Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Hala Al-Hamawi, PhD Candidate, Climate Finance, Nottingham Trent University

The Middle East region, home to both oil-rich economies and fragile, conflict-affected states, remains among the most underfunded in the global climate landscape.

Equitable access to international finance is essential to combat climate change, particularly in the upcoming Baku to Belem Roadmap, which aims to mobilise US$1.3 trillion (£1 trillion) in global financing for climate action at Cop30, the UN climate summit.

The Middle East region is far from uniform. Several fragile countries in the region, including Yemen, Syria, Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon, and host countries of refugees such as Jordan, were among the top 20 recipients of humanitarian aid over the past decade.

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Wars and climate change are inextricably linked. Climate change can increase the likelihood of violent conflict by intensifying resource scarcity and displacement, while conflict itself accelerates environmental damage. This article is part of a series, War on climate, which explores the relationship between climate issues and global conflicts.

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While Yemen, Syria and Palestine are among the top three recipients of humanitarian aid, they receive the least funding for climate action. Yet they remain among the most vulnerable regions to extreme weather events such as frequent drought, heatwaves, and flash floods.

Responding to conflicts in the region has not only redirected finance to humanitarian efforts, but also pushed climate action further down the priority list. This is in addition to the fact that emissions from prolonged conflicts and the destruction of infrastructure are neglected because they are difficult to measure or compensate for.

A global imbalance

According to the thinktank Climate Policy Initiative’s (CPI) recent report 2025, between 2018 and 2023, 79% of finance dedicated to address climate change was mainly mobilised in three regions: East Asia and the Pacific, Western Europe and North America. This has left the Middle East and North Africa region consistently underfunded.

Where finance has flowed into the region, more than half has come from the private sector, mainly for renewable energy projects such as solar photovoltaics and onshore wind. Globally, mitigation continues to dominate in 2023. International climate finance for mitigation was 27 times higher than for adaptation.

Climate ambitions and the finance needed to implement them vary across countries in the region. The costs of implementing identified climate ambition by 2030 (so-called nationally determined contributions) of 11 countries (including Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Sudan) amount to US$570 billion. Egypt, Iraq and Morocco account for nearly three-quarters that total amount requested.

Yet international finance flows for climate action between 2010 and 2020 remain highly concentrated in politically stable countries in North Africa, such as Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, while conflict-affected states in the Middle East are left behind.

I have researched the anticipated shift in global leadership in financing climate action following the US withdrawal from the Paris agreement. I found that between 2010 and 2021, the US disbursed US$390 billion in global development assistance, of which just over 11% (US$45.1 billion) went to the Middle East and North Africa. Yet less than 1% of this – only US$197 million – was allocated to climate action.

China, by contrast, has emerged as a major global lender, committing US$314 billion over the same period, of which more than 90% was in loans. However, its climate finance contribution remains opaque, voluntary and under-researched. Only around 6% of Chinese finance reached the region, and the share dedicated to climate action is largely unknown.

The US retreat from global climate leadership, combined with China’s growing role, raises pressing questions about the future of climate finance in the region, particularly through technology transfer and investments.

Filling the shortfall

Despite these challenges, new financial instruments may offer hope. Tools such as green bonds, carbon trading and climate debt swaps could help bridge the finance gap, particularly for indebted low- and middle-income countries.

The region already has experience with development-related debt swaps. A debt swap is an agreement between a government and its creditors to replace sovereign debt with investment commitments toward development goals (such as education or environmental protection), as a form of debt relief. Germany partnered with Jordan, France with Egypt and Sweden with Tunisia in earlier development-focused agreements.

Structuring debt swaps for climate purposes will be complex but potentially transformative. Initiatives to provide technical support for climate debt swaps, such as those by the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for West Asia, aim to achieve debt relief and promote climate action.

The private sector also has a crucial role in scaling up investments, particularly given the persistent shortfall in public finance from developed countries.

These instruments and private-sector investments may be unfeasible in conflict-affected countries due to poor economic conditions and limited capital. Supporting these vulnerable nations requires further exploration, potentially through regional initiatives with nearby stable countries.

Closing this financing gap requires more than humanitarian aid to address the adverse consequences of climate change. It demands recalibrating global finance flows, recognising the region’s specific vulnerabilities and fostering greater innovation through new tools and partnerships. Equitable access and allocation of the proposed US$1.3 billion will be essential. Without this, the region risks being left behind in the race to adapt to and mitigate climate change.

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Hala Al-Hamawi is a Senior Associate in Climate Finance at the Global Green Growth Institute. She is also a Climate Finance Negotiator Fellow with the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF).

– ref. Why the Middle East is being left behind by global climate finance plans – https://theconversation.com/why-the-middle-east-is-being-left-behind-by-global-climate-finance-plans-268161

Source: The Conversation – UK – By William Plowright, Assistant Professor in International Security, Durham University

A few years ago, you might have balked if someone told you that the US president would be photographed in the White House shaking hands with a man who was a former member of al-Qaeda, an insurgent against US forces in Iraq, and had led one of the largest Syrian Islamist armed groups.

But that’s exactly what happened when Donald Trump welcomed his Syrian counterpart, Ahmed al-Sharaa, to Washington on November 10. Al-Sharaa became the first Syrian leader in history to be invited to the White House.

Al-Sharaa’s stunning ascendancy to power has seen him become an almost mythic figure in Middle Eastern regional politics. As the head of an armed group known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), he overthrew Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in 2024 and ended the family’s 50-year reign.

In the process, HTS also brought the Syrian civil war to a close. This was a brutal 13-year period in which more than 600,000 lives were lost and more than 6.5 million people were displaced.

Al-Sharaa has complicated roots in the broader al-Qaeda family, but he has long taken steps to distance himself from that legacy. His approach has been described by some observers as shifting “from jihad to politics”.

