapse, corruption and repression. These explanations are not wrong, but they are incomplete.

Beneath the country’s political and economic crisis lies a more destabilising force that is still largely missing from international analysis: environmental breakdown.

Iran is experiencing not one environmental crisis but the convergence of several: water shortages, land subsidence, air pollution and energy failure. All added together, life is a struggle for survival.

So when citizens protest today, they are not only resisting authoritarian governance. They are responding to a state that can no longer reliably provide the most basic forms of security: water to drink, air to breathe, land to stand on, and electricity to carry on their daily lives.

From 2003-2019, Iran lost an estimated 211 cubic kilometres of groundwater, or twice its annual water consumption, leaving the country facing water bankruptcy. Excessive pumping – driven by agricultural expansion, energy subsidies and weak regulation – has caused land subsidence rates of up to 30cm per year, affecting areas where around 14 million people, more than one-fifth of the population, live.

Provinces such as Kerman, Alborz, Khorasan Razavi, Isfahan and the capital Tehran now have more than a quarter of their population living with the risk of subsidence. In all, large sections of the country – particularly around the capital Tehran, the agricultural centre Rafsanjan, and the city of Mashhad – are subsiding at alarming rates of close to 10cm per year.

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Read more:
Iran’s record drought and cheap fuel have sparked an air pollution crisis – but the real causes run much deeper

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Subsidence has cracked homes, damaged railways, destabilised highways, and threatened airports as well as Unesco-listed heritage sites.

Iran’s lack of water has become politically explosive. When reservoirs fall to extremely low levels, when taps run dry at night in major cities, or when farmers watch rivers and lakes disappear, grievances turn into protest.

As wetlands, lakes and riverbeds dry up, their exposed surfaces generate dust and salt storms that can blanket cities hundreds of kilometres away.

At the same time, chronic electricity shortages – caused by underinvestment, inefficiency and poor infrastructure – have forced power plants and industries to burn heavy fuels. The result is extreme concentrations of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and fine particulate matter.

Ignoring environmental problems

The World Health Organization notes that Iran is facing severe problems in terms of its air quality. Around 11% of deaths and 52% of the burden of diseases across the country are attributable to environmental risk factors.

In recent months, major cities have repeatedly closed schools and offices due to hazardous air quality, while hospitals report surges in respiratory and cardiovascular emergencies.

These environmental failures do not exist in isolation. They are the predictable outcome of decades of distorted national priorities.

Since the 1980s, Iran has channelled vast financial, institutional and political resources into ideological expansion and regional disputes — supporting groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen – while systematically underinvesting in domestic environmental governance, infrastructure renewal and job creation.

Meanwhile, Iran’s political economy has been structured around energy subsidies and megaprojects that reward short-term extraction over long-term sustainability. Cheap fuel has encouraged water-intensive agriculture and inefficient industry.

Environmental agencies have remained fragmented and politically weak, unable to restrain more powerful ministries or governmentally linked economic actors. International isolation has compounded these failures.

Sanctions deepened the environmental crisis by restricting access to modern monitoring technologies, clean-energy systems, efficient irrigation and external finance.

While much of the world invested in technology and regulation to curb pollution and stabilise water systems, Iran doubled down on emergency fixes that deepened ecological damage rather than containing it. Sanctions and climate stress amplified the problems, but the root cause lay in state priorities that have consistently ignored environmental security.

The political consequences are now unmistakable. Environmental stress reshapes not only why people protest, but where and how. Maps of unrest in 92 Iranian cities reveal a clear pattern. Protests increasingly erupt in areas where there is groundwater collapse, land subsidence and water rationing.

Water shortages and protest

In provinces such as Tehran, Khuzestan in the south-west and Isfahan in central Iran – all areas with high levels of protest – there are acute water shortages, subsidence causing damage to roads and pipelines, and disputes over access to water.

In other cities such as Kermanshah and Ilam, intensifying unrest reflects the interaction of major environmental problems of drought, rainfall decline and groundwater depletion with severe economic problems and poverty.

But Iran is not unique in this regard. Similar conflicts over water and economic issues have played a destabilising role in neighbouring Syria. Prolonged drought, conflicts over water and access to it, and limited rainfall have affected crop yields and animals there. Hundreds of thousands of people living in agricultural communities have been driven to cities and camps nearby in a desperate attempt to survive.

Water mismanagement and access to decent drinking water have also fuelled unrest in Basra in the south of Iraq.

Iran is not facing a cyclical protest problem that can be stabilised through repression, subsidies or tactical concessions. It is confronting a structural collapse of the systems that make governance possible, and are at the heart of human survival.

