Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Amalendu Misra, Professor of International Politics, Lancaster University

At the start of September 2025, US president Donald Trump sent a naval task force into the Caribbean to tackle drug trafficking in the region. The initiative has led to strikes on four alleged drug boats off the Venezuelan coast so far, killing at least 21 people.

The strikes have been condemned by Venezuela and Colombia, while some international lawyers and human rights groups have questioned their legality. Human Rights Watch, for example, has suggested the strikes amount to “unlawful extrajudicial killings”. However, these attacks are unlikely to stop.

In a post on X on October 3, after US forces killed four people in an attack on a suspected drug boat, US defence secretary Pete Hegseth wrote: “These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!!” Trump claimed, without providing evidence, that this boat was carrying enough drugs to kill 25,000 to 50,000 people.

The Trump administration now looks to be considering moving its campaign in the Caribbean to a second phase. On October 5, while speaking at a US Navy base in Virginia, Trump boasted that drug traffickers are “not coming in by sea any more, so now we’ll have to start looking about the land”. A leaked memo sent to Congress a few days earlier also suggests the US government has decided it is in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels.

Trump’s threats to escalate military pressure against the cartels may be part of a broader campaign to force Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, from office. The White House sees his government as illegitimate and has consistently accused Maduro of being a central figure in the Latin American drugs trade. There is little proof that this is the case.

A wider military confrontation with cartels across the region may therefore be unlikely. But it should not be discounted. On October 7, CNN reported that the Trump administration has produced a classified legal opinion that seeks to justify lethal strikes against a list of cartels and suspected drug traffickers.

The opinion argues that the president is allowed to authorise deadly force against a broad range of cartels, beyond those the US government designated as terrorist organisations in early 2025. But is a direct military confrontation really a viable strategy to curtail the power and reach of cartels in the region?

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Read more:
Trump labels drug cartels as terrorist groups – what it means for Mexico and beyond

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Striking the cartels

Some observers, including the US-based Washington Office on Latin America, have suggested that “the US military’s overwhelming capacities would allow it to disrupt the activities of a specific criminal group, destroy complexes of drug labs and capture kingpins”.

These moves would not be without their challenges. In response to direct military action, it is possible that the cartels may look to attack US military personnel and civilians across the region. The cartels are vindictive in nature and have a history of targeting law enforcement, military personnel and government officials throughout Latin America.

Shortly after becoming president of Mexico in 2006, Felipe Calderón declared a “war on drugs” and deployed military force against the cartels. They retaliated violently, with many public officials assassinated in broad daylight. The cartels may well respond in a similar way if US forces launch operations against them.

This could include retaliation within US borders. In its 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment report, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) detailed how the cartels have deep networks within the US. These networks, which span from large cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago to rural areas, provides them with the infrastructure to carry out retaliatory attacks.

The US homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, revealed in an interview with Fox News on October 5 that “cartels, gangs and terror groups” had already “put bounties on the heads of several federal immigration agents, offering US$10,000 (£7,500) to kill them and US$2,000 for their capture”.

“They’ve released their pictures; they’ve sent them between their networks”, Noem added. “It’s an extremely dangerous and unprecedented situation.” The cartels engage in various other criminal activities in addition to trafficking drugs, including the smuggling of migrants into the US.

The killing of a high-value drug kingpin or the arrest of a cartel boss also does not necessarily bring an end to that organisation. It only leads to fragmentation and the emergence of new tiers of leaders and groups that are often more violent than their predecessors.

Research supports this argument. The killing of the Los Zetas cartel leader, Heriberto “El Lazca” Lazcano, in October 2012 by Mexican marines was followed by higher levels of gang violence in the subsequent years as internal conflict between different factions intensified.

Addiction at home

Fentanyl and other opioids entering the US from Latin America have fuelled the worst drugs crisis in the country’s history. According to the US National Institute of Health, more Americans were killed by fentanyl-laced pills and other addictive drugs in 2021 alone than in all the wars the US has fought since the end of the second world war.

The DEA says Mexican criminal organisations, including the Sinaloa Cartel, play a key role in producing and delivering fentanyl and other illicit drugs into the US. But, to truly be successful in its war against the cartels, the US government needs to first address the problem of drug addiction at home.

According to a national 2023 survey on drug use in the US by American Addiction Centers, 48.5 million Americans aged 12 and older have battled a substance use disorder. This corresponds to 16.7% of the total population. A war on drugs needs to be a war against addiction in the US. Anything short of that will only fix the problem temporarily.

Amalendu Misra is a recipient of Nuffield Foundation and British Academy fellowships.

– ref. Why US military action against Latin America’s cartels won’t win the war on drugs – https://theconversation.com/why-us-military-action-against-latin-americas-cartels-wont-win-the-war-on-drugs-266933

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Naida Redgrave, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing & Co-Course Leader in Journalism, University of East London

Warning: includes some minor spoilers.

Brides is a warm and relatable story of two 15-year-old British Muslim schoolgirls travelling alone to Syria in 2014.

It’s not the first film to explore post-9/11 and 7/7 Britain through a Muslim lens. Films like My Brother the Devil (2012), Four Lions (2010), and After Love (2020) have each offered nuanced depictions of British Muslimhood. However, Brides is the first to address the personal impact of racism and Islamophobia through the lens of young Muslim women whose choices stem from complex social and emotional factors, rather than a duty to Islam.

The film comfortably passes the Bechdel test, which evaluates gender representation by assessing whether at least two named women engage in a conversation about something other than a man. It also passes the Riz test, an evaluative framework inspired by actor Riz Ahmed’s 2017 speech to the UK House of Commons. It measures whether Muslim characters are portrayed with agency beyond stereotypes of terrorism, oppression, or religiosity.

To achieve both is rare for Muslim representation on western screens and is what makes the film feel so refreshing. Woven throughout are delicate challenges to stereotypes often ascribed to Muslim characters.

