Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kamran Matin, Associate Professor of International Relations, University of Sussex

Many Kurdish people will be feeling betrayed by the US after the Syrian army, backed by the US and armed by Turkey, launched an offensive against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in early January. The SDF has long been hailed as the west’s most effective partner against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organisation.

Led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, the Syrian president who was formerly an al-Qaeda commander, the army initially targeted two Kurdish neighbourhoods in the city of Aleppo. Government forces then captured the SDF-held provinces of Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa further east before advancing on the Kurdish-majority regions of Hasakah and Kobani in the north-east corner of the country.

The Syrian army and the SDF are currently observing a fragile 15-day ceasefire, brokered by the US. But according to the UN, at least 134,000 Kurds have already been displaced. And many Kurdish civilians fear a repeat of the 2025 sectarian mass killings and widespread abuse against Syria’s Alevi and Druze communities.

Kobani, a city famous as the site of heroic Kurdish resistance against IS in 2014, is under siege with its water and electricity supplies cut off. And Elham Ahmad, a senior Kurdish official, claims the Syrian army has already executed hundreds of captured Kurdish fighters and civilians. She has characterised the actions of the state as a “war of extermination” against the Kurds.

Abandoning Kurdish allies

The geopolitical fulcrum of this upheaval is US regional strategy. Shortly after becoming Nato’s first secretary general in 1952, Lord Hastings Ismay said the organisation’s purpose was “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in and the Germans down”. In a similar vein, the US strategy in Syria arguably seeks to keep America afar, Iran out and Israel and Turkey apart.

In line with the Trump administration’s 2025 national security strategy, Washington has sought to block Iranian influence in the Middle East. Keen to shift the burden for overseeing the region’s security away from the US, it has also looked to withdraw US forces from Syria after al-Sharaa’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) coalition of Turkey-backed Islamist groups toppled longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.

A strong HTS-led Sunni Muslim state that is hostile to Iran and its Shia proxies in Iraq and Lebanon, under Turkish tutelage and supported by the Gulf states, was deemed the best option. Yet diverging Israeli and Turkish priorities have complicated this approach.

Israel viewed al-Sharaa’s al-Qaeda past and the inclusion of foreign jihadist fighters in the Syrian military as grave security threats. This helps explain why, immediately after Assad’s fall, Israel destroyed much of Syria’s strategic military infrastructure to prevent it from falling into Islamist hands.

Turkey, meanwhile, has long regarded the autonomy of Syrian Kurds (effective since 2012) as a threat, given the decades-long struggle of its own large Kurdish population for political and cultural rights. Washington sought to square these competing interests through a two-pronged approach.

First, it pushed Syria and Israel towards negotiating a security-economic deal, addressing Israeli concerns in return for sanctions relief and reconstruction aid for Syria. Seeking state consolidation, al-Sharaa accepted the de facto demilitarisation of Syria’s southern regions. He also signalled Syria’s readiness to join the Abraham accords, a series of agreements to normalise relations between Israel and Middle Eastern countries.

Second, the US pressured the Kurds to integrate their military and administrative institutions into the new Syrian state to address Turkish concerns. This led to an agreement between the SDF and Damascus in March 2025, with precise details left to be worked out by joint special working committees.

However, implementation soon stalled over Kurdish demands for local autonomy and integrating the SDF into the national army as a bloc to preserve its organisational coherence, akin to the Kurdish Peshmerga forces in Iraq. Spurred by Ankara, Damascus rejected Kurdish demands, producing a deadlock.

During US-mediated talks in Paris in early January 2026, the security-economic deal between Israel and Syria was agreed and will soon be finalised. At the same meeting, a Syrian government proposal for a limited operation to recapture SDF-held territory reportedly met no objections. And almost immediately thereafter, the Syrian army launched its offensive.

Another blowback in the making?

US policy in west Asia has repeatedly generated blowback – from support for the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad of the 1980s to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the chaotic 2022 withdrawal from Afghanistan. Abandoning the Kurds in favour of an anti-Iranian government in Syria risks repeating this pattern.

Domestically, it could embolden al-Sharaa to forcibly subordinate Druze, Alawite, Assyrian and other minority groups. This would reproduce a centralised state sustained by repression, like Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist Iraq, and risks renewed civil war.

Regionally, it destabilises neighbouring Iraq. Nouri al-Maliki, an influential politician who has been nominated for prime minister by dominant Shia factions in the Iraqi parliament following the October 2025 elections, has described al-Sharaa’s Syria as being governed by terrorists.

Indeed, alarmed by the handover of camps holding former IS fighters from the SDF to Damascus, the Iraqi government asked Washington to relocate thousands of IS detainees to Iraq. The US has accepted this request, despite having admitted Syria into the global anti-IS coalition only two months earlier.

Maliki is also closely aligned with Iran. Meanwhile, Iran-backed Shia militia groups in Iraq are concerned about the deployment of Syrian government forces on border crossings previously held by the SDF. Any US attack on Iran, as Donald Trump has threatened recently, could thus draw in Iraq.

Internationally, the danger of abandoning the Kurds is the return of IS terrorism to cities in the west. Reports suggest many IS detainees escaped from detention camps as SDF forces guarding them came under attack. And videos released by the SDF show what it claimed were IS members being broken out of a prison by armed “Damascus factions”.

Washington must honour its own conditions: support for Syria’s transitional government must be contingent on the creation of a genuinely democratic, plural and inclusive political order that constitutionally enshrines and protects minority rights – including those of the Kurds.