When there’s no water and the air becomes unbreathable, the social contract fractures. Citizens no longer debate ideology or reform timelines, they question the state’s right to rule at all.

What Iran sees today is not simply environmental stress but irreversible simultaneous failures across water, land, air and energy. These are not shocks that fade with rainfall or budget injections. They permanently shrink the state’s capacity to deliver security and economic opportunity.

Coercion can disperse crowds but it cannot reverse subsidence, restore collapsed aquifers or neutralise airborne toxins. A state cannot govern indefinitely where the ecological foundations of life, agriculture and public health are failing all at once.

Nima Shokri is affiliated with Hamburg University of Technology.

– ref. Iran’s biggest centres of protest are also experiencing extreme pollution and water shortages – https://theconversation.com/irans-biggest-centres-of-protest-are-also-experiencing-extreme-pollution-and-water-shortages-274217

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Justin Roberts, Professor of Nutritional Physiology, Anglia Ruskin University

Creatine is one of the most popular sports supplements out there. It’s shown to help build muscle and improve strength, boost speed and power in athletes and benefit sports performance all round.

Research also suggests this superstar nutrient may have other health benefits, including for brain function, memory, bone health and even mood.

While creatine has been a mainstay supplement for gym enthusiasts, most of the research on this supplement’s benefits has been conducted on men. With recent increased advertising specifically promoting creatine for women, there is growing interest in whether this nutrient can also be equally beneficial for them.

It’s already clear from the research that creatine could benefit women by reducing fatigue during exercise. It may also be particularly beneficial for maintaining muscle as women get older.

Creatine is a natural compound produced in the body from several amino acids (the building blocks from protein). We can also get it from protein-rich foods, such as meat and seafood.

Creatine plays a role in short-term energy, particularly during intense exercise, helping us to recover quicker between exercises. This makes it possible to do more work each time we train, leading to around 20% greater performance gains when regularly taking the supplement.

We naturally use around 2g-4g of creatine per day. But as our bodies don’t store much creatine, this is why we need to consume it in our diet or get it from supplements. Think of it like a short-term energy store that needs topping up.

Around 1kg of raw beef or seafood would supply around 3g-5g of creatine. However, cooking can reduce creatine content. This makes it challenging to consistently get enough from the diet alone, which is where supplements can be useful.

Research also shows that vegans, vegetarians and women tend to have diets lower in creatine – meaning lower overall body stores. However, women do appear to store a bit more creatine in their muscles than men, suggesting they may respond to it slower or differently than men.

The most studied form of creatine is creatine monohydrate. This can be taken as a powder, capsule or gummy. If women consume around 3g-5g of creatine a day as a supplement, it will help gradually increase muscle creatine stores over a period of two to four weeks.

But if you’re looking to boost muscle stores faster, research shows taking around 20g of creatine a day for seven days (before dropping down to 3g-5g daily) can safely boost stores.

Creatine benefits for women

There are many factors which influence a women’s health over their lifetime. This includes hormonal changes, the gradual loss of muscle that comes with ageing, loss of bone density and slower metabolism post-menopause – as well as fluctuating energy levels and poor concentration or focus.

Resistance exercise may be beneficial in mitigating some of these changes, particularly in supporting muscle mass and function, bone health and energy levels.

This is where creatine comes in. Doing resistance training for several weeks while taking around 3g-5g of additional creatine per day can enable you to maintain the quality and consistency of your training. This combination can be particularly beneficial for strength in mid to later life.

Women who take creatine consistently are shown to have improved muscle function, which ultimately can impact quality of life. There’s also some evidence that taking it alongside resistance training may support bone health in postmenopausal women – although not all studies agree on this.

It’s worth noting as well that creatine does not appear to lead to weight gain or cause a bulky, muscular appearance, which are often concerns for women thinking about taking the supplement.

More recently, research has been exploring whether creatine can affect brain health, cognitive function and possibly even mood in older women. Evidence also shows that in younger women, it can improve mood and cognitive function after a bad nights’ sleep.

There’s emerging evidence as well that taking 5g of creatine daily can help younger women sleep longer (particularly on days they’ve done a workout). The same dose may also improve sleep quality in perimenopausal women – possibly by supporting the energy required by the brain.

Another study also reported greater reductions in depressive symptoms in women taking 5g of creatine daily alongside antidepressants, compared to those just taking antidepressants.

Given many women report experiencing symptoms such as “brain fog”, poor concentration, stress, low energy and poor sleep during their menstrual cycle and throughout the menopause, this could make creatine a low-cost solution for many of these symptoms. However, a higher dose of creatine may be needed daily (around 5g-10g) to increase the brain’s creatine stores.