Brides tells the story of Doe (Ebada Hassan) and Muna (Safiyya Ingar) who embark on a hazardous journey from the UK to Istanbul. They travel across Turkey and finally to the Syrian border. Many in the UK will recognise the real-world parallel.

Writer Suhayla El-Bushra and director Nadia Fall have stated that Brides reimagines the case of the “Bethnal Green trio”. In 2015, three east London schoolgirls, Amira Abase, Kadiza Sultana and Shamima Begum, fled the UK to become “Isis brides”, leaving their families in shock and generating much media outrage and public fury.

Yet rather than focus on radicalisation, this buddy-girl adventure is interspersed with short flashbacks and longer sequences that contextualise the girls’ desire to escape. These culminate in a racist attack on Doe by a white male classmate and Muna’s suspension from school as she retaliates violently to protect her friend. Before we arrive at this climactic point (shown shortly before the girls reach the border) there are many examples of the everyday racism and Islamophobia that blight their lives.

While the roots of Islamophobia reach deep into western orientalism (the stereotyping of eastern cultures), its modern form has dominated British political debate since the early 2000s. British mosques and Muslim communities, more generally, have persistently been portrayed as breeding grounds for anti-western rhetoric and even terrorism, through a constant stream of online and print stories.

Brides references these through a montage of Islamophobic headlines, such as the Sun’s notorious 2015 claim that one in five British Muslims have sympathy for jihadis.

Brides depicts the real-world consequences of media scaremongering through the various insults and threats that its young heroines are subject to. The unnamed white boy who later attacks shy Doe uses obscene language towards her, prods her hip with a pencil and invades her personal space in the classroom.

The more truculent and outgoing Muna is called a slur by a female classmate. Rather than punish the racist kids, the headteacher moves Muna to a different class and threatens her with the government’s counter-terrorist strategy, Prevent, for retaliating against the racist slur.

The headteacher also tells Doe that she should “rise above” racism after the white boy accuses her of not washing her hair and pulls off her headscarf in the playground.

The attack comes after Doe delivers a charity food parcel to the boy’s home from her community. His sense of personal humiliation is clearly the motivation for his later racist attack. Fall and El-Bushra’s decision to include this detail is striking, as humiliation is often discussed as a driver of misogynistic extremism, but rarely acknowledged as a root of racist or Islamophobic violence.

The uncomfortable classroom scenes echo many real-life incidents and show how, as groups like The Runneymede Trust have pointed out, government policy and the media can fuel Islamophobia in schools and everyday life.

The real Bethnal Green trio grew up in inner city London, but Brides is set in an unspecified coastal area of southern England. By choosing this location, the film again gestures toward the long-term rise of nationalism and Islamophobia in parts of the UK that have been hard hit by recession, under-investment and austerity politics, which was first noted by researchers in the 2000s.

Girls just want to have fun

The recent wave of Islamophobia and racism have been fuelled by the perception that misogyny is endemic in Muslim communities.

Although various religious doctrines are used to justify or condone violence against women, gendered violence and sexual abuse is a social problem that crosses all classes, regions and religions within the UK.

Brides highlights this point as Doe’s widowed mother is subject to the violent rages of her white boyfriend, Jon (Leo Bill) who also displays sexualised behaviour towards her daughter. As young women, both Doe and Muna attract unwanted sexual attention from older men of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, both in the UK and Turkey.

This emphasises that the sexualisation of young women is a result of patriarchy, rather than specific communities or religions. This serves as a corrective to numerous stereotypical representations of Muslim women in which they are shown only in relation to dominant men within their communities – often as either victims or terrorists.

Brides explores Muna and Doe’s friendship through banter and shared enjoyment of ordinary teen girl tastes and interests, such as fun fairs, junk food and romance.
In the end, the film is less about terrorism than about the systems that make dehumanisation seem reasonable. Fall’s timely and perceptive film succeeds not only as great female-centred drama, but as an important intervention into the crude racial politics of the contemporary moment.

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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. Brides offers a unique insight into the roots of far-right activism and Islamophobia in Britain – https://theconversation.com/brides-offers-a-unique-insight-into-the-roots-of-far-right-activism-and-islamophobia-in-britain-266876

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Keith Rochfort, Assistant Professor, School of Biotechnology, Life Sciences Institute, Dublin City University

As colder months set in, respiratory infections begin to climb: everything from the common cold and flu to COVID-19. It’s a time when healthy lungs matter more than ever. Yet the very tissue that lets oxygen pass from air to blood is remarkably delicate, and habits such as vaping can weaken it just when protection is most needed.

The lungs are often pictured as two simple balloons, but their work is far more intricate. They act as a finely tuned exchange system, moving oxygen from inhaled air into the bloodstream while releasing carbon dioxide produced by the body’s cells.

At the centre of this process lies the blood–air barrier: a paper-thin layer where tiny air sacs called alveoli meet a dense network of hair-thin pulmonary capillaries. This barrier must remain both strong and flexible for efficient breathing, yet it is constantly exposed to stress from air pollution, microscopic particles and infectious microbes.

Vaping can add another layer of strain, and growing evidence shows that this extra pressure can damage the surface that makes every breath possible.

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Read more:
Want to quit vaping this year? Here’s what the evidence shows so far about effective strategies

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The cloud from an e-cigarette carries solvents such as propylene glycol, flavouring chemicals, nicotine (in most products) and even trace metals from the device itself. When this cocktail reaches the lungs it doesn’t stay on the surface. It seeps deeper, irritating the endothelium – the thin layer of cells lining the blood vessels that mesh with the air sacs.

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Read more:
What’s in vapes? Toxins, heavy metals, maybe radioactive polonium

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Healthy endothelium keeps blood flowing smoothly, discourages unnecessary clotting and acts as a selective gatekeeper for the bloodstream – controlling which substances, such as nutrients, hormones and immune cells, can pass in or out of the blood vessels while blocking harmful or unnecessary ones.

