Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nathan Waddell, Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature, University of Birmingham

Like many of us, George Orwell saw January as a month to be endured rather than enjoyed. You can picture him steeling himself against its cold, gloom, rain, frost and wind.

And not only because of his ailing, vulnerable body, which was ravaged for so many years by respiratory malfunction. But also because grimacing defiance is the posture January tends to bring out in people. Orwell wasn’t an exception. His attitude to January is soothingly familiar yet peculiarly his own.

At one point in Orwell’s novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), the protagonist Gordon Comstock meets his girlfriend Rosemary under some railway arches on “a horrible January night”. There’s “a vile wind” that screeches round corners and flings dust and torn paper into their faces.

In Animal Farm (1945), January’s “bitterly hard weather” makes the earth “like iron” and stops the creatures from working in the fields.

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) transposes these imagined Januaries to other points on the calendar. It begins on a “bright cold day in April”.

As in Keep the Aspidistra Flying, a “vile wind” whirls dust and scraps of paper into the air. The sameness between the books isn’t mere repetition. On the contrary, I think that it subtly evidences January’s tenacious impact on Orwell’s mind.

One of Nineteen Eighty-Four’s concluding episodes takes place on “a vile, biting day in March” when the grass seems dead and the earth is “like iron”, just as it is in Animal Farm. These are moments following long, hard winters, and it’s no accident that the protagonist of Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith, suffers through a long period of torture in the Ministry of Love in the year’s coldest, bleakest months.

Writing about the weather for the Evening Standard newspaper in 1946, Orwell noted that January and February are particularly difficult to bear – at least for those in colder regions. This is when rooms get chilly and pipes tend to freeze and burst. Remove January and February from the calendar, he claimed, and where the weather is concerned the English “should have nothing to complain about”.

Nevertheless, Orwell knew that winter was an indispensable adversity, the rest of the year depending on its burdens. Tasty fruit and scrumptious vegetables need “rain-sodden soil” and the slow arrival of spring to develop their flavours, just as England’s ordinary flowers – primroses, wallflowers and daffodils – thrive after frost and cold.

Take away the contrast between the months and they become less special. There’s a time for chilblains and noses that run endlessly in chilly weather, Orwell insisted, and heat and sweat have their place, too. We need January to enjoy July (and, for some, vice versa).

The arrival of spring

In his brilliantly titled essay Some Thoughts on the Common Toad (1946), Orwell reflected on the ostensibly “miraculous” arrival of spring after the bitter winters of the preceding five years – a time during which the climatic afflictions of January, February and March were made harder still by the burdens of the second world war.

It had been difficult to believe that spring would come, and it had been near-impossible to think that the conflict would end. And yet: hostilities ceased, spring arrived.

Orwell thought that January could be “beastly”, as he put it in his novel Coming Up for Air (1939), but he also argued that winter is a necessary trial: a time of temporary retreat ahead of release and recuperation. The war could have gone either way.

Spring, however, is not so fickle. The broader miracle is not that spring delivers warm weather and hope, Orwell claimed, but that nature’s rhythms guarantee their advent. The predictability of January’s beastliness matters because it points to the cyclical logic of the seasons themselves.

The shift from January into February and then into March and April is a progression that in Orwell’s view reveals an absolute limit to authoritarian power. “The atom bombs are piling up in the factories,” he wrote in Some Thoughts on the Common Toad, “the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the Earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it”.

It matters to feel the chill, in other words, because in feeling it we glimpse a structure in nature that remains away and apart from human influence. In an unexpected manner, the revolving seasons prove that those who’d like to bring the world to heel are themselves subject to natural laws they cannot change, and which make them forever inferior to a cosmos indifferent to their arrogant cravings.

Orwell never wanted to be sentimental about nature, or about the seasons. But he did think that seasonal cycles tell us important things about our dreams, complicating our myths of power and control.

Can January be wished away? No. And for Orwell it’s precisely because it can’t be wished away that it means something good. He never quite put it in these words, but he meant to say that January is our friend.

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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.

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

– ref. What January taught George Orwell about control and resistance – https://theconversation.com/what-january-taught-george-orwell-about-control-and-resistance-272860

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Klaus Dodds, Interim Dean, Faculty of Science & Technology, Middlesex University

Donald Trump and his senior officials insist that Greenland must become part of the US. This is for national security purposes, they say, maintaining that Denmark, of which Greenland is a constituent part, is not investing enough in defending the strategically vital region beyond – as the US president put it – adding “one more dog sled”.

The 1951 defence agreement between Denmark and the US is likely to be the first casualty of any hostile American takeover, since article 2 of that agreement recognises explicit Danish sovereignty over Greenland.

Framing this dispute as an issue of security ignores the fact that for the past 70 years, the US military has largely had a free hand in how it uses its military facilities in the northwest of Greenland to conduct strategic space and hemispheric defence – without interference from Copenhagen.

But America’s 2025 national security strategy, released last November, speaks of establishing US dominance in the western hemisphere, including Greenland. It shifts attention away from great power competition to a world shaped decisively by the interests and wishes of “larger, richer and stronger nations”.

If spheres of influence and domination are back in vogue, then smaller economies including Denmark and even Canada come under direct threat. Whether faced with dismemberment or incorporation into the US, the prospects are deeply concerning.

But the current dramas affecting the Arctic region cannot be blamed entirely on Trump. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has played his part too. Approaching the fourth anniversary of his country’s invasion of Ukraine, it is not hard to discern how a costly conflict in one part of Europe has had direct implications for other northern European territories.

Soon after Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the intergovernmental Arctic Council was suspended because seven out out of the eight Arctic states (Canada, Denmark-Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and the US) decided they could no longer work with the largest Arctic state, Russia.

The Arctic Council was widely regarded as the centrepiece of what a circumpolar Arctic could achieve, working hard to construct key issues such as environmental protection, sustainable development and scientific collaboration. While the Arctic states could freely diverge from one another on non-Arctic matters, there was a superstructure of working groups and taskforces that generated notable scientific and technical reports, including the Arctic Economic Council.