Kamran Matin is affiliated with Kurdish Peace Institute.

– ref. US abandons Syria’s Kurds, risking regional turmoil and an IS resurgence – https://theconversation.com/us-abandons-syrias-kurds-risking-regional-turmoil-and-an-is-resurgence-274169

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Peter Watt, Lecturer in Organisation, Work and Technology, Lancaster University

When Industry first aired in 2020 it seemed, ostensibly, to be a drama about a recent cohort of ambitious young graduates entering the cut-throat world of investment banking. But as the opening season unfolded and its central characters were established, it became clear that although the trading floor of the fictional-but-all-so-familiar Pierpoint and Co. was its setting, this was not just a show about finance.

In 2021, I had the opportunity to speak to the show’s co-writers and creators, Mickey Down and Konrad Kay. In this conversation, Down described the show as “a universal take on workplace culture”, which, he explained, was why they gave it such a generic title.

For the first time, a television drama was treating contemporary corporate cultures and graduate work with an unprecedented seriousness, sensibility and insight. It managed to capture, in heightened form, pressures that are recognisable far beyond the world of the trading floor and the corporate boardroom.

Indeed, Industry is about work, and how central work has come to all facets of our lives. As it heads into its fourth season and beyond the trading floor, the show is set to expose the all consuming nature of work more than ever before.

Industry was, and remains, a show about how work has become more than a mere site of economic activity. For some people, work is the main arena in which a person’s self-worth is awarded or withdrawn. In this, ambition is sharpened into pathological obsession and the employment contract contains a Faustian logic where total submission to work will be answered with “more” – more money, more power, more life.

In its fourth season, Industry continues to capture the tragic underbelly of modern professional life. The tone is set in the opening episode by Harper Stern, the series’ most vivid engine of ruthless ambition.

Early on she announces: “The story of our lives – giving everything to something that kills you.” If the previous seasons are anything to go by, this line works as a verdict not only on her, but on the entire grammar of contemporary professional life.

With Pierpoint collapsing in the finale of season three, the pathology of work that Industry has shed a light on is definitively revealed as a universal issue – the trading floor was simply its first and most visible stage. As the workplace drama grows outward beyond the office, the conditions of competition, appraisal, self-preservation and self-assertion are set to be revealed as something even more totalising.

In episode one, Harper is introduced on her 30th birthday as heading her own fund. By episode two, she has already alienated her investors. And, by episode three, she is starting again – back alongside her old Pierpoint mentor, Eric Tao, pitching a new venture to investors.

Harper may be an extreme case, but she shows, in concentrated form, what a constantly changing and increasingly insecure job market: the imperative of perpetual reinvention and self-assertion to gain and maintain employment. These characters and real world workers do all of this in the pursuit of a future that is always promised and never quite possessed.

Indeed, a dark irony and dramatic tension in Industry is that it so often places its characters near power – money, titles, access, invitations – only to show how little control they possess.

For instance, the two remaining characters from the first season have risen in status: Harper begins season four as head of an asset management fund and Yasmin is now tied to the peerage through her marriage to Sir Reginald Henry Ferrers de Chartley Norton Muck, the failed green-tech prince of season three.

However, they remain perpetually devoured by the same forces that shaped their self-destructive trajectories (and relationship) from the beginning. The difference now is that these forces have extended beyond the office and have spilled over into the intoxicating worlds of politics, start-ups, high-finance, aristocracy and celebrity.

The spilling over of work culure is most clear in episode two where Harper attends a birthday party hosted by Yasmin. As ever, the lines between work and play, networking and socialising, intimacy and leverage blur into a heady mix of debauchery, embarrassment and new business opportunities.

Only those who refuse to keep any part of life separate from the job are set to gain: “It starts and ends with work. And being proven fucking right”, Harper tells Eric in episode three.

Season four will likely be bigger and glossier but also the bleakest yet: more wealth, more ambition, more politics, and more reputational warfare. But, more subtly, we can expect Industry to reveal more of what has been its deepest cruelty and deepest truth from the beginning: that for so many, life no longer interrupts work – life is work.

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Peter Watt 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. Industry season four exposes the Faustian bargain of modern work culture – https://theconversation.com/industry-season-four-exposes-the-faustian-bargain-of-modern-work-culture-274328

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Oliver Taherzadeh, Assistant Professor, Environmental Economics, Leiden University

Who grows our food? This seemingly simple question is getting harder to answer in a world where our food crosses borders to get to our plate.

As countries increasingly rely on food imports, the mention of distant countries on our food labels is commonplace. Today, only one in seven countries are food self-sufficient across key food groups. So to understand who farms our food, researchers like me need to take a global vantage point.

The contribution of small and industrial-scale farming to global food supply has attracted much attention and debate. Yet, my research shows we’ve been measuring the wrong thing – production and not consumption. Focusing only on national farming systems skews our perception of which farmers are feeding the world by ignoring the food – and farmers – that sustain our daily diets.

This approach also amplifies the assumption that industrial farming is the foundation of global security. But when we lift the lid on our globalised food system, the story is very different.

By studying production and trade patterns of 198 countries, I have found that it’s small-scale farms (typically smaller than 20 hectares), not huge industrial operations, that underpin our daily diets. My team’s research, published in Nature Food, reveals that small-scale farmers contribute a third of the food consumed in high-income nations such as the UK and the US.

This insight has been overlooked by previous studies that solely focused on food distribution from farmers within national borders. These small-scale farms are often unrecognisable from the mega-farms that have come to dominate rural landscapes in Europe, South America and the US.