Studies show vaping can disrupt these defences, causing endothelial dysfunction even in young, otherwise healthy people. Controlled human exposure experiments reveal rises in endothelial microparticles – tiny cell fragments released when vessel linings are under stress.

My own research group has linked these changes to surges in inflammatory signals and stress markers in the blood after exposure to vaping aerosols. Together these findings indicate that the endothelium is struggling to maintain its protective role.

Laboratory work shows that vaping aerosols (even without nicotine) can loosen the tight seal of pulmonary endothelial cells. When the barrier leaks, fluid and inflammatory molecules seep into the alveoli. The result: blood–gas exchange is disrupted and respiratory infections become harder to fight.

COVID-19 is usually thought of as an infection of the airways, but the SARS-CoV-2 virus also injures blood vessels. Doctors now describe the condition as causing endotheliopathies – diseases of the blood-vessel lining. In severe cases, capillaries become inflamed, leaky and prone to clotting. That helps explain why some patients develop dangerously low oxygen levels even when their lungs are not full of fluid: the blood side of the barrier is failing.

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Read more:
How COVID-19 damages lungs: The virus attacks mitochondria, continuing an ancient battle that began in the primordial soup

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The virus exploits a key protein called ACE2, normally a “thermostat” that helps regulate blood pressure and vessel health. SARS-CoV-2 uses ACE2 as its doorway into cells; once the virus binds, the receptor’s protective role is disrupted and vessels become inflamed and unstable.

Vaping and COVID-19: a dangerous combination

My team is using computer models to investigate how vaping may affect COVID-19 infections. Evidence already shows vaping can increase the number of ACE2 receptors in the airways and lung tissue. More ACE2 means more potential entry points for the virus – and more disruption exactly where the blood–air barrier needs to be strongest.

Both vaping and COVID-19 drive inflammation. Vaping irritates and inflames the blood-vessel lining while COVID-19 floods the lungs with pro-inflammatory molecules. Together they create a “perfect storm”: capillaries become leaky, fluid seeps into the air sacs and oxygen struggles to cross the blood–air barrier. COVID-19 also raises the risk of blood clots in the lung’s vessels, while vaping has been linked to the same, compounding the danger.

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Read more:
Is lung inflammation worse in e-cigarette users than smokers, as a new study suggests?

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Vaping can also hinder recovery after a bout of COVID-19. Healing the fragile exchange surface requires every bit of support the lungs can get. Vaping adds extra stress to tissues the virus has already damaged, even if the vaper feels no immediate symptoms. The result can be prolonged breathlessness, persistent fatigue and a slower return to pre-illness activity levels.

The blood–air barrier is like a piece of delicate fabric: it holds together under normal wear but can tear when pushed too hard. Vaping weakens that weave before illness strikes, making an infection such as COVID-19 harder to overcome. The science is still evolving, but the message is clear: vaping undermines vascular health. Quitting, even temporarily, gives the lungs and blood vessels the cleaner environment they need to heal and to keep every breath effortless.

Keith Rochfort receives funding from Research Ireland.

– ref. How vaping primes the lungs for COVID-19 damage – https://theconversation.com/how-vaping-primes-the-lungs-for-covid-19-damage-266162

Source: The Conversation – UK – By John Griffin, Professor in Materials Chemistry, Lancaster University

Three scientists have been awarded the 2025 Nobel prize in chemistry for discovering a new form of molecular architecture: crystals that contain large cavities.

Susumu Kitagawa from Kyoto University, Japan, Richard Robson from the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Omar M. Yaghi from the
University of California, Berkeley, in the US, will share a prize sum of 11 million Swedish kronor (£870,000).

The prize recognises the pioneering contributions of the three scientists in the development of something called metal-organic frameworks (Mofs). Mofs are a diverse class of crystalline materials that have attracted much attention in chemistry due to the presence of microscopic open cavities in their structures. They are helping to revolutionise green technology, such as harvesting water from desert air and capturing CO₂.

The widths of the cavities can range from a few angstroms (an angstrom is a unit of length equal to one hundred-millionth of a centimetre) to several nanometres (a millionth of a millimetre). That means they are far too small to see with the naked eye or even with most forms of microscopes. But they’re the perfect size for housing various molecules.

The development of Mofs can be traced back to the late 1950s when researchers started to discover “coordination polymers”. These are materials made up of linked chains of metal ions (atoms that have lost or gained electrons) and carbon-based bridging molecules known as linkers. These materials did not contain cavities, but they were based on the same metal-organic chemistry that would later give rise to Mofs.

In the late 1980s, Robson’s research group reported that some coordination polymers could be prepared as framework-like structures where, crucially, the carbon-based linkers formed three-dimensional arrangements around clusters of liquid solvent molecules. As mentioned in Robson’s research article, this revealed “an unusual situation in which approximately two-thirds of the contents of what is undoubtedly a crystal are effectively liquid”.

In the mid-late 1990s, Yaghi’s group demonstrated that it was possible to prepare coordination polymers that retained their structures even after the solvent molecules were removed from the cavities. This was a surprising result, which dispelled the prevailing assumption that such frameworks are fragile and would collapse if the solvent was removed.

In 1997, Kitigawa’s research group showed that the open cavities could be used to absorb gas molecules. He also showed that, in many cases, the framework itself expands as gas molecules are absorbed into it and contracts as they are released. These coordination polymers with permanent, open cavities came to be known as Mofs.

The discoveries by the three scientists effectively marked the birth of modern Mof chemistry, with many thousands of research articles published on them since.

Wide range of applications

Why are Mofs so interesting for chemists? The microscopic cavities within Mofs provide a unique and controllable location for chemistry to take place. A key application of Mofs is gas storage. In many cases, these materials can hold gases at much higher densities than in their free gaseous state.