During the latter half of the war, HTS was restricted to its powerbase in the north-western governorate of Idlib. The group began to eschew terrorism by publicly breaking with al-Qaeda, and instead sought to earn trust and provide a legitimate base of governance.

Since taking control of Syria, HTS has continued this public personification of tolerance and stability. The group’s leadership regularly asserts that it is willing to accept diversity and that its primary goal with all parties – even longstanding rival Israel – is peaceful cohabitation.

Al-Sharaa has also worked hard to project a moderate image. He was recently photographed playing basketball with US military commanders – hardly the typical image most of us would have in mind of a former jihadist leader.

Some people have raised concerns that HTS is only pretending to be moderate and is hiding its true intentions. Others have noted conservative policies that were put in place while HTS was in control of Idlib.

Although the war in Syria has largely ended, it would also be naive to think that sectarian violence has disappeared. Conflicts have broken out between communities including the Druze and Sunni Bedouin groups.

There have also been a string of targeted killings against the Alawite community, the Assad family’s traditional base of support. It is in this context that al-Sharaa undertook his trip to Washington.

US-Syria ties

Since HTS took power, there has been a large international debate over how to engage with the new regime in Syria. Clearly, the approach of the Trump administration is to be pragmatic. This is not the first time that powerful figures in the US have contemplated working with al-Sharaa in some way.

As far back as 2015, former CIA director David Petraeus suggested that the US should consider working with members of HTS’s predecessor, Jabhat al-Nusra, in the battle against Islamic State (IS). And although HTS was officially listed as a terrorist organisation by the US in 2018, this approach was softened in July 2025.

The question remains of what Trump and al-Sharaa want from each other. The legitimacy granted by the trip to Washington is incentive enough for al-Sharaa, but he stands to gain more. With an aggressive and retaliatory Israel still occupying the Golan Heights and other parts of southern Syria, and regularly bombing inside Syria’s borders, al-Sharaa needs allies.

Trump has already revoked most of the US sanctions that were placed on Syria during the civil war – and suspended some more following the meeting in Washington. He will also probably play a role in unlocking World Bank funding for rebuilding in Syria.

The incentives for the US may include gaining an airbase in Syria’s capital, Damascus, that would help it rival Russia’s influence in the region. There is also a rumour that Syria will join the Abraham accords, the agreements normalising diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab states, which Trump is pushing to expand. However, this is unlikely as long as Israel occupies the Golan Heights.

Stronger ties between the US and Syria would mean successfully turning Iran’s strongest regional ally away from it, while also helping the US further combat the IS group. During his visit to Washington, al-Sharaa publicly joined the global coalition against IS. Though, in reality, HTS has been fighting the group on the ground for years.

Many regional players have an interest in al-Sharaa’s project succeeding. Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan want an end to conflict on their borders and to see refugees return home, while Saudi Arabia is keen to steal Syria as an ally from Iran. Al-Sharaa is even in talks with Israel about a military and security agreement, and he has already visited the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, in Moscow.

Shia-led Iraq is likely to be at best suspicious and at worst hostile to al-Sharaa, though both it and Iran may be left with no choice but to accept the new status quo. And this is to say nothing of the Kurds in north-eastern Syria. They bore the brunt of the war against IS and have already been repeatedly abandoned by Trump in their conflict against Turkish forces. They may not react positively to al-Sharaa’s plans to reunify the country.

It remains to be seen if al-Sharaa can consolidate power, end the sporadic violence in Syria and stabilise the country. An unstable Syria means an unstable Middle East, and an unstable Middle East is a problem well beyond the borders of the region.

William Plowright 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 former jihadist Ahmed al-Sharaa ended up being welcomed to the White House – https://theconversation.com/how-former-jihadist-ahmed-al-sharaa-ended-up-being-welcomed-to-the-white-house-269631

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andrew Dix, Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Film, Loughborough University

When a house mysteriously explodes in the sleepy suburbs of south Oxford and a child goes missing in the aftermath, concerned neighbour Sarah Trafford is driven to seek the truth. As an art conservator, Trafford is way out of her depth, so she enlists the help of a private investigator, Zoë Boehm. However, the pair end up in a plot far more serious than Boehm’s usual work of checking credit ratings and tracking adulterous husbands.

This is the story of Down Cemetery Road (2003), the debut novel of writer Mick Herron, which has been adapted into an eight-part series by Apple TV. Down Cemetery Road is the second of Herron’s book series to be adapted by Apple, coming hot on the heels of the fifth season of the critically acclaimed Slow Horses, which centres on misfits and renegades navigating bureaucracy and corruption at MI5.

Like Slow Horses, Down Cemetery Road is fronted by British acting greats, with Ruth Wilson as art conservator Sarah Trafford and Emma Thompson as private investigator Zoë Boehm. It also exposes failings at the heart of British institutions, this time the UK government.

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Read more:
Slow Horses: high drama and comedy abound in this gripping spy thriller about reject spooks

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Boehm and Trafford uncover evidence that the UK government has deliberately maimed its own soldiers during illicit chemical weapons testing on the battlefield (the Gulf war in Herron’s novel, Afghanistan in the adaptation). To an even greater extent on screen than on the page, however, this military premise feels like one of Alfred Hitchcock’s “MacGuffins”: something to get the narrative engines firing, rather than a theme for profound exploration.

As a conspiracy thriller, then, Apple’s Down Cemetery Road does not compare with such classics of British TV as Edge of Darkness (1985, exploring a shadowy expansion of nuclear power) and State of Play (2003, about corrupt links between politicians and the oil industry). But while it is politically thin, it is nevertheless satisfying as a TV spectacle.