Ukraine shattered all of that. Finland and Sweden joined Nato in 2023. Russia pivoted towards China and India, a shift that started after the first round of sanctions following its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.

The Arctic has fragmented into Russo-Asian and Euro-American segments. Western scientists are no longer able to access and work with Russian scientists, and circumpolar collaboration is suspended.

Some bilateral cooperation remains between countries such as Norway and Russia over areas of mutual interest, including managed fisheries in the Barents Sea and search and rescue. But high-level political engagement is now impossible.

Russia is instead likely to keep exploring ways of engaging with its Brics-plus group of partners including China, India, UAE and Saudi Arabia – both through direct economic trade, and in scientific projects in Svalbard and the vast Russian north.

Even if there is a peace settlement involving Ukraine, a return to normality seems impossible given the gravity of Russian operations in areas such as critical infrastructure sabotage, shadow fleet operations, and disinformation. Russia is engaged in risky and provocative behaviour, designed to be both disorientating and costly to its recipients.

It is no exaggeration to say that Europe’s Arctic states – and their close allies including the UK, Estonia and Poland – are now part of an arc of crisis that stretches from Svalbard and the High North of Europe to the Baltic Sea region and Ukraine. The long-held idea of the Arctic being a zone of peace and cooperation is an illusion.

Trump, Putin and the new great game

The US president wants Greenland – and expects to get it. There might be a strong element of ego-politics rather than geopolitics to this quest. Making America great again appears (in Trump’s eyes) to involve making it larger – and grabbing resources is part and parcel of that ambition.

Greenland’s resource potential has been repeatedly cited – as has the enhanced shipping activity of China and Russia, which has elevated concerns that US national security might be jeopardised.

2026 could see a slew of annexation and territorial swaps. For example, Trump takes Greenland while Putin takes the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. After all, neither leader is terribly invested in international treaties and organisations.

A cynical deal could also be done to allow Putin to have his way with Ukraine. The ground would thus be prepared for a new world order in which Putin, China’s president Xi Jinping and Trump all have their spheres of domination, not just influence.

A smaller group of regional superpowers might also be granted their own spheres, with Middle East-based countries looming large in that accommodation alongside the other global superpower, India. The idea might be that a new group of ten-or-so countries would create their new standard operating procedures. Venezuela was just the start, in other words.

What all of this would mean for the Arctic region, if it came to pass, is multifaceted. But above all, European Arctic states would no longer have any security guarantees from the US.

Difficult choices

Whatever happens, the 1951 defence agreement is a cold war relic that did not protect Denmark from great power overreach. The US stationed nuclear-armed bombers in Greenland in the late 1950s without bothering to consult Copenhagen.

Nato unity has now been jeopardised, and Norway and the UK face some difficult choices. Norway needs the US (and Russia) to respect its sovereignty over Svalbard, and it needs the US not to abandon the Nato article 5 commitment to collective defence. Meanwhile, as the UK and Norway work closely on North Atlantic anti-submarine defence, they need to focus on deterring Russia, rather than having to deter a hostile US as well.

American dominance and Russian belligerence are clearly taking their toll – at a time when the warming of the Arctic is having increasingly adverse effects on local and regional ecologies, and Indigenous and other communities in the far north. The Arctic is melting, thawing and becoming more flammable – and geopolitical fuel is being added to the fire.

Klaus Dodds 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. He is the coauthor of Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic.

– ref. As the Arctic warms up, the race to control the region is growing ever hotter – https://theconversation.com/as-the-arctic-warms-up-the-race-to-control-the-region-is-growing-ever-hotter-273118

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Martin Siegert, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Cornwall), University of Exeter

A 30-minute stroll across New York’s Central Park separates Trump Tower from the American Museum of Natural History. If the US president ever found himself inside the museum he could see the Cape York meteorite: a 58-tonne mass of iron taken from northwest Greenland and sold in 1897 by the explorer Robert Peary, with the help of local Inuit guides.

For centuries before Danish colonisation, the people of Greenland had used fragments of the meteorite to make tools and hunting equipment. Peary removed that resource from local control, ultimately selling the meteorite for an amount equivalent to just US$1.5 million today. It was a transaction as one-sided as anything the president may now be contemplating.

But Donald Trump is now eyeing a prize much larger than a meteorite. His advocacy of the US taking control of Greenland, possibly by force, signals a shift from dealmaking to dominance. The scientific cost would be severe. A unilateral US takeover threatens to disrupt the open scientific collaboration that is helping us understand the threat of global sea-level rise.

Greenland is sovereign in everything other than defence and foreign policy, but by being part of the Kingdom of Denmark, it is included within Nato. As with any nation, access to its land and coastal waters is tightly controlled through permits that specify where work may take place and what activities are allowed.

Over many decades, Greenland has granted international scientists access to help unlock the environmental secrets preserved within its ice, rocks and seabed. US researchers have been among the main beneficiaries, drilling deep into the ice to explain the historic link between carbon dioxide and temperatures, or flying repeated Nasa missions to map the land beneath the ice sheet.

The whole world owes a huge debt of thanks to both Greenland and the US, very often in collaboration with other nations, for this scientific progress conducted openly and fairly. It is essential that such work continues.

The climate science at stake

Research shows that around 80% of Greenland is covered by a colossal ice sheet which, if fully melted, would raise sea level globally by about 7 metres (the height of a two storey house). That ice is melting at an accelerating rate as the world warms, releasing vast amounts of freshwater into the North Atlantic, potentially disrupting the ocean circulation that moderates the climate across the northern hemisphere.

The remaining 20% of Greenland is still roughly the size of Germany. Geological surveys have revealed a wealth of minerals, but economics dictates that these will most likely be used to power the green transition rather than prolong the fossil fuel era.