This offers significant advantages for green technologies such as fuel-cell-powered vehicles, in which hydrogen fuel has to be transported as efficiently as possible. Many Mofs work particularly well for specific gases, which means they can also help separate gas mixtures in exhaust streams, or capture CO₂ from the air to mitigate the effects of global warming.

Mofs can also act as effective catalysts for chemical reactions taking place in the cavities. One of the key advantages of Mofs as catalysts is that it is relatively straightforward for chemists to switch and swap the metals and carbon-based linkers in order to tune the properties for a particular purpose.

As well as gas molecules, Mofs can also accommodate other small molecules, such as pharmaceuticals. This means they can be used to store and deliver drugs to a particular target, where their porous nature allows for controlled release of therapeutic chemicals.

In recent years, Mofs have shown promise for many other applications, including batteries, thermal energy storage and chemical sensors (devices that can monitor and detect chemicals such as contaminants). Excitingly, there remain many other applications that have yet to be explored.

Despite having been discovered over three decades ago, Mofs remain one of the hottest research areas in materials chemistry and will no doubt do so for many years to come.

John Griffin receives funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Faraday Institution, and has previously received funding from the Leverhulme Trust.

– ref. Nobel chemistry prize awarded for crystal materials that could revolutionise green technology – https://theconversation.com/nobel-chemistry-prize-awarded-for-crystal-materials-that-could-revolutionise-green-technology-267033

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Marcus Blagrove, Senior Lecturer in Intregrative Virology, University of Liverpool

Scientists have found eggs of the Aedes aegypti mosquito in the UK for the first time – a mosquito that spreads many tropical diseases.

The eggs were recently discovered in a trap at a freight depot near Heathrow airport and confirmed by DNA testing to be Ae aegypti. The discovery, led by the UK Health Security Agency, also reported further findings of Aedes albopictus, the “Asian tiger” mosquito, at a site in Kent in summer 2024. Both species are invasive and thrive in warm, humid conditions.

These Aedes mosquitoes matter because they can spread viruses such as dengue, chikungunya and Zika. Outbreaks of these diseases, once confined to the tropics, are now appearing in Europe.

In 2024, Italy recorded over 200 locally acquired dengue cases, mainly in the Marche region, while France and Spain also reported domestic dengue transmission. Chikungunya has become another European concern, with France reporting nearly 500 locally transmitted cases in 2025. Zika has not yet taken hold in Europe, but the same mosquito species could carry it if conditions allow.

Two related viruses, West Nile and Usutu, are also spreading further north across Europe. West Nile virus has caused outbreaks in birds, horses and people across Europe, and has now been detected in the UK for the first time.

In summer 2023, scientists found West Nile virus genetic material in wild mosquitoes from samples collected in Nottinghamshire. Usutu, which mainly infects birds, was first detected in London blackbirds in 2020 and has been found in birds or mosquitoes every year since, making it now endemic to the UK.

Both viruses belong to the same family as Japanese encephalitis, and although they primarily circulate in birds and mosquitoes, they can also incidentally infect humans. They also tend to move together. Usutu often establishes first, with West Nile following as temperatures rise.

The UK Health Security Agency notes that West Nile’s range has recently expanded “to more northerly and western areas of Europe”. Together, these findings show how climate change is shifting mosquito-borne diseases northwards.

Laboratory studies have confirmed that native British mosquitoes could transmit these viruses under local UK-climate conditions. Research has shown several species can become infected and even pass the virus on at typical summer temperatures.

For instance, common native Culex mosquitoes from England were found capable of transmitting Usutu in their saliva at just 19°C. In the same study, Culex pipiens and Culiseta annulata were able to transmit the UK Usutu strain, suggesting the virus could spread northwards.

Another experiment found that the salt-marsh mosquito Ochlerotatus (Aedes) detritus can transmit West Nile at 21°C, but not dengue or chikungunya. Combined, these results demonstrate that native UK mosquitoes are able to carry and transmit viruses like West Nile and Usutu if the right climate conditions occur.

More welcoming

The pattern is clear: climate change and global travel are together loading the dice. Warmer summers, milder winters and heavier rainfall are making the UK more welcoming to these insects.

Climate models already predict that Ae albopictus could become established in southern England within the next few decades. At the same time, more people and goods are travelling between the UK and regions where these diseases are endemic, bringing both mosquitoes and infections with them.

The UK Health Security Agency recorded hundreds of imported dengue and chikungunya cases last year. Each one a potential spark if the right mosquitoes are present.

The Animal and Plant Health Agency, a UK government agency, warns that this northward jump of mosquito-borne diseases is “primarily driven by movement of people and global climate change”.

In plain terms, the UK is warming into range for these tropical “vectors” and the viruses they carry. Already, Ae albopictus breeds widely across continental Europe, while local dengue and chikungunya outbreaks are appearing further north each year. West Nile and Usutu are following a similar path.

The UK’s surveillance network, coordinated by the Health Security Agency with universities and local authorities, is already monitoring sites most at risk of mosquito introductions. This coordinated approach is designed to catch incursions early and keep Britain ahead of a rapidly shifting global disease map.

The combination of a changing climate, international travel and the ability of these insects to thrive means both invasive mosquito species and the viruses they carry are edging closer to establishing in the UK.

The continuing surveillance and early detection will be crucial to catch incursions before they spread. As Britain’s summers grow warmer and wetter, the insects and diseases once confined to the tropics are finding a new home – even in today’s not-so-chilly UK.

Marcus Blagrove currently receives research funding from UKRI (cross council), BBSRC, MRC, NERC, DEFRA, The Leverhulme Trust, and The Pandemic Institute.