Although concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and across Asia, small farms play a key role in exporting fruit, vegetables, pulses, and root and tuber crops, to western countries. A few key cases stand out.

Despite small-scale farms making up less than 1% of Australian farms they supply around 15% of their food needs. In Canada and Europe, small farms contribute nearly 20% to national food needs, mostly from overseas. They also make up the majority of the food supply in 46 of the countries we studied, meeting the bulk of food needs for 5 billion people every day.

Agri-food export of food crops such as lentils and sweet potatoes from small-scale farms comes at a cost to low- and middle-income countries where these farming systems are dominant. These nations end up importing vast amounts of cereals and oil crops from high-income nations, to compensate for food and nutrition insecurity created by cash cropping and contract farming.

These dynamics bear the signature of colonial extractivism in the global agri-food system. They also signal a growing consolidation of food supply chains in low- and middle-income countries due to imports from industrial farms, a dependency that is set to grow with increased appetite for meat and processed food in rapidly industrialising countries.

Small-scale farms play a crucial role in creating global food security. But farmers of small farms often find themselves facing insecure land tenure, climate risk, unequal terms of trade and international trade regimes.

This new research, also reported in the latest State of Food and Agriculture report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, shows that such risks are not only contained to domestic food systems but will cross borders. Food and land insecurity for small-scale farmers means food insecurity for us all. Cuts to overseas aid from high-income nations makes this more likely, as support for climate-resilient farming dries up.

Safeguarding production from smallholders relies not only on domestic efforts to protect farmer livelihoods but transboundary measures to secure their land, rights and access to markets, such as land titles, small loans and living wages.

Subsidies, trade agreements and corporate consolidation erode these pillars of smallholder security and threaten the healthiest food on our plates – fruit, vegetables and pulses. Shining a light on the farmers hidden in national supply chains is a first step to ensure agri-food finance and regulation delivers sustainable livelihoods for all food producers.

This new study highlights the key role small-scale farmers play in meeting current food needs and hints to their importance in a sustainable food future. A plant-rich dietary transition, as called for by scientists, will rely on fruit, vegetable and pulse production, disproportionality produced by smaller farms, farms which typically produce more diverse food types than large-scale farms, higher yields and greater biodiversity. Now that we know who grows our food, we must give farmers equal priority in national farming policy, within and beyond our borders.

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Oliver Taherzadeh receives funding from Horizon Europe.

– ref. Small-scale farmers produce more of the rich world’s food than previously thought – new study – https://theconversation.com/small-scale-farmers-produce-more-of-the-rich-worlds-food-than-previously-thought-new-study-274057

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sarah Olive, Senior Lecturer in Literature, Aston University

Morfa Halen means “salt marsh” in Welsh. This tidal island is a delicious invention of Sky Arts’ new detective drama, Under Salt Marsh, although it has very real antecedents in north Wales. Shell Island on the Mochras peninsula, near Harlech, inspired writer and director Claire Oakley.

Morfa Halen is cut off from the mainland nightly, when the tide swamps the causeway. This isolation is emphasised through an overhead shot of a car cutting a foamy, white swathe through the blues and browns of saltwater and sunken grasses. Immediately, Morfa Halen is established as the kind of closed community on which the detective genre thrives: think monasteries, country houses and Oxbridge colleges.

Under Salt Marsh uses familiar detective tropes to tell a story about environmental precarity and community displacement – but its treatment of Welsh language and identity is more conflicted than its ecological politics.

The opening moments establish that central character, Jackie Ellis (Kelly Reilly), cares. We see it when the primary school teacher soothes her pupils’ troubles. It is evident when she discovers her student Cefin’s body face down in a drainage ditch, breaks the news to his parents, then babysits their other children. She cares because something similar has happened before. Her niece, Nessa, disappeared at the same age, from the same town, and is presumed dead. A police officer at the time, Ellis was unable to solve the case.

Ellis immediately interferes in the investigation, questioning witnesses and ordering the police team around. They are led by Detective Eric Bull (Rafe Spall). He was Ellis’s junior partner when her niece went missing. She wants him pulled from the case, saying he messed up the investigation then betrayed her. He claims Ellis was suspended for gross professional misconduct.

Their antipathy is complicated: she lies for him on her own initiative, getting him out of a scrap with a local lad. The gesture pays off. By the end of episode two, Ellis drags a reluctant commitment out of Bull to an illicit co-investigation. So far, so standard detective fare: a professional v amateur odd couple.

Furthermore, Bull’s encyclopaedic knowledge of flora and fauna; willingness to work viscerally by tasting ditchwater and chomping on samphire; and queer sexuality repackage classic detective traits from the likes of Sherlock Holmes. However, Bull’s character updates his aristocratic precedent with an urban English accent and football club tattoo.

Imagined communities

Place and its influence on people’s thinking and behaviour has long made for compelling detective television, from the Oxford of Inspector Morse to the Scandinavian borderland of The Bridge.

Morfa Halen’s community faces displacement due to climate change. This is a reality along the north Wales coast. In the short term, a severe storm threatens a forced evacuation. Evidence of the crime will be washed away, making the investigators’ work a race against time.

Sea defences are being built by workers who temporarily swell the village’s population and offer additional lines of inquiry. The earliest clues come when Cefin’s autopsy detects the salinity of the water in his lungs although he drowned in a rainwater ditch, and acid on his skin associated with landfill sites. Illegal dumping is discovered in a former quarry on land owned by Cefin’s grandfather, Solomon Bevan (Jonathan Pryce).