While coal deposits exist, they are currently to expensive to extract and sell, and no major oil fields have been discovered. Instead, the commercial focus is on “critical minerals”: high-value materials used in renewable technologies from wind turbines to electric car batteries. Greenland therefore holds both scientific knowledge and materials that can help guide us away from climate disaster.

Unilateral control could threaten climate science

Trump has shown little interest in climate action, however. Having already started to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement for a second time, he announced in January 2026 the country would also leave the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, the global scientific body that assesses the impacts of continued fossil-fuel burning. His rhetoric to date has been about acquiring Greenland for “security” purposes, with some indications of accessing its mineral wealth, but without mention of vital climate research.

Under the 1951 Greenland defence agreement with Denmark, the US already has a remote military base at Pituffik in northern Greenland, now focused on space activities. While both countries remain in Nato, the agreement already allows the US to expand its military presence if required. Seeking to guarantee US security in Greenland outside Nato would undermine the existing pact, while a unilateral takeover would risk scientists in the rest of the world losing access to one of the most important climate research sites.

Lessons from Antarctica and Svalbard

Greenland’s sovereign status and its governance is different to some other notable polar research locations. For example, Antarctica has, for more than 60 years, been governed through an international treaty ensuring the continent remains a place of peace and science, and protecting it from mining and other environmental damage.

Svalbard, on the other hand, has Norwegian sovereignty courtesy of the 1920 Svalbard treaty but operates a largely visa-free system that allows citizens of nearly 50 countries to live and work on the archipelago, as long as they abide by Norwegian law. Interestingly, Norway claims that scientific activities are not covered by the treaty, to almost universal disagreement among other parties. Russia has a permanent station at Barentsburg, Svalbard’s second-largest settlement, from which small levels of coal are mined.

Unlike Antarctica or Svalbard, Greenland has no treaty that explicitly protects access for international scientists. Its openness to research therefore depends not on international law, but on Greenland’s continued political stability and openness – all of which may be threatened by US control.

If it is minded to take a radical approach, Greenland could develop its own treaty-style approach with selected partner states through Nato, enabling security cooperation, mineral assessment and scientific research to be carried out collaboratively under Greenlandic regulations.

The future for Greenland should lie with Greenlanders and with Denmark. The future of climate science, and the transition to a safe prosperous future worldwide, relies on continued access to the island on terms set by the people that live there. The Cape York meteorite – taken from a site just 60 miles away from the US Pituffik Space Base – is a reminder of how easily that control can be lost.

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Martin Siegert receives funding from the UK Natural Environment Research Council.

– ref. Why Greenland is indispensable to global climate science – https://theconversation.com/why-greenland-is-indispensable-to-global-climate-science-273064

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jamie Lingwood, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Liverpool Hope University

Fewer children in the UK are growing up with a love of books.

Following a survey that showed the proportion of children and young people reading for pleasure has fallen to its lowest level in two decades, the UK government, the National Literacy Trust and other organisations have declared 2026 a national year of reading.

The aim of the campaign is to meet people where they are and encourage them to read about what they’re already interested in. For parents of children – whether they’re reluctant readers or not – a brilliant way to do this is to explore the many ways you can share reading, and your child’s interests, together.

Adults reading together with children from an early age is one of the most effective ways to shield children from the effects of social inequalities, including those linked with childhood disadvantage. For example, reading with young children helps them meet early development milestones and to go on to do better at school.

Children who are read to from an early age tend to learn language faster. These children are also then more likely to go on to develop better vocabularies and become better readers in school.

What’s also vitally important – and often overlooked in favour of the academic benefits of shared reading – is that time spent reading together builds a bond between adults and children, and comes with a wealth of wellbeing benefits for children and adults alike.

A recent report from children’s reading charity The BookTrust emphasises how sharing books fosters early attachment, a dynamic set of expectations and behaviours that stem from the caregiver and how responsive to their child they are.

These early attachments are the fundamental building blocks that lay the groundwork for healthy and happy development. Strong bonds between children and their caregivers are built through calm, consistent and responsive everyday interactions where children feel safe.

When a child shares a book with a parent or carer, this encourages joint attention, helping adults to connect with their child. Reading together is a moment of emotional closeness: parents are tuning into their child’s inner world and responding with warmth, which further strengthens their bond.

The simple, structured activity of sharing a book together encourages the child to develop expectations based on their caregiver’s responsiveness, using them as a secure base, allowing them to explore the world and a safe haven to return to if distressed.

For example, during shared reading a child may point to a picture and say “dog.” Through repeated experiences, the child comes to expect that the adult will notice their focus of attention and respond to them, by immediately and enthusiastically saying, for instance: “That’s right, it’s a black and white dog.” Over time, the child learns that their communicative attempts are valued and will be met with interest and warmth, reinforcing expectations of support and understanding during interactions.

During shared reading, you and your child are in tune. Being present and responsive during reading helps children find the calm in the chaos – as well as you finding this as an adult too.

Making the most of shared reading

When it is time to share a book, create a calm, cosy atmosphere without lots of distractions. Leave digital devices somewhere else, and dim lights or turn on lamps to create soft lighting. Choose a comfy spot: it could be a bed or on the floor with pillows or blankets. At this time the focus is you and your child or children.

Don’t feel compelled to read every word on the page. One of us (Jamie Lingwood) has a two year old son, and doesn’t spend a great deal of time reading the text in the books they share – his son is more interested in flicking through the pictures. It’s OK to just look at the pictures and talk about what you think might be happening in the story. Books are a prop for this shared reading time: use them to start a conversation, storytelling or role play.

As children become older, give them a choice of what to read. One of us (Emma Vardy) has a three year old daughter. Each night she gets a selection of books to pick from, giving her choice over the reading material.

Reading also doesn’t have to mean a book. As the national year of reading campaign encourages, look to what your children are interested in. It could be a comic book, a magazine or a newspaper. You could even create your own book together.