– ref. First evidence in the UK of breeding aegypti mosquito – the main spreader of dengue, chikungunya and Zika – https://theconversation.com/first-evidence-in-the-uk-of-breeding-aegypti-mosquito-the-main-spreader-of-dengue-chikungunya-and-zika-266767

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alison Habens, Head of Creative Writing, University of Portsmouth

The story of Apollo and Daphne was written around the year zero by Roman poet Ovid in the Metamorphoses. Ovid was a trainee lawyer and student of rhetoric. In the story, a woman named Daphne becomes a laurel tree to escape the unwanted advances of the sun god, Apollo.

It’s part of a collection of his stories in which humans transform into plants and animals (and vice-versa) amid the mountains and woodlands of early Greece. But I believe it must be reviewed in the era of #MeToo – a period marked by widespread awareness, activism and accountability around sexual harassment and assault.

The first literary celebrity, Ovid, was “cancelled” in his own day. There’s no record of an actual crime he committed, but he was exiled to a settlement on the Black Sea for something he called carmen et error (a poem and mistake).

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This article is part of Rethinking the Classics. The stories in this series offer insightful new ways to think about and interpret classic books and artworks. This is the canon – with a twist.

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Metamorphoses begins with Apollo slaying the monster python, a feat celebrated with the first Olympic Games. In competition with Cupid, Apollo is struck with an arrow that makes him fall him love. He then pursues Daphne, an unwilling nymph until, in desperation to escape his advances, she turns herself into a tree.

Like the famous sculptures and paintings, (by Paolo Veronese, Gian Lorenzo Bernini and John William Waterhouse to name a few) this transformation of lady into tree still emphasises her curves. “There with all about hir breast did grow a tender barke” and “a thin bark closed around her gentle bosom”.

Beyond this objectifying treatment, the poem focuses on the hurt feelings of Apollo at her rejection, effectively saying: “Don’t you know who I am?”

In a 1960s edition of the poem, retold by Enid Blyton, it’s all made out to be a misunderstanding: “You should not have been so fearful of me, I would not have harmed you.” But this isn’t what the aroused sun god tells Daphne in the classic text: “Resistless are my shafts.”

Daphne wishes to stay unwed, but her father, the river god Peneus, says that she is too pretty for spinsterhood. In the 1632 translation by George Sandys, he explains: “thy owne beautie thy desire with-stands” and in a 1717 version the young woman is told she’s fair game: “For so much youth, and so much beauty join’d / Oppos’d the state, which her desires design’d.”

Apollo’s fragile ego is prioritised and the affront to his self esteem is not permissible: “Perhaps thou know’st not my superior state/ And from that ignorance proceeds thy hate.” The sun god makes it clear who is the more insulted but, while he is listing his accomplishments (he invented music and medicine), Daphne runs away.

Even her escape is framed as erotic. In Arthur Golding’s 1567 translation: “Hir running made hir seeme more fayre”. The Puritan poet’s gaze lingers on her: “And as she ran the meeting windes hir garments backewarde blue / So that hir naked skinne apearde behinde hir as she flue.” And English poet and literary critic
John Dryden, too, found her fear titillating: “the wind … left her legs and thighs expos’d to view / Which made the God more eager to pursue”. In agonising rhyming couplets, the translators follow her flight.

Daphne’s looks are a curse – it is no blessing to be beautiful. Her pleas reach Peneus as she races with attacker in hot pursuit: “Destroy the beauty that has injured me / or change the body that destroys my life.” So finally, her feet take root, the toes digging in; her arms become branches, her fingertips leafy. In imagery more fit for horror than romance, the bark closes over her mouth and she says no more.

But Apollo still gropes her, though he calls it love. The poets describe him embracing the trunk, handling the boughs, kissing the boles, revealing how he: “fixt his lips upon the trembling rind / It swerv’d aside, and his embrace declin’d”.

If the sun god couldn’t tell she didn’t fancy him as a woman, he’s even less clear about her feelings now. He insists: “Although thou canst not bee / The wife I wisht, yet shalt thou be my Tree.” In another version he says: “Because thou canst not be / My mistress, I espouse thee for my tree.” He gleefully claims her leaves, wreathed around his own head, to symbolise his greatness for ever.

Does Daphne consent? She may be nodding in the account by Golding, “and wagging of hir seemely toppe, as if it were hir crowne”. Or is she coerced? In the 1922 translation by Brookes More: “unto him the Laurel bent her boughs, and it seemed to him her graceful nod gave answer to his love.”

The latest version of Metamorphoses (updated by Rolfe Humphries in 2018) emphasises the unreliability of Apollo: “He hopes for what he wants – all wishful thinking! – Is fooled by his own oracles.”

The tale’s awful moral can still be heard; men may use passion as a weapon and love as a reason to attack. Perhaps it’s finally time for a translation that offers the point of view of the tree, too.

Beyond the canon

As part of the Rethinking the Classics series, we’re asking our experts to recommend a book or artwork that tackles similar themes to the canonical work in question, but isn’t (yet) considered a classic itself. Here is Alison Habens’s suggestion:

The Chilean group Lastesis translate feminist theory into public performances. In 2019, they created perhaps the best example of a contemporary riposte to Apollo in the Daphne story, with their performance Un Violodor en tu Camino (A Rapist in Your Path).

Inspired by the writings of Argentine anthropologist Rita Segato, this popular protest was seen and heard around the world. It made a strong statement about victim-blaming and authoritarian violence against women. Its work of genius is to resist the silence and stillness of the laurel tree, using poetry and dance.

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

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Alison Habens 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. The story of Apollo and Daphne in Ovid’s Metamorphoses needs a new translation for the #MeToo era – https://theconversation.com/the-story-of-apollo-and-daphne-in-ovids-metamorphoses-needs-a-new-translation-for-the-metoo-era-235985

Source: The Conversation – UK – By John Fox, Senior Lecturer in Police Studies, University of Portsmouth

As a researcher of police occupational culture, I was horrified, but not at all surprised by the recent Panorama programme in which an undercover reporter exposed sexism, racism and general thuggishness among some Metropolitan Police officers.