The community’s “deep connection to the land” is both materialised on the corpse and called into question. The series feels fresh in its ecological concern, but salty in its environmental critique. Oakley told the audience at the preview I attended: “Salt marsh stores carbon, it is a buffer from erosion. If we don’t protect it, it can’t protect us.”

Oakley clearly loves the setting. She nails the rise and fall atmosphere of neglected seaside towns: the seasonal highs of ice cream parlours and lows of seasonal unemployment, the pretty painted cottages and drab pebble-dash bungalows. Oakley pours herself into the speech of a fellow incomer, an Irish engineer who has been motivated to oversee the flood defences by memories of childhood summers.

North Wales is established visually through a familiar repertoire: sea-to-mountain views; heavy rain and sheep. Though the rain was faked by machines, the sheep are real enough. However, the scene in which Solomon herds them into his own village pub to protest resettlement is fantastical (don’t sheep where you eat).

Characters of colour momentarily promise to redress the usual white default in constructions of Welsh identity, especially in the countryside. However, except for Irene, we barely hear from these characters in the first few episodes.

Audibly, the show is dominantly English. There are the Welsh accents of some actors, such as Pryce, although these are mainly south Walian. The few identifiably “Gog”/north Walian accents include those of Cefin’s cousins and mother. This reinforces the skew in media representation to Wales’ southeast.

The Welsh language is spoken occasionally, though more fleetingly than in the show’s nearest geographical and generic rival Hinterland (2013). The latter’s bilingual version was credited as the first BBC television drama featuring dialogue in both Welsh and English.

Sometimes Under Salt Marsh reinforces the Anglophone stereotype of the Welsh language being used as “code speak” to evade English ears. A family discusses what to do with evidence as the English-speaking police pass by unaware. Road and street signs make fleeting contributions but the scarcity of bilingual shop fronts, menus and display boards in the village undercuts its resemblance to north Wales.

Author Saunders Lewis’s proclamation that “Wales without the Welsh language will not be Wales” applies to the sight of Welsh, as well as its sound. The omission is, however, unlikely to be noticed by Sky Arts’ far-flung audience.

Watch Under Salt Marsh because it promises excellent environmentally engaged detective drama, not to learn about Wales or Welshness.

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Sarah Olive is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Bangor University and has received Welsh Government funding for research on teaching literature.

– ref. Under Salt Marsh: detective drama uses the Welsh coast to explore climate anxiety – https://theconversation.com/under-salt-marsh-detective-drama-uses-the-welsh-coast-to-explore-climate-anxiety-274156

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rebecca Wagner, Postdoctoral Researcher, Stem Cell Biology and Single Cell Technologies, Karolinska Institutet

Cleansing has long been an important part of hygiene rituals across cultures. Nowadays, cleansing remains an essential part of daily skincare routines, helping to remove sweat, makeup and old skin cells.

But with skincare routines becoming more and more extensive (and expensive), it can be difficult to know which cleanser to use – and how to use it. The right product can benefit skin health and overall wellbeing, while the wrong product could potentially damage the skin.

What does cleanser do?

Cleansers are designed to clean the surface of the skin. They remove excess oils, dirt and other products – such as makeup or sun cream.

Cleansers can be divided into four base ingredients: soap, detergent, surfactants and emulsifiers. These are all compounds with properties that allow them to solubilise particles – a process which allows particles (such as makeup or dirt) to be dissolved in water. This process separates these particles from the surface of the skin so they can be washed away – leaving the surface of the skin clean.

The first cleansers were soaps. These are relatively harsh on the skin as they strip away the skin’s natural oils, causing dryness or even irritation.

Most modern cleansers contain synthetic detergents, which are less irritating to the skin. Some cleansers also contain a higher proportion of lipids (fats). This prevents the skin from becoming dry by replacing the oils that are removed by cleansing.

When should we cleanse?

How often you should cleanse is a personal matter, depending on factors such as lifestyle, skin type and genetics.

For instance, if you have dry skin, cleansing less frequently or with milder products may suit your skin better. But if you’re someone with oily skin you may want to cleanse more often.

How do you pick the right cleanser?

The type of cleanser that works best for a specific person will vary depending on a whole host of factors such as skin type, age and lifestyle. So what works for one person doesn’t guarantee it will work well for the next.

Cleansers are typically made with a specific base ingredient – such as water or oil. Water-based cleansers remove water-soluble particles, such as dirt and sweat, while oil-based cleansers can remove oil-soluble particles, such as makeup and sun cream. Additional ingredients are also often added to cleansers to help provide specific results.

For example, salicylic acid is often found in cleansers for blemish control. It has anti-inflammatory properties and slows down cell growth.

Benzoyl peroxide, has anti-bacterial properties, which is why it’s useful in treating mild acne.

If you don’t have acne or a skin condition where these compounds have been proven useful, cleansers containing salicylic acid or benzoyl peroxide may be unnecessarily harsh and could harm the skin.

Cleansers containing ceramides, which are naturally-occurring lipids that are an important component of the skin barrier, may be a good option for those looking to protect their skin. The addition of ceramides to a cleanser means less of the skin’s natural oils are lost during cleansing.

Why is using the right cleanser so important?

The skin is delicate. If you use ingredients that are too harsh, it could negatively affect the skin.

For instance, soaps and detergents can be harsh on the skin – specifically to the skin’s lipid components, which are key to the skin’s function as a protective barrier.