Creatine is by no means a cure-all supplement, and clearly more research on women is needed. But the research so far shows that even just a small amount of creatine daily – when paired with a healthy lifestyle and resistance training – holds promise in supporting many aspects of women’s health.

Professor Justin Roberts is employed by Anglia Ruskin University and Danone Research & Innovation, and has previously received external research funding unrelated to this article.

– ref. Creatine for women: should you add this supplement into your diet? – https://theconversation.com/creatine-for-women-should-you-add-this-supplement-into-your-diet-272773

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alex Nurse, Reader in Urban Planning, University of Liverpool

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, has been blocked from standing for parliament – a step that would have been essential to mount a leadership challenge against Keir Starmer.

Andrew Gwynne, who has been suspended for some time, has stepped down as MP for Gorton and Denton, citing ill health. A byelection will now be held in the seat, which is in the greater Manchester area – Burnham’s home turf. But the party’s National Executive Committee has voted eight to one to prevent Burnham from standing in the byelection, citing the expense of running a mayoral election to replace him as the main reason.

However, their ruling has been taken as a signal that Starmer is too worried about the threat Burnham would pose from the backbenches to allow him to return to Westminster.

Starmer is right to be worried. Burnham has been following a long history by hovering around in the background as a party leader struggles.

Margaret Thatcher spent the second half of her premiership heading off the threat from Michael Heseltine. He didn’t replace her but she was toppled and John Major assumed power as a consequence of those tussles.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s rivalry was infamous and at times all-consuming. Both David Cameron and Theresa May had to deal with Boris Johnson’s ambition to occupy their job. And we know how that ended.

In some ways, Burnham is trudging a similar path to Johnson: a former MP who left parliament to take up office as the mayor of a large city, and who enjoys a national profile that perhaps exceeds that of his office. However, the similarities end there.

Burnham served in Blair’s government, before holding multiple roles within Brown’s cabinet, including as health secretary. Burnham also tested his leadership credentials on the Labour membership on two occasions – losing to Ed Miliband in 2010 and Jeremy Corbyn in 2015.

Burnham has often spoken of his disdain for the Westminster model and has done very well for himself out of being a mayor rather than an MP. It’s true that he was taking what many saw as a convenient off ramp out of Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet when he initially ran for the position, but he won the 2017 election with 63% of the vote. He increased his majority upon re-election in 2021 and has become the figurehead of the English mayors.

His most impressive credentials lie in his approach to transport. He has taken the lead on bringing buses back into public ownership – a move that has been popular among people frustrated by spiralling fare prices. His was the first city outside London to appoint a walking and cycling commissioner – something that was then copied by every other mayor. He has ultimately formulated what has become known as “the Bee network” – a fully integrated system of tram and bus lines and cycle routes.

Of course, not all of Burnham’s actions have seen successes. For example, the ten-year plan for Greater Manchester, which is overseen by his office, has become increasingly fractured as local authorities break away from it – particularly over concerns that its housing targets aren’t achievable.

However, it was during the COVID-19 pandemic that he really burnished his credentials as the so-called “King in the North” – a title that has endured in popularity longer than the TV show from which it was derived. Amid confusing advice over lockdowns and inconsistent support from national government, Burnham took to giving live press conferences on the steps of Manchester town hall railing against Westminster.

He eventually won some concessions from the Johnson government over lockdown restrictions in his region. This, perhaps for the first time, really showcased the value of a talismanic mayor who could argue for their city, and certainly reaffirmed Burnham’s position as a national player.

A king on the march?

Given his two previous tilts at the role, Burnham’s leadership ambitions have rarely been in doubt. Indeed they have always bubbled beneath the surface. Although he has little choice but to lick his wounds for now, Burnham’s status as a potential replacement for Starmer remains undiminished.

There will also, undoubtedly, be others in the Labour party who have their own leadership ambitions, and who will have mixed emotions that the main stalking horse liable to topple Starmer and instigate a leadership race has been stabled.

Perhaps in a case of life imitating art, we should remember that in Game of Thrones the King in the North is fatally undone by poor tactical decisions. The most successful example of returning to parliament and obtaining power remains Johnson.

Even so, this took nearly four years and a party that largely wanted him back. With his path to Westminster currently blocked, that timeline might leave Burnham questioning his long-term strategy.

Alex Nurse 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. Andy Burnham: what now for the King in the North? – https://theconversation.com/andy-burnham-what-now-for-the-king-in-the-north-266455