One of the incidental delights in watching the series is to encounter stalwarts of British acting even in minor roles. Mark Benton, a PI himself in the long-running series Shakespeare & Hathaway, turns up here as an Oxford academic.

He momentarily emerges from his wineglass to reminisce about Sarah as a gifted student who memorised the whole of The Waste Land (including, he marvels, the footnotes). Sara Kestelman, best known for her career in theatre, is touching as a bereaved mother. Gary Lewis, the initially scornful father in Billy Elliot, is bracing as a Scottish skipper who believes Zoë and Sarah to be yet more English folk intent on telling “humble Highlanders” what to do.

But the star turns are Thompson and Wilson. Zoë’s sustained presence on screen actually represents a promotion from the novel, where she is surprisingly absent until the second half.

Thompson is visibly having fun as she breaks away from the buttoned-up gentility of films such as Sense and Sensibility, Howards End and The Remains of the Day that, even now, will define her for many viewers. Her language is as spiky as her punkish silver hair, such as when she talks of collecting her husband from “the fuck-up creche”.

Wilson, as throughout her film, TV and theatre career, embodies intelligence and curiosity as Sarah. We are alerted to her vigilance from the start, as we see her scrutinising a painting through her art conservator’s magnifying glasses. But if she looks outwards keenly, she has fewer opportunities as the series unfolds to turn her gaze inwards.

The adaptation is relatively uninterested in the inner lives of others, too. In Herron’s novel, even the frightening government operative Amos Crane has interiority, chafing at the bureaucratic confines within which he has to work. Here he is played by Fehinti Balogun as a robotic killer, seemingly incapable of feeling (other than briefly mourning his brother and, improbably, laughing at an episode of the BBC sitcom Keeping Up Appearances).

While characterisation is thinned in Apple’s adaptation, the action is thickened. Morwenna Banks and her co-screenwriters are unafraid to introduce fights and chases not found in Herron’s novel. In an especially thrilling sequence, Down Cemetery Road joins films such as The Lady Vanishes and Murder on the Orient Express in exploiting the suspense possibilities offered by a speeding train, with no opportunity to get off.

The spectacular sometimes takes a homelier form. The moment when Zoë eats a giant meringue is made striking when it shatters into sugary shards, an explosion scarcely less apocalyptic than that in the opening episode.

The moment is funnier than the repeated conversations between civil servant mandarin C. (Darren Boyd) and hapless underling Hamza Malik (Adeel Akhtar). Their scenes, offered as comic relief, come to grate and indicate a certain self-indulgence about the adaptation.

There are thoughtful sounds, too. Mozart’s Requiem is heard as the action reaches a deathly climax. And bebop jazz by Dizzy Gillespie plays over a scene of narrative discordance at the end of the opening episode. Particular thought has also been given to each episode’s closing music: songs such as P.J. Harvey’s Big Exit and Björk’s Bachelorette are witty, apt choices.

Over the final credits, we hear Billie Holiday’s I’ll Be Seeing You. With three more Zoë Boehm novels already written by Herron, it is an open question whether we will be seeing her again.

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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.

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Andrew Dix 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. Down Cemetery Road: Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson delight in this light conspiracy thriller – https://theconversation.com/down-cemetery-road-emma-thompson-and-ruth-wilson-delight-in-this-light-conspiracy-thriller-269536

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Eleanor Dobson, Associate Professor in Nineteenth-Century Literature, University of Birmingham

November 2025 marks 100 years since archaeologists first examined Tutankhamun’s mummified remains. What followed wasn’t scientific triumph – it was destruction. Using hot knives and brute force, Howard Carter’s team decapitated the pharaoh, severed his limbs and dismembered his torso. Then they covered it up.

Tutankhamun’s tomb was first discovered in the Valley of the Kings by a team of mostly Egyptian excavators led by Howard Carter in November 1922. However, it took several years for the excavators to clear and catalogue the tomb’s antechamber – the first part of what would become a decade-long excavation.

This meticulous work, as well as delays caused by friction between Carter and the Egyptian government, meant that it wasn’t until 1925 that Tutankhamun’s remains were uncovered. This milestone whipped up another wave of what has been termed “Tutmania” after the tomb’s initial discovery generated a wave of popular fascination for Egyptian archaeology.

When Carter’s team eventually opened Tutankhamun’s innermost coffin, they found the pharaoh’s body fused to the casket by a hardened, black, pitch-like substance. This resin was poured over the wrappings during burial to protect the body from decay.

Carter described the corpse as “firmly stuck” and noted that “no amount of legitimate force” could free it. In a desperate attempt to soften the resin and remove the body, the coffin was exposed to the heat of the sun. When this failed, the team resorted to hot knives, severing Tutankhamun’s head and funerary mask from his body in the process.

The autopsy that followed was devastating. Tutankhamun was left “decapitated, his arms separated at the shoulders, elbows and hands, his legs at the hips, knees and ankles, and his torso cut from the pelvis at the iliac crest”. His remains were later glued together to simulate an intact body – a macabre reconstruction that concealed the violence of the process.

Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley has pointed out that this destruction is conspicuously absent from Carter’s public account of the autopsy. It is also absent from his private excavation records, which are available at the University of Oxford’s Griffith Institute and online.

Tyldesley suggests that Carter’s silence may reflect either a deliberate cover-up or a respectful attempt to preserve the dignity of the deceased king. His omissions, however, were documented in photos by the archaeological photographer Harry Burton. These shots offer a stark visual record of the dismemberment.

In some of Burton’s images, Tutankhamun’s skull is visibly impaled to keep it upright for photography. These images sit in grim contrast to the one Carter chose for the second volume of his work detailing the excavations, The Tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen, published in 1927. In this sanitised image, the pharaoh’s head is wrapped in fabric, concealing the severed spinal column, presenting a more palatable view for public consumption.