Harsh cleansers (or cleansing too often) could also potentially disrupt the skin microbiome – the many different types of bacteria, fungi and viruses that live on our skin and are essential to overall skin health. should be fixed now

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Read more:
Skin, mouth, lungs … it’s not just your gut that has a microbiome

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If the skin microbiome is disrupted, it could lead to a microbial imbalance, where one bacterial strain grows out of control. This could lead to breakouts or even exacerbate other skin issues, such as eczema.

Dry skin after cleansing may be a sign the skin barrier (the outer layer of dead skin cells that protect the underlying cells from harm) has been damaged. Moisturising after cleansing can combat this. Alternatively, using a cleanser that has a moisturising component – such as ceramides or a micellar water – may be helpful, though it’s still worth monitoring how your skin feels after cleansing.

How do you cleanse properly?

Washing your face with water alone won’t be enough to remove any oil, dirt or makeup that has built up.

Usually a single cleanse will work just fine for removing these things from the surface of the skin – including makeup.

Double cleansing is something that has been popularised by Korean beauty trends. This involves cleansing in two steps – first using an oil-based cleanser, which may work better to remove oily products (such as makeup or sunscreen), and following this up with a water-based cleanser. This procedure is meant to provide a deeper clean, which can be useful.

However, a water cleanser will not be very efficient at removing any residue that may be left behind from the oil cleanser. This could lead to a build-up of the oil-based cleanser which could lead to irritation or breakouts.

When deciding on how to cleanse and which products to use it’s important to consider what will be best for your lifestyle and your skin type. Just be sure your cleanser contains ingredients that allow you to clean your skin without destroying your skin barrier.

Rebecca Wagner receives funding from the Wenner Gren Foundation.

– ref. How to use cleanser properly – by an expert in skin science – https://theconversation.com/how-to-use-cleanser-properly-by-an-expert-in-skin-science-271029

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Brian J. Phillips, Reader (Associate Professor) in International Relations, University of Essex

It’s only one year into Donald Trump’s second term as US president, and he has already massively transformed US counter-terrorism policy.

The list of designated terrorist groups has grown at an unprecedented rate. Counter-terror policies are being stretched to include drug cartels – with serious international consequences, as we saw in Venezuela at the beginning of January.

And, importantly, the US is taking these steps without its longtime allies.

Since early 2025, Trump has added a whopping 26 new groups to the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list. In most years since the list started in 1997, only two or so groups were added. The past 12 months have seen the largest single year increase in US-declared terrorist organisations.

The FTO list imposes serious consequences on listed groups. It is a felony for anyone to “materially support” an FTO, so a US citizen could be sent to prison for transferring funds to a group member.

Banks have to freeze funds of anyone associated with a designated group. Alleged associates of designated organisations can also be barred from entering the US or kicked out if already in the country.

Terrorist designation implies a great deal of work on the part of law enforcement, financial institutions, the military and others, first in identifying and then in pursuing and countering organisations on the list.

In the mid-2010s, at the height of the threat from the Islamic State, there were about 60 FTOs – now there are more than 90. With such an inflated list, it is unclear that officials can focus on the highest priorities.

Other FTOs continue to carry out or direct attacks, such as the Bondi massacre of Jewish people celebrating Hanukkah in Sydney in December 2025, or Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps plotting the assassination of Israel’s ambassador in Mexico in 2024.

Drug dealers or terrorists?

The main US terrorist list has sprawled beyond traditional terrorist organisations. These are defined as ideologically motivated groups using intentional violence against civilians to achieve political goals.

In February 2025, the Trump administration added 15 groups to the terrorist list that are probably best described as drug cartels or gangs – such as the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico and gangs in Haiti and Central America.

Most people in the US had probably never heard of these groups, such as Gran Grif in Haiti and Los Lobos in Ecuador.

Especially perplexing to many analysts is why criminal groups would be added to a terrorist list. There are already US sanctions for criminal organisations, such as the Kingpin Act, which bans financial transactions with drug cartels and freezes their assets.

Apart from anything else, it stretches the resources of US crime-fighting agencies away from actual terrorist groups. And it seems to green-light excessive and counterproductive policies toward criminal organisations. A growing body of research shows that counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency used against drug cartels or gangs often backfires, leading to increased violence.

This expansion of the “war on terror” to criminal groups has been used to justify more than 100 deaths (so far) in missile strikes, and the overthrow of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. The Trump administration has justified the missile strikes with the language of counter-terrorism. Trump announced the first attack, on September 2 2025, with an explanation on social media indicating that the targeted group, Tren de Aragua, is an FTO.

There have now been 35 similar strikes, killing approximately 120 people.

America does not claim, however, that the targeted boats carry bombs or guns, the typical tools of terrorists. The boats are attacked because they are alleged to carry drugs – even though drug trafficking is almost never a death penalty offence in the US.

There have not been any missile strikes since Maduro’s capture on January 3. The US president justified the raid by saying that Maduro was the head of the Cartel de los Soles, which was designated as an FTO in 2025.

But, two days after Maduro’s capture, the US justice department dropped the claim that the cartel exists. It changed its indictment against the Venezuelan president to instead nominate him as sitting at the top of a system of corrupt patronage under which drug trafficking has flourished.

The US has certainly carried out regime change before, notably in Panama in 1989 when it captured and removed the country’s dictator, Manuel Noriega, who had been indicted before his capture. He was subsequently convicted and jailed in the US.

But the use of counter-terrorism law, language and lethal tactics abroad for drug traffickers – to this degree, in an extended military campaign – represents an unprecedented escalation.