Bedtime is the time we start to all unwind, but shared reading doesn’t need to be at bedtime. It could also be in the morning, if you have an early riser, or sitting at the table sharing lunch.

Shared reading is an opportunity for parents, carers, grandparents, children and communities to rediscover the joy and connection that books can bring.

Jamie Lingwood receives funding from the Educational Endowment Foundation and Nuffield Foundation.

Emma Vardy receives funding from Education Endowment Foundation.

– ref. How to share books with children to help them love reading – https://theconversation.com/how-to-share-books-with-children-to-help-them-love-reading-271023

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rachel Woods, Senior Lecturer in Physiology, University of Lincoln

Weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro work primarily by reducing hunger. They mimic a hormone the body already produces called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), which helps regulate appetite and feelings of fullness.

By slowing how quickly food leaves the stomach and acting on appetite centres in the brain, the drugs help people feel full sooner and stay fuller for longer, often without the constant hunger that makes many diets difficult to maintain.

The appetite-suppressing effect of these drugs can be substantial. Studies suggest people taking GLP-1 medications reduce their energy intake by between 16% and 40%.

But when food intake drops, the body still needs essential vitamins, minerals and protein to keep cells, muscles and organs functioning properly. If those nutrients are not packed into a smaller amount of food, deficiencies can develop.

Higher food intake generally increases the likelihood of meeting vitamin and mineral needs. Eating a varied diet across the week usually helps cover nutritional gaps, even if some meals are low in nutrients. But when portions shrink, that safety net disappears. With less food on the plate, food choices need to be more deliberate.

This is not a new problem. Traditional calorie-restricted diets have always carried a risk of nutrient deficiencies. The difference is that most of those diets failed because people struggled to stick to them. Ironically, that lack of adherence sometimes limited the long-term nutritional risks. When people returned to eating more normally, deficiencies could be corrected.

GLP-1 drugs change that pattern. Research shows many people regain weight quickly if they stop taking them, which means these medications might be used long term. That raises a new concern. If nutrient deficiencies develop while someone is eating much less, and that pattern continues for months or years, those deficiencies may persist and lead to problems such as muscle loss, weakened immunity, anaemia, bone loss or impaired neurological function.

Because GLP-1 drugs have only recently become widely used for weight loss, long-term data on nutritional outcomes are still limited. It is also difficult for people to recognise deficiencies without blood tests, as symptoms such as fatigue, weakness or hair loss can be vague and easily overlooked.

Early warning signs are already appearing. One study of people taking GLP-1 drugs who had lost weight and were preparing for joint replacement surgery found higher rates of malnutrition and severe malnutrition. Blood tests showed lower levels of key proteins, suggesting inadequate overall nutrition.

Another study surveyed people using GLP-1 drugs about what they ate. Many reported diets low in fibre, calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium and several vitamins, including A, C, D and E. Intakes of fruit, vegetables, grains and dairy were also below recommended levels.

Because this study relied on self-reported dietary data from a relatively small group, the findings may be affected by inaccurate recall or under-reporting, and cannot be assumed to apply to everyone. Even so, the results highlight a pattern that warrants attention.

Stronger evidence comes from a large observational study of people prescribed GLP-1 drugs. Within six months, about 13% had been diagnosed with a nutritional deficiency. Within a year, that figure rose to more than 22%. These included vitamin and mineral deficiencies, iron-deficiency anaemia and protein deficiency.

Protein deficiency is particularly concerning because protein is essential for maintaining muscle mass, strength and physical function. Weight loss often involves losing muscle as well as fat, and this can occur with GLP-1 drugs. Too little protein accelerates muscle loss, which can affect balance, mobility and long-term metabolic health. Resistance exercise can help protect muscle, but without sufficient dietary protein, its benefits are limited.

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Read more:
How eggs can help you come off Wegovy – cracking the problem of weight-regain

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In rare but serious cases, eating too little while taking GLP-1 drugs has led to medical emergencies. One case report describes a patient taking tirzepatide who developed severe dehydration and ketoacidosis after persistent diarrhoea and very low food intake. Ketoacidosis occurs when the body is forced to burn large amounts of fat for energy, producing acidic compounds that can become life-threatening if they build up.

There have also been rare reports of people developing severe vitamin B1 deficiency after prolonged nausea and minimal eating on GLP-1 drugs. This condition, known as Wernicke encephalopathy, affects the brain and can cause confusion, coordination problems and lasting neurological damage if not treated promptly.

Nutrient-dense foods

People using GLP-1 drugs need to prioritise nutrient-dense foods that deliver a high amount of vitamins, minerals, fibre and protein relative to their calorie content.

Yet a recent review found that many people taking GLP-1 drugs receive little or no meaningful nutrition advice. Without guidance, it can be difficult to meet your nutritional needs when appetite is dramatically reduced.

Many people with obesity already face a higher risk of nutrient deficiencies, including iron and vitamin B6. Chronic inflammation can interfere with how nutrients are absorbed and used by the body. Eating less while taking GLP-1 drugs may therefore worsen existing nutritional vulnerabilities.

This helps explain the growing interest in nutrient-dense ready meals marketed for people using GLP-1 drugs. These meals are typically high in fibre and designed to deliver more nutrition per calorie. In principle, this matches what people on appetite-suppressing medications need.

However, there is nothing magical about these products. The same nutritional goals can be achieved at home for less money. Adding seeds, nuts or nut butters to meals, using grains like quinoa, and stirring vegetables and lentils into sauces, soups and stews can all significantly boost nutrient intake. Keeping a small selection of nutrient-dense ingredients on hand and adding one or two to each meal can make a real difference.

That said, convenience matters. For people with limited time, cooking skills or nutrition knowledge – and who can afford them – prepared meals designed to be nutrient dense may be a helpful option.

GLP-1 drugs are powerful tools for weight loss. But they do not just change how much people eat. They change how carefully people need to think about what they eat. Until longer-term evidence is available, focusing on nutrient density, adequate protein and regular resistance exercise remains essential for anyone using these medications.