As we reflect on the centenary of this examination, it is worth reconsidering the legacy of Carter’s excavation, not just as a landmark in Egyptology, but as a moment of ethical reckoning. The mutilation of Tutankhamun’s body, obscured in official narratives, invites us to challenge narratives of archaeological triumph and to look back on the past with a more critical view.

“Today has been a great day in the history of archaeology,” Carter wrote in his excavation diary on November 11 1925, when the medical examination of Tutankhamun’s remains began. But the archival evidence suggests something far more morally complicated, even grisly, lying behind the seductive glint of gold.

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Eleanor Dobson 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. Tutankhamun was decapitated 100 years ago – why the excavation is a great shame instead of a triumph – https://theconversation.com/tutankhamun-was-decapitated-100-years-ago-why-the-excavation-is-a-great-shame-instead-of-a-triumph-269015

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alison Hess, Lecturer in Museum and Gallery Studies, University of Westminster

Around 70-90% of museum collections around the world are kept in storage . Often housed in buildings far away from their public institution, they represent a picture of hidden cultural and historical resources.

Remote storage often presents logistical and cost challenges to enabling public access to collections, and it remains an area of museum work that is easy to overlook by management, funders and policymakers. However, new projects are once again drawing attention to the value of access to both the collections and the decisions that are made about them.

In May of this year an exciting new addition to London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park opened its doors to the public. Occupying a spot between four of the London 2012 Olympic Boroughs (Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest), the V&A East Storehouse is part museum, cultural centre, archive and leisure destination. It is the latest addition to a growing family of V&A sites.

The Storehouse describes itself as “your access-all-areas experience of the V&A collection” and offers a behind-the-scenes look at the world of museum storage. It is a chance to explore half a million creative works, from the Glastonbury festival archive, to Roman frescoes, Dior haute couture, Samurai swords, Elton John’s costumes and mid-century furniture.

The experience itself is highly polished. Visitors are greeted at the door by a friendly staff member, then guided up the stairs into the main atrium. Here they discover a beautifully curated and highly designed idea of what a museum store should like.

Open shelving displays collection items within arm’s reach of the public, and only light interpretation (short labels and QR codes) hint at their purpose and the connections between them. Between the wide-open vistas of the space and below the glass floor, the storage proper is visible.

When I visited, there was a real buzz from a steady stream of visitors seeking the perfect Instagram shot from above the glass floor. However, as an academic who recently led an AHRC-funded research project on museum storage, my interest lies in what this new museum brings to the long-running challenge of balancing collections storage with meaningful public access.

A short history of museum storage

Collections have been outgrowing collectors’ capacity to store them for almost as long as museums have been around. However, with the emergence of recognisable public institutions, collections storage became no longer a personal problem, but a professional one.

The post-second world war period in Europe saw cultural institutions rapidly gain new and expanded collections. The careful reflection of collecting boards and policies, so familiar to current day museum practice, were not yet seen as necessary.

The result was that museum collections quickly expanded beyond the capacity of their public sites and were increasingly relocated to any space the museum could find, with consequences for security, conservation and accessibility.

By 1976 this had become such a universal problem that the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and Unesco organised a conference in Washington DC called the International Conference on Museum Storage. Many of the standard procedures still used in museums today came from this meeting. For example, the fact that museum collections are now kept in clean, dry, pest-free and temperature-controlled environments. However, what sometimes seems to have been lost in this process, is the centrality of public access.

If collections are not used or even visible, why do we, as a society, continue to keep them? Nowhere else has this question become more pressing, than in the case of communities whose cultural items have been taken without permission, through colonialism, opportunism or greed.

In 2024 ICOM returned to the problem of storage with the publication of a global report titled Museum Storage Around the World. Based on feedback from museums across the globe, a familiar picture of lack of space and funding emerged.

The resulting ICOM International Committee on Museum Storage seeks to bring the discussions around conservation and safety into a proper dialogue. Questions of access, cultural ownership and return come to the fore as storage spaces increasingly become the location for discussions with collections’ community partners.

Order-an-object experience

With echoes of the 1990s trend for “open storage” galleries, pioneered in places such as the National Railway Museum North Shed, the Storehouse still contains only a small proportion of the V&A collections.

The public areas are not a museum storeroom. The items on display are all carefully selected and curated. They are, as are all museum displays, only a snapshot of the complete collection, and a compelling reminder of the vast cultural resources that remain unseen in museum storage around the world.

The Storehouse offers an innovative solution: the order-an-object experience. Visitors search the V&A catalogue online, find an item they are interested in and book a time slot to see it. While not all items are viewable at the Storehouse (some can only be seen at the South Kensington site) the experience is easy and straightforward. And unlike many institutions, the service is open to anyone, not just academic researchers. The only limitation is that slots book up quickly, so advance booking is essential.

Once in the Study Centre, visitors can observe, interact or simply commune with objects in the V&A collections, supported by a member staff trained in collections handling and customer service. The simplicity and openness of the service represents a significant change in the way collections access can be realised if given enough resources and support.

The long-term preservation of museum collections remains a complex and challenging issue. Not all collections should be kept, not all collections should be universally accessible, but nor should they be hidden away, with conversations about their future happening behind closed doors.

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Alison Hess has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

– ref. How the new V&A Storehouse is reshaping public access to museum collections – https://theconversation.com/how-the-new-vanda-storehouse-is-reshaping-public-access-to-museum-collections-269462

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matthew Allen, Lecturer in Economics, Salford Business School, University of Salford

US president Donald Trump’s 15% baseline tariffs on EU imports may read like a throwback to old-school protectionism, designed to safeguard American jobs and manufacturing. But in today’s globalised and digitally driven economy, the risk isn’t just to steel or car factories, it’s to innovation itself.