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, the BBC produced another groundbreaking example of undercover reporting in the world of policing. In The Secret Policeman (2003), journalist Mark Daly joined Greater Manchester Police as a recruit officer. He covertly recorded his new colleagues making racist remarks. This was just five years after the publication of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, and the report finding the Met “institutionally racist”.

This latest Panorama demonstrated unequivocally that the Met still has not rooted out these views in its ranks.

My first thought when sitting down to watch the programme was, “Why can the BBC successfully infiltrate the closed world of police misconduct when the force’s own teams are seemingly incapable of doing so?”

Every police force has a branch called a professional standards department (PSD). They are supposed to gather intelligence on corrupt or bad officers, which can lead to a misconduct tribunal. If gross misconduct is found, the officer may ultimately be dismissed.

The Met has seen several high profile cases of police misconduct in recent years. These offenders – from Wayne Couzens, who murdered Sarah Everard, to serial rapist David Carrick – have often been dismissed as “bad apples”.

After Carrick’s conviction in 2023, I argued that the Met culture was so toxic that to protect the public (as well as its own good officers), their PSD should employ intrusive workplace monitoring. This should mean using covert devices and undercover operatives, no matter how uncomfortable it may make staff feel.

In 2021, Hampshire police’s PSD used a listening device to covertly record officers using racist language after a whistleblower was brave enough to come forward. I am not aware that this form of evidence gathering has been utilised in the Met.

In his response to the Panorama documentary, Met Commissioner Mark Rowley said he had “disbanded” the team in question. A serving officer has since been arrested over an allegation linked to a Panorama investigation.

But I would like to know that the Met PSD will go further, and conduct a thorough and systematic review of samples of past video footage from each similar team across the force.

Throughout the Panorama episode, officers were wary about talking to the undercover reporter – one actually asked if he was wearing a wire. Despite the horror of the programme as a whole, I was encouraged by this. For the culture to change, any police officer who is a racist or misogynist must be made to feel that they, rather than decent officers, are the ones working in a hostile environment.

I would suggest that a few years ago it was the other way round. We know that Carrick was openly nicknamed “bastard Dave” and Couzens was openly known as “the rapist”. Yet their notoriety among colleagues did not seem to come to the attention of the Met PSD. If Rowley has achieved nothing else, I am hopeful that he has at least reduced the feeling of impunity and being “untouchable” which seemed to prevail among bad officers under previous Met command teams.

Whistleblowers and workplace culture

Of greater concern though was the disturbing evidence of a complete distrust in any whistleblowing procedure. Rowley claimed that over the last four years, “internal reporting has trebled thanks to the courage and conviction of colleagues”.

This is very good news, but Panorama clearly revealed that officers making sexist or racist comments were still protected by higher-ups and the overall force culture, with detractors, who wish to work in a safe, ethical environment, still feeling intimidated into silence.

There is ample research which has shown that casual misogyny towards women in the police service – both officers and other staff – is rife. Panorama has now provided clear evidence of this. Sadly, it seems many women in the police workforce feel they have to silently put up with it.

Currently the police have the highest-ever rate of voluntary resignations on record. More officers than ever are choosing to resign after a short period of service because they quickly realise they don’t enjoy, or feel comfortable, working in the police. Two of the main reasons for leaving early were a sense they needed to “fit in” with the prevailing workplace culture, and discovering that their new job did not match the “values” they expected to find.

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Read more:
Misogyny in police forces: understanding and fixing ‘cop culture’

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Police tackle organised crime groups using all sorts of covert methods, including undercover operatives infiltrating gangs to gather intelligence on their activity. The bad officers in the Met who are relentlessly dragging down public trust in not only their own force, but all the UK’s forces, need to be treated like members of an organised crime group. As well as much better initial recruitment vetting, senior leaders must be bold and ruthless in finding out how their staff think and behave, both on and off duty. The BBC has shown them how.

John Fox 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. It shouldn’t take undercover journalists to expose policing’s sexist and racist culture – https://theconversation.com/it-shouldnt-take-undercover-journalists-to-expose-policings-sexist-and-racist-culture-266681

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Thomas Gift, Associate Professor and Director of the Centre on US Politics, UCL

The US vice-president, J.D. Vance, recently declared that he “doesn’t give a shit” if the Trump administration’s strike on a suspected Venezuelan gang boat is called a “war crime”. In a speech to hundreds of senior US military officers weeks later, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, then called for troops to ignore “stupid rules of engagement”.

These anecdotes are a reminder that, for all the focus on President Donald Trump’s overt attacks on democratic institutions at home, his administration’s approach to the law of armed conflict – the corpus of laws governing how militaries fight wars – is just as suspect.

In my upcoming book, Killing Machines: Trump, the Law of War, and the Future of Military Impunity, I make the case that Trump is unique among US presidents in the extent of his willingness to discard the law of war. This doesn’t mean that all of Trump’s predecessors in the White House have meticulously followed the law to the letter – far from it.

President George W. Bush, for example, was widely accused of riding roughshod over the law of armed conflict in waging his “war on terror” after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. His administration was alleged to have authorised or tolerated “enhanced interrogation techniques”, including waterboarding, stress positions and sleep deprivation, which are widely considered torture.

However, unlike past American commanders-in-chief, other US executives at least showed outward deference to the law of armed conflict, even as they pressed the law’s limit behind the curtains.

Writing in the Washington Post in 2020, during Trump’s first term as president, Georgetown University law professor Rosa Brooks said: “Bush at least tried to cloak his administration’s use of torture in legal sophistry, a backhanded testament to the strength of the norms his aides sought to circumvent.” Brooks added that “in contrast to Bush, Trump makes no secret of his disdain for the laws of war”.