Rachel Woods 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. Weight loss drugs make it harder to get the nutrients you need – here’s what to do about it – https://theconversation.com/weight-loss-drugs-make-it-harder-to-get-the-nutrients-you-need-heres-what-to-do-about-it-272936

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Daniele D’Alvia, Lecturer in Banking and Finance Law, Queen Mary University of London

On January 3, the world watched in disbelief as the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, was captured by US forces. It was a dramatic geopolitical event that would reverberate not just in Washington and Caracas, but deep into global financial markets.

Financial speculation erupted across prediction platforms, bond markets and even cryptocurrency. It was a frenzy that, for some, translated into enormous profits – something I have looked at closely since 2023.

At the same time, Donald Trump’s personal wealth has reportedly soared amid broader shifts in financial markets and his own crypto ventures. It was reported that the value of the US president’s crypto-related holdings may have increased by US$140 million (£104 million) following the Venezuela raid. It feeds into a broader trend of rapid growth in digital assets tied to the president and his family.

What this episode reveals is not only how geopolitics shapes markets, but how intertwined political power, speculation and personal wealth have become. This matters not just to investors but to ordinary citizens. The world’s future has rarely been more uncertain, but according to American economist Frank Knight, uncertainty is the road to profit.

Prediction markets are platforms where people bet on political or real-world outcomes. Users can buy and sell shares representing yes/no responses concerning the outcome of anything from sporting events, celebrity news or political shakeups. On Polymarket, an online prediction market, one anonymous trader turned a stake of around US$34,000 into more than US$400,000 by betting that Maduro would be ousted by the end of January.

Polymarket later announced however that bets on Maduro’s capture did not qualify and that it will not pay out. In a statement, it said the bet referred to “US military operations intended to establish control” in Venezuela.

But nonetheless, the potential windfall sent shock waves through the financial press. How did this platform user know? Were they lucky, or did someone with an inside track get there first? This has fuelled debate about whether prediction markets are legitimate aggregators of information or thinly regulated gambling platforms ripe for ethically questionable insider gains.

Cryptocurrency and prediction markets overlap in other ways. Many of these platforms – including those backed or acquired by major crypto players – operate on blockchain infrastructure and allow wagers in digital assets.

Trump’s impulse to loosen regulatory oversight has, over his tenure, tended to benefit crypto markets. While it’s too soon to quantify any direct effect on his personal holdings, the symbolic link between political risk and crypto valuation is unmistakable to investors who see turmoil as volatility they can profit from.

But in Washington, politicians are now proposing insider-trading restrictions specific to prediction platforms.

Turning distress into dollars

If prediction markets are the high-risk, high-return fringe of this story, the surge in Venezuelan sovereign bonds is its mainstream financial counterpart.

For years Venezuela’s government and state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) defaulted on billions in debt, with bonds trading at deep discounts. When Maduro was captured and the prospect of a political reset seemed real, those distressed bonds jumped sharply. Some rose nearly 20% in value as investors saw the prospect of debt restructuring or an easing of US sanctions.

Hedge funds and other institutional investors that had taken long positions in on this beaten-down debt suddenly found themselves on the brink of sizeable profits. This was not a gamble on an election or a crypto token – it was a political event changing credit risk expectations.

It is the kind of speculation that made headlines in the 1990s sovereign debt crises and again in Greek bonds during the eurozone turmoil. But it’s rare to see such dramatic moves tied to a single operation.

The bond rally illustrates how modern markets internalise geopolitical risk: when a regime change seemed possible, investors put money down that the new status quo would repair economic ties, unlock oil revenues and legitimise Venezuelan debt. The fact that this rally came so quickly after the raid shows how responsive markets are to political surprises.

Beyond prediction bets and debt traders, a third wave of speculation rippled through energy stocks and broader markets.

US companies – particularly Chevron, which already holds Venezuelan interests – saw their shares jump as investors priced in the possibility of the US gaining access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. News that Washington may exercise temporary control over Venezuelan oil sales only amplified this narrative, sending energy stocks indexes and broader market indices higher in the days after the raid.

The rally was not universal – global oil prices were more muted and even fell at times as markets assessed potential oversupply scenarios. But the broader trend was clear: geopolitical change in a major oil-producing nation quickly raised hopes of higher share prices for some energy firms.

This is not just Wall Street optimism – it reflects real strategic thinking about how a post-Maduro Venezuela might unlock tens of millions of barrels of oil and rekindle investment in one of the world’s largest reserves. It is a reminder that behind seemingly chaotic headlines, markets are always trying to price tomorrow’s economic reality today.

The capture of Maduro was a financial event as well as a political one. It exposed how deeply intertwined markets and geopolitics have become – and how much profit awaits those who can read the signals first.

Daniele D’Alvia 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 markets have cashed in on Maduro’s capture in Venezuela – and why it’s raising questions – https://theconversation.com/how-markets-have-cashed-in-on-maduros-capture-in-venezuela-and-why-its-raising-questions-273059

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Berry Billingsley, Director of AI, Digital and Online Development, Swansea University

When Elon Musk talks about robotics, he rarely hides the ambition behind the dream.

Tesla’s Optimus is pitched as an all-purpose humanoid robot that can do the heavy lifting on factory floors and free us from drudgery at home. Tesla is targeting a million of these robots in the next decade.

But is Musk likely to succeed? A few years ago, the thought of a friendly, capable household robot belonged in science fiction. We could imagine machines that danced, shifted boxes or played chess, but not ones that understood us well enough to be genuinely helpful. Then came generative artificial intelligence, or gen AI.

Whether your first encounter was with ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot, many of us felt the same jolt of surprise. Here was a bot that seemed to understand us in a way we didn’t expect. That has made Musk’s dream of a robot companion feel if not close then certainly closer.

Imagine leafing through a catalogue of robots the way we browse for home appliances. If a personal robot still feels too expensive, perhaps we might hire one part time. Maybe a dance instructor that doubles as a therapist. Families could club together to buy a robot for an elderly relative. Some people might even buy one for themselves.