The world’s most advanced technologies rely on complex, deeply integrated supply chains. Evidence from 2023 shows that even temporary US tariff shocks disrupted relationships between firms. And these tariffs won’t just hit the EU. They will disrupt the high-value tech ecosystems of partners like the UK – especially firms contributing to artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductor design and cybersecurity.

These industries underpin national resilience, data security and the competitiveness of advanced economies. For the UK, which often positions itself as a global innovation hub post-Brexit, the fallout could be significant.

Take ARM Holdings, the Cambridge-based semiconductor giant whose chip designs power 99% of the world’s smartphones and an increasing share of AI infrastructure.

ARM doesn’t manufacture chips itself. Instead, it licenses its architecture to firms like Apple, Nvidia and Qualcomm. That makes it a prime example of the UK’s value in the global innovation chain: high intellectual property (IP), low carbon footprint, huge reach.

ARM’s position as a vital link in the supply chain underlines another point. Trade policy aimed at traditional manufacturing sectors can inadvertently destabilise tech-intensive, IP-led sectors like semiconductors and software. This is echoed in research examining global tariff spillovers on tech competitiveness.

If tariffs are applied to components or design work linked to traded goods that cross EU or UK borders en route to US manufacturers, it introduces a layer of risk and cost to innovative firms and their global partners.

Even if a company’s work isn’t directly taxed, the uncertainty and red tape may make US firms think twice about sourcing from outside US jurisdictions. While Trump might present that as a victory for American manufacturing, in reality it could raise costs for US producers, damage innovation and make US firms less competitive in the industries he aims to protect.

It’s not just the giants at risk. In the UK, Cambridge’s wider tech cluster, sometimes called “Silicon Fen”, is home to dozens of ambitious AI firms. With operations spanning the UK, EU and US, companies like this depend on fast, flexible and trusted international partnerships to develop, deploy and refine their products. Tariff-related disruptions make collaboration harder at a time when speed is a competitive advantage.

This is not hypothetical. Tariffs reduce access to large markets – and when markets shrink, firms reduce investment in research and innovation.

What Trump gets wrong

Trump’s broader narrative suggests tariffs can bring back jobs and restore industrial power to the US. But innovation doesn’t work like that. A semiconductor isn’t made in one place. A cybersecurity system isn’t built by a single team. These are networked, iterative processes, involving researchers, suppliers, data centres and talent pools across continents. Disrupt that flow and you slow progress.

The UK is especially exposed because of its unique post-Brexit positioning. It trades independently from the EU but is still tightly intertwined with it, particularly in tech sectors.

Many UK firms use EU distribution centres to reach the US market or collaborate with EU partners on joint projects involving data, hardware or software This reflects the fact that the UK remains tightly integrated into European supply and value chains – exporting £358 billion of goods and services to the EU in 2024 alone. Tariffs targeting the EU could easily catch UK-originated components or design work as collateral damage.

Modelling has shown that Trump’s proposed tariffs could reduce EU-US trade volumes across multiple sectors, particularly in tech, where integrated production routes are standard.

Small and medium-sized enterprises and startups may find themselves most vulnerable. These firms typically can’t absorb sudden cost increases or legal complexities. Nor can they easily switch suppliers or reroute through different customs zones.

If you’re an early-stage AI company relying on a specific chip from Germany and a US cloud partner to train your model, a 15% tariff adds months of delays and thousands of pounds in costs, just to maintain the status quo.

From a policy perspective, the impact goes deeper. The UK government has championed sectors like AI, fintech and clean tech as pillars of economic growth. But these industries are only as strong as the networks that sustain them. If global fragmentation accelerates, the UK risks losing its role as a bridge between the US and the EU.

Meanwhile, countries like China continue to invest heavily in consolidating their innovation supply chains, from chip manufacturing to AI research, particularly in efforts to secure domestic control over advanced technologies and semiconductors. This is something that the US and EU have only recently begun to coordinate on.

In the short term, Trump’s tariff strategy may boost US customs revenue, which is up US$50 billion (£38 billion) a month by some estimates.

But this is not “free money”. These revenues are largely absorbed by businesses and ultimately passed on to consumers through higher prices, or to smaller suppliers through squeezed profit margins.

More fundamentally, it represents a belief that economic strength comes from protection rather than connection. But innovation has never worked that way. It thrives on collaboration, trust and scale. Tariffs may be politically effective, but economically they are the equivalent of building firewalls between teams that are supposed to be co-writing the future.

As the UK charts its post-Brexit global role, aligning itself with open, innovation-driven economies should be a priority. That means standing up for the integrity of global tech supply chains and recognising that disruption to one part of the system can reverberate far beyond its intended target.

Matthew Allen is affiliated with The Conservative Party as a party member. I am not a councillor or an MP. I am also not active in any campaigning.

– ref. Trump’s tariffs threaten the future of innovation – and UK tech could be collateral damage – https://theconversation.com/trumps-tariffs-threaten-the-future-of-innovation-and-uk-tech-could-be-collateral-damage-269158

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Molly Sheila Harbor, PhD Candidate in Psychology, University of Reading

It’s safe to say nobody likes vomiting. But while it’s not a pleasant experience by any means, few of us really give much thought to it – except maybe when we’ve had a few too many drinks or when stomach flu is doing the rounds.

But for around 2%-7% of the population, vomiting) provokes anxiety so severe they’ll do anything to avoid it. This specific fear of vomiting is known as emetophobia. Though much about the condition remains unknown, research is beginning to explore the debilitating impact it can have on sufferers.

Emetophobia affects everyone differently. For some, this fear centres around vomiting themselves, while for others it’s a fear of seeing somebody else vomit. Many also experience a combination of both fears. Some people can also pinpoint a specific traumatic event related to their phobia, while for others there is no distinct cause.