A new path

These changes are all the more remarkable because they are part of a decoupling from traditional US allies on counter-terrorism. For decades, the US set the standard on counter-terrorism. Analyses of the dozens of terrorist lists around the world demonstrate that when the US designated a certain group as terrorists, its allies tended to follow suit – until 2025, that is.

Over the past year, the US has far outstripped all other countries when it comes to adding to the list of groups deemed to be “terrorists” proscribing terrorist groups. And most have not followed Washington down the road of listing criminal groups as terrorist organisations.

A few Trump-aligned Latin American countries, such as Argentina, labelled some of the cartels as terrorists. Canada also followed suit, listing seven cartels, but the move was widely reported to be part of an effort to gain a favourable trade deal.

States that historically copied US counter-terrorism priorities, from Australia to the UK, have not stretched their terrorist proscription regimes to include organised crime.

Longtime US allies have gone in another direction on counter-terrorism in recent years, proscribing far-right groups. The UK, for example, added two white supremacist networks to its terrorist list (alongside the pro-Palestine group Palestine Action) in 2025. The Trump administration did not include any far-right groups among its 26 new FTOs.

Overall, the decoupling of the US and its traditional allies is occurring more broadly than just on counter-terrorism, as the recent debate about Greenland makes clear. But when they can’t see eye to eye on who the main threats are, it begins to present a problem for the people tasked with keeping the world safe.

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

– ref. Trump 2.0: overhaul of counter-terrorism policy massively expands US list of bad guys – https://theconversation.com/trump-2-0-overhaul-of-counter-terrorism-policy-massively-expands-us-list-of-bad-guys-273875

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jo Middleton, Research Fellow in Public Health, Brighton and Sussex Medical School

Scabies cases are surging across the UK and Europe. The tiny mites that cause it spread easily through skin contact, making children, young adults and elderly people particularly vulnerable. Effective treatments are available, but myths and stigma are getting in the way of proper control.

What is scabies and how do people catch it?

Scabies is a skin infestation with tiny mites called Sarcoptes scabiei. The mites transfer from person to person through skin-to-skin contact – when parents cuddle children, care workers help residents, people share beds, or during sex. Occasionally, contaminated clothing or bedding can spread them too.

Are scabies cases rising in the UK, and if so why?

In institutions across England and Wales, such as care homes and schools, our team found 241 outbreaks in just one year.

In the wider population, the picture is less clear because scabies does not have to be officially reported to health authorities, and many people treat it themselves using over-the-counter medicines. However, reports from GP surgeries and sexual health clinics suggest cases have risen sharply over the last few years.

We don’t yet know all the reasons for this rise. However, one of the main culprits is that in 2023 and 2024 supply chain problems left pharmacy wholesalers struggling to stock imported scabies creams. With treatments delayed, more people became infested.

Who is most at risk of catching scabies?

Anyone can catch it, but three groups face the highest risk: children, sexually active young people and the elderly. This is mainly because these three groups tend to have more physical contact and are congregated in institutions like nurseries, universities and care homes. People in other crowded settings, such as migrant centres or prisons, are also at risk.

Is scabies caused by poor personal hygiene?

Absolutely not. Bathing habits make no difference to scabies rates. Unlike many bacteria and viruses, these mites tolerate soap and alcohol handwash just fine.

What are the symptoms?

Scabies usually causes an intense itch, particularly at night. However, these symptoms usually take around four to six weeks to arise if it is the first time someone is exposed.

Sometimes you can spot S-shaped burrows on the skin, particularly between fingers or on genital areas. In elderly patients, we’ve found scabies can look quite different – they may not even complain of itching.

How contagious is scabies and how long can mites survive off the body?

Scabies is highly contagious. Even a few minutes of skin-to-skin contact – such as holding hands – can be enough for a mite to crawl from one person to another. This is how most people become infested. Depending on room temperature and humidity, the mites can survive off the body for up to a week, but human skin is their natural habitat.

Why does scabies treatment sometimes fail or seem not to work?

Traditional cream treatments work well in ideal circumstances, but using them correctly can be difficult. The creams need to be put over the entire body and left on for hours. At the same time, clothing and bedding need to be washed, and close contacts, such as family members, need to be treated even if they have no symptoms.

This whole process then needs to be repeated seven days later. This is because the creams work excellently at killing the adult mites, but less well at penetrating egg-cases. The second treatment will kill the newly hatched mites before they have a chance to mate. Not carrying out any of these steps risks failing to eradicate the mites.

Even successful treatment can leave itching that persists for weeks, wrongly leading people to assume they’re still infested.

Why was an oral medication recently introduced?

In many countries, an oral medication called ivermectin has been available for treating scabies for many years – making treatment far easier. To tackle the surge in cases, my colleagues and I in the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Kent, Surrey, Sussex were involved in getting the drug licensed and available on prescription in the UK. But like the creams, it usually needs repeating after seven days to be fully effective.

Is scabies becoming resistant to medicated cream?

There is evidence scabies mites in other countries have developed some resistance to permethrin, the medicated cream used to eradicate them. However, most treatment failures in the UK probably stem from the practical difficulties of using treatments correctly rather than the medication itself not working.

What are the emotional and mental health effects of scabies on patients and families?

The visible signs on skin, combined with the persistent myth about poor hygiene, create real problems. When we’ve spoken to patients and their families, they describe feeling ashamed, being judged by others, and withdrawing socially. Add in disrupted sleep from the itching, and the mental health impact can be serious.

Why do shame and embarrassment make scabies harder to control?

Early diagnosis and treatment reduce how many people catch it from an infected person. But shame causes delays – people put off seeking help for themselves, their family members, or even residents in their care. This gives the mites more time to spread.