The future Musk describes isn’t just mechanical, it’s emotional.

Why the humanoid shape matters

The idea of robots that look like us can seem creepy and threatening. But there’s also a practical explanation for the drive to make robots that look like us.

A dishwasher is essentially a robot but you have to load it yourself. A humanoid robot with hands and fingers could clear the table, load the dishwasher and then feed the pets too. In other words, engineers create humanoid robots because the world is designed for human bodies.

But the humanoid form also carries an emotional charge. A machine with a face and limbs hints at something more than functionality. It’s a promise of intelligence, empathy or companionship. Optimus taps into that deep cultural imagery. It is part practical engineering, part theatre and part invitation to believe we are close to creating machines that can live alongside us.

There are moments when a personal robot might be genuinely welcoming. Anyone who has been ill, or cared for someone who is, can imagine the appeal of a helper that preserves dignity and independence. Robots, unlike humans, are not born to judge. But there is also a risk in outsourcing too much of our social world to machines.

If a robot is always there to tidy up the mess, practical or emotional, we may lose some of the tolerance and empathy that come from living among other people.

That is where the question of design becomes crucial. In the most dystopian version of life with generative AI-powered, chatty, dexterous robots, we retreat indoors, sealed into our homes and attended to by machines that are endlessly “understanding” and quietly adoring. Convenience is maximised, but something else is lost.

If sociability really does matter – if it is worth a little extra inconvenience to practise being human with other humans rather than only with chatbots – then the challenge becomes a practical one. How do we engineer a future that nudges us towards one another, instead of gently pulling us apart?

One option is to rethink where conversation lies. Rather than building all-purpose, ever-chatty assistants into every corner of our lives, we could distribute AI across devices and limit what those devices talk about. For example, a washing machine might discuss laundry, while a navigation system might discuss routes. But open-ended chatter, the kind that shapes identity, values and relationships, remains something that people do with people.

At a collective level, this kind of design choice could reshape workplaces and shared spaces, turning them back into environments that cultivate human conversation. That is, of course, only possible if people are encouraged to show up in person, and to put their phones away.

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Read more:
The science of human touch – and why it’s so hard to replicate in robots

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The real design challenge is not how to make machines more attentive to us, but how to make them better at guiding us back towards one another

So, it is worth asking what kind of domestic future we are quietly building. Will the robots we invite inside help us connect, or simply keep us company?

Good bots, bad bots

A good bot could help a socially anxious child get to school. It may nudge a lonely teenager towards local activities. Or it may tell a cantankerous old person: “There’s a crime club starting in an hour at the library. We can pick up a paper on the way.”

A bad bot leaves us exactly where we are: increasingly comfortable with a machine and less comfortable with each other.

Musk’s humanoid dream may yet become real. The question is whether machines like Optimus will help us build stronger communities, or quietly erode the human connections we need most.

Berry Billingsley is the Director of AI, Digital and Online Development at Swansea University

– ref. Humanoid robots or human connection? What Elon Musk’s Optimus reveals about our AI ambitions – https://theconversation.com/humanoid-robots-or-human-connection-what-elon-musks-optimus-reveals-about-our-ai-ambitions-269757

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Charlie Firth, PhD Candidate, Paediatrics, University of Oxford

The UK has updated its childhood immunisation schedule. For parents who had already mapped out their child’s vaccination appointments in their heads, the announcement might have come as an unwelcome surprise.

The changes include routine protection against chickenpox through the combined MMRV vaccine, the removal of the Hib/MenC vaccine (which helps protect against two of the causes of meningitis and blood poisoning) from the one-year appointment, and a new vaccination visit at 18 months – bringing forward the MMRV vaccine, and adding a different Hib containing vaccine.

If you’re a parent, you might be wondering why the schedule you’d been expecting has suddenly changed. It’s natural to feel uncertain when something that seemed settled becomes unfamiliar. But changes like these are actually a routine part of how vaccination programmes work – and understanding why they happen can be reassuring rather than worrying.

When vaccination schedules stay the same for years, they fade into the background of family life. You know when appointments are due, your health visitor or GP knows the routine, and immunisation becomes just another part of early childhood – like weaning or starting nursery. It’s only when things change that we really notice the system at all.

Why schedules change

Vaccination schedules aren’t meant to stay frozen in time. In the UK, an expert committee called the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) regularly reviews evidence from clinical trials, safety monitoring, disease tracking and studies of how vaccines perform in real life. When the evidence shows a better way to protect children that is also cost-effective, recommendations are updated.

The addition of chickenpox vaccination is a good example (the “V” in MMRV stands for varicella, the virus that causes chickenpox). Many of us remember having chickenpox as children and might assume it’s always mild. But the evidence shows it can lead to serious complications, such as skin infections, pneumonia or brain swelling, sometime requiring treatment in a hospital. It also causes disruption through school absence and parents having to take time off work.

Delivering chickenpox protection through the combined MMRV vaccine makes practical sense too. Combination vaccines are widely used around the world – MMRV has been standard in Canada, Australia and Germany for years – and are designed to reduce the number of injections and clinic visits without compromising safety or effectiveness.

The new 18-month visit came about for different reasons and shows how one change can ripple through the whole schedule. The manufacturer of the Hib-MenC vaccine (Menitorix), given at one year, told the JCVI it would stop making it for commercial reasons.

The committee looked at the evidence and concluded that a MenC booster is no longer needed in infancy because the UK has a good control of meningococcal C disease, thanks to the MenACWY vaccine. It is given to teenagers, but can protect the whole population through herd immunity.

But children still need continued protection against Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), a serious bacterial infection. So an extra dose of the six-in-one vaccine – which protects against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, Hib and hepatitis B – is now given at 18 months.