Emetophobia can also have varying degrees of impact on a person’s life – ranging from mild to debilitating, according to a recent review my colleagues and I published.

The most common characteristic of emetophobia is avoidance. People with the condition often steer clear of situations where they think vomit might be a risk. Many avoid public transport, crowded places, theme parks, dining at restaurants or consuming alcohol. Some even go so far as refraining from saying or typing the word “vomit.”

This fear and avoidance can even influence long-term life decisions – with some people avoiding pregnancy and children due to concerns with morning sickness and the illnesses (such as stomach flu) that kids are prone to.

Not only can these avoidance behaviours affect social and professional life, they can also have an impact on physical health. For example, some people with emetophobia restrict their diet or avoid certain foods – such as meat, due to perceived risk of Salmonella (a food-borne illness that can cause vomiting). This can result in nutrient deficiencies and becoming underweight.

People have also been shown to engage in compulsive behaviours such as hand washing, magical thinking (the belief that certain habits or specific thoughts can stop vomiting from happening) and excessive cleaning to avoid being sick. These symptoms overlap with other psychiatric disorders – specifically anorexia nervosa and obsessive-compulsive disorder. This has often led to misdiagnosis, with patients referred to services who are not specialised in treating emetophobia.

Another common and often overlooked symptom of emetophobia is nausea – with the majority of people experiencing feelings of sickness on a daily basis, despite having no underlying medical condition. As emetophobia goes hand-in-hand with a preoccupation with vomiting, there’s usually a heightened awareness of bodily sensations which can cause anxiety.

Everyday mundane experiences such as feeling overly full after a meal or getting a headache from too much screen time can trigger the automatic thought: “I am going to be sick.” This creates a vicious cycle, as the more attention a person gives to these sensations, the more likely they are to misinterpret them as signs of illness. This in turn reinforces and entrenches the fear.

Treating emetophobia

A lack of research into emetophobia means treating the condition currently remains a hurdle.

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) seems to be the most evidence-based treatment investigated so far. This treatment approach aims to change thought patterns and behaviour. For emetophobia, this involves changing beliefs about vomiting and slowly reducing avoidance habits through exposure – such as visiting feared places and reducing excessive hand-washing.

Although some studies have shown promising results from using CBT for emetophobia, these studies only investigated a small number of participants. This means it’s difficult to draw firm conclusions about the treatment’s effectiveness until larger studies have been done.

Another option is exposure therapy, which has been tried and tested on people suffering from other phobias and has shown great outcomes. Exposure therapy involves gradually facing feared situations with the help of a therapist to teach the brain these things are not dangerous and reduce overall fear.

But it’s worth noting that although exposure therapy is recommended for other phobias, only 6% of people with emetophobia would be willing to try it. This doesn’t make exposure therapy a very accessible option for the majority of people struggling with this disorder.

Further complicating matters is the fact that people with emetophobia often avoid places such as GP surgeries and hospitals because of the risk of seeing someone who is unwell or catching a vomiting bug. This means they struggle to access what help might be available.

There’s a clear need for increased awareness of this condition, from both the general public and doctors. Awareness can help limit misdiagnosis, show sufferers treatment is available and reduce misconceptions.

Emetophobia is more than simply not liking vomit. It can affect every aspect of life. Our continued research aims to explore effective treatment options for this complex disorder.

Molly Sheila Harbor 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. Emetophobia: what it’s like to have a fear of vomiting – https://theconversation.com/emetophobia-what-its-like-to-have-a-fear-of-vomiting-269310

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Elena Papagiannaki, Lecturer in Economics, Edinburgh Napier University

The Greek government has passed a law allowing private employers to extend shifts to 13 hours per day, framed in terms of “flexibility” and “growth”. It’s marketed as voluntary and fairly paid, but effectively it dismantles the standard eight-hour day, despite survey data showing workers overwhelmingly oppose it.

But while critics question its legality, technically it does comply with the European Union’s working time directive. For many, especially in hospitality, it simply formalises what already exists: long hours, low pay, little rest.

The reform mirrors a broader European and global shift towards deregulated work. And it proves that the fight for shorter hours is far from over, as I set out in a chapter in the forthcoming book Global Futures of Work: A Critical Introduction.

After Greek workers’ 1936 victory securing the eight-hour day, the country has now reached a point where Greeks are again among the most overworked in Europe. Data from the EU’s statistics office and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show full-time employees log about 1,900 hours a year, compared with 1,510 in the UK and 1,330 in Germany.

Weekly hours add up to 41-42 on average, the highest in the EU. Yet wages and productivity remain low. This paradox of working more but earning less reflects a regime centred on labour intensification and wage suppression, weak collective bargaining and precarious jobs.

Since 2005, Greece has loosened its working time regime under “flexibility” reforms. A 2005 law allowed daily shifts to be stretched by two hours, another change in 2021 redefined overtime, while a third law two years later revived the six-day week.

And now the fair work for all bill permits 13-hour days on a “voluntary” basis. Together, these measures have eroded the eight-hour norm, substituting collective bargaining for the needs of employers.

The Greek government claims that workers want longer days, but the evidence suggests otherwise. The drive to extend working hours masks a refusal to raise real wages and household income. Since the 2008-09 financial crisis, GDP has shrunk by 27% and remains below pre-crisis levels, while household disposable income has fallen by 35 percentage points.

Even the recent minimum-wage hike (a 6% increase to €880 (£775) per week for full-time workers) offers no real gains in purchasing power, leaving workers poorer than before the crisis. Instead of higher pay, the government’s solution is longer days – stretching time when it cannot stretch income.