The list of ways Trump has openly attacked the law of war is long. He denounced the Geneva conventions, a set of treaties that established rules for humane treatment during armed conflicts, in his 2016 presidential campaign. He described them as a “problem” for the conduct of US wars and pledged to bring back “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding” if elected as president.

Around the same time, Trump also advocated the killing of civilians. In an interview with Fox News in December 2015, Trump said militaries needed to “take out” the families of Islamic State militants. He even endorsed dipping bullets in pig’s blood, considered impure in the Muslim religion, to intimidate Islamic terrorists.

Trump’s expressed contempt for international law doesn’t stop there. He has attacked global laws on state sovereignty and the use of force against terrorists, urging the US to “fight fire with fire”. Trump has also threatened to bomb cultural sites, proposed pillaging Middle Eastern oil fields for profit and lambasted the need to fight “politically correct” wars while terrorists “chop off heads”.

Not least, in 2019 and 2020, Trump pardoned multiple US servicemembers and private military contractors accused or convicted of war crimes. In 2019, condemning a decision by military courts to prosecute US service members convicted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Trump mocked on social media: “We train our boys to be killing machines, then prosecute them when they kill!”

Trump’s desire to challenge the law of war prompted journalist Adam Serwer to denounce him as a “war-crimes enthusiast” in the Atlantic magazine later that year. And around the same time, the New York Times ran a headline questioning whether the laws of war were “history” under Trump.

Challenging the law

Why has Trump so openly challenged the law of war? Put simply, as I argue in my book, he has had the means, motive and opportunity.

Trump has relied on right-wing allies in Washington. The Congressional Justice for Warriors Caucus is the group on Capitol Hill that has most vociferously advocated for war crime pardons. It has also defended Trump’s actions in office regarding the military.

Meanwhile, elements of the media have positively spun Trump’s explicit attacks on the law of war to conservative audiences. In his former days as a Fox News personality, Hegseth highlighted war crimes cases on his show and described the accused or convicted service members as heroes facing malicious prosecution.

Data also shows that Republican voters, who emphasise law and order domestically, are willing to discount the law when it comes to conduct by American military personnel overseas. For example, following Trump’s November 2019 war crime clemencies, a national poll showed that nearly 80% of Republicans approved of his actions.

At the same time, study after study has shown that people in or affiliated with the US military tend to lean to the right politically. That tilt was evident on January 6, 2021, when a disproportionate number of former service members ended up in jail for storming the Capitol building in Washington.

Many ex-combatants and current service members within the military have absorbed Trump’s calls to dismiss the laws of war and, by extension, the rule of law itself. The byproduct has been little resistance within the ranks to Trump’s agenda of military impunity.

Prior to Trump, there was little disagreement among US presidents about the moral and strategic imperative of upholding the law of war. Trump’s breaking of this precedent is yet another way in which he has taken the US into uncharted political waters.

Thomas Gift 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 is willing to flout the rules of war like no other US president – https://theconversation.com/trump-is-willing-to-flout-the-rules-of-war-like-no-other-us-president-262635

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Christopher Terrell Nield, Senior Lecturer, Bioscience, Nottingham Trent University

It’s a quiet autumn evening. You’re enjoying some TV, when an unscripted movement catches your eye. A large house spider (Tegenaria domestica) is striding across the rug towards you. You make a sudden movement. The spider freezes. You reach for a paper to shoo it away, look back and it’s gone. What did the spider see? Was it afraid of you?

To a house spider we appear as a potential predator. Yet, despite having more eyes than us, most spiders don’t actually see much detail. Their world is sensed mainly by vibration, air currents, touch and taste.

Spiders usually have four pairs of eyes and there are two types: principal and secondary. Principal or direct eyes help the spider see detail; the photo receptor cells of their retinas are at the front. As in other animals they detect light and turn it into signals for the brain. In secondary or indirect eyes the photo receptor cells are inverted. These eyes are sensitive to movement, rather than detail and can give spiders an early warning of potential prey or predators.

About half of Britain’s 37 spider families spin webs to catch prey. Their eyes are usually arranged in two rows and of roughly similar size. They have poor eyesight and use vibration to sense where their food is.

However, in some spider families, vision is important. These are the spiders which hunt or ambush prey and they have much better vision than their web spinning cousins. In the UK, this includes crab spiders (with about 30 species), wolf spiders and jumping spiders (both have about 40 UK species). Wolf and jumping spiders have one pair of eyes much larger than the others. These principal eyes focus on prey and the smaller secondary ones detect movement. Many jumping spiders can wavelengths of light we can’t, such as ultraviolet. They use it to locate prey and in mating displays.

Crab spiders (Thomisidae), named for their flattened bodies and tendency to move sideways, live in meadows and gardens. They can detect movement with their principal eyes from a distance of up to 20 cm. They are ambush predators that use camouflage to blend into flower heads and catch unwary insects with their long front legs. Misumena vatia, another crab spider, takes this strategy further. Its base colour is white, but it can gradually change to yellow. This broadens the number of flower species it can use to trap prey, and hides it from predators.

Net-casting spiders (Deinopidae) are called “ogre-faced” spiders because of their enormous eyes and angry looking appearance. They live in dark tropical habitats. Deinopis species have huge principal eyes whose lenses have a wide field of view. They can concentrate light more efficiently than a cat or an owl. Each night a light sensitive membrane is produced inside the eyes but destroyed at dawn as it is too sensitive to use in daylight.

Deinopus spinosa catches prey by making an expandable silken net. It deposits white faecal droppings onto a leaf as aiming points then waits above the net, head down. When an insect walks across the target area the spider opens the net and thrusts it down to enclose its prey.