The new appointment also allows the second MMRV dose to be given earlier, increasing protection against measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox at a younger age. This matters because of recent outbreaks. Some parts of London have been offering the second MMR dose earlier, between 15 and 18 months, since the early 2000s. This approach led to higher overall uptake by age five compared with later appointments.

Vaccination programmes tend to work best when they’re unremarkable – when they just happen in the background of family life. A new visit, a new vaccine or a new combination brings the schedule back into view and prompts people to look again at a system they’d previously taken for granted.

This isn’t unique to vaccination. Any kind of infrastructure becomes most noticeable when it’s adjusted – think of roadworks or changes to school term dates. In vaccination, these moments can prompt questions about why change is happening, how decisions are made, and what’s different from before. These questions aren’t a sign of mistrust. They show people engaging with health systems exactly as they should.

New vaccines are developed, existing ones are made more effective, and diseases become more or less common. The latest changes to the UK immunisation schedule aren’t exceptional – they’re part of the continuing work needed to keep a complex public health system functioning over time.

Moments of change briefly reveal the work that routine usually hides. They show that vaccination programmes aren’t fixed systems, but ones that are constantly fine-tuned to keep children and adults protected.

Charlie Firth receives funding from the National Institute for Health Research.

– ref. The UK’s childhood vaccination schedule just changed. Here’s why that’s actually reassuring – https://theconversation.com/the-uks-childhood-vaccination-schedule-just-changed-heres-why-thats-actually-reassuring-272746

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nicolas Forsans, Professor of Management and Co-director of the Centre for Latin American & Caribbean Studies, University of Essex

The Trump administration has justified the recent capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro as a law enforcement operation to dismantle a “narco‑state”. It also claimed it would break Venezuela’s ties to China, Russia and Iran, and put the world’s largest known oil reserves back under US‑friendly control.

This mix of counter‑narcotics, great power rivalry and energy security had already been elevated to a central priority by the administration in its national security strategy. Published in late 2025, the document announced a pledge to “reassert and enforce American preeminence in the western hemisphere” and deny “strategically vital assets” to rival powers.

Donald Trump has referred to this hemispheric project as the “Donroe doctrine”, casting it as a revival of the Monroe doctrine policy of the 19th century through which the US sought to stop European powers from meddling in the Americas. He seems to be seeking to tighten the US grip on Latin America by rewarding loyal governments and punishing defiant ones.

If Venezuela is the first test case of the Donroe doctrine, several other Latin American countries now sit squarely in Washington’s crosshairs. The most immediate target is Cuba, which the US has opposed since 1959 when communist revolutionary Fidel Castro overthrew a US-backed regime there.

Trump and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, have openly hinted that Cuba could be Washington’s next target. They have described Cuba as “ready to fall” after the loss of Venezuelan oil and have boasted that there is no need for direct intervention because economic collapse will finish the job.

Cuba is enduring its worst crisis since 1959. Blackouts now regularly last up to 20 hours, real wages are collapsing and roughly 1 million Cubans have fled the country since 2021. This is all happening as Venezuelan crude oil is being redirected under US control.

For over two decades, Venezuela has provided Cuba with fuel and financing in exchange for doctors, teachers and security personnel – 32 of whom were killed in the US capture of Maduro, according to the Cuban government. Strangling Cuba’s remaining lifelines may well be enough to topple the government there without US forces needing to fire a single shot.

It is possible that Mexico will also soon come under fire. Mexico has quietly become Cuba’s main oil supplier, shipping roughly 12,000 barrels per day in 2025 to account for about 44% of the island’s crude imports. This is unlikely to please the Trump administration, which has recently renewed its threats to “do something” about Mexican drug cartels.

The raid in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, took six months of meticulous planning and required an extraordinary amount of resources. So it is unrealistic to expect similar raids on other Latin American countries. However, targeted military strikes cannot be excluded.

Speaking on Fox News’s “Hannity” show on January 8, Trump said: “We are going to start now hitting land with regard to the cartels. The cartels are running Mexico.” He did not provide further details about the plans.

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, is trying to construct protective buffers. She has combined condemnation of the raid on Caracas with intense cooperation with the US on migration and security. This includes a deal for Mexico’s navy to intercept suspected drug-running boats near its coastline before US forces do.

But as part of a strategy that pushes US dominance of Latin America, Trump has already floated classifying Mexico’s cartels as terrorist organisations and the fentanyl they traffic across the border as a weapon of mass destruction. These are legal framings that could be used to justify strikes on Mexican soil in the name of counter-narcotics in the near future.

Trump’s other targets

Colombia, historically Washington’s closest military ally in South America, has flipped from “pillar” to possible target. The country’s president, Gustavo Petro, has been one of the loudest critics of the Venezuela raid. He called it an “abhorrent violation” of Latin American sovereignty committed by “enslavers”, adding that it constituted a “spectacle of death” comparable to Nazi Germany’s 1937 carpet bombing of Guernica in Spain.

Trump, who imposed sanctions on Petro and his family in October, responded by labelling the Colombian president a “sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States”. He then mused that a Venezuela‑style operation in Colombia “sounds good to me” before a hastily arranged phone call and White House invitation dialled back the immediate threat.

How long the conciliation between the two men lasts remains to be seen. Colombia has entered a heated presidential campaign season in which Trump’s remarks are already being read as an attempt to tilt the race, much as his interventions shaped recent contests in Argentina and Honduras.

Further down the hierarchy, Nicaragua’s government will also have watched events unfold in Venezuela with terror. Long treated in Washington as part of a trilogy of dictatorships with Cuba and Venezuela, Nicaragua features in US indictments against Maduro as a transit point for cocaine flights. Nicaragua was also recently designated by the US as a key drug‑transit country.

The unusually cautious statement on the Venezuela raid by Nicaraguan presidential couple Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, as well as the rapid reinforcement of the presidential compound in the capital Managua, suggest a regime that knows it could be next in line should Trump choose to extend his “narco‑terrorism” narrative.