A survey earlier this year by the Greek labour institute found that 94% of workers support shorter hours with no pay cut, and nearly 60% reject a 13-hour day outright. Among those already working such hours, 70% say the “voluntary” label is meaningless, with workers forced to put in these hours to make ends meet.

For many, the new law simply confirms the overwork they already face. For others, it represents a return to the 19th century. The wave of nationwide strikes demanding its repeal raises a clear question. If workers reject it, and EU law supposedly guarantees the opposite, how can the measure pass?

EU – protector or enabler?

Most opposition parties questioned the 13-hour workday’s legality under EU law, but the EU working time directive itself provides the loophole. It stipulates a 48-hour weekly average and 11 hours’ daily rest, yet imposes no cap on daily hours.

Member states may grant opt-outs, allowing workers to “voluntarily” exceed the limits, effectively legalising overwork. In response to a Greek MEP, the European Commission confirmed that Greece’s reform complies with EU rules. It admitted that the directive allows the 13-hour workday if the 48-hour weekly average is met in the reference period of four months. It is presented as “worker protection”, but this logic simply permits exhaustion now, rest later.

The UK government’s rebuke of South Cambridgeshire District Council for trialling a four-day work week shows that resistance to shorter hours is hardly unique to Greece. Across advanced economies, longer working time has been normalised.

And NHS staff reportedly performed more than 1 million hours of unpaid overtime every week before the pandemic. By 2025, it has been claimed that inefficiencies and delays have added another 7.5 million extra work hours every week across the NHS workforce.

Amazon workers in the US work ten-hour shifts and 55-hour weeks during peak seasons, with similar patterns in the UK. Amazon said its work patterns offer flexible career opportunities and that its staff were the “heart and soul” of its operations. Another elite tech firm looks like following suit: Google’s Sergey Brin actually called for a 60-hour week.

The push to extend working hours is not an anomaly in Greece, but part of a broader trend across advanced economies – the normalisation of overwork in the name of flexibility and growth.

Workers are expected to adapt, erasing boundaries between work and life. Greece’s 13-hour day doesn’t mark progress but a retreat from hard-won labour rights. And it threatens to undo historic victories on working conditions in pursuit of further productivity increases and profits.

Elena Papagiannaki is a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Future of Work (ifow.org)

– ref. Exhausted employees don’t want it – so why has Greece introduced a 13-hour work day? – https://theconversation.com/exhausted-employees-dont-want-it-so-why-has-greece-introduced-a-13-hour-work-day-269118

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Marika Taylor, Pro-vice-chancellor, Professor, University of Birmingham

In 1980, Stephen Hawking gave his first lecture as Lucasian Professor at the University of Cambridge. The lecture was called “Is the end in sight for theoretical physics?”

Hawking, who later became my PhD supervisor, predicted that a theory of everything – uniting the clashing branches of general relativity, which describes the universe on large scales, and quantum mechanics, which rules the microcosmos of atoms and particles – might be discovered by the end of the 20th century.

Forty-five years later, there is still no definitive theory of everything. The main candidate is string theory, a framework that describes all forces and particles including gravity. String theory proposes that the building blocks of nature are not point-like particles like quarks (which make up particles in the atomic nucleus) but vibrating strings.

It suggests that, if we could look deep inside electrons, we would see loops of strings, vibrating just like those on a violin. Different patterns of string vibrations correspond to different particles.

String theory unifies all the forces of nature. Forces that seem very different, such as gravity and electricity, are deeply related to one another. The forces are linked by so-called dualities: the same underlying phenomena can be described in different ways.

The force of gravity is described in terms of geometry, shapes and positions. Other forces are described in terms of different mathematical concepts, including algebra and numbers.

The unification of forces hence implies profound relationships between branches of mathematics. Such relationships had previously been proposed by mathematicians, particularly by Robert Langlands, and string theory gives physical explanations for the relationships.

Although string theory could be the correct theory of everything, it is hard to test experimentally. The effects of string theory become visible at very small scales and very high energies.

Particle accelerators explore the internal structure of particles by colliding them and breaking them apart. However, even the biggest colliders at Cern in Switzerland don’t have enough energy to break particles down into strings.

Clues in the cosmos

How can we test string theory experimentally if we can’t reach high enough energies in colliders? The answer may lie in looking up to the skies.

The very early universe was dense and hot, and the primordial soup would have been made up of strings. We can see the history of the universe imprinted in current day observations, from surveys of galaxies through to measurements of the cosmic radiation that permeates all of space and is a leftover from the big bang.

In the early 20th century, American astronomer Edwin Hubble showed that the universe is expanding. Galaxies are moving further apart from each other.

At the end of that century, detailed observations of the expansion showed that it is in fact accelerating. Galaxies today are moving apart faster than they were a million years ago.

What is driving this acceleration? Gravity is an attractive force so it slows down the expansion of the universe. The acceleration of the universe is driven by a new kind of energy, which is spread throughout the whole of space. Scientists call this dark energy and it makes up about 70% of the energy of the universe.

We don’t know exactly what dark energy is. The most plausible explanation is that it is the inherent quantum energy of the universe. In the quantum world, particles can never just sit still, with no energy. There is always a little bit of quantum jitter and associated energy.

Atoms cooled down to absolute zero temperature still have energy because of their quantum motion. Dark energy could potentially be explained as being the underlying quantum energy of all the forces and particles in nature, including gravity.

Experiments are pinning down the properties of dark energy. Desi is an observatory based in Arizona, US, which is mapping out galaxies and quasars. The space based telescopes Euclid and Roman will measure the universe in unprecedented detail, mapping out the history of billions of galaxies over billions of years.

Recent results from Desi suggest that dark energy is changing in time in a way that is consistent with string theory models – although this is yet to be fully verified by further measurements.