Wolf spiders (Lycosidae) are ambush predators, also with enlarged principal eyes. Pardosa amentata scans its surroundings for movement with its secondary eyes, though it can only focus on prey up to a few centimetres away. As its target moves closer, a row of secondary eyes, which detect movement, is used to gauge distance. Wolf spiders also use vision for courtship. On encountering a female, a male stands on its back legs, waves its palps, and vibrates its front legs in time with them. A spider’s palps are appendages in front of its mouth. They can sense touch and taste and are also used in mating. Pardosa dances differ from species to species, enabling females to recognise males they can mate with.

Wolf spiders often hunt at night and their posterior median eyes shine in torchlight because they have a reflective membrane. This membrane acts as a mirror, so light passes their photo receptors twice which enhances low light vision. This structure is an example of parallel evolution as it is seen in nocturnal animals as diverse as cats and crocodiles.

Jumping spiders (Salticidae) are among the few invertebrates with large camera-like eyes like those seen in most vertebrates (including us). Their eyesight is sharper than any other spider and is comparable to that of pigeons or cats. Portia africanus can image up to about 75 cm, relying on shape and colour to identify prey. Jumping spiders detect movement with their secondary eyes, which give a blurry image. The spider then turns and focuses its primary eyes onto the object. These give a sharp image. The spider then uses its lateral eyes to judge distance, and when close enough (2-3 cm) it jumps.

So how does this relate to our hearthrug spider? Any of these seen in autumn are usually males searching for females. As a web builder, Tegenaria senses changes in light and motion, but not detail. So they would see us as a large moving shape.

This may cause it to freeze, part of the looming response of many animals, including humans. Freezing or faking death can be effective protection as many predators are stimulated by movement. Was this a conscious act, or just a reflex? Research suggests insects might feel joy and pain, so why not spiders? Freezing and flight suggests they are more afraid of us than we are of them.

Christopher Terrell Nield 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 does the world look through a spider’s eyes? – https://theconversation.com/how-does-the-world-look-through-a-spiders-eyes-264406

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Richard Gater, Research Assistant at the Centre for Adult Social Care Research, Cardiff University

For years we’ve been warned that technological advances and artificial intelligence (AI) are set to sweep people out of work. But when we think about whose jobs are really under threat, the answer isn’t quite so simple.

Forecasts differ, and the speed of technological change makes it hard to predict exactly which roles will disappear. But one thing is clear – some groups are far more vulnerable than others. In particular, low-skilled, manual jobs – work that many working-class young men often find themselves in – are especially exposed.

My latest book looks at how young working-class men in the south Wales valleys view work, masculinity and the future. What I’ve found is a troubling mismatch between the kinds of careers being automated, the policy solutions being put forward and the identities and aspirations of those who rely most heavily on manual employment.

If such issues are not addressed, we risk rising youth unemployment and a widening of social inequality.

The workers most vulnerable to automation are those in routine manual roles. These include jobs like factory work, for example. These roles, often held by men with fewer qualifications, are easier for machines to replicate because of their repetitive nature.

By contrast, jobs that rely on social and emotional skills such as nursing and counselling are harder to automate. These roles are often associated with femininity or softer expressions of masculinity.

Governments are not blind to these risks. The UK government has promoted lifelong learning and digital upskilling as strategies to help workers adapt to technological change since 2021. The goal is to improve access to training and education so people can work alongside machines rather than be replaced by them.

Yet sociological evidence raises doubts about how effective this approach will be for marginalised men.

Masculinity and manual work

Many sociological studies have found that young working-class men are often drawn to manual work. This pull is rooted in social ties and an inherited sense of masculine identity, where physical jobs are seen as suitably “manly”.

At the same time, formal education and customer‑facing service roles are frequently rejected, viewed as feminised and at odds with traditional ideas of masculinity.

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Read more:
Why ‘toxic masculinity’ isn’t a useful term for understanding all of the ways to be a man

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In my work with young men in the south Wales valleys, I’ve found both continuity and change in how they think about jobs and masculinity. The continuity is clear. Manual work remains attractive, with fathers, uncles and grandfathers serving as role models. These careers are visible in communities, reinforcing the idea that this is “what men do”.

By comparison, other forms of employment – especially those coded as caring or service-oriented – are less visible and less valued.

‘Rupturing process’

But there are also signs of change. Some of the young men I spoke with expressed interest in careers beyond traditional manual roles. These included becoming a paramedic, a chef, or working in the media.

These changes often came through what I call a “rupturing process”, when a person or experience disrupts long-held ideas of masculinity and work. One young man’s decision to train as a chef, for example, was inspired by learning to cook with his grandmother. The experience influenced him to pursue a path outside the usual gendered expectations, and to embrace a softer, more expressive form of masculinity.

I also found that these young men are not entirely “anti-education”. Rather, they approach it pragmatically. They engage with subjects they see as useful for their ambitions and dismiss those they view as irrelevant. This nuance is often missed in policy debates that paint them as simply resistant to learning.

My research offers grounds for optimism. Despite the stereotypes, working-class young men are not all bound to regressive notions of manhood or limited to manual ambitions. Some are broadening their goals, sparked by different influences that alter their views on work and masculinity.

But optimism alone is not enough. Current policies centred on digital upskilling and lifelong learning will fail if they ignore the cultural and structural barriers that shape job choices. For some young men, a preference for manual labour remains strong, tied to community traditions and masculine identity. Simply offering new skills will not address that.

If we want the future of work to include everyone, we need targeted interventions that speak directly to this situation. That means community-based programmes, mentoring by relatable role models and education pathways that are flexible and practical.

Just as importantly, it means telling a new story about what work – and masculinity – can be. The robots may be coming, but the future doesn’t have to leave working-class young men behind.

Richard Gater has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

– ref. What work means to working-class young men in an age of increasing automation – https://theconversation.com/what-work-means-to-working-class-young-men-in-an-age-of-increasing-automation-262298