What should people do if they think they have scabies?

If you are concerned about scabies, you should see your GP. They can examine your skin to determine if it is indeed scabies and put a treatment plan in place, if necessary.

Dr Jo Middleton receives funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) through its Applied Research Collaboration Kent, Surrey, Sussex (NIHR200179). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.

– ref. Scabies outbreak in UK and Europe – what you need to know – https://theconversation.com/scabies-outbreak-in-uk-and-europe-what-you-need-to-know-273951

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Natasha Lindstaedt, Professor in the Department of Government, University of Essex

Mexico City has experiencing years of low rainfall, leaving it often unable to supply its citizens with water.

The city, originally built on lakes and wetlands, is now covered in concrete and asphalt. Another factor is that Mexico City loses about 40% of its water through leaks.

The shortages have sent the price of water shooting up. One resident told ABC News that he now spends about 25% of his income on buying water. And in 2024 water was rationed in 284 of the city’s neighbourhoods.

But the problem extends well beyond Mexico City. Water shortages are projected to affect 30 of its 32 states by the year 2050, which is forecast to affect 40-80% of its population.

Despite all of these water shortages, Mexico is being forced to send part of its water supply to the US because of a just over 80-year-old agreement that was negotiated when water was less scarce. The 1944 treaty governs the allocation of water from the Rio Grande and Colorado River. Under the agreement, Mexico must send 430 million cubic metres of water per year from the Rio Grande to the US, and the US agreed to send 1.85 billion cubic metres a year of water from the Colorado River to supply the Mexican border cities of Tijuana and Mexicali.

US president Donald Trump recently threatened additional 5% tariffs on Mexican exports to the US, claiming that Mexico was 986.8 million cubic metres short of delivering water targets set out in the treaty.

While Mexico is facing its worst water crisis in decades, with reservoirs that serve over 23 million people drying up, it continues to be struggle with this water debt to the US.

Now Mexico has agreed to send 65 billion gallons of water (246 million cubic meters) north by the end of January 2026, about a quarter of the debt, in an updated deal that was finalised on December 15, with distribution to Texas starting in January 2026.

Trump and Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum are expected to discuss further steps for Mexico to resolve its water debt by the end of January 2026. Sheinbaum has argued that there has to be recognition that Mexico has experienced years of drought.

How is Mexico coping?

This isn’t a new problem. Mexico City is sinking at a rate of 20 inches a year, with the aquifer that provides 60% of the city’s water over pumped. Back in February 2024, there were concerns that Mexico City might even run out of water in months.

In the town of San Cristóbal, in the southern state of Chiapas, residents have had to travel at least 30 minutes to access water as the taps often run dry, while other residents claim they only have access to water for a few hours a day.

In March 2025 for the first time ever the US refused a request by Mexico to provide water to the border city of Tijuana, which was running out of water. Tijuana is a manufacturing hub just 27 miles south of San Diego, California, which depends on the Colorado River for 90% of its water.

About 97% of the Colorado River basin lies within the US, while about 60% of the Rio Grande runs through the Mexico-Texas border, with the rest running through Colorado and New Mexico.

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Read more:
The world is in water bankruptcy, UN scientists report – here’s what that means

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Mexico has not consistently adhered to the water agreement since the early 1990s, and the agricultural sector in Texas has struggled to cope without the water being supplied. Texas lawmakers have made this a priority, calling on Trump to apply pressure on Mexico for not complying with the agreement.

And the pressure on Mexico is likely to continue as it must start to renegotiate the US-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement this year.

It’s not just Mexico that is running out of water, according to a new report by the United Nations.

The report reveals that more than 50% of the world’s large lakes have lost water while 70% of the major aquifers are experiencing long term decline. This is likely to ramp up tension between neighbouring countries over water access, with the Mexico/US conflict being just part of the bigger picture.

Mexico and the US’s growing dispute over water rights further complicates an already strained relationship that must tackle existing challenges related to drug trafficking, security, migration and trade wars. Water is just the latest issue to rise to the top of the tension table.

Natasha Lindstaedt 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. Mexico and US look for new deal in long-running battle over 80-year old water treaty – https://theconversation.com/mexico-and-us-look-for-new-deal-in-long-running-battle-over-80-year-old-water-treaty-274046

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna Walker, Senior Arts + Culture Editor, The Conversation

Jane Austen’s Paper Trail is a podcast from The Conversation celebrating 250 years since the author’s birth. In each episode, we investigate a different aspect of Austen’s personality by interrogating one of her novels with leading researchers. Along the way, we visit locations important to Austen to uncover a particular aspect of her life and the times she lived in.

For episode seven of Jane Austen’s Paper Trail, we’re doing something a little different. Rather than putting Austen under the microscope ourselves, we’re handing the questions over to you.

Jane Austen is a curious author because the more we learn about her, the more elusive she seems to become. She left behind a remarkably slim paper trail for someone so influential, and much of what we “know” about her has been filtered through family memory, biography and, sometimes, wishful thinking. As Jane Austen’s Paper Trail draws to a close, there are still loose ends to tie up – and that’s where you, our listeners, come in.

We’ve received a virtual sack full of letters from you, ranging from questions about Austen’s religious beliefs to her grasp of contemporary science, and even what she might have made of social media. Unlike Jane’s sister Cassandra Austen, however, we have no intention of throwing your letters into the flames. Instead, three experts join me to debate them – and, where possible, to settle them.