This doesn’t prove string theory because string theory can produce a variety of different universes, with differing patterns of dark energy. However, the Desi results suggest that interpreting dark energy as quantum energy of strings may be on the right track. There are of course phenomena other than strings that could explain the change in dark energy.

Euclid and Roman will make very precise measurements and will be able to exclude many such theories of dark energy and some specific versions of string theory – helping to narrow down the bits theorists should focus on.

Another way to verify string theory may be via black holes. Once something falls inside a black hole, it cannot escape. Inside a black hole there are very strong forces and particles are torn apart. We still don’t understand exactly what happens inside a black hole, but string theory teaches us how a black hole retains information about what has fallen inside.

That’s because string theory assumes there is no “singularity” inside a black hole – a point of infinite density and gravity – but instead that the objects are spread out as balls of strings called fuzzballs.

Future, more precise, measurements of gravitational waves (ripples in the fabric of spacetime) will be looking for the subtle signals of the quantum behaviour inside black holes predicted by string theory. If black holes are fuzzballs, they should produce a different signal when they merge, lasting longer and containing echoes. What’s more, if extra dimensions exist, as string theory proposes, black holes may oscillate in different ways which we could also detect.

In addition to cosmological measurements, scientists can run thought experiments, just as Einstein did with his theories of relativity. String theory has led to new insights not just in mathematics but also in other areas of science. For example, string theory has proven to be useful in understanding how quantum systems can be used in computing.

I don’t think a complete understanding of a theory of everything is just around the corner, but in the 45 years since Hawking’s Lucasian lecture we have certainly learned a lot. And right now, things are looking up for string theory.

Marika Taylor currently receives funding from EPSRC, STFC, UK government deparments and the European Horizon programme.

– ref. String theory: scientists are trying new ways to verify the idea that could unite all of physics – https://theconversation.com/string-theory-scientists-are-trying-new-ways-to-verify-the-idea-that-could-unite-all-of-physics-268149

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Natalie Pollard, Professor of Contemporary Literature and Culture, University of Exeter

What do you picture when you think about climate change? For many of us, it is the same set of dramatic images: melting glaciers, sinking landforms, rising seas or extreme weather.

These are powerful visuals. They shock, grab headlines and galvanise environmentalism. However, this imagery offers a partial account of transformation, often underplaying political responsibility and colonial history. In my new book, 21st-Century Climate Imaginaries, I call these charismatic images “climate memes”.

Monumental images of melting or calving glaciers lend drama to earth’s changing form, but tend to bypass the thorny social and economic roots of ice loss. Research shows that glacial melt is accelerating especially in regions at the frontline of resource extraction and colonial occupation. My research asks: why is this?

Imagine a glacier melting in the Andes. Blood-red threads of wool – like streams of meltwater – are running down the mountain. It is 2006. This is an activist intervention by Chilean-born artist Cecilia Vicuña. It is the first in her series of performances and soft sculptures, The Blood of the Glaciers. Her giant-order red threads spell out the effects of foreign direct investment in the wake of Augusto Pinochet’s regime, which sparked a dramatic rise in overseas mining corporations in Chile.

Here, as in many regions of the developing world, mining and industrial transportation make the glaciers bleed. The problem is acute because glaciers are water savings banks, essential in years with low rainfall. Glaciers sustain life. Industry-heavy sacrifice zones bleed life dry. Vicuña’s artistic activism shows how extractive mining is a primary driver of glacial recession. Melting is not just a “climate” issue or “natural” disaster. The cause is human activity.

Standing knee-deep in seawater on the shoreline of Tuvalu, the country’s foreign minister addresses Cop26 delegates with these words: “We are sinking”. Simon Kofe’s 2021 speech was broadcast globally from a point that had recently been above sea level. From his semi-submerged podium, Kofe made visible to the world the situation people endure in low-lying Pacific islands.

Since the 1980s, sinking islands have become a powerful shorthand for climate crisis. Apocalyptic spectacles of raging seas symbolise planetary transformation. An often-cited example is the documentary of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. It showed Tuvalu engulfed by tides, alongside the incorrect remark that “Pacific nations have all had to evacuate”.

In 2009, Marshallese activist Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner joined forces with Greenlandic climate poet Aka Niviâna and environmentalist organisation 350.org. They produced an influential video-poem: Rise: From One Island to Another. The performance connects changing Greenlandic ice and Pacific waters with Indigenous resistance to fossil capitalism.

Climate images of melting and sinking often go hand-in-hand with colonial narratives of Indigenous vulnerability. In contrast, Rise brings to life the history of Greenlandic and Marshallese opposition to development for extraction and scientific exploitation. The two activists highlight the nuclear colonial legacy of the Pacific Proving Grounds and Greenland’s Camp Century, linking military histories in the Arctic and Pacific: “nuclear waste / dumped / in our waters / on our ice”.

It is not always easy to remember that environmental change is caused by specific technological, military and political acts. Indigenous arts activism helps by showing how climate memes make sense only in the context of histories of exploitation and resistance, which often take place in developing countries.

Today, activists and artists across the world are challenging popular, generalised climate memes, such as those of melting and sinking. As I show in 21st-Century Climate Imaginaries, attention to the local and specific helps people process how social and environmental violence are intimately linked. Arts activism, working directly with people’s lived experiences of change, can offer much-needed, grounded alternatives to spectacular climate soundbites. How far these interventions are positively reshaping how we understand our responsibilities to a fast-changing world is yet to be seen.

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Natalie Pollard 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. Apocalyptic images of melting glaciers and sinking islands won’t help anyone imagine a better future – https://theconversation.com/apocalyptic-images-of-melting-glaciers-and-sinking-islands-wont-help-anyone-imagine-a-better-future-268909