Trump appears to be turning longstanding US concerns – drugs, migration and interference by other major powers – into a flexible toolbox for coercion in Latin America. Countries that defy Washington or host its rivals risk being framed as security threats, stripped of economic lifelines and, possibly, targeted militarily.

Those that keep their heads down may avoid immediate punishment. But this comes at the price of treating hemispheric dominance as a fact of life rather than a doctrine to be resisted.

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

– ref. What lies ahead for Latin America after the Venezuela raid? – https://theconversation.com/what-lies-ahead-for-latin-america-after-the-venezuela-raid-272774

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nishant Kumar, India Alliance Fellow, National Centre for Biological Science, Bangalore & Department of Biology, University of Oxford

Growing up in rural India, my grandmother would feed the village dog half a chapati and a bowl of milk each afternoon, surely insufficient for its needs. The dog survived by scavenging from nearby homes. Years later, living in Delhi, I encountered street dogs refusing biscuits, overfed by households competing to care for them.

India’s unique mix of religious and cultural values creates a deep tolerance for non-humans and wildlife among rich and poor alike, often rooted in millennia of coexistence. People consciously endure significant risks to coexist with animals. However, this dynamic is shifting as cities grow and their dogs become more territorial in crowded and more littered shared spaces.

India has at least 60 million free-ranging dogs, an estimate more than a decade old. More recent surveys found about 1 million in Delhi alone. Relatedly, India also accounts for more than a third of global rabies deaths.

Unlike most western countries, Indian culture and laws forbid culling. Dogs must instead be caught, sterilised, vaccinated and – crucially – returned to their exact territory. In practice, these mandates are frequently ignored.

Things changed in August 2025. After several children were mauled by street dogs, the country’s supreme court briefly ordered all street dogs in Delhi and the surrounding region be rounded up and placed in shelters or pounds, promising dog-free streets for the first time in decades.

The order was unworkable – there simply aren’t shelters for millions of dogs – and sparked a fierce backlash from animal rights groups. Within two days, the court reversed its decision and reinstated the long-standing sterilisation policy.

Subsequent rulings have narrowed the focus. In November 2025 the court ordered dogs be removed from schools, hospitals and public transport zones nationwide, while adding restrictions on public feeding and encouraging fencing to keep dogs away.

Most recently, on January 7, 2026, it directed authorities to fence and secure all of India’s 1.5 million schools and colleges from dogs – all within just eight weeks. Yet, like the earlier order, the aggressive timeline ignores the infrastructure challenges and is unlikely to significantly reduce the frequency of bites or resulting infection. The court is currently holding hearings with interested parties, as it tries to find a middle ground between mass removal of dogs and animal welfare concerns.

The nation is divided. It seems the state cannot kill these dogs, nor house them, nor control them. The question of what to do with them is one of public safety and animal welfare, but also something deeper: the latest chapter in one of evolution’s most remarkable partnerships.

An experiment in coexistence

Dogs are the only vertebrate species that followed human migration out of Africa into every climate and settlement. While the exact moment of domestication is uncertain, we know that dogs evolved to live alongside humans. But our cross-species ties now face unprecedented challenge of tropical urbanism.

In the past few centuries, as dogs earned their way into our homes, humans created over 400 breeds, fine-tuned for companionship, work or aesthetics. This co-evolution matters, as it means dogs are attuned to human cues and form strong attachments to specific people and places. In urban India, where dogs are unowned but aren’t truly wild, that attachment expresses itself as territorial behaviour over a home or someone who feeds them.

India’s unique social-ecological laboratory

India offers an unparalleled window into this relationship. Historically, street dogs served as scavengers. In poorer communities, they still do. But in more prosperous districts, they are now intentionally fed.

Preliminary research in Delhi I carried out with my colleague Bharti Sharma reveals dogs organise into packs around specific households where a few committed feeders can meet nearly 100% of their dietary needs. This supports much higher dog densities than scavenging ever could.

The urban collision

This is where ancient coexistence collides with modern urban design. Indian streets are multi-use spaces. In tropical climates, waste pickers and blue-collar workers often operate at night – the very hours when dogs are most territorial, and when the wealthier residents who feed them are asleep.

Dogs have adapted their behaviour – barking, chasing, occasionally biting – in ways that get unintentionally rewarded by feeders but create hazards for others. The statistics are sobering: millions of bites and thousands of rabies deaths each year.

Yet some backlash to the supreme court’s mandates was inevitable. As gentrification changes who gets to decide what urban life should look like, a conflict of values has emerged. Some value shared animal presence, while others prioritise risk elimination.

The path forward

We may have reached “peak mutualism” in India’s cities. Despite daily nuisances everyone suffers – the barking, the chasing – millions still feed these dogs. Yet the same dog that wags its tail at familiar feeders may bite someone new. This is not irrational aggression; it is territorial protection born of deep association with a specific human community.

Western cities culled their street dogs long ago because social priorities were more uniform. India’s diversity means no such consensus exists. It may take another 20 or 30 years before its urban population uniformly sees the presence of territorial dogs as intolerable.

As India urbanises, it must decide whether to maintain spaces for ancient relationships that predate cities themselves, or follow the western path of total management. My grandmother’s half-chapati ritual represented an older compact: minimal investment, peaceful coexistence and mutual benefit. Delhi’s overfed, territory-defending dogs represent a new, more intensified intimacy – and it is unclear whether this serves either species well.

Nishant Kumar receives funding from the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance Fellowship.

He is a DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance Fellow hosted at the National Centre for Biological Science, TIFR, Bangalore, India. Department of Biology, University of Oxford is his overseas host for the fellowship. In addition, he is the co-founder and Chief-Scientist of a research think-tank in Delhi, called Thinkpaws: www.Thinkpaws.org.

– ref. India’s 60 million street dogs are turning from village scavengers to city territory defenders – https://theconversation.com/indias-60-million-street-dogs-are-turning-from-village-scavengers-to-city-territory-defenders-272751