For our first panellist, we’re welcoming back Emma Claire Sweeney from episode four about Austen’s friendships. Sweeney is a senior lecturer in creative writing at the Open University and worked collaborated on a interactive experience with the BBC as part of the Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius.

Returning from episode six about whether Austen was happy is John Mullan, professor of literature at University College London and author of What Matters in Jane Austen. Completing the panel is Lizzie Dunford, director of Jane Austen’s House in Hampshire.

Together, they take your questions seriously, testing what can be answered from the novels, what can be inferred from historical context, and where Austen herself remains stubbornly silent. From faith and feminism to fame and future technology, these questions remind us why Austen continues to fuel our curiosity 250 years after her birth.

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Jane Austen’s Paper Trail is hosted by Anna Walker with reporting from Jane Wright and Naomi Joseph. Senior producer and sound designer is Eloise Stevens and the executive producer is Gemma Ware. Artwork by Alice Mason and Naomi Joseph.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here.

– ref. How much can we really know about Jane Austen? Experts answer your questions – https://theconversation.com/how-much-can-we-really-know-about-jane-austen-experts-answer-your-questions-274362

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Robin Ireland, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Glasgow

It’s almost too easy to make the case that men’s football in England has become overly commercial. At the start of this season, one Premier League striker cost £125 million. And with an annual TV broadcasting deal worth £1.25 billion, more money is flying around the top level of the sport every year.

But it hasn’t always been this way. So how has the sport become so dominated by commerce?

This was what I wanted to find out when I started looking into the history of the club I have supported ever since I was a young student in the 1970s. And it turns out that Norwich City is a good example of a side which has tackled the various economic factors that have transformed English football over the past five decades.

In the 1970s for example, those factors were often a challenge for businesses and households, with high inflation, high unemployment and slow economic growth.

Football clubs were not immune, and it was not an easy task to keep them going as sustainable businesses (especially when hooliganism and violence were lurking outside – and sometimes even inside – the stadium).

It was during that decade (April 1977) that Norwich City employed its first ever commercial manager, Nigel Mackay, who was fully aware that the existence of his very role was potentially upsetting to football purists. But it turned out to be a well-timed appointment.

Two years later, the Football Association allowed clubs to put sponsors’ names on players’ shirts. Four years after that, in July 1983, a meeting of Football League chairmen agreed a television deal with the BBC and ITV which allowed shirt advertising to appear on TV screens for the first time.

Norwich City’s first shirt sponsorship dealwas a three-year contract with a local double-glazing company, worth £50,000 a year, which was considered a milestone in the Norfolk club’s history.

Other clubs were a little more ambitious. And as football clubs continued to try to maximise their income, Tottenham Hotspur FC became the first club to be floated on the stock market in 1983.

A league of their own

The 1980s was a decade which saw a series of football related tragedies, including the Bradford fire in May 1985 which led to 56 deaths, and the deaths of 39 fans at Heysel in Brussels just 18 days later.

At the end of the decade, the horror of the Hillsborough disaster in April 1989, when 97 Liverpool fans died, proved a turning point both in how football was perceived, and how it was governed.

In 1991, the Football Association proposed all-seater stadiums for safety reasons, and a radical transformation of the sport to enable it to develop its commercial potential while leaning towards more affluent consumers.

And while Margaret Thatcher had been deposed as leader of the Conservative party in November 1990, her legacy of free market expansion and the sale of national assets to private investors was mirrored in the world of football.

The decision to allow the top 22 clubs to break away to form a new elite league in 1992 was a victory for those who sought to exploit and commodify football.

That year the “new” top division of English football launched its inaugural season in a fizz of colour and noise. The whole entertainment extravaganza borrowed much from American sport including exciting camera angles, trenchant pundits and new kick-off times to suit television audiences and advertisers.

And the US idea of mixing up television, commercial sponsorship and sport was clear to see as the media mogul Rupert Murdoch acquired the broadcasting rights to live coverage of the Premier League – using it to build his global audience for paid-for satellite television.

There were, of course, also increased ticket prices for those fans still wanting to attend matches at their local ground.

Winners and losers

Remarkably (it seems now), Norwich City were the unlikely leaders of the Premier League for the majority of its first season, before being deposed by Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United. And as others have mentioned, the financial reality in today’s game is that clubs like Norwich, Leeds United, Burnley and Ipswich Town are unlikely to match their successes of the past.

For its part, Norwich City, like many other English clubs, ended up turning to American ownership.

Before that, it was the famous TV cook Delia Smith and her husband who helped to bail their local club out of one of their periodic financial crises in 1997. The couple remained majority shareholders on the club’s board for more than 25 years, and probably never originally planned to hand over their beloved club to a US consortium in March 2025.

In many ways they were bowing to the inevitable. For the English Premier League, with its huge broadcasting revenues and sponsorship income, looks more like an exclusive club with every season that passes.

Fans have been transformed into consumers of a global entertainment product, at the expense of the competition and excitement which the new Premier League had promised. Success is now fundamentally bought with the vast riches generated by television, commercial income and the deep pockets of billionaires.

The result has pros and cons. As Delia Smith said herself: “There’s two ways to look at it. One is that the Premier League is the best in the world and everybody lauds us and our competition, but in another way we’ve lost so much of what football is. I think that’s a bit sad.”

Robin Ireland is affiliated with the Health Equalities Group (registered charity) as Director of Research (Honorary).

– ref. US cash, sponsored shirts and TV deals: how money took over English football – https://theconversation.com/us-cash-sponsored-shirts-and-tv-deals-how-money-took-over-english-football-266416